Being an artist gives us a great advantage when it comes to holiday season. Painting is a form of visual communication. Therefore if a person receives a painting that's irrelevant to them, it'll be like sending the wrong message. The person will be confused and not be able to acknowledge the value of your painting.
Read MoreA loose painting is not a style, but a display of your understanding of the visual language
I got quite a bit emails or comments about my painting. Many of them are asking me about how to paint things loosely, or compliment on my "loose style". However, I believe I should clarify that the looseness of a painting is more of artist's choice rather than a style. It's a display of an artist's understanding of the form rather than a skill.
In order the paint things loosely, you need to understand the visual language of painting. When you are able to analyze the form which you are painting, and able to treat them as a a visual language, you will be able to paint things loosely.
A loose painting is just trying to communicate visually with suggestions rather than trying to describe everything in precise detail.
It's really not that hard to understand if you can think of it as a real vocal communication. Compare the following two sentences and you'll see what I meant:
Today is July 20th and the temperature is 80°f, so it is very hot in the summer season.
vs
Today is a hot summer day.
I'm sure you find the 2nd sentence shorter, straight to the point and more clear. Same thing applies for the painting. If you are able to paint things with minimum amount of brush stroke and information, you end up with a loose but believable painting.
This is part of my Hollywood Blvd painting. You can see the distance cards and buildings are very loosely painted. (More loose as it goes into the distance.) The car is made with a few simple brush strokes of body, windshield, and wheels. The buildings behind the trees are very simple light and dark shapes. But you read them as buildings receiving the shadows of the trees. And the palm trees themselves are very simple brush strokes that's just mimicking the shape of the leafs.
Now let's look at this part of the painting in San Diego Seaside. You can see the distance boats are simply painted less than 3 brush strokes with the body of the boat, the long, tall mast. If you look carefully you will see some masts are not even connect to a boat, they are just painted shapes. But they help to define the quantity of the boats.
While most of the time I paint the background more loosely. The focus of the paintings are still very loose compares to a photo realistic painting. They are just more define with some extra touches of informations.
Like I said before, always ask yourself if what you painted is enough to communicate to the viewer, or is it too much. Try to get to a point that's "just right" and your painting will end up nice and loose, and more importantly, alive.
Create drama in your painting with scale
in Technique
Most people don't like a boring painting. Being an artist we have the freedom and responsibility to make an ordinary subject into a dramatic and exciting one. For me that doesn't mean to start go crazy and painting abstract shape or being so technical intense to shock people with the painting itself. Instead, I like to retell the story in a different way, so that people can see the same subject through a different lens. Play with the scale is a great way to bring the drama out of an everyday scene!
Read MoreA believable painting has believable scale
in Fundamental, Technique
One of the problem I often see in an unsuccessful painting is incorrect scale. A believable scale is essential especially when you are painting a scenery with figures and man made objects. Sometime I see paintings with cars that's way too small compares to the figure next to it, or a building that looks like 4 stories tall but in reality it was suppose to be 10 stories. In this case, drawing is very important to get the right scale and placement. When you are drawing, go through the following steps to get an accurate scale:
1. Find a scale reference
In most cases, a person is a perfect scale reference, because that's what we see everyday. For most of the cityscape, you can measure almost anything with the size of a figure. Why? because city is build by man, for the size of an average man. If in your painting reference there's no figure, then find something that's related to a figure: handrail, trash can, or car. You can really get close and detail when doing a figure. A figure is typically about 7 and 1/2 head length. So from a head length to a figure, and from a figure to the surrounding. Everything is relative to another in scale.
Measure and compare
Now that you have a scale reference, start measuring things you draw by it. In this simple drawing, it shows the scale of the car relative to the figure. Most car is a bit shorter than an average person's shoulder level. You can double check that scale relationship next time when you are about to enter a car. Of course, there are different type of cars with different height level, a mini van can be as tall as a person while a moving truck can be 2+ people tall. But what ever you have in your scene, having a scale reference will enable you to measure just about everything. I also eyeball the height of the traffic light pole since I have a pretty good idea how much taller it should be now that I have a basic scale reference of a figure and a car.
Checking the scale in depth
It is likely that your scenery will have depth. I won't go into the importance of perspective, but it is important to know to measure your scale in different depth level. In a typical street scene, the horizon is at the head of the figure since it's at your eye level. The figures in the distance will become smaller and shorter while sharing the same eye level. This little drawing shows how the same figure looks in different depth level. And we can use it as the scale reference for the car at that depth.
It might feel a bit tedious to check your scale for everything at first. But as you do more drawings/paintings, you will be able to pick up the scale relationship much faster. Next week I will continue to talk about scale and how to create drama in your painting by playing with scale.