Paint out with Jim Wodark

Jim started with a toned canvas.  He laid in his first layers of paint with a paper towel.  While he is choosing the colors for his painting, he is thinking in terms of complimentary colors.  He does not use an umbrella because it is difficult to use.  He drew his painting in red initially.  He works wet into wet.  The underpainting is able to influence all of his colors and build unity within the painting.  

While Jim is painting, he is thinking in terms of how will the lighting change during the painting.  Because the lighting conditions are always changing he wanted to paint the bluffs with the light on them.  He made painting the bluffs a priority because he thought the clouds were going to come into play later in the day.
Jim says he is looking for more color while he painting then there really is.  Jim is an advocate of mixing the paint on the canvas as well as on his palette.  When is looking at the colors in the painting he is looking to make large piles of colors that run throughout the painting.  He uses a knife for mixing to keep the colors clean.   Jim made a point to tell us that the impressionists had a tremendous amount of grays in their paintings.  Those grays make the highlights that much more beautiful.  Jim also talked about the dynamics of the painting changing once white or black paint was introduced into the painting.  He said once those colors are in the painting they get into every color in the painting.

Jim spent time talking about the quality of the shapes within your painting.  He said much of painting is devoted to painting abstract shapes.  Starting with large abstract shapes and working through the composition until you are painting smaller and smaller abstract shapes is essential to an interesting painting.  When you look at his painting it is full of abstract shapes.  Jim also talked about edges are what defines the shapes within your painting.
He did some problem solving with the group.  In the lower right hand corner of the painting he changed the painting because the way the lines converged at the edge of the painting.  He thought this was too distracting and would not hold the viewers eye in the painting.  He asked the group for solutions.  He weighed the suggestions and ended up adding a bluff in the foreground.
Overall, this was a really nice paint out.  Jim brought some interesting thoughts to the paint out.  It was great to have him share some of his creative thoughts.