Tag: technique

Painting techniques

Techniques in watercolour paintings

#Washes

The most basic watercolour technique is the flat wash. It is reduced by first wetting the area of paper to be covered by the wash, then mixing sufficient pigment to easily fill the entire area. The pigment is applied to a sloping surface in slightly overlapping horizontal bands from the top down. Once complete, the wash should be left to dry and even itself out. Don’t be tempted to work back into a drawing wash, the results are usually disastrous! A variation on the basic wash is the graded wash. This technique requires the pigment to be diluted slightly with more water for each horizontal stroke. The result is a wash that fades out gradually and evenly.

#Glazing

Glazing is a similar watercolour technique Do a wash, but uses a thin, transparent pigment applied over dry existing washes. Its purpose is to adjust the colour and tone of the underlying wash. Non-staining, transparent pigments such as Rose Madder (or Permanent Rose), Cobalt Blue and or Auroline are ideal for glazing as they can be applied layer after led to achieve the desired effect. Be sure each layer is thoroughly dry before applying the next.

#Dropping in colour

This technique is simply the process of introducing a colour to a wet region of the painting and allowing it to blend bleed and feather without interruption. The result is sometimes and predictable but yields interesting and vibrant colour gradations That can’t be achieved by mixing the pigment on the palette.

#Wet-on-wet

Wet-on-wet is simply the process of applying pigment to wait paper. The results very from soft undefined shapes to slightly blurred marks, depending on how wet the paper is. The wet-on-wet technique can be applied over existing washes provided they are thoroughly dry. Simply wet the paper with the large brush and paint into the dampness. The soft marks made by painting wet in wet agreed for subtle background regions of your painting.

#Dry brush

Dry brush is almost the opposite watercolour technique to wet in wet. Here a brush loaded with pigment (and not too much water) is dragged over completely dry paper. The marks produced by this technique are very crisp and hard-edged. They will tend to come forward in your painting and so are best applied around the centre of interest.

#Lifting off

Most water colour pigments can be resolved and lifted off after they have dried. Staining colours such as Phthalo or Prussian blue, Alizarin, Windsor red, yellow or blue are difficult to remove and are best avoided for this technique. The process for lifting of his simple – wet the area to be removed with a brush and clean water, then blot the pigment away with attached. Using strips of paper to mask areas of pigment will produce interesting hard-edged lines and shapes.

This is one of my watercolour paintings. I love experimenting with the medium.

Techniques in other kinds of painting

paints

As the name implies, pigments are already mixed with oil (usually linseed) in the tube, which makes for slow drying and easier blending. Clean up with turps or preferably and odourless solvent. Can be used straight from the tube (impasto) or thinly for underpainting or glazing. Usually used over canvas or board prepared with an acrylic or gas so undercoat. Retouch varnish may be used to even out the shine when finished. All other vanishes should not be applied until the paint has cured (around 6 months). Oils pretty much maintain their mixed colour once drive for, unlike water based paints which tend to dry darker or lighter than when wet.

#Poster colours

Poster colours contain a binder which remains water soluble when dry. Pigments used are generally of a courser quality than water colours and are therefore more opaque, specially pastel shades which are achieved by mixes that include white. Can be wetted again for further blending. Framing is usually as for water colours.

#Pastels

Here the pigments have been moulded into sticks using distilled water and a minimum of binders. Some are wrapped in waxed paper to prevent breakage. They come in square and round sticks and in pencil form full stock usually used on tinted pestle paper which has a texture (or ‘tooth’) to hold the dry granules of pigment. Spray fixatives prevent rubbing, button to dark in the pestle work. Framing is behind glass with the mat board to prevent the work from touching the glass.

#Acrylic painting

Painting executed in the medium of synthetic acrylic resins. Acrylics dry rapidly, serve as a vehicle for any kind of pigment, and are capable of giving both the transparent brilliance of watercolour and the density of oil paint. They are considered to be less affected by heat and other destructive forces than is oil paint. They found favour among artists who were concerned about the health risks posed by the handling of oil paints and the inhalation of fumes associated with them. Because of all these desirable characteristics, acrylic paints became immediately popular with artists when they were first commercially promoted in the 1960s.

This is one of my acrylic paintings.

#Tempera painting

Painting executed with pigment ground in a water-miscible medium. The word tempera originally came from the word temper, which means ‘to bring to a desired consistency’. Dry pigments are made usable by ‘tempering’ them with a binding and adhesive vehicle. Such painting was distinguished from fresco painting, the colours for which contained no binder.

Thank you for reading. Have a nice day!🌼

The Art of saying NO !

The ultimate productivity hack is saying no.

Not doing something will always be faster than doing it. This statement reminds me of the old computer programming saying, “Remember that there is no code faster than no code.” 

The same philosophy applies in other areas of life. For example, there is no meeting that goes faster than not having a meeting at all.

This is not to say you should never attend another meeting, but the truth is that we say yes to many things we don’t actually want to do. There are many meetings held that don’t need to be held. There is a lot of code written that could be deleted.

How often do people ask you to do something and you just reply, “Sure thing.” Three days later, you’re overwhelmed by how much is on your to-do list. We become frustrated by our obligations even though we were the ones who said yes to them in the first place. 

It’s worth asking if things are necessary. Many of them are not, and a simple “no” will be more productive than whatever work the most efficient person can muster.

But if the benefits of saying no are so obvious, then why do we say yes so often?

Why We Say Yes

We agree to many requests not because we want to do them, but because we don’t want to be seen as rude, arrogant, or unhelpful. Often, you have to consider saying no to someone you will interact with again in the future—your co-worker, your spouse, your family and friends. 

Saying no to these people can be particularly difficult because we like them and want to support them. (Not to mention, we often need their help too.) Collaborating with others is an important element of life. The thought of straining the relationship outweighs the commitment of our time and energy.

For this reason, it can be helpful to be gracious in your response. Do whatever favors you can, and be warm-hearted and direct when you have to say no.

But even after we have accounted for these social considerations, many of us still seem to do a poor job of managing the tradeoff between yes and no. We find ourselves over-committed to things that don’t meaningfully improve or support those around us, and certainly don’t improve our own lives.

Perhaps one issue is how we think about the meaning of yes and no.

The Difference Between Yes and No

The words “yes” and “no” get used in comparison to each other so often that it feels like they carry equal weight in conversation. In reality, they are not just opposite in meaning, but of entirely different magnitudes in commitment.

When you say no, you are only saying no to one option. When you say yes, you are saying no to every other option.

In other words, saying no saves you time in the future. Saying yes costs you time in the future. No is a form of time credit. You retain the ability to spend your future time however you want. Yes is a form of time debt. You have to pay back your commitment at some point.

No is a decision. Yes is a responsibility.

The Role of No

Saying no is sometimes seen as a luxury that only those in power can afford. And it is true: turning down opportunities is easier when you can fall back on the safety net provided by power, money, and authority. But it is also true that saying no is not merely a privilege reserved for the successful among us. It is also a strategy that can help you become successful.

Saying no is an important skill to develop at any stage of your career because it retains the most important asset in life: your time.  

You need to say no to whatever isn’t leading you toward your goals. You need to say no to distractions. As one reader told me, “If you broaden the definition as to how you apply no, it actually is the only productivity hack (as you ultimately say no to any distraction in order to be productive).”

Nobody embodied this idea better than Steve Jobs, who said, “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.” 

There is an important balance to strike here. Saying no doesn’t mean you’ll never do anything interesting or innovative or spontaneous. It just means that you say yes in a focused way. Once you have knocked out the distractions, it can make sense to say yes to any opportunity that could potentially move you in the right direction. You may have to try many things to discover what works and what you enjoy. This period of exploration can be particularly important at the beginning of a project, job, or career.

Upgrading Your No

Over time, as you continue to improve and succeed, your strategy needs to change.

The opportunity cost of your time increases as you become more successful. At first, you just eliminate the obvious distractions and explore the rest. As your skills improve and you learn to separate what works from what doesn’t, you have to continually increase your threshold for saying yes.

You still need to say no to distractions, but you also need to learn to say no to opportunities that were previously good uses of time, so you can make space for great uses of time. It’s a good problem to have, but it can be a tough skill to master.

In other words, you have to upgrade your “no’s” over time.

Upgrading your no doesn’t mean you’ll never say yes. It just means you default to saying no and only say yes when it really makes sense. To quote the investor Brent Beshore, “Saying no is so powerful because it preserves the opportunity to say yes.” 

The general trend seems to be something like this: If you can learn to say no to bad distractions, then eventually you’ll earn the right to say no to good opportunities.

How to Say No

Most of us are probably too quick to say yes and too slow to say no. It’s worth asking yourself where you fall on that spectrum.

If an opportunity is exciting enough to drop whatever you’re doing right now, then it’s a yes. If it’s not, then perhaps you should think twice.

It’s impossible to remember to ask yourself these questions each time you face a decision, but it’s still a useful exercise to revisit from time to time. Saying no can be difficult, but it is often easier than the alternative. As a famous writer has pointed out, “It’s easier to avoid commitments than get out of commitments. Saying no keeps you toward the easier end of this spectrum.” 

What is true about health is also true about productivity: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The Power of No

More effort is wasted doing things that don’t matter than is wasted doing things inefficiently. And if that is the case, elimination is a more useful skill than optimization.

I am reminded of the famous Peter Drucker quote, “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”