Toning the Canvas

I've finally followed Richard Schmid's advice and toned canvases with Turps instead of Odorless Mineral Spirits. Unless I'm painting a snow scene, heavy on the snow, I like to tone the canvas a predominant color. Others tone their canvas the complement of the predominant color and that is fine, especially for highly sunlit scenes. 

 

The image above is from an OMS toned canvas, toned olive the day before painting (!) which I like for scenes heavy with foliage. It takes forever to dry, like days. A La Prima: this makes it necessary to lay on think paint especially on light skies, since laying on thin paint mearly muddles the desired sky color if the toned canvas isn't completely dry. You can see I used thick sky color just laying it on, no swishing the brush.

By contrast, this image shows a canvas toned with turps wash of olive in the morning and painted over the same day. No muddling of the sky color: Titanium White and Manganese Blue. The Turps stinks to me, so I lay on the wash outdoors. It drys so fast there is no stink to the canvas. Voila!

PS In each case I wiped out the sky area after laying on the wash.

Everything I know about Painting – Not

 

After painting a dozen years with many workshops and classes, I was getting dissatisfied with my work, especially the lack of variety of landscape subjects, e.g. thin trees in winter, dense summer overlapping trees and brush.

I invested in a mentorship of eight afternoons with a painter whose work I admired and whose approach was looser than mine, another direction in which I wanted to go. This was 24 solid hours of one-on-one instruction, demos, and critiques: in short, anything he recommended discussing or demo-ing and anything I wanted to cover.

Warm Spell 8x10 Oil

So far, I found out that:

·         I needed to do more detailed, larger preliminary pencil thumbnails before painting and really “nail” the light and shadow of objects like trees clearly

·         I could actually use black paint and put some intense darks in my paintings, “up the ante” in terms of drama; one can also mix in red and other hues into the black to vary it slightly

·         “Use more paint” has always been my shortcoming and have someone remind me again was important

·         You can paint think over thin, but also thicker over thick and it works. I was able to lay on thick paint with all sides of the brush, e.g. thick and sometimes irregular sky holes; really load the brush and with a light touch dab it on thick; this allows painting darks over lights!

·         I also needed to be reminded to preserve my four value planes while introducing different hues of the same value in each plane; this preserves the big, dramatic shapes which capture the viewer’s eye

·         I tended to paint in a high key, i.e. warm palette, and never noticed it. When you are painting, especially a winter subject, this needs to be a conscious choice not unconscious or accidental

·         Painting from his reference photographs was a stretch for me but his keen eye for a composition made for some well-designed paintings

·         I wanted to make sure I did some homework and had at least two paintings done at home for the next afternoon session; this was by turns frustrating or rewarding, depending on if I had grasped his technique the previous session. No lazy days here.

·         Painting “under the gun” of an instructor in the studio imparts an urgency to most of us which usually results in poor drawing, proportions, inappropriate hues, etc. Better to take your sweet time; it’s results that matter, not speed.

·         Coming to the end of the mentorship I realize that old habits die hard, still not using enough paint, etc. but some progress made.

Many thanks to my knowledgeable and patient mentor Kevin Menck; see his excellent work at http://www.kevinmenck.com/

Cheers

Dan

Tweeking Photographs

Two weeks before Hurricane Sandy devastated the beaches of Central New Jersey, my wife and I vacationed at a B&B and the roamed the shore, mostly in rainy weather, but, hey, we were on vacation!
I took a number of photos on Long Beach Island, mostly uninhabited, but with a few public beaches. It was famous for teenagers who wanted to "make out". The variety of vegetation was impressive compared to the Great Lakes, but this is a warmer climate.

 



  This photo had plenty of potential but I wanted a stronger focal point and some eye travel. We were amazed at the flowers, not knowing if they bloomed all summer or were the result of the steady rainfall. We were accompanied by the gulls and a few isolated surf fishermen. In drawing thumbnails for a study, I enlarged the big dune on the left and eliminated the "X" shape of the plants and flowers in the right-center.  The result is this 8x16 oil study, which is worth a larger version sometime this winter.

 

 

If at first you don't succeed....

Cave Lake Inlet 8x10 Oil/Panel

 

 

A friend and I packed our plein aire gear and drove to Carter Caves State Park, a delightful place to paint with natural arches, trails, rock formations, streams and, of course, caves. With the temperature at about 30 degrees I set up the easel, premixed piles of paint and proceeded to fail miserably. We attributed our difficulty to it being our first paint-out of the year, where we were overwhelmed by detail:  the rock formations were beyond difficult with a multitude of subtle colors, layer upon layer of limestone and a rapidly moving sun with its long winter shadows.   

 

We took plenty of photos and, back in the studio, gave ourselves the time and patience to sort through the scenes for subjects. Cave Lake is a small lake surrounded on three sides by marsh grasses, with crystal clear water.  The bare trees were backlit by the strong sun and had to be painted wet over dry.

 

We vowed to return later in spring and take advantage of the simpler views and trails. No day spent painting is wasted even when you paint "wipe-offs". We've already selected our sites for the next visit and there is just something always energizing about fresh air, rock and sky. We both slept well that night.

Into the Fields



Bottomland (Study) 8x10 Oil/Panel

October is my favorite month, the farmland which has been restored to native plants and grasses, or left to grow and go to seed, provides so many opportunities to play with hues and values. This painting was done plein aire a few weeks ago before the trees began to change in earnest. The hardwoods are now at their peak, in-your-face, hot colors. This land is on a farm bordering Elkhorn Creek in Franklin County, Kentucky. The composition emphasizes the fields by limiting the range of colors and values in the distant trees and using a very high horizon. Our Plein Aire group stood in a firebrake of mowed tick-free path and painted all morning in 70-degree weather then stopped at a members nearby house for a homemade, organic lunch. It just doesn't get much better than this.

Dan

Cliche'

Switzer Bridge Study 8x10 Oil

Covered Bridges have been done over and over; even revered painter Richard Schmid has done (magnificently I might add) at least one. Switzer Bridge, in the townlet of Switzer (no traffic light), was destroyed in a flood in 1998 and an exact replica was constructed on the site. Judging from the foundation, it was wisely mounted higher than the original.  Elkhorn Creek, which would have been named Elkhorn River had it been one mile longer, flows under it.   There is a even newer two lane concrete bridge  nearby so you can paint from either side. It's a perfect spot for a plein aire painter to lollygag away a morning, creating yet another, personal, version of this cliche'.

There is Something to Plein Aire

"On Jonabell Farm"

8x10 Oil

This 8x10 Plein Aire was done on Jonabell Farm, Lexington, for a benefit auction for the Woodford County Humane Society.  As usual, I ignored the horses, barns, etc. and went for the water (and the shade). I could have snapped photos and returned to the studio. Staying the course and painting plein aire, I realized, let me understand clearly which trees were in foreground, which farther back, where the reflections were coming from, see clearly the dappled sunlight, in sort, to patiently study the scene. 

I did take reference photos over the course of the two plus hours, and when I looked at them later, I could not make out which trees were in front and which farther back, it was all a 2-dimentional jumble of leaves and branches. By completing the painting on site, I was able to indicate atmospheric perspective more or less correctly. 

While painting, other participating artists came up and we chatted and shared contact information, what else could you want. Cool Beans!! 

Road Trips

Hardin County Snow

9x18 Oil

Making a trip to Nashville on business was a good opportunity, midst a light snowfall and fog, to snap reference photos. Interstates frequently it seems, were carved through farm country affording us all the chance to be suddenly in the middle of sprawling farms.  I've always loved barms and farm machinery, innocently envious of the tranquility and time-worn appeal of buildlings, esppecially those with numerous additions.  It's all grist for the artist's mill. I inserted trees and cows, etc. to complete the composition. Bon Voyage! 

What Not To Paint

Plein Aire painting can be done for it's own sake, to keep one's hand-eye coordination up to snuff, to spend time in the great outdoors, or hopefully to get a completed small painting. But frequently the conditions, expecially light, prevent one from finishing even an 8x10.  It teaches a healthy sense of one's limitations.  When a study comes out strong enough, even in only a few aspects, to urge one to make a larger studio painting, it's exciting.

What I've found is that the more time one spends in front of the subject, the more information is absorbed, albeit much of it unconsciously: direction of light, color of light, shapes, and so forth. Taking reference photos is also important, another source of details.  Pencil thumbnail drawings and an 8x10 study force one to decide what should be included in the painting and what to leave out.

My painting partner and I hiked for almost an hour assessing subjects on a friend's farm, rejecting one scene after another.



This study was painted in full sun and is too dark and the colors too pale. But the composition made it worth using for a larger painting. All kinds of trees, bushes, etc were left out. Studying the reference photos allowed me again to pick and choose, and invent, additional detail and also deepen the shadows and intensify colors.

Ideally, one would like to come back a second time in the same weather and time of day, and do a larger painting. The following day was rainy, so this 12x16 was done in the studio. In the photos, I noticed the low sun streaming through the trees and incorporated this in the painting. It's a good memory of that crisp fall day.

Art "Off the Wall"

Our cooperative gallery, Artists Attic, challenged each of us to create an "Off the Wall" painting or sculpture. A work which was a departure from our normal subjects, style, approach, etc. I responded by doing my traditional landscape but in the form of a Triptych. These traditionally were three-paneled  paintings, typically religious. Nowadays they most often substitute for a single large canvas, which can be hard to stabilize and easier to damage in shipping, etc.

This one recalls our trip to California in July which included excursions to Napa and Sonoma valleys: "South of Sonoma", 12x36 Oil/Canvas.

Big Sky Country

Storm Remnants

12x16 oil (study)

Lexington Kentucky is not known as Big Sky Country, that is reserved for Nebraska, Iowa and points west and north. After recent rains, I was passing by an undeveloped commercial property a half-mile wide and was taken by the sunset. At the easel, eliminating the low buildings and adding some rolling Kentucky farmland nearby and the composition was decided upon. I'm now working on a 20x24 of the same scene and hankering for a trip out west to see more and more of this big sky.  

Everyone's Doing It

Yes, everyone around me is painting cows, spurred on by our resident expert in painting cows. I resisted for months, helped by weeks of rain which put a damper on canvases, paints and my inspiration. So here is my entry in the big sweepstakes..."Knee Deep"  I caught these guys by the side of the road in early morning, backlit to give them more appeal. Of course they interrupted their breakfast and were about to come over and see if I had more of it. Not being a farmer, I jumped back into the car and sped off to the next farm for photo-taking. Altogether a great day!

Knee Deep  oil/board 10x12

"Off the Wall"

As a project to do something different, and tired of the snow, I looked through photographs taken last summer in New Jersey at Sandy Hook State Park and decided to do a figurative work conveying the warmth and sun of mid-summer at the “Shore” as they call it.

I worked from a variety of photos, blown up. I stayed with oil on canvas, my traditional media, since the figurative work was enough of a challenge – I normally do unpeopled landscapes or seascapes. Rather than depict a “sea of humanity” as shown in the photos, I choose to have a strong focal point of fewer figures placed near the waters edge. The sand rises 8-10 feet from the water and everyone likes to be near the water. The frequent crowds at this beach insure the sand will be pot-holed with footprints.

I practiced drawing in pencil some individual figures in different poses, then practiced some of these on canvas paper in oil, a cheap and easy surface on which to experiment.

 The 20”x24” size was chosen to be able to include a number of figures as well as my having a frame of that size available. The completed painting: “At the Shore”.  I feel warmer already.

Happy Holidays Everyone!

Snow Near Troy Kentucky 8x10 Oil Study

I'm so appreciative of my collectors, friends, fellow artists and family for a wonderful year, personally and artistically. That's not to say I don't struggle with paintings sometimes (OK, too often).  This scene was built from photographs taken in Jessamine county a week ago when we had 3-4" snow, a big deal for Kentucky nowadays.

I was out bright and early when I saw the sun peeking through the clouds. I'd like to say this was painted plein aire, but my car outside thermometer said 19 degrees.   I love paintings where the focal point, brightest brights, is in the distance, which one can invent, but in this case that was exactly the case. Here we are looking east, the clouds indicating most of the snowfall had passed. It's always a privilege to be out in Mother Nature's realm. Happy Holidays!

Deja View

Last spring I came across a wonderful old tobacco barn by the side of the road  and just had to paint it. This 8x10 plein aire piece shows just  how "spring-green" the grasses can be.

Recently, after a weekend of snow, I revisited the site and decided to do a painting from the same viewpoint. Since the temperature was nineteen degrees and windchill near zero, I took photos and returned to a warm studio to paint it. The low winter morning sun was in almost the same direction relative to me as it was in spring. So the barn is backlit in both paintings.

In the meantime (between these two paintings) I did a plein aire of the other side of the barn. Love those barns.

Painting from Photos

Walking along Shawnee Run (valley and creek) in winter after a light snow I thought the baby cedars were cute and snapped a number of pictures. When I came to paint them, I couldn't come up with an interesting composition. So I zeroed in on the upper right corner of the photo and borrowed colors from another artist I admired to relieve the grey-on-grey of the scene.  This hilltop area was apparently farmed well into the twentieth century and, happily, cedars and

oaks are taking over the land.

 

Above Shawnee Run 10x8 Oil

Copy Cat

It was not a dark and stormy night, it was a blazingly dry and hot August afternoon and I was looking for something to do in the studio. I had just bought Scott Christensen's marvelous book "The Nature of Light". I found an image of a 6x8 painting of his in the section on studies. So I did my best to copy it, sipping on an iced tea in the cool studio.

One can learn a lot from copying a painting, in this case keeping the four values planes (uprights, slanted planes, flat land and sky) separate. That is, each has a range of values which is different from the others. In addition, this painting's focal point is clearly the tree in the middle. He uses various means to make this clear: color, contrast, detail, edges and lines - notice the shadows in the foreground point to the tree. The tree is surrounded by a much lighter sky. There is a lot of detail in the tree compared to the surrounding tree line, etc. Finally, the nearer clouds are warmer than those in the distance. This little study is a wonderful art lesson. Thanks, Scott!

Ready Made Paintings

In the Kewanechee Valley 7x14 Oil

Some folks are just blessed to be born in or live in the right places, for ready made paintings, that is. We spent a week in Colorado recently, visiting the site of a workshop I took six years ago and staying part of the time, and painting, with a classmate and her husband. Around every corner there's a spectacular view. I've got enough photos for  months of work. But then it's back to painting Kentucky - fully using one's imagination, trail scouting and lessons in composition which other artists continually illustrate and teach. It's more work, but it's an engaging challenge.

Improbable Places

At Jacobsen Park 9x12 Oil

Good friends scheduled a plein aire paint-out at a city park adjacent to their home. Since parks are usually manicured, excessively grassy or excessively peopled, I did not have  high expectations for my results.   It was a good sign that we arrived during a beautifully sunny day with puffy clouds. A dark one stopped for a moment over our heads and caused us to huddle under umbrellas while the fisherman left.  After this I took advantage of the lake and lush backlit trees and was able to finish this in two hours. After that a scrumptous dinner was provided by our hosts. A great day!

For the Love of Barns

Woodford County Spring 12x12 Oil

I love the area around Nonesuch, Kentucky. It's characterized by rolling hills, farms and a multitude of barns, mostly former tobacco barns, now used for hay or a tractor "garage". If I win the lottery, I'll buy land there and a second home. It's close enough to commute to Lexington if you need to. I've always loved barns for their smells, mysterious dark corners and farm implements, the uses for which I'm usually ignorant. But I'll find out after I get my lottery check.  In the meantime, they, and the land they seem to grow out of,  will be frequent subjects, I'm guessing.