Peggi Habets Transcript (Ep 4)
Please note: This is an incredibly rough transcript from my conversation with Peggi Habets Habets, Ep.4. It has not been checked by a human. To listen to the full audio version, head here.
Peggi Habets 0:00
So many artists, that's how they paint. They paint and they react, they paint and they react. And it's a very legitimate process for painting for me know, I have to plan I have to know when I know what I'm doing and I've done it in a small painting, and I'm doing the larger painting. There's something about that that allows me to be bolder.
Kelly Anne Powers 0:25
Hello and welcome to the Learn to paint podcast. I'm your host Kelly and Powers. This week I talked to the artists you just heard water colorist Peggy habits. Habits work includes portraits, figures and landscapes we talked mostly about her portraiture work, but we cover a bit of it all. Habits discusses how our process gets her freedom to be bold. She explains the most important things new watercolors can work on, and she gives great practical advice for how to get good reference photos plus a whole lot more had to learn to paint podcast comm slash podcast slash Episode 40 To get the show notes and links to habits work while you're there, sign up for the newsletter to get each new episode plus articles and fun links. Here we go. Hi, Peggy. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being with us today.
Peggi Habets 1:13
Oh, thanks so much for having me.
Kelly Anne Powers 1:15
What is it that attracts you to watercolor? Oh my gosh, I love her so much. I've tried so many other mediums. And there is nothing like the spontaneity and the fluidity of watercolor when you start those first couple of washes. And you see the mixing and mingling and is the most addicting thing. I always warn people when they start out in watercolor that they may never leave. It's a good problem to have. It's a good to have it. What do you find most challenging about it as a medium,
Peggi Habets 1:49
Almost everything I just said? uncontrollable. It does its own thing. A lot of times you really have to know your materials. That's very important to know how to control the pigments and the water and the paper. And brushes are also important. And using the same materials over and over really helps you to be able to do that.
Kelly Anne Powers 2:15
At what point did you decide you wanted to really learn how to paint because there's a difference between painting for fun, and that's wonderful. And then really deciding, I'm going to get good at this.
Peggi Habets 2:27
Almost from the start. I was a graphic designer for 15 years. And when I took a leave of absence from my job, I took a class for fun. And the first class was an abstract acrylic class and it didn't click with me so much. The second class was watercolor, and it clicked right away and the teacher was so good about finding a two inch spot on a huge painting that was good. Which is really you know, when you're starting out and somebody pointing out some good thing on the big flop. It's it really is encouraging. And I started to meet people who were doing painting as a career and I wanted to work I didn't want to go back to graphic design and I really thought that this might be a possibility. So it was really right off the start I was pretty intense about it. I was that student in the class that was at the edge of their seat. And you know, following everything the instructor said and writing everything down, and I took a lot of workshops and talk to a lot of people and and,
Kelly Anne Powers 3:33
yeah, as you were trying to get better Did you focus on finishing paintings, which were you laser specific, and I'm going to get better at design or composition, that kind of thing.
Peggi Habets 3:43
My initial focus was to paint realistically, I immediately started into portraiture, and so getting a likeness was very important in the beginning. So there was a lot of technical skills and I really did try to finish paintings to oblivion till they were just no more could be done to them. But mostly it was learning the technique and that was what I was really focused on.
Kelly Anne Powers 4:11
So you mentioned materials being really important. Why is understanding materials especially in watercolor so important?
Peggi Habets 4:19
Success with water color relies on being able to control the amount of water and amount of pigment on your brush and on the paper. And it takes a lot of time to understand how to achieve certain effects with water color. If you have poor paper or you have inferior paints, or you're just using little tiny blobs of paint, instead of really loading up your brush, you can achieve what you want to achieve
Kelly Anne Powers 4:49
what is the biggest struggle you see your students facing with materials?
Peggi Habets 4:53
That tiny little piece of paint that are dried and hard on their palate and they pull it out and They get their brush and they try so hard to get pigment on that brush and I come over and I just squeeze the two into the ballot and try to get them to just bite the bullet and put that pain in the palate and be able to load that brush up. That's the biggest thing. Paper has come a long way I don't anymore. Most students have at least good enough paper. That wasn't always the case. I guess it's become more economical to have certain professional grade paper and pallets. It's all of it actually pallets and brushes and using little tiny piece of toilet paper something to dry your brush off that they can't control the water that way so I've been going into the workshops and showing them a setup that really will work for them. A big bowl of water, a nice big stack of paper towels or a towel to dry their brush off a variety of sizes of brushes. You can't paint a whole background with a tiny number two round brush so I have them pull out their They're big breath. And that's scary for other students to use a big brush. So that's important a palette is important one that you can really mix up your paint, mix everything in the middle and not have too much problems with the wrong colors mixing together. So at least needs to be large enough.
Kelly Anne Powers 6:19
When someone talks about moisture control what is that?
Peggi Habets 6:23
When you are painting, you dip your brush in water and then you dip it in your paint and the amount of water on your brush mixed with the paint varies a great deal depending on what technique you want to achieve. So having too much water, you get wishy washy areas of paint. You don't get nice strong edges. You get mud eventually because the paint is there's not enough to sit where it needs to sit. It's too much water so it all flows together. Having not enough water you get almost the dry brush. effect, which you might want. So there are all kinds of variations. There's a spectrum. And you need to figure out what you want to do and how much water and pigment you need. It's it's a little bit of a dance.
Kelly Anne Powers 7:12
Do you have students coming into your workshops? that moisture control is sort of a new concept to them?
Peggi Habets 7:19
Oh, absolutely. I mentioned that stack of paper towels because it's a constant thing. Every workshop, I walk around and I sit down and maybe I'll help them, show them how to paint something. And I'm looking for where to dab my brush and it's just a little tiny swatch, a paper towel, and it's soaked. So I sometimes we even stopped the workshop and have everybody just look and pull out all of their paper. We kill a tree in a workshop and punch and hit paint but it's so important to be able to have a dry brush when you need it.
Kelly Anne Powers 7:53
So talk to me about physically what a student does to control how much my shirt is in their brush.
Peggi Habets 8:00
dip your brush, you dab it with a paper towel or a towel before you start mixing your paint on your palate. But you still leave enough water on the brush to be able to grab the paint and mix it in there. And then it's a little bit of a dance as I said, where you are just dabbing in the water and dabbing on the paper towels and back to the palette.
Kelly Anne Powers 8:23
What is the biggest challenge you see students facing with portraiture?
Peggi Habets 8:27
Some students don't take the time to get their drawing, right. So from there, there's not much you can do just can't recover from it. It's it's swatter color. Eye is over here and it needs to be here. So hard to change. You can do it it's been done but why put yourself through that. So taking the time to get it drawn right is key. If drawing is a stumbling block and you spend so much time on your drawing, you probably will tighten up and not want to ruin it. So you don't take risks. So what I do as sort of a hybrid is I will take my reference photo and get it the size that I want. And then I cut it out, and I trace along the outline of the head. So there I can see I can mark Okay, the ice will be about here, the nose will be about here. And I just put little tick marks and draw it in. So the other thing is you have to worry about erasing a lot. You can erase the sizing off of the paper and that affects how it accepts the water in the paint.
Kelly Anne Powers 9:27
Why do you think students want to skip the drawing part and the learning to draw part?
Peggi Habets 9:33
A lot of students want to paint loosely and freely and they think that that's the way to do it is to just take your brush and start painting and I think a lot of times what happens is it starts to look contrived that looseness isn't really for a reason. It's just a technique that they learned. I think there's a difference. When you have strong skills. You know what good doesn't is you, you know how to draw, at least somewhat, I think you take those skills and then to loosen up with them, you can do it so easily because you already have that knowledge. And to make a simple stroke, you can identify a figure with one stroke or two strokes as opposed to, you know, having a tight drawing. But that's because you already know what that finger should look like, how that arm bends, how that body moves.
Kelly Anne Powers 10:28
Let's jump into your process. Could you give us a bird's eye view of your process?
Peggi Habets 10:34
Let's take a portrait head on me for an example. The first thing I would do is have very good reference material. And we could talk about that separately if you want because that has its own criteria, but I have my reference material. And I would think about what I wanted to say about this person. So what am I feeling about this expression or this this mood or how do I want to capture this person so when Start with making decisions about personality. For instance, if somebody has a very bold personality, I might be apt to paint much looser, there might be more color, there might be less hard edges and more lost edges, there might only be a few areas that have detail. And the rest of it maybe is suggested, it really depends on what I want to say about that person and how I want to capture them. And then I might do what's called a value study, which is a small black and white study. And basically that is a sketch that I only put in black and white and gray, and they're not lines, their shapes and I create I decide where I want my darkest darks. My light is lights. And if that works as a small sketch, if I look at that and think, oh, that has impact that will draw me from across the room as a painting when I do it larger. And if I follow that value sketch, chances are it's going To have that same impact, then I might do a color study, if I'm not sure, if it's maybe something a little more complicated, I might do a couple color studies. And those are small little mini paintings, maybe five by seven. And that tells me what the background might look like, what colors I might use, what techniques I'm use, where my edges would be lost, things like that, where my detail will be and where it won't be. And it's not a tight painting that, you know, it takes four hours to do. It's just a quick color sketch. I just put things in, and it kind of helps me be more spontaneous when I'm painting because I already have the roadmap. I don't have to sit and stop and think oh, color should I put it was the wrong color. Now I have to change that. Now. What do I do? So it's sort of it's it's just a little bit of a guide for me. And then I draw the image and then I'm ready to go. That would be the process up to the painting.
Kelly Anne Powers 12:57
What does the process give you? As an artist,
Peggi Habets 13:01
it's helping me work out ideas. When I talked about doing ahead only, I probably don't go into that much detail with the planning because there's just not that much to do. But I will still often do it, you know, the values such and a color sketch. When the paintings get more complicated, and there's multiple figures, I'm changing the background, it's a large painting, it's almost reassure. It's just a almost unnecessary step for me to know, this is where I'm going. And it reminds me that this is what excited me about the painting. And when I look at my little color study, I usually have it above where I paint. When I look at that, and I see what I wanted to accomplish there. It really kind of loosens me up when I'm doing the larger painting. When I'm using a two inch brush and I'm covering a painting with you know, all this color and paint, and it's going everywhere. I know in my mind, it's going to work Because it was it already did.
Kelly Anne Powers 14:02
When you're first starting, there's this desire, maybe because of time limitations or being new that you just want to jump into the painting, like the painting itself is the goal. Is there a danger in that?
Peggi Habets 14:16
I pretty careful about how I answer that because it really depends on the artist. So many artists, that's how they paint, they paint and they react, they paint and they react. And it's a very legitimate process for painting. For me know, I have to plan I have to know, when I know what I'm doing, and I've done it in a small painting, and I'm doing the larger painting. There's something about that, that allows me to be bolder, which is almost you wouldn't expect that it almost seems like it's more of a timid way. But you, you can load up your brush. You can do that background, almost black in that one area. Because you knew that dark value was necessary there. So for me, it's really important. For a lot of my students, it's important but not for everybody.
Kelly Anne Powers 15:11
There's this idea that bold, spontaneous painting. If that's your goal, it means you don't plan.
Peggi Habets 15:17
Now that's a little bit different. Both spontaneous painting is different than abstract expressionism, which is reacting to mark making. If I were doing an abstract, bold, spontaneous looking painting, I would do a color study because I would want to know my color, I would want to know what I'm trying to achieve and I would want a rough idea. And with watercolor, there's only so many layers unless you're using opaques that you can make those choices. It's a little bit different and an oil painting or a pesto or another medium where you can erase you can take things out, you can layer and layer layer. watercolors a little bit different, so you don't always need To do all of the planning over time, there's certain things you know will work. You've done it in a certain way. So you don't have to sit and do 10 color studies or something like that. But I think in the beginning, it really is helpful.
Kelly Anne Powers 16:14
How much is thinking a part of your painting process? Again, when someone's starting painting, they think about painting as the process of painting actually being in the paint. And the more I talk with people, the more I'm realizing that there's just so much thinking that goes into painting, that as a beginner, you just have no idea
Peggi Habets 16:37
about, it's overwhelming for new students and I sometimes I really have to remind myself when I go into a workshop and I'm teaching, you know, there's the advanced students, and then they're the newer students and the newer students are trying so hard and they're writing down everything you say, and it's almost information overload and there is a lot of thinking and can stuttering and I would suggest for new students to have a goal and just focus on a few things in the beginning, don't try to do perfect design and this technique and this technique and all of that just something that you want to learn. Maybe it's just achieving a likeness. So you're focusing on maybe values, accurate values, and that in itself, somebody can accomplish that, that didn't know it before. That's a huge jump and learning how to paint realistically or accurately, but have a goal, I would say to have a goal because I think it takes away from all the overload that you get if you're just get so much information and it's very hard. It's and it's hard with, you know, you go on Instagram, you look at all this gorgeous artwork, and you want to do that you want to do that and you want to do that and maybe just keep it specific. And then as you grow certain things you don't realize become muscle memory. I don't think anymore about water control, I can feel it and and that I realized that one day when somebody asked me to explain that, I realized that I just do it, I can tell how much water I have by how my brushes dragging on the palate. And I didn't realize it, but it's something that just, it's hundreds and hundreds of paintings. Over time, that becomes something that you no longer have. It's like, you know, as a child, you learn all these big steps, tying shoe walking all of those things, and eventually, you're not thinking about this things anymore.
Kelly Anne Powers 18:38
That was a comfort to hear. Could you walk us through how you approach the values and colors, but have a face? Where do you start? Where do you end?
Peggi Habets 18:51
The drawing is there it's finished and I'm looking at my reference photo and I'm trying to decide where the light is coming from. Once I think about that. And decide that then what I will do it take a very watery mixture of a light color, a yellow, maybe Ross Ghana or maybe a transparent yellow very watery so it's almost you almost don't see it once it dries and I will paint around where I want to leave the white of the paper. So there's a strong highlight or there's an area where I don't want pain, I want it to look like a strong light, I want to leave the white of the paper, I'll paint around that and that tells me as I'm painting to stay away from that, otherwise I'll accidentally paint right over it. Then I start out by mixing connector Don rose and Ross Sienna together on the palate in a watery mixture. If it's a darker skinned person, I might use that mixture or I might add some Burton Sienna to that then I paint the whole face with this mixture of raw sienna and quite accurate on rose and then while it's wet, take more of some of them and drop them in on the paper and as Adding more colors in different areas, this is where you can really make the skin tones come alive because you're not mixing one color on your palate. you're mixing color that's mingling on the paper. So I'll take some Scarlet Pyro, which is a very bright red, like fire red, and I'll drop it where the nose is, and I might drop it, you know, on the cheeks or somewhere where I know there's going to be more warmth I might drop more or less of the rusty Anna and the connector down grows all around the face. And what I'm painting is the first couple values, the lightest light all the way to maybe a mid value, and I let it almost even get a little garish, because you can always tone down color. But once you tone down color, you can't really get that pure color back. So I try to keep the pure color and it might look a little wild at first because there's just intense color everywhere. The next couple of steps things Get toned down as you start to put in shadow some things.
Kelly Anne Powers 21:03
So then the hard part starts now,
Peggi Habets 21:06
this is the shadow area, this is difficult and it it's a struggle because to do shadows that look lively and don't look dead and heavy, it takes a little bit of skill. So I start with usually and ultimately in blue, it's semi transparent. It works really well with those first two colors that I talked about. And I'll just do a wash along the shadow shape and I'll do one whole shadow shape like maybe along one side of the face, and while it's wet, I will drop in the other two colors, a mixture of the other two colors, they're already mixed on the palette and I drop that in and so that's really an orange neutralizing a blue because their compliments so you're getting a neutralize but because they're mixing on the paper, the blues picking through the other colors are peeking through so it's a very lively shadow. It's just not a big flat check. I paint realistic portraits and experimental portraits. So they're a little bit of a different process when it's realistic. For instance, when I did commission portraits for 10 years, I was more aware of painting the skin tones realistically, and the shadow areas had to really You almost had to capture them perfectly, because that defines the bone structure of the person. So there was a lot more a little tightening up and a little more control of the water in the paint and things were, you know, little smaller areas. Whereas the more experimental portraits, I let things run and I let things mix and it's a little bit different process
Kelly Anne Powers 22:42
is understanding thicknesses of paint and motion control is more important when you're doing dropping in paints because of how the paint moves.
Peggi Habets 22:51
Yes, yes. And also knowing the pain itself, the lighter more transparent paints will flow a little freer, the heavy paints like a surreal in blue. Some of the other paints that are more opaque, they'll sit and the water will actually push them. You could see it pushing the paint, and they don't always play nice. You have to learn the paint on top of everything else. What is your palette of colors that you use? It's a frank web palette. So it's a big rectangular palette with these open wells. And I range it from transparent, mostly transparent to opaque because I start on the transparent side of the palette and work my way around usually, and I use professional grade paint I use several different brands that I've tried that I really like and mostly having a variety of yellows, blues, greens, and a big area to mix the colors. And
Kelly Anne Powers 23:49
so if you check out the show notes, Peggy has given us a list of all the colors she uses. It's got a display of the palette and the brushes. So you said that you work from transparent Okay, could you talk about some of those properties that paints have,
Peggi Habets 24:04
so the connector downs are generally staining and transparent. They're lighter, say low blue, you put that on your paper, you'll never ever get it off, but they're beautiful and they layer nicely over each other. The more opaque colors is surreally and blue, cobalt blue, there's a sepia that I use, even if you use titanium white, those are all very heavy and opaque and they lay on top of the paint. Sometimes they take you can put a swash ups really and blue on top of something that you've painted and it will just sit there and it changes the whole texture of the paper. You may or may not want that it just depends.
Kelly Anne Powers 24:44
watercolor really is super diverse in its pigments.
Peggi Habets 24:48
It is and again, every medium has its strengths and watercolor can be very opaque and you can build it up, but only to a point there's a point where there's a shine that starts happen. And it's just too much paint. It's no longer being absorbed into the paper. And it's just sitting there. And it drives me it doesn't I have friends, it doesn't bother them at all. It drives me nuts. So sometimes I'll actually remove all the layers of paint in that area and start over just so I don't have that shine. It's something that I don't like.
Kelly Anne Powers 25:22
How does accurate drawing help you paint loosely,
Peggi Habets 25:26
to paint loosely or realistically? I think it's important to have the right drawing skills and to have good solid drawing skills. And even if you don't paint realistically, I really still believe that having strong drawing skills will aid you. There's something about being able to create a gesture of a person. Usually if you can draw that person well. The reason a lot of times that you see people going from very successful realism and getting looser and looser Because it's easier for them, and more economical to suggest a figure with a few strokes, but they have all those years of skills, they know how that arm bends, or how were those I should be or the fact that those sockets are a little darker, and they might just suggest the face that way with, you know, Shadow shapes. So I think it's important to really do that. And I think a lot of people do want to skip that step. And they do want to say, I just want to paint loosely, I just want to be free. But I think the freedom comes from learning those skills, and also learning rules. So you can break the rules. You can break them because you know what they are, and it's not arbitrary or accidental. You're breaking them on purpose for a reason.
Kelly Anne Powers 26:46
If someone wants to learn to draw, how would you suggest they go about learning to draw?
Peggi Habets 26:52
There's a book we still read books. Drawing on the right side of the brain, I had used it years ago. years ago when I was teaching teenage students, and it's probably the best book, but students can learn just by doing it just by taking still life objects and you know, simple things and drawing. I mean, there's really no substitute for it. But drawing on the right side of the brain is such a good book because she has you do these neat little exercises that keeps you from drawing an eye, you're actually just drawing shapes that become an eye. I would recommend it if somebody really wants to learn the skill of drawing,
Kelly Anne Powers 27:30
what is value, and why is it important.
Peggi Habets 27:34
value is how you perceive the lightness or darkness up something. And it's one of the most important things that I teach in a workshop for realistic portraiture because it's the thing that aside from an accurate drawing, if you can achieve accurate values, you can paint in any color. You can do a lot of things that aren't realistic, but it will still look realistic because of the values. So, for instance, the shadow, most times people perceive the shadow maybe darker or lighter than what it actually is. And that just takes careful observation. The really hard thing about values is that they're relative to what's surrounding them the way you view them as relative. What I mean by that is, if you have a color, and it's surrounded by a very dark value, it will look much much lighter than the same exact color surrounded by white. And I show my students this exercise that exact thing and they swear that these two squares are different values. And when we put a little hole over them, and just isolate the two areas, they see that they're exactly the same and that is the hardest thing. So when you're painting you're often tricked by our own eyes, and you have to stop and test and check. We check with a bullet hole which is a hole punch in a piece of paper and you place that over an area, you're not sure what the value is, it isolates it from what's surrounding it. And that helps you to see the value a little more accurately. You have to get in the habit to slow down and check things. And if you often see a beginner student do a portrait and the eyes look like they're bugging out. That's because beginners tend to paint the whites of the eyes to light they think they're white. They're usually really dark, much, much darker. Sometimes if they're in shadow, they're almost indiscernible from the iris in value. And it's such a slight difference, but people still think why did the eye so they're thinking it's white. So that takes a little bit of getting the students slow down and use that bullet hole and to check it and that usually helps a lot
Kelly Anne Powers 29:49
where a couple places on the face that are generally the darkest,
Peggi Habets 29:53
the sockets of the eyes, generally, of course the nostrils but a lot of people paint them black. Which really, I think part of that is because the photographs will often not show all of the color range of a face. But if you look at nostrils generally there's formed there's color in there, but they're, they're dark, but they're usually not black, oh, this little spot under the lower lip, there's a little area down there that people usually paint a little too wimpy, but they're usually a nice shadow shape there and under the chin. If it's a strong light, those are the areas that will pick up a lot of shadow shapes.
Kelly Anne Powers 30:29
And then generally, where's the lightest
Peggi Habets 30:31
light, anything that's closest to the light, so a nose or the forehead or the cheeks or the chin depending on where the light is, if it's coming from below, then you won't have that strong light on the forehead. It really depends. When you first start your painting, it's a good idea to try to identify what direction the light is coming from. Think about that first
Kelly Anne Powers 30:54
one that sort of leads us into reference photos. How do you get a good reference photo?
Peggi Habets 31:00
One of the best ways to get a good reference photo is to use natural light by a window flash, no flash will wash out the face the shadows, it will cause weird reflections where you don't want them you can always tell a painting that has been painted from a reference photo with a flash, you can always tell if you play somebody by a window and the lights coming in from the side and you just play around with rotating the head left to right just to see where the shadow shapes lie. You can get some really nice really nice shadow shapes to paint and also the colors really nice from that type of like,
Kelly Anne Powers 31:39
what do you generally take from a reference photo and what do you not take? If I'm painting
Peggi Habets 31:45
ahead only portrait then I want detail. So I want it to be clear, detailed photo that shows me everything I need to know instead of trying to make that up. If I'm painting a scene and Putting fingers in it, I can use something shot on my cell phone, because I'm not describing, I could do a finger in a few shapes and values. And you can define a figure that way without all of the detail of portrait.
Kelly Anne Powers 32:14
Thinking about portraits, again, have bounce light work.
Peggi Habets 32:18
There's direct light from a source and bounced light is when light is coming from something else and bouncing up on to the finger. So if they're wearing a white shirt, for instance, you may see a white or red or whatever the color they're wearing. But you may see that reflected on their chin, maybe the bottom part of their nose, any of those planes that are horizontal, and it's a softer light, it has softer edges, whereas a single source light that strong will tend to have harder edges.
Kelly Anne Powers 32:50
Actually, let's talk about that. What kind of edges do faces have and where are they?
Peggi Habets 32:56
It's a good question too. It's great to have a variety of badges for one thing that's really important. If you that mean there is a style that's all hard edge and there's a style that's all soft that I'm not talking about that I'm thinking in general terms. It's more interesting for the viewer to see hard edges, soft edges and last edges and last edges are were to dark areas are too light areas merge and you don't really define the edge, but the viewer, their eyes will finish that image and it's just more interesting for them to be looking at a painting that has that variety. So a hard shadow with a strong light will most likely have a hard edge, there's a harder edge along the bridge of the nose, oftentimes under the nose, that little area under the bottom lip, there's usually where the chin starts to the bottom left, there's usually this little rectangular shape under there, that tends to have some harder edge. A lot of people paint smile lines with the hard edge but that really needs a lot of care. That's all my You get that Marionette look. So it's really not as hard as you think it is it in softening it even more than the photo is showing it will help that look more realistic. hair has shadows and shape to it. People often will paint hair with 199 line little lines. Whereas when you look at it and you squint your eyes, you can see shapes in the hair that have value. And when you paint those shapes, you end up painting what looks like hair, what is the challenge you see with people and backgrounds and a painting, not planning. And that is that that is something that is so hard in a workshop when people are learning. Well, we talked about this earlier where there's too much information so you know, to have a student plan the background and do these techniques with dropping in pain and learning about warm and cold. I mean, it's really it's too much. I'm surprised people don't run out screaming sometimes. So what happens is They will paint a beautiful portrait and white background. And then they say, Well, what should I put in the background? And it's like, I don't know any more than they do. And I said, I don't know, what does your color study look like? Which of course I know they didn't do and so what will happen when you do that is you either play it safe and you do the same background all the time, because you know, that's a nice background, or you might accidentally do something really great or more often than not, it just doesn't work because once you add color, and value to the background, you've changed this portrait. So a small colors is my, my mantra, you know, even just stick behind you know, you just do a very simple face and then just test out like some of the color backgrounds, how light, how dark, it's really helpful, because what do you need your background to be? Every inch of the painting should be beautiful, but it shouldn't be screaming Attention. So there's certain areas that you want the viewer to look at. Not everything should be as equal of importance. So the background might be more important than the figure that's possible. But you have to make that decision ahead of time. More often than not, it's a supporting character. It's something that doesn't dominate the portrait. If it's just a head only then generally, yes, the face is the focal point. And the background should really just support that in some way.
Kelly Anne Powers 36:30
For good background you talked about it needs to be part of the plan in both the value and the color plan. I know that in your workshop, you have them do three color studies. Could you talk about what those three are and why they're important?
Peggi Habets 36:42
I do that for longer workshops. We don't have time for the shorter ones. But if I'm doing a five day we'll spend an entire day on value studies and color studies. And they hate the value studies and I warn them ahead of time, you'll hate these, but you'll like them. Male like me by the end of the day, because then we'll do these color studies. So what we usually will do is, the first one is you do get it out of your system, do the green grass, the red stop, sign the paid out everything being local color, and just paint it and just do it. Then they look at, I give them a handout that has different color schemes. So they pick a color scheme that maybe they might want to try. So the second one will be something that you might want to try. It's a little riskier, but you know, it might be interesting. And then the third one is color scheme they would never try. Why not? It's five by seven, you can paint this little thing and maybe, you know, a half hour and a lot of times, that's the one they want to do. And there's been some really exciting paintings that come out of that.
Kelly Anne Powers 37:52
What are color schemes and why are they useful? Why not just like, pick and choose as you're going
Peggi Habets 38:00
Well, color harmony is important. So, color harmony comes from colors that aren't clashing in unusual ways. If you're using a yellow and it has a lot of green in it, it might not be the right yellow to use with other colors. So that part you have to kind of work out. And also there are probably hundreds of color schemes that you could use, but it's helpful when people are first learning about it to just give them I give them a packet and there's maybe like seven different color schemes to try or more, there's probably more and so they can pick from there and it's sort of spells it out. These are things that have been shown to be harmonious together. So try these like a violet and orange and green. It's something that people use almost to the point of cliche for landscapes, but try that in your painting and see what happens you know that grass grow could be one of those other colors, it doesn't have to be green and your mind. The hard part about that is when you pick a color scheme trying to show students that it's not just full strength, violet, orange and green, it's the whole all the way to neutral. It's the whole range, mixing those colors and getting lots of neutral. So we sometimes will do these strips and mix colors and so they can see the whole range of color that they can get from those three colors.
Kelly Anne Powers 39:34
Right? Because I imagined that at first when you hear Oh, I can only stick with three colors that feels really limiting until you realize, oh, wow, there's a lot I can do with those three colors.
Peggi Habets 39:46
Yes, and it's hard. It's very hard in one day, even one full day of doing it to learn that because you still your brain is telling you green, violet, orange and you're painting the dog violent and you know things.
Peggi Habets 40:03
And it's spotty, and it feels odd and it's not working. And it's because they're not adding neutrals in there. And they're not mixing colors and they're not getting something like yellow almost goes to brown when it's neutralized. So you have that whole range, it's still read this yellow that if you isolate it and you see it, you see that it's actually almost Brown.
Kelly Anne Powers 40:24
And while they're doing this, they're trying to replicate their value study in these colors.
Peggi Habets 40:30
Yes, and paint a likeness, right? It's a bit much that part of the workshop is bit advanced. But when I have beginner students and I see them struggling, I will often just have them do one thing and work on that with them. Instead of trying to do that whole range. It's a lot to absorb
Kelly Anne Powers 40:51
what freedom does
Peggi Habets 40:52
getting it give them on the other side, because you don't have to stick with your photo reference. And paint a photo painting that looks exactly like a photo. We learned about editing. So you know maybe that bush isn't crucial to being in that painting. It doesn't add anything, you take things out, you add things in. Same with color, you don't have to stick with local color. Sometimes a painting is oftentimes the paintings a lot more interesting when you're using color to create a mood or an emotion or something that is beyond that photograph. And I show them example, I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And so we have a lot of barges and rivers and things that look dingy and grungy. And I show them this photograph that I had of all of these barges and then I showed them the finished painting, which was purples and yellows and it was had a whole different mode to it and a vote all kind of a feelings of almost Miss Dahlia just because of the choice of color.
Kelly Anne Powers 42:00
That moves us into mood. How does an artist create mood? What tools do they have at their disposal from a mood standpoint,
Peggi Habets 42:08
so you have your values, strong values, create a whole different feeling in a painting, then very soft values that are close together. Color absolutely can evoke a mood just by how intense it is or what you're using it with, or just how you use it, what you focus on. Sometimes when I'm painting a figure, I might just focus on one area of the figure, maybe it's an arm or something like for my dancer series, I did a whole series of dancers and I want it there was certain body parts that were just so interesting because of the way that light was hitting and the muscle and the rest of the painting was so subtle, you almost it almost disappeared, but there was parts of the body that were very detailed and focused and that creative A specific mood. Where do you make those choices about mood? When you have a reference photo? It's a really good idea to ask yourself, why why am I paint? Not what am i painting? But why am I painting this? What am I drawn to? What am I excited about the value sketch and the color studies sort of help you remember what excited you about that when you first encountered it? I mean, even when you're painting plein air painting from life, there's something that you're excited about that you're trying to capture and trying to remember that it's
Kelly Anne Powers 43:32
it's really important. If someone came to you and said, I want to get good at painting, how do I do that? What would your advice be to them?
Peggi Habets 43:40
I would say if you know what you want to explore, what are your goals? Be clear about that? What you want to do. You want to paint portraits, you want to explore color you you know you want to paint plein air, figure that out first and then find somebody who's doing it the way you want to do it and Follow them and take workshops from them limited time. You know if you can't get time off for workshop, I guess the second best thing is to try to find videos but it's not quite the same experience as being in the workshop and watching the instructor and asking them questions and watching the other student respond and interpret what that instructor saying. So I would say workshop videos and just paint there's no substitution for hours, paint 100 ugly paintings, throw them in a tour a drawer and don't tell anybody. And you'll be amazed at number 100.
Kelly Anne Powers 44:36
You can find more information about Peggy habits including her workshops at her website, www dot Peggy habits calm and on Facebook and Instagram. find links to all of it in the program notes. Peggy, thank you so much for joining us today.
Peggi Habets 44:50
Oh, thanks so much. It was great.
Kelly Anne Powers 44:52
Thanks for joining me this week. had to learn to paint podcast slash podcast slash Episode Four to get the show notes links to habits word and sign up for the newsletter. And if you enjoyed today's episode, share it with a friend. Happy painting