Translating a black and white drawing to digital color art
First, I took the original B&W drawing and scanned it into the computer
using the HP flatbed scanner and saved as a TIF file. I cleaned up the TIF to a fairly sharp B&W image (without losing
the smoothness of the scanned image) by increasing brightness and contrast. Then I saved as greyscale TIF to decrease the
size of the file. Then I opened the TIF file in Adobe Streamline and saved it as an Illustrator file (.AI) which converted
it from bitmap to vector art. (I could have saved as bitmap and deleted the white space and proceeded from there. I simply
decided to eliminate any fuzzy areas which occur in bitmap.)
I opened the Illustrator file in Photoshop and saved as a Photoshop native file (.PSD), which
converts the image to a transparent image. Then, with the image open in Photoshop, I began "painting" over and under the "drawing
level" using different tools and brush sizes. This continues to be a fairly time consuming task, but I am learning as I go.
Today, I learned to make a window and then copy it and thus make all the windows on a building fairly quickly.
The use of Translucency in portraiture
If you look closely at skin, it's not opaque. So in doing a portrait, you
want to communicate this translucency. There are two ways to do it, in either oil or acrylic. In simple terms, one is called
glazing and the other is called scumbling. Don't try to paint a flat color and call it skin. Sneak up on it. Paint into it
the bluey-greens of veins, the browns of freckles, the pale blues and reds and oranges that occur because of reflection. Oh
yes, there's reflection! Did you ever hold a buttercup under your chin to find out if you liked butter?
Glazing involves using a transparent or semitransparent coating in order
to enhance or slightly alter the color tones. Glazing is done in oil painting by thinning the paint with Liquin or one of
the more traditional glazing media. In acrylics, use acrylic mat medium or gloss medium or gel medium to thin. Same principle.
Scumbling seems to have two meanings: its earlier meaning: a broken passage
of opaque or translucent color (often paint) skimmed or dragged across the surface in such a way that each color is visible,
each modifying the other, or, to apply a color in this way; a later meaning, to smudge or smear the lines, edges, or colors
in an image by rubbing lightly. In any case, if you apply paint over a dry or partly dry layer, only partly covering the paint
below, you are "scumbling".
In some dictionaries, scumbling is further defined as applying a lighter
color over a darker color, and glazing as applying a darker color over a lighter. Whatever!
Applying these techniques can give your painting a richer surface.
Intention
Painting something, (or should I say, "creating something") is sometimes a rough
thing to do. There are so many things one could be doing instead where one doesn't have to put out as much. The approach must
be: so what if you don't "feel" like painting. Paint anyway. A painter paints. If you don't feel particularly creative, paint
as a lesson. Do color exercises. Do a value study. Explore the qualities of paint.
Use of Acrylics under Oils
In the February issue of The Artist's Magazine, Ross Merrill, conservator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., explains that acrylics under oil are not recommended because
,unlike gesso (also acrylic based), they are formulated with a 'closed' surface. Casein is a better choice. He himself favors
alkds (for their stability) occasionally finishing up with oil.
Contrast:
The beginner sometimes fails to appreciate the importance of contrast in
shaping how we see things. Early on, holding a pencil, we are taught to draw outlines. If you look around you, you will find
that things are not usually defined so much by outlines as by contrast -- and that things (individual things) sharpen and
blur along their edges. Try making a B&W copy of any piece of art. See if the darks and lights continue to define the
edges.
Contrast takes many forms
Early on, we think of contrast as being light-to-dark. Contrast can be many things:
smooth to textured, warm to cool; sweet to harsh. Take into account some of the other ways that contrast operates. I know
its been said that "the focal point of a painting is the point of greatest contrast." You might want to take that into consideration
when you are critiquing your painting. But keep in mind that, in art, "rules" are meant as guidelines but are not absolute.
I think, for example, that the artist should attamept to move the viewer's eye into and around the canvas. As yet, some art
has attempted to stabilize and centralize the view. (Rothko, for example.) And it is viewed as great art as well.
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