EPISODE 56 Robert Liberace workshop

I've been swamped since Alberta Culture days where I shook thousends of hands and now classes starting up......



8 at Atelier Artista.

5 at ACAD

1 at Waldorf

and 1 every couple Sundays at Swintons.



So this is a catch up episode from my workshop at Whidbey Island with Robert Liberace. Which was so good!!!



Please watch the episode and when things simmer down another will be in production.



:D

EPISODE 46 Workshop #1 Canvas Building Workshop

Hey guys and gals, I just finished a 2 week cleanse and visited the dentist twice, so Im feeling squeaky clean as I bring you this instalment. Episode 46 - Workshop #1, Canvas Building 101. Take a look!

Canvas Building Workshop!

Learn to make and take home the canvases that you build.

I just announced this workshop.
Sign up quick, space and tools are limited.
+ You get to take home two excellently made canvases worth the price of the class.

Saturday April 8, 
11 am - 2 pm.

http://www.atelierartista.com/canvas-building-workshop

figure and portraits continued

We continued our study of the figure and the musculature.  Using tracing paper, I draw the big muscle groups over the reference picture to aid in the development of the drawing. It helps to understand how the shapes and shadows fall across the body. 

We did lots of tracings of the figure and broke down the body into simplified shapes to understand different poses and how to construct our own figurative pieces.

I transferred my reference image using the charcoal and tracing paper technique onto my primed canvas.

Using a simplified palette, I block in and big form model the basic shapes that make up the figure.

The result is the first layer in copying this work.

Did some tracings of simplified shapes that describe and communicate a portrait.  All that is needed is light and dark and then we can develop it further from there.

Next we work on portraiture,  I transfer a copy of my reference image onto a prepared canvas board and block in the shadow shapes.

I block in the fleshy bits of the face, keeping thing simple and not worrying about detail elements at this point. There is not, enough time left in the class to complete what we started, however the lessons were full to leave us with plenty to work with in order to improve our practice.

I quickly block in his clothing and pack up all my wet paintings in order to head home and eat with enough time to prep for my evening class at Quickdraw Animation Society.

Never stop improving your technique

Practice does make perfect. With art you've got to practice, practice and practice some more.

I know I need to put in more quality time to get to where I want to go artistically. I am taking another 3 day workshop with Martinho Correria titled: Studying the figure through the Masters at the Calgary School of Art at Cactus Arts Supply store. Check out their respective website for more info. Its nice to see some familiar faces as well as many new ones for this intensive in classical atelier methods of instruction. I love the private training, you always get pushed beyond the levels and learn so much, making the price worth every penny. I highly recommend these courses and others like them at Swinton's Art Supply etc. if you really want to learn artistic skills and techniques directly form those in the craft every now and again I ma delegated at the opportunity to improve my skills as a student and devote some time to improving my practice.

After the first lecture we worked on tracing gesture type drawings from old masters works to get a feel for the essence of "gesture drawings". It is challenging to remove what you know and previous skills and learn to work a different way. These gesture drawings are meant to be simple ways of conveying the weight and feeling of a model and freezing it into a moment as models tend to move even when posing for a long time. This means you have to learn to capture the feeling behind the figure being drawn.  We traced a myriad of figures done by different artists for reference.

We learned how to properly prepare a pencil and how to hold it for this type of drawing. This one was plastic composite and not wood, I was fooled at first, until I got my exact blade in it, it shaved weird. Then you make a point in the lead with some sandpaper and use smooth wrist and arm movements to create soft and curved S and C curved lines.

We practiced on a small Brague drawing example. First doing a gesture drawing to capture the feeling of the form and then moving into getting the basic shapes and proportions of the figure in place. I took additional notes during the demos to add to the invaluable handouts our instructor Martinho provided.

After a lunch of a delicious "Manwich" at the Holy smoke Grill across the street, I felt groggy with so much meat and bun in my belly. I set up my drawing board on an easel and set up the reference next to the paper another student was kind to offer me to try and work on. This pose is a little intimidating given how much time we had left in the class.

We worked on drawing our figure larger using comparative proportions. I think my guy is a little thick, in places, there is some definite tweaking needed before continuing onto the next stage. But I did manage to get the majority of the figure blocked in in the time given. I look forward to learning more in the next few days, we will see how things develop, I hope this interests you and you come back to check it out.

Ciao for now = :D

DISTRESSED SIGN PAINTING

I took a week-end workshop at Swintons Art Supply (http://www.swintonsart.com) taught by Rick Janzen of Streamline Studios (http://streamlinestudiosinc.ca)  and a wicked local sign painter in the sense of the traditional trade craft.

We started out finding about the history and Rick told many great stories about his experiences. There were many book references and lots of photos of past work to look at. He introduced us to the tools of the trade and all the materials etc. were included in the workshop fee = wicked!!

I have always wanted to learn the skills of the traditional sign painter in order to better perfect what I hope to do in my work. I've taken up many of the skills, from transferring lettering, hand painting on glass as well as learning airbrush. I've done a few murals and some signage(see earlier blog post or visit my website for reference) Brianbatista.com. 

We rolled out some poster paper and began with layout and design of hand painted signs.  I decided to make a sign that I can use at my comic expo booth or elsewhere I offer custom work.

Then I was lucky enough to get to try out his electro pouncer. This is definitely something I'd love to have in my studio, though at around $500 its a little rich for my blood. for now a luxury item I can try out. It used electricity to burn holes int he paper. How it works is you stick paper to a piece of metal using magnets. The electro pouncer has a ground wire that gets attached to this metal backing. You turn it on and use it like a pen. It pulses out a little arc which burns holes. So cool. A couple of people got shocked, which isn't that shocking, handle with care!

This paper is then put on top of the surface. Take a chalk bag and tamp the surface and the chalk will go thru the little holes and create an outline to follow that can easily be removed. This is a great way to transfer a design. here I am using white chalk but if the surface was light or white I would use crashed charcoal instead.  Once the designs transferred it makes it much easier to paint, plus I still have the pounced paper design if I need to make multiples.

Here it is mostly painted.  It takes a lot of brush skill to do this well. Something that only time and practice and bring, as in any real skill worth attaining. I ran out of time to add other colours and outlines but I do intend on working on the sign more and adding some more decorate elements and maybe some gold leafing before distressing it.

What interested me most about this particular workshop is the DISTRESSING part.  In my sacred images paintings I try to get that aged antique look. Often it is tedious and labor intensive requiring lots of techniques and time. This on the other hand was quick and effective. First we need to age the wood so that the ground doesn't look so fresh. there are so many ways I found online to do this from vinegar and steel wool to what we did, which was way easier, stain it with raw umber paint watered down.

After the initial drying we applied wallpaper paste to the surface. This will act as a resist for later when we begin removing layers. I used this heavy duty dryer to speed up the process. Aesthetically speaking, the wear on a sign would be more around the edges and more around the top due to weathering so more paste should be applied there, the middle would have much less distress. rick gave us many fine examples and ways about thinking about how to distress the work to look realistic.

 Then you put on your design. You can use a variety of transfer methods or go the old fashioned routs and draw directly on it like I did.

I created a second test panel where I painted a letter on a fully painted background whereas the first I chased in the background. I designed this letter B based on an old rosewood style font I have always admired. another transfer method is to rub the back of the paper with charcoal and then place it down and go over the lines on the front. This pushes the charcoal on the back onto the surface with the traced design.

Here they are painted in. I decreased the contrast between the off white and black to show bleaching by the sun. The colours I used are harmonious with one another and are heritage colours.  With little time I raced to paint these in, they are rough but it is not going to matter once the distressing comes into play.

Here they are after I finish with the two distressing techniques we learned. I like them really aged :D

The first method is to use a warm water soak to loosen the wallpaper paste and then using a floor brush or nail brush with short strokes to lift the paint off the surface where the wall paper paste is applied. Its wet, wild and fun and works fantastic.

I love how this lake sign turned out by one of the other participants.  Did I mention these are water based paints but it works equally as well for oil based paints. It is the messiest part of the process which is why we put down black plastic garbage bags.

We also tried block ageing which added to my tests. It is a way to make it look as though the painting is peeling off without having to life the paint, instead you add paint of the wood colour on the top. Here rick is further ageing his sign.I think the more distressed the better, as long as you can still make out what the sign says. It was a fun time and by the end of the class we had some pieces to be proud of!

Photo by Rick Janzen

I am so stoked about what I learned, I am pumped to apply it to my practice. I already have grand ideas and an extensive list of stuff I want to do so be prepared to see some major output in the coming months  after I finish all my teaching gigs and I can get back to the studio. I can't stop thinking about it, so much so I skipped past the remaining El Salvador trip inspiration. If this class comes up and this interests you I highly recommend the course.

Until next time = :D

Airbrushing workshop

I attended a 3 hour introductory workshop to airbrushing at Swinton's.

I brought my Iwata HP -CH airbrush and got to try a few others like the black Aztec above.

Here is a photo of the notes I took during the demonstrations.

We began with getting the proper flow and creating some dots and lines using the dual action feature on the airbrush.

Then we worked on dagger strokes and playing with the distance and flow of the paint in the airbrush.

We then worked on blending two colours. The paper was a bit unforgiving though.

So I moved onto card stock, I did a blend from bottom to top of yellow.

I blended to red and then topped it off with blue at the top.

I decided to dabble in a bit of the opaque white.

I made two cheesy 80'2 style tests, but my dagger strokes on the palm trees definitely needed more practice. I also vignetted the larger of the two test panels.

Here is the instructor Vince showing another participant how dagger strokes are done.

Here is his demonstration board. He made it look easier than it really is. 8+ years of experience does that.

I did some more practice and experimentation.

The final demo was on the use of stencils, we made space scenes with cut out circles.

Here is the start of my space scene. I like the star burst made with 4 taped together business cards as a stencil.  I sprayed the corner of one of the cards at an angle and held it close to the surface to create the star pattern.

Did some different patterning with the example stencils. We finished up the workshop with  dismantling the airbrush and proper clean up.

Notes from Martinho's workshop

During some New Year's clean up I deleted a bunch of files containing my notes from MArtinho's painting workshop last spring.

Here they are in their entirety:

Painting workshop

Day 1

Burnt umber and white value of 6- cobalt drier and solvent
Solid shadows

Calcium carbonate (marble dust) to make whites opaque. with titanium to help give it more umph 1-0.85

Shadows - black and yellow ochre

Background mid tone - black and yellow ochre and a touch of emerald green

More solid shadows and background
Blueish ground blur the line between the two

Peek thru a finger hole to get color relationship to flesh palette!

Flesh - red umber and white
Blend the meeting line a bit

Fill in other mid light tones

Palette & flesh ball!
White, yo, red, Indian/venetian, (make an orange) then add white for flesh, red umber, burnt umber , raw umber, black

---------
Day 2: fall of light

Dark at bottom of legs paint up like a flat cardboard cut out.

Shade the background and floor

Bought a litany of 50 cent brushes and got a free travel case.

Photo demo in the afternoon.

Head photo, 25 cm.
Printed out in colour.

Priming a canvas with big car wash super sponge and lead white paint.

Light sand - wipe off with a damp cloth.

Bring painting home and leave in warm truck can to speed up drying time.

--------
day 3

Demo
Oil in, first painting, model the largest forms in the round

Lesson of the day:
More paint!!!
After all (paint is cheap)

Background
Punching shadows a bit
Lighten up the background

------

Day 4

Oil in- this process is done onto dry oil to bring the color back


Fairfield Iowa- marahashi

Scottish portrait painter- sir Henry Raeburn

-----

Day 5, work one area with second stage painting.

Working on legs, bumping up the chroma using more Persian once it is pulled out can see the uses of a more closely resembled hue

campatura-wet sand the poison surface and Rubbed in thinned burnt umber.

You got to know when to quit,

I'm happy where I'm at, time to quit while I'm ahead.

last day of the sale, I succumbed to some more purchases!

Tab aret - rolling cabinet.
----


Things to buy:
Cobalt drier
Buy a color and tone chart
For reference and photography

Black mirror. Red plexiglas or other optical enhancer.

Good brushes: Rosemary and company. England. Mongoose finishing, series 276 finishing.

Download: the book of wealth


--------------------------

Painting workshop - week 2

Starting a new portrait

1) Tracing with high and low points, small straight lines rather than curved ones that are inaccurate

2) Charcoal the back of the tracing paper. Align the tracing to layout the composition. Trace back over on top of the line to transfer the outline to the support underneath.

3) block in shadows, burnt umber and white! First draw in the lines with. The paint thinned with mineral spirits. Then begin dead coloring. Starting With the shadow.

3) followed by the midtone in the lit side. Fill in the background mid tone.
Made of flesh tone (red + ochre + white) plus some Red Umber. The background is black with  yellow ochre and a bit of white. The background tone could have been thicker but I will be going over it again.

----lunch break

Printed out a black and white reference at home

Traces, Transferred and inked.

Put in the dead coloring, major shapes of shadows and lights.

Background and cloth blocked in.

I really like working on the texture of the prepared surface.

---------------

Big form modeling
Basic flesh color
But turning
Planes of the head
Red umber and white is a good place to start near the bed bug line
A little bit lighter than the shadows
Just a bit of 3:1 medium

Making the head into a flesh ball

--

Have two turps one for first clean and another for second back into paints that is cleaner.

More chroma, guard against inadvertent greying of the tones.

=======
Week 2 - day 3

After big form modeling work on the planes of the face

Oil in both canvases and set up my palette put about an hour setting up making tones to work from and finding the shifts and planes. Pic of palette

Worked on piece until the lunchbreak.
Then, excitedly ran over to the holy smoke for a man which sandwich and some fantastic chili con carne, stuffed, drowsy and needing some java I continued back on my girl portrait doing the shaping of the larger planes.

Went back into my self portrait and worked on creating some form in the shirt. That button sharply grabs the attention.

---------

Week 2 - day 4

Regular start, oil in, chat, 1 damar : 1 oil.

The most important thing I've found laying out the palette.

Revising the shadows for the girl, really starting to "see" the values. Mixing Persian red straight in, surprising how much oil can handle.

Doc: why beauty matters. Culture counts, book.
Local color - movie
--
Caesar santos - Cuban American in Miami

----

Final day of workshop,

Oil in,
Rework the girls face cause I like torturing myself to understand this value scale and palette system.


Chateau artiste
Krauser P U A

Finding it challenging
Now it's starting to come together
Build you up and break you down
Process - be a man!

lunch time - helped Darryl with his HD camera here is the empty classroom at lunch.

Charles Bargue book
 on amazon



- kept working,

Broken colour background:

movement of tone in background,

Mix up 3 values: low, mid , high (big middle circle (first shot)

Break the colour into yellow and blue and mix both a higher chroma and a lower chroma of both
Ex: low chroma blue add a bit of black and maybe some white. Yellow is raw umber.


---

Portraits in Oils - Week 2 - FRIDAY

The final day, keep working + time to put some finishing touches

 We began the day slowly. I think the reluctance to start stems from a few areas, fatigue, was a major one, but mostly we didn't want it to end. We stood around as Martinho covered glazes, with a video from a surly guy from Brooklyn telling it exactly how it is, quite refreshing. A glaze is just thinned down paint used to tweak the tone if needed a the end.*

*With this style of painting that glazing is unecessary if you did it right the first time,  I need to make an additional clause:  VERMEER AMENDMENT! (glazing over a Grisaille under painting method.)

 I oiled in and then decided to rework the girls face because I like torturing myself. Mainly I felt the need to assert that I had in fact learned to understand the value system and to work with my palette. Plus I wasn't happy with it, I knew I could do better and when you have a pro who can give you feedback it helps, 'cause in the studio you have no one to help. So though it looks a little messy, I went back to the first stage of controlling the fall of light/big form modelling stage. Her chin area wasn't dark enough before and it was throwing off the whole relationship between values. This helped solidify some of what I had learned throughout the workshop.

Here are some examples of Martinho's work. The top is a copy he made from one of his teachers pieces. He has not only fantastic drawing skills to get the details and proportions right but also superb control of the subtlety of values and colour. That is a skill in my craft that I badly desire. In the bottom piece if you start at the feet you can see the beginning stages of the work, as you follow up the leg to the thigh you pass the dead coloring stage and get to the big form modelling stage. As you travel up the light side of the ribs and arm you see masterfully finished work, and for me, my jaw drops the the beauty in which he subtly renders the figure to perfection.

At the lunch break, I helped another participant, Darryl, with his HD camera. After the lunchbreak, We we introduced to the theory of colour for broken colur backgrounds. This is where if you look from a distance the background appears to be say greenish, but as you get close you realize those greens are mixed in your eye and in fact, it is made up of a variety of other colours. first there is th movement of tone in the background, from low to high value. With each of those colours you then mix a breakdown of each with low and high chroma. Green is made up of yellow and blue so you mix a yellow and blue of high and low chroma for each value that will go on the canvas. It may be equal to a day of work, but the effect is quite stunning.

 I revisited the work from the first week to play with the background. This piece was a learning lesson and will most likely be abandoned unless I really feel like making it into something, I hung it in my studio as a reminder. I barely got the legs to second stage painting but you can really see how this method lends itself to creating realistic looking figures, for me the legs seem to pop. Now I need to keep working on my craft and develop and loose sensitivity to applying the paint subtly like the masters.

 Here is a scene from the workshop, the craziness of an arts studio while we are in it creating. Now it site empty. The other participants were a joy, through the trials and tribulations. I kept thinking that this is what art school should have been like, the work ethic and the challenges making ti worth while to show up daily. Like the studios for training the masters back in the day. I learned so much in so little time. It renewed my vigor to attain artistic mastery. I asked myself, why hadn't I done this so long ago?!

Here are me and my half Portugeuse bretheren and workshop Instructor Martinho on the last day. Teh Bob Ross shirt is definitely tongue and cheek when you know the level of work and quality we hope to attain. It cant be done watching a half of an hour PBS TV program. I want to impart why this pursuit toward beauty matters to me so much. I feel vigorously renewed after this training, my goals in life redefined:

Beauty is my muse. 

It is the essential life blood of my existence.
 

I am an artist. 

I make beautiful things to look at. 

The job of the artist is to uplift the soul.

I must become the best at my craft so that I can do this.

If you see beauty in everything your soul is set free.

This brings me happiness.