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For all of us on the path to becoming a master artist, here’s some good news: we only need to learn five things!

The bad news? There’s a huge number of individual “hacks” that are part of those five things.

If we’re fortunate enough to go to an art school or atelier we get exposed to those five elements in a relatively systematic way.  By the end of our training we have a clear understanding of what we need to do and how to do it.

Ultimately, representational art consists of mastering these five skills: drawing, value, edges, color (temperature), and design. Everything we need to learn falls into one of those “buckets”.  If we think about art this way, it’s much easier to learn. More importantly, it is also easier to recall each little procedure when we need it!

If we’re “self-taught” i.e. picking up information wherever we can, the knowledge acquisition is NOT systematic. Today we can learn from master artists through a variety of methods: books, workshops (both in-person and via Zoom), videos, mentorship, and YouTube. But this can lead to a problem I call “workshopitis”.

 Most in-person workshops start with a demo by the teacher. Although the instructor probably understands the five skills, he or she may have developed an idiosyncratic way to start a painting. The student sees one teacher begin with a detailed drawing, another begins by massing shapes, still another by gridding out the placement of centers of interest. One portrait instructor carefully measures the placement of key features; another starts at one point and works outward.  The student is understandably confused and can get hung up on the differences among approaches instead of noting the underlying commonalities. Too many workshops with different instructors can actually hinder a student's growth!  (We “can’t see the forest for the trees!”)

So, what’s the solution?

1. I’d suggest writing down those five skill areas listed above. Tape them to your easel. As you watch a demo or video and take notes, label each note with one of those five areas (you do take notes, right?!) For example, you might write “Drawing- the teacher measures with the handle of his brush.” 
2. Work on one skill at a time. Bryan Mark Taylor calls this “chunking”. For example, if you’re working on understanding value, don’t worry too much about drawing or edges. Just focus on the value “chunk”. (That's how musicians practice to become virtuosos!)
3. “Attack your weakness!” That’s a quote from master artist, Dan Gerhartz. He means focus on your problem areas. Good advice that has the added benefit of making us think about each of the five “buckets”.
4. Use the five skill areas as a checklist: “Is my drawing ok? Are the values accurate? How about the edges? Do I have accurate temperature relationships? How about the design?”
5. Use the identical steps to begin each painting (at least for the first 50.) Once you have thoroughly ingrained an understanding of the five areas, then you can shake things up by changing your sequence.

They say the first step toward a solution is to recognize that there is a problem... So now you know!

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We have all seen the plethora of AI generated images flooding the internet. Some are attractive (as if they were trained on romance novel cover illustrations by Pino). Some have bizarre artifacts: too many or too few fingers, giraffe-like necks, etc. Artists worry that AI will make them obsolete or at the least drive down the value of their work. (BTW if you want to become wealthy, become an investment banker or a politician…not an artist!) However, this technology is in its infancy. I can foresee a day when it becomes so “good” that its use is almost impossible to detect.

Recently the Art Renewal Center Salon, arguably the largest annual representational art competition,  was forced to rescind an award when a "painting" was revealed to be an AI creation, which violated competition rules. For more info about the brouhaha, look at AI and the 2024 ARC Salon. 

The Witchling - Alyson Barton

The YouTube video by content creator, “Jakedontdraw” analyzing the violation is embedded in the link above. It has already had over 174,000 views in the month since it was posted. The odds are this will not be the last time that someone tries to cheat his or her way to success!

Most of the viewers seem to be appalled! And rightfully so given that the artist:

1. Violated the clear rules of the competition
2. Was dishonest about it.

However, this raises a couple of questions: Are all uses of AI “cheating”? What about works that are entirely created by the artist’s hand, but that may have an AI “look?” After all, artists absorb, consciously or sub-consciously, what they see around them. As Anthony Waichulis points out above, “More and more traditional and digital artists are being wrongly accused of ‘using AI.’ As many of you recognize, such accusations can have serious consequences for an artist’s career and reputation.”

The arguments against any use of AI seem to boil down to:

• It’s dishonest!
• It takes no artistic skill. Becoming an accomplished artist requires years of dedicated study and practice. The sheer laziness of the AI shortcut is an affront to whatever remains of our Puritan work ethic.
• While the painting might look attractive at first glance, upon closer inspection the strange AI artifacts just look…weird and unreal. (The implication is that ultimately art viewers may lose the ability to tell the true from the false.)
• The implied, underlying fear is that the programs will ultimately put human artists out of business. 

However, I’m reminded that throughout history new artistic techniques and approaches have often been met with disdain. For example, the Impressionists were initially ridiculed for their sketchy lack of finish, broken color, and “modern” choice of subject matter. The very term “Impressionism” was initially meant as a slur!

Impression, Sunrise - Claude Monet

Traditionally trained artists (including me), regard painting from a photo reference as inferior to painting from life. But nowadays, virtually all artists use a photo from time to time. (It helps to understand rapid movements, or to see a fleeting expression or light effect.)  Try to get a five-year-old to sit for a three-hour pose!

Purists may frown on the use of modern tools like Photoshop to compose paintings.  Can I make thumbnail sketches to figure out where to place my center of interest? Sure! Can I do it 10 times faster by putting it in a layer in Photoshop and moving it around with my cursor? Of course!

I don’t believe that it’s somehow more virtuous to do things the hard way if there is faster method. After all, the old masters used whatever tools they had at their disposal, including students and assistants to handle the grunt work so the master could apply his skills to maximum advantage.

My take on the use of AI is that it can be a tool to help generate ideas, test out compositions, or serve as a reference. But like any tool it should be used in an honest manner. If a competition says images created in AI can’t be used, they can’t be used, period! And certainly, don’t lie about it!  Just as the AI programs are getting better and better at image creation, so to the AI detection programs are rapidly evolving as well!

As an afterthought, the greatest threat is not the lack of artistic integrity; it’s that AI decides that humans are a danger that must be eliminated!  (You saw The Terminator, right?)

Artists who are also science geeks like me will find The Tell-Tale Brain by V. S. Ramachandran incredibly interesting. It is the most eye-opening book I’ve read in decades! The author trained as a physician. He is also a noted researcher holding a PhD from Cambridge. He is a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Diego and adjunct Professor of Biology at the Salk Institute.

Written for the lay person, The Tell-Tale Brain explores concepts as far ranging as: “what makes humans unique; what is consciousness, and are there brain structures which have evolved to give us an aesthetic sense”?

In the past two decades neuroscience has identified and mapped many of the structures and pathways in the brain. These recent discoveries have allowed the science of the mind (perception, emotion, cognition, and intelligence) to finally “advance beyond the Bronze Age!”  One example: humans have as many as 30 visual areas in our cortex, other animals have half as many. Why? Our brains are also rich in “mirror neurons”, cells that let us “experience” someone else’s point of view…probably a pre-cursor to true language!

While the entire book is mind-blowing, the chapters that deal with aesthetics are particularly interesting for the artist. Ramachandran postulates nine “laws of aesthetics”:

1.     Grouping

2.     Peak shift

3.     Contrast

4.     Isolation

5.     Peekaboo, or perceptual problem-solving

6.     Abhorrence of coincidence

7.     Orderliness

8.     Symmetry

9.     Metaphor

Ramachandran uses various styles of art as examples. He asks the question, “what brain structures have been re-purposed to underlie each aesthetic principle?” For example, Gestalt psychologist discovered the law of grouping early in the 20^th century. Look at this example. 

At first it seems to be a set of random splotches but if we continue to stare for several seconds, we start to group some of the splotches together. We see a Dalmatian dog sniffing the ground. “Our brains glue the dog splotches together to form a single object that is clearly delineated from the shadows of leaves around it.” While this effect is well known, scientists have ignored the fact that the “aha” moment when we recognize the object is pleasurable.

Ramachandran postulates that there is great survival benefit in grouping; he gives the example of a lion hiding behind bushes so that only splotches of yellow fur are visible through the foliage. He states, “Your brain says (in effect), what’s the likelihood that all those splotches are the same color by coincidence? So, let’s glue them together to see what it is. Aha! Oops! It’s a lion---run!”

The concept of peak shift is even more interesting for the artist. Our brains tend to exaggerate stimuli. Ramachandran mentions the Sanskrit word rasa, which loosely translates as “capturing the very essence of something.” He points to an experiment in which rats are trained to discriminate a rectangle from a square (food is always behind the rectangle.) When presented with a longer, skinnier rectangle the trained rat will actually prefer the new shape to the one it was trained on! The rat has learned a rule – “rectangularity” – rather than a specific prototype. The new shape has even greater “rasa”. The rat brain thinks “Wow, what a rectangle!”

In art this tendency pays off! Look at this bronze sculpture of the Indian goddess Parvati from the Chola period.

Larger breasts and hips, an impossibly narrow waist, and a pose of extreme contrapposto create the rasa of femininity. If medieval Hindu art is not your cup of tea, these pieces by the master painter, Dan Gerhartz also embody the very essence of feminine grace and beauty.

Reflection

 Winter Tea

Check out the book; it will start your artistic wheels turning!

Representational artists must learn four basic skill sets if they ever hope to successfully render a person or object: shape (drawing), value, edge treatment, and color temperature relationships. We generally learn them in that order. I remember struggling for years before I could finally see and depict the temperature relationships! Temperature is so challenging, in part, because we don’t normally talk or think about it…therefore we don’t have a verbal “bucket” to house that information.

When I ask students “What is the temperature of the light?” I’m often greeted by a blank stare. In fact, that should be the first question we ask ourselves. It’s crucial!

In rendering anything, the major division is between light and shadow. We all know that there is a value difference between the two. However, beginners don’t recognize what the pros know full well: there is also a temperature difference between light and shadow. For example, north light on a clear day is a cool light.  What makes it cool? If we run that light through a prism, we find that it contains more blue rays than yellow-orange-red ones. If we block that light, we create a shadow that has less blue in it. Therefore, it must be warmer. Light generates a shadow of the opposite temperature. Cool light creates warmer shadows; warm light creates cooler shadows. (Generally! There are certain rare atmospheric lighting conditions where that may not hold true…but that’s a topic for a later blog.) Here’s an interesting factoid: the darkest recesses are virtually always hot…regardless of the temperature of the light.

Artists ignore temperature at their own peril. If we fail to depict the warm/cool shift between light and shadow, our paintings will look wrong. Viewers probably can’t verbalize why the paintings don’t look right but they certainly recognize that they don’t!

Light temperature is measured in degrees Kelvin. The higher the number, the cooler the light. (Imagine a block of steel heated to 3500 k.  It will glow with a yellowish-orange light. If you heat it further to 5500 k, it glows with a blue light.)

In judging temperature, we face several problems:

1.     Sometimes it is just plain hard to see the temperature of the light.

2.     We tend to confuse local color with temperature. We think of certain hues as warm or cool.  For example, is this pastel stick warm or cool?

How about now? It’s cooler than the orange stick.

How about now? It's much warmer than the blue stick!

The fact is that the temperature of a color is always in relation to another color; you can have a warm red or a cool red depending on what’s next to it.

3.     Even if we see them, mixing colors that carry the relationships throughout the entire painting can be a challenge.

Here are some solutions:

1.     Keep looking! (I.e., force yourself to think about temperature shifts) Eventually they will become obvious to you.

2.     Hold something white (like a paper towel) in the light. Does it look more blueish or yellow orange?

3.     If you can't judge the light, try looking at the shadows; do they seem warmer or cooler than the light areas?

4.     Mix puddles – use a palette knife to mix large masses of paint for the light areas and for the shadows. Look at the puddles below.  I mixed these for flesh in the light and shadow. Each puddle has areas that are redder or greener or more violet, but the overall temperature of the light puddle is cool (I mixed blue and white as the base for that puddle) - the opposite of the overall temperature of the shadow puddle. In addition to managing the temperature, mixing puddles does three other good things:

a.     It helps us avoid unintended value jumps within an area (getting “spotty”)

b.     It forces us to mix enough paint (most beginners use a fraction of the paint they should)

c.     It keeps our palette, and our thinking organized!

5.     Use two different brushes. One for light and one for shadow…don’t mix them up!

6.     Force yourself to think “With this stroke, which am I painting - light or shadow?”

7.     At first, exaggerate the temperature difference (it’s easier to grey down a saturated color than it is to “punch up” a greyed one).

Here’s a helpful exercise: look at some of your favorite paintings and ask yourself “Was this subject under warm or cool light when the artist painted it?

Here are some examples:

“My Wild Irish Rose” Pastel

Don’t be confused by her red hair and freckles. The model was under cool north light. The giveaway is the warmer shadows under her hair on the forehead and under her lower lip and chin. You can also see the cool highlights on her nose, forehead and chin.

“1001 Nights” Oil

The light source is clearly warm. Note the cooler shadows cast by the veil. You can even see the candle’s hot illumination “eating” into her fingers as the light pours between them.

“Dappled” Oil

This is a much more complex lighting situation. You can see the warm light sunspots on the model’s arm and the blanket. But in the open shade the light is cool.  (The tree above blocks direct sunlight but there is plenty of illumination from the blue dome of the sky. Look at all the blue on her dress and the blanket). It’s also worth noting that the deepest darks next to her cheeks are hot!

I encourage students to actively work on seeing and depicting temperature shifts. That knowledge will make you become a more advanced artist!

In December’s newsletter I wrote that “drawing is the root skill.”  The sad truth is that if my drawing is off, no one even looks to see how well I painted the eye, mouth, or any other detail. BTW what most people mean by “drawing” boils down to proportion – having the right parts in the right place.

At the American Academy of Art in Chicago, I had the great fortune to study life drawing with the legendary Bill Parks who trained many of today’s professional artists. He taught two drawing methods: contour and gesture.

Contour is a concise description of the subject. Mr. Parks often said that a line goes “a certain distance before it changes direction” – length and angle. He said that contour drawing is “like brain surgery.”

Gesture, on the other hand, is about movement and action. He used to describe it as a “scribble, but it’s a meaningful scribble. It has mass and direction and, most importantly, it’s doing something!”

Contour drawing involves careful measurement. We lay out the features by comparing two relationships at a time. The first measurement on a head was “distance from top of head to the inner corner of the eye (along the center line), compared to the distance from the corner of the eye to the bottom of the chin.” We make marks on our drawing paper to indicate the same proportions. The artist continues dividing the space to find ever-smaller relationships. It’s a systematic method for accurate drawing. The key is to measure…don’t guess! Mr. Parks also admonished us to “see how square you can make the round”. In other words, draw with straight lines, not curves. It makes the drawings more powerful and more accurate! Here are a couple of examples of contour drawings.

You can go to my YouTube channel to see these as time lapse videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW0r7A51_H0&t=12s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiz6Wd6DgP8 (Please “like” and subscribe.)

Bill Parks method for gesture drawing is to “start at the top of the pose and go straight to the bottom. Next find a center point and then work a little on one side and then the other. Always looking; always comparing.” I bet I heard those words a thousand times during the eight years I studied with him. As the artist’s gaze moves around the figure, the charcoal follows, scribbling the mass and action of the pose. 

After laying out the gesture of the pose, we were taught to come back and put the contour drawing on top of it. Then, if we had time, we’d draw the contour of the edge of shadow pattern. We could shade the shadow pattern when the model took a break. Using this compound method one can capture a fairly accurate representation of a figure in a few minutes. This method yields a lively drawing that is anything but stiff! Here are a couple of examples of 5 minute drawings.

When someone tells me, “I just love your colors,” I, of course, appreciate the compliment, but I think the real key lies in getting accurate value relationships. The artists’ cliché, “Value does the work, but color gets the credit!”, is absolutely true! It’s like being a lineman in football; the big guys upfront slug it out to create space for the running back to dance through. The RB gets the girl, the glory, and the endorsements. The lineman gets icepacks and the whirlpool!

Value is not only the key to successful color choices, but it is also the key to design. Composition or design is, at its heart, the distribution of three or four large, interesting, value masses on the picture plane. (What makes those shapes interesting? According to Master Artist Quang Ho, they are unique and specific.) Noted teacher, David Leffel, has said, “a painting composed of a number of small value shapes will appear small and petty.”

There are two problems:

1.     Seeing the correct value relationships

2.     Painting them

So, what are the solutions?

Chunking

Bryan Mark Taylor in his instructional video, The Master’s Mind, talks about chunking as the most efficient way to master a new skill. He describes a process of isolating and rehearsing one “chunk” of information until it is mastered, rather than trying to do everything at once. (BTW the video is well worth the price; here’s a link https://lilipubsorders.com/search?type=product&q=the%20masters%20mind* ) Musicians do this routinely. (I’m working on improving my guitar playing, so I practice scales in five positions up and down the fretboard. Using a metronome, I gradually increase the speed.)

The traditional way to develop a good understanding of value was to draw from the plaster cast, trying to render the light and shadow in five values. Drawing in graphite or charcoal takes color out of the equation. That’s how Bouguereau, Sargent, Sorolla, and Zorn all learned! When I studied at the American Academy in Chicago, my instructor, Ted Smuskiewicz, had me make my first paintings using only mixtures of white and black paint. I wasn’t making finished pieces; I was learning to see the relative values! It’s interesting to note that Jeremy Mann actually sells his stunning large monochromatic cityscapes which he gives titles like “Composition 172”. You can see his work at redrabbit7, here’s another link https://redrabbit7.com/cityscape

Quick Fixes

For those of you who want some “quickfix tools” here are four ways to help you see the value structure in any subject:

• Squint – (and compare). At the American Academy I was told to squint…oh, about 10,000 time! Squinting simplifies the world into five or six values.
• Use a red acetate film – It take the color out and again lets us see the value masses.
• Use Notanizer- This is available in the app store; it reduces any scene to black & white (a “notan” – the Japanese word for “light and dark.” A notan is two values. You can also set the app for three or four values). The app costs a couple of bucks but has saved many a painting!
• Use Photoshop – You can go to “image – adjust - hue and saturation” to de-saturate the image. Then go to “filters – artistic - cutout” to reduce the image to 3, 4, 5, or 6 values (Adobe calls them “levels”) It does the same thing as Notanizer.

"Drink From My Cup" reference and value "cutout"

"Drink From My Cup" 20 x 16 Oil - finished painting

How to paint them

The good news is that the hard work of seeing the value structure is done. The bad news? We still have to execute. Here are a few “hacks” that might help:

• Grisaille (pronounced like Versailles) – This is an indirect painting method developed during the Renaissance. The artist first makes a complete under painting in 5 or 6 values of grey. After the grisaille dries, the artist glazes transparent layers on top of it, finally arriving at the full color painting. (You have to allow each layer to dry before applying the next). Time consuming, but artists like Bouguereau and Ingres created stunning masterworks using this technique.
• Monochromatic block in – Richard Schmid and others sometimes use a single color (raw umber, or transparent oxide brown, for example) to create an underpainting. By wiping out the light areas with a rag and deepening the darker areas with more paint, one can arrive at a very believable full value representation. The artist then paints into that underpainting with opaque paint, working “wet into wet.” Hint: you need to do this on oil-primed linen or canvas…an acrylic primed support can’t be wiped all the way back to white! This technique is much faster than using a grisaille.
• Paint big value masses – Think of areas as opposed to things. For example, the shadow on a figure might bleed into the shadow on the wall behind the figure. Zhaoming Wu (a master who teaches at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco) calls this a “unified shadow shape.”
• Make “puddles” – When I paint a portrait I mix a single “puddle” for all the colors that I see in the flesh in the light. Part of that puddle might be redder, part greener, part more violet etc. but the values are tight, meaning there are no unintended value jumps when  the hue changes. The key is, there is no space between the colors in the puddle.
• Check your work – Notanizer, Photoshop, or even your red acetate film come in handy to make sure that you did what you intended.

Happy painting!

One of the biggest threats we face as artists is painting things instead of shapes.

Think of how an infant sees the world.  A baby sees a swirling mosaic of shapes, colors and values. But soon it learns that when it’s hungry or needs its diaper changed, a recurring pattern of shapes appears and makes it feel better. The baby learns a name for that recurring pattern – “Momma”. He or she soon learns names for other patterns of shape, color and value too. “Where’s your eye?” “Touch your nose.” “Where’s Daddy’s ear?” Etc. By the age of two the toddler strings together simple sentences. “More food. “ “No nap!”

By the time we’re four or five we have learned to think in the “human mode”.  That is, we constantly talk to ourselves – subject – verb - object. We have given up much of the direct observation of the world (the moving mosaic) in exchange for the much more rapidly processed world of symbols.

Ask a five year old to draw an eye. They will probably draw the universal eye symbol - an oval with a circle inside it. Ask a 60-year-old non-artist to draw an eye and they will draw the same symbol that they had learned as a child.

There are also symbols for lips, noses, glasses…pretty much anything that has a name. We artists may develop more “sophisticated” versions, but they remain symbols. The problem is when we paint symbols, the paintings don’t look very realistic. In fact, they look downright amateurish!

Art teachers say, “paint shapes, not things!” (We merely have to unlearn a lifetime of symbolic thinking. Easier said then done!) We must “become as little children to enter the kingdom of heaven!” (I’m defining “the kingdom of heaven” as learning how to see like an artist.) In other words, learn to see that moving mosaic of shapes again.

Here’s a trick that just might help: as you begin the painting, break the symbols,

meaning don’t complete them. When drawing the eye, don’t draw the complete oval. Instead, only draw the shadows under the upper lid. Do not draw an outline around the lips or put a line in between them. Instead merely mark the center-point between the lips, the shadow shape under the lower lip, and the corners of the mouth. Doing this somehow makes it much easier to see the actual shapes that comprise the feature.

My theory is that the left-brain has a low tolerance for incomplete symbols. It abandons the field, leaving the right brain (the artistic side) in charge.  Right-brain says, “I see a dark shape that angles up about this far then it flattens out and gets darker before getting darker still and much softer and indefinite as it moves downward at about this angel and, oh my lord! I just painted the eye…” I find that when I’m really in the zone, I get surprised as the little shapes of value and color magically form themselves into the representation of features. Try it; I think you’ll see more accurately.

Athletes lose strength, speed, and agility as they age... there are no 60-year-old pro-bowl quarterbacks. Artists, however, can (and should) keep learning and growing their entire lives! Leonardo da Vinci on his deathbed said, "I have offended God and mankind because my work didn't reach the quality it should have!" He was still intent on learning.