Why is painting difficult in the first place?

Drawing

There are two approaches to drawing (at least):

Constructive drawing

where the the artist builds a scene from component parts.

Replicative drawing

where a visible scene or a reference image is captured and reproduced based on how it actually looks. The component parts and mechanics of the scene can be disregarded in favour of the final view.

Does anyone know better terms for these? Perhaps conceptive and perceptive.

These two modes are respectively epitomised by:

• the computer rendering of three dimensional models
• photography.

Constructive drawing

To draw well with the constructive approach the artist must know a lot about the objects in the scene. They need to know the relative sizes and proportions of the objects and their component parts. They need to be able to mentally manipulate the parts and imagine how they will look from a particular orientation, where the lighting is coming from, how it will interact with each part and what shadows will be cast. They may need to understand perspective and foreshortening, loss of contrast and definition with increased distance and more.

The advantage of this approach is that a scene can be constructed from imagination.

The disadvantage is that it is hard to do well.

Worse, it is extremely easy to do it very badly.

It is easy to fall into drawing symbols representing the objects rather than the objects themselves. A child's drawing might show a person as a body with arms and legs and a head. The drawing represents what a person means to them rather than what they actually look like.

There is some great art that uses such symbolism and that would be fine if that was what I wanted. But it isn't.

A more sophisticated artist may use methodologies, such as perspective grids or the Loomis method for constructing sketches of the human head.

These are useful but it is difficult to put realism or character into such rule based drawings.

Replicative drawing

Hetch Hetchy

Forget about the drawing the concept of the thing and draw the appearance of the thing.

Using the replicative approach the artist does not need to know anything about the objects in the scene other than their relative locations and colours. Indeed it can be desirable for an artist to deliberately repress anything they know about the objects contained in the view in order not to fall into any traps of the constructive approach.

Draw what you see, not what you know to be there.

Techniques for this include imagining construction lines through the scene, measuring relative proportions with your out stretched thumb, reproducing the image upside down, and squinting a lot.

Think of colour first, subject last. Everything begins as an abstraction of colour. Sergei Bongart

The replicative approach requires the scene be visible to the artist (or at least have been visible if they have a great memory). The artist must study a the scene or reference in detail but they do not need to understand it.

A game console constructing a scene needs to understand its component objects but a camera capturing a scene does not.

Drawings can be a mix of the two approaches. Sometimes without the artist realising. This can be a good thing but it can also lead to disconnections. A modelled object, perhaps with incongruous, contradictory lighting, might be included in a scene and look like something cut out from a different picture.

On top of both approaches an artist may strive to depict the essence of a scene. The impressionists for example were interested in how a scene felt as well as how it looked.

But that is more about art. For now I am only interested in drawing and painting.

Colour judgement

A and B are the same colour #787878
©1995, Edward H. Adelson

Judging the colours in a scene is extremely difficult. There are so many optical illusions which can fool us into thinking that the same colour, repeated in different situations, can look wildly different in each. The lighting plays as great a part on the perceived colour of an object as its underlying local colour. If not more so.

A common technique is to block out the rest of the scene by looking through a hole in a card, a colour isolator, at an area in question. YouTuber Mark Carder uses a little colour checker thingy which also has a place to put his paint mix on to make comparisons.

Even discounting optical illusions it's still hard to judge whether two colours match. Getting them a little wrong doesn't seem such a big deal individually, case by case, but can make the final image look odd for reasons that can't always be easily fathomed.

The constructive and replicative approaches mentioned for drawing above are also relevant for colour.

When using the constructive method the colour used might be the known intrinsic or local colour of an object, green for a leaf, yellow for a lemon, but with added modifications for the angle and colour of the lighting, and the atmospheric effects multiplied by its distance etc. Tricky but not unachievable.

For the replicative approach the colour is what it is. The perceived colour is what it is too. There is no need to understand why that green looks blue in that context, just match the green and use it.

If that green looks like blue in the view then using paint of that green will look just like that blue in the painting.

If you think your colour judgement is good then you might like to try this little colour game later. Not now. I need you to focus here.

Colour mixing

Once we have determined what colour we want we still have the problem of mixing it from our available palette.

The difficulties are compounded by all the common misconceptions about colour theory. Don't get me started on the ancient lies about primary colours. Yet.

Beware that the term colour theory is used both for colour perception and and colour aesthetics. Two very different topics.

When I started all this I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. This problem was the main driver for me when I started writing the helper program.

Paint technicalities

It turns out that it's not so difficult once we get to know which experts to trust and which to ignore.

There are a lot of confusing rules which are often stated without explanation.

They make more sense once we understand the whys and wherefores (usually). All these and more will be dealt with properly later.

Always paint the darks colours first.

This seems to stem from it being easier to paint opaque colours over transparent ones. Commonly, light colours are opaque and darker colours are transparent. It’s usually easier to lighten a colour than to darken one.

But it ain't always so.

Darks-first does give a painting some shape from the outset though.

I quite like working outwards from the mid tones, extreme lights and darks last.

If you begin with the middle-tone and work up from it toward the darks so that you deal last with your highest lights and darkest darks, you avoid false accents. John Singer Sargent

Paint fat over lean.

A rule for oils (mostly). This stems from the need to paint slower drying paints over faster drying ones in order to prevent cracking. Add a little solvent to lower layers to make them dry fast. Add a little oil to upper layers to make them dry slower. Alternatively add something like Liquin to all the layers to make it flexible and crack resistant.

I'm not too worried about the longevity of my paintings. They are not that good anyway.

Oils are difficult.

Oil paints are unfairly maligned. They are not so difficult nor are they inherently toxic nor do they smell when wet.

Though admittedly some of the pigments in them are toxic. The same pigments are used in other paint formats such as acrylics or watercolours but it is always the oil paints that are singled out for condemnation. Perhaps it is because they are an older format and in the past even more poisonous ingredients were used and the fears linger on.

Oils also release some toxic chemicals such as benzene as they dry. Not very much, but you shouldn't hang around for extended periods where oil paintings are drying unless there's adequate ventilation. Don't leave them drying in your bedroom.

And flammable. Spontaneous combustion of discarded drying oil soaked rags is not unknown.

It is also true that some of the popular solvents used with them are toxic and/or smelly. But we don't have to use any of those. There are alternatives for most.

Acrylics on the other hand dry much too fast for me. I can't find them relaxing. They also tend to get darker as they dry and their milky binder clears. It's not a huge change but still…

Water miscible oils are my current favourites. Best of both worlds.

You shouldn't use black.

This seems to be a confused, multi-part claim with conflated histories.

Some state it doesn't exist in nature.

Er,

a) yes it does,
b) there are situations black paint is still not black enough. Blackest black.

Some say you shouldn't have pure black anywhere in a painting as it can be deadening, harsh or flat.

Using black as a shadow colour can certainly look odd. Shadows are usually lit indirectly by scattered light and are rarely totally black. But sometimes they are. In tenebrism and chiaroscuro (pronounced: key-are-ruh skoo-roh) black can be used to dramatic effect.

Monet never used black.

But then he didn't paint dramatic candle lit interiors much either.

Using black to create a shading sequence from a pure, saturated colour can make the rendered object look awkward, flat and dirty. But shading sequences can be made with black and white for less saturated local colours.

Others state you shouldn't have black on your palette at all.

They are just wrong. I'll explain why later. At great length. With diagrams.

Although it is perfectly true there is no black in the solar spectrum visual phenomena are not entirely made up of light. There is the negation of light -- darkness. There are places where the light does not fall, although there is probably no shadow so deep but some light is not reflected. These omissions on the palate Rob most of the impressionist pictures of much of the dignity associated with really fine colouring. Harold Speed

Paint application

Again, not actually all that difficult. Once we know the right colours and the right places we can just splodge them in.

In some formats, where the individual brush strokes remain visible, this is the one place where practice is required as well as understanding.

But it's good to know what we are doing, about stroke economy and using stroke direction to lead the viewers eye, before churning out hundreds of practice studies.

Areas of flat homogeneous colour can look odd or dull in some styles of painting. Some variation of colour can add interest.

Some paints dry faster than others which can put us up against the clock. We need to plan our workflows to allow us to cope. Choosing the right brush sizes makes a fair difference.

Overworking an area can make it look awful. Mix the colours on the palette not the canvas.

But these are all minor hurdles that are easily cleared with a liffle forethought.