More on edges

This is a lower area of a recent painting

where arms cross each other. There are

no sharp distinct edges. Sharp edges

draw attention. Here, I am

subduing the edges because this is not

the focal point of the painting. So be

careful where you place hard edges.

Edges

For me there is an almost instinctive choosing of

what edges I make soft and which ones are painted

with a crisp edge, a sharp demarkation.

Here you see the edges of the arm are soft and the

edges of the fabrics are mostly crisp and sharp. Flesh

is soft and so soft edges make sense in order to convey

this quality. The fabric elements seen here, are rather

flat and are one layer over another, so sharpness of each

edge helps convey that.

Often I will paint an edge 'hard' and then I will use a sable

brush to blend it and soften it up almost imperceptibly.

Sable brushes are mainly for such blending and softening

because the bristles are not stiff and will not move the paint

around much ~ just enough to blend things.

Storing my colors so I can find them!

There are a number of reasons why I have so much

paint! Of course I purchased a great deal of it myself.

But then I have also inherited some. A friend was

moving and gave me her supply, a neighbor's mother

passed away and she gave me that supply, a former

student's wife gave me his paint supplies after he

died. So now I have somewhere between 100 and

150 tubes of paint!

In order to find what I am looking for, I first did

a color chart which is posted earlier in this blog.

Then I separated the color families and here are

photographs of how they are stored.

It is important not to have too many different

tubes of color on your palette as it is too confusing.

So when I am going to start a new piece, I select what

I want and can find them easily.

I hope you find this helpful!

Warms and cools in the same color

Each color, as you look around the color wheel,

has a tendency toward warm or cool. Here are

some reds as well as an orange on the left. Cool

reds move toward blue on the wheel. Warm reds

move toward yellow on the wheel. Alizarin crimson

and quinacradone red are cool reds. Cadmium red

light is a warm red. In choosing paint colors for

a painting, look to see if it the colors you choose

are more warm or cool. Sometimes you will need

both. Often you do.

Photographing your set up

If you have to take down your set-up due to this

or that reason, photograph it from exactly the

same position from which you are painting it.

AND photograph it from above as well. How things

look when only viewed from the front can be

deceiving.

This is the set-up of one of my students. It is

quite the interesting challenge to do a painting

when everything in it is in the same color family.

Well except for the orange marble!

More on Tube Tops

This is not my original idea, but it sure is a great

one. I got it from an art magazine years ago and

only wish I could acknowledge the clever artist

who shared it.

These are called 'eye hooks'. They are a great

solution for caps that have disappeared. But better

still, they are a great solution for the way the necks

of paint tubes get all loaded with paint and it is

impossible to screw on the caps because the screw

threads are full of dried paint.

You will notice that there are different sized screws.

Different brands of paint have different sized holes.

So experiment by buying several sizes. Even if the

size you have doesn't fill the hole completely, it will

keep a channel open for you to get the paint out

easily.

I have found that I almost never bought a size big

enough when I started doing this years ago.

The artist who wrote about this did this with all

his paint tubes and then hung them from something

he made so he could easily find his paints. I never

did that. Just doing this was a great help.

Paint tube tops

After an artist has been using tube paints for a while,

the caps can become more difficult to get off. This is

true for all paint mediums that come in tubes, even

watercolor. The two tried and true methods of getting

off stuck caps are plyers and then using a lit match

to soften the hardened paint around the edges of the

cap.

There is still another way to handle this, but that is a

post for another day!