Open Studio

Here's a sample of some recent work :

Goat Vista (Palouse)

High Road 

Quilt (Palouse)

Say What You Will (Palouse)

Forge

Sweet Sorrow

Motto

City of Refuge

Significant Event (Oaxaca)

Bellows' Woods (Lopez Island)

Filter (Seattle)

New Land (Hawaii)

Important Air   (Palouse)

Un Poco Tarde  (Oaxaca)

All Classes Homework "What If?"

What if there were no homework assignments this week? I'm pretty sure you'd still paint, right? Let's see what you come up with...


Here are some images that might take what we were doing in class and push it a bit:

Andre Derain

Alexi Von Yawlensky

David Park

Richard Diebenkorn

David Park

Yawlensky

Monday Night and Wednesday Afternoon 11/6/14: Colors in Shadows

Shadow Color

Alley in the New World

We’ve observed that, as a rule, shadows are darker, cooler, andmore neutral than the surface they fall on. This is usually true in nature, but in a painting, of course, you can do whatever you want. Depending on the feeling you are creating in the picture, you may want to make all the shadows ultramarine, for example, or let all the component colors of a neutral show in the shadow, leaving it for the viewer to mix them together.

Experiment with a simple scene, trying out different colors to see how the changes affect the overall feeling. Be subtle. Be outrageous.

Here are some photos and paintings to stir you up. Look for a shadow photo and have some fun with it.

Robert Wade

Deborah Secor        Pastel

Beginning Watercolor Homework; The facial shadow pattern

For the self-portraits we will do in class we will set the lighting so that there is a distinct pattern of light and shadow. A relatively high contrast pattern coming from a single light source does most of the work of describing the features and creating a feeling of three dimensions.
Seeing the shadow pattern as its own layer is a great way to get started in portraiture.

In our set-ups the shadows will be middle value. Here, in these samples, many of the shadows are quite dark, which makes them easy to see as a separate layer. Try copying some of them roughly. Don't fuss too much with the likeness. After a few you may feel that you can invent a face or two simply by painting a pattern of shadows. Give it a try.