Fleming's Class 5: Painting Clothing

Lessons learned:

• It's impossible to see everything when you look at a person - similarly, when painting a person, don't try to capture every detail
• You don't have to paint a white sweater white or black boots black - you can add some blue to them to harmonize them with the blue shirt
• When painting people, use fewer brush strokes and really blend the strokes together
• The upper lip is almost always in shadow

Woman in Blue Shirt, 14x20 in, (c) 2011 by Jess Sanaie

Fleming's Class 4: Contrast

This class was about contrast and doing several layers of painting, going from light to dark. The darkest sections received the most layers.
What I learned:

• Make adjacent shadow areas the same value. For example, when the red shirt meets the brown neck, both tints should be the same value.
• Integrate the figure with the background and do not let the background overpower the figure. Texture, contrast and color attract our attention. If the background is dry brush, high contrast and super bright, then it will detract from the figure.
• Practice practice practice - I've been doing one 5-minute figure sketch each day which helps me draw faster (we only get 20-30 mins per painting in class).
• The joy of using Raw Siena, Burnt Siena and New Gamboge paint for figures. Also, the joy of using my new filbert size 16 and size 4 brushes. Fleming uses round brushes for figures, but I prefer my filberts.
• To stop using Caput Mortum paint on the figure - that color is best left for painting landscapes only.

Captions:

top: Ready to Leave, ~10x15in

bottom: Byron Sitting, ~9x15in

both watercolor paintings by Jess Sanaie (c)2011

Fleming's Class 3: Faces

Class 3 was about doing faces. Here's what I learned:

• Combine the shadow shapes together, such as the shadow on the side of the face and the one under the chin.
• Find the big shadow shapes. You may need to make the shadow shapes darker than they really are. The contrast turns the figure (makes figure look 3-dimensional).
• Use warmer colors higher on the face; use cooler colors as you move down.
• There's a warm shadow in the following places: corner of the eye, going from side of the nose up towards the eye, the underside of the nose, and above and below the lips. The shadows around the lips are warm because of reflected light (lips are reddish so the shadows are reddish)

Portrait of Michael (c)2011 by Jess Sanaie, 11x16in