What's in Your Kit?

Charlie asks: What’s in your kit?
Everything I need for drawing or basic painting lives in a belt pouch which I bring everywhere. It's small enough to take everywhere and big enough to hold a whole painting kit.

What are your favorite watercolor art supplies to use? 

I have a 12-color watercolor pan set and a small, changing set of gouache. 

What brands do you prefer in watercolor and gouache? 

I keep coming back to M. Graham and Winsor and Newton, but I have samples of most brands. I keep a several different brands in play at any given time, and combine colors from more than one brand in any given painting. Holbein makes a good starter set, and Shinhan Pass makes a watercolor/gouache hybrid set that is quite reasonable with a wide variety of colors. People who watch my videos know I also use Richeson casein occasionally, both for doing finished paintings, and for underpainting. 

What brushes do you use?

I use flats and rounds the most. A good starter set is the short-handled travel brush set made by Richeson.

What kind of paper do you recommend? 

I use a Pentalic watercolor sketchbook, which has heavyweight, medium-textured watercolor paper that works for all my water media paintings and sketches. I use illustration board and linen canvas for my separate framable oil paintings. 

What cameras and audio do you use to capture your videos?

Lately, I've been using a Canon M6, which is great for video, stills, and onboard timelapse. I keep a compact point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot Elph on a belt holster. For a digital audio recorder, I use a Zoom H2N, and that's handy for capturing voiceover and for room tone. I also include a Rode Video microphone.

What else do you carry?

I also carry a couple of water cups with lids that hold on well. In the metal box I carry a water-soluble colored pencil set, plus graphite pencils, a few pastels, a fountain pen, erasers, and water brushes, which work with the colored pencils in tight spaces. And of course I need a paint rag. 

Where can I learn more about your easel?

I use a homemade sketch easel and a tripod. Here's a link to a tutorial on how to make one, and here's a link to a Facebook group of other builders.

Alfred Munnings Paints a Horse

Here's Alfred Munnings painting a white horse while a stableman holds the subject roughly in position.

Scenes like this could have been painted in that way, by having each horse pose with an assistant.

Smooth the Husky Mix

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Smooth, the husky mix rescue, sketched in acrylic. #dogart #instadog #dogsofinstagram #huskymix #rescuedog

A post shared by James Gurney (@jamesgurneyart) on May 19, 2020 at 4:49am PDT

Here's a quick profile of Smooth, who is always ready for adventure.

How do you paint portraits in gouache?

Daniel asks:

"I have been drawing portraits for some time, then chose gouache as my painting medium, not oil, because I have a very cramped apartment.... I would definitely like to mimic the opaque properties of oil in gouache, though know that is not totally possible.

My issues are that the color value changes slightly when put on paper vs when on the palette, and also about the fast drying nature of gouache. I have tried paper towels and stay wet palettes, but found it not good for me. Moreover, I know that gouache reactivates with water, but when I go to my dry paint after about 10-15 minutes, it has a more crusty and undesirable feel compared to first when out of the tube.

I would like to blend and do transitions better. I would also like to do a more classical style, with a first drawing, then a grisaille Underpainting, then adding color layers on top for the portrait. I could perhaps even glaze with thin layers. Is trying to mimic a traditional indirect oil process somewhat futile in gouache, do you think? Should I attack the paper surface more directly Alla Prima style? Is gouache conducive to multi layers like oil? I think I want to know more about the nature of this gouache medium.

I have bought a few painting courses, which have been very helpful, but none have been in gouache. So I was wondering if you could just give me a few tips on a better way to paint portraits in gouache? (I will always start with a drawing at first, at least for now. I love the drawing part). Your portraits in the wild course might be a start. 

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Answer: Gouache can be used for portraits, but it presents all the problems you mentioned if you try to use it in the slow, indirect way of grisaille and glazing.  

 

The issues that you're facing with its fast drying time are really unavoidable. You've just got to work faster. Speed of execution can be gouache's virtue in painting from life. I show several examples of directly painted gouache portraits on my Gumroad tutorial "Portraits in the Wild."



Here's a sample of the new video "Color in Practice" which shows a portrait of a Greg at his workstation in an auto repair shop. (Link to YouTube)

You can always use pastel to get controlled gradations, following the example of Maurice de la Tour, who did the one above. Pastel lets you work at whatever speed you want, but de la Tour worked quickly to avoid tiring his sitter. The advantage is that he achieved a sense of fleeting, momentary expressions. 

You can use acryla gouache if you really don't want to pick up previous layers. But I like having an open surface because it allows me to soften blend later if I need to. With regular gouache, you can place a wet stroke over a dry passage if you have a very light touch and don't mess with it. 

You can also varnish it to recover the values of the darks. I would only recommend varnishing if it's a very dark-keyed painting.

Adolph Menzel, Senior Privy Councillor Knerk,
portrait study for the painting The Coronation of Wilhelm I in Königsberg, 1863/1865,
watercolour and gouache over a preparatory sketch on vellum paper

I would practice painting vegetables first until you're familiar with the medium. If you try to figure out the properties of a type of paint while handling the immense subtlety of a portrait, you're inviting frustration.



I hope that gets you started on the path,
James G.

Art Chat with Justin

(Link to YouTube)
I enjoyed this conversation with Justin Donaldson. I should have explained that I can't do a video chat, because my internet connection is too weak. At least I got decent audio.

Thomas Hart Benton Talks About Popularity

In a vintage audio recording, Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) talks about art and popular taste. 

He argues that advertising and illustration can be great art only if it has a form that transcends the message. Link to YouTube.

Object-come-to-life Challenge

I'm looking forward to seeing and reacting to the new Proko challenge to draw or paint an object that comes to life as a creature or character.

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James Gurney is judging the MAY PROKO CHALLENGE - Win a Wacom Tablet, Signed Prints and Proko Courses! RULES: 1. Like this post & follow @jamesgurneyart, @prokotv, and @wacom 2. Transform household objects or vehicles into a character or creature! Depict them interacting with an environment rather than individual character design. It can be a drawing, painting, or sculpture. Digital or traditional. 3. Post it to your IG account using #prokochallenge 4. James will judge based on originality, consistency of vision, well-thought-out implied story, and convincing execution in terms of design, color, lighting, dynamics, and perspective. James will make a reaction video! Deadline - Monday, June 1 at 11:59 pm (EST) PRIZES: 1st place - Wacom One Creative Pen Display, signed print with a sketch by James Gurney, and the Proko Figure, Portrait, and Anatomy courses. 2nd place - Wacom Intuos medium tablet, signed print with a sketch by James Gurney, and 1 Proko course of their choice. 3rd place - Signed print with a sketch by James Gurney and 1 Proko course of their choice RANDOM WINNER - To give students a higher chance of winning, a random winner will also get a Wacom Intuos small tablet and signed print with a sketch by James Gurney PROKO TEAM CHOICE - The Proko team will choose their favorite along with a few fun awards with prizes TBD. Winners will be contacted via DM. This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Instagram. Free shipping of Wacom prizes to US, Canada, Latin America (except Venezuela), EU, UK, Japan, and Australia. Participants in all other countries would pay shipping costs to claim a tablet. COVID-19 Alert: Shipping to certain countries will not be possible right now because of the pandemic. Please be aware of an indefinite delay for shipping prizes to winners outside of the United States. #prokoandwacom #artcontest #drawingcontest #wacom #digitalart #traditionalart #characterdesign #jamesgurney

A post shared by Proko (@prokotv) on May 15, 2020 at 11:37am PDT

Link to Instagram

"Lines and Colors" Review of Color in Practice

 Charley Parker, in his blog Lines and Colors, reviewed my new Gumroad tutorial "Color in Practice"     

Here is an excerpt of his review.

      "Many artists’ instructional videos on color want to start out running and dazzle the student (i.e. prospective buyer) with promises of color mastery, but undeservedly breeze past these important stages, the most fundamental of which, of course, is black and white, or value.
      Gurney starts there, with easily grasped exercises like comparing transparent and opaque methods of making value steps in the form of simple charts.
       Gurney has an uncanny knack for what I think of as “teaching within teaching”. In the process of covering basics, he touches on more complex concepts like like chroma, alternative color wheels, color temperature and color gamuts — not in depth, but in a context that allows a basic understanding and prepares the student for more a extensive explanation later. He lets you absorb these secondary concepts almost unconsciously as you follow his main thread."
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Lines and Colors Review of 'Color in Practice'

A Tip for Sketching Kids

How do you draw kids without them being self conscious?

Adolph Menzel "would go out in wind and weather but one day when there was too heavy a downpour, he came into the music room where my two little sisters were playing Haydn’s ‘Serenade’ together on the piano."

Adolph von Menzel (1815 - 1905) 

Therese and Grete Herrmann at the Piano, 1872

Pencil on paper, 24.5 × 33.6 cm

"'Children,' he called out, 'I want to draw the candelabra, play something for me while I’m drawing’, and thus he could capture the undisturbed image of their playing in all its naturalness and sketch the picturesque, unique likeness of them with which he later delighted [their] parents." Quote from Art Dealer Stephen Ongpin. 

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Book, edited by James Gurney "Adolph Menzel: Drawings and Paintings" also available on Amazon.

Portrait by Nicolai Fechin

Nicolai Fechin (1881-1955), born in Russia and ended his years in the southwestern USA. Beneath the eye-catching brush texture is a solid understanding of form.

Fechin's father was a woodcarver, and he himself turned to sculpting at the end of the day when there wasn't enough light for painting.

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Nicolai Fechin on Wikipedia