The phases consist of areas of concentration that an artist is focusing on. This year I've had two: Movie posters and horse paintings. Both of them are fun and rewarding, and allow me to really grow. The theory goes that in order to excel at a certain genre, you have to paint that particular subject three times. The other is that it requires 10,000 hours to excel. Hey, I'll go with the three paintings. Who has 10,000 hours to do anything?
MOVIE POSTERS
The first one is the movie posters. I started by doing existing movies posters, like the Good The Bad and the Ugly on a two foot by three foot sheet. I searched around on Google images to find the poster that jumped out at me. Believe me, you will know the one that speaks to you when you see it. It has to be an image you want to spend at least 12 hours with, and although I don't like the movie (way to slow and too little dialog), I could look at these guys all day. I also learned pitfalls with going for large subjects. Keep this in mind: you will not have a way to stretch it on a backing. So you want to pick focal points that won't take forever, and a background that you can speed through in order to NOT waterlog your paper. All these are watercolors. If you waterlog a huge piece of paper, your whole thing will be warped and not look good even pinned down by the mat. You may also have limited acccess to an area. I had to do Van Cleef standing up to reach his part of the paper because he was so high up. Here's another trick, use Indian ink for your background. I found that it covers it usually in one application and doesn't warp much. Remember, without a backing, you only have so many times to hit it with the wet brush before the paper goes all accordian on you. Black ink makes that foreground really pop. Cool 3-D effect. I started off masking any area that was going to stay perfectly white, especially the highlights on the hats and the whites of the eyes. Doing three faces back to back, I figured out that you want to go as far as you can with the burnt sienna (reddish brown) as a complete portrait. Then add burnt unber (dark brown) as far as you can go, then erase using the magic eraser where you haven't left enough lightness or white for the highlights, then go back and with the burnt sienna and burnt umber. You don't do the black ink until everything else is done.
I made a boo boo by not leaving a highlight on Van Cleef's hat, which made it look different from the other two (to me anyway.) I taped off the edge with masking tape where I wanted the highlight to show up. Then I scrubbed it with a damp magic eraser. This is the greatest invention ever for a watercolorist, who used to be cursed to live with screw-ups like that for the life of the painting, since I we had was a little lightening of the color with a paper towel. Now we have the best of both worlds, even with staining colors like green! The movie poster "of Human Bondage" was an orginal I made up from a photo of one of the movie scenes. This is even more fun than doing an existing poster, because you get to make it look any way you want. Next I could do favorite book jackets. Whatever grabs me at the moment.
THE HORSE PHASE
The second phase was painting horses. Horses make incredible subjects but require TONS of detail work. This is something you can really get OCD with if you don't finally say "Good enough!" But they really come out looking just like the photograph if you dedicate a good bit of time. Here's what I do: I tape off the horse and rider. This frees me up to get nice and loose on the background. Then I would tape off a fence. What if the photo doesn't have a fence? Well, I find a fence a pretty way to do a background and just about the easiest. Just three strands of tape across the canvass and your have a fence! Do this AFTER you have taped off the horse and rider. It will be your middle ground.
Now you can go a little wild. Lots of great sky, trees in the background, a nice grassy lawn (remember, these are people with money for horses and landscaping) of course your fence needs some pretty shrubs and bushes behind it. Throw in some color. Not overly detailed, though. Your horse and rider are the focal point. Nothing should take the eye away from them at all. So leave out the details and dark shadows. This should take an hour or less. Do not leave the background until it can stand on it's own as a nice fuzzy landscape picture on it's own. Once the tape comes off, you cannot go back to it! If you find you must go back, retape at least the fence. That fence is left white.
Now we move on to the horse and rider once you remove the fence tape. Again, you're going to hang out with these two for about three days, so find a subject you LOVE to look at and won't get tired of. I guess with the horse thing, it's like an alter life I might have had if I could have handled being on a fast horse, and had the money for boarding, food, a horse, and lessons. That didn't happen, so I will do the vicarious thing. I don't doubt I'm a much better painter than I ever would have been a horsewoman.
With the horse, again, start out with the lighter color (either burnt sienna or burnt umber) put down a wash, dab off the highlights, and then add layers upon layers of darker paint. Lift as you go with paper towel if necessary. Then go with the darker color and go as far as you can with that. Then you want almost black. Mix a burnt umber and blue the shade of your sky to get a "black." I do not use Payne's grey. It's kind of a dead color. I do for the top hat and things like that, but that's all. See that tent in the background? Purely taped off. No paint on that except the stripes. Then I went with a double mat of the same white and black. I hadn't paid for framing in some years, but this one was really an exception. Here's my plug for Hobby Lobby: If you buy the frame and have them cut a mat there (you'll have to for these jumbo paintings), Hobby Lobby will frame it for you while you are in the store!
The neat thing is I've been commissioned to do a couple of paintings of family members. This will always be a hobby of course, but it's nice to actually have people think that I'm good enough to paint their family and friends. These frogs are not part of the two phases, but they did win in a rescent art who, and they COULD be a movie poster, don't you think?
