The Colors You Choose is Personal

What colors you choose to put on your pallet will decide the fate of each painting and help you create the emotional effect you’re after. I offer you my current pallet recipe as a barometer. A guide if you will, in your own personal creative journey.

Even though my work is quite colorful, you may be surprised to know that I have always kept my list of pigments between 7 and 10. This forces me to mix almost every color I need, and in return, my colors are naturally harmonious. I find it strange when I see a pallet with 15 – 20 colors displayed like a rainbow across the surface. To me, it’s wasted paint and really not necessary.

The oil pigments on my pallet have changed often over the years. Some pigments fall out of favor with me like Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black and Cadmium Orange while other are discovered along the way; becoming necessary additions to my pallet such Phthalo Green ( Usually $17.00 for 150ml on Amazon) and Bright Red. (Usually $12.00 for 37ml on Amazon)

The reason why some colors fall to the wayside and others take their place is a conundrum. It happens so gradually over the years as I settle into a very personal and exploratory method with my art. Ask me in 2030 what colors I use, and I will likely give you a different answer, because my art is always changing. My artistic growth and timeline

High Chromatic colors

I like to start with saturated and high chromatic colors and dull-down from there. If the color starts off saturated, I can fine tune and mix it down to the desired color. The pigments I choose for my pallet cannot be mixed outright, but are very good mixers and have a “strong tinting power”. Meaning: If the color remains vibrant when you add white, it has “strong tinting power”. These strong and saturated colors can be used to create a myriad of secondary and tertiary colors.

My Top 10 Essential Pigments in 2020:

What, No Black?

You read that right. I don’t use black. Why not?

1) Black flattens out as it dries and is not very rich, or deep.
2) Black is mixable. Save your money.
3) Black out of the tube is more predictable and less interesting than a black you mix yourself.
4) Black should be used to grays down a color, not darken it. If this is the case, mix in a color’s compliment instead for more varied and interesting results.

Try combining pigments to make black instead. A few recipes below: (To test if your mixed black is a true black, take a little from your mixture and add a touch of white to see if it turns gray. If it does, then your black is good!)

Mixing Black Recipes:

• Burnt Umber + French Ultramarine Blue Best
• Phthalo Green + Alizarin Crimson
• Cadmium Yellow + Phthalo Blue + Permanent Rose
• Phthalo Blue + Burnt Sienna + Alizarin Crimson

Get to Know Your Colors

As mentioned above, Color Choice is Personal. So I would like to stress that there is no right or wrong colors you choose to put on your pallet. It really depends on what you are try to accomplish with your color choices. It’s more important that you mix and mix and mix colors so that you experience the way you pigments work. Don’t worry too much if you have purchased the right brand or grade of pigment. For example, the round image above titled ” Letting Go” was painted with both professional and student grade oil paints. It’s not the tools that make the artist.

Create a Color Chart

If you want to understand what your colors can do. I highly recommend creating a color chart. Not a color wheel. I find that color wheels have very limited use when you’re finished. However, a color chart can be used as a reference that you can come back to time and time again. Also, the mixing required to finish a color chart of 10 – 15 colors is an education in itself – like the example below from one of the Georgetown University painting courses – mixing colors for this project is very similar to real painting and inspire a clearer understanding of the relationships between pigments and their unique properties.

So I leave you with an assignment…

Color Chart Project – Assignment

My Assignment for you: Creating a color chart using the list of pigments above (or your own pigments from your art box). 

1) Lightly make a grid Similar to the chart above.
2) Leave space so you can label your colors in the same order running vertically and horizontally. 
3) Then mix and paint in the color in the corresponding box.* 

*Notice that the left side of the color chart is repeated on the lower half with the pure hue running diagonally down the middle? The difference between the top half and the lower is that the top half is painted opaquely and the bottom is transparent. (Thin the colors on the lower half with liquin or your preferred medium so the color on the lower half is more transparent.)

If you do this Assignment, send it my way, and with your permission, I will add it to this article!

Why?

Artists are asked to explain why they paint or draw what they do. My artist statement for example, describes pretty well, my thoughts about my current body of work. But it does not really go into why I paint hands. So here goes. I will attempt to explain.

We use our hands to interact and communicate with the world around us, be it to create, or destroy. In that way, our hands are a direct link between our mind and our environment. In addition, hands imbue emotion, and depending on the pose, they can bring meaning to the work. Fingers are not unlike keys on a piano. As they articulate and move in space, light and colors bounce from the surface of each finger at a different rate, creating a rhythmic and dynamic pattern. In short, painting hands brings meaning, movement, pattern and “soul” into my portraits.

Painting Hands Project

As of May 2020, I am in the process of designing a new piece I am calling the Painting Hands Project. I intend to create a wall of paintings of hands. Similar to my wall of mouths back in 2002. Each painting will be an exploration of movement, color, meaning and medium. The project is meant to encourage creativity and experimentation by allowing me to try new colors, compositions and mediums. It’s important that I foster, within me, the artist’s mindset for play and exploration.

In the video below, I discuss why I paint hands, and explain my thoughts on how I continue to paint and work through the corona-19 stay home order. I conclude with the informal introduction to the Painting Hands Project, which arose from the difficulty in finding quality time to paint, and the mental bandwidth to really delve into a difficult work of art.

Are you a professional painter? I have been a very active artist within the Northern Virginia, Arlington, Falls Church and the DC art scene for over 20 years now. I’m an artist, and also a Professor at Georgetown University. I love teaching. It gives me a sense of personal satisfaction and my students are always inspiring me. I learn a lot from them and I wonder if I would still be an artist if I had not chosen this profession. Many of my colleague from when I was school are no longer active artists. That’s okay of course, but I wonder how much of it is due to the loss of desire vs the need to make a living?

That brings me to a phrase I sometimes hear that I want turn on its head. The phrase, “Those That Can’t Do, Teach.”

Well, I for one “Teach, So I can Do!”  This video explains it best.

I wanted to thank all the students out there that have emailed me over the years regarding my art and life. I am grateful to every question and I thought I would put together a ‘frequently asked’ list below.

This list will continue to grow as more questions come up. therefore, this list is in no way complete, so if you have any questions that are not listed here, don’t hesitate, I can be reached on my contact page  here.

1) When were you born?
I was born April 9th, 1973, in Indianola Iowa. USA

2) Where did you receive your eductional training?
BFA at Drake University in Des Moines Iowa
MFA at Geogewashington University in Washington DC 

3) What type of artist are you?
The style of work I create has changed a lot over the years (timeline), however I have always been a figurative artist. Currently, I would say my work is a hybrid between imaginative realism, futurism, and metaphysical surrealism.

4) Did something in particular inspire you to become an artist?
When I was 12 I saw a painting by Francis Bacon Study after Velasquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X. I had experienced such a deep emotion looking at that painting. His painting haunted me so deeply that I am still painting imagery today that evokes his particular aesthetic. I wonder if I am continually chasing that same emotion/feeling I felt looking at Francis Bacon’s painting.

5) Where and when did you develop your style?
I am asked this a lot. I can see my “style” even in the early stages of my education; however my style developed incrementally over many years. In that way, my style has taken my whole life to develop. If I were to quantify when and where I was most influenced, I would have to say at Drake University. (Undergraduate School) I received the most rigorous training there.

6)  Is there a routine you go through when you create a piece?
The less obvious one is that I clean my studio before I begin. It is as if I am cleaning out the cob webs in my mind. Starting fresh! I also make my own surfaces and I prep those before I begin. During the process of painting I block out the world by putting on head phones and listening to my favorite music, pod-cast, documentary, etc… By listening to something I am distracted from my painting or drawing just enough so that I don’t get lost in details and overwork the piece.   

7) Do you work directly from first hand, sketches, or photos?
I work from both life and photos. I paint 2 times a week from life. (Teaching Demos) My personal studio work however is mostly from photo. I have never worked from a sketch.

8)  What made you start to study faces/faces with hands?
Most of my ideas are discovered by accident. The way I work can be described as organized chaos. My discoveries arrive through experimentation and play. I am searching for various ways of abstracting and reorganizing the figure. With this in mind, I begin cutting and pasting on the computer (a digital collage). I never know how the final image will look. I merely let the process of cutting and pasting naturally unfold. Unfortunately one side effect to working this way is that I have a lot of half finished ideas that never see the light of day.

9)  How do you see your work developing in the future?
All of my paintings and drawings are derived from the creative act itself (The act of digitally assembling/collaging the figure) therefore this question impossible to answer.  However I hope that my work become less focused on one portrait with a shallow or empty background. I will soon be attempting to compose multiple figures in a more complex and abstracted scene. 

10) What is your preferred scale and why?
Another great question. I don’t have a preferred picture plane ratio or size, however I try to paint and draw the figure life sized if I can. The objective and practical reason is that a larger figure/face is easier to paint and achieve the level of detail I am going for. The second more subjective reason is that a life sized figure maintains the illusory character of a painting more naturally. Larger or smaller figures appear as pictures or illustrations to me where a life-sized figure allows me to engage with the figure in an immediate and visceral way.

11)  Who would you see as your influences?
My main influences are figurative artists. Here is a short list, by no means complete, but I trust it will give you a more complete idea of who I look at.

Contemporary: Vincent Desiderio,  Francis Bacon, Ewan Uglo, Allysa Monks, Jenny Saville, Tony Oursler, Lucian Freud, Jules Kirschenbaum
Art Historical Influences: Caravaggio, Dorothea Tanning (later work from the late 50’s to 60’s) Edwin Dickinson, Giovanni D Tiepolo, Pontormo

12)  Is there a contemporary artist that you admire in particular?
The artist I admire the most is my former teacher, Jules Kirschenbaum. He was a great painter and professor. He deserved more recognition during his life time.

13) Would you be able to describe the process of creating “Her Echo Her Shadow”? 
This piece was created the same way as I described above. I start with a digital collage on the computer. However this time I used images from two photo sessions I had with two different models and started experimenting by overlaying them together in one composition.  I had never done this before and had no idea how the piece would turn out, or if I would produce anything worth of painting. This piece is a perfect example of the way in which I experiment and play during the creative process. I will never make anything unique unless I am willing to fail.  If you go to my Instagram account you can see the underpainting. https://www.instagram.com/p/BYZlrMkgZt6/

14) What do you feel is your most successful piece to date?
The one I am working on currently of course. 

How to be creative when life gets in the way?

Life brings with it times of plenty regarding creativity and can also be peppered with dry spells. You might not always want to create something and it’s a constant challenge finding ways to be creative. The major take away from the following list? Persevere, try to surround yourself with creative individuals and make it a large part of your daily routine.

1) Be Creative Through Experimentation and Play:

It’s important to allow yourself time to play and experiment. Where ever you decide to focus your energies, do it with variety. For example, I’m a painter. However, I like to experiment with a variety of mediums, subject matter and artistic approaches. This is especially true for younger artists. Mastery comes with a life time of consistent work. You have the benefit of time. What you need is to carve out time for play and experimentation. Those two things will inspire discovery and get you closer to who you are as an artist.

2) Look inward, not outward:

I admit, for most of my student career (all the way through grad school)  I didn’t study many artists. Mind you, the internet was in its infancy and the Library and Museums were my main source of information. As such I was not willing to browse the library bookshelves when I felt the need to be in the studio. I even found myself curating what I looked at when traveling to Museums and galleries in NYC. Instead, I found my inspiration during periods of isolation. You can’t substitute the countless hours one needs in the studio.

More about the animations I projected behind 50 Man Machine [] More

3) Listen to constructive criticism, not criticism based on self interest:

Ever had someone critique your art based on what they would do to make your work better, not specifically what you should do to make it better? There is a difference. If the person looking at your art does not know or ask what you are trying to say with your work, their criticism comes from the wrong place. i usually set that critique aside and move on. (As an educator: I make a point of critiquing based on the individual’s needs, not my own.)

4) Be Creative by trying something new:

Fine art is many things. For me it is individual, honest and seeks for a type of truth. Some art is social, some a rejection of the current artistic trends. Other art is created in homage to the past or done for purely aesthetic reasons. My work is highly personal and I believe this adds to its uniqueness. My growth as an artist and as an individual is directly reflected in the work and illustrates my personal journey. I have no idea how some artists paint the same picture for years. It makes me wonder. Below is a photo montage of my styles. You can see how much my work has changed over the years because of my willingness to try new things.

My work has changed a lot over the years! [] More

5) Tackle multiple projects at once: 

I don’t always want to paint or draw on my most current project. So I start another. As of this post I have 6 paintings I am currently working on. If you do this, you can continue to work and keep your level of interest high.

6) Stay Away from Fads:

Artistic fads will make you stuck. It’s tempting to create in a specific genre or style that you like. But it will only stop you from moving forward and your work will look just like the rest of that genre. Instead use a style or genre as a launchpad, a departure point for your own form of expression. 

My social media community  Instagram | Facebook | Youtube

7) Find a community:

I am lucky to be a professor at a great University surrounded by talented faculty and hard working students. This is my community and it has helped me stay on track and continue working. Do you have a community to keep you excited? If not, you may be able to find it through gallery openings, museum visits, social media and
 

8) Create every day:

In order to stay creative you need to practice every day. Share with me the ways you are creative below in the comments!

* My thoughts are based on 20 years as a professional artist and professor. They are my own thoughts and may or may not apply to you, so read, but in no way should these thoughts supersede your own experience.

Four months ago I was approached by the Washington Printmakers Gallery to Jury the 20th Annual Small Works Competition. It’s a member-run gallery in the heart of Georgetown that specializes in prints. It’s in a great location, I highly recommend visiting there if you get a chance and you are in the area.  I accepted the invitation to be the Juror this year and I had an enjoyable experience working with them and judging the artwork that was submitted from all over the country. 

They used the online site called submittable.com.  I have used Submittable before, but never as a juror. The layout made the process really easy and made the jurying go incredibly quick and smooth with its intuitive interface. As a side note, if you are an artist actively looking for opportunities to show your artwork I highly recommend signing up to Submittable.com. It’s free to sign up, and artists can search for shows through their online database. Honestly, you will likely be signing up with them at some point, a lot of galleries currently use their interface for digital submissions.

Back to my thoughts on Jurying…

Once it was time to jury the show I went through the list of 118 artists and over 400 pieces of art. I had a few prevailing thoughts while I selected artists for the show.  First I began by asking myself, what do I think the artist is trying to say? Each piece of art in the show contains a unique meaning. Some pieces are experimental in nature, while others were more traditional in execution. Whatever the process that the artist deploys, it is important for me to be able to understand clearly what each piece is saying regardless of whether the artist is present to clarify its significance. Secondly, I look for a mastery of the craft and the confident organization of the picture plane. Lastly, all the work chosen for exhibition contains an element of uniqueness that elevated it above the crowd. 

It was not an easy task, but jurying the Washington Printmakers Gallery Small Works Show was both edjucational and rewarding. It forced me to reaffirm my own tastes in art, and at the same time it challenged me to be open to new art forms. As an artist myself I know what it’s like to put my work out there. (I have quite a long list of rejections myself.)  Thus I did not take the process lightly. I went in knowing that  every submission took time and cost the artist money to apply. 

I have applied to countless of National juried shows, solo shows, publications, and grants over the years. I certainly don’t get accepted into everything. Rejection can be frustrating, but once you do get a piece into a show or receive recognition for your art it can be the salve that helps soften the blow. I say keep at it and don’t quit. Continue to look for ways to get your work out there. Just so you know, coming from someone who has juried before, don’t get discouraged if you don’t get accepted. It’s not personal, and likely your juror has had a number of rejections as well. 

Scott Hutchison

Have you ever received a redesign or SEO (Search Engine Optimization) email from a web designer asking if you want your website redesigned or optimized for google search? I receive two – three a week, and I would suggest putting these in your spam folder and promptly ignore.

Example email sent by an SEO & Design sales person: 

The reasons I would ignore:

1) None have a professional email address.
2) None ironically have their own websites.
3) None show their portfolio of work.

What?

I wrote, composed, photographed and promoted my own hardcover art catalog in 2019. If you are willing to get your feet wet, why would you pay for a designer or SEO optimization with no examples?

My email reply is as follows:

I realize the irony of suggesting that you delete emails trying to sell you SEO or web design services, while I choose to reply. But, I see it as a teaching moment!

I have been in the art business for a while and designed websites on the side as well. (This website was designed by me a few years ago) I realize my website isn’t perfect. BUT I did it and have learned a lot about what it takes to make a great site.

What I have also learned as an entrepreneur is that you have to stand out. Like in the original email to the website spammer I pointed out that everyone in his business is doing the same thing as he. If he wants to get business he has to:

“… do what others won’t, or can’t”.

If you want to be successful in whatever you do, go the extra mile.

If it’s customer service, then learn about your customer. If it’s carpentry, don’t cut corners. Your customers will know if you do an average job. If you mop floors or take out the trash, do it with pride and be thorough. If you are an artist, fully devote your time to your craft and stand up for your artistic principals.

What do I do, that other artists may not? I’m an entrepreneur, I represent myself. I used to fret over getting a gallery to sell my work. But I can’t sit and wait for something that may or may not happen. So I took a huge step towards self promotion and exclusive control of my artwork, sales, shipping and client relations.

I spend a lot of time self promoting and working on my art business. It is almost as important as the creative element of my craft. It’s a lot of work, but worth the freedom and satisfaction that comes with it. So get out there!

My work has changed a lot over the years. The reason it has varied so greatly is due to the non-linear experiential way in which I learned this craft as well as a need to keep my work personally exciting. Some artists work in the same style over decades. However, I need to tinker, experiment and get myself into trouble. It is as much about the discovery and the journey as it is the end result.

To put it simply, before I begin I always ask myself: “What am I trying to say, and what is the most important element(s) in this image?”

This is often the deciding factor in my choice of medium and the approach I take with the work. I am an artist because art is difficult. It changes and complicates me. Art has taught me that I must be willing to adapt and evolve. For me art is a moving target – engaging, intellectual and necessary.

 © Scott Hutchison