Review: Color and Light by James Gurney

I hate being sick. Some artists can draw and paint whilst little microscopic lifeforms devour their bodies, but I can't. It's too damned distracting. I just can't concentrate and I always make horrible color and light choices. So I looked around for a good book to read while I coughed and hacked and I cracked open my copy of Color and Light.

I know, I know, what was I waiting for? To be honest, I was afraid to find out how little I knew. I was afraid I wouldn't understand anything in the book. Well it turns out I know more than I thought and with Mr. Gurney's excellent explanations, I actually understood even the most complex principles in the book.

Mr. Gurney provides the best art instruction anyone will ever get in this book. He nails down everything an artist needs to know, from atmospheric perspective to what oil paints are lightfast. He instructs us on how to organize and harmonize our colors and gives us very simple ways to do it.

This book is far undervalued. For the meager price you get the best of a first-class art school. In fact, you get many concepts and tips that some art schools don't even provide. At the very least, you get the best artwork of James Gurney (Dinotopia) on every page; most of it never-before-seen landscapes that will blow your mind.

This book will not teach you how to draw. It's not that kind of book. This is an essential guide to illustrators and painters already working in the field or just knocking on the door of becoming professionals. The information in Color and Light will fill in the cracks of your artistic knowledge. Art-spackle for your flaws.

Train: Underpainting

Now the fun begins. I've taken the small photo of the train that I did my sketch from and projected it onto my gessoed board (masonite). I then applied a wash of acrylic Burnt Sienna and started laying in the dark areas first. When I paint, I'll be working in the mid-tones first, but for the underpainting I like to establish my darks and lights. This locks into my mind the darker and lighter parts of the painting right at the get-go. It also breaks up the monotony of painting the same thing twice as I'm working on different aspects of the painting in this stage and in the actual painting stage.

I work the underpainting in oils, using Burnt Sienna and Pthalo Blue. I do a two-color underpainting mostly to establish what is going to fade into the background (blue) and what is going to be my focus (brown). For this one, I did some of the blue areas in acrylic first but didn't like how that went so I switched back to oils. I find the underpainting stage is very flexible this way. Also, I may throw in different colors for the underpainting based on the colors I'll be using in the final. The theory here is that the underpainting will influence the final oils and if you use a bright or complimentary color under your final oil, the final oil will pick some of that up and really help the colors stand out (or fade back, as the case may be). It's all about establishing focus.

Going back to the topic of focus, I've detailed and darkened the areas that I want to be the focal point (very front of the train) and left the back areas very loose. This will give me a guide as I'm painting and will be a constant reminder of how and where I want the focus. This is essential because when you paint something with tons of detail, like this train, you tend to go overboard and render everything you can see on your reference photo. This is very bad because it produces a flat painting. I want depth and getting the focus right is one way to nail-down depth.

***

I've seen artists post pics of their palette and they all look nice and orderly. Mine used to look that way, and sometimes it does, but mostly I use any white surface at hand to act as my palette. In this case I grabbed a paper plate! No matter what I use, I always place my colors around the edges with white in the middle. I'll post a pic of my final oil palette when I'm a bit further on the piece. I almost always use those cheap disposable paper palettes you can pick up at the local crafts store. I suppose I'm more concerned with the paints going on the canvas than arranging them on a nice wooden palette. Each to their own!

Train: Pencil Sketch

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I did a pencil sketch of the train before quoting a price. This is a good practice when you haven't drawn something before. It gives you a good idea of what will be involved because a thing often seems simpler in our heads than it does in reality. I discovered whilst doing this sketch that I don't like drawing trains, but I know from experience that you must be enthused about any piece of artwork you're doing. If you aren't enthused or happy about your artwork, it will show. Emotions come through. So I struggled to finde something to get excited about in this train (it wasn't until the underpainting that I really got excited).

 This sketch took me about an hour and a half to do and I was mostly concerned with getting the larger doo-dads down. This also gave me a good idea on what details I didn't need.