Think Before You Paint
The best way to insure a better outcome from your work is to think and plan before you paint. Whether you come across a scene you want to paint en plein air, set up a still life, or work from a photograph, preparation will ALWAYS improve your painting.
1. Make several thumbnail sketches to insure you have chosen the strongest design for your painting.
2. Transfer the value pattern for the design to your canvas with thin washes of paint. Take a minute to turn the painting on all four sides to make sure that all of your major shapes are interesting and that no two are exactly the same. Make changes to strengthen the design. Make sure light or shadow dominates. Do not leave a design that has equal parts light and shadow.
3. Decide what attracted you to do this painting in the first place. Write it down on your sketch. This should be your center of interest.
4. Think about the rule of thirds when you place your center of interest on the canvas.
5. What is the dominate color of your painting? What is it’s complement? What mood do you want to convey in the painting? Will one color scheme suggest this mood more than another?
Now you are ready to begin. Block in the big shapes with the color and value that best represents the average color and value of those shapes. Cover the painting quickly. Once the painting is covered you can evaluate the changes you will need to make if any. You can’t know if a color note is correct until you have covered the canvas. If you second guess yourself and begin changing things before you can relate them to the whole, you might just change the only color note you got right. Break down the big shapes into smaller shapes until you are content that the painting says what you intended for it to say when you began. Look at your center of interest. Have you put your darkest dark and lightest light here? Have you used hard edges here and softer ones in the rest of the painting? Did you remember to use stronger colors here as opposed to more neutral ones in the rest of the painting??? Is there anything else needed here??? Have you led the eye here with brushwork in the rest of the painting????
Look at the statement you wrote down before you began about why you wanted to make this painting. Does the painting say what you wrote????
If your answers to these questions are, yes. GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!
The best way to insure a better outcome from your work is to think and plan before you paint. Whether you come across a scene you want to paint en plein air, set up a still life, or work from a photograph, preparation will ALWAYS improve your painting.
1. Make several thumbnail sketches to insure you have chosen the strongest design for your painting.
2. Transfer the value pattern for the design to your canvas with thin washes of paint. Take a minute to turn the painting on all four sides to make sure that all of your major shapes are interesting and that no two are exactly the same. Make changes to strengthen the design. Make sure light or shadow dominates. Do not leave a design that has equal parts light and shadow.
3. Decide what attracted you to do this painting in the first place. Write it down on your sketch. This should be your center of interest.
4. Think about the rule of thirds when you place your center of interest on the canvas.
5. What is the dominate color of your painting? What is it’s complement? What mood do you want to convey in the painting? Will one color scheme suggest this mood more than another?
Now you are ready to begin. Block in the big shapes with the color and value that best represents the average color and value of those shapes. Cover the painting quickly. Once the painting is covered you can evaluate the changes you will need to make if any. You can’t know if a color note is correct until you have covered the canvas. If you second guess yourself and begin changing things before you can relate them to the whole, you might just change the only color note you got right. Break down the big shapes into smaller shapes until you are content that the painting says what you intended for it to say when you began. Look at your center of interest. Have you put your darkest dark and lightest light here? Have you used hard edges here and softer ones in the rest of the painting? Did you remember to use stronger colors here as opposed to more neutral ones in the rest of the painting??? Is there anything else needed here??? Have you led the eye here with brushwork in the rest of the painting????
Look at the statement you wrote down before you began about why you wanted to make this painting. Does the painting say what you wrote????
If your answers to these questions are, yes. GOOD JOB!!!!!!!!
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