A quickie lesson in layering warm and cool paint

[Tammy Nielsen]

Thanks Karin for sharing all the techiques. I'm loving it. And I love to hear others opinons too. It really makes my brain ponder each point and then try to use what I digest. Tammy

[Adrian Gottlieb]

Although I don't support the manner of Steve Moppert's disagreement with technique and formulas, I believe that it is a legitimate concern. Right up front, I am in total support for the intellectual understanding of what we see. It is in learning these formulas that one can paint as the eye sees that much more accurately. The simplest analogy is anatomy. Sure, it can be abused, resulting in comic book superhero figures. Used wisely, however, anatomy can help you to turn a complicated form, illustrate a movement or tension, and to just understand what all those darned bumpy things are.

Any formula can be abused. But I'm not afraid to use them now and then, because the end result is what I see.

[Karin Wells]

Adrian, I agree that formulas are not rigid rules. I think of them as a bit like learning to ride a bike...some of us (not all, but some) need training wheels until we learn to get it right.

When you really learn to ride, the training wheels will get in the way...just like those pesky "rigid rules."

Meanwhile, so many begining painters crash and burn...sadly, left alone to suffer from an untrained eye, they never learn to paint really well.

I feel that any help a beginner can get to produce a good result is valid. With a few successful paintings under their belt, so to speak, the beginner will gain the necessary knowlege and experience with which to judge what methods and techniques work for himself/herself.

Thank you for your kindly manner of disagreement, I appreciate it. Personal attacks over differences of opinion serve no useful purpose.

[Marvin Mattelson]

Hello everyone,

I

[Steven Sweeney]

Mr. Mattelson --

Congratulations on your acknowledgment at the recent portrait artist conference, and a great pleasure to read your contribution -- please get as addicted to it as some of us have become. The membership on the site -- folks extremely eager for your caliber of advices -- has now doubled in a very short time, but I suspect that hundreds, thousands, likely tens of thousands more are tapping into the well anonymously and printing out lots of postings.

It's a bit of a rub that you encountered the Maroger thread first, because that was probably the worst example of anything that's ever happened here -- by rule of order an extraordinarily civil, decent, informative home -- but the lapse was rather deliberately engineered, I believe, by the provocateur, who I hope has by his behaviour become an uninvited and quickly -- perhaps unprecedentedly so -- unrespected guest here and self-defrocked expert "contributor" to a civil and informed forum.

Please wander around SOG's topics, especially the critiques and topic headings for courses offered by you. You won't be reminded of any other website you've visited, save in occasional lapse that is inevitable and has become, particularly in the one instance you referred to, nefariously and legendarily sourced and predicted, and others, aberrations. Differences in procedure and protocol are accepted almost universally -- indeed usually eagerly -- here. Speaking only for myself, of course, your brand of tolerance, interest, professionalism, and eagerness to investigate all procedures and protocols is very welcome.

Cheers

[Juan Martinez]

What a fascinating thread this is and one that is near and dear to me. As Marvin put it so well, I won't add to his comments about seeing except to include one of my favourite quotes. It is from Robert Beverly Hale: "First, we draw what we see. Then, we draw what we know. And then, we know what it is that we see."

This picks up very well on what Adrian mentioned about anatomy, for example. Knowing anatomy perfectly does not in itself allow you to draw a convincing human form. Just go ask your doctor to draw a person. What it does do, though, is allow you to better understand what is in front of you when you are faced with the human form.

Similarly, chromatic and/or value changes that occur as the form (plane) turns away from the viewer is very much a natural phenomenon, but it is not always immediately evident to the eye, particularly when that eye is untrained. However, just doing it on the canvas, in a "formulaic" way--"on faith" so-to-speak--usually results in the thing looking right. Then, if we were to look back to the model, sure enough, there it is.

So, all of the various forumlas, conventions, and systems--call them what you will--that have been devised for painting, are there as guidelines for the painter to better express their vision. None are truly "reality". They are all abstract mechanisms for representing three-dimensional form onto two dimensions. It often boils down to what works best and what you know best. Marvin mentioned his willingness to make changes as he deems them fit and necessary. I love that attitude. Moreover, some conventions work better within certain painting systems than do others and so we must fit the approach with the treatment of subject within those systems.

Also, welcome back Stephen. I hope you had a fruitful and enjoyable R & R.

All the best.

Juan