Two Ways to Successfully Lead the Viewer

'Walk with Me'         16x20           pastel          ©Karen Margulis
available $250

I knew this. But for some reason it gave me an AHA Moment when I was thinking about it this morning. It is something I do on purpose for every painting and having to verbalize it made it clear! I love when that happens. I'd like to share my moment with you! It has to do with the composition or design of our paintings. This is the topic we are exploring over on my Patreon page. 

One of the important goals of a painting is to give the viewer and interesting visual journey. We need to give them a way to enter the painting, show them around, show them what is important and have them leave satisfied.  How do we accomplish all of this?

We need to PLAN for it and think about leading our viewer both in the underpainting....what we put underneath, AND what we put on top, or those final layers and marks.

Painting with a Plan.....Value Thumbnail and Notan

• Today's painting was one of my Florida demos. I began the painting with a plan. I did a value thumbnail and a Notan. I thought about what I needed to do to hold the shapes together and guide the eye from the foreground up to and behind the tree. What would I put UNDERNEATH? I added a dark value pathway that would be under the grass but would subtly pull the eye back. I added theses dark shapes in the underpainting.

• As the painting developed I added AREAS OF CONTRAST to attract and pull the eye around the painting. I used hard edges against soft, bright colors surrounded by duller colors, dark shapes of tree trunks against the light of the sky. The flowers also became little stepping stones into the painting.

Armed with this information makes it harder to get lost in the progress of a painting. I am much more likely to have a successful result.

Visit  www.patreon.com/karenmargulis  for more!

How to Find Simple Shapes in a Painting

'Cliff Edge'       5x7       pastel       ©Karen Margulis
available $75

Big. Simple. Shapes. I repeat these three words when I start any new painting. It is so easy to get caught up in the details. Especially with some of my favorite subjects. Flowers-filled meadows are full of 'stuff'.  It is challenging to simplify and suggest but it all begins with big simple shapes.

Block in a painting with just a few big shapes for a stronger painting. 

Squinting is a very good way to simplify a scene whether you are painting on location or from a photo. Squinting removes a lot of the detail and color allowing you to see the masses of light and dark.  Another good way to see big shapes is to use a scrap piece of glassine or tracing paper.

Glassine is just right for obscuring details. It isn't clear yet it isn't quite opaque either. Place a piece of glassine over your reference photo and it is like looking at the photo with really dirty glasses. Like squinting it allows you to only see the big shapes of light and dark.

For today's painting my concept was the contrast and drama of the setting sun illuminating the flowers at the edge of the cliff leaving much of the hillside in shadow. I used a piece of glassine to create a black and white notan thumbnail.  The glassine was helpful in allowing me to decide what needed to be left in the shadows and what areas should be light.

So don't throw out those scraps of glassine paper. Save them for help with shape finding!  Glassine paper is useful to cover finished pastel paintings. I keep a roll handy and cut pieces as I need them.

My daily 30in30 oil painting '  field study'      5x7    oil

How to Use a Notan in an Unexpected Way

'Magic in the Air'             9x12           pastel         ©Karen Margulis
purchase here $150

It's a powerful tool that we all should embrace. Thumbnail sketches done before painting is one of the easiest things we can do to improve our work. Thumbnails help us simplify our subject. They help us create a stronger design. They help us establish a framework of values. The details should come later. We need to frame up the house before we can put up the walls and decorate!

Usually I like doing simple four value thumbnails for my landscape paintings. The 4 value thumbnail is based on the idea that most landscapes can be simplified into four values ...light, dark and two middle values. (John Carlson... Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting)

Notans are even more simplified. A Notan is a thumbnail or study containing only two values. Dark  and Light. Black and white. It is a simplified massing of shapes and value. To create a notan we have to decide whether the shapes in our scene are mostly dark or mostly light. The middle values are shifted to either black or white. Deborah Paris has written a wonderful article about Notan. Read it here. 

I decided to try doing some notans . A black Sharpie marker would be the perfect tool.  I chose the Magnum Sharpie which has a big chiseled tip to help me create big simple black shapes.

my notan created with sharpie black markers

The Magnum Sharpie worked great for my little notan thumbnail. I used a 4x6 index card for the notan. I used a regular sharpie to draw in a few of the thinner tree shapes. I liked doing the notan. It made it easy to see the shapes. I could see if I had interesting shapes and arrangement of dark and light. It was also quick to do....no thumbnail excuses!

But then I put in my "what if" hat.  What if I used the Sharpie and created the notan right on my pastel paper? I have not had the pleasure of watching Tony Allain paint but friends have told me he will sometimes use sharpie markers to start a painting. What a great idea! I could use the sharpie to mass in my big dark shapes. I was curious to see how it would work as an underpainting for a landscape.

I selected a piece of gray Canson Mi-Teinte paper for my painting. The sharpie marker worked well on the paper and I was able to block in the dark shapes of the trees and the dark shape leading through the meadow. I also used the thin sharpie to draw some of the tree branches.  I now had a nice value map to follow.

It was simple to reinforce the dark areas with pastels that were close in value to the black shapes. I could easily see if a pastel was too light when placed on top of the black marker shapes. It helped me keep my dark shapes strong which was important in order to create the illusion of the glow of the setting sun.

Sometimes it seems like we have too many choices when starting a painting. Using a notan and then actually recreating the same notan with marker as an underpainting is an unexpected but simple way to give a painting a strong start!

Can you help?  I am putting together a new program this year and need your questions about underpaintings. If you have any questions about anything to do with underpaintings send them to me at karenmargulis@gmail.com. I appreciate your input!