Art Tutorial
Plein Air Painting, Part 2
In
Plein Air Painting, Part 1, I
demonstrated my favorite approach to creating a dark
underpainting. That stage took ten to fifteen minutes. The
picture on the right is the completion of that stage.
Now, I am ready to paint in earnest.
I make sure to have a full palette of
color. My preference is for titanium white, zinc yellow, cadmium
yellow and orange, scarlet, red, crimson, violet, cerulean and
ultra marine blue, and ivory black.
(I use this palette for landscape as
well. I prefer to mix my own greens).
In this technique I systematically
work from dark to light.
This will sound easy, but I simply
paint the color I see in the shadow areas directly into the wet underpainting.
What happens, and what you want to
happen, is that the dark wet underpainting mixes with the color
you just applied.
This will group all your shadow colors
under common "veil." The finished result will give the sense
that all the colors are bathed in shadow.
(Once you feel comfortable with the
technique, you can use different color for the underpainting
base--it will create dramatically different results, but be fun
no matter what happens).
It can feel a little awkward in
lightening the shadow areas before the light areas, because they
can feel too light. But if you
started with a dark underpainting, trust me, it will come out
right.Here I have gone in
with color in all the shadow areas (except for the shadows on
the corrugated metal gate, you can see that in the next step).
Here, I painted the light steely blue
color of the gates striped shadows.
That marks the end of stage 2: all
the shadow areas are painted in.
-----
Now, I am ready to paint the areas
that are in the sunlight: the buildings in the upper right hand
corner, and the red brick wall and building.
I am still working from dark to
light, therefore, I am holding off painting the brightest areas.
The red wall and the building in the background were in my
middle range area.
Now, the magic from the
underpainting technique kicks in. Because I wiped off the dark
paint in the highlight areas, when I paint on top of that, the
color is cleaner, brighter, fresher. Notice the difference
between the red wall's highlight and shadow areas--the shadows
look more muted and the light area sings.
It is moving very quick now. I go on to
highlight the corrugated metal gate. It is the second brightest
area in my composition.
(A topic for another tutorial is the
importance of constantly mixing new nuances of color. For every
mark of color in this painting I would slightly vary the color
of the brick or the cool gate. When you do this, the eye picks
up on these subtle differences and always feels refreshed).
Notice now, there begins an optical
trick, the shadow areas seem to be getting darker. I haven't
changed them or the camera's settings. It happens, simply
because I am painting in the bright areas, consequently, the
shadows become relatively darker.
The white cement sidewalk is the last
thing to be painted. To do this, I made sure to have a clean
brush, plenty of clean space on my palette, and plenty of fresh
color.You really don't
want to accidently drag dark, muddy colors into your mixing
while you are painting your brightest areas.
With a big breadth of air, I look at
my watch--under an hour, that is it. I knocked everything in,
and leave it alone!!!
I will not sign it then. I take it
back to my studio, look at it for a day or two, make any tiny corrections
that may be necessary, and then sign it.
I hope you enjoyed seeing my favorite
process for plein air painting. Michael Newberry
New York, October 14, 2008
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