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Painting 1: Starting to Paint

Written by
Ian Simpson
Contents
Learning to paint
You and your course
The paints for the course
A list of basic materials
Additional materials
What you should start collecting from now on
Keeping sketchbooks
Keeping a logbook
Visiting museums and galleries
Annotating
Theoretical studies
Reading and books for the course
Monographs
Starting your logbook
Extending course projects
Deciding where to work
Using the text
Your timetable

Aims and structure of the course

You and your tutor
Course aims
Course structure

Making a start
Brushes
Paper size
Using acrylics
Making a start with oils

Project and tutorial plan

Notes for students tutored by post
Assignments and tutorials reports
A working pattern
Student profile
Your tutor

1: Shapes and tones

Theoretical studies
What you need
Project 1: drawing shapes and tones
Stage 1: choosing your subject
Stage 2: making charcoal drawings
Stage 3: selecting a drawing for development
Stage 4: masking off
Stage 5: extending a drawing
Stage 6: making a final selection for development

Project 2: from drawing to painting

Stage 1: painting with a limited palette
Stage 2: developing the painting
Stage 3: considering the design
Stage 4: what have you achieved?

2: Colour theory and practice

Theoretical studies

Your first project: colour mixing

What you need for this project
Stage 1: mixing colours
Stage 2: adding black or white to colours
A brief digression on light and colour

Project 2: the colour circle

 What you need for this project

Project 3: tone, saturation and contrast

What you need for this project
Stage 1: tone values
Stage 2: saturation
Stage 3: colour contrasts

Project 4: how colours affect each other

What you need for this project
Project 5: optical illusions
What you need for this project
Stage 1: optical mixing
Stage 2: inducing colours
Stage 3: what have you achieved?
Further reading

3: Using colour to describe objects

Theoretical studies
What you need
The advantages of an easel
Positioning yourself to paint
Project 1: a colour study
Stage 1: deciding your viewpoint
Stage 2: colour mixing in practice
Stage 3: revising your colours

Project 2: painting objects in an interior

Stage 1: thinking about your approach
Stage 2: deciding on the size to paint
Stage 3: a painting
Stage 4: what have you achieved?

4: Painting in three dimensions

Looking
Drawing
 Perspective
Drawing objects
Local colour and the use of colour contrasts
Theoretical studies
Project 1: perspective
What you need for this project
Stage 1: rectangles seen ‘flat on’
Stage 2: rectangles seen ‘corner on’
Stage 3: what have you achieved?
Perspective and looking

Project 2: solidity
Stage 1: drawing an apple
Stage 2: painting an apple

Project 3: Painting a Flower or Plant

What you need for this project
Stage 1: choosing your subject
Stage 2: three preliminary studies
Stage 3: an interior with a flower or plant
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Further reading

5: Extending the view

Theoretical studies

Project 1: some different views

What you need for this project
Drawing your home
Project 2: looking from one space into another
What you need for projects 2 and 3
Stage 1: considering light
Stage 2: making a start
Stage 3: continuing the painting
Project 3: looking out
 Stage 1: the right scale
Stage 2: the right tone and colour
Stage 3: making the planning
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Project 4: more that one view
What you need for this project
Stage 1: multi-viewpoints
Stage 2: scanning vertically
Stage 3: drawing from right to left
Stage 4: painting from two or more viewpoints
Stage 5: what have you achieved?

6: Composition
A good composition
A painting rectangle
Painting before composition
Shapes for paintings
Theoretical studies

Project 1: the dynamics of the rectangle

What you need for this project
Stage 1: in black and white
Stage 2: in colour
Stage 3: what have you achieved?

Project 2: geometry
What you need for this project
Artists and geometry
The golden section
Stage 1: hidden geometry
Stage 2: a geometric grid
Stage 3: using the grid
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Project 3: composition in practice
What you need for this project
Three-dimensional composition
 Four practical composition problems
Stage 1: using preliminary studies
Stage 2: the flexible approach
Stage 3: what have you achieved?
Further reading

7: Painting from photographs and studies

Different ways of working
Theoretical studies
Project 1: painting from working drawings
Stage 1: drawing shapes
Stage 2: tones and brush marks
Stage 3: colour
Stage 4: final preparation
Stage 5: making a painting from studies
Stage 6: what have you achieved?
Project 2: developing a shorthand
Colour notes
Numbering tones
Stage 1: drawing shapes
Stage 2: colour notes and numbered tones
Stage 3: assessing your information
Stage 4: painting
Stage 5: what have you achieved?

Project 3: using photographs

Stage 1: deciding on your photograph
Stage 2: drawing from the photograph
Stage 3: assessing your information
Stage 4: making the painting
Stage 5: what have you achieved?
Your fourth project: squaring-up
Stage 1: squaring-up
Stage 2: painting
Stage 3: what have you achieved?
 Further reading

8: The figure
Theoretical studies
What you need
Project 1: figure at a table
Stage 1: the subject
Stage 2: a working drawing
Stage 3: starting the painting
Stage 4: developing the painting
Stage 5: what have you achieved?

Project 2: artist and model

Stage 1: deciding on the subject
Stage 2: working drawings
Stage 3: painting
Stage 4: what have you achieved?

Project 2: a reclining figure

Stage 1: the subject
Stage 2: working drawings
Stage 3: painting
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Further reading

9: Expressionism
Theoretical studies
What you need

Project 1: associations
Stage 1: a starting point
Stage 2: a different approach to painting
Stage 3: painting
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Project 2: atmosphere
Stage 1: a starting point
 Stage 2: preliminary drawings
Stage 3: painting
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Further reading

10: Painting outdoors

Basic equipment required
Some outdoor painting problems
Painting outdoors
Theoretical studies
What you need
Project 1: a garden or park
Stage 1: starting your painting
Stage 2: reviewing your first painting session
Stage 3: a second painting session
Stage 4: what have you achieved?
Project 2: a landscape
What have you achieved?

Project 3: a townscape
What have you achieved?
Project 4: a waterscape
Stage 1: visual research
Stage 2: painting and reviewing
Stage 3: what have you achieved?
Looking back at the course
Further reading

Going on to the second course

If you plan to submit your work for formal assessment

Project 2: From Drawing to Painting
This project will take about seven hours.

The drawings made in Project 1 should have given you a good idea of the best
viewpoint for painting the same group of objects. Put the earlier drawings
away and prepare to make a painting of approximately A2 size from the
position which gave you your most successful drawing.

Although this drawing will have given you a vantage point from which to
start work, don’t try to make your painting a direct copy of the drawing. This
time you’re going to begin by drawing in the main shapes of your subject in
very thin paint. Look for the most interesting shapes. These may turn out to
be different from those in your earlier drawing because as you look at a
subject over a period of time your attitude towards it changes.

To artists, the appearance of things is constantly changing and you change

your mind about what is important, even with subjects that you know well.
The painter Carel Weight wrote:

You pass the spot each day. You know and love every brick and tree.
Suddenly, in a moment, everything is changed...

STAGE 1: Painting With a Limited Palette

The word palette is used in two ways. It means the range of colours you use,
as well as the surface you mix them on. For this particular painting, I want
you to use a limited range of colours, black, white and yellow ochre only.
You’ll be surprised by the variety of colours than can be mixed from these
three basic colours. Painting in this way compels you to translate rather than
to copy colour. The restricted colour range also exercises a harmonising
influence on the painting. In a sense, the limited palette sets aside the problem
of having to make the colours in the painting relate to each other. Instead it
allows you to concentrate on other issues you’re concerned with: shape and
tone.
Matisse, who became one of the greatest of all colourists, made several early
paintings with a palette limited to four colours, those above plus vermilion
red.

First draw in the outlines of the main shapes of the objects. Do this with a
small brush and black paint diluted by water (or turps, if you are painting in
oils) to make it very thin, so that the lines can just be seen. Once you have
drawn them (and perhaps redrawn them), don’t paint the objects, but begin to
paint the shapes between them, using black, white and yellow ochre. These
shapes are often called negative shapes as opposed to the positive shapes of
the objects themselves (see below).

Paint everything you can see which makes the negative shapes interesting in
themselves - such as a slight change in the colour of the table-top - and appear
to be in their correct place in your painting. It may seem odd to you to be
concentrating on painting the negative shapes but as you do so you will see
the positive shapes of the objects emerging.
STAGE 2: Developing the Painting
As your painting begins to develop, you will almost certainly find that the
positive shapes, having been left white (or grey, if your board or paper is
grey), will stand out like ghostly cut-outs. You will need to ‘kill’ the white or
grey ground by over-painting with a single suitable colour and tone, still
restricted to the limited palette. This will leave the positive shapes as a simple
abstract pattern, seen against the more detailed treatment given to the
negative shapes.

Resist the temptation to develop the positive shapes as recognisable objects.

You’ll be surprised how recognisable they become, even without any attempt
at describing them.

There’s a very important lesson to be learned here. Often the best way to get
the elusive shape and form of an object is by painting the shapes and forms
around it, rather than by painting and repainting the object itself. In later
paintings you will be painting the objects but nevertheless this approach of
carefully considering the shapes between objects will continue to be a most
important painting strategy.

STAGE 3: Considering the Design

When you’re satisfied that you have the best arrangement of shapes possible,
and that you’ve made as complete a statement as you can about the shapes
between the objects, stop.

You now need to consider where the edges of the painting should be. You
may already have decided that they should be well within the edges of the
paper or board on which you’re painting. Even if you think you have
successfully designed your painting within the confines of the rectangle, try
masking off sections of the painting with strips of white paper as you did
with your drawings. Be certain that you eventually have the most satisfactory
design framed within your paper strips. It may be a different shaped
rectangle from the original A2 size rectangle. It may be square. Mark the
position of the masking strips on the painting so that you can replace them
when you come to refer to the painting.

STAGE 4: What have you Achieved?

Pin up your four tonal drawings alongside the painting of negative shapes
developed from one of them.

This section has started you painting but it has compelled you to concentrate
on looking, selecting and translating what you see. You may have found the
restrictions welcome because they directed you to what you had to do. You
may have found them frustrating because they didn’t allow you to paint the
kind of picture you would have liked to paint.

There’s no reason why you shouldn’t paint a picture describing these same
objects if you want to later on, but the object of the course is not to produce
finished descriptive pictures, although I hope you’ll make paintings you will
learn from and think worth keeping. My aim is to get you to experience a
series of different approaches and attitudes which will help you to develop a
better understanding of seeing and painting. As you continue you will paint
better, with greater skill, but the learning process never finishes. Hokusai, the
Japanese artist, envisaged the age of ninety as when he would have
penetrated the mystery of things and a hundred and ten as when, ‘Everything
I do, be it but a dot or a line, will be alive’.

Look at your work and consider it carefully. Don’t be discouraged if your

drawings or your painting ended up looking messy and confused,
particularly if you haven’t done much painting before.

You have searched for the position which gives the best viewpoint of your
objects; you have translated what you have seen into simple shapes, and
finished by painting the negative shapes only, using a restricted palette.

When you review your work, ask yourself these questions: were there better
viewpoints than the one you chose? Did you choose the best drawing to
develop? Did you use only four tones in your charcoal drawings to translate
the tones in your group of objects? Would you change any of the tones in
your drawings if you started again?

You will have another opportunity to consider this same subject again later.
However dissatisfied you are with your drawings and paintings, I hope that
you feel you have learned something about shapes and tones. If you have
only discovered your own inadequacy, don’t be discouraged. I firmly believe,
as I said in the introduction, that everyone can learn to draw and paint. But it
needs practice and cannot be achieved overnight or after a few hours work.
Many artists practise drawing every day just as musicians practise their
instrument. They are exercising not just their hand but their eyes and the
coordination between hand and eyes.

As well as beginning to learn about drawing and painting, perhaps you’re

also starting to see your everyday surroundings in a new way, recognising
more and more potential subjects for painting.

Make some notes on what you feel you’ve achieved or failed to achieve and a
list of possible questions for your tutor. These notes and questions, and any
subsequent comments or advice from your tutor, should eventually be placed
in your logbook as a record of your artistic development. If you do have your
work assessed formally at the end of the course, they will form part of the
evidence of your judgment.

Let your tutor see all your work because this will help her/him identify any
special help you may need.

This is a sample from Painting 1: Starting to Paint. The full course contains 31 Projects and
5 tutor-assessed Assignments.