Art Lessons with Lee Hammond

The best thing about online and video education is that it’s so easy to follow along. You can pause and rewind over and over again, all while seeing how your favorite artist pulls off what seems so difficult–and they make it look easy!

For Jen’s Pick this week, we return to one of our favorite artists, Lee Hammond. She has some new videos out and we’re loving every bit of the instruction we find in them. Check out this great interview she did with us, then preview the videos to get a glimpse of all the new techniques you can learn.

Draw Animals in Nature
Achieve lifelike drawings of animals in their natural environments by adopting Lee’s favorite drawing tips, such as how to do smooth blending and gradual tonal changes. You’ll learn about how to use a grid and work with soft and hard edges for more realism in your drawings. Then draw along with Lee to practice a variety of animal topics such as fur, eyes and anatomy, as well as background elements like grass, water and trees to set them within their environment.

This is a fantastic video if you want to get:

Step-by-step instruction on drawing from photos
Step-by-step instruction on basic drawing

YOu can find the Art Lessons with Lee Hammond: Draw Animals in Nature video download, stream the video on artistsnetwork.tv, or get it as a DVD.

Acrylic Landscape Painting
You’ll get great instruction on how to achieve realistic landscapes using Lee’s favorite acrylic painting techniques. Start by learning about painting tools and how to use them to achieve your desired results.

Lee’s instruction also covers blending, layering, varying brushstrokes and other basic techniques so you can add more realism to your landscapes. And follow her exercises to paint a variety of elements, such as skies, clouds, trees, grasses and water to get a gorgeous scene full of light and color.

Get this if you want:

Step-by-step instruction on creating acrylic landscapes from photos
Step-by-step instruction on basic acrylic painting techniques

You can find the streaming video on artistsnetwork.tv, or you can buy the video download or DVD through northlightshop.com.

Draw Faces in Colored Pencil
Learn how to draw a face in colored pencil by checking out this great DVD title. You can also get it as a video download and keep an eye out, because soon it’ll be up for streaming straight to your computer, just like the other titles!

What will you get? Clear, friendly, and easy-to-follow instruction as Lee demonstrates colored pencil techniques for achieving realistic portraits. You’ll learn about what tools to use and how to use them. Techniques she covers include smooth blending, layering color, gradual tonal changes and more basic techniques for adding a lifelike feel to your portraits. You’ll also practice using your colored pencils to create facial features and hair, using layering and pencil strokes. Finally, you’ll learn the most valuable tool an artist needs: how to go about fixing mistakes.

In a nutshell:

Step-by-step instruction on creating colored pencil portraits from photos
Step-by-step instruction on basic colored pencil techniques
Copyright information reviewed (for use when practicing from photos)

Love the online learning environment? You can also join our class on Drawing Faces at Artist’s Network University, featuring Lee’s books on Drawing, which you can also pick up at northlightshop.com.

The Next Generation of Artists and You

How Big Can It Get? by Minji Cho, middle school

How old were you when you first realized that you were an artist, or at least began truly experimenting with art? For many of us, we did so before we realized that there was a word for it, and it came as naturally as walking. Art is in our veins, and many of us have expressed it through activities as simple as drawing in the sand, arranging pebbles in a unique way to show a picture, or perhaps taking a permanent marker to our parent’s walls before we could write “abc.”

It seems obvious, but I think it’s worth bringing up the fact that it’s important to teach the arts to our next generations, whether it’s in public school, at home, through art clubs or elsewhere. I bring this up today because I recently had a conversation with Maureen Bloomfield, Editor-in-Chief of The Artist’s Magazine, who’d just returned from NAMTA, which is an art materials trade show. She reported that carrying arts on to the next generation was a recurring topic among the art supply manufacturers, who realize that it’s important to teach our youth how to be creative–not only so that they can create works of art, but because it helps them successfully consider different approaches to problems, and so much more. In honor of this, the works I’m featuring today came from student participants in the Cray-Pas Wonderful, Colorful World contest.

Untitled by Timothy Powell, grade school

Art is beautiful, and I love to share the processes and results with you, as well as the special offers through North Light Shop, such as the popular Crazy 8 sale going on now, where many products are just $8.88. I encourage you to tell about your own beginning art experiences in the comments section below; maybe you’ll inspire others to find the artist in themselves or share their inspiration with the young people in their lives.

Sincerely,
Cherie

P.S.
Don’t miss the article “Once Upon a Time,” about Jan Brett, children’s book writer and illustrator, who writes children’s stories and also encourages the young, budding artists.

Quiet and Cool Watercolor Art

Italian Garden Nectar (watercolor, 21.25×14) by Carl Dalio (carldalio.com)

Once in awhile, a band comes along that I love so much, I’ll travel hours from home to see them live in concert. On one such trip a few summers ago, I found myself in Cleveland, Ohio for a show at the House of Blues with some friends. The concert was to start a bit later in the evening, so we enjoyed the city by walking around, and came across a delightful street that had been blocked off for pedestrians only. Stores and restaurants lined the sidewalk, and we chose to sit in an outdoor dining section and have a drink while we waited.

On the table was a glass of red wine, an imported beer, a cosmopolitan, and a bourbon on the rocks. We sipped, watched passersby, and were warned by a police officer to perhaps move our purses closer to our tables so that they couldn’t be snatched. I thought that was very nice of him. As we enjoyed our afternoon together, adventurous and yet lazy at the same time, my friend Melanie raised an eyebrow and smiled, looking down at our table. “Do you realize that our drinks completely match our personalities?” she asked us. We gazed down, and sure enough, realized that each of us had ordered something completely different and yet somehow reflective of our individual nature. What a laugh we had! I still have a photograph of this philosophical drink array.

And so when I came across Italian Garden Nectar by Carl Dalio of Sedona, Arizona, I paused to admire the arrangement of glasses and jars and the soft light that signals the sun setting just off to the west of the table. It also reminded me of Soon Y. Warren’s watercolor paintings (learn her techniques for painting water in her newest DVD, Vibrant Watercolors), which are quiet and yet lively at the same time, sort of like enjoying a drink with friends while on an adventure.

Cheers,
Cherie

Pastel Pointers | Shades of Green, Part 2

Last week, I discussed how perplexing green can be for pastel landscape painting. I mentioned how a warm complementary-color underpainting is a popular technique many artists use as a setup in advance of applying green. This week, I want to share a few more tips that may prove useful for the pastel landscape painter.

A close-up of the green selection of one of my pastel palettes with a few friendly violet pastels.

Mixed Greens: First, remember that green is a pigment in your palette and light in nature. Our pastel sticks are not what we see in nature, they are the tools we use to portray what we see. Many of the pigments used to manufacture green pastels are too chromatically intense (over saturated) and too cool in color temperature. Viridian and phthalocyanine green are examples. When these pigments are left in their native form and merely tinted with white and shaded with black to produce a value range, they appear artificial. While greens that appear cool in temperature definitely serve a purpose in a painting, these pigments have to be affected to appear natural. This has lead many pastel manufacturers to offer greens made by mixing pigments together much in the same fashion as an oil painter. These mixed-greens are often warmer in color temperature, producing a more pleasing green tone. While I have viridian green on my oil palette, I think of it as a turquoise blue/green and mix my basic green paint by combining a warm-yellow and blue. I duplicate this in my pastel palette by purchasing pastels that represent these mixed greens.

Color Secrets: Understanding the importance of color temperature and the effect simultaneous contrast phenomenon has on the appearance of color led me to create a saying for students: the secret of green is orange and the friend of green is violet. Natural light represents all color, so a little orange introduced into green (which is a combination of yellow and blue) subtly introduces the color family of red and completes the color wheel spectrum. Orange can be in the pastel stick itself, as previously mentioned, or feathered into a green passage within the painting. Violet also helps to visually complete the color wheel because violet is made with blue and red. When it is place in close proximity to green, it makes the green appear warmer. Note: Orange (the secret) is in or on top of the green and violet (the friend) is next to the green.

Make a Comparison: When painting on location, a comparison can be made between a pastel stick and the scene. Start by selecting a pastel stick. Then hold it up in front of the scene, close one eye and squint. Make sure that the pastel stick is in the same light as the area in question, i.e. sunlight or shade. Often, the selected stick will appear more intense (chromatically saturated) than the actual area. This tests what we believe we see with what is really there and can help in making better green choices.

Green can be a tough color to handle, but with color temperature finesse, sensitive observation, wise selection, and artistic permission to sometimes tweak reality for the sake of a harmonious outcome, a successful lush painting can be achieved.

MORE RESOURCES FOR ARTISTS
painting greens in pastel

• Our special value pack includes 7 essential resources for your painting the landscape in pastel, inlcuding a DVD on Mixing Greens with Liz Haywood-Sullivan. Check it out here!

• Subscribe to Pastel Journal magazine

• Watch pastel art workshops on demand at ArtistsNetwork.TV

• Get unlimited access to over 100 art instruction ebooks.

• Online seminars for fine artists

Progression of Heavenly Hues: A Pastel Step-by-Step Demo

In this excerpt from Stan Sperlak’s feature article “Into the Night” from The Artist’s Magazine (June 2013), Sperlak demonstrates how to complete a sunset landscape from start to finish. Scroll down to read this step-by-step demo, and learn how to portray the ethereal qualities of night with pastel.

Progression of Heavenly Hues
By Stan Sperlak

The moments after the sun sets provide an opportunity for an easy lesson in painting the order and values of prismatic colors as they appear in the sky. If painting from life, try to match the range of colors in a small work that you can use as a study.

Demo: