The Power of Reflection and Negative Space

This is a great time of year to reflect on your painting journey and explore the power of negative space in your paintings and your life.

Welcome to another studio chat, where I invite you into my studio to take a little break and share some thoughts about how art and art-making enhance our lives (and vice-versa).

This month, I’m reflecting on my recent art and art-related projects, and exploring the power of negative space to enhance the impact of paintings and allow room for something new and invigorating to enter our lives.

Next week we take up Abha Rajan’s question on creating depth in a painting, and discuss the challenge of creating a believable illusion of depth and shadows, especially on pink, yellow and orange objects. The reference photo is a royalty-free photo from Pixabay. The photo and Abha’s first draft are in last week’s post if you want to give it a try yourself to really appreciate the challenge.

What would be most helpful to you in the coming months?

When I moved the newsletter to Substack, I planned to publish on an every-other-week schedule. (The best pace I’d ever been able to maintain in the past!)

As it happens, I’ve actually published a new article and/or video every week since July. I was able to do this because I had a large backlog of articles and videos that I’d developed at least partway before realizing they wouldn’t work as stand-alone videos on YouTube.

At this point, I’ve mostly worked through that backlog, so I’m considering using those “off weeks” in other ways that might give you a wider variety of learning options. I would love to hear what you would find most appealing or helpful. I know we all get surveyed constantly these days, but I promise to actually read what you have to say! Or, if you prefer, just leave a comment or hit ‘reply’ to let me know what you think.

Just to be clear: this is to help me make choices. I won’t be trying to do all of this! But if there are a lot of different interests, I might rotate through a different set of activities for different seasons, or just to change it up now and then.

Zoom classes and events

We’ve all had a break from everything-Zoom. And it sure is convenient to attend a watercolor class or event from home—no schlepping all your stuff, no transporting wet paintings, no weather concerns. Is it time to try some Zoom events again?

Here are some options I’m considering:

“Office hours”

Every other week (or perhaps weekly, if there is enough demand), a Zoom call with a series of consecutive 15-minute slots you could sign up for to get help with a project or ask about a watercolor challenge. (Cost around $10-15.) Timing would probably vary somewhat to accommodate different time zones and schedules. Like campus office hours, you would be able to sit in and listen (with your audio and video off) to each other’s questions/discussions.

Demonstrations w/Q&A

An updated version of the Second Sunday Live Demos (but probably not always on Sundays).

A big challenge with the earlier live demos was that many people wanted to just buy access to a recording. But trying to record a live demo so that only I am visible and audible on the recording¹ makes an actual conversation impossible.

BUT, I think I have a solution! If I pre-record the demonstration itself, we could do the live event as a “watch party”. I would play the recorded demo, and simply pause it to answer questions, add more information, or demonstrate something in more detail. This would allow us to have an actual conversation at the live event, just like we might in for an in-person demo, but the pre-recorded version could be made available later to those who didn’t want to attend the live event.

Paint Jam

Get together via Zoom to paint, ask questions, enjoy artist conversation, and hold yourself accountable—you gotta paint at Paint Jam!

I would provide a painting prompt or reference material for each session, but you could also just work on whatever you want. (I would also strongly encourage everyone to share what you’re working on, just like you would in an in-person painting group.)

To preserve my sanity, you would buy access for some period of time, not session by session. But there would be no set curriculum, so you it would be up to you whether to attend every session you had access to.

Zoom workshops

Standard 1-2 day workshops on a specific topic. (If you’re interested in something like this, it would be great if you could leave a comment on what topics you’d most like to see!) These would be interactive events at a specific time. I would not be trying to create a separate self-paced, pre-recorded version.

If you’re interested in workshops, what workshop topics would you like to see?

Self-study/Self-paced courses

I’ve been putting out a lot of content lately, but in the newsletter, I try to move around between topics, so there’s something for everyone. I have also been working on some more self-study courses, where you’d get a more in-depth and organized series of lessons on a specific topic, but I’m finding that I simply can’t make progress on them AND publish an article or video every week. (Topics in development are: color-mixing and palette selection; techniques for skies and clouds on smaller paintings that don’t require stretching your paper; planning tools for watercolor; and a more in-depth look at intuitive painting.)

So, one option might be to devote that “off week” time to actually getting some more of these courses published. If you’re more interested in coursework than community interaction, you might prefer I spend my time this way.

The color-mixing and palette selection course will be finished first, but of the remaining topics, which would you be most interested in?

What am I missing?

Is there something else you’d find even more helpful to your learning? Leave a comment (or hit reply) and tell me about it.

1. Otherwise, I would need a model release for everyone else who is visible or audible in the recording, including people who just wander by in the background of someone’s Zoom window. I know people ignore this, but I feel rather strongly about the privacy concerns, even if there weren’t also a legal issue.