Does Size Matter?

When it comes to paintings, yes and no. Miniatures are big on the market, often detailed, gorgeous, and sometimes less expensive. Extremely large sofa or wall sized paintings are popular too.
  The following is a tip for artists who'd like to do very large works, but simply don't have the space to do them.
  Why not do little paintings in a very big way? Lately, I've worked mostly with 11x14's. Commonly accepted is the idea that portraits be about 75% of actual size up to actual size. Well, I like them bigger than that. For myself, I find more room for the detail I love to paint when I oversize works.
    This is an early stage of  my latest painting in the Black and White Series of a hand. It's an 11x14" photographed with my own hand beside it to show the scale of this work. This painting, while on a small canvas is "larger than life," so to speak.

This way of painting wont be for everyone. There is the issue of having more space to fill where there may not be much detail in your subject, but noting subtleties of color and light and shadow can fill those spaces beautifully.

   Here's the finished piece:



"Hand Of A Friend"
11x14"
Acrylic on Canvas





Glazing the Cherry: Beginner's Guide to Glazing

Glazing is (deceptively simple) an Old Master Technique used to create translucent color which allows light from below the color to shine through. When I began glazing in '97, there was very little information available on the net. Today, everyone is doing it, (I love that!) but the approaches vary. I'm a goal oriented, frugal and practical painter. I like to find the simplest ways to paint and pass them on to others. (One of the reasons for demonstrating with craft acrylics is to show beginners that painting need not cost a lot. This can alleviate the fear of trying, and more than anything I want you have the freedom to play.After trying a few things with craft acrylics, I highly recommend moving on to regular tubed acrylics or oils).
  In any medium the goal in glazing is translucency. Approximately 1 part paint to 20 parts medium is mixed, then applied over a subject. The result is like looking through a piece of barely colored stained glass. You still see the subject clearly, it has only a blush of color. The mix can be much more translucent than what I will show you, meaning it can be a ratio of 1 part paint and 50 parts medium.
 (Here, I'm using FolkArt's Floating Medium for craft acrylics. Golden has a glazing liquid that works wonderfully for regular acrylics. In my oil work, I use Liquin for oil paints. Use a medium suited to water for water based paints like acrylics and one suited for oils in oil based paints.)
   Glazes must be allow to dry completely. After, subsequent glazes may be added allowing each layer to dry before adding another. My portraits have about 15 to 20 glazes. (For this demo, we will only do 3 glazes._ Glazing produces natural, translucent looking skin (on people or cherries) that can't be produced using opaque colors. Again, the point is to see through them.
   I'm working in craft Acrylic here to demonstrate. The penny is to give an idea of the amounts. There is no need for precision whatsoever.
1. is pure paint in Apple Barrel's Bright Red. Below it is what I am using to glaze. It's FolkArt's Floating Medium. I've added a scant of black to the medium only so you can see it in the photo. It's perfectly colorless.
2. is how much medium and paint I'll mix. Just touching the tiniest dot of paint (1 part paint) to about 20 parts medium.
3 is what they look like mixed, and I've dragged the paint out to show that you can see through it.

Creating a Glaze

   I find it best to apply glazes with a flat brush or an angular flat. I like the point on an angular to get into small places easily, and I can lay it flat to apply glazes in smoothe, wide areas. Here's a demonstration on one of my black and white works. I've painted a cherry and lime peel in grayscale (black and white.) I've made glazes with each of 3 colors as I needed them (acrylics dry quick, so make them when ready to use them). Each was made just like the photo above.

Colors:    Apple Barrell Pumpkin Orange
             Apple Barrell  Bright Red
             FolkArt True Burgundy
Using my flat brush or my angular I apply Orange first in the lightest areas. It's ok and sometimes desireable to go over whites with this. Later, if needed you can touch those pure white highlights back in. (As you can see, there is very, very little change in this painting in the first glaze. Each glaze builds color, and each allows us to see through to the light underneath. This is also used to be able to see through skin where veins are painted.) Allow this layer to dry completely. Depending on the humidity, Acrylics are dry in about 10-20 minutes.


Orange Glaze

The second glaze is done in the shadows in True Burgundy.

The third Red is our Bright Red. This is in the light areas between the orange and True Burgundy. Note that all of these colors can overlap. This causes a visual blending, meaning they look blended, though we never blended the colors.



Now, Glazing is a New Master Technique. It's yours. smiles.

 Here's my finished work which has the addition of Apple Barrell Leaf Green for the stem and the lime peel.

 "Cherry Lime"
8x10"
Acrylic on Canvas

If you would like to see a start to finish simple demo on creating this painting in grayscale. See my step-by-step tutorial here:
http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-painting&tid=16091







"Headless Burros" How to Use Reference Photos

Photo by Tina Jones "Headless Burrow"

Using photos as a reference. If it's not believable in the photo, it won't be believable in paint. This particular photo is an extreme situation to show how "off" something can look. The rear burro turned his head to nibble/scratch at his far side just as I snapped the photo, and now appears headless. If I wanted to shock scare people, I'd paint it as is. If not, I'd use another photo.

   I take ten to twenty reference photos for each subject, because people and animals move, light changes and what looks normal at a glance may not upon later inspection.

•    The photo is where I choose composition. Usually, I get something workable in the initial shot, but often I crop the photo. In this case, I'd rather the burrows be toward the left side, so I'd crop an inch or two off of the left side of the photo. This is my planning stage.
• Do I want the burro/burros center top to bottom?
• Do I want to omit the far burrow or use another reference photo for that one? 
• Should I move the bottom of the fence? It creates a dead-center line in this compostion. Center is often dull to the eye. Placement of that line at 1/3 from the bottom or top makes for more interest in composition.
• Do I want the ground shadows as is? I look at shadows on the ground/surface as part of the composition. Do I want them as is, or would omitting some make for a more cohesive piece?
• Much of the shadow here is cast from a nearby tree. Will it be believable as is, or might I put only shadows under the burrows for better composition?
• What about the lone vertical steak on the fence? Is it adding anything to my idea of painting the burrows? Might it be ommitted? Might this work without the fence altogether?
• Do I want to paint the grass, or might this burrow look ok in a desert, among rocks or sipping water?

   These are some questions I encourage you to ask yourself about your reference photos. Be critical of them. I use reference photos as a sort of shopping list of what I'd like in my painting, taking what I like and leaving the rest. Following is a quick, loose sketch to show how I chose to place the burro on my canvas.





 Burro Composition Sketch in Acrylic



Happy Painting!

tina jones