getting a bluetooth running for the first time ever — I feel like a Jetson!

learning a valuable lesson — today in particular, a valuable art lesson

Almost every book on drawing or painting stresses the value of values [lights and darks], and they are an aspect of art I have long taken for granted. But, now that I've started painting [and working in colour as opposed to the black and white of my comics work], the whole concept of value becomes more challenging for me. Learning to see the lightness or darkness of a colour is not always trivial for me. But all my recent lessons have been emphasizing the importance of this learning, so I finally reached the point where I am trying to pay more attention.

Almost every painting book recommends the exercise of painting a value scale, which looks something like this:



However, since my art skills are surpassed by my procrastination skills, I have never done so. I always handwaved and said yeah yeah I get it. Until today.

I approached the problem logically, and figured that a half-and-half mixture of black and white paint should give me a middle value like 5.

Not so.

It was with considerable consternation that I discovered a 50-50 mixture gave me a result barely distinguishable from 9. In fact, a 90% white - 10% black mixture gave me a result much like 7.

Up until now, when I painted, I mixed what I needed but never paid too much attention to how much of what I used. I just mixed til it worked. But today, by approaching this in a systematic fashion, I have learned a new appreciation for the darkening power of paints. That's gotta be worthwhile knowledge to have, right?

a perfect nap

I was sitting on the couch after getting a few things taken care of, and accidentally nodded off... not for long, maybe half an hour. But I woke up feeling like it was exactly what I needed then, and like this is how I always want to feel after a rest. It was so restorative that I was a bit stunned.

a new album from The Linda Lindas



Gotta tell ya, I find a lot of these songs uncommonly well-crafted for punk rock, and for such young creators....

My fifth gouache is a tribute to musical and visual artist Gizelle Smith. The hair was particularly challenging — I don't think I nailed it spectacularly, but I also don't know that I am capable of doing it much better than this now, either.

My fourth gouache is a study of the 1890 painting Fisherman on the Laita by Paul Sérusier. I was immediately taken by this work the first time I saw it — something about his unusual colour choices and his simplification into graphic shapes. I decided to work from a smaller-than-necessary reproduction of the work, so that fine details would drop out and the shapes would grow flatter and simpler — emphasizing the aspects that attracted me. It felt like a good learning experience for me.

My third gouache is another singer tribute — this time, to Alanna Quinn-Broadus, vocalist for the band Alanna Royale. I decided on a different approach for this one, because the lighting on my reference pic was very bright. This washed out much of the photo. so that there was very little in the way of forms being modelled by colour and shade. Instead, it was largely flat shapes defined by contour, with a few linear details. But I particularly liked the contours in that pic, which is why I chose it as my reference anyway. So I kept the painting small, forcing me to streamline those details, and emphasized the flat graphic-arts nature of gouache: converting the background to a flat black shape and stylizing the hair, in a manner which I admit makes it rather similar to my cartooning work.

Once again, I didn't manage to nail a photographic likeness, but I think as a graphic work in and of itself, it holds up not too bad.



UPDATE: I also posted this to my Instagram... and received a comment on it from Alanna herself:

OH. MY. GOD. i am BEYOND impressed and honored you would pick up a brush with my face in mind. i truly love this. may i share?

How swell is that?

Okay, let's call this Watercolour #25A. Today I decided to take another crack at yesterday's robin, but this time going for something a bit more expressionist and abstracted, aiming at a more minimalist, Chinese-calligraphy approach to it. Trying to put a form down in as few brushstrokes as I could manage. I used the same brushes and paints, but actual watercolour paper this time [you might be able to make out a bit of the paper texture in the photo].

Once again, not amazing but not abysmal. Gotta say, though, the whole process of putting the brush down more mindfully each time, trying to get it down right in one stroke [not always succeeding, but trying] — I found all that very instructive. That alone made the exercise worth my while.

My second gouache is a study of an acrylic by Patti Mollica, Boat at Lake Trasimeno. When I first saw it, I was immediately drawn to how they abstracted the water into these big, bold, sweeping brushstrokes, and I was moved to try that out for myself.