I was approached last week about writing a piece for an artist friend of mine. Her name is Kelly and he has a blog, much like mine, in which she posts paintings that she does. Unlike me she dishes out philosophy, and advice, and other helpful soul searching stuff. We have talked often about how we paint and how we see a picture and interpret it so differently. She had the idea to formalize how we see and paint a picture. If you pop over to her website, you will see that her painting is drastically different than mine (http://lovelylightandpeace.blogspot.com). At any rate, I thought it was a brilliant idea. Kelly found a picture and away we went.
What follows are my initial thoughts on how to approach this painting, then her thoughts on how to approach the painting. In a later blog, I'll post how our paintings turned out. I hope that Kelly asks other artists to formalize how they approach this painting, and can post them to continue with her idea.
Michael's Thoughts
Beautiful surfer girl, beautiful tropical beach. How would I paint this? What should I focus on? Here are my initial impressions of this painting.
1. Lighting. It must be overcast because there are no harsh shadows.
2. Colors. cool in the background, warm in the front.
3. Focus. Obviously the woman is the focus of this painting. The ocean behind her is out of our field of focus, and if you notice, so are her feet and surfboard.
Ok, here is my plan of attack. Lets start with a good drawing. I don't like to get too detailed, but since there isn't a great deal of detail in this picture, we can go with a nice outline of the girl, the horizin and the sand.
I'm going to start with the sky and the water in the back of our painting. The waves aren't just plain old blue. From what I can see there are 3 distinct colors of blue. The water beyond the waves is the coldest blue, and by coincidence or happenstance the cold blue seems like its far away from you when you look at it. The water in front of the main wave has a very slight pink tint too it. That pink carries forward until there is just a splash of darker blue just off the left arm of our surfer.
Im going to start in the upper left hand corner and paint down to my horizon line with a very faint pale, cold blue - probably a very light turquoise. I'll let the paint dry a bit, then paint down to the beach. Again, I'll be using a fairly pale color, and as I get closer to the beach, I'll tint my blue with a little pink or purple. Just off her left arm, I'll put in a little spike of the original blue. While the paint is still wet, I'll go back and lift out the waves. For me, I'll try to lift them out in the shape of the wave. I don't know if you will ever be able to tell in the final painting, but I think that if I do it, not only am I thinking of the shape, but I may miss a little paint that will remain to show the shape of the wave. Be sure to put a little burnt sienna where the wave it breaking. I don't know if its a reflection of the sand or maybe some seaweed, but the color will help define the wave from the water behind it.
My next move will be on to the sand. Again, there isn't a lot of detail, so there isn't going to be too much to do. Some nice blending color and move on. Given that in the painting you can see that the sand grains seem to be quite large, you could splatter a lot of paint on the paper using a toothbrush or something similar. But I think for the purpose of the painting that will be unnecessary. Get a good mix of yellow ochre and burnt sienna, you'll use both of them. The trick will be to get the paint to flow from one color to another without making the sand look blocky, striped, or blotchy. I'm going to use a mix of the two, heavy on the ochre in the distance and the same mix, more 50/50 in the front. I want just enough variation throughout to have a little interest. Where you can see impressions in the sand, I'll be using the same color I used in that area, only just a bit stronger, to make the mark. Remember, since we don't have the sun out, we don't have deep shadows, only darkening of the colors that are around us.
So we have put paint to paper in two stages, one to put on the water, one the sand. Now is where we make or break tha painting, our surfer. Take a deep breath.
Here is the thing I think about her. She is all shading. Her body tone is pretty even. So, we are going to paint her all at once, no stopping. Paint her face, shoulders, back, arms, butt, legs, and feet all the same color. Do it quickly. We need to work with wet paper to get the shading right. Whatever tone you used, darken it. touch her right shoulder, left arm, left flank, right hip, back of left knee, and everything on the underside of her left leg and right shin. Did it? Awesome. Before we go on, go back and redarken between her left arm and her body, and a few spots around her knee. The only trick was to do it when the paper was just barely damp so the color wouldn't run very far, but would give the indication of a little roundness. With the paint dry, we can go back with some black and paint her swimsuit on. There really was no reason to paint it on before, the black will cover everything underneath it. That leaves us just two things, her hair and her feet.
Find whatever you think is the lightest color of her hair and paint the sold mass of her hair that color. Pull out from that all the tendrils of hair coming down her back and the few in the wind. Now let it dry a bit. Not too much, we still need a little workability. Darken you color and paint the lowligths in her hair. Don't get too bogged down on it being exactly right, the viewers eye will fill in a lot of the detail.
Now the foot. Go back to our skin color, and darken it just ever so slightly. paint between her toes and just a very tiny bit on the foot behind her toes.
Sign that baby, you are done. How does it feel? Pretty good, right? And I bet your painting looks pretty good too. We broke it down into 3 easy steps and tackled them one at a time. In so doing, we were able to focus on each one and give it just the care it needed. when it all came together at the end it was like "boom." Congratulations.
Kelly's Thoughts
When I want to paint something...and lately it has been mostly the human form....I find something that interests me by pose and shape....and what I've learned....is that I decide on things by the cool shapes and angles I see....I don't normally pay much attention to color....initially....
I look at this picture and I think....cool perspective....that would be fun to draw....and then...later after I draw it...I'll try to figure out some color to put in there....
the thing is...I may find a cool pose...and go to my box of watercolor pencils...and watercolor paint and grab the first thing that catches my eye....not really adhering to the colors I see in the picture...but maybe the color that grabs me when I go searching....
this is the usual way I approach things I want to paint. I mostly react to light vs dark...and the contrast creates shapes...forms....and cool forms and the way angles direct movement draw me in and around the pictures...this is the first thing that I notice...and this is the first thing I want to tackle...I want to pour all over the angles....and shapes....and then I want to play around and get creative with the colors afterwards.
so...for me...I'd start drawing the woman...first.
I'd start at the shoulders....and follow down the arm....that is the very first place I'd go....and follow the curves around to her legs.....and I'd try to figure out her foot. and then I'd go back up and figure out the other side....as I meet up with the other shoulder....
I'd probably do a quick wash of background....and let the color bleed between sand and water, for fun.
as far as specific colors....I would use....probably my lunar blue and ultramarine blue...but light light....washes...with a lot of water....I generally use a lot of water with a little color. Also....some yellow ochre for the sand...with tiny spaces of some type of warm brown...with the same warm brown for the body...but with splashes of warm orange....and maybe even some bits of red....with naples yellow....or something light for the lighter parts of her body.
I'd also start to squint...and see the lights and darks of the contours of her body.....so I could push those even further....squinting helps you see the contrast better.....and in this pic...the contrast isn't as sharp between lights and darks...so yeah....
and voila. that's what I'd do.
I really just started with slapping some paint on, trying to block in some color, Then I remember that I stink at painting hair, and thought I should try somehow to make the hair more realistic that in paintings past. I can't tell you how many strokes I have in the hair on these two. And I'm no where near done!! 
