The Eyes Have It!

Communicate life, intention, concept and whimsy in your figure painting with good eyes! Begin by really looking at your subject. In class today we practiced making good eyes. Here’s the rough of it. We worked a red-brown shadow over a general skin tone, light sienna. Next we sketched the top line of the lid and added some reddish rose for depth in the corner areas of the eye. Then the fun began as we added dark brown into the lash line, and our brown eye. We put a dot of dark black in the center of the eye for a pupil, and a pop of bright pink in the corner of the eye socket to represent the muscle holding the eye in place.

We added some light flesh tone just off the edge of the nose and under the eye in the cheek bone area. You might simply assume that all eyeballs are white… but look again. Soon you will see why. Find two grays, one medium/dark and one medium/light. Use the darker one to outline the iris. Fill in all the white of the eye ball with this darker gray. Next, blend in the light/gray color into the middle of this eyeball area. This will give the look of a curve to your eyeball.

Now, as I was telling you, the light source reflects off the moist cornea and causes highlights that will make your eyes sing with realism. They can be brighter and more focused, unblended, than the other parts of the eye. These highlights are not white either! Oh, what fun! For our hazel eyes we used blue highlights. The source of our light passed through the top right quadrant of our eye. It exited out the opposite quadrant as a pool of local color…. Local color means an intensification of the color of the eye. Example: Green eyes, blue eyes or hazel, in our case. For our pool of local color we used bright orange blended ever so slightly with a moss green.

For fun throw in some light blue highlight in the top of your eyebrow and a touch of lavender on the edge of the cheek/forehead area and nose to round the face away from the highlighted front.

These accents don’t need to be overstated to have a great effect. We had a blast today. Try painting your own eye. Afterward, you will be ready to paint all sorts of critters.

As artist, William A. Schneider said in a Pastel Journal interview in Feb. 2008, “Artists have to observe the actual shapes and values that form the eyes; otherwise they revert to painting a symbol.” Whatever your intent, follow these tips and you’ll put some life in your eyes!

Happy painting,

Susan

 

 Class eyes on you!

 

Sometimes it's a delicious color palette that calls and sometimes it is a mood. Be you collector or painter, waste no precious time wandering around inside a bland-day lull. Go linger with your art if you are a collector. Get painting if you are an artist. Every fiber of my being thrives when I paint and enjoy my art. Such energy must continue and match its maker's energetic translations of form.

 

So, please enjoy as I offer you my latest class painting... I'm still playing with the title, "On Flower Pond" or "Sweet Moody Blues."

 

 Aren't we lucky to have another day to enjoy art?

 

Susan

Want to paint but need inspiration?

Try following your fancy to a new color story!

 

Today I encouraged my students to paint from their fancy. For my ’Fancy’ demo I selected a color story from a magazine picture which I put to use in my own imagined composition. If you love color but sometimes find yourself at a loss as for which ones to use, or you are simply bored with your usual fare… try this trick; find a picture with colors you like and use them as your inspiration.

I was not interested in the little boat in front of the house and trees. I was not interested in the subject matter at all, but the colors… now they wowed me. I fell in love at first sight over the soft green-turquoise, olive green and lavender combinations. And then there was this pop of red. Be still my heart. Enjoying the subtle “Ahhhs.” Might have been nice enough alone, but I knew there could be so much more. I searched my box of pastels, until I isolated each color in the magazine photograph. Once I satisfied my palette the fun could really begin.

 

Here are the stages of my play.

 1. First I sketched a few trees with a light pastel, onto my Wallis Belgium Mist sanded paper. Then I washed Gouache around where I imagined a few trees might grow.

 

2. Next I roughed in some local colors.

 

3. I continued to explore places for those lovely colors. “Hum, where can I put that lavender?” and such. I also sketched back and forth in the background trees with sky and tree colors, all of similar value, to get a softer look going in my background.

 

4. Next I massed bush and tree shapes in with a pastel very near the color of my paper.

 

5. Finally, I used a soft yellow-orange pastel to light up the sides of my background trees. Added more colors to the sunny area on the right side of my painting and signed my name in that lovely pop of red.

Tomorrow, after sleeping with my painting by my bed, I will solve other challenges. I add or move trees, details and such, but a great fun was had today from a simple magazine color story.

Have fun painting; that way you’ll always have access to happy thoughts. Then like Peter Pan you can always fly.

Susan

 

(C) "Winter Lights"

 

This little demo from a class in Puyallup was such fun to create. To quickly paint believeable snow I chose 4 different WHITES. A green white and a blue white gave the trees their snowy chill. Lavender white unified the snowy ground and I used a yellow white to splash in sunlight on that lavender snow. All in all, you can nearly feel the warmth of the snowy day. The snow built a perfect background for those great orange balls of fire, my late autumn bushes.

 

Have fun playing with those ever so slightly tinted whites, but be sure to keep your mittons ready, just in case...

 

Susan   

What a happy lightfilled forest for these lovebirds. Of course good things always come from our pastel class play. Today's class theme was on three sources of light: sky light, reflected light and direct light. Making colors bounce up the trees was super fun. The lovebirds appeared ready to supervise.

 

If you are a pastelist you'll surely have a stash of lovely colors just waiting to be bounced and reflected in your paintings. Remember a few warm colors will temper the cool sky light.

 

Happy lights to you.

Susan

Three summer workshops introduced new folks to the magic of pastels, filled up our senses with beauty, exploration of techniques ending with the sweet summer flavors of grilled, cherry-glazed pork loin. New friends, new skills and a whole lot of painting went down.

    

     

Those who bring the sunshine with them...                                                          Foggy Plein-Aire!

Here we are on the afternoon of day two. Painting in the mists of Avalon brought us a new appreciation for the sublties of painting fog and into each other's hearts forever. And yes, laughter does make all things better. It was exhillerating to paint together in such a beautiful setting, including the temporary fog. 

 Diane King thrilled us with a harp concert and coaxed the sun to shine as we painted.

 

 Our visual feast continued on into dinner!

More to follow....

 

 

Thank you Fife class, for the fun of making art with you. I'll see you again in October. Until then, happy painting!

 

Susan

(C) 2012 "Bearded Ladies"

What fun, this week's Pastel classes really got me going. Yes, and I guess that's a pretty ideal situation for an artist who also teaches.

 

I began by suggesting that my students focus on an overall color skeme, one that historically and scientifically pleases, such as some triad, split complement or monochromatic plan. Then to line-up three or more analogous colors for each final color in their sketch/plan. By working backwards at least three clicks on the color wheel, and then making that color be their underpainting color, we were able to get some real 'glow' going. We laughed a lot.

 

I am certain putting this analytical approach together must have had them feeling like they were chewing gum and patting their heads at the same time. It did me a little. Most of us paint from an instinctual place, and you may end up in the same spot without a plan. But, we made a game of it and were not disappointed. Margot Schulzke says, "Those who fail to plan, plan to fail." We certainly took on the color challenge with verve.

 

I may not be able to know, or even want to know where my painting will end up before hand, except that it will be sincerely and consciously painted. Having fun painting, stretching my little grey cells...  all these things are good for me!

 

Have fun trying this technique if you like. My "Bearded Ladies" certainly started talking!

 

Susan

 

(C) "Little Tree"

 

For fun this winter I've added a French segment to my classes. We open with some thoughts and inspiration from a different French master each week, as well as a few minutes actually saying words in French. "Ca va? Tres bien!" You may imagine our laughter, trying to enunciate strange new sounds without losing it. My original idea was not to evoke laughter, though I now see it was genius, but to make my own French, fantasy journey with other artists.

 

"Take heart, dear one," I counseled myself, "You can have fun pretending you are in France with your classes even before you actually do it." Once I am securely stanched within my good-feeling attitude, "BAM", inspiration strikes. I find I have new access to good ideas that help guide my painting techniques. Life is so good and it just gets better and better.

 

So my advice for today is to laugh yourself silly and then learn something. Relax your mind from your cares and then paint. Be aligned with your best self and have your best day ever. And, don't wait for anything to be happy. This little piece in progress was already a study in light but only after teaching my thoughts on Monet's brilliant strata of planes and alignment-lines of objects of interest, did I improve my own painting's depth and intrigue.

 

Hugs and paint,

 

Susan, or should I say, Suzanne, dahling?