_City Tutor small

oil on canvas

5 members like this

View Full Size

Tags:

Add a Comment

You need to be a member of The Complete Artist to add comments!

Join The Complete Artist

Comment by kevin miller on August 26, 2015 at 6:45: Hello Michael,

I think I see where I went wrong and I feel better about making this change. I still do not fully understand what I am doing but I guess you learn by doing. I really appreciate your help and insight.

As for VAA, I have been somewhat MIA over the last two months since I did a dumb thing and enrolled in another drawing type course given by some people in the digital art world that are pretty good. I thought it would be another way to beat into me the ideas of good design and principles of composition. The one time I jumped on there I did a review of one of your plein air pieces that looked really nice. I think you then posted two more since then that I have not even been able to really look at. I need to wrap up Workshop B and get moving forward. I'll be looking for you final painting for workshop C!!

One of the things that drives me nuts about VAA the is the fact that I cannot subscribe to postings so I know when someone like you makes a new post. Aggravating to say the least.

Comment by Michael J. Severin on August 25, 2015 at 16:02: Hey Kevin ...now I like the new version!!! ....was that done on your paint program? I love the warm variations and the gradation you put in the house facade!! ...Yes, that version has a lot of potential!!! ..good job, my VAA friend. Speaking of VAA ..where have you been? I have finished C, and getting ready to do my summary painting.

Comment by kevin miller on August 25, 2015 at 15:43: Hello Michael,

I am seeing what you mean. Not sure why this is a struggle as this is basic notan design/ value relationships. I was doing a quick rework of the image (using Corel Painter) when I saw your post. I quickly turned the progress image to black and white and saw my values are too similar except for the added lighter value spots. I'll just need to keep reworking. My tree needs to go darker and I thought maybe I would do the same to the ground cover on the lower edge. Thank you for the added comments. Frustrating that I still cannot clearly see this stuff but I will keep at it.

Comment by Michael J. Severin on August 25, 2015 at 10:49: Hi Kevin. Kevin, it is not color you want to concentrate on ..it is tonal value. Really analyze these paintings closely, and you will notice that the artists have manipulated tonal values first ..and then color. For instance ..look at the windows in the other paintings ..then look at yours ...see how they thought about value first. Also, please notice that even though these paintings are not in bright light ....the artists use plenty of warmth in the colors. Notice that the trees in the first 2 paintings are darker then what they are overlapping ..thus putting them in front of the house. Notice what the artist does on the 3rd painting down ...the tree is light .against the dark shadow ..which is against the lighter value house!! ..light, dark, light BUT ..notice the dark accents on that tree trunk ..all that stuff brings it forward ..in front of the house. Look at the counterpoint in this first painting ...we have a dark tree trunk against the light part of the house and sky ..THEN ..we have lighter branches against the dark of the house!!! Last thing. Each of these paintings was "keyed" to a particular value scale...with the last painting a high key. The bottom line is ..think tonal values ..by that I mean ..the value of the color. Okay, for instance ..look at your round bushes ..they show bright sunlight hitting them ..why just there? ...Why is there bright sunlight hitting that tree on the left? ...If you say this is diffused light, then they should not be that bright. Now, they are really not bright at all ..they just look it because everything else is dark ...In all of these other paintings, the artist has painted the grasses and trees with the same value tonality ..there is no ambiguity has to what kind of light it is. Also, keep in mind that these paintings have great color harmony ...the grays you see in these paintings were all made from combinations of the red and green ....color harmony. Look at the first painting and notice the "white" part of the house ..Note how warm it is ...it relates to the greens. Try harmonizing your painting by putting some greens into your reds and reds into your greens ...those other paintings show that. Put these other paintings into black and white and see what the tonal values look like.

Comment by kevin miller on August 25, 2015 at 5:35: Thanks Jon. I took a version of this painting and brought it into Painter (digital painting program) to play around with some ideas based on what Michael said. Although I feel my original thought of a light source from behind me would be better (and I am going to try a version with this) I feel like I should not have to add this element to make this piece work. I also feel that not every scene has a strong light source which means there would not be deep dark shadows. With that all said, that means my only vehicle for improvement is for me to work with color. It may not work out very well which is why I am doing this first through Painter before I started further altering this painting. I added some examples from other artist which do not appear to have a strong light source but appear successful to some degree.....at least for me. Maybe that is part of my problem though, I do not know what makes a successful piece. I guess that is why you keep doing this.

Comment by Jon Main on August 25, 2015 at 5:20: I like the lone figure, the foundation - concept and drawing - are very good, nice shapes too - it's always a revelation for us to get Michaels'ss analyses

Comment by kevin miller on August 24, 2015 at 6:49: Thanks Susan!

Michael, thank you for the very detailed response. As always, you have very salient points. The one thing I am going to question though is the light source. This was done on a sort of bright overcast day. Shadows were very diffused. The light seems to be coming from everywhere and the big tree allowed some of the bright overcast sky to break through but there was little shadow. I would have preferred a sunny light coming from behind me but I worked with what I had at the moment. With that said, I think I am going to try to rework this because I feel your points are correct, especially on the color. Not sure what I am going to do yet but I think it can definitely be improved with what you said. Thanks again!

Comment by Susan Burke on August 24, 2015 at 4:31: Kevin, very nice!

Comment by Michael J. Severin on August 24, 2015 at 3:52: Hi Kevin. Your drawing is very good Kevin ..I can see you took some time on that. I believe you are correct with your comment about the time of day and the position of the light source. ....some shadows would have been better. In your painting, there is an absence of a light source and an absence of shadow. A couple of things happen when this occurs: There is no sense of light ...you need darks for that, and there is no modeling ..everything is pretty flat ..2 dimensional. Although you do have overlapping elements, the house comes forward due to the sameness of the values and lack of value contrasts. The large dark windows really come forward. The tree on the left needs to be much darker in order for you to push the house back into space. The sun is out because I can see some shadows ..but ...you need to warm these colors up ..you have painted just the local colors of everything ...you need to paint the influence of the light source ..the sun. What shadows you have are too warm and to light of value ...contrast is needed to depict sunlight. One last thing Kevin ..unless you intent was to make an architectural rendering, your windows are too exact and much to dark ...and very much too cool. Well one more thing Kevin ..(sorry). You have painted green grass, Terracotta brick work, red house, white wall ..etc. But there is no unity or harmony in your colors ..because each stands alone. Remember on our VAA course about repetition ...repetition creates harmony and unity but repetition must be varied.

Comment by kevin miller on August 24, 2015 at 0:55: Tried my hand at doing an architecture piece when I was downtown at my local small town. I was trying to capture the interplay of man made structure set into this tranquil streetscape. The two do not always seem to work with modern developments but within these city streets, there is often this wonderful dance between structure and landscape that is really quite wonderful. My piece would have work better if the light would have come from behind me and up high as I would have had shadows and dappled light playing off of the building's surface that could have been fun. Not confident enough to try to make that up on my own but this piece was fun to do and I could see myself getting into more of these sort of town/ city paintings.