Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain, Betty Edwards - Book Review

I was hopeless at drawing just two weeks ago but you'll have seen in my last couple of posts that this has changed and it's all down to this book.  The difference it has made is absolutely shocking.  I'm finding that it also makes me see the world through new eyes, which has to be good news for my painting.

The book is a training course, with exercises.  It's important that anybody reading the book does all the exercises and takes them all seriously.  At the end, you find you can draw and will probably never need to open the book again.  It does look good as a trophy book on the shelf though.

Among all the pseudoscience and exercises, there are really only four lessons in the book.  The first is on perceiving edges and drawing what you see on the "picture plane".  The second is on the familiar subject of negative drawing: drawing the spaces between things rather than the things themselves.  Then the third lesson is on understanding perspective and being able to draw what you see using a pencil at arms length to get the distances and angles correct.  And finally the fourth lesson is on light and shade.  There was a strange chapter that came after this on using the intuitive right side of the brain to solve problems away from the drawing board; there is some truth to this but I thought the "look for the edges and spaces in your business problem" connection was pushing it.

Overall, this book is a miracle that changes me and gets an easy five palettes.  I've not read the equally highly praised Terry Dodson book on Keys To Drawing, so can't yet compare the two.

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Father And Son

That review of Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain is coming soon, I promise!

Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain - Progress Update

I still have one book from my birthday left to read and review.  It's Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain by Betty Edwards.

I'm about 40% of the way through the book and a full review will follow at some point but I thought I'd share these drawings.  The one on the left is a drawing of my hand that Betty asked me to do at the start of the book just four days ago. The other two are drawings of the same hand that I did today.

Absolutely staggering!

DNA

And here's the second of the day.  This is all out abstract.  I cracklepasted a board a couple of days ago (with watercolour ground applied to the non-pasted bits) and stuck a satsuma net bag into the paste, just like I did for Stormy Abstract.  This time, though, the bag was placed down the diagonal of the panting and I was careful to include the end of the bag where all the strands are brought together.  It came out well.

My plan was to make the central band red or violet and the corners green or yellow - complimentary colours and all that.  With plans to use a number of different colours, this wasn't going to be painted in a simple key.  I started by using acrylic inks bring out the cracks.  Indigo, brick red and a bit of gold.  I stayed away from sepia - this painting was only going to be based on primaries.

Then onto the painting.  I was switching backwards and forward between the band and the corners, so I didn't do this in the same order as described.  The corners started with a glaze of Indian yellow, followed by a glaze of French ultramarine.  The middle band was already looking a bit blue/violet from the inks so I started by painting it red.  I used quinacridone magenta, rose dore and (for the first Time in a while) cadmium red to get a bit of variety.  In places I painted French ultramarine over the top to get some purpley bits.

And then we get to the tinkering.  I thought the transition between the band and the corners was a bit too abrupt, so used some quinacridone magenta to try to link the two together.  But then the corners started to look a bit muddy, so I added in some transparent yellow to make them greener again.  Eventually got to something I was happy with.

And then I thought the painting was a bit dull and needed a bit of bright yellow to bring it out of the hole it had dug for itself.  I decided to paint some of the islands and valleys in the crackle paste in a warm yellow colour.  I started doing this with Indian yellow but found it was too transparent and didn't brighten the painting enough.  So then I painted over that first attempt with cadmium yellow, which is opaque, so worked.  These yellow bits look like some sort of strange writing or spider legs.

Finally, I wanted to brighten up the green corners, so spattered on some more cadmium yellow, trying to spatter it away from the central band and at a right angle to it.

And that's how I got to this painting.  My oldest son told me which way around it should hang (I was also thinking landscape format but the other way round).  When pressed to tell me what it looked like, he told me it reminded him of Peter Parker's DNA in a weird scene in the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film, so that's where its name came from.  But it can be anything you want it to be.

I'm pleased with this one.  If there's anything that could be improved, I guess the colours could be brighter but that's being picky.

Schneesturm

Two paintings today, both on cracklepasted board and both with the help of acrylic inks to bring out the cracks.  This is the first.

This one started with quite a boring application of crackle paste, looking like a zigzagging mountain skyline.  Even then, the peak on the right is a bit too childishly pointy.  Oh well.

After the paste had been given a couple of days to dry, I tried using acrylic inks and granulation medium to fill in the cracks.  Ink colours were sepia, indigo and a bit of gold waterfall green.  It's difficult to see any remnants of those last two still there though.

Anyway, on to painting.  I don't claim to have done this one in a particular key, with more than one yellow playing a key role.  The sky was painted first in Indian yellow, left to dry, painted over in quinacridone magenta, left to dry and then painted over in French ultramarine.  But it didn’t look as if it was going to come out in the great colour that I created in Key Street Florida, so I interfered and used a towel to blot out some of bits.

Next up the mountain on the right.  This was painted in French ultramarine and burnt sienna, two colours that mix to a nice grey.  I managed to get the value of this bit right for once, pale and faded.

And then there was the mountain on the left.  I started with thicker versions of the French ultramarine and burnt sienna but wasn't satisfied.  So I threw in some Indian yellow for a bit of light near the top, some transparent yellow for a bit of greenery at the bottom and quinacridone magenta in a few places for variety.  I may even have added in some rose dore.

At the end, I still felt the painting had something missing, so added in some titanium white snow splatters and stopped there.

Overall, I think this works.  The colours in the mountains are good and the cracks add a lot of character.  The snow adds something too, although in the foreground it looks like snow has landed on a camera lens rather than floating through the sky.  The worst bit is probably the low point on the skyline in the middle, where the mountain on the right is nestled inside the one on the left rather than being behind it.  And I guess I could be accused of not pushing myself with this painting - I've played it a bit safe.

Light And Shade In Watercolour, Hazel Soan - Book Review

I feel so guilty for saying this, because I do like all her other books in my collection, but this is a clunker from Hazel.

I was hoping that this book would all be about highlights and shadows and maybe atmospherics.  Something like the James Gurney Book that's my wishlist but a bit more geared to impressionistic painting than to realistic (which I understand to be James' focus).  But it's not.  These areas get some coverage but Hazel's Book is almost entirely about values.  The book's been misleadingly titled in my view.

Still, values are always something I could learn more about.   Can the book teach me anything in this area?  Unfortunately the answer is no.  I know that it's useful to do a pencil sketch beforehand to plan the values.  And I know values are more important than colours.  And that a contract between light and dark is good.  I could go on forever.  This is all stuff that I already know about.  And the book's very repetitious, going over the same points again and again.  It's divided into eight or nine chapters but there's very little distinction between them.

As usual, the artwork in the book is great and inspiring.  But with nothing very useful in the text, it's not as inspiring the artwork in her other books.  Also, unlike that of Tom Hoffmann and Jeanne Dobie in their books, Hazel's artwork is actually too complex to work as examples of great use of values.  To illustrate simple points, you need simple examples, and that's something Hazel doesn't have.  For example, she shows us a huge painting of four cowboys on horses and only talks about what she's done with the shirt that one of them is wearing!  I'll point out once again that I'd still like to see a Hazel Soan book on impressionistic colouring - that's where Hazel's paintings would illustrate the points perfectly.

She's going to hate me for this but I have to be honest and I'm only going to give this book two palettes.

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Making Color Sing, Jeanne Dobie - Book Review

160 pages, paperback.

So what's in this book then?  Well, the first 100 pages are about colour.  What to have in your palette, some colour mixing ideas, using hot and cold colours, complimentary colours and glazing techniques.  The bit on colours in the palette is a bit out of date - there are more transparent blues these days than cobalt and nobody uses alizarin crimson.  So Hazel Soan's Watercolour Rainbow still rules there.  But the rest is....   Let me come back to that later.

Because then the remaining 60 pages are on something else: values and shape-based composition.  It's all still kind of colour related but feels less colour-focused than the first 100 pages.  Still good though.

Most art instruction books tend to have, what, six to ten chapters?  And you read through them and pick up the odd interesting tip here and there.  Maybe there's one chapter you don't learn from but another where you learn something new on every page.  Making Color Sing isn't like those books.  It has 31 chapters and each chapter is effectively one huge tip.  And these are all tips that you want to put into action on your next painting.   It feels like a relentless barrage of learning - the sort of book where you realise half way through that you probably should have been taking notes.  And as well as those 31 huge tips, there are plenty of other useful nuggets within the chapters.  I've had to read it all a second time just to take it all in before I write this review.

This book is so good that it's got me wondering whether I should downgrade some of the five palette ratings that I've given other books.  I found it to be amazing, well worth investing in.  One of the very best books out there.  Just buy it!

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Key Street, Florida

First things first.  This painting was inspired by a photo by Harvey Jones that I saw on the BBC website.  He has a Flickr account at https://www.flickr.com/photos/148416622@N07/ and a website at harveyjonesphotographs.com.  Talented photographer.

Ok, what did I want to do today?  Well, I'm almost through my second read of Making Colour Sing by Jeanne Dobie (review coming soon) and wanted to try out a couple of her ideas.  The first was atmospheric glazes.  You put down an all over yellow glaze, let it dry, do the same with red, let it dry, do the same with blue, let it dry.  And you end up with amazing colours that you can only get this way and would never get by mixing colours in the palette or on the page.

The colours all need to be transparent, non-staining and ideally based on a single pigment for atmospheric glazing to work.  This pretty well restricted me to a purple warm key: Indian yellow, quinacridone magenta and French ultramarine.  Maybe I need to replace rose dore with (non staining) quinacridone red as my warm red if this becomes a regular thing.  So I laid down the three glazing coats after protecting the figure, plank, etc with masking fluid.

The second tip I took from Jeanne was to mix my own greys from the three primaries, so I've only used three colours in the whole painting.  The idea was to use complimentary greys: a yellowish grey against the purple and a blueish one against the orange.

How did it all work out then?  Well, the glazing was a big success.  My technique was different to Jeanne's.  She mixes loads of paint in a paper cup so she can load up a brush and not keep refilling it. And she glazes over with clinical accuracy, like someone cutting the lawn in Wembley stadium.  I didn’t use a paper cup, so had to keep refilling my brush.  And I found myself repeatedly brushing from left to right and right t left, like I was painting a wall.  I also didn’t worry about missing the odd spot due to the texture of the paper, whereas Jeanne insists on covering every spot.  But the result was fantastic.  I've graduated it a bit, with more yellow at the top and more blue at the bottom.  You can't see where the horizon is, but honestly who cares?

The colours in the silhouette were less successful.  I struggled to get the vibrant greys that I wanted.  I've ended with a brown at the bottom, a plain grey at the top and a bit too abrupt a transition between the two.

But I'm pleased with the result.  The background really does sing and make this one a keeper.  It's up for sale.

How To Draw Animals, Jack Hamm - Book Review

It's another Jack Hamm book, a 120-page paperback about drawing animals.

Just like the Jack Hamm book on people and faces, this isn't a book to sit down and read.  It's a reference book to consult as and when I want to draw animals.  But I think this book will be more useful to me than the other.  Whatever animal I want to draw or paint, I can look it up in the index of this book and it will point me towards all the pages throughout the book where that animal makes an appearance.  This even applies to animals like badgers, who only have a single picture on a "here are lots of other animals" page.

There's a general introduction on drawing animals, before we get on to how to draw specific animals.  The cat and horse family get the biggest page count, with bears, elephants and the dog family also getting extended coverage.  For most animals, there's lots of useful information on all the little lumps, divots and creases that make that animal unique.  In places there are simple "start with a square and divide it up like this" techniques that I quite like in moderation.

Overall, it's a useful reference book.  If feels like it should get 3.5 palettes.  I'm going to be mean and round it down to 3.

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