Al Fresco Art Club Challenge, Aug 18, 2019 -- Another Cézanne Masterpiece

The Al Fresco Art Club is in a sweet groove. For the last couple of months the challenge has been to paint in the style of the masters, as if we were students trying to learn by copying a painting in a museum. I’m hooked on Cézanne. This week I decided to attempt to paint one of his more colorful portraits, Woman with a coffee pot. We’re allowed one hour to paint. Having a strict time limit encourages looking at a painting and quickly prioritizing the important details that must be in the final work.

As always, our painting had to be done on one layer, with no undo, no filters, and no gradients. I chose a triad color palette, which I created with Krita’s Artistic Palette and Gamut Masks tools. Very cool!

The gamut mask for Woman with a coffee pot…

Cézanne’s Woman with a Coffee Pot

Created with the Krita Gamut Masks tool

My attempt…

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Chore Day, Aug 10, 2019 - A Message in a Bottle

Dear Diary, today was chore day. I started the day by cooking up a batch of food for my boys — black bean and sweet potato “burgers”. My youngest boy is a Pomeranian who thinks he’s in charge of the whole world. My other boy is a mature Pug who thinks only about getting his next meal. The Pomeranian hates what I cook. I tell him to get a driver’s license and drive down to the co-op to buy his own food. He ignores me.

Besides cooking dog food today, I reread James Gurney’s Color and Light. This book is a real game changer for me. I can now look at my paintings and see where I’ve abused my color palette. I’ve also learned how to create a color palette that unifies the colors in my paintings. Unfortunately, the colors in my children’s picture book are all over the place. I’ll do what I can to improve them before I publish the book.

If I were marooned on a desert island, I would send out a message in a bottle to every beginning painter. It would go something like this…

If you have any desire to produce paintings that do not expose you as an amateur, learn about color gamuts.

Krita has a built-in gamut mask creator. This screenshot shows that I don’t know how it works…yet! Fortunately, Aaron Rutten has a great video showing how to use the Krita gamut mask tool. Check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ch3M57N8-o

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