A R T N E W S + B U S I N E S S A D V I C E + R E S O U R C E S + E D U C AT I O N + T U T O R I A L S

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2013

Artists As
Inventors
PAGE 30

Paint the Increase Your

Work’s Value
Mystery PAGE 58

of Glass Sell Online

PAGE 46
Successfully
PAGE 10

Art About Our

Environment
PAGE 69

APPROACHING NOISE
by David Kassan
 contents
FEB+MAR 2013 VOLUME 27 // NUMBER 1

features
10 Daily Painting
By Carol Marine

18 Payment Processing
By Daniel Grant
30
20 Printing at Home
By Sarah Pollock

28 A Rough Guide to Living

the Dream
By Elena Parashko

30 Artists as Inventors
By Kim Hall

42 Book Excerpt from

Making It in the Art World 64 46
By Brainard Carey

46 Painting Glass
By Ora Sorensen

54 Inventory Lists
By Diana Moses Botkin

58 Increasing the Value of Art

By Alan Bamberger

64 Creating Challenging Work

By Terry Sullivan

69 Environmental Artists
By Renée Phillips

10

2 Professional Artist FEB+MAR 2013

 16

on the cover
Approaching Noise, 2010, by
David Kassan. Oil on panel, 48” x
60”. Read more about the cover
artist in Artists as Inventors, page 30.

columns
16 Photo Guy
By Steve Meltzer

16 27 Best Business Practice

By Jodi Walsh

41 Planning Your Art Business

By Robert Reed

57 Coaching the Artist

By Eric Maisel

departments 63 Heart to Heart

By Jack White

4 Editor’s Letter
5 Headlines & Details
8 Artist Spotlight: Diane Feissel
By Kim Hall

75 Art Resources
77 Calls to Artists www.professionalartistmag.com

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46 Professional Artist FEB+MAR 2013
 BY ORA SORENSEN

ILLUSION
Painting &e
OF GLASS
W
hen you depict glass in a painting, you’re most often creating an
illusion. But the approach is often quite different from painting
other subjects. Unlike creating an image of opaque objects,
you don’t actually paint the glass itself, since it’s either translucent or
transparent. Instead, you paint the reflections, refractions and distortions
that occur on and within a glass object. Simply put, you render the abstract
shapes caused by the play of light on the glass object in order to replicate
its appearance.
But how can you paint what I call the elusive journey of a light wave? It’s a challenge, to say the least. Light
will look different at various times of the day or depending on atmospheric conditions. It also changes
appearance in glass, water or other transparent substances, which often bend or distort the light.

Green Vase, 2012, by Ora Sorensen. Oil on canvas, 40” x 30.” Copyright © 2012 Ora Sorensen. Used by permission of the artist.

www.professionalartistmag.com 47
 Paint what you see,
not what you think you see.”
Figure 1
This is called refraction — the turning or bending of any wave,
such as a light wave, when it passes from one substance into
another of different optical density. This process often bends
the light wave sending it in many different directions. It’s this
traveling light wave that creates distortions and reflections of
objects around, behind and inside the glass (see Figure 1).
As the light refracts at the surface of the water inside the glass,
the angle of the light changes and distorts the appearance of
the submerged stem into “broken” pieces and causes the stem to
appear shallower and wider. The stem viewed through the glass
also appears lighter and brighter in tone (see Figure 2).
At the point the ray of light hits the glass, two things happen:
First, some light is reflected off the surface. Second, some of the
light passes through the glass. So, the effect of light on the glass
48 Professional Artist FEB+MAR 2013
of water produces shadows filled with bright spots and sparkling
patterns. Additionally, some shadows thrown from the glass
appear solid in some places, while others are filled with bright
highlights and colors. But the shadow is darkest where the
light wave’s pathway is blocked by the curves of the glass or any
imperfections in it (see Figure 3).
Although the complex relationship of reflections and refractions
may sound complicated, if you train your eye, you can often see
these lighting effects quite clearly. But you’ll need to scrutinize
and analyze the shapes that you’re painting and pick the ones
that seem most important, tonally and chromatically. One
method I use to do this is to see my paintings as puzzle pieces
and paint each piece separately, keeping in mind the adage,
“Paint what you see, not what you think you see.”
Figure 2

Figure 3

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 1 2
To help you understand how to capture the illusive qualities of
glass in a painting, here’s a step-by-step demonstration:
STEP 1 Setting Up the Composition
I used a beautiful green vase with a clear glass bottom for this
demonstration and placed a large white Casa Blanca lily and some
water inside the vase. I chose a white flower and white drapery so
that the green vase would stand out. The vase, flower and fabric
were arranged outdoors in the bright sunlight to capture bright
highlights and deep shadows.
I decided to paint on a 40-inch-by-30-inch canvas and started by
making a detailed drawing directly on it using a No. 2 pencil. (I
generally like using a mechanical pencil.) I spent a lot of time on
50 Professional Artist FEB+MAR 2013
the drawing because I’ve found the more problems I solve at this
stage of the composition, the more successful I’ll be when I get to
the painting stage.
Since graphite pencil can smudge, I painted a thin layer of gesso
over the drawing to set the pencil lines and keep them from
smearing into or bleeding through the oil paint. (I also mixed a
little water and a dash of yellow ochre acrylic paint to thin and
tint the gesso mixture.) The pencil lines still showed through the
layer of gesso enough to be a guide.
STEP 2 Painting the Background
When I was ready to start painting, I first worked on the
neutral background and the white cloth. I like to paint from the
 3

background to the foreground. I also tend to work from light to dark. Focusing on the background first STEP 1 I spend a lot of time on
the drawing because I’ve found
often enables me to accurately determine the correct values in the foreground. Working this way also
the more problems I solve at this
makes the objects in my paintings stand out. stage of the composition, the more
successful I’ll be when I get to the
STEP 3 Blocking in the Abstract Shapes painting stage.
Next I blocked in various abstract shapes I perceived in the vase. I used three shades of green
(a very light green, a medium green and a dark green), which I mixed with Winsor & Newton STEP 2 In this step, I painted the
Liquin as a medium. background and the white cloth in
neutral colors.
I examined the still life, then picked out and exaggerated the separate shapes by tone. I then painted
them each as abstract shapes, which were created by the folds, shadows and highlights of the fabric STEP 3 I pick out and exaggerate
behind the glass vase as well as the distortion of the stem and water in the vase. Note that the the separate shapes by tone and
shadow beneath the vase is painted with the darker neutral shade from the background, and the paint them each as abstract shapes.

patterns within the shadow are painted with the light and medium green tones from the vase.

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 4 5
The opaque colors I used to mix the three tones are as follows:
Light green: Cadmium Green, Titanium White,
Cadmium Yellow Light
Medium green: Chromium Oxide Green, Cerulean Blue,
Cadmium Yellow
Dark green: Chromium Oxide Green, Cadmium Red Deep,
Cadmium Yellow
STEP 4 Blending
Next, I blended the colors right on the canvas, softening
the edges with a soft, clean brush.
52 Professional Artist FEB+MAR 2013
STEP 5 Glazing
After the base colors have dried, I used very thin, transparent
glazes of oil paint to unify and intensify the colors, add depth,
and strengthen the contrast. I used Winsor & Newton Liquin,
tinted with oil paint, to make my glazes. For the first glaze, I
used Aureolin Yellow and Viridian Green. For the second, I used
Alizarin Crimson and Sap Green to darken the vase.
The surface seems to glow more when a darker glaze is laid over
a lighter one. But it’s important to wait for each glaze to dry
completely. If you don’t wait, the new layer will pull off the prior
one. So, I let each glaze dry overnight, which seems to be plenty
of time.
 6

STEP 6 Adding the Finishing Touches STEP 4 I blend the colors at the
edges with a soft, clean brush.
To emphasize the beautiful play of light on the green vase, I added deep shadows and highlights
last, using glazing techniques as well as a dry-brush technique. I find the green vase appeared STEP 5 I use thin, transparent
brighter when the shadows were deepened and bright, starry highlights were added to the surface. glazes of oil paint to unify and
intensify the colors.
I like to keep in mind what the glass sculpture artist Dale Chihuly once said about his favorite
medium: “Glass is the most magical of all materials.” It’s a notion that also reminds me why I find STEP 6 Shadows and highlights
glass so interesting: It can often add shimmer, shine and magical allure to a still-life painting. PA are added last, using glazing
techniques and a dry-brush
technique.
Ora Sorensen (www.orasorensenart.com) was born in New York but grew up overseas in such countries as
Libya, Turkey, Iran, Holland and Thailand. Her paintings are collected worldwide and have been shown in
numerous exhibitions.

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