KING FAISAL

I painted this in watercolor in 1980.

COLOR THEORY: TINTS & SHADES

This summer I've been teaching Aria a Summer Quarter on "Color Theory." This was a demonstration of Tints and Shades. A tint is made by adding white to a color, and a shade is made by adding black. I started with a white sun, then made tints of blue until I got full strength. The sharks are mostly shades, black being the darkest of all shades, working up to a light tint for the smallest, farthest shark. We are using acrylic craft paints, so the circles dried before I could blend them. Oil would do better.

CRUCIFIX - 1964

ELLIE'S PORCH

A 

From the top:

1. Very challenging subject--try one.

2. Spent Daffodil, with a volunteer pine tree; a lesson in perspective with thanks to Mark Kistler.

3. The same view as in the second one before this post. This was early spring.

4. Ellie's porch has two arches. Makes for interesting framing. These along with the top two of the last post, plus the bird feeder and the wind chime were all drawn from the same chair.

TWO-TONED

From the top:

1. From Ellie's porch. During spring we watched the landscaping bushes and trees slowly hide the buildings. I have some late winter-early spring drawings of this, but not in two-tones.

2. From Ellie's porch. This view is from the same place but straight out. It's another building in the large apartment complex. What might have been an imposing, inner city "project" is really quite beautiful because of the spacing of things--buildings, parking, pool, mail center, garbage dumpster corner, playground, and strolling areas. But it is the landscaping that makes this so visually appealing--tiny woods, flowering trees and hedges everywhere, shade trees, annual flowers exploding at the entrance. Everywhere we've been in the Atlanta area the landscaping is outstanding. 

In this picture I paid attention to the "holes" in the foliage, noticing a pattern.

3. Parking Lot. I found that the car, the truck, the fire hydrant, and the sky holes broke up the black. But now I think I could have made up a better pattern. The trick seems to be to make up an interesting pattern without doing violence to the believability. For example, there cannot be sky holes where the straight trunk of a pine tree should be. Rather they should define it--and form an interesting design at the same time.  I'll have to try again.

4. A strip mall. The malls here, big or small, have great facades and wonderful landscaping. 

5. A bright, sunny day made black shadows on a wall of a litter barrel and a cigarette urn.

6. Ellie's porch, without the backdrop.

7. Ellie's porch. This wind chime is a bit more than two tones, but it belongs with the bird feeder & mop.

HINTS OF TINTS

The top picture is grey ink and watercolor. I use solid watercolor sticks that look like pencils, but have no wood. You can draw and shade with them and then go over them with a wet brush. I used a wet brush and take the color off the tip of the sticks.

The second from the top is carbon pencil and watercolor. Carbon pencil is like charcoal but much harder and doesn't smear so readily. Painting over it makes a bit of a dirty smear, but adds some character to the work.

The next three are graphite and watercolor.

The last one is a Sharpie and watercolor. Drawing with a Sharpie is pretty daunting.

Jay's Stuff

Jay drew these pictures. He draw the Picasso Red Rooster with Micah.

Not bad for a first grader. Micah gave Jay book on drawing cars for his birthday. Look for cars in the future, I think.