Plein air session with Milind Mulick
Last week, I had the pleasure to attend two plein air painting sessions with
Milind sir (Mulick) and his students. This was held at the Pune University main
building premise. Giving me company was my friend Shri Sanjay Desai.
It was a pleasant morning inspite of late summer morning.
And on the first morning Sir asked us to draw the adjacent white building having a canopy of a
Gulmohor tree. Sir settled himself with his easel and paints and brushes. He
did a quick sketch of the building in the front. I could see his mind whirring
with thoughts of the colors he would choose and the tones he would be applying
on the various parts of the composition. Though the Gulmohor tree was not very
prominent in the actual scene, he made it a prominent part of his picture, as
the tree caught the fancy of the viewer. The next step was the white washed
house. In the first stage he did the
flora part in several mixes of the same colors Orange, Green, yellow,
ultramarine blue and sienna. He let it
dry before continuing.
In the second part he did the house, foreground and deepened
some of the branches and elements of the earlier stage.
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| The target scene |
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| Milind sir's work after the first stage |
As I understanding, he seemed to be balancing the colors and
the tonal values in the composition and trying to bring out the summery feel of
the day. I was particularly fascinated by the way he mixed some colors on the
pallete and some on the paper, which maintained the freshness. The quick
rendering made the picture surreal which is his trademark. Total time taken by
him was about 45 minutes to complete it.
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| My work from my corner view |
The tree on the left in my painting, looks very easy on the eye, but I find
it very daunting to give it the carefree look, however hoping for the best just
splurged on! I think I got it right. My take: If you get the silhouette and
colour correct, it looks pretty good. How does the Gulmohor tree look to you?
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| Sir with students |
On the second day, we did the main tower building with the
coconut tree in front of it. Since we took a side view the coconut tree was
placed on one side. He did a quick sketch of the building and the coconut tree.
He explained about the elevation and perspective. One useful tip was to hold
the pencil parallel or vertical to the building lines and check where they are
leading. More details can be found in
his book “Perspective” do have a look at it, it will
save you many rounds of mistakes if you follow this book. Sanjay pointed out my
mistakes in my drawing for me, which I corrected.
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| starting with a cobalt sky |
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| Clicked my view on my camera |
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| Sir's completed work |
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| Sir detailing |
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| My completed work |
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| Sir's completed work closeup |
He started with a
wash of the Cobalt sky. For the building he merged ultramarine and sienna to
indicate the various colored stone in the walls. With this major “value” in
place he blobbed in the trees and grass in the foreground to balance this,
which in actual was not as romantic, as in the painted pic. He was careful to
bring out the major details like the slice of sky in one of the windows, arches
and shadows of some of the windows. Never did he worry about matching every
stone, shrub, and tree with the actual, he just painted an impression!!
This was the last session and I completely agree with him
its learning that will teach you to paint and playing with colors. Fortunately
the art2day team has provided the
class with enough material to do more than 50 paintings, so one does not need
anything till one can discover her inner strength to make that “purrfect”
painting and enjoy the journey.
My advice to self learning students would be to take a
picture of your drawing on you mobile and match the elements, till your eye is
trained to do so without any such gadget. For more complex building have a
strategy to capture only the elements like an arch, window or door in detail or
if you want a photographic detail, than the drawing should be extremely in
detail and be prepared to put in a few days to complete it. See here a lovely video of Eric for the
same.
In my painting, the tower’s horizontal lines were wrongly painted and I
washed off the entire sheet to do it all over again, so in a way there is a way
to correct watercolor, inspite of the prevailing belief it is difficult to do
so.Amen ...
