FINAL DAY OF GERALD BROMMER WORKSHOP: MORE IS BETTER!

Gerry talked about the architect that created the phrase "less is more" then he quoted another architect who stated "Less is boooooooring" Mr. Brommer sides with the latter! Today's assignment was to have a "theme" and place your focal point in the top third of the vertically oriented page, then fill the bottom 2/3rds with lots of small drawings and words, much like a journal page. He likes to fill up all the space. This is a great idea for travel, especially. We started out with collage images, covered with washi paper then diluted gesso. After this dries, go back into it with drawing and painting.

I decided this was a good chance to see how my new photo transfer process would work. I ruined two sheets by printing on the wrong side. The ink just slides off and doesn't stick. What a mess! It was very difficult to see the coating on the side meant for printing, but I finally got it right and printed one page of drawings and one of colored paintings of my Frenchman. I made a contact sheet with nine on the sheet. It was lots of fun working with this idea. After I transferred the images, I used mostly tissue paper to collage over as I wanted a lot of the stuff to show through. Gerry suggests adding a border to unify the composition and contain all the small fragments. I still want to add some stronger ink lines and perhaps more words. Over all, I am pleased. It is very different from anything I have ever done before. I also want to try more of the transfer process on this surface. It has interesting possibilities.

I was too tired to unpack the car. Tomorrow I have to finish packing for my workshop in Ransom Canyon, Texas. I will need to switch hats and be the instructor instead of the student. I love both roles. Looking forward to renewing some friendships from my last Texas workshop and meeting some new friends.

BROMMMER WORKSHOP DAY 4: GESSO ADDED TO THE MIX!

Today we collaged the paper first, let it dry, covered it with diluted gesso...let that dry...then drew our image in and added paint. The entire week, line was to be the dominant element. I used lots of printed material from magazines and books underneath the Japanese rice papers. The gesso helps to obscure the collaged materials and creates an interesting surface to draw and paint on.

In the middle of the night I had this idea to do a collage starting with black gesso and then working towards lighter values. Here is my first go at this idea. I drew the image on the dry black gessoed surface with diluted white gesso in a needle nose bottle. It would be fun to try this idea with other gesso colors. I have red and gold. It comes in many other colors,

The ideas we have been working with this week are not in any of Gerald Brommer's published books but he has a new DVD through Cheap Joe's with this workshop material on it. Naturally, I bought a copy. It turns out the Gerald has seven different workshops he presents to groups around the country and is working on another. It is inspirational to see someone that is 82 so active, energetic, creative and dedicated as he is. I want to be like him when I grow up.

GERALD BROMMER WORKSHOP DAY 3: HEAVY TEXTURE PLUS LINE

Each day just gets better and better. I am very much attracted to this way of working. I hope to do a lot more in the future and have some greater insight into additional methods and ways of combining materials that I never thought of before. I have all the books but somehow they never sunk in. Probably sensory overload. There is only so much we can absorb at a time. I need to revisit lots of my books.

Today we built up the surface with collage paper, using brown bag or brown craft paper for the dark value. Covering the entire surface with layers of paper, then drawing and painting into the wet collage, especially adding white gouache which does amazing things on this surface. Then let it dry and then adding more line, paint, etc. Here are my two efforts for the day. I think this is the first workshop I have ever taken where I wanted to mat and sign anything I did. Amazing!

I am soaking up all of Gerald's wonderful stories and wisdom as well as his great techniques. He has traveled and taught for so many years that he has great little interesting adventures and experiences that he shares.

Tomorrow we will put gesso over the textural surface and paint on that. Gesso? I think I have died and gone to heaven!

LINE AS SHAPE & PATTERN

While packing a box to ship to Lubbock for the workshop I am giving next week and packing supplies for the Gerald Brommer workshop I am taking this coming week, I came across the start of a painting with the Frenchman. I had drawn this image onto the paper with red ink. I decided to see how the Permanent Masking fluid would work on this paper. Using a calligraphy pen point with a flat nib, I covered the red lines to preserve them. I followed with a pale yellow wash and went from there. I used a wider nib and a ruler to keep my lines straight, I patterned some of the sections with stripes. The resist is very subtle on this paper and in some areas doesn't show up at all. This is my printer paper which doesn't seem to have much sizing in it or on it. I have some other papers to try it on. Overall, I am pleased with this one. I kept to 4 colors and their mixtures. Gamboge, Thalo, Permanent Red and Hansa Yellow Deep (Yellow Orange). It was very helpful to have my value pattern all worked out. I stayed with it most of the way. I was able to remove the color to create a black and white image in the computer. Comparing it to my value sketch, I am happy to say it measures up quite nicely! By outlining the shapes with a line I effectively combined two elements. Using line as pattern is another combination of design elements. Pattern is a form of texture. In fact, each element can be combined with each of the other elements to create an amazing array of ideas.

I look forward to sharing with you the Gerald Brommer workshop this coming week. He will be focusing on Collage and Line!!!!!!! How perfect is that? I am looking forward to meeting him and learning from one of the true master teachers. In fact he has been a teacher's teacher for many years. I know it will make me a better teacher as well as learning some exciting new ways of working.

"NEW" TIMES TWO!

Thinking up blog post titles can be as much fun as creating titles for paintings. The first "new" thing is that my redesigned web site is up and running. Click on the blog title to check it out. One of the best changes is that I can update it myself. It is also more interactive, so viewers can leave comments. Kevin is now ready to help other artists with a custom web site that they can self manage. $200 is his going rate but since I provide dinner every night, I get the deep family discount (free!) I have some rearranging of paintings to do and some workshops to add. Hopefully I will get to that by the weekend.

The second "new" thing is I am starting to work on the examples for the next chapter in my book. LINE is an interesting element and a big favorite of mine. It is most often used as an accent in a painting. Except for Asian Brush Painting, line is rarely the dominant element in a painting. I was searching for a new idea when I thought of reversing the process I used for my line painting in the Nick Series where I redrew the image over and over with successively smaller brushes and darker paint. In this painting I used Permanent Masking Medium. It acts like maskoid but can't be rubbed off. I changed brush sizes and started with pale yellow and went progressively darker with the paint. I did a final line drawing with a dark line. I think it reads as LINE as a dominant element and I am intrigued with the possibilities for this product. I would like to try it again. That's what is so wonderful about experiments. There is no attachment to the outcome and it leads to planned ideas based on the unexpected results.

LAST OF THE COLOR STUDIES (FOR NOW!)

Here is the last of the quartet of color studies. This one is ANALOGOUS COLORS (3 or 4 colors next to each other on the color wheel) As a random pick, I got Red Orange/Orange/Yellow Orange. I actually mixed the RO and YO together to get the orange as I didn't have one in the Hydrus line. My 3 forms of color trio was TINT/TONE/BLACK. I tried to stick to this but in the end I couldn't stand the total blackness of the side of the face so created a SHADE by brushing Red-Orange on top. I really like the result. I wound up "cheating" on my value plan, as well, as I was painting. In truth, this is the way to work. It pays to have a plan when you start but an artist needs to respond to what is happening on the page and make adjustments which may deviate from the plan to make the best painting possible. When I was a very inexperienced painter, many years ago, I remember being baffled by the expression "let the painting talk to you". It's exciting when you get to the stage that you not only understand this expression but have an engaging "conversation" with your painting.

THREE DOWN, ONE TO GO!

I redid the painting from the last post on traditional watercolor paper and I like it much better. I am actually using white and black pigment from the Dr. Martin's Hydrus liquid colors and I am pleased with the result. With GREY/TONE/SHADE, the tone parts look bright as long as I don't lower their intensity too much. I am a big believer in doing a painting a second or even third time until I get it right. Trying to rework watercolor just creates more problems than it fixes for me. I prefer a total do-over.

The second painting was my Split Compliment of Red/Blue Green and Yellow Green using the 3 forms of WHITE/HUE/TONE. I fudged a little with the hues because I wanted to try the Daniel Smith Watercolor Stix on this new paper I have. The colors I used were Quin Coral for the Red, Sap Green for the yellow green and Thalo Green, blue shade for the Blue Green. That's close enough. I actually like this one. It's pretty bizarre but fun. A little like a Baboon's bottom! The watercolor stixs actually worked much better on this paper than the tube paints I tried earlier. That means I shall take this paper with me for travel sketches in color. The stixs are good items for travel. I just touched a wet brush to them and painted directly on the paper.

The third painting used another Split Compliment combination of Yellow Orange with Blue and Violet. Faber Birren thinks that Split Compliments work best when there are two Tertiary colors and only one primary or secondary color. This one has only one Tertiary (yellow orange) but I am pleased with the results. The 3 color forms were TINT/TONE/SHADE.

I didn't get the last of the four paintings done today but it is nice to have something planned for the next day. It makes getting started so much easier. Tomorrow's painting will be with analogous colors. That should have a totally new look for Monsieur.

TINT AND TONE EQUAL IRIDESCENCE

I have been re-reading Faber Birren's book from cover to cover in order to fully comprehend his ideas. He has a very formal way of expressing himself and often it is difficult to totally process the concepts. Putting words to visual expression is very tricky I am finding out. It turns out that Birren's contribution to color as it applies to painting was mostly in the area of figuring out how to express luminosity, iridescence and luster along with chromatic light effects and mist, etc. Much of this is strange to apply to a portrait but the attempt creates some very unusual results. I don't think you can really get an iridescent face but I decided to do something with the formula in today's painting. The general idea is to have the majority of the painting in the mid value range fairly neutral with TONES and then have small touches of TINTS. Instead of having the TINTS as part of the features, I decided to super-impose these squares on top of the image just for the fun of it. By masking off the areas for tints, I was able to paint more easily. I created the TONES by mixing complements. I have my palette arranged according to Stephen Quiller's recommendations for perfect compliments. It makes life so easy when it is established this way. All of his palette is pure hues so it works very smoothly with Faber Birren's 7 forms of color triangle. This color effect is all about INTENSITY of color and controlling the VALUE range. INTENSITY is the degree of purity of hue versus neutralizing or dulling it down. The confusion of intensity comes when you lighten the hue but don't dull it. Theoretically it maintains it full intensity but not full SATURATION which has to do with the pigment load, not the purity. I understand the concept. I just think there could be a better term to describe the situation. I like PURITY myself but the term INTENSITY is here to stay.

Art has it's own specific language and we have to be consistent in order to communicate these visual concepts. Many years ago when I was a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis in one of my first classes, the professor gave a talk. I remember thinking it sounded like English but I didn't understand a thing he said! I hadn't learned "art speak" yet. I'm still working on it!

THE CHALLENGE

It seems like there are challenges everywhere I turn. First of all, the internet signal to my computer keeps cutting out. Just when I want to post to the blog, no connection! Irritating to say the least.

The second challenge is really comprehending all the color ideas in Faber Birren's book, "Creative Color". My copy dates back to 1961. I think it may be out of print. It was the text for the college class I took in color. I am rereading it and trying some of the exercises. Above is the latest "Frenchman" painting trying to get LUSTER effect. This is the use of HUE, SHADE, BLACK combination of color forms. It turns out that DOMINANCE is critical for the effect. A small amount of pure hue surrounded by dark shades or black give the optical illusion of luster. Luster is generally "seen" in metal or fabric, not skin. In a portrait the effect isn't exactly lustrious but a beautiful glow. Rembrandt did it best! I think this version from the "Vern" series worked better. At the time I was translating a beautiful landscape painting by Wolf Kahn into a color scheme for a portrait. Now I realize that it followed the HUE, SHADE, BLACK formula which produced this beautiful glowing light. My latest version isn't as dramatic and has a much warmer set of colors but I think it works. I did lose the "intensity" of the yellow when I glazed the painting with red. A little watercolor crayon should bring it back.

The next painting will be pure hue surrounded by gray or neutral tones to capture "luminosity". I have attempted this before with limited success.

FABER BIRREN'S COLOR CONCEPT

In response to Rhonda Carpenter's request for more information on my last post, I will describe what I am trying to accomplish.

Faber Birren devoted his life to the study of color. Perhaps the most complicated of all the elements of design. In his book "Creative Color", he devised this schematic shown above where you have HUE (PURE COLOR) WHITE & BLACK in an equilateral triangle. If you combine HUE with WHITE you create a color called a TINT. If you combine HUE with BLACK you create a color called a SHADE. Lastly, if you combine WHITE with BLACK you get GRAY. He places each of these between the HUE, WHITE AND BLACK. In the center is what is called a TONE. A TONE is created when you mix GRAY (BLACK & WHITE) with a HUE or when you neutralize a HUE by adding it's compliment. By adding a compliment you are in effect combining all three primary colors in some ratio. Even a small addition of the 3rd primary creates a dulled color. So, you can see that this "triangle" has lines connecting each to the other where there is some common element. The idea that he had was to draw a straight line through three connecting "words" and create a painting using only these aspects of color. Why? You would have a natural harmony because each element has a relationship with one of the others. This is also a way to establish mood.

So, within this concept, a HUE must be a pure color. Many tubes of paint are mixtures and already TINTS, SHADES OR TONES. Magenta was one of those colors that was already altered. It would not work with the HUE/TINT/WHITE painting, as I found out. I should have known in advance but it isn't always easy to see the subtle alteration of a color. Watercolor makes this idea more difficult because the TINT is created by adding water instead of white pigment. At what point does HUE become TINT? I don't really know but will use my best judgement. Another factor making watercolor so challenging for this project is the transparent nature of watercolor. With color glazing I am getting tones when I don't want them. An opaque paint such as acrylic would be much easier to create the effects. I struggle on! Above is my watercolor version of WHITE/TONE/SHADE.

Color can be parsed very mathematically but I am not interested in "exact". I am satisfied with "approximate". I am intriguied by the concept and the visual result of following these color design formulas. If I get a general approximation of the effect by following the guidelines, I am not going to stress over a minor infraction.

Just to complicate the matter further, consider the aspect of DOMINANCE. If there are three items to work with, they could be used equally or one could dominate and the other two could be very minor or one could dominate, one could subordinate and the third could be very minor....think "PAPA, MAMA, BABY" or two could be equal and the third could be minor. When you switch the players around into the different positions you see why one lifetime isn't enough to grasp it all!

I have set the challenge for myself to paint the same image using a different combination of HUE, TINT, WHITE, GRAY, BLACK, SHADE & TONE and see what it looks like. The more I understand the more I have a powerful tool to express my ideas.
I am not going to try for all the variations of dominance within each grouping.

Rhonda,is your head spinning yet ? Aren't you sorry you asked!

FOCUS ON COLOR

Today's efforts were focused on color. I made two attempts to do a painting with hue/tint/white. I started with a magenta along with yellow and thalo blue. Magenta has some blue in it so the mixtures with yellow were actually tones (neutralized). I started over with deep rose red, new gamboge and thalo blue. Finally, I was able to create a painting with only hue/tint/white.

I had this idea to grid the failed two paintings and alternate the strips. It's much more interesting than the original versions.

CARDBOARD CUT UPS!

I received this e-mail from Bonnie, one of my favorite students (who become new friends!)
"Today I was meeting with some other artists...and I was raving about your newly organized studio---how inspiring it was to see on your blog.

So, until I took your San Diego class and learned about texture, etc., mine was neat as a pin, also. Now its a mess, and overflowing. Your fault! Some stuff is even in boxes in the pool house. And the stuff piled on the floor, and the rolling file cabinet, there is just no place else to put it that I can think of."

Nice try but I only accept responsibility for my own messes! I should have a disclaimer: Work with me at your own risk!

The good news is I have discovered a wonderful use for corrugated cardboard in a new book "Art From Intuition" by Dean Nimmer, Watson Guptill Publications. Among lots of wonderful ideas was this cardboard printing idea. I have photographed the tools I used. First I drew the design onto the cardboard. I easily made corrections knowing they wouldn't show in the final print. Then I had to decide which parts to leave solid and which to cut away. Using an exacto knife, I scored the cardboard and peeled away the paper. I found one of the tools to a cheap clay sculpting set (Michael's Craft Store) was perfect for cleaning off the paper between the ribs. I felt like a hygienist at the Dentist office...nice to be on the other side of the scraping for a change!! I forgot to reverse the drawing but will try to make a note for next time. In my enthusiastic haste to see how it would print, I forgot to coat the cardboard with gloss varnish medium. After wasting ink and several sheets of paper, I decided to reread the directions. Ha! I guess I skipped an important step. I put two coats of varnish on. Amazingly, I didn't have gloss but I did have what is in the photo. It worked pretty well. I think the gloss will give a smoother surface for the ink. It's on my shopping list. I originally used red oxide for the ink so that color is under the varnish on the plate. I did the final print, with decent results, using Ultramarine Blue ink. The image I designed doesn't look that exciting, so I will do something more with it tomorrow. The barren I used to burnish the back of the paper, transferring the ink from the cardboard to the paper, was found in the cake decorating section of Michael's. It works very nicely for my purposes.

I think this cut cardboard has interesting potential and I have plenty of this material to work with. Check out Belinda Del Pesco's blog (click on my blog title for a direct link). She is a real print maker and has a great way to use scrap foam board for printing. Her images are stunning. Ideas abound!

"HOW LOW CAN YOU GO?"

I think this is about as low as I can go and still have the image read "Frenchman" I may play with it further, but for now I am satisfied. I have ten versions of simplification, each one with a little less extraneous information. I think it comes naturally to Peggy Stermer Cox. She's absolutely brilliant at designing, not so with me. But, I am getting the hang of it and having fun with the process. I am finding tracing paper a great tool. As I try different ideas, I can easily erase the lines that don't work and trace some of the lines and shapes from previous versions that I particularly liked, as I work out new drawings. It makes the process go fairly quickly.

I was doing these additional drawings for the book I am working on. It is slowly taking shape and I am getting excited about it.
I have nine pages completed. Trying to fit what I want to do on each page into the templates they provide is a little more difficult that I thought. I am learning a lot....especially patience!

ICONOCLASTIC ARTISTS...HOW TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

I have fallen into a pattern most days. I try to read for about a half hour in the morning before I get out of bed. Reading often acts like a sleeping pill at night, but I can focus better in the morning. Right now I am excited about this book "Iconoclast", which is someone who is an original thinker. I also check my e-mails on my computer while I eat breakfast. I signed up for this Artist A Day service. Each morning there is a new artist to check out. Many times I am not too taken with the art but today I was blown away. Talk about an iconic thinker! This guy does amazing things with a sheet of typing paper. Click on the blog title and it links to his website. He also works with bigger pieces of paper....much bigger. I always love when things link up unexpectantly, like the book and the Artist A day website.

In the afternoon I went to a terrific demo and hands on session sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley Watercolor Society, with a representative of Atelier Interactive Acrylics by Chroma. I have been very curious about them and actualy bought a trial set but was waiting for this session to figure out how they work. They are in competition with Golden's Open Acrylics but I think these are more versatile. They are highly saturated and thick bodied but can be diluted with just water to a spray bottle consistency without loosing the acrylic bond! One set of paints can be used for the entire gamet of viscosity. You also can rewet the paint after it has dried and you can speed up the drying time as well as slow it down dramatically.

I have been wanting to try mono-printing for a long time but after reading the books on this process, I didn't want to invest in the various paints that it required. I thought slow drying acrylics might just do the job. So, that is what I played with this afternoon. I painted the image (guess who) on a piece of glass and then placed the paper on top. The first image was slightly marred because I used a brayer on the back of the paper and you can see the uneven marks. I repainted the glass and this time just rubbed the back of the paper with my hand. This print looks like a woodcut. The eyes are startling. I like the effect. There was still lots of paint on the glass, so I sprayed it with the unlocking solution (how you rewet dried paint) and got the last print. I think this one will look interesting with lines drawn on top. I am going to explore this technique further. Lots of fun and always a surprise when you pull of the paper. Isn't it nice that art is always full of surprises!

THE BEST LAYED PLANS...

Well, I learned a lot...enjoyed my painting time...and produced a painting that is pretty darn ugly! I did follow my plan. I chose the "film noir" value plan and came pretty close! I am pleased about that. I made the painting black and white in photoshop to compare my results with my sketch. I am working with the high key palette in Nina Leland's color book to see what I could do with those colors. This is a dark as I could get with many layers of color. I decided to have a warm dark on the face and a cool dark for the background. Really don't like the warm dark very much. The second image shows the painting pretty much done. I thought the colors needed to relate more, so I put a quin gold glaze over it as a unifying force. That color wasn't in the palette. Almost all of the colors in this palette are semi opaque and granulating. They are beautiful by themselves but don't lend very much to layering or glazing. The palette that I normally use has little or no semi opaque. I like very transparent and strong colors that can create rich darks. I was trying to get the feel of a poured painting without actually masking off and pouring. The last image is the final result. Keep in mind that this isn't exactly how it actually looks but close enough to get the idea.

I am going to try again using a value pattern with just a little dark, mostly light and some mid value shapes. Also, I am going to keep from neutralizing the color too much. You can read about color until the cows come home but the only way to truly learn is by doing.

I had to wait until each layer dried before I could continue, so I started reading an interesting book. I spent the afternoon painting then reading, then painting, .... The book is called "Iconoclast" by Dr. Gregory Berns. A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently. Turns out innovator's brains fire differently and one can learn how to do this. There is so much interesting research on how the brain works. I may figure mine out yet!

THE VALUE OF THE VALUE SKETCH

These are 4 value studies I did yesterday in preparation for my next painting. I want to do more because I really like this image and plan to use it to explore color ideas. It gives me so much more confidence to start painting when I have the darks, lights and middle values already decided. I totally messed up the Zentangle painting because I didn't have a plan. That is when I really became a total believer in creating these multi-value sketches. Each time I do one, another variation comes to mind. I finally had to quit after four because it was getting late.

It took quite a few steps to get from original drawing to finished value sketch. The original image was created by overlaying two drawings to create a new one. The resulting pattern is half-sheet size. To reduce it down, I photographed it and then tried to adjust the lighting in the computer. This was nearly impossible because tracing paper on a sliding glass door doesn't photograph white. I then printed it out in a reduced size. There wasn't that much difference between the lines and the background. I went over the lines with a pen, then I traced the small image twice and put that in the copier. It's worth all the trouble because now I can print out as many as I want. I glue them into my sketch book to save them.

I have started the first painting using one of the value patterns. Hopefully, I will manage to finish it tomorrow.

FRENCHMAN WITH SKETCHBOOK TECHNIQUE

I sat at Gallery Concord today with one of my favorite people, Juanita Hagberg. It was great having someone to visit with and bounce ideas off of each other. After the close at 4 PM, we went to downtown Walnut Creek and hung out at Barnes and Noble and then went back for the Gallery Reception , celebrating the opening of our new show, at 6 PM. It was a mild night and there was a good crowd, food, drink and lovely musical entertainment. I stayed for an hour working at the sales desk, then headed home. It's an hour's drive but my books on tape keep me entertained.

I had a chance to do a painting during the day of the Frenchman on a half-sheet prepared like the sketchbook I posted yesterday.. I used some pen but mostly Hydrus Liquid Watercolor in Paynes Gray, Indian Red and a little Chrome Yellow (which is actually a yellow orange). I finally added some white acrylic ink because it needed the contrast. I don't think the additional color improved the technique. With collage, sometimes smaller works better because of the scale of the added pieces in the composition. I think I may try this again with just the pen. I don't have that "Eureka!" feeling I had with the sketchbook. I did prepare a second sketchbook, ready for drawings, so I am continuing to work on this idea for awhile.

ZEE FRENCHMAN IS ZENTANGLED UP!!

Along with the graphite drawings yesterday, I discovered a website called Zentangle. You can click on the blog heading and it will take you there. Basically, it is an organized way to create intricate patterns. It works like meditation on your mental state and is very fun. The couple that developed this idea have taken it to the ultimate marketing heights! I kept looking for directions but it seems you have to order a kit for $50 to get the lowdown. I wasn't going to do that, so, after looking at everything, I discovered that their archived newsletters had different patterns explained and showed variations. Aha!! Now I was in business. I sat in front of the computer and drew all the patterns I could find. Now that I have the hang of it, I could look at some of the examples and figure out some of the different ideas. I did 3 3.5 square Zentangles in my sketchbook.

Today, I wanted to get back to my Frenchman with some ideas that were in my head before they disappeared into the black hole that sometimes masqeurades as my mind. I traced each of the 3 stylized Frenchman on separate pieces of paper. Using my sliding glass door as a lightbox, I taped two up and played around with overlaping images. This idea works best with a very simplified drawing. When you use the same design but draw it freehand each time you get interesting effects. You can choose which lines to keep and which to ignore. There are endless possibilites with this idea.

For this image, I reversed one of the drawings and positioned it so the the middle eye will work for either face. It's strange but intriguing to me. I was curious how the Zentangle patterns would look on it. I told myself 5 times "It is only a piece of paper" before I started playing with the patterns. With these kinds of ideas, there is no way to know how it will look without doing it. Each pattern changes the entire look. I was sorry that I colored in the red squares. They are too strong. Maybe I can think of a way to lighten them. I plan to add watercolor to it tomorrow. There are a few places where I messed up. No way to fix it and too laborious to redo. It's so busy, it is hard to find the errors, anyway. This is an example of pattern as texture. I decided I wanted lines more subtle than black ink so I used a fine red pen on white paper. The photograph has been adjusted as best I can. Not quite right but you can get the idea.

I hope to have the internet thing fixed today. In the meantime, I am working against time again to get this posted. I sat at the gallery yesterday so had a lovely quiet time painting. Here is my realistic version of the Frenchman on a textured background using a limited palette of Quin Gold, Burnt Sienna, Brown Madder, Payne's Gray and Neutral Tint. I'm not sure about the bubble wrap on the nose! Otherwise I like the textures with the traditional...makes it a little more interesting. I need to be more careful about where I put what textures in the future. I want to do one more stylized version of this guy. I had an interesting idea for presentation using four of them in one frame. Maybe I'll make him more "green". Green is in these days.

FRENCHMAN WITH SHAPE, COLOR AND TEXTURE AGAIN!

I am having difficulties with technology today. My internet connection comes and goes and it is my computer that is the problem. My "experts" can't figure it out. I am also having trouble adjusting my digital image to reflect the proper color and value. This is as close as I can get. Not quite right, but you get the idea. I tried some different stamps and texturizing ideas, then painted using the same palette as yesterday but I didn't use the yellows and Burnt Sienna. The only red was Brown Madder and the "yellow" was an olive yellow green. It actually is Seniellier 's (spelling is wrong but I am too lazy to get up and look at the paint tube) Quin Gold. It is very different from any other brand and is very greenish. Works perfectly for this palette. I used Neutral Tint, Payne's Gray, Indigo and Indanthrone Blue as my other colors. I wanted a dominance of cool colors. The value pattern was my attempt to follow the Rembrandt scheme as described by Robert Burridge in his last two newsletters. I'm not sure I achieved it but the results are satisfying. That really is the point, anyway. It doesn't matter if you "get the right answer". It isn't math. By having an idea to work from it gives you a starting point and then the painting takes on a life of it's own and you work to resolve whatever challenges show up. If the best solution doesn't match the original concept, who cares?

Tomorrow is the 80/20 warm dominant painting with this drawing. Then I am going to see how a more realistic rendering looks over all this texture.