Auction for Shelter From The Storm

I am pleased to donate all proceeds of this painting to Shelter From The Storm, an organization supporting abused Canadian women and their children.


 Click Here for more on Shelter From The Storm.

Foray Into Digital

Happy New Year! I'm going to try to make this a happy one at least. I've started doing digital painting recently and it's got my creativity going again, especially since I'm not relying on reality that much, it's mostly imaginative (for now). That kind of puts me in the mood to tackle traditional painting again. Here's what I've been up to:

"Green and Blue Day", 2012

"Sunset", 2012

Inspiring Imagery from the Entertainment Industry

Just last year I was enjoying the music one of my favourite bands, Sade, when I noticed how incredibly beautiful their album cover was. The album is Soldier Of Love (2010) and on the cover is the lead singer Helen Folasade Adu and I could have swore this was a painting. I was immediately trying to think of who could have painted it and thinking I wish I did it myself! To me it’s clearly influenced by painting but it turns out it’s a photograph/Photoshop as usual. I think it’s interesting that it’s not the usual photograph with the band’s name on it and there is an attempt to evoke a very sophisticated painterly quality. There are numerous other artistic album covers but this one grabbed me because it looks to me like a contemporary realist painting.

Then yesterday I came across this movie poster for The Other Woman (2010) starring Natalie Portman and there she is but, again, not in the usual way. Are illustrators making a comeback in the movie poster business? It could have been the usual photo collage with the title on it but this appears to be a hybrid of a hand drawing with digital elements with the intent to appear mostly as a drawing. I think it’s really well done and it got me thinking that these types of images in entertainment could be helping contemporary realism right now. Granted it’s not painting but it’s a shift from just photos and text back to art. And again, there were always the occasional artsy posters but this one is clearly influenced by contemporary realist art.

I'm not sure this is a trend but I hope it is.

"Intensity" vs. "Chroma" and Understanding Munsell

Ever since I found Rational Painting a couple years ago, I've been puzzled by Munsell. There's a colour wheel and that's about all I could recognize about it. As you know, most kids in art classes are given the colour theory of the Impressionists and that's the first thing that comes to mind when I think about my early colour theory education—Monet, Seurat...If you could use colour theory to create works like them then you fully grasped colour. That's what I learned and that was fine because there wasn't anything else, at least not what my teachers knew about.

Looking back to my early attempts at mixing “intensity scales” and monochromatic scales...all sorts of scales, I realize they didn't really help, not when it came to painting what was in front of me because the standard mixtures were not sufficient, they were too arbitrary. I quickly realized that not all pigments fit into these pigeon holes and the colour wheel stopped working and became this mysterious thing I felt I needed magical powers to make work for me.

Painting became something I could do one day and not the next. I could never mix the same colour on the fly one day and get again the next day and I accepted that as part of what painting is. That's why drawing was always better for me; value is value, there's no confusion there. I thought “Why can't paint do that?” When I found this site and saw these strange Munsell notations, it went straight over my head. I heard the term “chroma” before and it sounded familiar to me, then I saw people using it synonymously with “intensity” and I relaxed again because I know about Hue, Value and Intensity. Then I found that actually didn't help me understand chroma at all.

Intensity seemed to block my understanding of chroma. I read some people saying it's the same as chroma, some people saying they are completely different. I figured artists disagree frequently and that's all that is, but after attempting a self-portrait and trying to mix my skin tone day after day, I had to get to the bottom of this issue. I knew Munsell had to solve this problem but I couldn't grasp it if I couldn't grasp chroma. Intensity and Chroma could not exist together in my mind and reading this excerpt from A Colour Notation by A.H. Munsell, I finally understood why.

“Intensity is a misleading term, if chroma be intended, for it depends on the relative light of spectral hues. It is a degree rather than a quantity, as appears in the expressions, “intense heat, light, sound”--intensity of stimulus and reaction...The word becomes especially unfit when used to describe two very different phases of a colour—as its intense illumination, where the chroma is greatly weakened, and the strongest chroma which is found in a much lower value.”

That's like fresh air rushing to my lungs. How did I survive without this hundred-year-old information for so long? It really is unbelievable. Now I can actually start learning and using Munsell.

Ahh, that's better.

5 Hour Still-Life

I challenged myself last night with one of the most difficult objects I've ever painted. I bought it at Value Village, and I'm not sure what it was used for but it was a great find. I only gave myself 5 hours to paint it so I didn't get to every detail but I'm liking the results. The only thing is the background colour is too dark so I'll have to change it. Here it is so far:

First Foray into Landscape

For those who have been reading my posts, you know I really wanted to try landscapes. Well I'm in the middle of one and...I don't know, maybe it's too soon to say. I'm not sure I love it. I love when other people do it, it's mesmerizing. This painting is photo-based as I don't have a portable easel right now but it's winter so I'm faced with a lot of bare branches and dull colours. I am not big on colour in general but I like there to be enough colour in front of me to manipulate as I please (tone them down if I need to). Also I'm not sure I love the act of painting grass or foliage. I mean art is tedious by nature but this kind of tedium makes me want to stab my canvas. Mind you, it's not necessary to paint every detail for realism, but shortcuts often degrade landscapes.

That all sounds really pessimistic but I still have hope for this genre, the only thing is I think I'd rather make landscapes up--just construct them from imagination because I'd feel less constricted. I'd still do studies from life (in more appealing weather) but I really like the idea of just creating my own world. I know many artists do this and I think it's a great idea and I'd love to be able to do that in a naturalistic way or, in other words, a non-artificial way.

As for my current landscape, I'm not sure I'll finish it. I know I should just to finish, you know? Because it's no good having unfinished work lying around, it's very demoralizing. I also know I'm very hard on myself and even though this is my first real attempt at landscape, I expect only good or great results in my eyes. Others may love it, I don't know but I won't be including it in my portfolio, LOL.

Great Art Instruction DVD's

Still waiting for paint to dry so I thought I'd talk about some awesome art DVD's floating around on the net. I have not seen any in their full duration but I do plan on getting a couple of them. How do I know about them? Youtube! I'm sure you all know this but there are a lot of artist demos on Youtube, some are full demos but most of them with instruction are just clips. I'm going to focus on ones with instruction for this post because they're the most useful.

First up is "The Portrait Sketch" by Jeremy Lipking. Lipking is one of the top realist painters today and when you look at his work, it's a lot like Sargent's work in terms of his brush stroke. His DVD shows him doing a portrait sketch of his wife and for someone like me who would like to be able to do a relatively quick and accurate portrait it's looks very promising. Here's the clip:

The DVD is available through Lipking's website for $75 USD.

Next is David A. Leffel's "Reclining Nude". Leffel has been called a "modern Rembrandt", and it's pretty clear why. What's even more impressive though is his story. He was hospitalized for much of his childhood but he kept drawing and painting and though it. I won't go on and on but the point is he's an inspiration. Anyway, this DVD shows a figure painting sketch and what was really great to see was the colours he uses for skin tones, which is pretty much half the battle. Here's the clip:

It's available through Liliedahl Video Productions for $150 USD. Very pricey but must be worth it. That's it for now, I'll get some more up later and hopefully I'll get a copy of one of these soon and review it. Happy learning!

Done, But Not Done

Ok so a few months ago, I was pretty excited to be done my four years as an undergrad, but because the courses I need are not available for the summer I need to go back in the fall for one more semester. I can't say I'm happy about that, I really was looking forward to future plans but that doesn't mean I can't do those things right? Actually I'm in the process of making my future plans work right now. I don't want to say too much but...Anyway, my final critiques overall were good, especially given the obstacles I had to overcome financially. Not being able to buy supplies readily isn't the most ideal situation. But I'm glad that's behind me and I've got a couple of commissions to get done and I'm also working on my Youtube channel. So far I've got four videos, and you can see them here. Here's the most popular of my videos right now:

I will be making more as soon as I figure out what I want to show next. Actually, I might do a video on pencil sharpening for artists and no, it doesn't involve a pencil sharpener ;) . 

Current Work, Thoughts

Welcome to my new blog. I love blogging but I haven't done it in a while. I guess I should start with introducing myself: I'm Crystal Brown (sometimes I write Crystal C. Brown for my art) from Toronto, Canada. I'm currently finishing off my BFA, just few more months to go. After that I plan on doing my MFA in New York but it could be awhile before that happens... Ultimately I want to be a full-time painter, and I think I knew that since grade 10. I was certainly interested in art all my life but that's when it became serious. My work is figurative and I think I can credit that to my personality and the great traditional skills I picked up in high school. I don't think that's going to change too much but you never know. 

Right now I'm really frustrated because I can draw pretty well but I can't paint nearly as well. It's tough to deal with. I expect a lot of myself and when a painting doesn't go right I get very impatient. I just hate mediocrity in my work, especially when I need to get my work out there. I've got some figure drawings going right now, which I love. Life drawing comes with ease for me, and I feel very comfortable with it. It's funny, I always wanted to be a portrait painter but now I'm better at drawing/painting faces within the context of the figure instead of on it's own. What I'm really trying to do is make my figure drawings more meaningful that just "a figure on a page", but I don't know how yet. 

Anyway here's what I'm working on right now: At the top right there's a drawing in progress. It's 18"x24", charcoal and carbon on newsprint. I'm enjoying it, but there's a lot more to go and I really hope it'll be one of my best. And last but not least, I've got a youtube video up, check it out here. That's it for now, be back soon.