Ken Goshen en Atelier Mesones, día 1

What we're going to do is in the morning I'm going to bore you with me talking. You're going to get all bored and you're going to withstand me painting some demos, demonstrations. Then it's going to be time for you to work and I'm going to go around the class and look at everybody's individual projects and we're going to be talking and on purpose this is something that not a lot of teachers do but I prefer to do when I talk to you individually I'm going to speak loudly and I hope that you do as well because when you ask a question you can be certain that at least one or two more people have that same question. So don't feel like you need to whisper, Ken I don't understand this in this case, explain to me. Not in my class. In my class it's Ken why is this? Why is that? Speak so that everybody else can benefit from what you are trying to learn. What I've come to understand is that in painting we all go through the same struggles so if somebody is dealing with a challenge it's very likely that whatever I have to say to alleviate that struggle is going to be productive and beneficial to other people too. My philosophy on painting and the way I approach painting is different from perhaps what a lot of other teachers think and do. So some stuff that I'm going to say is not going to intuitively make sense. It might not totally fall in line with things that you may have heard in the past and that's okay because there's not one right way to paint. I don't presume that my way is any more correct than anybody else's. It's just what I've learned, what I've grown up with, what I've learned how to do and so what I recommend is for the purposes of making the most out of this workshop just take whatever I have to give and then if it doesn't come together with everything that you like to do or everything you already learned just put it aside. After the workshop you can say ah okay well I learned how Ken does it he has his own way that was interesting we learned that way and then maybe you choose to incorporate some of it into your practice some of it maybe doesn't work but in order to make sure that you learn as much as you can out of these sessions try not to reconcile what I'm about to say with the stuff you already know. Try to take what you already know put it in a box close that box until Saturday then later you open all the skills you already have they're yours you've earned them okay I can't erase them and I'm not going to try to but just for the purpose of this classroom if I say something weird roll with me try it if it's really weird that's fine we're gonna have fun and very importantly what I want us to prioritize together is the learning process the learning process a lot of people when they come to study painting there is some conflict because on the one hand they want to learn new skills and on the other hand they want to make pretty pictures and these two things don't live together well why because when we want to make something pretty to put on the wall we have to use the skills we already have because that's all we know in order to create something pretty if I'm giving you some new techniques that you are unfamiliar with it's very likely that when you first start out with them it's not going to come out pretty it's going to come out a little awkward because everything that's new starts off feeling a little bit awkward that's okay let's embrace the awkward if it comes out ugly that's fine if it comes out unfinished that's fine if it comes up really different from what you consider to be your style that's also fine if at the end of the process you look at a work and it's it's not your best work but you say oh this is new my work has never looked this way before that's what I want that's what we're going for it means that you came out of here with new ideas new techniques and new possibilities and then maybe you want to adopt 33 of it 75 of it that's going to be up to you I want to leave this workshop with giving you uh as many tools as I can so that later you can decide what goes in and out of the work but let's not bring into this particular classroom the desire to make something that we can scan and put on our website that's gonna it's gonna hold us back let's come into this workshop with the mentality of let's learn grow and improve as painters uh even if later it doesn't totally fit our personality but that's that's what I suggest first of all it's important to understand that painting is both a verb and a noun right painting is an object but painting is also an action right so I'm not talking about the noun in this case let's talk about the verb I would say that painting in all its forms what it is is an organization of shapes and color on a surface the craft itself is we take something two-dimensional and we arrange on it stuff this stuff in the way that we arrange it we put the colors together could come out to be a dog could come out to be a rabbit could come out to be a person could be totally abstract but no matter what the image is the action is an organizational action that's what we do if something is wrong with the shoulder of the model and I tell you the shoulder is incorrect it needs to come lower what you're doing is you're not moving a shoulder we aren't plastic surgeons there's no figure on that actual surface what you're doing is you're moving a shape around right if I tell you to bring down the shoulder what I'm telling you is here's a shape that's too big or too small that shape needs to expand or get smaller all these adjustments that we make in the course of our work it's an adjustment of I'm arranging shapes differently I'm arranging colors differently everything we do happens on a flat surface with things that whether or not they look like people or they look like chairs or they look like bread at the end of the day they only look that way but they aren't that thing and it's our job to do and to focus on the organization such that the visual impact that we're trying to convey is received by the observer but we mustn't believe that we are taking part in like looking at the that harms us because we feel like there's a person there that we're starting to identify with and when we move the nose it hurts us or when we move the eye it feels painful it's like oh I don't want to like I've this is going to be oh it's the eye moving the eyes really difficult it's not an eye it's not an eye these are just shapes okay the painting is an organization of shapes and colors on the surface no matter what you want to do with it what you want to do with it is your business right so the organization is what is going to become the message that you're talking about the information the information is a result of the organization very yes that's it I'm trying to take us in the ground and talk about what is paint right and like we would expect from doctors right if something's wrong with the hand you don't want them to put a band-aid right we want to x-ray look at it look as deep as you can to discover what the problem is if you have problems with your paintings first go bedrock forget message things information what's what is it about the shapes what is about the colors that isn't working something is not working we diagnose it from the bottom from the bottom we're going to speak about it like mechanics right if something is not working I want to hear the description not in terms of information not in terms of description but in terms of actionable um actionable items like say something's wrong with the foot is not specific enough we're going to have a hard time if you say something is wrong with the foot and you think you've expressed an actionable item that you can later follow up on you don't have enough information we need to go one step lower the shape that represents the leg it's too large the shape that represents the leg is on the wrong angle the color that represents the leg it's too dark it's too light I want to talk in the ground level when we are making adjustments what is paint it's just glue with pigment that's it it's glue and pigment I don't want any romantic ideas that's what we are painters are so full of romantic ideas and romantic ideas are confusing they're very confusing and they activate the ego in ways that are counterproductive we all know the feeling of walking around the what's that what does it mean the combination of two words wow comma what's that question mark how can it be that we're amazed by something before we know what it is and then we come closer and discover that it's a rabbit or it's a landscape well what what there's 70 paintings around the one calls to us from afar we don't know what it is we're magnet magnetized we come close it's a portrait we come close it's an apple but from afar it was quote wow comma what's that how can you explain that a good painting is a painting in which the organization of shapes and colors is expressive before we know what it describes the organization of how the colors are placed in the frame the lights the darks high chroma low color how it's organized before it describes a fish or a mountain the organization of the shapes and the colors is expressive so emotional resonance colors and shapes all right so painting is organization of shapes and color on a surface a good painting is when that organization is expressive expressive or successful evocative choose whatever one word you want right now i would suggest to you i would offer that later when you come closer and you see what it is you could have the experience up close that it's either meeting your expectations or disappointing right you could like it from afar come close and then it's not as good as i thought or not so bummer i thought it was going to be better and i think at this point we are talking at the level that maybe most painters are more familiar with like for example are the proportions correct right is the is does the figure look right or is it a little awkward is something wrong with the face all these things that we can look up close could defy our original infatuation with with the painting if we discover that it doesn't actually do what the larger arrangement does right so we have the large arrangement of the design that could or should be the first step towards a good painting and then how it's done in terms of like the technique needs to just meet some threshold of quality right and my thesis for you is that in most um academic institutions or most people who teach art today deal with that second part the technique the anatomy the bones the perspective should be correct right when you come up close you're impressed if it's done well very impressed sometimes extremely impressed it's very well done but the step before does it hit you emotionally that doesn't come from the impressive qualities it's a separate thing right if it hits you emotionally from a distance calls you to come closer that part of the design as you called it we have to prioritize because without it we come we can come up with a painting that's extremely impressive but has no emotional impact even worse it could be an impressive painting that's ugly it's possible there's a lot of very impressive paintings that are ugly right what i'm going to hopefully do with you during this workshop is prioritize this first step right technique you can always build up but i feel like in today's landscape this fixation on design is missing is missing so that means that i'm going to be encouraging you to make work that isn't necessarily focused on the impressive parts of the technique the impressive parts of the technique all of you in five years if you apply yourselves and buy all the anatomy books you're all going to be able to do it not a lot of secrets there but the world of design is full of secrets and it is the window to making your pieces emotionally attractive and dare i say beautiful beauty does not come from something impressive beauty is a result of design and harmony we're in the mindset for just painting or drawing triangles these triangles right now have pretty much the same emotional impact triangles floating in space doesn't really say much however if we compare the emotional impact of this frame to the emotional impact of this frame to the emotional impact of this frame to the emotional impact of this frame this does not erase very well suddenly i think all these things feel very different how can we have feelings for triangles it doesn't make any sense this is just it's it's the same triangle but it feels different this feels claustrophobic it's closing in on that triangle a lot of tension this feels like you know the triangle is like looking up uplifting this you know feels cinematic you could even have the frame here right and that's even more like a movie action right this you feel like you're using a uh how do you call it like a telescope telescope you're looking at something very close right we can evoke emotion just by organizing something so simple as a triangle in a frame but the kind of frame you choose matters matters a huge amount right so if this is true for a triangle then it's true for every shape that's more complicated than the triangle and at the end of the day what we need to understand is the emotional resonance is not just of this shape it's this shape how it relates to this shape right how it relates to this shape and how it relates to this shape or all the other shapes there is no shape that is empty because what are we doing what is painting it's an organization of shapes within a frame so every shape that we did not populate doesn't become a non-shape it's just a big shape of a more less um less contrasting real estate right if we have background that's a shape that's gray shape that gray shape is going to have an emotional impact depending on how that shape looks like right this shape this background shape is not in any way less important than this shape in this context if we are trying to create a design if the triangle could evoke emotion then this triangle could also evoke emotion and how we crop them together matters this is something that we need to think about before we start working what am i trying to do here what am i trying to do here we look at the opportunities presented to us in the visual field we see what present themselves and then we take the responsibility to say okay i see i see the shapes we have a light shape here we have a dark shape there then a very small dark shape then a very small very light shape they are organized like this i need a frame that looks like that in order to and that's where you come in that's where you come in everybody has a personal way of doing it that when we approach our design we don't obey nature nature is just a set of opportunities it's a set of opportunities for us to cultivate emotionally resonant designs we take what we need right my motive is to create this design so everything i find in nature that contradicts my motive i should question if my original intent was to make all of this very dark and that's how i initially saw it but then i look at it a second day and suddenly i see all this information there remember the motive don't get swept by what nature presents you remember your pictorial vision what picture am i trying to make right what is my motive why am i here to rub a burnt wood on processed wood crazy crazy thing you need to have a motive that is not documentary it's not i want to explain to the people later that there was a model sitting on a chair great that's a sentence we can just there was a model sitting on the chair nice we've done that with words what i want to capture when i'm standing there with these strange materials and this strange way of spending my time i want a motive that has a purpose creatively design composition purpose specificity that's what i mean so when i say motive that's what i'm going to mean because i'm going to use this word a lot shapes that are playing a role here and these shapes if they don't look like a person at the beginning even better even better try to squint squint at the model until you don't really see a person anymore you just see a collection of shapes that have different values light dark right so one very important shape that i'm seeing looks something like that then another shape dark shape looks like this another dark shape looks like this not a person but starting to look interesting should be interesting before it's a person otherwise the idea is not great right so now that i have this i can start to question okay so how how does it look in a frame what kind of frame do i need for this idea maybe maybe like this not a person not a person but the organization light shade populating a frame dark shape more dark over here interesting create some kind of design arrangement on top of a design arrangement you can always later add the information the information can be put onto the design but the design can be put on the information right so i'm going to try to create a frame that looks like the frame that i found compelling so something like this then i can hold this viewfinder in front of me and try to divide this frame into the main shapes that i'm seeing so shape of the background over here very beautiful shape keep it simple keep it simple keep it basic keep it design-based this shape looking at this shape how does it look in the viewfinder i want to design this shape needs to be beautiful this is not just oh whatever whatever i had no this shape needs to be an interesting shape every shape matters right so that shape then what do i have on the other side i have a shape that looks like this broadly and of course this can later be adjusted corrected improved upon it's just a sketch but this sketch helps us understand what we're trying to do like for example right now i'm discovering that the frame i drew here is a little wide for me i don't want it that wide like so and i see okay let's see what's going on here if i make that shape a darker value as it should be not a person but nice shape here nice shape here now let's take the shapes that are inside what do we do about them we're using this newsprint because it's cheap quick to erase easy to apply pencil is too slow for this i can't do this with pencil because moving it around adjusting it just takes forever charcoal is our friend in this instance because it does it quickly and i can very quickly do divide divide the shape into the dark and the light carve it away this will help us discover what are the errors what are the inaccuracies does this need to be shorter put the shapes down like you are mapping out uh like you're creating a map don't express anatomy just test design what's the shape of the light here how does it go does it work before it's a person does it work before it's a person the organization of light and shadow in the frame i look at this i wish this was larger but i respond to my visual stimulus i see i apply i don't think thought is just going to slow me down i see and i apply but i use this other eraser just because my frame's so tiny this is actually i think probably too small to do what i'm trying to do but bear with me background dark accent this and this interesting relationship right that shadow the hair this shadow not as dark interesting bounce right how are we organizing this stuff in a frame we can then take our eraser and assert some changes to play with it until the design is compelling what's the shape of the light this cuts like that this cuts like that over here light moment rhythmic right i'm thinking how am i organizing all these shapes later on this i can then measure how is this where is that where is the shoulder where is the neck where is the chin all that stuff can build can build on the design now if you don't have your painting surface that's okay what i would expect you to do at this point once you have your design and this can take you you can try as many designs as you want right other people will teach you almost as well as i will or better how to draw shoulders but i want you to take this opportunity to try different designs you take uh if you don't have your painting surface at this point you can do um a drawing that is more polished more specific on the paper and then tomorrow we can transfer it to your canvas if you didn't bring your canvas today if you didn't bring your canvas today and your canvas is white i would strongly suggest to stain it to some kind of middle value tone it tone it with a gray or gray or brown gray problematic why because gray has white in it and white dries slowly you're going to put a gray on it today tomorrow you're going to have a wet canvas what pigments dry fast umber terraverting these kinds of earthy pigments they dry fast raw umber easy choice raw umber solvent come tomorrow if you didn't bring it today come tomorrow with something that is not white okay we're gonna it's so now i'm going to use my viewfinder in order to see how much more i need to change my surface but since i'm an obsessive person and i wouldn't want it to be too high i'm actually going to do the sympathetically crazy thing of putting half amount on both directions like that i'm gonna bring this down a little bit so now i have a format i can check it with my viewfinder that it's pretty much what i had in mind and now i look at my idea i remember the motive my motive is here in front of me this is what i'm going for all right now with my motive at my side i'm just going to do the same thing only this time i'm not going to put any values in and i'm going to be a little slower a little more considered i'm going to think how far from the edge of this frame do we meet the side of the face what kind of shape is this going to create where does this cut how much space do i have here what kind of angle do i have here and the idea is this you can't put the correct line on the very first try only very very genius people can do that i cannot but what i can do is know that i'm about to get it wrong and commit to fixing it if i discover that it's wrong that's the best i can do so right now i'm charting it without any thought of anatomy i'm just a designer just a designer and i'm looking for these shapes and how they populate my frame this is just going to tell me if some lines line up in a way that i should care about and they do for example this which i've already put this line here lines up beautifully with the back of the head that is something that enhances my motive when i discover this this is what we call a pictorial opportunity when you look at all these masterpieces on the wall you're going to find these lines that continue through objects all the time and the magic of this pictorial opportunity is that it's only true from this angle if i stand here i probably have different pictorial opportunities if i stand here i probably have different pictorial opportunities but all of them are the same model in the same light in the same day in the same time but the visual uh relationship of the shapes is different so as painters we have to be aware when something like this is presenting itself to us that's an opportunity so we need to harness it and take it so you can use the skewer to discover these opportunities for example we have a nice line coming from here all the way to where this shadow is going to start we're going to try to keep that opportunity and we are just looking for and when we're hunting for these things we are improving the chances not that it's going to look impressive but that it's going to look beautiful that the eye is going to have nice channels through which to travel across the design when you have this kind of line that continues from this side to the next when you have this kind of line that continues the shape of the shadow that's going to be created here the eye is going to travel across those lines and what you as painters want to do you want to create enough of these interesting movements throughout your piece that the eye just gets trapped traveling traveling traveling through these axes that's why when we go to a museum and we can't stop looking at something your eye goes here goes there goes here goes where goes that's design pictorial opportunities and at this point i would like you to search for them and whenever you find one rejoice this is more happiness than successfully capturing a nose because a nose can be captured from every angle but these opportunities are from this spot this is not in the model it's in your creative idea maybe somebody else would find another line to focus on that's where creativity comes in okay so we're going to find some more of these and notice how i'm using straight lines i don't want any curves curves are too fancy i'm just trying to keep it very simple like a builder testing testing interesting pictorial opportunities finding these lines this lines up nicely with this this lines up nicely with that this that and that what a beautiful rectangle we have here ah beautiful shapes that's what we fall in love with beautiful shapes not ideas right here we have a little triangle that later goes up into this neck and what i really like about working with charcoal on these kinds of surfaces is your pinky is just an eraser you rub it on the eraser and it's ready to go and you can use it to cut these shapes into pieces to adjust the light i start by measuring the largest shapes and when and the largest distances the largest angles and once i consider them to be working once i have my big shapes which i don't yet and i consider them to be working and solid and compelling and visually attractive i can choose to take any one of those large shapes and break them into several shapes that is the process of adding resolution or detail but when you do that do that while not losing the motive if you put too much detail into the light the light's going if you put too much detail into the dark what how do you put detail into the dark by adding light moments how do you put details into the light by adding dark moments and then the contrast comes close to the middle and the motive disappears don't add information for your ego to show that you could see it all we know you can it's okay all of us can all this information is there but does the painting demand it that's my question okay we as people have the ability to look at shapes random shapes and just um embed them with meaning that they don't have in on themselves you look at a cloud oh it looks like a horse and you can't stop looking at the horse it's just just a cloud there is no horse there but our brains are constantly looking for patterns right so if you find a shape that you can almost call by a different name not torso but parallelogram right not shoulder but butterfly this kind of stuff activates the brain because you look at that shape and your brain is doing like going to all these different possibilities you can't look away from it but at the same time a higher level of your brain is saying person on chair what are you talking about this mystery of the story of the shapes themselves underneath the story of the narrative right person these are two layers it's like lyrics and chords chords underneath can say something totally different from the words of the song you can take the same words of the song and give it to nine different composers to give me different chords right you compose one song you compose a different song heavy metal jazz rock anything you want and the story is still going to be model on a chair that's your lyrics but i care about the right so whatever you when you find interest in the shapes that's good enough for me we have dark shape inside of light and light shape inside of dark i call this yin and yang this means i can play to accentuate this epic timeless idea that always looks harmonious always looks in balance if i'm a mature painter this would mean if i if i really want to play up this idea it would mean i probably should give up some information here and here because the more information i put in these eyes the more my visual idea is weaker right if this was not the idea of course other portraits maybe focusing exactly on the eye is the idea but in this case the way we choose to i hate this word render the eyes has to be a result of what serves my visual idea my design concept and so i'm not prescribing this design concept this is just a suggestion but when you look at life try not to see a face try to see do these shapes when they come together create some interesting arrangement that turns you on that's what we're looking for okay i have a riddle for you let's say something about the model in the position that she took is slightly different between pose to pose what is the right way to approach these chambers think before you answer 10 points are on the line maybe trying to see geometric figures i don't know in manisha say more say more how do i deal with it it's different than what i have on my paper what do i do what do i think how do i decide what to do imagination no try to understand the logic in your design thank you 10 points if the change is better for my design i change it if it's worse for my design i hope next time she'll take the previous one that's how every session presents slightly different opportunities and you only pursue them if it's like oh they brought this item to the supermarket i better get it now it might not be here next time but you don't make that change if it's just there and you blindly follow it you make a change if it's better for your design if it's not better you leave it fernando wins 10 points oh yeah for me music is so important because uh because all these different creative endeavors have have different properties and they can learn from each other in music it's very easy to understand the difference between the harmony the chords and the lyrics in art it's much more much more tricky so music learns from art art dance is also very important for painters to consider because what we're doing when we paint which is as we all know organizing shapes and colors on a two-dimensional surface we are also recording the movement of our hand in paint if the movement was a dance that we appreciate the painting is going to be fun to look at just like imagine a dancer dipping their leg in ink and dancing across a stage each dancer is going to produce some very very different pattern on the stage right so this is something that we want to be mindful of when we're going to talk about mark making you want to make sure that the marks you're making are fun to look at okay the movement of your hand is how it's going to be such an important part of your style eventually uh so right now it's a little early to think about it another riddle when we work with charcoal on paper what are the different properties that we can hope to express we already discussed shape is one of them there are two more shapes shapes is one value is the second one contrast color contrast is part of values if i'm expressing dark versus light that's value the third property that we can express forms the um edges edges thank you edges soft edges on the heart thank you once edges edges if you can come for a second here i just want to show you something very quick this you don't want to do before your design starts to be solid three properties shapes values edges that's all we can do with charcoal pencil any dry media that's all we got everything from the most sophisticated portrait to the most simple abstract design or most complex abstract design is made of shapes values and edges when we do this process we need to think about them in the hierarchy of importance shapes comes first okay once the shapes look okay we test them with the values once the values and the shapes both work pretty well we can start to think maybe our design can benefit from some variation in edges so for example where does this come into play on my drawing here there's a very very interesting edge relationship that you can look at between this shape and this shape right now all the edges are the same right but when i look at it at life i see that these edges are so soft and this edge is hard and that is what's going to make this look round and this is going to look like a cast shadow coming from the head so not now but just put it in the back of your brain that once you get your shapes and your values to start working the brain is going to come up and say is it time for details yet and you're going to say no it's time for edges these big masses the connection the relationship between them we see the same thing happening here right this edge is soft and this edge is sharper that is going to start to suggest a different relationship of the form see what i mean not the details the details are not going to do it they could do other things but they're not going to do that right so when you are looking for the next level after you have your shapes and values you always think about edges and then the funny thing is once you start working on the edges which means some areas become softer and some areas become sharper you're going to lose some definition of your shapes so it's a circle shapes values edges shapes values edges shapes values edges until it's like it looks good that's it for this stage we don't need any details you go in circles if you've done everything you could do with the edges you step back and your question should be what shapes need to be better if the answer is they're all fine we move on we move on to paint okay that's it