Robert Raack, Cleveland watercolor artist
All my drawings and paintings are done from direct observation. They begin with a search for the choice of a subject. There are four different types of subject matter that interest me; first is naturally occurring situations in my surrounding environment, the second is still life in my studio, third is to work from a model and fourth is botanical subjects. Regardless of the choice, my actual subject is always the movement, light and space I see before me.
I prefer to stand when I paint, because I have maximum mobility. However, sometimes I will sit in order to see the subject from a lower angle. My distance from the subject has considerable influence on my experience of seeing; so I spend time to consider how close or far away I should be from the subject. I only paint with natural light on my subject, on my palette and on my painting. This is because daylight reveals such a broad range of colors.
I start by making a line drawing using an HB pencil on watercolor paper or burnt umber (a very fast drying pigment) for oils on canvas, paying attention to the relative proportion and position of all areas within the picture plane. I always layout a full color palette when I paint; a warm and cool of the three primaries and just a few others; also a lot of titanium white if I'm painting with oils.
The early to mid development stages of my paintings are characterized by moderately small abstract* color groupings that over-time expand into visual pathways that lead the eye through the visual field of a painting. At this stage I am laying the groundwork that will hold everything together. I consciously avoid painting any identifiable object in its entirety until the later stages of the painting, so it does not take my attention away from seeing the unity of the painting.
Over the course of a paintings' development I observe countless changes in the colors of my subject that occur due to the changing play of light upon surfaces. I take note of how these changes in the lighting affect both the color relationships and the sense I have for the space. Sometimes the light accentuates certain features and other times diminishes them and because some parts of a painting are worked on at different times the viewer might notice slight differences in the lighting within the same painting. I paint some passages over and over again, because I notice problems with placement, proportion, or the character of shape or colors that are not quite right; whatever the problem, I continue to make adjustments and corrections to achieve a closer correspondence to how I see my subject.
By paying attention to the entire picture plane I am able to get a sense of where things are in space and how big things look compared to one another within the surrounding space. Where something is in space, is often more important than what the things are, because what something is, is not a function of the spatial organization.
The degree of attention and awareness I bring to seeing is of paramount importance. When I look at a larger area of space that includes an object I am able to continue working freely across those contours from outside in and back out again into adjacent areas of space. Ultimately, I work toward being in a state where I can visualize the development of the entire image, while it is coming into being. The more aware and present I am in this endeavor the more intentional and confident I become in constructing and reconstructing the image and consequently the more expressive the image becomes.
* My working definition of abstract is to 'distill forms and space down to the fundamental visual elements of line, value and color, omitting any extraneous embellishments'.
I prefer to stand when I paint, because I have maximum mobility. However, sometimes I will sit in order to see the subject from a lower angle. My distance from the subject has considerable influence on my experience of seeing; so I spend time to consider how close or far away I should be from the subject. I only paint with natural light on my subject, on my palette and on my painting. This is because daylight reveals such a broad range of colors.
I start by making a line drawing using an HB pencil on watercolor paper or burnt umber (a very fast drying pigment) for oils on canvas, paying attention to the relative proportion and position of all areas within the picture plane. I always layout a full color palette when I paint; a warm and cool of the three primaries and just a few others; also a lot of titanium white if I'm painting with oils.
The early to mid development stages of my paintings are characterized by moderately small abstract* color groupings that over-time expand into visual pathways that lead the eye through the visual field of a painting. At this stage I am laying the groundwork that will hold everything together. I consciously avoid painting any identifiable object in its entirety until the later stages of the painting, so it does not take my attention away from seeing the unity of the painting.
Over the course of a paintings' development I observe countless changes in the colors of my subject that occur due to the changing play of light upon surfaces. I take note of how these changes in the lighting affect both the color relationships and the sense I have for the space. Sometimes the light accentuates certain features and other times diminishes them and because some parts of a painting are worked on at different times the viewer might notice slight differences in the lighting within the same painting. I paint some passages over and over again, because I notice problems with placement, proportion, or the character of shape or colors that are not quite right; whatever the problem, I continue to make adjustments and corrections to achieve a closer correspondence to how I see my subject.
By paying attention to the entire picture plane I am able to get a sense of where things are in space and how big things look compared to one another within the surrounding space. Where something is in space, is often more important than what the things are, because what something is, is not a function of the spatial organization.
The degree of attention and awareness I bring to seeing is of paramount importance. When I look at a larger area of space that includes an object I am able to continue working freely across those contours from outside in and back out again into adjacent areas of space. Ultimately, I work toward being in a state where I can visualize the development of the entire image, while it is coming into being. The more aware and present I am in this endeavor the more intentional and confident I become in constructing and reconstructing the image and consequently the more expressive the image becomes.
* My working definition of abstract is to 'distill forms and space down to the fundamental visual elements of line, value and color, omitting any extraneous embellishments'.