The Shapes of Spring

I'm inspired today at the feeling of Spring coming and Winter departing, and thought I'd work it into our mini-challenge relating to our weekly theme of shapes in art.

If it is still cold and miserable wherever you may be, perhaps looking at a glimpse of Spring might make you feel better for the time you are making art today. Making art always makes me feel better about EVERYTHING, so it especially works when I'm cold and stuck inside. But today, as I look outside my window at my lemon tree, heavy with fruit, and fuschia colored azaleas covering my bushes, I am really into the idea of Spring- and flowers!

Two well-loved artists used flowers a great deal in their work, and both really exploited the boldness of color -and especially shape- of flowers. Of course, I am talking about Georgia O'Keefe, with her larger-than-life contemporary flower portraits and their wonderful shapes, and Vincent Van Gogh, with his crazy-beautiful views of irises and sunflowers. Who could look at the flowers painted by either of these artists and not feel something wonderful? (Well, I may be a bit biased, as these have been two of my favorite artists since I was a young girl, but just go along with my bias for this little post...)

Here is a simple quote I found by Ms. O'Keefe, that I thought related to the topic today"

I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way--things I had no words for.

See! Georgia (may I call her Georgia?) knew the power of shapes, and you can follow her lead and be inspired to do the same today with your art.

Above and below, you will find two of my photos of flowers that you can work with today in your drawings or paintings. Look for the positive and negative space and how you can make the composition interesting by exploiting it. Look for the repetition of shapes in the petals. If you are reading this post for the first time today, look back to the other posts this week for additional posts relating to this one. We have spent our entire week focusing on shapes in art and how to use them to make our work stronger, with individual lessons and focus on how to do it. (Tomorrow starts a new weekly theme!)

Here are some links to flower paintings done by Van Gogh and O'Keefe (See Bella Donna, 1939) for you to take a look at, and inspire you.

Get drawing or painting, and have fun today working with the shapes of Spring!

Putting it Together-Shapes

We're almost to the end of our week focusing on shapes and how we can use and manipulate them in our work to create more powerful art.

Today, let's put some of the concepts we looked at this week together to work, and see what we can do with them.

Earlier this week, we looked at the shapes that can be made in positive and negative space, repetition of shapes in artwork and how to use them to your advantage, turning reference work upside down or sideways to see the subject in terms of shape better, abstraction of reality by using shapes as a starting point and more.

Here's an idea to try today- take a photo or a scene that you'd like to use as your reference, and divide a page in your art journal or sketchbook into three or four sections. Then try a few different approaches that we discussed this week in the different areas. You can use your artistic license to decide how you'd like to proceed, and have fun with it!

In my example, I worked from an old photo of the silent film starlet, Gloria Swanson. (After all, it's Oscar Night tomorrow night!)

You can see how I experimented with exaggerating parts (like the hand in the first drawing) and with the placement of the shapes that made her up within each section of the page. I tried different papers and media, too. Which one do you think worked best??

Give this idea a try, and share it with us here!

Do it Upside-Down!

OK- Get your mind outta there, 'cause I'm just talking about looking at art differently- upside down and even sideways to get a different view of the shapes that make up your subject.

Of course, the best known person for teaching this technique is Betty Edwards, who discovered this method while teaching one of her drawing classes, and who has written the well-known and excellent book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

In a nutshell, by turning a reference photo or a copy of an old master drawing upside-down, it is easier to replicate it, because we do not draw what we "know." We, instead, actually draw what we see. The example that sticks with me the most is one that she writes about in her book, where new artists tend to draw a bucket with a circle at the top (for the hole) and a flat bottom. This is because they know that the bucket is completely round at the actual opening, and that the bottom sits flat on the ground. They can't yet look at it and take the time to push the logic away, that when viewed from the side and looking down a bit on the bucket, it has an oval opening and a curved line at the base. This is really basic, but it is the beginning of learning to see.

For a complicated picture- a face where I want the likeness to really be close, or for a scene that has a lot of shapes that need to come together in a pretty exacting way, looking at the picture upside down or sideways can help you get something corrected that may look off when you are drawing and just can't figure out what the problem is.

I also use this method to help me figure out what I can bring out and accentuate in a painting. I can see certain things when I look at the scene straight ahead, but if I snap a few pictures for reference, and then use them in my studio to view upside-down or sideways, it helps me look at the scene in a new way.

Below, I will share one of my photos, taken in Laurel Grove Cemetary in Savannah, Georgia. Use it as you wish to interpret for your own art.

Notice how the shapes seem to delineate better, when viewing the photo upside down. Our brains stop trying so hard to understand the picture and can just look at it in terms of shapes, lights and darks- a much easier task to replicate and interpret for our art.

I hope that you will share your work and think about leaving a comment! I just created a yahoo group for this blog, and will soon be uploading the button for a direct link there. It will be easier for you to share your related work.

Shape It Up- An Abstract Challenge

Today, we'll continue to explore the use of geometric shapes in art. Our mini-challenge today will be to create an abstract interpretation of what we see, based on shape.

Yesterday, we looked at one of Van Gogh's self portrait to see how he used repeating shapes in his composition. If you look back to the self portrait, you will see that it is interpreted somewhere between the reality of what we know of the human form, and a purely abstract view of portraiture. Our goal, in today's exercise, is to go past the semi-abstract, and elaborate on the shapes themselves to make something pleasing.

Today, using yesterday's post as a guide, dissect an interior scene or a photograph of something you like into its basic shapes. Do you like the way the composition looks when it is pared down to the basic elements? If not, consider moving some of the shapes around a bit to better balance the composition, without looking at the reference at this stage of the game.

If there is too much going on visually, edit out a shape or more than one shape until it looks good to you. Once you have your basic drawing the way you like it, take the reference away completely. if it is a photograph, turn it over. If it is a scene you are part of, ignore it, or move elsewhere to finish your drawing or painting.

Now, look at ways to integrate the shapes into something that works. Use color and value. Most of all, put your own twist on the art but creating a mood or feeling with the piece. Consider the way color and pencil or brush strokes can support the way you are feeling- an emotion you wish to convey. At some point, you may wish to return to the reference to gather some reaction to it, and translate that reaction to your abstract view.

Try to create a dance of darks across your page, to keep the eye interested. Add light values at the end, either by adding pure white sparingly or erasing to the paper's background to highlight areas you would like to draw the eye to. Remember, the person looking at your work will be drawn to the area of the lightest lights and darkest darks. Use this information in a way that will make your piece work better.

As we progress during the course of this art journey together, I will try to empower you as an artist to make your own decisions about translating what you see. It is great to have the technical skill to be able to render something accurately, but the greatest power you will have as an artist is to learn how NOT to be faithful in reproducing exactly what you see, and how to use movement, composition, value difference, line, and color to create powerful work.

It is my belief that we are not cameras- devices created to record an image exactly. Photographers know the power of using the tool- the camera- and manipulating depth of field, focus and point of view to get the viewer to see something special in something that might be ordinary otherwise. It is our job, as artists, to bring a special view to others who look at our work.

So today, create a masterful abstract! Try it in your art journal. I think you'll have fun with it.

Here's the first step for my abstract, just showing you some of the shapes I will plan to abstract out of this portrait of one of my dogs. Tune in later for an update with the actual art created from it....