Tag: cliffs

6 / 30

Day 6

I think I am getting some of the points of this course and the usage of pencil to create value studies. First, I changed simply to an HB pencil and a smooth paper with a tiny bit of tooth. The bristol was too smooth a paper and the 2B and 4B pencils just smudged too easily despite my best efforts.

The teacher, Roberts, speaks of structure, rather than subject or detail, as the purpose of these drawings. This means masses of value, not picky details. The details can come in the painting, more so as it becomes larger. The value studies help sort out directing the eye to the point of interest.

The white cliff across the water is the focal point of the drawing, and, ostensibly, the painting. To lead the eye there I vignetted as one does in photography, but this time with graphite. The corners of the drawing are deliberately darker. A sort-of cloud or fog bank is light against the sky in the distance. I tried to use the pale reflection of the cliff in the water to draw the eye as well. Finally, I reworked the piles of sea weed and flotsam to aim the viewer toward the cliffs. The same can be said of the vegetation on the land above the cliffs.

I am beginning to get more comfortable with this approach to painting using a value study. 30 days of value studies is changing my eye and thought processes. Hopefully it will pay off in the future.

Carpinteria Bluffs

Another attempt at acrylic painting. This time I used a sheet from a Fredrix linen pad. I gessoed it and then used, initially, the Open medium with the paints, but I didn’t like the way it was working, and so switched to regular matte medium to dilute the paints. I tried to use the paints fairly straight out of the tube, blending with white and matte medium. The result was a fairly thick paint that behaved well.

The Carpinteria Bluffs are located in the southernmost section of Santa Barbara County, just above the border of Ventura County, where I currently live. Carpinteria was home for many years and always enjoy returning, especially in summer when the light shifts and everything has a glow of its own. Eucalyptus trees and other plant life make for a wonderful walk along the cliffs above the Pacific, and across the Santa Barbara Channel are the various islands that make up the Channel Island National Park. This might be San Miguel Island, but I can never remember which one is which!

Along the Coast

I’ve been in a foggy mood lately – could it be matching my aggravation with the coronavirus and all the social restrictions it is placing on us? I have been rather out of it for the past several days, so today I decided that, no matter what I felt I had to do, a painting with a cheerful theme would be the day’s beginning! Nothing like a beautiful day at the seaside with a good wind and a brilliant sun to cast away those doldrums.

A Tale of Three Paintings

Over the last week I have been painting the same image three times, each time in a different media.   I began with gouache, moved to pastels, and did the final painting in watercolor. Doing such an exercise was really educational as well as pleasurable.

As you can see in the gouache, the perspective is totally off! I didn’t do much of an underdrawing, just a few quick lines, but I didn’t really check this point against that, as well as compare it to the photo. The result was an uphill beach, and a total lack of realistic perspective. I suppose it would look like htat if my head were on its side, lying in the sand or something! Anyway, it was a good lesson as I realized most of my perspective issues are simply the result of poor drawing techniques.

This next one is my favorite. Maybe it’s because I am just learning pastels and totally in love with them. Here, the perspective problem is solved. The cliffs look quite sandy in the picture, and in reality, they are. Along the coast where I live in California, cliffs tend to be friable, made of highly compacted but still fragile sand. They easily collapse, and it is really foolish to sit under them on the beach or to walk along there edges. After rains it can be especially dangerous, and one year a major landslide occurred and several people died. It was not good. So, I think these cliffs are pretty accurate representations of what our cliffs look like here.

Finally, watercolor. Perspective issues remain resolved, but a sense of distance prevails along the strand of beach on the opposite shore. Rather than overwork it, I left it as it was, still pondering how I could make a sense of distance as the beach veered off to the left and background. More blue? Less detail? I’m still befuddled on that one.

Altogether, using three different mediums to paint the same image was rewarding. Problems occurred in all paintings, many of which could be applied to others. Perspective is always an issue for me, so I really need to focus on it probably more than anything in landscapes. I know the rules, but need to find methods to implement them. Gouache and pastels are more forgiving as you can paint over what is underneath to a reasonable degree; watercolors are pretty much a one-shot deal. I think I will continue the 3 painting studies in the future as I learned far more than if I had only done one study in a single medium.