Maggie on Photographic References, Part II

First things first. Thank you first of all to Ginger, who only peed in the house twice in the last week and who posted on my blog to inform the world of my illness. Thanks second to everyone who wished me well in the comments and by e-mail -- I think it helped, because I'm definitely human again today.

Second of all, I wanted to point out that the Apple Tree in Springfield, Virginia, is hosting another two day colored pencil workshop with me on April 5-6 and there are a still a few slots left. Last month we had a full house, so book early if you can. We'll be getting 3-4 colored pencil pieces done from start to finish in those two days and it's a lot of fun.

Third of all, I won first place in the drawing category at the Fredericksburg Fine Arts Exhibit with my drawing, "Victoria in Spring" (at left). Not to brag . . . um, but yes. To brag.

So I wanted to follow up on my photographic post from last week. The one on making art from photos and how to fix said photos that was so rudely interrupted by my throat and sinuses being torn out by small elves and used for target practice.

As I mentioned in the last post, there are seven major items I expect to be missing most photographs. Every photograph I use as a reference will be missing at least one of these components and I'll need to make up for it in another way.

• Good lighting
• Interesting composition
• Appropriate background
• Accurate Color
• High level of detail
• Needs to be combined with the subject of another photo
• My unique artistic vision

And I'll add one more, which was pointed out both in a comment and in an e-mail and is very true, especially for equestrian artists or artists that do a lot buildings or tall items

• Lack of distortion

If I addressed how to fix all of these with nice Maggic examples, the post would become roughly the length of the movie Hidalgo and we would all be here all night. Much as I know that you enjoy my company, I think that would be a bit excessive, so I'm going to break it into three posts and hope I don't come down with chicken pox or something before the next one.

So tonight I'm going to write about how I adjust for lighting and composition. We'll hit the rest of the list on Wednesday and Friday. And questions, I think, on Friday, because I've got quite a backlog now.

ADJUSTING LIGHTING IN PHOTOS

First, let's talk about what counts as "bad lighting." There's all sorts of terrible lighting that one can encounter in the world of photography, but for me, there is only one unforgivable curse (hey! Harry Potter reference! I'm socially aware!) in lighting.

Flash. I cannot say this enough: Flash is a tool of the devil. Don't do it. It gets rid of every contour in every face in every person ever. Did you ever wonder why your driver's license photo never looked like you? Hello! Flash. Now, if you go to a nice posh portrait studio, they'll use flash -- but you better believe they'll have lit the $%^& out of one side of you so that you still have one side of your face lightly shadowed.

To demonstrate the evils of flash, I've taken the liberty of using two photos from my dear friend Helene, who is also a talented artist and possessor of Ginger's very spoiled sister. Photo on left? Flashed. See the way that it flattens everything? There's a weird ghost shadow behind her caused by the flash that would only happen in real life if she was watching a nuclear explosion. There's some interest in the photo because she's got fun colors . . . but can you imagine doing a portrait from that if she was all white? Most. Boring. Portrait. Ever.

Okay. Photo on right. No flash. Strong natural light from left of photo. Look at those lovely contours and imagine what you could do with a portrait of that if you decreased the contrast of those shadows slightly and threw color into them. Say it with me: ahhhhhhh.

Long story short: I would never do a portrait from a flashed photo. Ever.

Problem: Flash
Solution: a) Secure a non-flashed photo from the client or take them yourself. b) find a photograph of a similar animal/ person/ setting with good lighting and apply that lighting to your original image when you work it yourself. (If you do preliminary sketches, which I highly recommend, you can combine the two things in that sketch). Notice the pic of Ginger above. Different color, but similar facial structure and hair pattern. She'd work fine as a lighting pattern for a portrait of Helene's dog if all I had was the flashed photo.


ADJUSTING COMPOSITION IN PHOTOS

This is actually a fun one, because for every image, there are ton of different ways to approach composing it. There are many, many composition rules and guidelines that you can follow to give you a more subconsciously appealing piece of art, but when it comes down to it, I only follow three reliably.

NOTE TO ALL THOSE WHO LISTEN SLAVISHLY TO MAGGIE:

Composition rules are meant to be broken. Just learn them first, okay, before you break them? So now, Maggie's three quick and dirty rules to composition.

• I never center anything. So that means no subject dead center in the middle of the composition (notice how Victoria in Spring is weighted to the left) and I never chop a painting in half by putting the horizon line in the center. Centering an image instantly makes it more static -- dead. Check out this photo I took of the breathtakingly eerie marshes near Tapphannock, Virginia. The one on the left has the horizon line perfectly centered. Blech. Looks like something my 3 year old drew. Good for a 3 year old. Bad for someone who has conquered puberty. Now take gander at the one on the right. Same photo, cropped to allow for more sky and putting that landscape line on the lower third. See how much more impressive that is?
• I put the focal point on one of the "sweet spots." What, pray tell, you ask, is a sweet spot? Imagine dividing your image into thirds horizontally and then again, vertically. What, you can't? Not to worry, I've already done it for you on my painting "The Horses of Roan." Every place where two of the lines intersect is a "sweet spot." Put your focal point (that would be your subject's eyes, dummy) and you'll make magic. Experiment with this rule and you'll see what I mean -- it'll make a huge difference to your work if you don't already use it.
• No kissing. I don't mean the clients. Though I don't kiss them, either. And I try not to hug, if I can help it, as I've noted before. I'm talking about kissing edges. I take great pains to never have the edge of a major object touching the side or touching another object. Far better to overlap. Otherwise, it's just . . . weird. It creates a sharp angle that instantly draws the eye, and that's not a good thing. You want to draw attention to your focal point, not to the edge of your piece. Check out my photo of oranges, for instance. The pretty one on the left sits in a sweet spot away from the edge. Now check out the version on the left, cropped so that the edges kiss. Ick! Disconcerting and unprofessional looking.

So:

Problem: Uncropped photo/ bad composition.
Solution: Crop in a photo editing program or in your sketch book according to composition rules until you find a crop that you like.



Okay. Thus ends post 1! Whoo, I told you it would be long! Questions? Comments? More next post!

Planning & Painting

The Puppies! Three weeks old and getting terribly cute and friendly . . . due to various life crises on the part of some of the buyers, there are now four of them available, so let me know if you're in the market. :D

Last week (before my life got slightly crazy with going to the zoo, puppies, mid-life crisis, and other indoor sports), one of my blog readers asked a good question. She asked:

Dear most wonderful Maggie (okay, I made that part up, but the rest is true):

You can create these beautiful, big, well-composed paintings fairly quickly (at least it seems quick from the rate of posts) and I'm wondering what kind of prep work you do. I find it way easier to work on something once the painting is underway - the planning stage is where I procrastinate.

Do you work from well-composed photos, or do you sit down and work out compositions first? How long does that take you? I saw your WIP posts of the big horse - do you do that level of planning for every painting? How much time do you spend planning out focal points and contrasts?

This is a question I get a lot at my workshops. Artists tend to be perfectionists, and insecure ones at that. Combine the two traits and you end up with paintings that take 2.5 years to complete.

I am no exception, but I've come to grips with both -- most of the time. Basically I've given myself permission to create a crappy work, because I'll just do another one. You'd be surprised how freeing it is. And you'd be surprised how much more you improve when you paint 300 imperfect paintings a year instead of 5 perfect ones.

That aside, onto the Maggic of it. How long it takes me, and what exactly falls into the definition of "it."

(by the way, everything I'm about to say applied to my acrylic paintings but not necessarily to my colored pencil pieces -- which are a bit harder to do fast that large).

PAINTING: "Dusk"
SIZE: 16 x 20"
MEDIUM: Acrylic
TIME SPENT: 3 hours

First of all, I want to say that part of why I'm so fast is by virtue of creating a painting or drawing every single day for two years. It means that a lot of the prep work becomes automatic. What I used to agonize over, like choosing a good crop, now takes five minutes. Figuring out values and adjustments from the photo used to take another three or for years. And then color choices? Oh man. I remember a simple 8 x 10" colored pencil piece that took me two weeks of work, off and on. Now that piece would be done in 2 or 3 hours. So keep in mind when looking over these steps that, like everything else, practice makes perfect. Or at least close enough to perfect that no one else will notice.

So. First step is choosing the photo. Or taking the photo, depending on your subject. (Or setting up your subject if you're working from life) I really recommend taking your own photos as practice for building good compositions. A good rule of thumb is that crap photos make crap drawings, at least until you're ace at manipulating them. If you're unsure if you can pull it off, stick to good photos with nice lighting. Do not agonize over this step. Remember, your painting will take you 3-4 hours, so you can always do another if it didn't turn out perfectly (and they never do).

Step two is cropping and composition. Composition is a wonderfully complicated subject that I didn't care about at all when I first began. I didn't understand it was important. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that composition makes a huge difference. Take a look at the first photograph -- well, the second. Not the cute puppies. The shot of the Irish town. Then take a look at the painting. The uncropped photo shows you a beautiful town, but it's not as pleasing to the eye as the cropped painting. For any photo, there are usually dozens of options for cropping. Pay attention to the basic compositional rules and then pick the one that pleases you the most. Not your husband, dog, friend, artist partner . . . you. Because cropping and composition will become part of your style.

Now there are a lot of different composition rules, and I can't tell you why they work, but the ones that I consider pretty crucial are:

• You should have a focal point.
• The focal point will generally be the point of greatest contrast -- if it's not in the photo, it behooves you to make it thus in the drawing or painting
• Divide your canvas into thirds. Your focal point should lie roughly on one of the intersections of these lines (see how the road vanishes on one of the thirds? That's my focal point. And the front car lies on another one)
• Don't divide your painting in half. Your horizon line should lay on one of the thirds
• Every corner of the painting should be different.

Every other compositional element is negotiable. I play with the photo in one of my photo editing programs for about five minutes before I begin the painting. If it's a complicated image or I'll be cobbling together a lot of reference material, I do a preliminary drawing, like the one I did for the colored pencil piece I'm working on today. In that case, I do a very brief 2 minute sketch with only three values to work out where everything goes and what problems I might encounter. I do up to four of these sketches if a piece really stumps me. If I can't make it look clear in a three-value sketch format, I pitch the painting and start over.*

*by the way, I'm getting very close to the end of my sketch book and I'll be drawing a name out of my blog-subscribers to give it too -- so subscribe if you want a chance at winning it


Step Three is slopping down the actual paint. This used to take me longer as well, until I did the John Singer Sargent project in January of this year. Sargent told his students to slop down paint with confidence instead of dragging a dry brush across the canvas, showing the world how you hesitated. With that in mind, I work quickly when I paint. I don't do a preliminary drawing on the canvas. Instead I block out the rough shapes with a warm color for the foreground shapes and a cool color for the background shapes. This takes literally ten or twenty minutes, because I'm talking very rough and very ugly.

I let that dry for about a half hour while I mix up big globs of paint, and then I start putting down more realistic colors. With each step, putting down more realistic colors, I refine shapes and tighten up details. This process take me about two hours, maybe three if you throw in a half hour here and there for drying time.

Really the secret is not to second-guess yourself and to start rough and refine as you go along. Don't waste time doing a detailed drawing on your canvas. It'll work itself out. (Well, if it's a portrait, you might rethink this. People tend to like their portraits to look like the subject).

Secrets of the World Revealed . . . Sort Of

"Checking out the Competition" - 4 x 6" colored pencil on Bristol paper.
Copyright 2007 Maggie Stiefvater.
Click here to bid.

Y'all should be flattered. I spend 2.5 hours today working on creating a detailed work in progress for you guys, pausing every so often to take photos of the wondrous maggic that is my technique, imagining your shining faces when you opened up your inboxes to find the wonder of this illustrated education.

Except my photos sucked.

I didn't have enough light in my studio for my camera to take nice pictures so I got a bunch of weird-colored things with no real value, like a tartan-colored possum.

But I'll throw them up for you anyway, to make of them what you will. Um, good luck.