Making of Painting Rainbows

A couple of you asked about the making of the book trailer video “Painting Rainbows” which aired yesterday.


Lighting and Effects
My wife Jeanette pulled the color cards and operated the smoke machine. There’s a shimmering light effect to the left of the camera path between :22 and :27. It’s a caustic pattern that I got by reflecting sunlight off an undulating surface of water on a cookie sheet, which bounced the light up onto a movie screen.

I filmed that caustic reflection in HD and then projected it from a digital projector (visible on the C-stand to the left of the studio photo below). The smoke effect was a blast from a Memorex fog machine (Thanks, Frank).


Camera
The HD film was shot on a Canon Vixia HV40 and edited in iMovie. I shot the tabletop flyover using a homemade suspended camera rig. The rig was mounted to the end of an extension arm that reached out from a C-stand strapped to a bicycle. By steering the bike I could fly the camera an inch or two above the tabletop, giving a dolly shot with some steerability (and some wobble due to the knobby tires).

The dissolve to the Chandara artwork masked the switch to a reset camera rig at the end of an extension arm on a circular pivot from a floor-mounted C-stand to the left of the table, rotated with my right hand as I reached for the box.



Sound
There are a number of “whoosh” effects added, along with some audio enhancement during the assembly of the toolkit, using gun cocks, lock clicks, and squeaks. All are copyright free sounds, as was the musical piece “Sanskrit,” which came with the iMovie suite (Thanks, Apple!)


 Brushes and Paint
The brush is a Winsor and Newton Series 995 3/4 inch held onto the Helix compass with a Tridon hose clamp. The rainbow block has six slots cut with a radial saw with a plywood blade set to a maximum depth of 1/4 inch and spaced apart to a full spread of 7/8 inch.

The paints are cheap acrylic paints, most of them $1.00 or $1.50 each at Michaels. They’re fairly close to YURMBY colors: American Bright Yellow, Michaels True Red, Folk Art Magenta, Craftsman Bright Blue, Aqua, and Holiday Green.

Total budget for the book trailer, about $9.87.
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Link to Painting Rainbows

Flags and Cutters

A "flag" —also known as a "cutter" — is a piece of opaque black cloth or board held in position to block a source of light.

Here are some modern flags, held in position by a C-stand. These allow a director of photography in a photo lab or a movie shoot to control exactly which surfaces the light touches or to keep a light from shining into the lens. 

Here's a photo of John Singer Sargent painting Mrs. Fiske Warren (Gretchen Osgood) and her daughter Rachel at the Fenway Court in Boston (now the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), where Sargent had set up a temporary studio.

Sargent placed a chair behind the sitters, with poles strapped to the back of the chair. Across those poles he draped a piece of cloth as a cutter to reduce the backlighting and the glare into his eyes. The soft key light comes from a window unseen to the right.
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New book on Sargent (released yesterday):John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1900-1907: The Complete Paintings, Volume VII
More about that Sargent painting.
Sargent photo from "Representational Painting" Facebook page
Photo of modern cutter from Enchanting Kerala.org
Previously on GJ: C Stand

Winter Painting Tips

Now that winter is here, only the crazy people go out to paint.

I learned how to survive winter painting from one of my crazy friends, Jim Cramer. He’s far more intrepid than I am. He does all his paintings outdoors, year round. You’ll find him out there in the teeth of a gale or beside a frozen river down to about ten degrees above zero.

I wimp out below about 25 or 30 degrees Fahrenheit or about minus 4 degrees Celsius. But I love painting snow because the colors of light and shadow are much more obvious, especially around the “golden hour.”

Here are a few tips, mainly on what not to do:

--Fingerless gloves keep your hands warm without losing your grip on the brush. Put your non-painting hand in a warmer glove.

--Don’t use a metal mahlstick like I’m doing here. A wooden one is much better.

--The glare of full sun on snow makes it hard to judge color. Try painting late in the day when the shadows lengthen.

--If you’re painting in watercolor in subfreezing temperatures, don’t replace the water with white wine, because that freezes, too. Use vodka instead.

--That white umbrella on the C-Stand is meant to cut direct sunlight from behind. If the wind picks up, the C-Stand should be weighted with a sandbag.

--Your feet and your fingers are the first to freeze. Wear insulated boots, and try standing on a carpet sample instead of directly on the snow.

Powers Market

The North Bennington Plein Air Competition began with a motif tour for the artists. We rode around town on a wagon pulled by draft horses.

The horses were a rare breed called American Cream, with amber eyes and pink skin.

About two dozen invited artists fanned out through the small town of North Bennington, Vermont. They set up on grassy hillsides, beside ponds, and in back streets.

Jeanette and I looked across to Powers Market, a Greek Revival building that served coffee and sandwiches, and conveniently had wi-fi and a bathroom.

My foot is on the C-stand to keep the white umbrella from blowing over (because I forgot the weight bags to hold it down). I'm using the umbrella not for rain but to cut glare and to diffuse light into the work surface.

I laid in the painting with a bristle filbert using burnt sienna oil paint. It was forecast to be cloudy, and I expected to be working with a lot of gray tonalities, so I wanted those warm colors to peek through in a few places in the finished painting. After stage 2, I drove into Bennington to buy the tube of white, which was missing from my kit yesterday.

That building in the back is a lawn mower repair shop, and the wood structure is leaning wildly, a fun contrast with the straight regularity of the market.

The owner of the lawn mower shop, Ron Nadeau, came over to tell us the history of his building, which used to be a blacksmith shop. He described what the town was like in his father's day, when there were working factories here that made hand mirrors, shoes, and rocking chairs.

EVENTS TODAY!
Come today (Saturday) to the Park McCullough House in North Bennington, Vermont, for the Quick-Draw event between 1:30 and 3:30. Anyone can join, and there are over $500 in prizes. Also, there will be an exhibition of works tonight and tomorrow at the Taraden Guest House.
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North Bennington Plein Air Competition
Quick-Draw Event
Wikipedia on American Cream Draft
Taraden Guest House
C-Stand on Wikipedia
Previously: White Umbrella, Traffic Cones

Remote Cast Shadows

How do cast shadows change when the object casting them gets farther away?



In this video, you can see how the shadows get blurrier as the branches move progressively farther away. The clip is an excerpt from my Gumroad tutorial "How I Paint Dinosaurs."

In any real forest setting, shadows are cast from branches that are a variety of sizes and distances from the dinosaur. Using a scale maquette of both the dinosaur and the branches is particularly useful for reference, because the lighting effect scales up proportionally.

If you're getting this post by email, you might need to follow this link to see the video.

Equipment shown:
Matthews C Stand (Century Stand)
Extension grip arm



Previous posts about cast shadows
Casting long shadows to suggest ground contours
Cast shadows, part 1
Cast shadows, part 2
Chromatic shadows
Dappled light

Links to my other social channels 
iOS app GurneyJourney Blog
Instagram @jamesgurneyart
Twitter @GurneyJourney
Facebook JamesMGurney
Pinterest GurneyJourney
YouTube GurneyJourney
Gouache in the Wild Tutorial

White Umbrellas

When you’re painting outside, the direct sunlight is a killer on your eyes. It’s hard to judge colors when you’re squinting from the glare of full sun on your white palette. I have a friend who uses dark brown palette paper to solve this problem.

Another way to cope is to always face your line of sight toward the sun, so the painting itself is in the shade, and it casts a shadow over the palette. But you can’t always limit yourself to looking in one direction. Sometimes you want the sun at your back.

The solution is the white umbrella, which helps to soften the sun's glare into an even, indirect light. Even if you are painting in a deep forest, little shafts of light will travel across your painting, and the umbrella will eliminate their distracting patterns.

To support the umbrella I use a “C-stand,” or Century Stand. A photographer told me about this vital piece of support equipment, standard stuff in the movie industry, but most artists don’t know about them. They’ll hold anything at any angle.


The goal for illuminating your work on location is to make the light level on the painting equal to the illumination in the scene itself. That way you can judge colors much more accurately.

This photo was taken of a painting directly in front of the landscape. It is lit by the light of a white umbrella, so the levels are pretty close.


By the way, some umbrellas are opaque, with black or gray on the inside. This doesn’t help, because you need the light from above, diffused through the umbrella, not bouncing up from the ground. Get one that is a translucent white nylon.

But with umbrellas, beware of the wind. I’ll talk about that hazard, frequently my downfall, in a future post called "The Disaster at Kaaterskill Creek."

Materials List for Sketch Easel

As promised, here's a materials list for putting together the sketch easel and the diffuser. These are all referenced in my new Gumroad video.

Sketch Easel

Materials

Oak plywood 1/4 x 24 x 24
Southco adjustable torque hinge (3)
3/8" Sheet Metal Screws Stainless Steel (12)
1/4-20 x 5/16 x 3/4 Inch Tee Nuts (2)
Thumb Screws, 1/4-20 x 3/4-Inch (2)
Small brass hinge (1)
Nalgene jar (2-Ounce)
1/4 x 1/16-inch Neodymium magnets (17-20)
Spring clamps
Gorilla glue
Magic Sculpt 1 Lb. or Plumbers' epoxy putty
Wood stain
Tung oil finish
Metal watercolor set
AmazonBasics 60-Inch Tripod
QB-4W quick release platform (square type for Velbon or Amazon tripod) (2)

Optional
Polyethylene coated (freezer) paper (For making an oil palette)
Friction lid support (optional, if you want to make a camera bar)

Tools
Drill Press, 10-Inch (optional) or handheld electric drill
Brad point dowel bit 1/4 inch or Forstner bits (for drilling flat bottomed holes)
High speed drill set—small drills for screw pilots and 5/16 Inch drill bit for T-nut.
Nail set or just a big nail.
Spade bit, 3/4 inch
4 inch belt sander (optional)
Sandpaper, 80 grit and  240 Grit
Circular saw with a plywood cutting blade (Optional. Your lumber supply or hardware store will usually be able to cut the wood for you if you don't have a saw)
Electric jig saw
or a Hand saw and a Coping saw
Aluminum ruler
Phillips screw driver
Round (rat tail) file (you could also use sandpaper on a thin piece of wood)
Sharpie marker

Light diffuser

If you want to make the diffuser from scratch, you'll need white rip stop nylon and a dressmaker's pencil, 2mm carbon fiber rods (for small diffuser) or .125" carbon fiber rod (for longer spans), plus a cross connector. You'll also need twill tape and access to a sewing machine.

Square diffuser

For the diffuser mounted on the pedestal base, which fits on its own camera tripod:1/2 in. x 2 in. x 4 ft. "appearance" board
QB-4W quick release platform (1)
1" sheet metal screw (4)
QB-4W quick release platform (1)

Trapezoid diffuser
For the base that fits on the sketch easel's gripper, you'll need to extract the hardware from a Helping hand magnifier tool

Aluminum frame diffuser
For the aluminum frame design, you'll need an: Aluminum hanging file folder frame (makes two diffusers)

Branch diffuser
For the branch diffuser, you'll need the white rip stop nylon and a branch with a flat growth habit. I used gray birch and let it cure a few months before I used it. I ran coated picture wire around the slotted tips of the branches before sewing the seams. You'll need a needle and thread because you can't machine-sew the edge.

Artist's umbrella
If you do use a traditional artist's white umbrella, I've found the Jullian gives good light, but it does get damaged if it hits the ground too hard. To keep it from taking down your easel, you can clamp it to a C-stand (century stand), which is heavy, but sturdy, and you'll use it for a lot of other uses.

Kite option
Alternate methods: Instead of buying the parts separately, you can buy a cheap white kite for $10.00.
It's 30 inches across, and includes the kite sticks, twill tape, and white rip stop nylon.
You can also use white corrugated plastic for diffuser, and save having to deal with fabric and frame.
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This information is in reference to the video "How to Make a Sketch Easel," which shows you how to build both the easel and the diffuser.

The 1080p HD download is available now for just $14.95 from Gumroad.
The DVD version is available for $24.50, and it includes a slide show. The DVD is also available on Amazon.

(I couldn't get to a good enough wifi connection to upload it to Sellfy and Cubebrush, but I should have that by Tuesday.)