Thursday, May 24, 2012

Painting in Series

The new issue of International Artist magazine includes my latest masterclass on serial painting. 


I use the term "serial painting" to refer to plein-air painting where several images are created one after another, connecting them through time or space.

One approach is to make a set of closely related studies one after another, like frames from a film or comic book. I learned this from architectural illustrator Dan Church, who paints a set of small watercolors out of the window of a moving car. It helps to work really small if you're working this fast.

The other kind of serial painting involves painting multiple plein-air studies of the same subject under different lighting conditions. This is one of the best ways to become aware of the effects of different lighting conditions.
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International Artist

3 comments:

Diana Stein said...

OH good! An excuse to get to the bookstore!

Laura G. Young said...

Upon reading about travel series here awhile back, I tried painting with ink, watercolor pencils and a water brush on the road trip out to KC. So much fun -- but very different from what I'm used to. (Doesn't lift or blend as easily as ordinary watercolors) Also, I got a good case of motion sickness(!) Does the article have any tips on how to deal with this problem, or how to keep pencils from getting lost in seat cushions? :)

James Gurney said...

Diana, hope you had a good ride back from SFAL. We only saw two bookstores in 1500 miles!

Laura, no tips on motion sickness, but those trains are really smooth. I do tend to drop my pencils a lot, but that's why they make them hexagonal, right? So they don't roll on the floor.