Realistic Painting Workshop

Creative Methods for Painting from Life

Dan Carrel

• Publisher: Quarry Books
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781610594561
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

This is a unique, how-to art instruction book, taught by masterful artist Dan Carrel.Using Dan's original method of painting, readers with little or no painting experience will easily learn to create realistic renderings of any subject. Through a simple process of layering and learning how to create light and shadow with paint, a complex and sophisticated image emerges. What begins as chaotic color is transformed into an orderly, realistic finished piece of art. Dan Carrel has been teaching workshops for over 30 years with amazing results. No matter what your artistic inclination, and even if you have never picked up a paintbrush, you'll find yourself painting beyond your wildest expectations. Anchored in a positive philosophyof creative discovery, this workshop teaches Dan's no-fail techniques through accessible, step-by-step visual instruction and inspiration.

1
UNDERSTANDING YOUR BIRTHRIGHT AS AN ARTIST

Everyone has the potential to be an artist. In fact, we were wonderful artists by the time we were four years old. Then, as we got older, we were told that we had to be talented to be an artist—that is, to be able to visually sculpt, paint, or draw. But no one told us that we needed talent to learn math and writing skills—to sculpt, paint, or draw with words. We could learn math and verbal reading without a talent, but we couldn’t learn art structures without it.

In school, we learned to read and write using a verbal alphabet—our ABCs. And, if we put the letters together in the right order, we create words that everyone can understand. But we do not learn a standard visual alphabet that enables us to communicate visually, despite the fact that 13 percent of us can learn to visually read, paint, or draw very realistically when given a blank page. Instead, we falsely describe that 13 percent as artistic and talented and give the remaining 87 percent of our population an excuse for being visually illiterate. Our society expects the visual-artist population to be verbally literate but in turn does not expect the verbal-artist population to be visually literate.

Tyco Wave, Window Blind series; acrylic on woven canvas strips behind a canvas/wood lattice, 3" × 48" × 78" (7.5 × 122 × 198.2 cm)

Aspens; acrylic on canvas, 44" × 36" (112 × 91.5 cm)

THE TALENT MYTH

We all can learn to paint, draw, or sculpt realistically if we have the right instructor or need. There is enough hardwired programming in our brain to do almost anything in an average way. To be able to draw a realistic, recognizable image is equal to being able to write a complete sentence.

True talent is the ability to immediately access a universal human ability—such as painting, running, singing, and working out complicated math problems—without training. It is a genetic memory that is passed down through a person’s genetic makeup. To write a novel that brings new insight to the world or to paint a portrait of a woman whose perfume you swear you can smell is the product of talent. Being able to write a complete sentence or paint a recognizable portrait is learned and is not true talent. Great artists, mathematicians, writers, musicians, and singers rely on a powerful talent, but the average person can learn to paint, write, sing, play music, and do math in a competent way without requiring a special talent.

Normally, we all have arms and legs, but very few of us are Olympic athletes. A runner is not necessarily talented if he can run faster than you. He’s talented if he can run faster than most people. But we all have an ability to run, because a basic knowledge of running and walking is hardwired into the brain. The same principal applies to art. Most of us have the necessary components of visual thinking or art; to be a competent artist, we might only have to learn or practice one small component that we did not have immediate access to at birth.

We need to realize that our present society’s definition of visual talent is wrong. Society determines what is average and what is talent and what is important. Our society sets low standards for visual reading (art) and high standards for verbal reading (language) because verbal reading is falsely perceived as more important than visual reading. If it were perceived as equally important, most of the population would be able to paint, sculpt, and draw with the same ability the average person has to read a book.

Historically, society had the same misconceptions about reading, writing, and mathematics; 500 years ago, the average person believed that it wasn’t possible to learn to read without having a talent for it. In fact, it was true, because the educational system excluded average people. However, if you went back to that time, before the era of mass-production of goods, you might be amazed by how talented the average person was at making things, compared to our present times. These skills were learned out of necessity and valued by the larger society. They were crucial to its success. But the ability to paint, sculpt, and draw is not perceived as a necessity for survival in our society. If we all had been given enough opportunity to practice art, and if society had given more emphasis to visual thinking compared to verbal thinking, we would all be decent visual artists.

Endorsing a one-dimensional thinking and learning style in our academic institutions has created some serious problems for our society—40 percent of our first-grade children are creative-thinking and right-hemisphere dominant, and very few of them finish college; creative thinkers comprise 80 percent of our prison inmates. Their self-esteem is starved from a bigoted learning-style hierarchy, tinting their creative solutions with anger and fear.

An excellent educational system employs teachers who realize that their job is to find each student’s particular problem-solving talent and reveal how it is an integral part of opening all doors of knowledge; it is not to impose on these students their own or society’s intellectual biases. The latter creates an excuse for the teacher and student to fail. The failure is not the lack of a specific talent combination but the belief that all individual talents are not necessary to fully solve every problem. When brainstorming to solve a complex problem, most talent categories come into play, from spatial thinking to mathematics. Visual thinking is at the top—how can you visualize a problem without being trained visually? Each specific talent is made up of smaller common intellectual components of information that are arranged like notches and points on a key. Each talent-key combination fits certain problems perfectly but also can help unlock any problem. The more keys you have at your disposal, the more doors of information you can unlock.

The truth is that everyone has immediate access to part of the talent lock. To be healthy in mind, body, and spirit, we all need the powerful emotional energy generated by our talents. Being able to solve problems in our own way motivates the creation of new intellectual keys that will eventually open the doors to all knowledge. We should all be given the opportunity to learn in all learning styles, which can give us clues for using our talents in new ways.

No individual has the perfect set of talent tools to solve a problem completely. The best solutions come from outside the traditional talent box within a group of distinctly different learning styles united by a common bond of passion for discovery. Our education and working systems need to endorse a program of teaching and working that includes both creative and critical thinking. The more creative-critical combinations an organization has, the greater its problem-solving power.

Supporting Creative Thinking at Work

In the last 100 years, jobs for creative thinkers have disappeared. Craftsmen, artisans, even farmers who have to be very creative in their gamble on the environment are almost gone in the United States. Corporate CEOs are sometimes creative and critical thinkers, especially if they created their own companies. Companies need creative people but demand environments that only cater to the critical-thinking management styles, thus making a distinctly unfavorable environment for its creative workforce.

PROBLEM SOLVING THROUGH VISUAL LITERACY

Although our society heavily favors learning verbal and mathematical languages, the birth-mother of these languages is visual communication; ideas are always discovered visually and then translated into these other languages. Unfortunately, we’ve forgotten that visual literacy is one of our most important thinking tools; one that can bring new concepts and rare ideas into the world. In fact, some of our best creative thinkers were labeled learning-disabled, because they thought with the “wrong side” of the brain. In other words, they use an unpopular thinking style to solve problems. Many of the greatest writers were not gifted grammarians, but they were excellent storytellers. And, though Einstein flunked high school algebra, he knew how to ask the right questions.

The visual structures learned through the arts enhance the mind’s capacity to learn and solve problems! Combining the intellectual tools used by the visual, verbal, musical, and mathematical arts gives all of us the chance to use our individual unique talents more effectively and extend the understanding of our potential.

We are all talented, and within the structure of each of our unique personal talents are the essential components that can universally unlock all information, including visual art. This book is a blueprint for resurrecting that important knowledge you used as a child and applying it to your adult life with the joy of a child and the wisdom of an adult.

SIDEWALK DRAWING EXERCISE

Before you can learn how to paint or do anything new, you need to understand what you already know about the subject. The key to transformational painting is to realize that you are already an artist and that your ability to paint is within you; it’s just waiting to be discovered. This exercise is a good way of proving to yourself that you have sophisticated and complex universal visual-thinking tools already in place and can illustrate complex concepts in a powerful, succinct way. This exercise also reveals how your talent components and personality influence visual thinking.

I have given the following sidewalk drawing exercise to hundreds of people over the last thirty-four years and have come up with some very similar, predictable data proving that we all are able to produce complex sophisticated visual symbols that transcend gender, race, age, and societies. This simple exercise is full of important information to give you the confidence to paint.

To perform this exercise, you’ll need to gather together some friends, family members, or even coworkers. They don’t need to be interested in learning how to paint to participate, but they might find themselves enjoying the exercise and learning something about themselves—and others in the group—in the process. You will notice that everyone becomes relaxed and happy and that the concept of time passing disappears—a common occurrence when you are thinking with the right hemisphere.

tip

You will find that you grow faster if you can work on these exercises with other people. With this book, you can learn to paint by yourself, but to grow as an artist and use your talents to full capacity, you need honest critical evaluation by people who are struggling with the same problems. We are all students and teachers when we create. We all learn from each other’s mistakes and triumphs.

Step 1 Place a length of white paper approximately 2’ × 12’ (61 cm × 3.7 m) (a roll of newsprint or printer paper works well) on the floor to duplicate a sidewalk, and have at least five adults sit on both sides of the paper sidewalk. Pass around a large container of assorted colored crayons and have everyone take some crayons and pass the tray to the next person. As the crayons are passed, note how each individual handles theirs. Some might organize the crayons by size or color, some might stack them like Lincoln logs, others might just leave them in an un-collated pile. Some might even take crayons from their neighbors without asking!

Step 2 Have people close their eyes and visualize their earliest pleasant memory. Allow at least two minutes for this. When everyone’s facial expression has softened and relaxed, have them open their eyes and pretend they are four years old for the duration of the sidewalk drawing.

Step 3 Now, illustrate the five following concepts without using recognizable realistic symbols, words, or shapes—to illustrate in the pure abstract. Be sure not to draw the concepts in order or number them at this time.

1. Fear

2. Sex

3. Hunger

4. Happiness

5. Eating an ice-cream cone in the hot sun

Step 4 When finished, have everyone stand and walk clockwise around the sidewalk, giving each drawing a black crayon number that they feel corresponds to the concept. (For example, a participant who feels that a particular drawing represents Hunger would give the drawing a black crayon number 3; one that suggests Happiness would be given a number 4.) Ask the participants not to be influenced by others but to be honest.

Step 5 When the drawings have been numbered, have everyone sit at their own drawings and number them in red crayon. The red crayon numbers reveal to the rest of the group which drawing was intended for which particular concept.

Step 6 Have the participants stand up and look at all of the drawings and numbers, noting which drawings were correctly guessed. Remember, the black numbers are the participants’ guesses, and the red numbers indicate the correct concept. Then discuss which drawings fit each concept better than others. Whic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Understanding Your Birthright as an Artist
• Chapter 2: Got Chaos? The Visual Alphabet
• Chapter 3: Materials, Tools, and Techniques
• Chapter 4: The Transformational Painting Process
• Chapter 5: Painting Techniques
• Chapter 6: Gallery
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright Page