Newsletter April, 2005 A Free Newsletter for Those Who Love to Paint

Color of the Month

Cadmium Orange

A bright warm orange color. I find I can mix just about the same shade by combining cad red medium and cad red yellow. However, if you find yourself using a great deal of orange, you may want to get yourself a tube. I find it too harsh right out of the tube, so I usually gray it down some by adding blue, mostly Manganese blue. You may be tempted to use it for autumn leaves, but a mix of burnt sienna and yellow ochre or cad yellow will give you a more realistic hue. Follow your own muse and use it if you'd like, I find it just takes up too much space on my palette so I leave it off.

Tool of the Month

Deli-Keeper

Although they are available in all shapes and sizes, the one I am suggesting today is rectangular and rather thin, sometimes called a deli-keeper. This is what I use as my traveling palette. I use it upside down. I tape freezer paper to the inside of the lid. The main compartment becomes the cover. I do not use nor recommend a palette with deep sides for oil painting so I reverse the normal usage. Yes you can buy acrylic palettes that seal, but they are larger than what I want for painting on site. The deli-keeper is just the right size for me, seals well and travels well. Check out the plastic-ware and consider a fresh approach for your palette.

The Music Behind the Notes

I have heard that it is the music behind the notes that gives a performance its personality. The beat, the expressiveness, the improvisation - all make the music more than the notes on the sheet music. I have heard actors say that true acting is the expression behind the lines. The mood, body language, back story, and facial expressions create the true nature of the role even as they recite the lines of the script.

The same can be said of painting. It is the personality beneath the brush strokes that can turn a painting into art. Your choice of colors, brush size and type, composition, highlights and shadows all add to your style of saying, "It's not what you paint but how you paint it." is still as true as ever. Consider a vase of sunflowers, when painted by Van Gogh it can become priceless. If I knew exactly what makes some paintings masterpieces and others just pretty pictures I would be world famous myself. But art is a journey that we are taking, trying to improve our work.

Here are a few ways to try to get there.

Use colors that speak to you. You may use what's in front of you as a starting point, but change it if you'd like: make it stronger, cooler, warmer - whatever you feel works best for you.

Edit your painting, leave out stuff that does not add to the finished product. Every area within a painting should work with each other. If an area doesn't make the painting better, leave it out.

Need something else? Add something that isn't there, use your artistic license, choose your addition to make the painting better.

Make your composition your own, use your point of view, use what makes the painting interesting to you. If you use your inner eye and make the painting your own, it will speak better to the world.

Push your values. Make the highlights brighter and the shadows deeper than they appear, this adds a punch of intensity to your paintings.

Keep you colors pure. Avoid mixing mud. If you need to adjust a color just add one other to it and keep it in the same temperature. Mix warm with warm and cool with cool for the cleanest results.

Let's all keep practicing and work towards better paintings and maybe one day they will be recognized as something special.

canyon

Rio Grand Canyon, Taos NM

Sample Palette

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