Embroidered Collage

I pulled fabric from bags by the sofa, parts of the guestroom, the closet, and many smaller boxes.  And then I did this.  The top box is cottons.  The bottom box is fancies, mostly in crazy quilt size pieces.  I have another box with larger pieces of fancies and canvas type fabrics.  And of course the coordinating hand-dyed bits are elsewhere.  But these are two palettes that I can draw from while I'm creating, all nicely set up.  The primary organization is by color, but there are a couple subsets for things like batiks and kimono fabrics.

I organized my beads by color too, but that doesn't look nearly so cool because they are in plastic bags inside other plastic bags.  I'm also mostly done with my fibers.  I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to handle the paper though.  Basically I'm still trying to get everything put away into my new closet so that I can reach for it and find it.  Having easy access to my supplies, instead of having to hunt for them, will make it much easier to keep making art when my time constricts later this summer.

I actually painted a picture that I like in this final session and enjoyed the process.  No aargh at all.  I got into it as soon as class began.  I looked and compared and painted and looked and compared and painted.  I didn't agree with Jim on a number of things about my first set of colors, but once I fixed the incorrect relationships that I did see, then his comments made more sense and I was able to implement his suggestions.   Jim also did a demo for us, similar to the first week, but this time we knew what we were looking for.

This has been a very successful six weeks for me.  I've learned a great deal about color relationships, how to show light and shadow, and how to mix paints.  I know what questions to ask myself to start interpreting light into pigment.  I'm interested in trying some abstracts and seeing how the color usage applies.  I'm interested in working with the paintings I created and seeing what type of finished works I can come up with.  I'm also looking forward, as always, to Mixed Media's next set of class listings.

Finally a blog entry on this class that doesn't start with Aaaargh!  I did a much better job of painting appropriate colors last night than I have been lately and have hope that if I continued to do these at home I might actually SEE some of these colors in the neutrals instead of having to theoretically extrapolate them.

I was able to pick up a shot of a corner of the classroom.  It's not nearly so dark, but I think the spotlight was throwing off the sensors.  I work sitting down, with a table easel on a tv tray in front of me and wax paper and paints spread out on a tv tray to my left.  I tend to go through two or three sheets of wax paper in a session, because I run out of room.

I started with the bulk of the pitcher because I knew it was the color that I would need to relate all the other colors to when I moved forward.  My first try was lighter than you see above.  Jim stepped in and asked about it, then suggested that I might not have enough room to get a full value range if I started with it that light, so I darkened the color a bit.  I didn't change it again throughout the process, except for adding shadows, even though it looks lighter in the pictures to follow.  I went with a pinker color for the white plate to show that it was warmer than the pitcher but still in the light.

 To the left is the result of my first efforts in covering the canvas completely.  I thought I was ready to break up the shapes further, but it didn't turn out that way.  The first thing that jumped out at Jim was how cool and intense I had made the shadow.  Shadows are usually less intense in color than the objects that make them.  I agreed that I saw the color as more purple, but I had had trouble getting the right value with purple, so I went blue.  He also suggested that there was some green in the purple.  I had difficulty seeing it, but agreed to give it a try.  Jim also mixed up a few colors on his palette, showing me how he made more muted tones.

I asked if my value relationships worked.  He approved, except for the right hand portion of the plate, which needed to be darker.  He asked me to compare the plate to the spout in the still life and then look at what I had done in the painting.  I noticed immediately what he had been talking about.  In the still life the spout just popped because it was so much lighter.

 For my next iteration I muted the colors of the plate overall while I was working on the shadow and value issues.  For example, I remixed the pink of the left hand portion of plate in the light and added touches of purple and green to it.  I also added a little extra shadowing on the pitcher because the lack of form was driving me a bit nuts.  What jumped out at me now was that the pear's shadow was way too cool and the pot looked too dark, although that last is hard to see in the photo. 

Jim and I talked again and he suggested that instead of making the pot lighter I should move on and make the pear darker, since the yellow I had begun with was more the color and value of the highlight and not the form.  After he said it, this made a great deal of sense to me.   Why touch my initial reference color when I hadn't made adjustments to the rest of the painting?  He also mentioned that the shadow might work better if I softened the edge, which would better approach what was in the set-up.

 And he was completely right!  The whole picture pulled together better when I added the shading to the pear.  I think I went a little too dark, but the relationships and image are  still closer to reality than they were.  I warmed up the shadow as well, then added a little more shading to the pitcher and put in the highlights.  We had a few more minutes at this point but my brain hurt, so I stopped and watched Jim talk with some of the other students.

I still do not have a fully developed color study because the relationships are not just right, but I am closer than I have been since the first class when all we had to contend with was bright clear colors.  This is still difficult for me, but I have been learning a great deal and am very glad to have proof that some of it is sinking in.

  White!  Aaargh.  I was able to mix the bronze-browns in the background just fine with a bit of green and a bit of orange and Jim agreed that they were not mud.  But I had a great deal of difficulty getting the values and shades of the many whites right.

This was my first set of colors that I laid down, fully covering the canvas, trying to get the shadings of warmth and cool correct.  He saw the table cloth in the light as much warmer and lighter than I had, a great many more colors in the scarf, and greater value differences between the light and shadow areas of the "white" stuff.

I became extremely frustrated at this point and metaphorically threw my hands up in the air and went for bright colors that had nothing to do with the white I actually saw, because that was the impression I acquired from our conversation.  The picture shows the result of that and also what happened after Jim dabbed a bit of paint on as well, hence the whitish areas. 

He thought this approach was closer to what we were aiming for in color field studies, except for two key points.  I painted the cup in two shades of blue, but he saw the light side of the mug as definitely warm, not just a warmer cool.  And he pointed out that by painting the colors in this fashion that I threw all the values out of whack, which was something I definitely saw as well.

Jim went back to the principle of painting the easiest color first, starting with the top portion of the scarf, and moving on, but this time I heard what he said differently.  The next easiest color isn't painted in near isolation, replicating what I see as best as I can, which is what I'd been doing.  Instead I am to paint the next easiest color RELATIONSHIP.  Is a nearby color warmer or cooler, lighter or darker, a bit more of this or that?  I don't have to work my way from the center out, I can bounce around across the picture, too, as long as I'm always doing comparisons.  Only the first color is painted by translating light into pigment.  I did a little fiddling with mixes after this revelation but was mostly burned out because my brain hurt.  I'll try again next week.

Another thing I noticed is that Jim takes much less paint into a mix and then onto a canvas than I do, yet somehow gets full coverage.  He adds much tinier dips of the pure pigment to the mix and creates subtler gradations.  I might have to try this.  It also might be easier on a smoother surface than the watercolor paper.

I think that as I move forward beyond this class I will try doing some similar work with colored pencils, where I can see the color and overlay instead of having to mix ahead of time.  It might help me be able to work with I see more easily.  Then, if I want, I can try in paint again.

Brown.  Aaargh.

Well, I can safely say I've gotten the basic concepts down for easy to see colors.  Jim thought that the first blocking in of the flag and bottle worked well and was especially pleased that I pushed the white into purple and peach for my first go.  But the brown of the baseball mitt was just such a mess.  I forgot my camera or you'd be able to see the multiple times I basically tried to start over with this somewhat colorful version being the one that my brain shut down on.

I had been trying to mix brown using complementary or near complementary colors.  Jim said that I was making mud.  The idea was to pick the strong colors that you see and start out with them.  And then mute them as necessary.  A helpful comment from this week was that in muting you don't go 180 degrees around the color wheel for the complementary.  You go 90 degrees or often even only 20 or 30 degrees, picking the direction that you see more of that color.  The "purple" in the shadow of the glove popped against the "yellow" of the ball.  Since I didn't see any green in the shadow I would mute it by adding red, but, Jim added, it would have to be the right red.  Even if it doesn't look brown and correct on canvas, if I get the relationships right  and step back, then it should work as a painting.

I still don't see these colors.  I can extrapolate them.  I can say that the white in the shadow is cooler, lets make it more purple and the white in the light is warmer, lets make it yellow or peach.  And I added a new theory last night - if two objects really pop against each other then their color field colors should be complements or close to it..  But when he talks it's as if he actually sees the color there.

I also mentioned that I didn't really feel like I knew what all the colors on my palette did to each other and was tempted to just sit down with them and make mixes.  In his opinion I'd be better off doing many simple color field studies, because while I can test certain two color mixtures, I couldn't really get into the multiple three or four color mixtures that I would use in real life with a drop of this and a bit of that.  I'm afraid that I would only use what I was most familiar with in that case.  I might see if I can combine the two approaches at some point in the future.  In the meantime, onward with the class!

Aaaargh.  Beige is beige!  I still don't see where Jim got a greenish blue color that he applied to my neighbor's canvas as the first step for the shadow before he started toning it down.  Well, I understand the theory behind it, but I just couldn't SEE it.  I discovered neutrals last night, which didn't go so well, even though I also made improvement generally.

Jim pointed out again that we weren't duplicating the light.  We were using the pigment to create the same color relationships in our painting that existed in the still life set-up.  He showed how using color to make beige produced a much more striking result than working primarily with the earths.  He showed us how working a little bit of a different shade at the background where it touched the bottle could make it pop out or else blend in.  And this is the point - to learn the relationships by duplicating them so that you can control where the viewer's attention is drawn.  Although he didn't say it, I know this will be important for representational and abstract work too, in any medium.  Paint just lets you create more shades.  Fiber or paper might have less subtlety.

  Into the nitty gritty then.  Here's the still-life I worked on this week.  The camera picked up the background and dark colors very well, but washed out the flower and the orange spectacularly.  I think that if I was to take reference pictures that I intended to use to develop the painting further that I would need to try a couple different lighting settings on the camera in order to make sure I had accurate representations of all the value and color changes.

  The drawing and blocking in of color were done in the same fashion as I described last week.  I thought I had taken a picture of that first stage, but apparently not.  In this image I had already reworked the red - my first attempt being far too cool - and added some value changes to the fruit and flower.  When I first mixed the red you see here I thought it looked ridiculously orange on the palette, but I put a dab on the canvas to see it and was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked.  I learned that I need to do that, even if I might mess up, because it makes a difference in how I perceive the color. 

You can also see a bunch of different dark colors in the center.  Those are my many efforts of attempting to mix a darker and greener shadow color.  I tried a number of options and it just didn't work.  Finally Jim played with my paints a little and took a different approach than I had and came up with the color you see in the final painting.  I worked off of that idea to finish repainting the beige, even though I knew that it was way too green, at least I was getting the values somewhat closer. 

We only had a half hour left at this point, so I went back to the objects in hopes of getting a slightly more finished work so I could better see what would have been next.  I muted the shadow on the bottle and added highlights and such.  The fruits don't have enough lights though.  And that background is waaay too green.

Jim did a little more mixing and created a couple of great browns which he dabbed on after I'd taken this photograph, in order to show me how the background could be changed.  I asked him about techniques to use to shift the color without losing what I had already established, since I can't mix in to the still wet paint like he would with oils.  I brought up glazing and he brought up scrumbling.  He also mentioned that the foreground still needed to be a much lighter value.

The other thing that really bothered him was at the very top of the painting where the red and green met above the flower.  I painted the one shadow up above the flower, so there is nothing to cast it and the value of the red cloth was too bright in comparison to the greenish beige next to it.

One of the other students made a comment during our discussions about neutrals, about how Jim must have done many many many of these while he was in school, learning.  And he agreed.  And said that he still does at least a few a week.  It boggles my mind a little.  This whole endeavor has definitely given me a much greater appreciation for what can go into a painting, even if it seems like there isn't much going on.