Beginning with July, I'm going to do two lessons a month for you. Here is the first lesson painting: "Keeping Cool" Today I took my mare and met up with some other riders at Bonelli Park, near Raging Waters water park for a four-hour ride. The temperatures soared to 112 F, and where we rode it was 104. HOT weather... You can see a picture of me (covered because I don't want to risk skin cancer) on my mare in the water where we cooled off, through this link. I took our small digital camera, and later combined two photos of the other riders in the stream bed into a great composition for a 12 x 16 painting that sits now on the easel. Today I'm sending you the link to the source material (combo of two digital images) . I have the painting about 90% finished right now, and I'm really excited how it is turning out.
Please go to the source image and then compare it to the first pass I've sent to you today. I ask you to do that, because that will give you an insight into what I change to make common photography into good paintings. You might look at this and ask yourself, "What would I do with this image?"
To explain the first lay in, I am developing the abstract structure over a mid-value toned canvas. For this toning, I used Artist Spectrum brand Italian Pink, which turns out to be a lovely grayed transparent yellow. Over that, I've blocked in the structure of the darker values using a larger brush and burnt umber and thalo green. These dark values will be the larger stage against which colors and lesser value contrasts will play. Note the asymmetrical balance, which will be set to a steelyard by a smaller focal point on the right side nearer the right shore.
Tomorrow the lesson continues. This one will go three days (Hey, family's coming over for a barbeque tomorrow--I have to clean house at some point!)
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