Professional Artist Magazine, article by Ora Sorensen

A R T N E W S + B U S I N E S S A D V I C E + R E S O U R C E S + E D U C AT I O N + T U T O R I A L S FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

Artists As Inventors PAGE 30

Paint the Mystery of Glass PAGE 46

Increase Your Work’s Value

PAGE 58

Sell Online Successfully PAGE 10

Art About Our Environment PAGE 69

APPROACHING NOISE

by David Kassan

contents FEB+MAR 2013

VOLUME 27 // NUMBER 1

features 10 Daily Painting

By Carol Marine

18 Payment Processing

By Daniel Grant

30

20 Printing at Home

By Sarah Pollock

28

A Rough Guide to Living the Dream

By Elena Parashko

30 Artists as Inventors

By Kim Hall

42 Book Excerpt from

Making It in the Art World

By Brainard Carey

64

46 Painting Glass

By Ora Sorensen

54 Inventory Lists

By Diana Moses Botkin

58 Increasing the Value of Art

By Alan Bamberger

64 Creating Challenging Work

By Terry Sullivan

69 Environmental Artists

By RenĂŠe Phillips

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on the cover Approaching Noise, 2010, by David Kassan. Oil on panel, 48” x 60”. Read more about the cover artist in Artists as Inventors, page 30.

columns 16 Photo Guy

16

By Steve Meltzer

27 41

departments 4 5

Editor’s Letter

8

Artist Spotlight: Diane Feissel

Best Business Practice

By Jodi Walsh

Planning Your Art Business

By Robert Reed

57

Coaching the Artist

63

Heart to Heart

By Eric Maisel

By Jack White

Headlines & Details

By Kim Hall

75 Art Resources 77 Calls to Artists

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46 Professional Artist FEB+MAR 2013

BY ORA SORENSEN

ILLUSION Painting &e OF GLASS W

hen you depict glass in a painting, you’re most often creating an illusion. But the approach is often quite different from painting other subjects. Unlike creating an image of opaque objects, you don’t actually paint the glass itself, since it’s either translucent or transparent. Instead, you paint the reflections, refractions and distortions that occur on and within a glass object. Simply put, you render the abstract shapes caused by the play of light on the glass object in order to replicate its appearance.

But how can you paint what I call the elusive journey of a light wave? It’s a challenge, to say the least. Light will look different at various times of the day or depending on atmospheric conditions. It also changes appearance in glass, water or other transparent substances, which often bend or distort the light.

Green Vase, 2012, by Ora Sorensen. Oil on canvas, 40” x 30.” Copyright © 2012 Ora Sorensen. Used by permission of the artist.

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Paint

what you see, not what you think you see.”

Figure 1

This is called refraction — the turning or bending of any wave, such as a light wave, when it passes from one substance into another of different optical density. This process often bends the light wave sending it in many different directions. It’s this traveling light wave that creates distortions and reflections of objects around, behind and inside the glass (see Figure 1).

of water produces shadows filled with bright spots and sparkling patterns. Additionally, some shadows thrown from the glass appear solid in some places, while others are filled with bright highlights and colors. But the shadow is darkest where the light wave’s pathway is blocked by the curves of the glass or any imperfections in it (see Figure 3).

As the light refracts at the surface of the water inside the glass, the angle of the light changes and distorts the appearance of the submerged stem into “broken” pieces and causes the stem to appear shallower and wider. The stem viewed through the glass also appears lighter and brighter in tone (see Figure 2).

Although the complex relationship of reflections and refractions may sound complicated, if you train your eye, you can often see these lighting effects quite clearly. But you’ll need to scrutinize and analyze the shapes that you’re painting and pick the ones that seem most important, tonally and chromatically. One method I use to do this is to see my paintings as puzzle pieces and paint each piece separately, keeping in mind the adage, “Paint what you see, not what you think you see.”

At the point the ray of light hits the glass, two things happen: First, some light is reflected off the surface. Second, some of the light passes through the glass. So, the effect of light on the glass

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Figure 2

Figure 3 www.professionalartistmag.com

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To help you understand how to capture the illusive qualities of glass in a painting, here’s a step-by-step demonstration: STEP 1

Setting Up the Composition

the drawing because I’ve found the more problems I solve at this stage of the composition, the more successful I’ll be when I get to the painting stage.

I used a beautiful green vase with a clear glass bottom for this demonstration and placed a large white Casa Blanca lily and some water inside the vase. I chose a white flower and white drapery so that the green vase would stand out. The vase, flower and fabric were arranged outdoors in the bright sunlight to capture bright highlights and deep shadows.

Since graphite pencil can smudge, I painted a thin layer of gesso over the drawing to set the pencil lines and keep them from smearing into or bleeding through the oil paint. (I also mixed a little water and a dash of yellow ochre acrylic paint to thin and tint the gesso mixture.) The pencil lines still showed through the layer of gesso enough to be a guide.

I decided to paint on a 40-inch-by-30-inch canvas and started by making a detailed drawing directly on it using a No. 2 pencil. (I generally like using a mechanical pencil.) I spent a lot of time on

When I was ready to start painting, I first worked on the neutral background and the white cloth. I like to paint from the

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STEP 2

Painting the Background

3 background to the foreground. I also tend to work from light to dark. Focusing on the background first often enables me to accurately determine the correct values in the foreground. Working this way also makes the objects in my paintings stand out.

STEP 3

Blocking in the Abstract Shapes

Next I blocked in various abstract shapes I perceived in the vase. I used three shades of green (a very light green, a medium green and a dark green), which I mixed with Winsor & Newton Liquin as a medium.

I examined the still life, then picked out and exaggerated the separate shapes by tone. I then painted them each as abstract shapes, which were created by the folds, shadows and highlights of the fabric behind the glass vase as well as the distortion of the stem and water in the vase. Note that the shadow beneath the vase is painted with the darker neutral shade from the background, and the patterns within the shadow are painted with the light and medium green tones from the vase.

STEP 1 I spend a lot of time on the drawing because I’ve found the more problems I solve at this stage of the composition, the more successful I’ll be when I get to the painting stage.

STEP 2 In this step, I painted the background and the white cloth in neutral colors.

STEP 3 I pick out and exaggerate the separate shapes by tone and paint them each as abstract shapes.

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4

5

Glazing

The opaque colors I used to mix the three tones are as follows:

STEP 5

Light green: Cadmium Green, Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow Light

After the base colors have dried, I used very thin, transparent glazes of oil paint to unify and intensify the colors, add depth, and strengthen the contrast. I used Winsor & Newton Liquin, tinted with oil paint, to make my glazes. For the first glaze, I used Aureolin Yellow and Viridian Green. For the second, I used Alizarin Crimson and Sap Green to darken the vase.

Medium green: Chromium Oxide Green, Cerulean Blue, Cadmium Yellow Dark green: Chromium Oxide Green, Cadmium Red Deep, Cadmium Yellow STEP 4

Blending

Next, I blended the colors right on the canvas, softening the edges with a soft, clean brush.

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The surface seems to glow more when a darker glaze is laid over a lighter one. But it’s important to wait for each glaze to dry completely. If you don’t wait, the new layer will pull off the prior one. So, I let each glaze dry overnight, which seems to be plenty of time.

6 STEP 6

Adding the Finishing Touches

To emphasize the beautiful play of light on the green vase, I added deep shadows and highlights last, using glazing techniques as well as a dry-brush technique. I find the green vase appeared brighter when the shadows were deepened and bright, starry highlights were added to the surface.

I like to keep in mind what the glass sculpture artist Dale Chihuly once said about his favorite medium: “Glass is the most magical of all materials.” It’s a notion that also reminds me why I find glass so interesting: It can often add shimmer, shine and magical allure to a still-life painting. PA Ora Sorensen (www.orasorensenart.com) was born in New York but grew up overseas in such countries as Libya, Turkey, Iran, Holland and Thailand. Her paintings are collected worldwide and have been shown in numerous exhibitions.

STEP 4 I blend the colors at the edges with a soft, clean brush.

STEP 5 I use thin, transparent glazes of oil paint to unify and intensify the colors.

STEP 6 Shadows and highlights are added last, using glazing techniques and a dry-brush technique.

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