创建一个绘画,艺术家使用许多工具和技术创新不仅完成任务,但也使这幅画看起来绝对最好的。纵观历史,科技方面的进步天定义了工具。当刷制造得到完善和某些头发被发现持有漆比别人更好,该工具采用。当合成纤维被创建,该工具进化(更好还是更坏取决于你的偏好在刷)。
当棉能够被织入织物,油画成为技术进步的一天。各种理由被发现并应用于油画绘画之前,艺术品成为,更好。相机的出现使得艺术家画的能力诸如景观在他的工作室而不是位置不关注天气,一天的时间,甚至一年的时间。一个可以继续下去。
然而,我们必须了解,知识是累积的和技术的进步建立在现有的技术但不一定取代并消除它们。因为我们现在有技术才能画出像素,而不是实际的油漆,这并不意味着传统的方法将被替换。相反,在这一天的像素,艺术家的工具盒只是变得更大。
许多艺术家的工作完全电脑,从不打开管油漆或拉伸一块帆布在所有。很多,比如我自己,还是更喜欢雇佣一些较老的技术通过实际涂刷一次美妙的,紧紧地伸展,白色块帆布。虽然数字是完全可以接受的媒体以我的估计,本文处理创造一幅油画在真正使用真实的画布,但在二十一世纪。
我不回避现代工具。我相信,就像历史上的其他创新这些工具可以使用之前的人一起工作,更好的。此外,我相信他们可以使艺术家的任务艰巨,允许更少的快乐,做的画。
在本文中,我将概述我的程序使用相机和电脑作为布局工具显示为什么我相信最终的结果是更好的为它。以下是当前工作的纪事,我最近生产的。
一个星期六的早上很早去年8月,星巴克的承诺和早餐,我有我的妻子,这是罗本,陪我在一百四十五分钟开车去拍摄一个谷仓,已经引起了我的兴趣在早前的旅行。我没有停止和拍照在早些时候,因为我想射它的戏剧性的光线的早晨。
以上是35毫米快照我花了大约7点半,早上和我的老宾得的k - 1000。在看完这些照片,我认为这些引用提供了大量的潜在的优秀的绘画。我可以开始我的画只有这些,但是,我想要更多的戏剧和更多的颜色和不想要做的工作的可能性在我的画布。我想做这样的时间事先我躺在画布上画我将是相当肯定的我,想要什么作为最终产品。
首先,我扫描了快照在平板扫描仪和创建了一个复合的使用Adobe Photoshop 7。当我在Photoshop,我删除了分心的公路,电线杆,路标和房地产标志主要是利用克隆工具,和补丁,修复笔刷工具。我也提高了颜色有点。一旦我做了,我开始意识到天空太无聊你可以告诉第二图像。
我在其他照片我已经拿过去供参考,碰到这些镜头的日落我拍照两年前。现在,请记住,我是一个艺术家,因此我有一个艺术许可证。光源是足够接近在这些,我想我可以做到,所以我再次扫描了快照。
在Photoshop中,我创建了一个复合的云,然后将它们组合,调整我的谷仓景观照明和颜色使它可信。我现在已经准备好开始工作在我的绘画,因为我有一个很好的参考源。解决了视觉问题在Photoshop中给了我自由探究选项而不是摔跤和我引用想弄点,只是在我的脑海里。
然后我打印出来一个11“×17”打印我的彩色打印机(最大大小我的打印机将输出)为参考而画。这是更好的比4“×5”的照片我已经开始与原因很明显:这是很多大的,颜色是接近我想结束,天空是可怕的,它是在一块。
我没有停止在那里为自己提供参考资料,然而,然后我打印出来两个11“×17”块在两倍大小,这样我有我一半的场景一,一半在其他。现在我有一些真正像样的大小的参考材料。然后我伸我的Frederix帆布在白桦木材框架我建造自己衡量20×60”。
然后我扩大我的Photoshop文件实际大小和打印黑白页的整个文档。然后我“瓦片”所有这些页面贴到一起。接下来,我展示几大块的碳纸(那种是一卷)在我的帆布和大致追踪我的图片从我的黑色和白色的“瓦片”输送到我的画布打印。然后我回去用手和增强的任何区域,没有保留足够的细节在跟踪。
曾经我很满意我的绘画,我喷固定它(在我的车库)使用Kamar可行的固定剂允许足够的时间对固着干燥和气味消散。与画布早在我的工作室,我准备开始。云彩和天空应该是宽松的,所以我没有给自己任何铅笔指南在天空区域,我仅仅勾勒出它在与油漆。
一旦我封锁在天空中,我开始画云。
云是粗暴的后,我准备好了开始工作在底部部分。我倾向于油漆从左到右,从上到下,以免太大混乱,因为我瘦我的手在画布很多而画。
看着我的参考,我能够辨别,一个蓝色的色调在我的阴影区域将是可取的,所以我迅速应用一个在绘画的色彩。
我已经包括了上面的图片显示多少图纸细节我离开显示通过底层色。
我曾经申请过最后的油漆我的画底色,我使用一个标准的棉拭子解除一些油漆备份在较轻的地区作为一个额外的指导,当我回到涂掉。
在这一点上,一旦我的画底色已经变得相当干燥(通常是第二天),我开始画在我的颜色在底部部分的绘画。我的工作很快就尽量不去太在意细节。这是在这个阶段我关于自己与粗糙的形状,只有适度的细节。当我穿过整个底部一节中,我将来,在必要时添加细节。
因为我不是一个逼真的画家,有很多细节,我不会出汗了。上面所示的工作,从天空的完成这一点,是在大约两到三个小时,大概四分之一的时间都花在了站回来评估和考虑执行下一个小的区域。
下一节,基本上都在和包括两棵树,代表另一个两个小时的工作。
这张照片显示了水平的“松动”我努力工作当我阻止部分如这片草地上。
然后我起见黄色与无与伦比的“松动”在这一点上。
我经常不集中在一个区域如草直到完成;如果我厌倦工作,我会搬到另一个部分的绘画像谷仓这里。
事情真的开始聚在一起当我开始添加一些阴影一边的谷仓。在后台的山,长满草的地区,这一点在谷仓的完成代表另一个几小时的绘画。
在这一点上,我可能只有几个小时的画做。我足够远,我现在可以开始一起看这幅画作为一个整体,细看价值观和色调,我放下。我怀疑我已经涂绿草地太亮,我想看到一些背景有点朦胧的距离,给人的印象。带着这些想法,我将完成我的一些调整和釉的油漆和温莎牛顿Liquin一旦我完成其余的前景。
接下来,我结束了谷仓和阻塞的主要地区,颜色和形式在长满草的/毛茸茸的面积在右下角的这幅画。这一部分非常宽松而是回来和沉闷地渲染的草叶和秸秆的刷,我创造了这个幻想只有少数地区的小形状和细节。
这是整个事情——“塞拉谷”20×60”
下面是一个镜头,它因为它坐在我的工作室等待被陷害。
总之,我花了大约18.5小时在这幅画,分解如下:
- 旅游的地点和拍摄地点——2.5小时。
- Photoshop的工作——3小时。
- 构建框架和伸展画布——1小时。
- 绘画- 12小时
原文如下：
To create a painting, the artist uses many tools and technological innovations to not only accomplish the task, but also to make the painting look its absolute best. Throughout history, the technological advances of the day defined the tool. When brush making was perfected and certain hair was discovered to hold paint better than others, the tool was employed. When synthetic fibers were created, the tool evolved (for better or for worse depending on your preference in brushes).
When cotton was able to be woven into fabric, canvas became the technological advance of the day. As various grounds were discovered and applied to that canvas prior to painting, the artwork became that much better. The advent of the camera allowed the artist the ability to paint things such as landscapes in his studio rather than on location without concern for the weather, the time of day, or even the time of year. One could go on and on.
We must realize, however, that knowledge is cumulative and advances in technology build upon existing technologies but do not necessarily replace and eliminate them. Because we now have the technology to paint with pixels instead of actual paint, it doesn’t mean that traditional methods will be replaced. Rather, in this day of the pixel, the artist’s tool box has merely become bigger.
Many artists work completely on the computer, never opening a tube of paint or stretching a piece of canvas at all. Many, such as myself, still prefer to employ some of the older technologies by actually brushing paint on a nice, tightly-stretched, white piece of canvas. While digital is a perfectly acceptable media in my estimation, this article deals with the creation of a painting using real oil paint on real canvas, but in the twenty-first century.
I don’t shy away from modern tools. I believe, like other innovations in history these tools can be employed along with prior ones to make one’s work all that much better. Furthermore, I believe they can make the artist’s task less arduous, allowing for more enjoyment in the doing of the painting.
In this article, I will outline my procedure using the camera and the computer as layout tools showing why I believe the end result is better for it. The following is a chronicle of a current work that I recently produced.
Very early one Saturday morning last August, with the promise of Starbucks and breakfast, I got my wife, Roben, to accompany me on a forty-five minute drive to photograph a barn that had caught my interest on an earlier trip. I hadn’t stopped and photographed it on that earlier occasion because I wanted to shoot it in the dramatic light of morning.
Above are the 35mm snapshots I took at about 7:30 that morning with my old Pentax K-1000. After looking at the photographs, I thought these references offered a lot of potential for a good painting. I could have started my painting with just these; however, I wanted more drama and more color and didn’t want to have to do the working out of possibilities on my canvas. I wanted to do it beforehand so that by the time I was laying paint on the canvas I would be fairly sure of what I wanted as a final product.
First I scanned the snapshots on a flatbed scanner and created a composite of them using Adobe Photoshop 7. While I was in Photoshop, I removed the distracting highway, telephone pole, road signs and real estate sign using mostly the clone tool, healing brush, and patch tool. I also enhanced the colors a little. Once I had done that, I began to realize that the sky was too boring as you can tell by the next image.
I searched through other photos I had take in the past for reference and came across these shots of a sunset I had taken pictures of a couple of years ago. Now, remember, I’m an artist, and as such I have an artistic license. The light source was close enough in each of these that I figured I could pull it off, so once again I scanned the snapshots.
In Photoshop, I created a composite of the clouds and then combined them with my barn landscape, tweaking the lighting and color to make it believable. I was now ready to begin work on my painting because I had a great reference source. Working out the visual problems in Photoshop gave me the freedom to explore options instead of wrestling with my references trying to get something that was only in my head.
I then printed out an 11″ x 17″ print on my color printer (the maximum size my printer will output) for reference while painting. This was much better than the 4″ x 5″ photographic prints I had started with for obvious reasons: it was a lot bigger, the colors were closer to what I wanted to end up with, the sky was awesome, and it was in one piece.
I didn’t stop there in providing references for myself, however; I then printed out two more 11″ x 17″ pieces at double size so that I had half of my scene on one and half on the other. Now I had some really decent sized reference material. I then stretched my Frederix canvas over a birch wood frame I built myself which measures 20″ x 60″.
I then enlarged my Photoshop file to full size and printed out black and white pages of the entire document. I then “tiled” all these pages taping them together. Next, I layed a couple of large pieces of carbon paper (the kind that comes on a roll) over my canvas and roughly traced my image from my black and white “tiled” print transfering it onto my canvas. I then went back by hand and enhanced any area that hadn’t retained enough detail in the trace.
Once I was satisfied with my drawing, I spray fixed it (in my garage) using Kamar Workable Fixative allowing plenty of time for the fixative to dry and the smell to dissipate. With the canvas back in my studio, I was ready to begin. Clouds and skies should be loose, so I didn’t give myself any pencil guidelines in the sky area, I merely sketched it in with paint.
Once I blocked in the sky, I began painting the clouds.
After the clouds are roughed in, I’m ready to begin working on the bottom section. I have a tendency to paint from left to right, top to bottom, to avoid making too big a mess because I lean my hand against the canvas a lot while painting.
Looking at my reference, I was able to discern that a bluish hue in my shadow areas was going to be desirable so I rapidly applied an under painting of that color.
I’ve included the above picture to show how much drawing detail I leave showing through the underpainting.
Once I’ve applied the last of the paint to my underpainting, I use a standard cotton swab to lift some of the paint back up in the lighter areas as an additional guide when I return to overpaint.
At this point, once my underpainting has become fairly dry (usually the next day), I begin painting in my color on the bottom portion of the painting. I work fairly quickly trying not to get too caught up in the details. This is the the stage where I’m concerning myself with rough shapes and only a moderate amount of detail. Once I go across the entire bottom section, I’ll come back and add details where necessary.
Since I’m not a photorealistic painter, there’s a lot of detail that I won’t sweat over. The work shown above, from the completion of the sky to this point, was done in about two or three hours of which probably one quarter the time was spent standing back assessing and contemplating the execution of the next small area.
This next section, essentially everything between and including the two trees, represents about another two hours work.
This shot shows the level of “looseness” I try to work at when I’m blocking in a section such as this grassy area.
I then block-in the yellow with a comparable level of “looseness” at this point.
I often don’t concentrate on an area like the grass until it’s fully completed; if I tire of working on it, I’ll move on to another section of the painting like the barn here.
Things really start to come together when I begin to add the details to the shaded side of the barn. The mountains in the background, the grassy area, and this point of completion on the barn represent another couple of hours of painting.
At this point, I probably only have a few more hours of painting to do. I’m far enough along that I can now begin to look at the painting as a whole and scrutinize values and hues that I’ve laid down. I’m suspicious that I’ve painted the grassy area too light, and I’d like to see some of the background be a little hazier to give the impression of distance. With these thoughts in mind, I’ll accomplish some of my adjustments with a glaze of oil paint and Windsor-Newton Liquin once I’ve completed the rest of the foreground.
Next, I’ve finished off the barn and blocked in major areas of color and form in the grassy/brushy area in the bottom right of the painting. This part is pretty loose but instead of coming back and tediously rendering blades of grass and stalks of brush, I’ve created the illusion with just a few areas of small shapes and details.
Here’s the whole thing – “The Sierra Valley” 20″ x 60″
Below is a shot of it as it sits in my studio waiting to be framed.
All in all, I spent about 18.5 hours on this painting, broken down as follows:
Travel to and from the site and photographing the site – 2.5hrs.
Photoshop work – 3hrs.
Building the frame and stretching the canvas – 1hr.
Painting – 12hrs
