Het Vlaams Kunstschilders Forum

I created an online forum for dutch speaking painters.
If you are interested in painting, check it out at www.kunstschildersforum.be

De studio is zo goed als klaar.
Het enige waar ik nog op wacht is extra verlichting en een witte paraply om stillevens te kunnen verlichten. Deze zijn onderweg. Het eerste olieverfschilderijtje is dan ook een feit. Het is iets abstract geworden dat moet dienen als hoofding afbeelding op het Vlaams Kunstschildersforum (www.kunstschildersforum.be), een online forum voor iedereen die geïnteresseerd is in kunstschilderen. We hebben geregistreerde leden nodig, dus meld je aan om gebruik te maken van oa. een handige evenementenkalender. Je kan er berichten plaatsen, reclame maken voor je eigen werk en website(s). Je kan er online kopen en verkopen uit de 2e hand en nog veel meer, en dat allemaal gratis
Voor meer info, ga naar www.kunstschildersforum.be

Tussen Zand en Zee, Olieverf op paneel

Selfmade Easel

Here's what has been keeping me busy lately: My own large easel!
It took me a while to build it because I have 2 left hands and praktically no tools.
But I did it!

I went for the cheapest wood I could find since this was my first attempt, but as I went along pretty well, I bought some nicer wood for the tooltray and the top canvas block. If you want to do this too, be careful to buy straight wood. The ones I bought were 5shelves packed together, and they looked quite straight like that, but as soon as I cut the straps, they went all directions. So it was quite challenging to make something with those crooked shelves!
In the end, I think I paid around 75€ for all materials (and I still have loads of screws, bolts etc left), so all in all I saved half the price of a new easel.

Color Charts

A while ago, I painted some color charts with Acrylics.

I used following colors: Lemon Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Phtalo Green, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine and Titanium White.

The first chart is every color pure from the tube and then mixed with Titanium White.
The other charts have each color as a dominant color, mixed with all the other pigments (again in 5 values).
The photographs aren't that well, for which I apologize.

Doing these color charts was an amazing experience.
Some of the stuff I learned:

• Some pigments are stronger than others (eg Alizarin Crimson is probably one of the strongest pigments).
• Pigments loose their strength when mixing with white or another color.
• Earth colors like Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna seem to be more transparant.
• It's really hard to keep a certain color dominating sometimes.
• It only takes the smallest amount of color pigment to mix with white and have a much darker color.
• Adding white to a color cools down the color.
• The more white is added to the pigments, the more harmony there is between the mixtures.
• Mid range colors seem most saturated.

I'm probably forgetting to mention a zillion other things.

Still Life - Fruit

Acrylics on canvas

 

I was reading this book by Helen van Wyk  on mixing color and she has a really interesting approach. Also some of her thoughts on painting are quite striking and putting me with both feet on the ground.

Some of my favourites:
Beginners should stop wanting to paint reality. One can only paint an interpretation of one's reality.

There are 4 questions that need to be asked constantly when mixing colors:

1. What's the basic hue of the subject? The answer is always one of the following 6: yellow, orange, red, violet, blue or green.
2. What's the value of the color? Answer: light, middle or dark value in comparison to it's environment
3. How intense is the color? Is it very saturated, middle or low saturated?
4. What's the color's temperature? Is it a warm or a cool tint?

Showing this still life I painted this weekend in acrylics on canvas.
I started off well by making a pencil sketch and rearranging the fruit until I was satisfied with the composition. Then I made an underpainting with only white and black. I got into trouble right away when painting the colors and it took me more than 3 hours to do that, because I was following my gut and not thinking about the 4 questions I just wrote above:

1. I saw the wrong colors.
2. I did not paint the background "in" the subjects", which is why my edges are screwed.
3. I didn't think about the value of the colors I was mixing, which is why the forms are screwed here and there.
4. I didn't think about saturation, which is why some parts look dull and others look oversaturated.
5. I didn't think about color temperature, which is why my shadows are totally screwed.
6. I didn't thnk about the light and it's influence on the forms, which is why the core shadows are screwed.
7. I instantly was in trouble because I did not think enough about what colors I want to create and what colors I need to mix them. I must learn the color wheel inside out, as for now I'm not making too much of it.

I'm assuming that I will be making these mistakes a hundred times more. If there is anything I overlooked, even though I'm doing much better at critisizing myself than I'd expected, please let me know. I will try to remember for the next painting.

Shoes

Acrylics on canvas

Pencil studies after Antoon Van Dyck

Self portrait

This one was done in Painter IX.5 for the SP day at CA.org on Nov 1st