I had the privilege of heading out to Taos with my mom and dad a couple of weeks ago to Kevin Macpherson’s Magic Grid Workshop. It was awesome!
I typed 2136 words in an Apple Note, took hundreds of reference photos, wrote 35+ pages of notes, and painted 5 paintings. I really struggled editing everything down for a blog post, so instead, I set a 10-minute time limit this morning to share four of my most impactful learnings and some painting progressions:
Drawing light and shadow families – then painting shadows first.
This was the most impactful technique I learned. This dramatically improved the vibrancy of my contrast. I practiced restraint, not filling in fun sunlit colors first. Painting outside, I also used this technique to avoid chasing the light as it changed. Before, I’d paint whatever color struck my fancy, which made it challenging to control contrast and remember where the shadows were.
Don’t forget to design your negative shapes.
At our critique, Kevin shared that when he was just starting out as a painter, he brought a truckload of paintings to an artist he admired for critique. The artist looked for all of 90 seconds and told him, “Focus on your negative shapes; really carve them.” It changed Kevin’s perspective because he thought not only about designing the shapes but also about the negative shapes that surrounded them. I gave myself the assignment on the day I painted Vigas Shadows to focus on carving interesting shapes. I first blocked in the colors of the trees, then used the blue of the sky to carve out negative shapes.
Setting smaller, achievable goals results in faster improvement.
It is easy to get frustrated if your goal is trying to do a kickass painting. But when you step back and objectively critique what’s working and what’s not in the language of specific elements of the grid, you walk away with one or two assignments on what you can do better next time. This prioritization also allows you to give yourself grace when an element, like the value matching in the sky or the negative shapes, doesn’t come out as crisp as in the last painting, where it was your focus. Beyond painting, I think this is true for many things that seem overwhelming.
Stop trying to paint what you think you see; start painting what you actually see.
One of the hardest elements of painting is letting go of what you think something is supposed to look like, and painting what you see. For example, in Painting with Mom, I was trying to figure out what color the windows reflected. I stopped trying to look so hard and squinted until they were out of focus. I then saw Mom and my two umbrellas reflected in the window, with trees behind us. So cute and special!! I smiled and blocked out the lights and shadows on our umbrellas and Mom’s hat. I learned how to squint like an artist to see the puzzle pieces of color, shape and value instead of telling myself, “I don’t know how to paint trees.” Kevin likes to joke that the sharp end of a paintbrush is for poking your eye out if you’re “thing thinking.” If you are thinking “that’s a bush” and you paint a bush as it appears in your mind instead of what you see, that’s thing thinking.
Boldness.
Paintings start to break down and weaken when your decisions are muddy and not well thought through. Every single brushstroke should be thoughtful. And once you’ve made that decision on color and value, have fun filling that color in!
Painting progressions below!
Some references:
My post on the Magic Grid from Guatemala in Nov 2023
Kevin Macpherson’s Magic Grid Workshop: