DRAWUP - Portrait Painter's Way

Painting Material

2011-12-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

There is nothing more beautiful than material that is painted well. A painting can be breathtaking when an artist can translate the textural feeling of material in a way that not only pleases your sense of need to touch, but also stimulates that part of your sight that is so fond of color and effect. They might paint what they see like a light reflecting in jewel patterns on the sheen of the material, a white that reflects a rainbow of softly woven reflections of all the colors in the prism of light, a beauty of a pattern recreated by their paint brush in masterful strokes, or the curvilinear lines that describe the sensual flow of a enchanting form under a piece of material. Whatever the effect or subject, painting material is a magic form of adding intimacy to a subject. Material is just as much part of a person's character as their hair, their features, and their hands, because it is what holds to the shape or lets loose of their form in response to their personality. So, what and how you paint the clothing and materials around your subject(s) is as important as all the other features. Some painters really miss this, resulting in paintings that are stiff and unfeeling.

As a special note, you cannot paint clothing until you learn to paint the human figure. So put your time in studying the human form, skeleton, muscle form, and anatomy in any and all ways you can, prior to painting clothing.

When painting the folds in cloth or clothing, be sure to make your brush strokes move with the direction of the flow of the material. For example: if there is a hump or a fold in the material, the brush stroke should come from the top of the material. Remember that the material does not just end at the wrinkle, it continues on under. Use your mind and your hand to create the motion in your material by seeing around the edges, proving the shape of the rolling material in the way that the value is applied.

Material is a supple object. It will therefore take on any shape that it lays against. Thus, you must understand what it is laying against and show the form or shape of the object with purpose. If you can do this, you will carry out a moving piece of art. You may get tired of hearing me say this, but you must think like a sculptor. Think three-dimensionally. When at all possible, have a model or some form of a modeled human anatomy around to remind you of the shapes of muscle and bone structure.

The material has a character of it's own that you also need to take into consideration.

A page from my book... On Color Theory

2011-09-16T14:35:00.000-07:00

Painting is an art form like dance and music. Relative to the desired effect of movement your strokes are the music and your harmony. Sense the emotion created by the bold large movement of a dancer to strong rhythmic beats. Then, as the movements become more intent and the dancer uses just their limbs, we become more aware of the subtleties and nuances of their character . And with our emotions evoked, we take the time to look into the eyes, just in time to see the final focus of passions, as told by the slight tilt of a head, the precise movement of the hands, and the placement of every finger. Your strokes also evoke such emotion from large to small.
Use your colors to enchant your painting as a whole. Make this a dance of brush strokes, only to finish with the movement of tiny details, never to be over done.
Think about how one color relates to another. Think about how you can use the last color in the next color and yet not loose the freshness of the color you are working with.
You really want to move into a blank canvas and claim it for your own. The white of the bare canvas is as blank as the emptiness of an empty room. Your emotions are important to your painting. When you move in, let the feeling of the subject fill your space as you would fill your room with life.
This may sound silly and overly romanticized, but painting is a part of life that uses emotions at their best. Paintings are meant to entertain. We are entertainers. If you don’t evoke some emotion from your viewer, you have missed out on the whole concept of painting. Only the best paintings can really capture emotions of the model, the artist, and the viewer. Use what comes naturally to make your painting far better.

Always make the decision of feeling ahead of time. What do you want to feel from this painting? What does your client want to express with this painting. If you take the time to think this out, your paintings will come alive.

This is a good time to tell you about a wonderful book for artists, The Artist’s Way and The Artist’s Way at work, by a friend of mine, Mark Bryan. (The “Morning pages” are the best tool to tap into your emotions and help you to enhance your work. I highly recommend it.

Sharing My Knowledge

2011-06-27T15:59:00.000-07:00

Sharing my knowledge
All rights reserved Bobbi Baldwin, June 22, 2011

I have recently started to coach other artists - Not just teach them about painting, but coach them in thinking, because just like anything in life, the way we think affects the outcome. This life has given me many gifts, and I guess it’s just time to share it all … even the life lessons. I haven’t just learned to get a likeness and make my portraits look alive … I have an insight to the psyche of people, and their creative minds. I see myself as a scientist, not just a psychology enthusiast or portrait painter. I love studying not just the human form relating to art, but also the person who has the skin. Every person has such incredible history written in their features, stance, image, voice … that it becomes this intriguing game for me to find what makes each person “tick”. I love society, and what each person brings to it with their own originality, from the expressive artistic personalities to the worker ants (as I call less colorful focused people).
People are incredible. And the Artist is even more challenged than most. This is often because of stereotypes that they mentally take on or as others project onto them. But, I rarely find an artist with the traits that the stereotyped character is supposed to have. Instead, I find intelligent thinkers who are strong, sensitive, and quiet geniuses in their own right … just misunderstood and lacking others who speak clearly of the way in which an artist IS normal.
Life hands us lessons daily and most of the best ones are not wrapped up in a pretty bow. Many of my lessons came with emotional hardship. The one thing I am most thankful for is the opportunity to share. In the last three years, I have found my way into a place where I sponsor people, not just artists, but people of the community that learn like me … the hard way. But what is life if not experienced? This has opened the doors for me to speak about the trauma in my life openly. Until now, I have never formally chosen to use my stories to tie in my life’s experiences with art, even though I have been teaching all forms of art for a very long time and may have shared a story or two, here and there. What I have found, though, is that my way of getting through things helps others to understand more about their lives. And this feels right. So, here I will share my philosophies and hope that it may also reach you!
I survived child abuse. It’s just my story. Everyone has a story to tell about their life. I will spare you the details here because it isn’t about what I went through, it is about the human psyche; specifically this artist’s psyche. This tool to understand myself and give back the lessons that I have had to learn to internalize, is the greatest gift I have been given. I work hard on myself to improve not only my skill level but my own mental focus too. I treasure the opportunity to share this with you.
Here are the things I have learned:
I will start with the basics - The sides of the brain and how they function:
I am not a doctor, neurologist, psychologist, or psychiatrist, but I have spent my time reading and listening to those who are, as well as just studying people, and personalities in my life. What I know about how the human brain functions is best described in hemispheres. Although there is controversy over the division down the center of the human brain and how it functions, there is an agreement about hemispheres and what is driven in us by those hemispheres.
The left hemisphere is the side of the brain which reads, writes, verbalizes, rationalizes, organizes, and keeps logic. The right hemisphere is sensory, creative, intuitive, abstract, feeling, emotional, and expressive. EVERYONE needs both sides to operate in everyday life with success.
Artists are sensitive to the world for a good reason, and much more driven by the right side. But that alone doesn’t make us artists. The goal is to learn how to use what we are strongest with to make our life balanced. Often the more creative mental right hemisphere ‘pushups’ we do … the more the intuitive, feeling, visual, emotional side gets engaged and developed. This is why artists, in my opinion, become more intuitive and much more able to use their antennae, so to say, to pick up on what is to be observed by all the senses.
I have often been in conversations with others about how or why we are like this. Were we first born with this right brain developed more than the left or is it circumstances that led us to this strength? I believe it is both or either. What we learn and why we have learned it often go hand in hand. In over 25 years of teaching and 29 years of portrait painting, I have found the more I talk to artists, the more I learn how they have had a similar sensory opening in their minds that keeps them observing the world at a level that most others never get to see. It’s incredible to talk to an artist who really is capable of expressing (with the left hemisphere) what the right has been able to perceive –Or- to visually see a painting that takes your breath away because they have learned to put that hyper sensitivity into a painting.
I became a portrait artist at the age of 24.
Let me next talk about ‘hyper sensitivity’ or in my case ‘hyper vigilance’. I started drawing when I was about 10 years old but the drama in my family was already there at birth. The family thought I was slow. I was not expected to go to college. Although I seemed to quietly get through school with a good GPA, I never studied the way others did. I believed that I was slower than the rest! It wasn’t until I was 45 that I was actually given an IQ test and learned that I have a 144 score. I could go on and on about how frustrating this is to me, to learn at such a late time in my life and think of all the wasted thoughts of inadequacy that came in the years that I didn’t understand. AND … the kids who are like me in school now … I think I will save that for my sister the school teacher! But I digress here. Let me continue…
My knowledge of psychology started with my mom earning her Master’s degree in psychology while I was in high school and then learned early that talking to someone (about my life choices and my personal ‘character building’ experiences) was a necessity in my life.
I needed to know that God, the Higher Power, Buddha, and the Universe … who ever … chose to give me this experience for a reason! I needed to know why at three years of age, my first memory was only one of many that would make anyone uncomfortable to hear.
And now at 52 years of age … my coaching, sponsoring … teaching about the psyche has given me that answer. I am thankful. The answer IS the hyper-vigilance I learned that made me an artist. It was that need to survive in an environment that was so crazy for a little child, in which I had to find a way to control my outcome that I became hyper-sensitive to my visual memory.
A person can become hyper sensitive to their creativity for whatever reason … it is personal. What we do with it … can be an art form.

With that explained … how does this fit into the art world?
• Well, I teach people how to out think their critic, understand how to work with their personality, and get past those things that stop them. For example when showing your portfolio to a client, I would teach you, as an artist, to think of the last compliment you heard someone say about your art work. That is all that you are to say out loud. Because artists are their own worst critics! We use this critical tool to make ourselves better, to raise the bar consistently, therefore to make sure that we continue to be the best that we can be. In other words, we are high achievers. And this is a great skill as long as we don’t use it as a stick to beat ourselves with.
• When I hear artists criticize themselves over how long it takes them to create a painting, I remind them of Leonardo DaVinci who took 7 years to paint the Mona Lisa. Or if they lack the attention span they desire, I remind them that there are painters who paint paintings in two hours, selling their ‘studies’ (en plein air), constantly.
Whatever the personality trait is that you possess, make it your specialty! We are all humans having a human experience and there is no such thing as normal. But, what I do find is that there is a common ground we share -And that is the quality of being scientists, psychologists, empathic, intuitive, and strongly observant. These are qualities that often get mistaken and misunderstood. Embrace them like a carpenter embraces their hammer, a mathematician embraces their calculator, and a doctor embraces their passion. We are wired the same as anyone else, with just a stronger emphasis in different areas.

Personal Creativity Coaching
Price: $395 per month
Includes:
1 phone consultation per week, daily e-mail communication, and help with setting up your Portrait Painting career
Personal One-on-One motivation
Portfolio preparation advice
Painting/Drawing critiques
Contract and paperwork set up
Marketing advice
Over 29 years of personal experience!

2011-01-17T23:34:00.001-08:00

"Surrender"

2011-01-17T23:28:00.000-08:00

“Surrender”
The moment when you know…
In 2008, I personally went through an event which seized my entire existence by the throat, and transformed me into a place that I had never emotionally gone to before. It wasn't a good place; I nearly died. But it was there, in that despair, that moment of "Surrender" I finally felt the deep understanding which taught me to 'let go and let God'. It was a beautiful moment. Life has become a magnificent peaceful serenity since. Life is an ever evolving opportunity for abundance in learning lessons. This was my greatest lesson.
It's that moment that inspired this sculpture. I first saw this sculpture as hands in the air asking for help. But that was a moment too late for the emotion that I wanted to express. I recognized the moment was actually just prior. It was the emotionally distraught place at the very moment when I knew my Higher Power would care for me. The moment of "Surrender".

I hope that you also have found your serenity. And that this piece gives you as much joy as it has me.

I am currently taking orders for this limited edition. The price for this bronze is $1200. Payments, Visa, & MasterCard are welcome.
Blessings,

Bobbi Baldwin
Baldwin Fine Art

How I became a painter...

2010-05-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

There are so many ways that painters are inspired in their lives from the immediate moment to the depth of their experiences in life. For me, there was a start that wasn't so pleasant that sent me into a hyper vigilant observation in life. I became the viewer, the observer of people and environment to such a degree that I notice everything. Or, at least it feels that way, at times.
I have heard many quotes about the sensitivity that artists poses. One being from John Howard Sanden, "that he often feels sorry for artists ... as they have these antennas", another more rough statement that comes to mind is "if you didn't want to be an artist, you shouldn't have chosen such a rough childhood". Interesting the take on how and why we are so sensitive. But, the more I study and learn about the human brain and the way it reacts to experiences, the more I understand. The artist's brain is mostly utilizing the right hemisphere which is non-verbal, intuitive, emotional. That is where the images are stored. That is where creativity is born individually in each of us.
So, with that being said, did our outcome and 'take' on life come from our right brain dominant personality from birth or was it a progression from circumstances that we encountered as children that led to us depending on the right hemisphere more than the verbal, and non-logical circumstances that we may have experienced as children? I am sure in the latter situation it is a bit of both and coping mechanisms are the tools for survival.
In the end ... I wouldn't want to be anywhere but here, now. And all that it took to make me who I am ... came from some hard stories. Everyone has some. What do you think led to your deep focus on painting?

Creativity: what drives it?

2010-03-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

When you are facing a blank canvas and the brush in hand or your mind is ready to take it on ... what is it that drives you? How do you find your inspirations? What drives that artist to the passionate paintings you create? For me, it is a movie with special lighting, the way a person stands in the sunlight, watching someone in their zone, and many other events. There are so many things that come to play in that part of the artist that really trigger that feeling of wanting to recreate. It could be music, watching someone sing, a costume or clothing style, the lines in someone's face when they smile ... there are so many things that move me to paint. When I paint, I feel the movement, the colors, the sence of light, and so much more. I think my students are far wiser and stronger as a group than I have ever had. It's a great feeling to know that these stong minds are so hungry to learn more. I love seeing them passionate and moved by their own paintings. Likewise, when they are not moved by their artwork and they say negetive things about themselves and their abilities, it is hard to listen. I feel like I try so hard to get them to change thier minds to understand they are capable (or I wouldn't be saying so) that sometimes they don't believe me either. I think the hardest part of being a teacher is watching a talented person not understand their talent even when I can see thier talent. Talent is work. It isn't a gift that just appears. It begins with believing that you CAN do it and ends with seeing it and having pride in what you create a step at a time ... a day at a time. It's the pure insight that you see in every step that comes to you. I just try to open that door for all those I teach.

Youtube.com ... my video...

2010-02-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

I have a video that is getting a lot of hits. It's hard to paint teeth. And I have a lot to say about every subjects. Sadly, I don't express it all unless I have a paint brush in my hand and a student asks the right question. So, I did an 11 week demo which was video taped. It wasn't a hollywood style (pretty amature) video but what I say is important. I would love to redo these. But, in the mean time, here is a glimpse. And my book is being brought out and dusted off as we speak. I am setting up the table to lay the chapters out and see where I got to, two years ago with Mark Bryan. I have a goal!

In the mean time, enjoy 235 views! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QwEd3RZdMM

Exerpts from my book, chapter on Color Theory ...

2009-01-26T21:58:00.000-08:00

THINKING IN PRIMARY COLORS
Initially when an artist begins to match color by sight, there is much confusion about whether or not to buy all of those beautiful color mixtures, premixed in a rainbow of paint tubes, that are guaranteed to stretch your arm out when you carry all of them to a location beyond your own studio. However, if the creative mind can simplify its thinking by interpreting all colors into the three primaries, this can be a very easy process without creating monkey arms in the process. What I am suggesting is that you have in your palette, a warm and cool form of each primary color and a few other highly used colors like brown, white, and green. I will cover the specific colors that I use in the chapter on color (see page xx).
How do you begin to teach yourself to think in primaries? Look at each color and find the two significant primaries. If the color is bright and a red, yellow, or blue, but not pure as what comes from your tube, then add the compliment. The compliment is the color directly across from your color on a color wheel (see page xx). Think of your brown tones and gray tones as a mixture of all three primary colors. Both of these colors are created by adding all three of the primaries together. Understand that the only difference in mixing brown or gray is that gray has more blue, and brown has more yellow and red. Once you know the dominant color, you have to decide what the second color is that is influencing this tone. Next, think about secondary colors. Your job is half done if the shade is closer to an orange, green, or violet. Once you decipher the color into the two main colors, add the third primary and/or white in small amounts to dull the shade or tint to the tone that you are seeing. It’s that simple.

Recent Work

2009-01-26T13:39:00.000-08:00

Today's model session.

Artist's Way Workshop ...

2009-01-24T23:37:00.000-08:00

I have created some fun canvases from the 'reframed' blurts we made at the Artist's Way 'Jump Start' workshop. Filled with positive statements about Artist's, my canvases are a conversation peice and reminder that we are wonderful people! Those negative statements will now be changed forever with these little charms to hang on your wall. Buy full set for $450 or $50 each.

Exerpts from my book, chapter on Grisaille (or not) ...

2009-01-24T21:42:00.000-08:00

To Grisaille or or not to ...
It is up to you, the artist, to decide what style you want to use when painting a portrait. There are many different styles that include or don’t include a preliminary coating of the canvas. I often prefer to do a painting directly on a white canvas, as it will keep the luminosity of pure bright colors rich and strong.
But, there are other times when I want to create more of a ‘deep mood’ than a statement of color. Grisaille painting is wonderful for this reason. You can paint in the moody method of the Renaissance painter with the right knowledge of how it is done.
When I first began painting in 1984, I was taught to paint the whole image with just burnt umber, scrubbing it in thin and literally erasing out my highlights. I still teach some of my new timid students to use this method, as it helps them learn to evaluate value and make their often timid use of value stronger in contrast by force. Since that time, I have learned more about the original use by the masters of painting both warm and cool tones, in values of gray and brown, to emphasize not only the value, but the temperature of the light and shadow.
Grisaille is a method of using gray in the cool tones of your model. Bistre is the method of using brown tones in the warm lights. Together, they create a full range of values that are not only rich in depth, but illuminated with temperature of value. Glaze is added over the top of your Grisaille and Bistre and produce a finished painting. (see the chapter on ‘Glazing’ for more information on methods and techniques).

DRAWUP.ORG

2009-01-24T17:37:00.000-08:00

The following pages shall contain material that is copyrighted by Bobbi Baldwin Fine Art 2009. All rights to reprinting, publication, copying of any kind is prohibited exept in written approval by Bobbi Baldwin.