Color Boot Camp SATURATION: Neutral Areas vs. Saturated Areas, 11×14″ oil study
Continuing in the New Masters Academy Color Boot Camp series, this second Saturation exercise is about painting in a high major and minor key. The High Major Key means that overall the greater proportion of the image is very saturated. The Minor Key, or range of contrast of saturation, is also high. As you can see, the background is very neutral relative to her blouse and skin tones.
I was very happy with the way my study turned out. I spent closer to 3 hours than 30 minutes but the session went very well without much struggle.
Below are the reference photo and Mr. Perkins’ 30 minute study. I love the way he simplifies and makes a painting without worrying about painting this exact person.
Color Boot Camp SATURATION: Neutral Areas vs. Saturated Areas, Photo Reference
sketched in ink and watercolor from a SktchyApp photo, 10×9″The cat’s expression (and the boy’s) perfectly replicate mine the past few days of dealing with some tough family stuff. But drawing helps keep me sane. This was sketched from Susan Cooper’s photo on SktchyApp. Ink and watercolor 12×9″.
Instead of my usual lengthy posts I thought I’d experiment with the occasional quickie drafted on my phone. A picture, a few words, and done.
I have several long posts in progress but can’t tear myself away from painting to complete them. So to give me a little more time…here’s my contribution to the SktchyApp weekend challenge to draw using cross-hatching. Done and done!
Color Boot Camp: Saturation. Overall LOW Saturation, Study 1 v.2, 11×14″ oil on Dura-Lar
In each of Bill Perkins’ New Masters Academy Color Boot Camp courses, he introduces one aspect of color (e.g. Value, Saturation, Complements, Temperature), demonstrates and explains further with a quick oil study of the same model in different color/lighting situations. I tried this one twice (second version above, first below) because even though he emphasizes these assignments are NOT meant to be portraits, I’m as interested in learning to capture a likeness as I am color. I did a better job on the positioning of her head and getting a likeness in the second one, above. (See bottom of post for reference photo and teacher’s rendition.)
Color Boot Camp: SATURATION. Overall Low Saturation, Study 1 v1
Mr. Perkins uses the concepts of Major Key and Minor Key for each color topic. In Saturation, the Major Key describes the Level of saturation—how intensely saturated the colors are in the greater proportion of the image. The Minor Key represents the Range of contrast between neutral gray and the most saturated color in the image. This first study in saturation is supposed to represent a Low Major and Minor Key.
I was confused at first by how highly saturated the model’s face seemed to be with her very rosy cheeks and golden skin. But after getting some valuable feedback from the teacher, I now understand that the Major Key is Low because the proportion of saturated color (her cheeks) to neutral areas (the rest of the painting) is small; and the Minor Key is Low because the range of saturation from neutral to the moderately-saturated pink in her cheeks is also fairly low.
Below are the photo reference, my paintings, and the teacher’s study. He painted her skin tones much darker than I did. Maybe I need more study with value? I can see how I could have gone a little darker but not as dark as he did. Coming up next, Study 2 with very saturated High Major and Minor Keys; just the opposite of this one.
Sketch of Louis Squires listening with his whippet; drawn from his photo on the Sktchy app, ink and watercolor, 9×12″
I love listening to podcasts with interviews of artists, especially painters, who talk about their process and practice, their lives, studios, challenges and successes. In the list below I share with you the ones I’ve discovered and what I like about them. Let me know which ones you like and if you know of any I’ve missed, please leave a comment and I’ll add it to the list.
Color Boot Camp Part I Monochrome. Left to right: Color reference photos, B&W converted ref photo, my two studies
When my art friend Chris Beaven commented on the previous version of this post that it would be interesting to see my studies compared to the black and white versions of the photo references, I did a virtual dope slap (Of course! What a perfect way to see if I got the values right!) and then decided to redo this blog post to show that comparison (above).
While I often convert color photos to black and white to see the values, when I did these studies from Bill Perkins’ Color Boot Camp on New Masters Academy I wanted to try to do the conversion in my artist brain instead of using technology. But putting my studies next to the converted photos gives me just the reality check I needed. I can see that I did pretty well in painting the values from the color photos.
In the lesson he set up one model in four different lighting situations and then demonstrated doing a 30-minute painting of each in black and white. He recommends doing the studies in no more than 30 minutes, emphasizing that it’s more important to do many starts, without worrying about getting a likeness or making finished paintings. I have to admit spending longer than 30 minutes, probably up to 3 hours on some, and in retrospect, the longer I worked the less effective the study was.
If you want to see Bill Perkin’s studies and mine in greater detail, click the “read more” link below.
CBC Part 1-3, Janas #1 High Key, High Contrast Study (My favorite of 8 below)
Being a member of the New Masters Academy is like having a treasure chest of jewels to explore, with new art classes added all the time. The only downside is that I have to assess my own work and be my own teacher since NMA doesn’t offer feedback to the video lessons’ assignments.
I revised this post by publishing a new version of it so I’ve deleted the content here. Please see the next post for the rest of the content from this post.
Sketching from Sktchy App photos (I explained it here) is a great warmup exercise and opportunity to practice drawing a wide variety of faces and expressions. Each week they offer a Weekend Art Exploration (#WAX) challenge and 3 of the drawings marked in the collage below were for WAX. All are in a 12×9″ sketchbook.
Collage of sketches and inspiration photos from Sktchy. (Click on image two times to enlarge.)
The challenge marked in the top row was to draw on text; mine is on a page of “Secrets of the Flesh: The Life of Collette.” The challenge in row two was to show your tools used to create the art so I put my colored pencils in front of “Crazy Eyes,” as she titled her photo. The bottom row challenge was to use the magic of art to transform a photo into something else (I combined Tweety Bird with the girl making a bird face). The last sketch above is from a photo I uploaded for others to draw. I did a better job on Millie than me.
Below are larger versions of a few from this batch (click to see larger):
Audrey Henry, Colored Pencil
Artist known as “Foggy 365” in the hospital, graphite and conte pencil
Henry Luis Alonso on Secrets of the Flesh
4 views of “Moon Child Luna 2” in graphite
This weekend the challenge is to draw from the same photo twice, once with each hand. Wish me luck! I don’t think my left hand knows how to do anything except type.
Sketching people drawing the model during a “boring” pose
I love my Friday figure drawing studio and our wonderful models. In the morning I draw the figure during the shorter poses and then switch to a portrait for the final hour-long pose after lunch. In the sketch above I decided to draw the crowded room and other artists instead of the model since I had an obstructed view of what struck me as a boring pose.
Fallon, charcoal on toned paper, life-size.
Fallon is one of my favorite models. She is so beautiful and strong, with unique features and she always brings interesting costumes and music to play for us.
Brian, charcoal on toned paper, life size
Brian is very unusual looking, tall, muscular and lean, with prominent facial bone structure and a small, pouty (not potty!) mouth. I think I went too far with the dark charcoal as there’s too much contrast with the lighter areas but I think I did get a likeness, despite the clumsy shading and unfinished hair.
Brigitte, charcoal and conté on tan paper, life-size.
I thought the drawing above was going great until I saw it on my camera’s screen as a mirror image and it looked all wrong. I tried to fix it, but couldn’t figure out what the problem was. She looks so sour and grumpy and really was just a little sleepy from the long pose.
I’ve had so much fun since I discovered the SKTCHY app. It’s so simple: people upload photos and artists use them as inspiration to draw from and then upload snapshots of their artwork. (click on collection below twice to enlarge.)
Collage of recent sketches and their Sktchy.com inspiration photos
Above are my sketches and their Sktchy reference photos from the past week in a collage (made using free PicMonkey online). The Sktchy app is super easy to use, with an incredibly wide variety of people to draw and really interesting artists’ work to be inspired by. Join me there! It’s big fun!!! (FYI, it’s currently only available for iPhone/iPad; Android version is in the works).
Click on any of my sketches below to see larger or in a slide show. They are all in a 12×9″ sketchbook.
Walter Justice, colored pencil
France Belville Van-Stone, graphite
Kalie Jones, colored pencil
Khyla Duran, colored pencil
Shwan Kamal, photo ref, watercolor
Fernando Quijano, Jr. Graphite, attempt #2
Fernando Quijano, Jr., Colored pencil & Graphite, attempt #1
Jana Bouc, Artist 