Completed Saturation Painting

Day 3 of Saturation Painting

I spent today working mostly on the figure, trying to make it duller and more in the background.

I'm having a hard time with maintaining one style. While on some objects I've been very lively with my brushstrokes, on other objects are starting to appear quite smooth. I'll have to go back to add texture.

Saturation Painting

After day 1:
















After Day 2:
















Colors:

This is a much more exciting painting because we get to use brighter colors. The earlier paintings moved from shades of gray to warm and cool shades of gray. In this painting, we created a pallet completely out of yellow, blue and red. We do not use white at all. We also don't use black. Our darkest colors are violet and blue violet.

Method:

In this painting I tried to avoid the edges even more. My teacher was most excited about the potted plant in the first picture I uploaded here. She says that in the beginning, it is a good idea to keep the painting very open. By this she means not defining the edges just yet. This is because the painting could possibly change as I fill in other parts of the painting. I think that the mistake we often make is outlining the object, and then we are often too afraid of going back to make the necessary changes. Also, it seems from the past painting, that defining the objects too soon can make it appear flat. The object begins to take shape as I lay down the colors and the shades and lights.

This painting has been the hardest, but it is also the most fun. That's because in trying to be free, I laid down color very rapidly. I also kept my brush strokes alive. What I mean is, while in my first painting, I tended to go in one direction with my brush strokes, in my second and third paintings, I've learned to move in different directions. For example, the brush strokes do not all have to go vertically on the side of a box. It can be vertical, horizontal and even diagonal. This seems to help make the box come alive more.

What makes this painting difficult is the pallet. It is hard to look at the objects, which have their own colors, but see them in shades of warms and cools. Then use such vibrant colors on them! For example, the round thing on the right is actually black, but the light that glows off of it makes parts of it appear look warm. So using violet helps keep the warm tone. The pot is blue, and the light that reflects off of it can look cool. That's what I think anyway.

There are actually two table cloths. One red, and on top of that is a light purple one. It looks orange in the painting. That's because the light casts a warm glow on it. I'm trying to bring in undertones of violet to show that it is purple.

Thoughts...

I've learned so much. And what I've been telling Jason is that I'm glad that I am doing it now. I think I am absorbing it differently than I would have if I had tried to learn it when I was younger. As I've gotten older, I'm more open to learning things from the beginning. Having drawn most of my life growing up, I think I was more stubborn about my style and the way I knew how to draw when I was in my late teens and early 20s. It would have been harder to break down those preconceptions about drawing and art to explore techniques. Besides, I know back then I would not have wanted to paint still lifes...how boring!

It's funny that now that I'm older, I'm actually more willing to start from the beginning. Both my figure drawing teacher and my painting teacher have said that there is a disadvantage to already knowing how to draw. Because those people always do it that way, and it always looks like a drawing. It's much harder to go back to the beginning.

So I'm trying to not know. To just explore and feel my way around this painting. And it's surprising! Because suddenly, I find that I am learning to paint in a way that is completely different from the way that I've always drawn. It's gotten to the point that when I just have a paper and pencil, I'm a little stunned and don't know what to do. I want to make different colors of smudges until the the picture manifests on the page. That has been the greatest pleasure...when random smudges of paint starts to transform and surprises me with a beautiful image.

Push the painting further

When I thought I was nearly done with my second painting, my teacher said, "Push the painting further." She took my brush and smeared the edges and added more brush strokes to the center. She said my tones were good, but the objects had a quality of being there and not really there. She said that I should not define the objects. This second painting seemed to say, "Yes, I am a bottle." But the bottle should be brought out of the painting, not defined by me. I attempted to liven up the brush strokes and blend the edges a little more. I noticed that it added a little more 3-d quality. Here is the final product. I will post my nearly complete version next to the final version to see if a difference can be seen.

The nearly complete version:













The complete version:











I remember having to add a lot more paint on as well. It also gave me an opportunity to straighten the bottle necks. I'm still unhappy with the blue bottle in the back right hand corner though.

It was an interesting lesson in observing the relationship between things. An edge only appears to be an edge because two things come together. Particularly the sides of the bottles. Being too aware of the edges end up creating 2-d objects. I suppose the edge comes together when two colors meet. In my next painting I try to ignore the edges even more by just laying down the spots of color.