Hello 

Welcome to the FLOAT-YOUR-PIGMENT Newsletter #107,  Simplifying

Last weekend I had an amazing time up to Dillman's Spring Open House Festival. Most exciting was meeting and watching a demo by artist and instructor Sterling Edwards. No matter what level of artist you are it is always educational and amazing to watch other artists with amazing talents demonstrate their skills. Sterling did an amazing demo piece. After he demonstrated I got a chance to go up to him and introduce myself. We started talking watercolors and the rest was history. Sterling gave me one of his bristle watercolor brushes so I gave him a set of my BeckerArt Brushes. Can't wait to give his brush a try.

There are still a few spots open for my June Workshop at Dillman's

sign-up ASAP. This is going to be an amazing workshop and I have some special gifts for all that will be participating this June. sign-up by calling 715-588-3143 or register HERE​​​​​​​

If you are up near Dillman's June 15th, artists and non-artists are invited to join me at my BeckerArt Paint Party. I am bringing this paint party to Dillman's to help raise money for their Dillman's Creative Arts Scholarships. Dillman's gives out scholarships to many students that can't afford to take art classes and I have had the pleasure of teaching many of those students. This is also a great way to give the artist's spouses and friends who are non-artists a taste of painting and it a great time too.
​​​​​​​Everyone can be an artist at my BeckerArt Paint Parties!

Sign-up for the June 15th BeckerArt Paint Party by calling 715-588-3143 or register HERE​​​​​​​
More info on the party HERE

David

Yes to Class at the Civic Center in Libertyville on May 25th
Yes to Class at The Studio in McHenry on May 27th

Most students have a hard time attempting a city scene due to the amount of details that they have to draw. Drawing is probably the hardest part when creating a busy city scene. The actual watercolor painting of the city scene is what I try teaching students to simplify. Many believe it is the amount of things in a city scene that makes it hard to paint, but it is the drawing that makes it hard.

The thing you have to do is simplify the light and dark pattern of the values. 

Below I have broken down the scene to black and white and then I posterize it to 3 values to show you how I look at the photo when I am painting it. I don't actually do this to my images I do this by squinting my eyes at the photo to break down the values. The 3 photos below are to show you how I see it when squinting at the photo. 

When I was in art school I had to draw value sketches to break down the values into simple patterns. I don't make my students do value sketches because many take the sketches too literally and draw a really tight drawing of the photo and that defeats the purpose of doing a simple value study or what many call a thumbnail sketch. Most of the time I now tell them to make a black and white copy of the photo and look at it for their value pattern. Don't get me wrong by thinking it is not helpful to do value sketches, they are extremely helpful, I just want my students to learn to paint in my class and not spend the entire time pencil sketching the subject. I tell students that sketching is very important and they should sketch often in a sketchbook, it really helps you tremendously when learning how to draw and learning to simplify large value patterns.

Below are the 3 steps to simplifying the values in a colored photo.

 Then I posterized the B&W photo to 3 values, this simplifies the values to big bold patterns.​​​​​​​