New Challenges: the human face and figure

For years I have been intimidated by the human face and figure so as i began work looking for a new topic to paint--what the heck--i decided to go after my biggest fear. And i am having fun with the challenges of technique and composition. i am using my friends from the local watering hole--Prima Bistro--in Langley WA as resource material and guinea pigs. And i certainly apologize for making them fatter, ugly and generally not themselves. i am relying a lot on three painters for guidance: Charles Reid (of course), Mel Stabin and Ted Nuttal; mostly Reid and Stabin for their expressiveness--Reid for his deliberate yet impressionist style and for Stabin for his faster painting energy.  Their impressionist approach fascinates me and inspires my work as i seek to be less tight and more fluid as i learn the techniques of painting the human form. the challenges of subtle lighting on the faces etc. is a real learning process for me and i now know will impact all of my painting no matter what the subject.

I have a show coming up at the Prima in Langley for April, May and June 2015 that hopefully will be exciting and fun with seven to nine large works. Stop by on First Saturday and have a glass of wine.

i have included a couple here and will add more as i progress over the next two weeks. The first painting is "Too Spicy?" of Red and Lucas at the Prima. the Second painting is "A Ferry Sunny Day", actually a selfie with Wendy Freitag on board the Alaska ferry the Matanuska in the Inside Passage some years back. i wanted to focus on the light and brightness of the day so i spent most of the energy on shadow shapes in mid-value range with a simple blue/orange color complement.  Hope you like it.

more to come...Keep painting, ron k

In Search of The Story

There are painters who will paint almost any topic as a demonstration of their ability to make a common element magical through watercolor technique. I certainly am not one of them. I need to get into the spirit of the topic in order to stimulate my painting effort. the last series, The Prima Kitchen, was actually a story on the chefs, line cooks and cooking process behind the scenes and was very successful. Unfortunately as i was low on funds and rushed to complete the exhibit i did not retain any quality images of the work and that was a mistake due to its reception by many folks. that won't happen again.

Once more i am on the search for a topic. I have spent many days going over old studies, photographs, slides etc. in search of a story. i am getting close, going back to my roots as an urban design consultant in small towns in the Pacific Northwest, BC and Canada. and now instead of just painting isolated images, i am threading together resource images of abandoned industrial buildings, mountain views from the Alaskan ferry and even groups of people in various clustered compositions on the ferry or in certain small towns. since i am not good at faces, the clusters and composition of the group become the strengths of the painting, not the facial features--one thing i struggled with and learned from the last "Prima Kitchen" series and exhibit.

Bottom line: what is the story? what is the spirit within the images that connects them? ahhhh. liking that.

Keep painting and i will check in in about two weeks as i get into composition and value studies.

Ron K

The Challenge of Over-working

I am one of those painters that too often just jumps in to my work and wind up over-painting, either too many colors, too bright or high key etc. trying to restrain myself and still keep the intensity is a challenge for sure. after struggling this late fall with works related to the last blog, i set that subject aside, did some reading and reflecting and came up with a an obvious but ignored (by me) technique to step back. Namely, select a simple contrast and stick to it! in this case and the example included below, "Kitchen Kollaboration", i simply restricted myself to a color  complement principle: orange and blue, orange gray and blue grays with a touch of subtle blue green at a diagonal (bottle upper corner and plates in lower right). otherwise the dominant color complement is orange and blue. boy, did it make a big difference in that i was not over-coloring, creating too much distraction in color and forgetting value. the simple complement enabled me to focus on value and composition rather than trying to represent every shape in the composition.   i hope this helps as it really set me on a fun course again and i now have four done in this new series on the Kitchens of Langley.  Have fun and keep painting, Ron K.

What a struggle on human figures.
I have been wrestling with the Prima Deck painting for weeks on and off and keep coming up with "cartoonish" human figures. Driving me batty. So am changing and will get more whimsical as i do the same scene with different images to replace the people until I can improve them. The real path here is to abstract the faces as much as possible and not get caught up in detail as i am not a portrait painter. stay tuned. on winter break now so at the easel. keep painting. ron k

Changing Composition

After struggling with so many shapes in the sketch composition for "Prima Deck", i decided to eliminate most of the peripheral human figures and focus on the three or four in the limelight. will post wedn hopefully. ron k

Northwest Watercolor Society Watermarks 2013 Exhibit

I had the pleasure of attending the artists' reception for the North West Watercolor Society's Watermarks 2013 Exhibition at Tsuga Gallery in Bothell WA on Thursday evening. My painting, "Emergent Eagle", was jurored into the exhibition by juror Michael Reardon. The Exhibition was well attended including friends I have not seen in decades--what a treat; and the Sandy O'Conner, the wife of a university colleague at the University of Washington.

The reason for this blog is to share some of Michael Reardon's comments and criteria for selecting the fifty works out of over 250 submissions. One criteria that was dominant is the understatement of color in many of the award winners--subtle color, strong design and strong simplicity--a more subdued palette. This puts the emphasis on composition and value as contrasted to strong color schemes. Color was certainly present and the juror in my opinion did a masterful job of selecting a nice diversity of work and approaches. What a treat as this is my third work selected for exhibition by the NWWS.

i am working on a piece at the moment in which i am trying to eliminate many shapes from my sketch and seek to combine and cluster major shapes with colored grays, leaving the brighter and intense colors for the center of interest. we will see by next week.
Keep painting. ron k

Zooming In

Hi all, am back to painting again so thought i would share some issues that i am dealing with as i warm up. one issue or approach is the choice of  how much detail to put in a scene. i tend to reduce the detail and simplify the composition in order not to get caught up in lots of shape "bits". it is fine if they truly add to the story or background support but if they are simply information props then i filter them out. so i choose to zoom in on a strong center of interest and eliminate detail.

the two sketches from my sketchbook illustrate a zoom approach with each having a different center of interest: the lower image is the combination of two women sitting under the umbrellas; and the upper image is another woman  figure with a white hat showing through the shadows cast by other umbrellas. this way i am challenging myself to simplify both the detail and the brightness and attention at the center and not all over the painting as i tend to do at times.

i also have been painting with as smaller brush lately, a no. 10 Scepter II WN round backed up by a no. 16 round. i tend to paint quickly and sometimes impatiently so am trying to slow down a bit and not loose the looseness re: Charles Reid. i also am trying to put more accuracy in my pencil sketches as i do the same with the sketch technique as you can see in value/composition examples attached. including more people in my compositions as their shapes have always been a challenge.  have fun and keep painting. ron k