Hi guys, I have a question about lettering on ornaments/bottles. I'm trying to follow Marks method and I know he usually lays down his darks first. But, what about things like lettering on a bottle? I have some text on a white bottle which is printed in black (on the reference photo). If you take an abstract method as Mark shows where you wont paint them in exact detail, should one do the lettering first, or leave it for once you are done with the bottle and then place it 'on top'.
I've attached the photo I am using to show what I mean. Thanks for your help!
Comments
I'm a newbie, but I think the answer depends upon your brush size, or equivalently, your smallest clearly discernible brush mark size.
If you are using a really tiny brush, and your brush mark sizes are significantly smaller than the lettering you could choose to put those in first, however if you are using a reasonable painterly brush size, and those details are to be somewhat abstracted, I suggest painting them on last is the correct approach.
For the illusion of very thin black lines... a thicker but lighter gray line could do the trick.
I ran into the same problem with the painting I posted at this link … not quite as difficult if lettering as yours is though.
https://forum.drawmixpaint.com/discussion/14100/the-writers-desk-22-x32-oil-on-acm#latest
The very last 2 lines of lettering on the bottle I would suggest doing as a pattern that alludes to the lettering rather than attempt specific, as it is so small. Of course that is dependent on what size you are doing the painting.
I did this last year (9x7 inch) and as you can see I did not do the very fine lettering in detail on lower part of bottle here.
Thanks for the question. It's great to watch this bunch stirred up, they throw out gems of knowledge when the right topic comes along.
For my two pennyworth, I agree with @Abstraction my painting would ignore the lettering completely.
My top 3 loves in your composition are
Anything that takes away from these would go.
Text unwillingly grabs my attention in a painting and takes away much of my enjoyment. Even blurred or blocked in dark shapes just confuse me into thinking they are shadows.
I hope you have fun painting it😉
I too like the photo for the reasons you mentioned (also the subject matter itself, a whiskey bottle paired with pairs). I should mention it was taken by someone else https://pmp-art.com/freds/gallery/311963/20201130-144127 . I'm on a tight budget until I feel confident I can do this so I save where I can. Wait till you see the color checker and proportional divider I made for this painting...
I notice the photo you attached has a very wide angle of view and was probably taken with a phone. Are you planning to paint from life or from a photo?
Ah, well two things mostly, the wooden shelf and the jug.
The wooden shelf is almost perpendicular with the direction of view, yet there are very pronounced perspective effects, e.g. the pronounced converging of the lines off to the right in particular.
For the jug, there are 5 discernible ellipses, the bottom surface, the color transition, the bottom and top of the neck, and the very top surface of the opening. The perspective views of these ellipses at different heights changes markedly. The view is looking down on the bottom ellipse at an appreciable angle and yet looking up (from below) at the top ellipse, at an appreciable angle.
Feel free to ignore the following but I have a little theory about what is the appropriate field of view for photos used as references.
A wide angle photo is perfectly fine for a modern instagram/selfie "this ia painting of a cell phone photo" look, but for realism that approaches something more traditional IMHO the angle represented in the painting (field of view) should match (as closely as possible or practical) the angle viewed by a viewer of your work when it is hung on a wall and they are standing at a comfortable distance. This makes a better match between how they see what they see when they see your painting, and how the camera saw what it saw when it took the picture. (Imagine the canvas filling a virtual window through which you are looking)
For this one, if painted as is, on any size painting, I would estimate a person should view it from about the a distance equal to a width of the work for the view to look "right".
So IMHO, paint as is on a large canvas and you are gold. Or, take another picture with the same composition at a narrower zoom or FOV (if you are a techy/mechanical/engineering type person, you can actually do all the measurements) which matches how the viewer will view your painting.
Hope you find this interesting or useful!
In illustrative, commercial work, precision may be required so potential consumers of the product being illustrated for an advertisement can read the label, but it can look tight, and detract from a fine art painting if the rest of the picture is in a loose, painterly style. It takes just as much, if not more, skill and artistic judgement to render objects and their details in a painterly way.
See the fine example by Manet below. This is a large work. Can you read the labels on the bottles? Does it matter? I think that how they are painted does matter. Imagine how incongruous this would look if the lettering were tight and precise amid all that wonderfully loose brushwork. It would not be in keeping with the rest of this great painting. It would destroy it, IMHO.
I just found some interesting info on this painting from an exhibition here in US. Thought you guys might like it. @tassieguy @ GTO
And, yes it is really interesting how he signed it.