Category: Tools & Materials

Munsell madness

Munsell cubes

Munsell cubes, cones and spheres

My UK friend Paul Foxton is working through the tonal experiments too. Excep

t he’s doing a much better job of it than I am. If you want to know more about it you can check my archives to see what I’m doing. Or even better check out Paul’s blog.

Paul recently put up a post showing the cubes and spheres he made for the exercises. I couldn’t resist sending a photo of mine.

And being something of a pedantic fool I had decided that cubes and spheres alone wouldn’t make a balanced composition when it came time to paint the pictures. So, I found some styrofoam cones at a craft store and painted those in the Munsell greys too, just to round it out. Think about it… Since when should composition matter in an exercise in painting tonal values? I figured Paul would get the joke.

I think he did, ‘cos next thing I find he wants to put it on his website and share my lunacy with the world. Is that OK with me? Fine, but I’d better’ fess up here first… so here you have it: Munsell madness.

Life – drawing in colour

I’m hoping for a little fun at life drawing this week. I work mostly in pencil sometimes charcoal. I quite like the woodless graphite pencils too – except I dropped my new one. Oops. Warning: those things are really brittle and once broken into small pieces are useless.

This week I’ll be trying some Faber Castell Polychromos pastels. They’re harder than a normal pastel but not really hard like I had imagined. More like a Conte crayon with colour. Lots of colour. A whole rack of colour. I didn’t buy a box but rather went through the rack and selected ten more muted colours: ochres, pinks and grey blues and green. The sort of colours I imagined I would use for a life drawing. Then bought a cheap little plastic box to keep them organised and voila – a beginning.

Polychromos pastels in a plastic box

Polychromos pastels

Why so good you ask? Alright you didn’t ask but this is my blog so I’m going to tell you anyway. Most sane people don’t get so excited over a few fairly dull pastels.

One of the problems I have with colour is that I love the bright colours but don’t actually use them. I mean I have a veritable box full of lovely media like Pitt pens, pastel pencils, watercolour pencils and even a small box of soft pastels. Some I chose myself, others were gifts. All collected up over time. Mostly untouched. I really love the colours but when it comes down to it I don’t use them.

Time and again I take something different along to Life Drawing but reach for the charcoal or the stumps of my Conte pencils instead. Dull colours like black, grey or sanguine. What gives? It’s happened too many times to be forgetfulness. I think. I can’t remember.

I don’t think I’m afraid of colour. Not with sculpture or paint anyway. Just drawing. I thought about it and figured that maybe everything I have is just too bright. Too unlife-life. So on the recommendation of a friend I headed off to the art shop (any excuse) to look at Polychromos. This time, I showed great restraint and chose only the more muted colours. Just ten. Enough to experiment, not too many to get scary.

I can hardly wait until Life Drawing this week. I think I’m on to something.

Amanda

Greyscales and cubes

As a first step toward getting control of tonal values I’ve swapped the white ceramic platter I’ve been using as a palette for a piece of glass. Under it there’s a sheet of masonite cut to the same size and painted mid grey. To be absolutely sure the grey was correct I used Liquidtex Grey No.5. Also sitting under the glass is a greyscale – showing the values from white to black. What next?

Jeffrey Freedner suggested I buy or make ten wooden cubes and spheres and paint them from white through the grey scales to black, then paint small still lives of them. This exercise was recommended by Graydon Parrish and he reckons it is a great exercise to do no matter what level you are at.

Another similar idea was to find objects around the house to represent the same simple shapes: cube, sphere, cone, cylinder. Then set them up, separately and together, with a good strong light source at a 45-degree angle. Look for the value steps in the objects and draw them. This suggestion looked easier because it would be easier than trying to make the wooden cubes and spheres.

In fact I’m going to do all of the above…

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Wooden cubes ready for painting

The styrofoam spheres and cones came from the craft store. Cones? Why cones? Well I had this thought that if I’m painting still lives of these things then a little attention to composition wouldn’t hurt. Three items grouped would work. (Since when should composition matter in a tonal exercise… nuts!)

Now for the gesso.

Amanda