Session Nineteen # 19 Dark Passages So Now You

Pieter Brueghel II Session Nineteen # 19 Dark Passages So now you know that value patterns are the secret sauce in painting (if you didn't know it already.) You know to squint at the world like Clint Eastwood – and see it as abstract patterns of lights, grays and darks. And where you don't see a pattern of values when sketching, to go ahead and make one up. Do you see a value pattern in the following pictures? Howard Pyle – Book of Pirates Jessie Willcox Smith “Heidi” by Johanna Spyri Gustave Dore Gustave Dore Gustaf Tenggren With your pencil, try a small value sketch of one of these. Draw the frame first, then scribble the shapes inside. Shade to create a design of three separate puzzle pieces of light, mid-tone and dark. If you can manage to place to place the darkest dark against the lightest light, you're on your way to a painting that will work. Gustaff Tenggren – Backdrop for Disney animated movie Pinocchio You might have to squint your eyes to see three distinct value groupings in the color paintings.. Have you ever seen little kids do this when they draw – scrunching up their eyes to see what they're copying? Do you remember ever doing it yourself? Howard Pyle Pirate by candlelight Fritz Eichenberg Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights Most of the work has already been done for you in the black and white images. Fritz Eichenberg Jane Eyre Winslow Homer Darks are a critical part of the value sketch. Do you know that many watercolorists are afraid of the dark? We've heard how, in watercolor we're supposed to work “light to dark.” But, in truth, many of us never get far enough lalong to make real darks in our pictures. We're afraid to commit to that darkest puzzle piece. We know there's no going back once we do. And no one's shown us how to make a good transparent dark in watercolor. Howard Pyle Watercolors generally aren't very punchy. Watercolorists are nice people who want to avoid conflict. We're taught to build up our paintings gradually, in a series of tentative, timid washes. Sneak up, as if we're invisible, on the darks and extreme contrasts. We don't want to make a scene. But it's the illustrator's job to make a scene. And illustrators know there's no contrast without stepping into the dark. Gustave Dore John Milton's Paradeise Lost It's easier with oil or acrylic painting. You just go in with rich black paint. You know you'll be able to add white to lighten the picture. You can start like the “Old Masters” did, scumbling the entire canvas with Sienna or Ochre for a warm mid-tone. Then you mass in your dark and work your way up to the light. The last stage would be fine-tuning, tweaking values and colors. You can add as much white as you want working with opaque paints on a mid-tone ground like this. It gives you a delicious feeling of sculpting form with dark and light. (In my acrylic painting above you can see under-painting peeking out of the canvas -– the orange-brown of the middle cupcake.) But with watercolor, as I think you know, you use the paper for the whites of your scene. The cotton-white paper is as light as any shape will get in your picture. The only way to make it any lighter is to paint something really dark next to it. That triggers an eye-brain response, “simultaneous contrast.” It's just an artists' and photographers' trick to create a perception in the viewer of heightened contrast. Since you're not using much – if any – white paint in watercolor, you'll find you need to rely on the darks even more to articulate form. This should by all rights be a fun stage of the painting, since you've already done the hard work up to this point and now all you need to do is pull things together a bit. If you do feel yourself going wrong in the conclusion of a painting, just make another value sketch. Or recommit to the first one you did. A good value pattern really is the best medicine. The darks can make or break you. But usually the way they'll break your work is if you don't make them. If you've jotted off your little value sketch ahead of time and you stay faithful to it, most of the calamities you cause at this stage probably won't be fatal. Don't be too quick to judge what's happening in your painting while you're doing it. Sometimes what you perceive to be a mistake isn't one. Remember that with the value sketch, you're like the photographer setting up the studio lights for your commercial shoot. You decide where your light source will be, how your shadows will fall, and if your scene should be back lit or front lit or both. You don't have to work out every value to the last ray of light. It's just a just a quick sketch to determine how the light, gray and dark puzzle pieces should fit. Shade just enough with your pencil or marker to make your statement. You can tackle the smaller value details when you have the brush in your hand and you're splashing paint around and seeing how the washes are falling. Gustaff Tenggren That's the improvisation that makes painting fun. It will stay fun as long as you stick to your value pattern. The next time you hear yourself exclaiming, “My colors are turning to mud!” remember that there's nothing wrong with muddy color. “Muddy painting” usually means that you haven't made some of the colors dark enough – and some parts of the painting light enough. You haven't been deliberate with your values. But if you persevere with your plan, push those dark values and protect those lights, the “muddiness” will go away. And your picture will become interesting again. (And If you don't believe me, just ask Toby the trilobite.) John Singer Sargent Do you think Sargent followed through with his value plan in this painting? OK, you're right. It's not a watercolor. It's an oil painting. (He got to use all the white paint he wanted!) John Singer Sargent So here's a Sargent watercolor. His whitest white is the white cotton fiber paper. And look at those trees! Are they dark enough for you? So how do you achieve a good watercolor dark? Make a puddle. Mix your dominant color into its opposite color. Add plenty of both pigments to the puddle. Stir well. Add more pigment. Favor one compliment over the other in your mix, to give your dark a color identity. You don't want it halfway between warm and cool. You want either warm or cool. That's that three to five big design idea in action. Unity with variety. 60-40 is better than 50-50. You're still working in puddles and you're using enough water with all of this extra pigment you're adding. Stirring your paint. Because you want a transparent wash. Even in your darkest passages you want the light to bounce up through the brush stroke. Because watercolor works like stained glass. The paper is the daylight outside the window. You don't want to give all those paint pigment particles a chance to clump – and blot out the reflecting light. So you stir. When you think your solution is dark and saturated and transparent enough, brush it on a test strip to see if it is. Remember it will lighten even more as it dries. A fast way to darken your values is to add black paint. Illustrators don't have to be Impressionist painters. I prefer a liquid black – Hydrus Fine Art Watercolor produced by Dr. Ph Martin's. I use the 11M Carbon Black. You might noticed it in the supply list for this course. Here's what it looks like. For me, it darkens more satisfactorily than the tube blacks – Ivory, Carbon or Peach Black – I've tried. One drop from its eyedropper into your color puddle will be more than enough. (It will change everything.) Put it through the same process I just described. How dark do you make your darks? It will depend on the painting, but you'll know it when you see it on the test strip. Then you might make it a little darker, Because a watercolor paint stroke always looks darker when it's wet. It will lighten as it dries. OK, you've endured enough discussion. You've met the beast. You're not afraid of the dark any more. You're ready to paint. You've done all the prep you need. You have your value sketch beside you in case you get lost. Your color wheel up where you can see it. You've decided on a dominant color for this painting. You have four color puddles already mixed in their separate wells (or paper cups.) Your dominant color and the other three colors of the court – the royal family – they came as a set, remember? (Sessions #5, # 6 and #7.) You'll make your mixes from them. You'll keep it all in the family with few exceptions (one being those transparent skin tones that we talked about in the last session.) You've slogged all the way to the top of the ski mountain.

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