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Posted
Favourite subjects are trees and rocks - because of their solidity, character, and occasionally sinister aspects. Least favourite is water in any form, because it won't stay still; and I don't enjoy painting machinery, having not much interest in representing it. I'd paint machinery if you paid me, but water has to feature in landscape at some point, and I live next to the sea so feel I must paint it, which indeed I'm currently doing. I always approach it with trepidation - perhaps that's the problem.
Posted
At the moment my favourite things are animals. I also love painting flowers, single flowers usually in close up and I've painted loads of them using watercolour! But now I've discovered coloured pencils, I don't think they lend themselves so much to flower work - I need more practice - but I'm on a learning curve which I'm enjoying, who'd have thought there was so much to learn about boring old coloured pencils?
Posted
My favourite is the human form and in particular the face, because everyone's character is different and it can convey different emotions and movement We read the body and face better than anything else because that is what our mind is evolved to do for instance we can see if somebody across the room is looking at our mouth or our eyes because it is so important to read another's intent and from an artistic point of view there are many complexities of form and challenges and choices to be made in rendering another's physical personality.
I would say still life is my least favourite, I won't say that I won't every paint one (I will have to at some stage because I believe in trying everything twice...if the first time I dislike it I will do it once more to confirm) but it is meaningless other than a technical exercise to me unless it is diagrammatic of an object like a watch or something that needs illustration for a purpose.
Posted
My favorite is people and faces, they are all alike to some degree, but then they are not alike...infinite variety. I like everything about painting people...body language, gesture, expression etc. Animals are OK too. I'm 50/50 on abstract, I admire much of what I see, but haven't a clue what I'm doing when I try one. That gives me no real basis to judge the result. Least favorite...buildings, landscape, still life, flowers. I will paint these if it's necessary...set dressing for a painting of a person.
I said buildings, landscape, still life, flowers...that accounts for probably two thirds of the gallery contents, which suggests I don't like two thirds of the gallery. Luckily, just because I don't like PAINTING them, doesn't mean I don't like looking at them. I can admire work that I don't, or can't paint.
Posted
Greens - now look 'ere: buy my little e-book - it's about oil, but it touches on greens because so many people have trouble mixing them. But let me help anyway.....
There are thousands of different tones and colours of green - most of them can be mixed, some are beyond the capacity of man-made paint and we have to accept that nature always beats us to it. But you've got tube greens such as Sap Green (go for the one that claims it's permanent), Emerald Green (quite good for the jungly greens, and anyway there are several different versions of it), acrylic Sap Green from Winsor and Newton, which is nothing like the traditional hue of Sap Green and rather attractive, Perylene Green, Pthalo Green, Viridian, Cinnabar Green. And then there are thousands of greens you can mix yourself from blue and yellow - yes, thousands. Lemon Yellow and Cobalt Blue; or Ultramarine; or Pthalo or Prussian Blue; Cadmium Yellow with a range of blues; Raw Sienna or Yellow Ochre or Mars Yellow with any number of blues, or with Viridian - you can do an awful lot with Viridian and Burnt Sienna for foliage. You can get a deep green by mixing Prussian or Pthalo Blue with Burnt Sienna, or even Burnt Umber - perfect for leaves in deep shadow.
What you always need to remember is that generally, tree greens, bush greens, anything that grows on a woody stalk, TEND to be darker than grass-green - if you paint your trees with Lemon Yellow and Cobalt or Pthalo Blue, for instance, there's a danger that the painting will look as if someone had taken a bucket of lawn clippings and threw them at the tree hoping they'd stick - which they might, but you'll regret it if they do: you don't want grass-green trees, other than in very rare circumstances - trees have depth, to start with: painting everything in a high key isn't going to represent them; mix your reds and browns into these greens, mix them into the paint to make darks. And don't forget a) the visible branches, especially when they catch the light; and b) the 'sky holes', which show light through the foliage.
Trees aren't difficult if you practise them. I'm evangelical about this, and apologize for disrupting the thread, because there is SUCH fear of green, and there doesn't need to be. Come on, Jen and Ellen - have a bash. It's just fear that's holding you back, and I know that because I have similar problems with seas, of all things - painted a dreadful picture of the sea which I've whipped off my gallery. So I'll get stuck into that, while you two commit yourself to the greening of your paintings.
Posted
I'm a bit of a Jack of all trades (and yes, master of none) when it comes to drawing and painting. I love painting motion in figures, dancers etc, sea and boats/ships and landscapes best, and probably flora and fauna worst. ( I confess to not being very good at those and really appreciate the work of others who are) . Not a still life specialist either, but beyond that I'll have a go at most things. I regard it all as a challenge not to be afraid of and am a firm apostle of the "paint what you see" dictum. I'm not really a fan of photographic art, needing what I do to be mine (I paint renditions of other/famous works fort practise.) and individual. I love experimenting with colour schemes and am not the best student of the Theresa Green Academy. 😆
Jim.
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