Step 4

Now you are all set to just paint things as you see them in the photo or as you imagine them to be realistically. Here's the jacket and the guitar painted as I see them to be. Notice, however that as I paint if some of the underpainted color peaks through, I make a conscious decision to let it stay. I could choose to paint over the underpainting color until it goes away, but heck, what fun would that be. I'm loving the unexpected colors that peak through so I'm leaving them.

Here I've painted the star yellow and white but as I apply my paint I let thick portions stay (without smoothing them out) to add even more texture and I let the purple underpainting show through on parts. Notice how I've also thrown caution to the wind when it comes to creating straight lines to the star. It's the excitement I'm trying to capture, not the exact realism of a perfectly straight symmetrical star. Now I begin to paint the background and you can see that the background (particularly around the face) is my backup to correcting shapes and errors that I want to refine. I can paint closer in on the forehead and cheek or leave some of the underpainting show to round out part of the chin. Don't just blindly paint the background in, use it to refine your painting.

As you paint the background you are not painting an object but you are painting the negative space or the space around the object.

Notice the drum set portion in this picture painted in it's realistic colors. The stands are painted but they are not very refined. Just a kind of sloppy line at this point.

As I paint the negative space (the space around the drum stands) or the background I begin to create the shape of the drum stands by NOT painting the drumstands.

Here's a wider view so you can focus on the objects I am creating by painting the negative space which in this case is also the floor of the stage.

Closer up on the right under the bass you can see the negative space painting creates the bass stand.

So now Elvis is coming to life. I add more details and then restrain myself in these impressionistic works from going "too far". With a painting like this you step back a lot to see what the piece looks like from a distance. When you get just to the point of recognition in the face or the objects you STOP.

As a result you don't have just a pretty painting of an image but you creat in your painting an excitement and emotion of the image. You have captured the spot light of the stage, the excitement of the performance and the performer - all in the unexpected colors of the painting. You can almost hear the music in the vibrations of the colors and the brushstrokes. I love to paint this way. I hope you enjoyed taking the step by step journey with me.

Step 3

This entire blog looks like it's gonna be no more than 4 or 5 steps. That makes it sound easy and I hope you find it that way but if not never fear, just take it slowly. If you were to watch me demo this process you might see my hand and brush "fly" across the canvas but that's just the way I paint. There's no need for you to try to go that fast. I've been painting this way for over 20 years.

By the way if you are up to date on reading this blog, August 20, 2011 I'll be at the Wolf Chase Galleria in Memphis, Tennessee demonstrating this technique on a larger than life painting of Marilyn Monroe. I'll not only be using this process but some larger than usual paint brushes. There will be a whole lotta paint mess in the process. You'll undoubtedly see my hands work faster than you might as you first experience this process but I think you'll enjoy watching. If you can't get by to watch, here's more on the process.

You have already painted the background in opposite colors or some strange color that you selected. Now you are going to begin to paint the painting "for real". That means you will paint the real colors of each object ONLY don't get all caught up in the realistic aspect of this painting. It's all about the excitement of the colors. So as you create a brush stroke and an opposite color peaks through, take a moment to look at it and think about leaving it exposed.

For example, in this picture I have painted the guitar in yellow ochres and browns. My underpainted color was a dark blue and I was able to let it peak through on the shadow parts of the guitar. Step by step, you can see that I've painted the shadow on the pants in a dark brown. Then I paint the dark blue/purple paints with their highlights. Notice how some of the yellow peaks through on the leg on the left. Not much is peaking through here however so you see that you can make a choice to leave lots of "peak thrus" or just a little "peak thrus" or no "peak thrus" at all. I have students who start this process and completely cover the strange colored underpaintings. Jane's Perpsective is if you like it, leave it. If you don't like it paint over it.

Things get really strange on the face. If you followed my blog about realistic portraits you'll see that I follow the same steps/process here only I just don't go in for all that detail. Just like in the realistic portrait, I start with the shadows. Here I've painted the shadows in dark brown over the blue face.

Next, just like in the realistic portrait, I paint the highlights that I see on the face.

Then I fill in the middle areas with the flesh tone of the face. If I work really fast some of the colors blend together right on the canvas. If they don't I get a block of color. If I like it I leave it. If I don't I continue to paint over it until I get a resemblance - not a perfect likeness - but a resemblance. After all this is an "impression" of the person.

You can see I also worked on the hands so that I wouldn't have to worry about mixing the exact skin color again. This can really be a problem in acrylics unless you have a stay wet palette or are good at matching colors.

This type of painting takes a different mindset and you have to throw a lot of caution to the wind. I'll show you what I mean with a lesson in negative space in my next blog.

Step 2

I'm putting my titles on this series of blogs as "steps" cause I was noticing that if you jump into the blog just anywhere, you are liable to be in the middle of something and not know where you are. Following the steps or taking up a step where you left off will probably make more sense. Especially today cause the painting step you are going to see here is going to really "shake you up" and taken out of sequence, it could be rather confusing.

We finished the sketch yesterday so today I want to start the underpainting. But first here's a little tale I'm telling on myself.

I actually went through 7 years of college painting courses (4 undergraduate and 3 years more to get my Masters) and though I learned a lot, none of my teachers taught me UNDERPAINTING. As a result, one of the most frustrating things to me (and now a pet peeve of mine) was to paint a painting and have raw canvas show through. Especially as I painted more impressionistically, there were always brush strokes that didn't completely cover the canvas or had a dry brush effect and I was literally trying to fill in the "gaps" after the painting was completed. Years later I was working in the casinos of all places when a fellow blackjack dealer showed me some of her artwork and started talking about what she had done in the underpainting. Underpainting? It was the first time I had ever heard the word and as she explained its' simplicity I seriously felt like a fool. Then I felt kinda gypped that no one ever taught me anything about it for my artwork. I can't imagine how much further I would have been in the success of my pieces if I had been using underpaintings for the past 20 years. Don't let that happen to you. Go to all the seminars, talk to all your artist friends, read all the how-to books, ask questions, look at artwork up close and take all the classes you can until you find your artistic style and then still keep your mind open to more.

OK, lecture over. We're going to start our underpainting. Simply stated, an underpainting is a painting you put down first (in a wash or opaque style - it does't matter, you are going to paint over it later anyway). It's a painting UNDER the final painting. The most logical underpainting is a wash of the colors that you will choose to use later. Putting down this "same" color underpainting helps you see what the painting will eventually look like, covers all of the canvas with color (so there won't be any pesky white canvas peeking through like an unfinished paint by number set ) and gives you a chance to change any of the colors when you paint over the underpainting. How convenient! How brilliant! How "why didn't I see that earlier" neat!

Only I have one tee-niney little change to that definition of an underpainting that I am going to make on THIS painting. I mean, there are no rules in painting so I'm going to paint the opposite colors as an underpainting. Why? Because I can AND because I am really looking for some excitement in the colors of this piece so why not?

To paint the opposite colors I have to kinda think backwards. If you choose to do this it actually helps to get out a basic color wheel to keep you mind on track. And think SIMPLY. Don't get all complicated. Look at the picture and say, "OK, purple background, white shirt, brown instrument, peach skin color, blue pants, etc etc". Don't get all hung up on the exact shade or variations in shadows. Just like a coloring book, name the colors of the parts of the picture. BUT when you get ready to paint - paint a wash of the opposite colors like this: In this part of the painting the jacket is going to be blue and the opposite color of blue is orange so I paint the jacket orange. His face is going to be peach which is like orange and the opposite of orange is blue so his face gets painted blue. The instrument is brown which is kinda hard to figure but put in it's simplest form, brown is warm like a dark orange so the opposite of orange is blue. It's not rocket science so don't get hung up, just paint. As long as you paint an object in an unexpected color, you're good. And don't panic (see next picture)

OK, I told you not to panic. Sure that blue face and hands on my American icon looks strange but bear with me. I mean I could have thought of the head and hands as pink (a shade of red) and painted them in green. Doesn't matter, it's my painting and I can paint it like I like (what an attitude).

Here's what all of the figures in the painting look like painted in opposite colors. The figure's dark purple/blue pants are now yellow, the yellow drum set is now purple, the white jacket (again I figure the closest to white is light blue so I went with orange). You can figure out your own colors. Nothing is "wrong". The shoes on the final painting are going to be white but instead of orange I decided to do a blue underpainting cause I wanted some neat blue shadows on them - see, even I break my own "rules". Jane's Perspective says "chill out". It's called "art", not "work".

I wanted the picture to have a dark background like the photo so for the opposite underpainting I also thought in terms of values. If the background was going to be so dark, to keep the painting light and exciting I painted the underpainting light shades of the opposite colors (the blue on the floor is thinking opposite of orange which is like brown which is basically what the wooden stage was all about - a lot more exciting than plain old brown wood - you'll see what I mean in the next step).

One final note: Whenever you paint an underpainting this way, stop a minute and take a good look. You will be seeing your painting in a whole new light. What about keeping some of this opposite color in the final painting? What about enlarging parts to make a fabulous abstract? Open your artistic mind to the unexpected. Turn the painting upside down and sideways. Can you see a whole new painting that could come from this one? Especially if you paint a sloppy underpainting - how loose and creative did you get?