Ai Painting Background

[Annemie]

The background is at the top of the page, and the foreground at the bottom. If you imagine standing outside, the part of the landscape that is closest to you is at your feet. This is the same way we organize a painting because it is how we see the world.

Draw out a few thumbnail sketches (small sketches with no details). Make sure each sketch has a foreground, middle ground, and background. Try adding the same subject matter to the foreground and middle ground. What had to change to show where in the pictorial plane they are located?

My painting Time for Reflection has the perfect background for the message I wish it to convey. However, I will make changes to this painting to demonstrate the power of the lessons I will share below. You will find the lessons I share here can be applied to any subject and any medium.

What to do if you want your background to be relatively close to your subject? You would create a slightly darker, slightly cooler background (as mentioned above).

We artists can change the atmosphere completely by understanding how we can push/pull our subjects within our composition. But these same lessons also teach how you can create mystery, emotion, mood and a certain feeling in your work.

Painting the background first also allows you to add details in the background more easily too. It makes it easier to paint lines and forms of continuation behind the main subject, such as the horizon or a tree branch, etc.

Of course, an object would look weird just floating in space. So even very minimalist surroundings add credibility to your subject. Cast shadows and perspective help to ground the subject and create three dimensional space.

I picked some fern leaves from the garden to draw from. Slowly I starting building up the feeling of space in a dimly lit forest with shadows and light, with leaves and plants overlapping and crowding each other.

A simplified summary of the most important principles to be aware of when painting. This 68-page guide with full-page colour artwork is meant to help beginner, as well as professional artists. Use it to explore new aspects or directions in your painting and to check your own work. My aim was to write this booklet without clinging to dogmatic ideas, fashionable trends or obfuscation, but keep to the universal and fundamental principles of painting.

I believe in creating extremely high-quality artwork that will last for generations. I believe in providing information and excellent and approachable service to collectors. I believe in daily practice and hard work to improve the quality and vision of my art.

Should I paint the background first or last? This is a question I hear quite often as an art tutor. It illustrates very well how many beginning portrait and still life painters think about painting. They focus on the subject matter of the painting first and foremost, and the background is a separate thing.

But the background problem only seems to appear when we paint a portrait, or a simple still life. Landscape painters or painters who tackle more complex still life don't seem to worry so much about the background. One reason of course, is that a landscape is not considered to even have a background.

And there is the clue to our problem. Even if a landscape painter is painting something quite close to a portrait or a still life, for example a single tree against a fairly simple sky, even then the landscape painter will not be left wondering what to do with the background. Usually the sky behind and the grassy field below is automatically considered as part of the painting.

So if you struggle with backgrounds then perhaps it would help to consider your subject matter as a landscape. Paint what you see and emphasize what you find important or beautiful. Don't forget that your art work goes from the left edge of the canvas, all the way to the right edge of the canvas; it is not just your subject matter. Everything from one edge to the other counts and helps to build your art work.

So when should you paint your background? Well, at the same time as everything else of course. Your background is not 'second class' in a hierarchy of importance. It is as much part of the art work as the subject matter. So you must paint it all at the same time.

When you paint your background at the same time as your subject matter you willl immediately see how the subject matter and the background interact with each other. This is an important bonus of painting the whole art work at the same time.

While you see how parts of your art work interact with each other you might decide to enhance a colour, a value or the contrast. You might decide to soften an edge or highlight a shape. You will only find these things out if you incorporate the background in the painting process from the start.

Of course it would be ideal if your reference photo is perfect. It really pays off to spend time shooting good reference photos and making sure that you are happy with the background, foreground, colours etc. Even better, if you can work from life, make sure you set up your still life or model in such a way that you are happy with what you see. Change backgrounds with fabrics, large sheets of paper, or move around in the room. Start painting when you are happy with what you see.

If you are working from a less-than-perfect reference photo (tut-tut! No just kidding, we all do this!) or you want to play around a little with your reference material and be creative, it is even more important to paint your whole picture from the start. Get that background in straight away and see how it works with the subject matter. Fancy changing it into a bright blue? Try it! Do it at an early stage and see how it looks. If it is no good, you can still change it back, wipe it off, or paint over it. While you are painting you can experiment and play around. Even a single stroke of colour on the canvas will give you an idea of how it will work with the rest of the painting. You might well decide after one stroke whether your idea was good or bad.

Changing background colours dramatically can easily lead to odd-looking paintings. If you change the background of a portrait from a dull grey into a bright blue you will have to change a lot in the face of the sitter as well. If the sitter was actually sitting in a bright blue room, there would be lots of blue reflections and light on his or her face. Working from a reference photo with a grey background, you don't have this information and you would have to make it up. Paintings created from the imagination can look wonderful, but if you are after realism, it might not be your best bet.

So changing backgrounds (painting something else than you see) can be a tricky business as you end up making things up. You might get stuck painting things you don't have a reference photo for. Your best bet, if you want a bright blue background for example, is to shoot new reference photos, this time armed with a bright blue background material.

Often portraits have busy backgrounds and sometimes still life too. It could be a room full of books, a kitchen table, windows, or perhaps a landscape. I think few of us would leave such a background to the last painting stages. We realise more easily that the background is as important and as much part of the painting as the subject matter.

Busy backgrounds require great skill in composition, value and colour. After all we don't want the background to dominate the subject matter, yet we can't just blur it like we can in photography. If you have anything in your background it is important to look carefully where you want main lines to appear, patterns to sit, and colours to pop (or not). Do you want that horizon at the same level as the eyes or not? Do you want that doorway right behind the sitter's head or not? Do the dishes in the background distract from the flowers on the kitchen table? Can I leave out that tea towel?

So backgrounds,whether busy or plain, are as much part of your art work as the subject matter itself. They deserve attention and care and they have an important role to play in any painting. So when do you paint it? Remember the landscape painters who never have this problem: their subject matter runs from canvas edge to canvas edge and so does yours. A portrait or a still life runs from edge to edge and everything in between is equally important. Paint your background at the same time as your subject matter. This way you can see how it 'works' with the subject matter and you can develop it together and build up an harmonious art work.

All backgrounds, light or dark is better to be painted in advance. Otherwise the subject will look like pasted on the background. The way to do it is by masking the edges / outlines of the subject, work the background wet in wet, let it dry completely, remove the masking fluid and proceed with the making of the subject. While you are painting whatever your subject is, your brush will soften the edges where the background is attached with the subject that you are painting. It is something similar with the glazing technique but in an auto mode!

Whether or not to do a background is a personal choice. I like to do both. Sometimes the subject itself works best with lots of white space surrounding it, and then other subjects need the background to help tell the story. When preparing for my solo exhibition, I had to create a body of work in a short time span. In desperation, I left many of my still life subjects without a background and found that I really liked the way they presented. But not all subjects work as well and need the support of a background to finish them.

There are many color strategies to consider in answering the initial question. One of my favorites is to choose an analogous color of the subject. In this case, the analogous colors to red are either purple or orange. I chose the purple. Notice, however, that this purple is not of high intensity. It has been de-saturated, which makes the more intense red apple pop out.

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