Stage 3: COLOR!!
Maybe, for me, the most important thing I learned in this workshop was that clean intense color is kept to a small part of the painting. Anyone who watches me paint knows that I love and misuse color (too much, too many places). That said, limiting a small area of color allows it to "pop" because of the beautiful supporting greyed color.
Qiang paints from dark to light. In the color stage he said that he asks himself ""where is it warm...cool...?"(in the value stage, he asks "where are the darks and lights"). He first added the shadow areas of the orange gourd. His greyed the shadow area by mixing cad orange with ultramarine blue but then warmed it with some cad red. This was placed in thoughtful, careful strokes that defined the shadow forms. He remarked that to lighten a color without cooling it, he adds cad yellow. He then placed the highlights on the pot to be able to compare between dark and light. Next, he painted the grapes which he made by mixing thalo blue with some of the background greys. These were painted with a bristle brush in small defined strokes. He painted the reds in the grapes with a mixture of alizarin and cad red light plus some white to cool this.
The copper pot was painted with transparent red oxide plus an existing grey for the top. The highlight was made with cad yellow deep and white (?plus cad red light). Highlights are painted with a bristle brush to add texture. The base of the gourd has a line of alia crimson plus premixed dark grey which anchors the gourd. Some patches of color have color shifts painted in smaller strokes or areas between strokes.
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| Color Stage: Blocked in (not modelled) |
The color stage slips easily into
Stage 4: Modelling
This stage takes the most time and makes some of the patchy color forms believable (some are left as impressionistic forms). In this stage, he uses more edges (soft, lost and hard). He models one shape at a time.
Stage 5: Consolidation
This stage considers the totality of the painting. Perhaps a linear element needs to be added here (a twig, wire, ribbon). Together there needs to be a clear center of interest and abstract elements.
Day 2
Qiang reinforced these painting stages by having each of us paint each stage after watching him demo the same stage using his own set up.
Day 3
Qiang gave an informative talk about his business experience especially using the internet.
He then completed his painting from the previous day, picking up at the consolidation stage. He started by adding a rose to this painting. Qiang reminded us that flowers need CLEAN, PURE color. Therefore, he wanted to paint on a clean background. Because the paint was dry, it didn't scrape well. Instead, he needed to wipe a small area with gamsol soaked paper towel. He described the rose he was painting as a cylinder. He illustrated where the highlight, shadow and midvalue areas would exist on a cylinder (and therefore on the rose). He mixed alizarin, cad red and white. He also mixed some perm rose with white. He used a synthetic brush to form sharp thin edges because roses have sharp edges. To create the shadow color, he added some background grey to alizarin (ultramarine plus transparent red). He stroked in small shapes of small changes in value. To the lighter areas he used strokes of cad red plus white (the rose is lightest on the outside). The top, he painted straight white. He then painted in small shadow lines using a tiny brush. He added abstract shapes of greens for leaves and some other abstract rose shapes. The stems were added for movement and design.
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| Qiang's painting with the rose added |
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