Try looking at something for 10-20 seconds then turn around and draw as much as you can remember. Memorize stranger's faces as you're going about your day, then as soon as you can get a sketchpad and draw what you remember. At first you won't remember much but soon you'll start remembering stuff. A nose, a mouth, a chin.
In The Conservatory, Edward Manet
You can get a better view of the image here: http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/altesnational/in-the-conservatory
In Manet's "In the Conservatory", A sort of "brushwork perspective" is being used. The closer objects have a more pronounced and visible brushstroke, while the farther ones are smoother and better rendered. Also, on the dress, there is a sort of alternation between azure and turquoise. The geometric shape of the dress leads the eye towards the women's face. The woman's and man's gaze creates a sense of detachment while their hand, almost touching, creates tension.Understanding Color
(This is still a draft...)
Painting can be divided into three steps. To quote Richard Schmid:
"I know this simple fact--when painting from life, all I have to do is correctly identify a color I see in my subject as a specific pigment or mixture of pigments, and then put that on my canvas in the right place. Nothing more--see it right--mix what I see right--and then stick it where it belongs." --Richard Schmid, Alla Prima, page 119.
Seeing It Right
To understand what it is that you're seeing you first have to understand how light behaves. The key concepts here are temperature, hue and value. Temperature is how cold or warm the color is. The "warmness" or "coldness" of color is a relative quantity. A green color can be cool next to yellow but warm next to blue.
You can dig quite deeply into the subject. There are three rules that as far as I know generally hold true. They are:
- If the light source is warm, then the shadows will be cool, and if the light source is cool, then the shadows will be warm.
- It doesn't matter how warm or how cool you paint any particular spot, but only that the relation between the parts be correct. That is, you only have to get the degree of warmth right in one spot in relation to the degree of warmth in all the other spots. Whether it's right in absolute terms doesn't really matter. More so, getting it right in absolute terms is sometimes impossible because of the limitations of our pigments.
- The warmth of any given spot is given by a combination of three factors: the pigment it's made of, the light source that's illuminating it and the pigment of whatever is surrounding it. A candle light will make everything look yellower or warmer (but the shadows cooler. See 1) and if you wear a red shirt your face will seem warmer, or redder.
Regarding (2), I'll quote Richard Schmid again (his book, Alla Prima, is amazing by the way):
"To sum this upp--we must see the RELATIONSHIP between colors, the relative visual warmth or coldness of colors to one another in a complex visual field of many colors. The question to be asked in all cases is not what color something is, but rather what color it is COMPARED TO ALL OTHERS AROUND IT." --Richard Schmid, Alla Prima, page 121.
Mixing It Right
To mix it right you have to master your materials. A good excercise for this is doing color charts. Write down what you mixed for each color. Then use your charts as a reference while painting.
Putting It In The Right Place
Getting the pigments mixture correct won't do you much good if you can't put it in the right place. To do that you have to take measurements. Measure what you about to paint against what is already painted. If your first measurements are right everything will fall into place. If they are wrong it won't. The first few steps are the hardest since you have nothing to verify against.
Capture the 'envelope' (basically, the envelope is the outer contour of your subject captured in five to six lines) first.
Know your subject. If you're drawing the human figure, know the anatomical landmarks. Know the skeleton. You should be able to draw the front, back and side views from memory. Preferably the 2/3's view, too. Memorize the main muscles. Or if you're drawing a flower, knowledge of botany won't hurt. See Leonardo Da Vinci's studies to get what I'm talking about. You can go as deep as you want or need. And even deeper if you're curious. And you better be if you want to paint well.
Questions I Have Regarding Painting
- How do the features of the head fit together to create a unified whole?
- What interesting effects can be created by distorting the placement of the features?
- What's the quickest way to memorize the porportions of the human skeleton?
- How do the muscles 'sit' on the face? How do they 'sit' on the rest of the body?
- How do you see colors the way they are? does it matter if you distort them?
- To what extent can you distort colors?
- What are the key characteristics of colors?
- What are the key characteristics of pigments?
- What are the key characteristics of light?
- How do you mix colors correctly?
- How do you put each color you see in the right place?
- Can you get hues right but the values wrong? Or does one depend on the other? vice versa?
- What happens if you get the colors right but the hues wrong? If the opposite?
- How do different light sources affect the hues?
- How do different light sources affect the values?
- How does the structure of the face affect the transitions from one value into another?
- How does the skin tone affect the hues and values?
- What is contrast?
- How do different bone structures affect the figure's character?
- How do different skin tones affect the figure's character?
- How do different combinations of noses, eyes, mouths, and ears affect the figure's character?
- What is character?
- Is character more than just getting the contour, values and hues right?
- What is a good painting?
- Why bother painting a good painting?
- Is a popular painting necessarily a good one?
- What's the difference between the female skeleton and the male skeleton?
- How do you go about learning how to draw a certain subject matter from your imagination?
- What's the minimum amount of knowledge you have to know about a subject before you can draw it from memory?
- What makes one composition good and another bad?
- Is the concept of a good composition a made up human invention?
- Is Hazel Dooney a great artist or a commercial hack?
- If I remove one brush stroke from a painting is still the same painting? What if I remove two? Three? When does it become something else?


