All the shadings that bacon was talking about is something that should be established in the underpainting, whether this be One single color or Black and white. Your black and white should look almost as good if not the same as your main drawing.
No, not necessarily. You're talking about doing a grissaile underpainting, which is a solid technique backed up by a couple centuries of usage and I'm not going to argue against anyone using it. But everything I've suggested can still be done entirely alla prima; probably a necessity for anyone under a deadline.
I hope one day I discover the one and only method that all "real" painters have used throughout all of history!
Then I won't be confused by the obviously bullshit idea that there may be several valid ways of painting a picture!
[/SARCASM]
For the record, what I advocated was based on Orik's need for speed and technical accuracy when it comes to illustration work. If he were doing impressionism, I'd suggest more direct painting. If he were painting the Renaissance-style figures, grissaile would be a solid bet.
However, for this application, direct painting can lead to technical concerns being glossed over, and high-quality grissaile would likely take far too long to meet regular deadlines. Hence this in between method. The opportunities for nice, fancy brushwork or extremely polished glowing rendering isn't going to be there like the other methods, but it's relatively quick and is fine for reproduction purposes.
That's why I brought it up. Because it's a good working method for the purpose given, not because it's the only way to paint- or even the only way to paint for this purpose-evarrrrrrr. I apologize if I gave that impression.
Whether or not it is the best way to paint in the context of what Orik is attempting to accomplish is up for debate.
What is not up for debate is "The Best Way to Paint, Period.", at least not in this thread. Personally, I think any argument on the subject not containing the phrase, "it depends", is a bankrupt one from the start.
Man, I probably could have saved myself a lot of time if I had just said, "why don't you take it to the discussion thread if you want to discuss the relative merits of different painting techniques."
Or even more time if I had just said, "why don't you both just shut up."
Ori- what makes me say what? That you've bitten off more than you can chew? The slew of problems already pointed out to you. Painting is fucking hard. If you cannot draw very well, you are not going to paint very well. It is a difficult thing to judge your own work, so allow me to help you put it in perspective. Your drawing ability is seriously impeding any progress you might hope to make with painting. Every painting you do is going to be built upon the same sloppy foundation. IF you cant completely render this painting with just a pencil, theres no way in fuck you are going to be able to do it in paint throwing color and all other things paint into the mix as well.
I applaud bacons patience and the effort he put forth with that step by step. IT perfectly illustrates what I was saying about simple shapes. Break that figure down and it becomes those shapes I was talking about. I hope some of what hes saying sinks in. I find it difficult to offer advice to some one in your stage of progress with out simply turning them into a pair of hands saying.. no put that highlight here.. etc.
Another thing.. Unless youve been painting for years and years and proably still even then. There is a massive amount of process work that goes into making a painting.. if you are trying to ensure a good outcome at the start of every painting. This process includes.. Thumbnails, Color studies, value studies, working the final drawing out in pencil(some people render it up..) then transfering (redrawing a composition with a brush on a larger scale is a pain), shooting reference, then finally taking it to the painting. As you get better .. certain parts get eliminated.. blah blah.
Having said all that shit. Dont stop painting. You will at the very least get comfortable with the medium. I would just simplify your subject matter to something like a single piece of fruit on occasion. So you can more easily address all the major issues when painting. As always.. keep working on your drawing.
Wow. I wish I got this kind of response every time I posted a work. Thanks, guys - particularly Bacon, whose approach is basically the only way that I ever get anything out of crits.
Sorry if I came off as defensive above, I hadn't slept in a while and probably wasn't coming off too clearly.
The killer is, I've already been through everything you guys are suggesting. Most of the things that are in your crits comes from habits that I picked up through getting my art degree. Time to start unlearning them, I suppose.
The killer is, I've already been through everything you guys are suggesting. Most of the things that are in your crits comes from habits that I picked up through getting my art degree.
what? That doesn't make any sense. You are saying you were taught bad habits?
You've been through everything we are suggesting? Running a lap doesn't mean you can run a marathon. You have the wrong attitude towards the fundamentals.
does it matter? i should mention that i dont' have it yet, but as I only have three classes left and they're all either in English or independent projects, i doubt it matters. I'll PM you if you're still interested.
Ken, did I piss in your Cheerios or something? You're the only person being a dick in this thread.
No, I'm just blunt. Hopefully your bruised feelings wont interfere with you seeing that I'm actually trying to help out. I see you spending all this effort and time, and having been there, am trying to offer the same advice(offered in the same fashion) that helped me.
I'm afraid I may be a little to blunt or serious for this so I'm going to bow out. I wish you well on future art making endeavors.
Well, at least nobody's taking the high ground. It's perfectly possible to be taught bad behaviours, Ken. Specifically, a couple of my painting professors discouraged sticking precisely to a planned composition or sketch, because it lacked spontaneity. One of those professors told us to avoid figurative/representational work in general in his class.
i've been keeping in mind people's crits as i've been refining, mainly simplifying forms (and stealing Bacon's zombie lighting, holy shit that is a big help, i'm going to come back to that workover and do studies from it)
I think the mood's a lot more accessible here.
Also I don't think I'm going to put in the THEIR MISSION - EXTERMINATE THE HUMAN RACE text anymore. I like it the way it is.
next on list: refining woman, cleaning up shadow edges, zombie captain face, cleaning up ufo beam, cleaning up background and letters, defining jetpack, cleaning up ... actually after that i'll be done
it is hard sometimes to not get offended
i still occasionally get offended, especially if it's that time of the month for me
(hurr hurr periods)
so don't worry about it, it happens
so long as you realize that it's silly to get offended after the fact, you're golden...pony boy.
Theres a lot still in that painting that could use a lot of work, but really you should just start a new one and try to use Bacon's advice from the ground up.
i'm done with it at this point. i'll apply everyone's crits in my next project, but i've already done this painting, i wouldn't have the same level of dedication to it if i did it again
Orik, as conceptual pieces of art your paintings are fine. It's just that they only work in one dimension.
Only when you have so many different shades and hues overlapping eachother, it gets a dynamic feel of it's own. But it's not an actual representation of the subject as i know you had in your mind.
For example the astro zombie poster: You were starting out and going for that early sci-fi look. Then when it (the painting) fell flat, you rushed right back to the old and tried technique of "slapping paint on it until it's nice to look at".
Once more i'd like to stress that you pull that off really well. But i know that's not what you had in mind when you started, right?
Listen to the critiques in this thread, i think you have a lot to gain from them.
well, like i've said before, my school is 90% conceptual-based. that's the only way i know how to paint. clearly, from the critiques in this thread, i need to add the systematic fundamentals, paint some still lives, work on my colour theory, etc. and i will. the way i paint things works well now (i've gotten nothing but positive comments from curators and the people who were at the opening) but i'm not content to stay here. got to improve.
Well i'm really late to the party here, but I'll throw in a few cents.
If you ask me, the colors in these paintings are really muddy and dark and become more so the longer you work on them. I don't know anything about water soluble oils, but it kind of looks like you're working these up in thin layers with washes and glazes, and by the time you get to the end you've thrown so many colors in you end up with nearly black dark browns and blues all over the place, and then there's light highlights transparently painted on top of that mud which make the light look dusty and on and on. Maybe I'm full of shit and I'm reading incorrectly into your process, but anyhow my biggest suggestion would be to try to paint much, much more opaquely.
Now, specifically addressing the astro zombies painting. I realize it's finished and you're moving on but I still want to mention a few things, and maybe you will consider them for next time around.
Biggest problem with the whole piece I would say is that it's very difficult to read. I'm not really sure at all what the narrative going on here is and I can only guess. This is would be less of an issue if I could actually tell with some granularity what I was looking at in certain places and figure it out, but a lot of it is simply not sculpted out very well and it doesn't read clearly.
I'm looking at this and asking myself who the astro zombie is. Is it the guy holding the woman, kidnapping her to make her his zombie bride? Is he actually the hero holding his fallen love and the zombie is the man with lobster claws bending over to grab her? What is the barely visible UFO that's making the light beam doing--abducting or rescuing them? Are those zombies in the background or an army of terracotta soldiers or... just rocks? Is that a mail box they're standing next to?
After studying it for a few minutes I could finally figure out that the red on that fellow's torso must be zombie gore and he is reaching out and grabbing at the hyuumans, so he must be the zombie, but at this point any dramatic impact has long been totally lost.
Maybe you are working too small to be able to comfortable work out these details, or maybe more likely it's a matter of lack of practice with sculpting out forms in paint. Regardless, I think Mully's practice suggestion is a good one and is exactly what you should work on.
Posts
No, not necessarily. You're talking about doing a grissaile underpainting, which is a solid technique backed up by a couple centuries of usage and I'm not going to argue against anyone using it. But everything I've suggested can still be done entirely alla prima; probably a necessity for anyone under a deadline.
Twitter
These are older paintings so I didn't really push the value in them well but they state at least what it does
This is just figuring out the values (there wasn't a model)
and then depending how thick or thin you make the paint, you let the color seep through
I forgot what this is called though but the White face only took me about 10 hours to do and only 3 hours to do the first one.
edit: wait I'll fix that sentence
one of the problems with black and white is it takes wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy longer. and yah, is limited as they said
oh god maybe I should just stop
TALKINGGGGGG
I'm retarded but I didn't want to delete my retarded ness
Then I won't be confused by the obviously bullshit idea that there may be several valid ways of painting a picture!
[/SARCASM]
For the record, what I advocated was based on Orik's need for speed and technical accuracy when it comes to illustration work. If he were doing impressionism, I'd suggest more direct painting. If he were painting the Renaissance-style figures, grissaile would be a solid bet.
However, for this application, direct painting can lead to technical concerns being glossed over, and high-quality grissaile would likely take far too long to meet regular deadlines. Hence this in between method. The opportunities for nice, fancy brushwork or extremely polished glowing rendering isn't going to be there like the other methods, but it's relatively quick and is fine for reproduction purposes.
That's why I brought it up. Because it's a good working method for the purpose given, not because it's the only way to paint- or even the only way to paint for this purpose- evarrrrrrr. I apologize if I gave that impression.
Whether or not it is the best way to paint in the context of what Orik is attempting to accomplish is up for debate.
What is not up for debate is "The Best Way to Paint, Period.", at least not in this thread. Personally, I think any argument on the subject not containing the phrase, "it depends", is a bankrupt one from the start.
The guy who said, "There are no rules, only tools" was a smart guy.
Man, I probably could have saved myself a lot of time if I had just said, "why don't you take it to the discussion thread if you want to discuss the relative merits of different painting techniques."
Or even more time if I had just said, "why don't you both just shut up."
Twitter
Twitter
I applaud bacons patience and the effort he put forth with that step by step. IT perfectly illustrates what I was saying about simple shapes. Break that figure down and it becomes those shapes I was talking about. I hope some of what hes saying sinks in. I find it difficult to offer advice to some one in your stage of progress with out simply turning them into a pair of hands saying.. no put that highlight here.. etc.
Another thing.. Unless youve been painting for years and years and proably still even then. There is a massive amount of process work that goes into making a painting.. if you are trying to ensure a good outcome at the start of every painting. This process includes.. Thumbnails, Color studies, value studies, working the final drawing out in pencil(some people render it up..) then transfering (redrawing a composition with a brush on a larger scale is a pain), shooting reference, then finally taking it to the painting. As you get better .. certain parts get eliminated.. blah blah.
Having said all that shit. Dont stop painting. You will at the very least get comfortable with the medium. I would just simplify your subject matter to something like a single piece of fruit on occasion. So you can more easily address all the major issues when painting. As always.. keep working on your drawing.
Sorry if I came off as defensive above, I hadn't slept in a while and probably wasn't coming off too clearly.
The killer is, I've already been through everything you guys are suggesting. Most of the things that are in your crits comes from habits that I picked up through getting my art degree. Time to start unlearning them, I suppose.
INSTAGRAM
what? That doesn't make any sense. You are saying you were taught bad habits?
You've been through everything we are suggesting? Running a lap doesn't mean you can run a marathon. You have the wrong attitude towards the fundamentals.
does it matter? i should mention that i dont' have it yet, but as I only have three classes left and they're all either in English or independent projects, i doubt it matters. I'll PM you if you're still interested.
it's more of a "I'm going into education and like to discuss other's experience with art schools have been." kind of way.
no pressure or anything. in fact, shoot me a PM, I'd like to BS about school with you in general.
No, I'm just blunt. Hopefully your bruised feelings wont interfere with you seeing that I'm actually trying to help out. I see you spending all this effort and time, and having been there, am trying to offer the same advice(offered in the same fashion) that helped me.
I'm afraid I may be a little to blunt or serious for this so I'm going to bow out. I wish you well on future art making endeavors.
i've been keeping in mind people's crits as i've been refining, mainly simplifying forms (and stealing Bacon's zombie lighting, holy shit that is a big help, i'm going to come back to that workover and do studies from it)
I think the mood's a lot more accessible here.
Also I don't think I'm going to put in the THEIR MISSION - EXTERMINATE THE HUMAN RACE text anymore. I like it the way it is.
next on list: refining woman, cleaning up shadow edges, zombie captain face, cleaning up ufo beam, cleaning up background and letters, defining jetpack, cleaning up ... actually after that i'll be done
edit: it's done.
i still occasionally get offended, especially if it's that time of the month for me
(hurr hurr periods)
so don't worry about it, it happens
so long as you realize that it's silly to get offended after the fact, you're golden...pony boy.
Do something like a close up of a face. Boring, I know, but it will help you concentrate on your details and using the paint to create gradients.
That is my suggestion to you sir. What about a portrait of Miss Palmer, yelling?
Only when you have so many different shades and hues overlapping eachother, it gets a dynamic feel of it's own. But it's not an actual representation of the subject as i know you had in your mind.
For example the astro zombie poster: You were starting out and going for that early sci-fi look. Then when it (the painting) fell flat, you rushed right back to the old and tried technique of "slapping paint on it until it's nice to look at".
Once more i'd like to stress that you pull that off really well. But i know that's not what you had in mind when you started, right?
Listen to the critiques in this thread, i think you have a lot to gain from them.
Keep on truckin'
and why woulden't people be positive about your paintings? like i said, as finished pieces of art they are really impressive.
If you ask me, the colors in these paintings are really muddy and dark and become more so the longer you work on them. I don't know anything about water soluble oils, but it kind of looks like you're working these up in thin layers with washes and glazes, and by the time you get to the end you've thrown so many colors in you end up with nearly black dark browns and blues all over the place, and then there's light highlights transparently painted on top of that mud which make the light look dusty and on and on. Maybe I'm full of shit and I'm reading incorrectly into your process, but anyhow my biggest suggestion would be to try to paint much, much more opaquely.
Now, specifically addressing the astro zombies painting. I realize it's finished and you're moving on but I still want to mention a few things, and maybe you will consider them for next time around.
Biggest problem with the whole piece I would say is that it's very difficult to read. I'm not really sure at all what the narrative going on here is and I can only guess. This is would be less of an issue if I could actually tell with some granularity what I was looking at in certain places and figure it out, but a lot of it is simply not sculpted out very well and it doesn't read clearly.
I'm looking at this and asking myself who the astro zombie is. Is it the guy holding the woman, kidnapping her to make her his zombie bride? Is he actually the hero holding his fallen love and the zombie is the man with lobster claws bending over to grab her? What is the barely visible UFO that's making the light beam doing--abducting or rescuing them? Are those zombies in the background or an army of terracotta soldiers or... just rocks? Is that a mail box they're standing next to?
After studying it for a few minutes I could finally figure out that the red on that fellow's torso must be zombie gore and he is reaching out and grabbing at the hyuumans, so he must be the zombie, but at this point any dramatic impact has long been totally lost.
Maybe you are working too small to be able to comfortable work out these details, or maybe more likely it's a matter of lack of practice with sculpting out forms in paint. Regardless, I think Mully's practice suggestion is a good one and is exactly what you should work on.
e: which reads like a total blow-off, but trust me, it's not