Tackling The Elephant, Part 3

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It's an unanswerable question, I suppose, and everyone who fancies themselves artists asks themselves something similar: 

It was such a simple step. What took me so long?

Today I took that yellow ochre sketch and added burnt sienna for the shadow areas, and the form rose off the canvasboard to meet my eye.

 

The point of the work is to explore using directed strokes to impart a feeling of volume and I'm actually fairly thrilled to be able to say to myself that I have grasped that just a bit. 

Burnt sienna also for the shadow under the elephant and darkening in the trees in the distance.

This is the warm underpainting that will support the cooler colors I'll by layering atop ... for which stay tuned anon.

Tackling The Elephant, Part 2

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I like this silhouette bit more than the last time I did it. A lot more. 

 

I am trying to copy as close the original as I can. I was unhappy at first, with my inability to sketch this out using paint and then I had trouble thinning stuff out to the way I wanted it.

It's still not perfect. But it's better.

At Last I Try To Tackle The Elephant

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Over a year and a half before this, I was working through a book called Learn to Paint in Acrylics With 50 Small Paintings. I got up to number 46, a painting of an elephant that explores contour painting techniques. And it was at that point that, for some reason, even though I had absorbed many of the techniques well, or so I had thought, I ran into the wall I ran into so very many times.

It's not a wall so much as a fog that pushes back. I can spend time dissecting it but knowing what stopped me wouldn't have done much more than given me labels for it all. If you're trying to reinvent yourself as an artist, you know what I'm talking about without another word and I can't find one anyway.

So it all sat there on my drawing board for more than a year, waiting for me to get back to it, while I did PBNs, wasted time off a dwindling life span (statistics being what they are) and letting my social media addiction get the best of me. Not that different from the billions of self-made aspiring artists in the virtual world, really.

I thought about the idea of shortcuts and assists, then. It occurred to me one of the things I didn't like about that first attempt at this was I couldn't sketch out the shape in yellow ochre and feel confident about it; the harder I tried, the sourer it felt. This, I theorize, is what pushed me off the track and landed me straight in the mud. And all the inertia and ennui followed.

It occurred to me that I didn't have to be flawless about my sketching to start and further, I already knew techniques that would allow me to transfer a reference to the media. It was so simple! It just involved, in this case, printing a copy of a scan from the page, coating the back of it with soft graphite (4B Prismacolor Monolith, for what that's worth) laying the print on my media (still the eight-by-eight canvasboard) and rubbing.

A bone folder from my GD days did the burnishing duty. This is what I have:

That light gray pattern is a basic outline concentrating on the shadow areas. It should be enough to get me started, again.

Wish me luck.

PBN Today: The Process of Lighthouse In Moonlight

3692Of the PBN boon provided me by my Brown Eyed Girl on my birthday, I've breached the first and have largely conquered it. And here's the general arc of the diver.

The PBN in question was PaintWorks by Dimensions' #73-91424, Lighthouse in Moonlight, based on a painting by artist Al Hogue. This work is very much his artist's voice, if you see the other works on his site: soft-focus stylized landscapes drenched in moonlight made of magical realism. All very dreamscape-like.

In the past my overall strategic approach to one of these paintings was to find a color and hit it wherever I found it, trying to get as many of, say, color 4 (or any given mixture) in one pass. This has been efficient but ultimately unsatisfying. The layout of the painting seemed to speak to me to try a different approach: doing one region at a time even if it meant I'd be remixing and reopening pots later on. It made it a very rewarding experience.

I started with the sky because enclosing the Moon appealed to me in a gut way.

The clouds and moon precipitated out of the sky like those old Polaroid instant photos developed. It was fun to watch it happen.

Once the sky was sufficiently filled in, I moved on to the promontory.

This is a painting with a great many small fussy areas to fill in. It's not uncommon for me to regard these as small countries, with areas you get familiar with and then move on once you've done your time there. Specifically satisfying was to watch the colorful foliage display blossom under the brush. Al Hogue knows from palette; the colors, warm and cool, coming out with a lush, rich sense of calm and comfort.

I then worked up the tower of the lighthouse, ending at the rather detailed filling in of the light and structures around it itself. If I get nothing else from PBNing, the dexterity workout is worth it alone.

Last but certainly not least I entered upon the sea and the waves. I'm always charmed by the way the interplay of color, thoughtfully selected, makes for the illusion of a phosphorescent, translucent, yet solid wave of water. This painting had that and more. At this point, I hit that moment of epiphany, got that feeling of frisson when the painting became more than just a pattern of lines I was filling in with color but a thing I was creating, that had volume and space and depth, that I was a participant in. I'm convinced that this is part of the magic of art making, whether you're creating original work or rotely following directions. You get into it and it gets into you.

This makes completing a mere PBN more than just following directions. PBNs are an easy way for the non-pro to get a taste of what the pro feels when they're in the zone, and it's a great feeling to have, that moment of realization. I recommend it to literally everyone.

In the more practical wise, it was satisfying to watch the waves emerge from the ground the way they did, and it was also easy to recognize that it was the interplay of light and dark colors, perspective generated of contrast, that made it all so.

Next, and cruising into the homestretch now, we get the colors that define the foreground and cause the small wave in front to emerge from the pattern just like the bigger wave in back did. Warm colors reflecting the lighthouse and reddened moonglow and darker greens giving dimension to the water's surface tie the whole thing into a coherent whole.

All but completed. All the colors are filled in but I'm going to confront a thing now. The extra added feature of PaintWorks kits, as I've said before, is that it gives you more than just a pattern to follow, it encourages you to take it a little farther. There are blends that would make this painting even more of a visual treat, blending the borders between the gradient bands circling the Moon and the shadows on the lighthouse tower and these call for drybrushing, which the kit, as all PaintWorks kits do, give you instructions for.

PaintWorks' system gives you actual instruction in some basic painterly things. Drybrushing is the most common. However, not only am I an impatient artist, I also am having a bit of trouble grasping drybrushing. I've tried in on a few of them and have been dissatisfied with the results. However, the Brown Eyed Girl, whose skill with painting RPG miniatures I've sncerely not matched elsewhere, gave me some protips on drybrushing and I learned something there, and I'm going to try them here. I'll work around the Moon first, then try them on the tower if it works.

So, stay tuned for that.

PBN Progress Report: Isn't It Romantic?

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Last issue, I mentioned returning to PBNs to keep my artistic somatic work going. Used a little clip of what I was working on. But here's the whole thing, in three stages for work-so-far:

When I abandoned it then picked it up again, here's the state:

Pretty subdued and earthy-toned so far. But then more colors come in ...

The fancifulness of the colors begins to really blossom and shine.

The title is Isn't It Romantic?, and I've got to say it is, with the warmth and fantasy is supported by the palette. I'm enjoying it.

The New Water Jar

3600Times change and some of my painting habits have changed with it. I'm using bigger and more brushes as I explore the joy of painting acrylic. Washing these brushes in the old jar got a bit messier and soggier than before because they're larger and require a bit more vigorous of a wrist to get rinsed and clean.

Well, actually, messy, I don't have a problem with as the older I get the more feral I become. Soggy, though, I don't do. Anyway.

My Brown Eye Girl came up with a suitable, and larger, jar. Allow me to introduce you all:

Same former product, same brand (Hy-Top was what WinCo sold before they didn't). Bigger chest, smaller neck: should corral the sloshing water a little better.

Please, people ... celebrate appropriately. Thank you. 

The Daily Paint By Number: Beach Chair Trio Progress Report #3

3599Checking in with my current PBN project, PaintWorks' Beach Chair Trio, we find things going quite quickly actually, but since I'm splitting my time between three projects, it goes about as quickly as the big one.

The painting in warm colors is the fun part, really. I'm also letting the sharpening of my manual dexterity sink in, really knowing it. I want to capture my own artistic evolution in a knowing way and this is another reason why doing this is more personally exciting than the other times I tried to reinvent myself as an artist. This is the reason this one, I think, may just stick and take me places I should have been some years ago.

There are big tracts of single colors here, though, so doing one color takes up a lot of painting space. That's also kind of fun in its own ineffable way.

50 Small Paintings #4: Deep Blue Sea

3598The next painting is an exploration in a simple gradation. In its simplicity it suggests looking out to a placid, sunlit sea.

The first step was to sketch in the shoreline and horizon with a mixture of unbleached titanium and yellow ochre. It was then a rather simple matter of gradating upwards, starting with a mix of titanium white and light blue permanent, leaving a sliver of canvas showing through, then applying successive horizontal strokes of the same with an increasing proportion of cadmium blue before the preceding strokes have wholly dried. This strikes me as a way of a sort of blending on the painting, a dash of alla prima. 

The work is finished off by adding in a sky of the same white/blue mix we started with, leaving a bit of canvas peeking out to suggest a cloud in the distance, and filling in the shore unbleached titanium. Comparing the finished work with the photo in the book, I find myself okay with it generally but a tidbit unsatisfied with the smoothness of the gradation. The author suggests attempting this several times if one is not satisfied, but I'm satisfied enough, for now.

... the scene of the crime:

Eggplant With Peppers: Progress Report 2

3597After falling sloppy in love with the first three of 50 Small Paintings I've let the "Eggplant with Peppers" still life stay on the shelf. I took it down and did a little something.

Here's the painting, now:

I wouldn't say I'm in striking distance of simultude here. Maybe same area code, is as close as I am right now, and I didn't do much: the white/cad yellow mix on the inside to suggest the cut edge of the big yellow pepper, and the addition of some color to the small yellow pepper to give it some dimension and visual heft.

Up close it looked like ass. I grew a little frustrated and stepped back.

When I stepped back ... it kinda looked better. I kinda liked it.

Vision seems to work this way for me, and maybe for you too: you take a close look, a real close look, and you see all the little parts. They don't suggest a whole, they only suggest themselves. You step back, though, and the diminished level of visual acuity of those details which occurs naturally ... nobody, no matter how eagle-sharp your vision is, can see every detail when you step back ... causes as sort of visual blending to occur. That, and your peripheral perception provides the framing context which reaches into these visually-blended details and knits them into the visual whole. This causes the whole brain to do a gestalt thing, and this connects what you see into what you know, identities map, and it achieves a level of sense. It's not exactly what a pepper would look like, but it makes sense as a valid interpretation of one.

So, going into that prolix mishmash, I was pretty sad about this. I hadn't done much and it didn't seem to do much good but all of a sudden it all fell together.

Clear as mud? Thought so. Next, I'll be trying some highlights.

The Little European E On The Paint Tubes

3596I'd always thought it was a European thing. Turns out I was right, not quite in the way I'd thought, but right sure enough.

There is a symbol to the right of this text; it is a minuscule "e" drawn in a peculiar style. I've seen it on art supplies, specifically paint tubes, for a while. It has to do with a standard for prepackaging weight for products and it turns out it points up a subtle yet significant difference between Europe and the United States of America.

This is what they call the "estimated sign". It is a European standard. Without belaboring things too much, it appears in the same visual field as the weight or volume of the product and it means that the contents won't, on average, be less than the number you see, and for those that are slightly less, that slightly-less will be within an expected tolerance.

The European market, then, is what they call an average fill market. In America, though, that packaged weight is the least you will expect to see in all cases, and for that reason they say that America is a minimum fill market.

The language behind all of it makes even my eyes glaze over; the specifications, as well as the precise specifications for even drafting the symbol can be found on the Wikipedia page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_sign. They are intimidatingly complex.

A slightly less abstruse reading can be found at the page https://www.ceway.eu/cosmetic-product-labels-estimated-symbol/, published by CE.way, a consultancy that provides market-oriented regulation and testing advice to the cosmetics industry. It makes the highly interesting point that, while you may see the 'e' on prepackages sold in the USA, since it's for products shipped from withing the EU to within the EU, putting the 'e' on your USA package imported to the EU means little or nothing, especially when one takes a moment to think about making a minimum-fill product jibe with standards for average-fill products.

So why do it? For the same reason any American affects something European: style. It lends an air of sophistication.

But that's the story behind the 'e'.

And that, as they say, is a thing you know now.

50 Small Paintings #2: Simple Sunset

3595The second of the series of 50 Small Paintings is "Simple Sunset". It shan't take long to see why.

It's a brief yet effective experience in using pure tube colors as well as layering them.

First, a fat stripe of Cadmium Yellow Light (Lemon Yellow had to suffice, since I, at that time, had no Cad Yellow Lt) across the lower middle. Then, a big stripe of Cad Orange overlapping that. Then, coming down from the top, Cad Red overlapping the first two. Below the horizon, Mars Black. Put a few bumps on the horizon to suggest distant clumps of trees, and a short horizontal stroke of Titanium White for the setting sun.

Once again, how effective and evocative this simplicity is! I, with just my meagre re-emergent artistic skill, have created a scene you can kind of melt into, that reminds me of slightly-out-of-focus, heat-distorted sunsets I've seen portrayed in film.

How powerful, this modest amount of technique is.

And at the end of it all, the palette. We drank water that day.

50 Small Paintings #1: "Moonrise"

3594My Brown Eyed Girl is always on the lookout for compelling things that make me want to create. This is credit that must be stated. And, in her (so far) tireless quest to do so (much gratitude) she located, at the Mighty MultCoLib, a book by Mark Daniel Nelson, titled Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings. This book delivers exactly what the title advertises: 50 small works, most seem to be easily accomplished in a single sitting, each concentrating on introducing and giving experience on foundational skills in acrylic painting but each resulting in a charming little simple yet displayable painting.

It also touches on principles of design and display: the works are conceived in groups along common artistic themes so that they may be displayed together in harmonious groups or strategically against each other to create thematic contrasts.

I found a gold mine here and intend on doing all 50. And it has been rewarding, exciting, and fulfilling. There are more aspects to this work that I'll get into later, but, for now: the first painting.

These are all going to be done on 8 inch by 8 inch acrylic-primed canvasboard, the sort you find in every art store (the book specifies 5-by-5 and advocates exploring preparing your own grounds but 8-by-8 works just as well and I could fool about creating my own ground but I just want to get down to it (and the text is very accommodating about that as well)). Here in Portland we are blessed with more than one value-minded art supply store (mid-level acrylics and sensibly-priced canvasboard are in good supply at not only I've Been Framed but also Artist & Craftsman Supply), so exploring and getting an honest-to-goodness start on a painting practice is both convenient and not about to bust any budget.

So: ready, steady, go. Here we go down the road toward painting and illustration.

"Moonrise" means to introduce the aspiring acrylics artists to basic paint application and basic mixing. The only colors used here are Titanium White and Mars Black, and here's a view of the palette immediately after the work was completed:

For the record, yes, the big cracked cup had coffee in it, and the brushes were almost (but not quite) rinsed in the coffee more than once; some artistic traditions must be maintained.

First, the entire square was covered with a dark gray mixed from the two colors. Second, the dark mass of the hillside and skyline were added with pure Mars Black. Then, pure Titanium White was used to create the Moon and the reflection in the water (short, wiggly, horizontal strokes for that). As a finishing move, more dark gray was mixed and the sky and water were went over once again, to make it as opaque as possible and also to clean up the edges on the Moon and reflection.

The Moon was a little out-of-round: this was done with a #8 round brush and, as with the other non-PBN paintings I've been doing, working with other than the now-teeny-feeling #2 round has been a revelationary experience in and of itself. Scary and exhilarating.

This is the final result of the work, displayed next to the book (thoughtfully laid out so that you can do your work against the book and compare as you go):

Not too terribly bad, hey?

This gives some important experiences. Not only those mentioned, working with the paint, applying it, experience mixing (the final dark gray was lighter than the original dark gray, so I got experience in adjusting as I go) and dashing in lines with a paint brush to fill in, but a truly singular one I really felt for the first time: the experience of actually completing a real originally-created painting.

I've done it two times since. Those results will be up presently.

But, if being an artist hinges at all on completing the works one attempts, having a serious accomplished painting looking back at you, then I have graduated to actually, at long last being an artist in a positive way.

And I've done it two times since, three in total, and am about to embark on a fourth.

I can't recommend Mark Daniel Nelson's book highly enough just on that alone.

Progress on "Eggplant With Peppers"

3593Here's how the work on the "Eggplant With Peppers" painting is proceeding.

EWP, as will be recalled is the first project out of John Barber's The Acrylic Color Wheel Book, and is a project that acquaints (or re-acquaints) one with the basic ideas of arranging subjects in still-life, color mixing, glazing, and creating highlights.

The book, which hovers somewhere between moderate tyro and beginner masterclass, doesn't grab your hand and direct the brush so much as it tells you generally where to go and you take your chances. This is a positive thing, because by trying something you aren't wholly confident on yet seems, at this point, what I need to get experience and grow.

The opening moves were to fill in the simple veggie shapes with simple colors straight from the tube. The two yellow peppers were filled in with cadmium yellow, and the long and small peppers were a mixture of that yellow and ultramarine.

See the palette below:

The painting is a simple still-life and the shapes easy to fill in, the directions for the colors easy to follow. 

The challenge at this point came at defining the shadow in the cut pepper, which turned out a lot rougher than I'd hoped. 

The blue-gray color for the neutral background came out a bit more blue than I expected as well. The shadows, however, I find, are kinda convincing. Kinda.

 

I'm tabling this for a few days while I go on to the first three or four of 50 Small Paintings.  And what are those? Well, tune in for our next missive, which comes up...

Right now. 

Beach Chair Trio: The Opening Act

3591And here's the first moves on "Beach Chair Trio", the PaintWorks PBN by Darrell Bush.

It's a smaller work, only about 17x11, and the dark and the second dark colors are easier to cover in a single sitting. And even though there is a black to fill in, and a black pot of paint, the black on the card isn't black. It's a combination of color 2 (a red) and color 5 (a green). The result is a dark yet warm purple. The second-dark is a very light blue (color 6) and a darker yet neutralized blue (color 8) resulting in the seafoam swells.

Eggplant and Peppers: The Opening Act

3590There's not much to see here, but it's the foundation to "Eggplant and Peppers".

The author suggests I block in the veggie outlines with black chalk. I went with a 2B Lyra Graphite crayon because it'll work just as well for my purposes and I don't have any black chalk anyway.

Letting my compulsion toward frugality override my desire to happily create, I used a canvas panel which I obviously accidentally intended for something else, or which intercepted something somehow, and I figure I'll work it in somehow (which is perhaps an unwarranted fit of artistic competence at this point, but I'm going to roll with it).

I'll be fine tuning the blocking just a little, but just a little. The author is encouraging me to keep it loose here and to bring the finer detail when I go in and actually do the painting.

Two Paintings: One With Numbers, One Without

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A preview of the next two things I want to attempt, painting-wise. Number one is another PaintWorks PBN. Number two is the real challenge.

Pictured above is the PBN. It is another PaintWorks product, this one titled "Beach Chair Trio". It's a smallish one, only a little bigger than 17"x11", and contains just twelve colors. This is similar to the "Flower Shop" PBN I did a while back. There is an opportunity for drybrushing practice here. I expect the usual level of PBN satisfaction from this.

... and the second one:

A while back I picked up a book by John Barber called The Acrylic Color Wheel Book. It contains a slidable color wheel in the cover so you can easily envision the mixes it calls for, and several projects that look pitched at the beginner painter who wants to gain skills to do more solid work. It is the kind of stuff that sits on the next level of proficiency that I want to attain on this journey.

I've reviewed the work "Eggplant and Peppers", a still life, quite a few times. The feeling I have of it is that of the swimmer about to dive into the deep end of a cold swimming pool and is still building up courage to do so. But in that way, it calls to me, such a mundane painting to do so, but it does. And I can picture me doing the techniques it calls for. So it't time to push into it.

I'll be documenting it all here on this blog and on the Facebook page I've started, The Daily Paint by Number. Wish me something resembling luck, or at least, perserverence.

The Daily Paint By Number: First Strokes of Taste Of Italy

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I've begun painting the PaintWorks piece Taste of Italy. And there is a ton of detail here and with the glorious opportunities thereunto and the advanced techniques I have a chance to employ, I get a 'tyranny of choice' situation. It's impossible to choose where to start.

When I begin with color, though, I know where it's going to start (thanks to a suggestion from Library Gordon), but first, I took he simplest choice. Just do the black areas.

As earlier pointed out, the black areas are picket out by regions of darkest tone. On the diagram chart, they are starkly black; on the panel, with its screened-back printing, it's a very very dark gray. Still easily identifiable; it's the single darkest tone.

Just cover it with black.

I started in the dark areas in the fruit stall.

This took somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes of work, for two reasons: I was getting the feel of a new brush (Richeson's Gray Matters #2 round, which has immediately become indispensable) and the desire to make it a sort of meditation. PBN is great for this.

After two days of work, I nearly have the entirety of the simply-black spaces covered. After blacking-in the RISTORANTE IL VESUVIO lettering, that'll cover it.

This detail shot gives you the idea of what the black areas on the panel looked like before coverage, and after.

After the sign is painted, on to the first applications of color.

Vintage Walter T. Foster Publication Celebrating The "New" Acrylics

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Very old how-to-draw publications find their way to Powell's, as I've shown before. This one here is an unexpected delight, and timely into the bargain.

This is the front cover of what appears to be a periodical, or at least an occasional series, called How and What To Paint. Charmingly cover-priced at the modest amount of thirty cents (at your art store). The publisher, that titan of how-to-do-art books, Walter T. Foster.

This, volume 5, concentrates on three main things: How to draw bears (hence the cover art), mixing colors, and an exciting new thing ... the versatile new plastic paints. What that is, of course, is acrylics; acrylic paint media is pigment emulsified in an acrylic polymer medium, and acrylic polymer is a type of thermoplastic.

When you're painting in acrylic, you're painting with plastic.

The number is undated, though an ade for a brand of mediums and varnishes on the back cover features an oil by Frederic Taubes dated 1964, so it certainly can't have been published before that, quite obviously. Given my recent excursion into the acrylic medium by way of PBN painting, finding this historic jewel is both timely and serendipitous.

The article only covers one spread (less ads) and here is what it looks like:

As exultant the article, penned by managing editor Dixi Hall, was, the charming ads really win. Brushes from Langnickel, and illustration board from Hi-Art, a brand of the National Mat, Card, and Board Co, which exhorts the reader to request free Hi-Art samples, so they may not be left behind when all the other fellow artists rave about it at the next art club meeting.

Truly, we have come so far.

The Daily Paint By Number: Unboxing Dimensions PaintWorks Taste Of Italy

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So, this is a first for this blog ... an 'unboxing' post. Only this isn't any sort of tech toy. This is a Dimensions PaintWorks PBN kit, the most advanced one I've seen yet, a light-year ahead of any I've done so far.

The-clock-she-is-a-ticking, so let's get started.

PaintWorks is a brand that is part of the Simplicity family of art and craft products. It is a large-format, detail-oriented work intended for the ambitious PBN enthusiast who loves detail and is ready for a challenge above and beyond the more pedestrian Royal & Langnickel works.

The above is the box for PaintWorks #91320, Taste of Italy. It is, as can be seen, a charming, idealized Italian village street scene, bursting with color and Old World pulchritude.

This is 20 in by 16 in. Compared to the works I've been doing so far, this is like a large dining table with the extender in. A couple of things of note here; the piece actually credits the designer (an early sign we're working on another level here) and the picture, if one lets the eye linger in the details, seems to be of the completed PBN work itself, not the detailed picture that the project was abstracted on.

Let's empty the box, shall we?

Here it all is: eighteen snap-together paint pots, the project panel, and a chart sheet with painting diagrammed and charts detailing the paint pots and the various color mixes.

Here, the paint pots unsnapped from their circles and laid out in rows. Note the colors are printed on the fronts of the pots, a real boon ... no scrawling them on the cap in Sharpie this time!

There are two ways to specify the colors. The number in front of the parenthesis is the number used on the diagram itself, and the number in parenthesis is a code number to order more if you happen to run out ...

SCREECH! Hold the bus a moment, driver. 

They actually anticipate you running out of paint?

I'd best paint wisely. As the website on the box is no longer operant and the pages at Simplicty.com that list the PaintWorks kits have no obvious route to ordering replacement paint, a side process here will be researching if that is possible at all. This is a big panel. I can get started but I must do so thoughtfully.

Anyway. Onward into the materials.

This table on the chart is a listing of 'pot' colors ... the unmixed paint. Two points of note: 17, black, is noted on the table with a black swatch. This is one intriguing new thing; the solid black color areas on the panel are where you put the black. You'll have noticed them by now in the picture above where I've arrayed the paint pots; look just below at the solid dark colored areas. I'll just be going over those with black.

Paint color #18 is a thing I've not seen before. It is only used in mixes, never appearing unmixed in the painting.

And, this table lists the mixed colors I'll be creating to complete the painting. This is different from the others, if on the other kits I was to mix #1 and #7, for example, it would be noted as "1/7" on the panel. Here, it's simply A.

Also, see the space on the table that has "7 + 15", how there's a gray swatch next to it? Just as there are solid dark areas to be covered with black paint on the panel, your 7/15 mix is to cover gray-filled areas.

Pretty smart and just the thing for those of us who like 'work-y' art. I have a feeling I"m going to love this.

Here is a closeup on the chart. Here's an important thing. The dashed lines indicate areas that call for a rather advanced painting technique for PBN ... drybrushing. This is meant to produce a visual blending effect. More on this just down the posting.

Here's a closeup of one of the thoughtfully-designed paint pots. They open and close air-tight but easily, and the wide base makes it very stable.

And here's the instructions on drybrushing. You drybrush along the boundaries that are dotted lines to give the appearance of a gradated blend, and a more sophisticated finish than your more average PBN work. And the way this is taught, it instantly occurred to me that this is a portable, and also rather sophisticated skill. This kit is teaching a fairly advanced technique in the context! Exciting, really.

In the way that I used marker in the last work to make it sort of a multimedia thing, the instructions indicate detailing with marker or pen may be called for.

Withal, this looks like a project that will teach as well as entertain in the doing. I can't start it immediately but very soon, and I can't really wait to get started ... though I'll have to!

Check in here for the painters progress.

The Daily Paint By Number: 50's Diner, Completed

3564.

So, I glide-pathed gracefully into the end of Royal & Langnickel's PAL28-3T: 50's Diner. Of the various projects I've done since PBN has re-introduced itself to me, and me, it, this has been by far the most fun and satisfying.

Whoever designed the kit knew just what to leave out and put it. The rendering of the illustration onto PBN abstract was immaculate, as far as I'm concerned.

As I've mentioned under other aegis, the plan was to work from the outside in. That meant sky, ground, foliage, cars, building, sign. It worked out very well in this one. The above picture was the first fillins to the building, which was, by then, the only part of the picture remaining un-painted. The long lines and straight spaces contrasted interestingly with he ripply reflections in the windows.

Filling in the rest o the windows and getting the dark areas in the building gave it solidity and dimension and really started to make the painting pop.

The completion of the sign atop the diner was the final pin that the logic of the lighting pivoted on. The bright yellow of the neon in the word DINER gave the yellow areas of reflected light on the cars and the building's side its internal sense. It was also terribly much fun to do.

There area  couple of small things that actually makes this, by definition, multi media. The black print on the sign and the numbers on the license plate have issues; the plate gets covered up by the light blue and the part of the sign with the writing on it is unpainted (that's the panel showing through) and the writing is in the same screened-back blue that the rest of the painting's marks are. Fine line Sharpie to the rescue! So, I can truthfully say that this is a work in acrylic paint and marker. Multi-media artist, me, now!

And we'll put this one on the wall near the others. It should be a centerpiece, really.

Next up, we have an uncommon thing for this blog ... an unboxing! And it all has to do with the next project.