A reference filled with details can bombard our senses so much that we hardly know where to start when choosing it for a painting. Rather than going straight to the canvas or paper, artists whose work we most admire begin
with exploring possibilities and sorting things out somewhere other than their substrate.
There are a number of ways we can get clarity in this nascent phase of beginning a painting, but let's focus this Tip on a blocking-in rehearsal.
That's right: a rehearsal, not unlike musicians and other performers do as an understood routine.
We hear the term "block in" (or block-in) used to describe anything from a rough placement of shapes, values and colors to the artist
putting down first quick impression of their subject. Let's use it here to do the most generalized and quick placement of shapes, values and colors that we can possibly do.
Something like this:
We're not trying to make paintings yet. It's much too early for that. All we are doing is exploring possibilities for big
generalized shape-value-color placement. If we don't know how we want to place it, most likely we won't be able to compose it successfully. But by rehearsing a possible placement without agonizing over it, we're probably going to come up with a good idea.
Perhaps there's a painting you've been wanting to do, but are daunted by all the images and details you will have to deal with. If so, use this exercise to play
with that idea. OR just find a subject that has lots of stuff going on in it.
- Work in either your sketch book or on scrap paper. Use whatever medium you want. Heck, you can even use kid's crayons for this.
- Keep your format no larger than 8" x 10". Even smaller than this is better. My cow rehearsal is about 3.5 x 4 inches and is done in my sketchbook with watercolor. My sand dune rehearsal is 6 x 8 inches and is done with oils on gessoed card
stock.
- Pause here and watch Quick Tip 260 Small Shapes/Big Picture found at Small Shapes/Big Picture
- Now you're ready to boogie: Do a preliminary sketch, following the guidance of Quick Tip 260 (up to frame 9:18). Squint your eyes to blur out the details. Divide the entire scene into no more than 5 shapes, the fewer the better.
- Now. Get your paints ready, locate the largest brush you have that will do the job in the format size you've set up, then set a timer for 5 minutes. That's right, this rehearsal is to take you no more than 5 minutes.
- Squinting, quickly block in the major value/color masses of those shapes.
- Once your time is up, do it again, maybe slightly different this time.
- In fact, if you will rehearse this block-in at least five times, you will know how to get your painting started. Then you can just let the details fill in themselves within their designated space.
Remember when we were children playing in the sand? That was a perfect place to build castles, tunnels, trails or just scoop in our hands and watch as sand sifted
through our fingers. That's a place within from where we can imagine ourselves while doing an exercise like this. It's a carefree place--no political noise, no threats to our well-being, nothing but the now moment. And then the next now moment, and then the one after that, and after that...
HAVE YOURSELVES A LIGHT-HEARTED WEEKEND!
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