Notes: The Poster

The poster is a geometric simplification of the value structure of your image. Each form is built up of myriad gradations, which can be difficult to comprehend. The poster simplifies these gradations made up of hundreds or thousands of steps of value into a much smaller and more manageable number of steps. How many steps is up to the artist, and can be quite flexible depending on subject matter and the technique being used.

The idea is to ignore the gradations at first and instead focus on the patterns that the gradations are making. Is it a smooth transition from light to dark? Does it get gradually darker most of the way and then suddenly shift more quickly at the end? Does it shift from dark to light and back to dark? How do all these shifts correspond to the contour?

Thinking of what the gradations are doing and putting them down in steps allows us to analyze the progression of values without worrying about the technique of making the smooth gradations. There are all sorts of ways to make the gradations later, but it's important to understand what's happening in them first.

Back in Action

For the past several months I've been studying at the Art Students League in NYC. I was fortunate enough to study painting with Mary Beth McKenzie for six months, from whom I learned a lot. Unfortunately, while a lot of what I learned is in my hands, a lot of it has slipped from my head. When I switched over to Michael Grimaldi's class in November, I started trying to make more of an effort to write things down as I made connections, had new ideas, or heard something useful from the teacher or a fellow student. At first I was writing things down on post-its, but I developed a solid talent for losing them shortly after making them. Around Thanksgiving, my wife Aileen and I took the plunge and got ourselves some iPhones. I started writing down notes on the iPhone and have managed not to lose them (so far).

I figured I'd start a series of posts describing the various notes I made to myself. Some ideas have quickly become obsolete, and others are interesting thoughts but don't quite fully make sense yet. A few seem to be promising ideas that need further exploration. Still others are reinforcements of things I already knew (or thought I knew, anyway).

Perhaps by sharing them I'll spark ideas in someone else, or at least chronicle what's going through my head as I work and learn- for the benefit of me or someone else.

Donna

I wanted to go in a different direction than the last one, which ended up sort of subdued color-wise and more polished than I usually lean. The bright color's in Donna's costume wouldn't allow for subdued colors, so I was attracted to this setup. I felt like it was a perfect opportunity to try out the Reilly palette with a Russian Impressionist technique. Generally pretty happy with this one- need to clean up a few edges, but that always seems to be the case!

Plus, Donna's got a great face and a wonderful personality, so she was a real joy to paint.

Raven

This one veered kind of old-mastery due to the muted colors. I wasn't setting out for that in the beginning, but it started to lean that way so I tried to follow it.

Almost Done...

Here's a piece from Mary Beth McKenzie's class at the Art Student's League. I'd like to clean up a few things in the background and fix some edges on the body before I call this one finished.

I got bogged down in the details on this one- I spent most of the last day trying to make the face look like the model before I really solidified the larger masses of the head. So I wasted a bunch of time that I could have spent on other things. I was able to mostly save the head mass in the head, but had to give up getting it to look like the model. That bums me out on a certain level- though no one would ever really know aside from those who saw the setup, I always feel I owe a certain amount of respect to catch the likeness or posture or something else characteristic of that particular model. I was also bummed that I never learned the model's name, which something else I owe to the model out of respect.

Composition of the Day: (untitled)

Composition of the Day: "Snakeskin and Thread"

Had to give the girl, the fox, and the fairy a break- the characters had developed to the point where each day's composition was taking longer and longer since it usually also required fitting in with the other ones and developing plot along with the

This is based on a drawing I did years ago. I liked the general feel, but it was done with little to no planning, so some parts hadn't totally worked out. This one is a step to resolving some of the issues of the old one. I'm also trying to recapture some of the energy of some of my old sketches. It's not there, but it's heading there....