Turnaround

One of the strangely interesting things I regularly experience is discovering additional subjects the longer I work in a given location.

Once I get the painter’s eye in gear after working on one motif, it’s typical for me to step away from the painting that’s occupying me, and turn around to clear my head for a moment only to find something else of interest that I hadn’t noticed earlier. But this is only the case when I’m painting/sketching…I can’t get that same experience just showing up somewhere  if I haven’t tuned in to the place and spent some significant time actually working. The work itself puts me into an extra-receptive mindset where things appear to me differently than at other times.

 

Forest study, 11 x 14″ oil

This is what lies directly behind me on the large Waimanalo piece I’ve posted previously. One day,  I simply “noticed” this while working and came back early the next morning when it receives light and made this study.

Now, I ask myself how I could have possibly missed it….but I did, and often do.  It takes time to get into the spirit of the place and I suppose it’s part of the reason that some painters eventually spend much of their careers working in the orbit of a relatively small geographical area. The right light and an open mind can do a lot.

I’ll give this another hour or two of work,  and consider it as reference for a larger piece, perhaps a studio painting.  That’s how it works, one thing leads to another.

That Waimanalo Bay Painting Again

I’m into yet another session on this painting, planning a few more to get it together to the point where I’m (hopefully) satisfied with it.  I’m mainly bringing the colors and values together, like drawing a large lasso around the whole thing and gradually corralling everything closer to the moment in nature that I’m in.

Besides the work on the painting, I’ve had a lot of good times with the visitors to the beach, curious to see what on earth I’m doing, the usual questions and comments to which painters out-of-doors become accustomed. I enjoy taking a few minutes to answer the questions and chat a bit  because I’m always so surprised by the differences in perception that people have of their surroundings. I noticed Saturday evening someone kindly left an unopened Heineken on the log next to me, presumably a little token of appreciation.

 

Ko'olau's over Waimanalo

untitled, 20 x 36″ oil on panel

Because the light is seldom steady here ( I typically have mountains, trees,  and low-hanging clouds over my right shoulder, which is where the light source is), I can only catch the look of light striking the elements of the painting, especially the cliffs,  in snippets…there’s almost no time when it’s visually as I’m portraying it.  So the piecemeal effect has to be fought by moving around the painting and not getting hung up on one area too long.

I spent one session eliminating the lower third of the sky and repainting it.  The clouds I’d painted simply weren’t contributing as I intended and so I scrubbed them out and reworked the area, which is now looking much better.

The shadows are delicious… extraordinary lavenders set against the yellows and bright greens.  I’m gradually getting the surfaces developed in a way that I like, something that is becoming more important in my paintings lately.  I anticipate some glazes towards the end as well.

Here’s the little watercolor that started it all, 7 x 10″

Cinderella Greys

It’s been a while since I’ve had anything large on the easel, and so I’m excited to have this new painting under way, which hopefully will figure nicely into a show scheduled in November.

It began a few weeks back with a fast, last minute sort-of watercolor sketch when the light unexpectedly illuminated the grove of Ironwoods on the right.

light effect/composition sketch 5 x 7″ watercolor

I find it profitable to do the first round of composing in watercolor…I experience the effect and get it under my skin quickly,  and if it doesn’t work, I see it without a big commitment of time, plus I have a sketch for the archives and to pull out down the road when hunting for some fresh inspiration.  I think I use sketchbooks and watercolor somewhat in the same way that a lot of artists have used the camera, which I’m still unable to get enthused over.

Since this was promising, my next step was to return to the location and work up this small oil painting  to see what the possibilities were.

sketch, 8 x 10″ oil

That went well enough and the final painting, shown below,  was begun last week, this image showing the second session’s development

untitled, 20 x 36″ oil on panel

Now that I’m on to the final piece, there’s so much to respond to in this subject…the constant fluctuations of light and color at this beach keep me moving all over the painting, trying to allow the light effect to remain the principal thing;  how it passes across the face of the cliffs and the very real inner illumination it provides the grove of trees.  Textures are everywhere in the lights and halftones, many opportunities to be pretty rugged with the paint itself.  I hope to get some real surface charm into this painting.  But these strange greys are the thing that are making this painting work.

Mysterious, evasive, improbable combinations of cool blues and warm reds that would be unattractive if isolated from the sun-drenched passages that they are joined to, but that perfectly support them when unified.  Maybe I should regard them as the Cinderalla colors of painting…I believe I enjoy dwelling over them more than the obvious, luscious colorful sections.

Two Ideas

Two principals I’ve come to understand over the last few years:

There are no unattractive color combinations in nature.

Crazy thought maybe, but I think it’s true.  I cannot recall seeing any naturally occurring combinations of color in nature that were not somehow harmonious and appealing, though the individual component colors may not be, and often aren’t.

The novice seeks to improve his paintings by adding details. The artist does so by simplifying and refining relationships.

I put that thought out for my students, many (if not most) who are struggling with learning to work with the great generalities in their paintings first.  It finally came to me while laying in a landscape painting and took me a good long while to get it into two sentences, and it probably could use refining.  But it’s true.

Any thoughts?

 

Watercolor/Figure workshop October 6-7, Honolulu Museum School

I’m putting together a workshop on the figure in watercolor for October 6-7.  A powerpoint presentation on watercolor painters and exceptional examples of indicating the figure (my love for Rembrandt’s drawings will be publicly outed!) along with a series of good exercises I’ve developed with and without the live model will round out the weekend. I think it will be very helpful, a game -changer for some, and I’m looking forward to it.

DSC_0003

We needed to come up with an image for promoting the workshop, so I spent an afternoon coming up with this little piece out of my head, which I always find to be a great challenge and a practice that I advocate strongly.   There were a lot of options for subjects, but I eventually decided upon representing the artist being publicly critiqued by a passing dilettante.

This  choice gave me a crowd to show simple background figures, a developed central male and female pairing, the man being rather Boho and the other rather stylish, some color,  and physical gestures/body language to work with.  And most painters can identify with the cheerful, helpful novice that happens to drop by and interrupt everything at the worst possible moment.

The artist looks uncomfortably and unintentionally like myself, so I suppose that shapely woman might be my dear wife Iris, except she won’t go near a bicycle.  Anyway, it’s loose, and it’s done.

New moonlight studies

I was excited to take myself on a field trip Saturday, May 5, to head to the high cliffs nearby and take a shot at the spectacular full moon that was promised.

I loaded up my oil painting gear and my small pastel kit and was at the Lanai Lookout on our Eastern shore by about 4:30 PM. Folks were already assembled to watch the much-anticipated moonrise over the ocean, and so I was fortunate to grab a parking spot, and from there hiked with my gear about a quarter mile across the old basalt flows to a high point that I’d decided in advance was a good place to work from.

From previous posts, you may know that I try to define my mission in advance. By this I mean that I decide whether I’m going sketching (looking for a general effect), making a study (fact-finding), or doing a finished painting.  Since this was a sketching trip, I brought small oil primed panels along, as well as pastels, hoping to capture colors that would be of help later. Because of the brevity of the sunsets here in Hawai’i, I already realized that seizing any shapes, except the simplest ones, would be more than I should expect.

As the wind was quite strong on my location, I opted for oil, and I didn’t get anything terribly fancy, but was pleased with having caught the general color mood.  I worked as hard as I could, loving every second of it.  The sketch (9 x 12″) was done with Liquin as a medium, which I rarely use outdoors in Hawai’i, but it helped in this case.  This small piece will serve as an important reminder of the color I experienced for anything I do later in the studio.  DSC_0002

By the time this oil sketch was done, it was too dark for more painting, so I hiked out, loaded up my gear and backtracked in my car to another favorite piece of shoreline about a mile back.  For perhaps the next hour, I sat on the shoreline making mental notes of the rocks, the action of the ocean against them, and the effect of the light, which gradually become much cooler as the evening turned to night.  Drawing was hopeless, but I felt that I had formed a pretty strong mental picture of the values and colors.

The following evening, I returned in the very late afternoon with my pastel sketchbook to make some quick sketches, such as this one. moon sketchbk

I didn’t have the moonlit effect in quite the same manner as the previous night, but had already fixed in my mind what the effect was, and began the following morning to produce this pastel study, 14 x 18″, in-studio from my sketches and memory/imagination.

pastelmoon

This should serve me pretty well if I decide to work up a more involved and larger  painting from the experience.  Right now, I’m able to envision a large pastel or something along the 30 x 40″ size in oil.

Something in sanguine

DSC_0001 Sanguine seems to be very sympathetic to the rendering of human form, and so many of my favorite figure drawings are executed in it that I enjoy putting it to use from time to time.

Kohinoor manufactures the sanguine crayon I used on this, which I place in a brass holder and sharpen with a beautician’s callous remover.  It’s got a slightly waxy binder, barely noticeable, and  works fine for what I want to do.

My first step is to lay down a light tone with broad and easy strokes, which I rub loosely into the paper (a warm straw-colored Canson Mi-Teintes, the non-golfball-textured side)  with either a bit of soft, unprimed linen canvas or  paper towel, and then develop the drawing working from the outside-in, getting the big outer shape of the head established as best as possible, and gradually bringing the entire drawing along from there.

The longer I can resist adding the features of the face, just working with the underlying forms ( kind of like the look of a nylon stocking over a bandit’s head!) the better.  My own taste is for the drawing to emerge somewhat loosely and casually from the paper, not suffered over to the point of being hard on the eyes of the beholder, if possible. I’ve seen drawings that have that sense of growing out of the page effortlessly, somewhat rarely I admit, and I’d like to get that sensibility into my drawings. I’ve used the term “casual elegance” to try and describe it, but that’s not sufficient.

If I ever get it, I won’t need to explain it. We’ll both know I think.

In the darks, moistening the tip of the crayon slightly gives a richer note.  Removing highlights with a kneaded eraser is the last step. This pose was a little more than an hour, and is carried about as far as I wish to go with it as far as rendering.  I always want to get a better expression though. Any fatigue of the model should never show.

Maintaining an edge~ new drawings from Life

These are some images from the last few months or so. Relatively short poses, mostly under an hour.

DSC_0118

I’ve been pursuing a more seasoned and sensitive description, allowing for more construction and “thinking out loud” with line.

I’m sticking with charcoal and carbon pencils for a few months, and I’ll possibly go into a Cont’e crayon-mode or other red chalk next. They have possibilities I haven’t explored enough. I make it a habit to work with a single medium for a several month stretch, and then rotate to another so that by the end of a year I may have worked in three or four drawing media. So much of progress is showing up, being energized and diligent, but without going stale. Switching up mediums like that helps, but it doesn’t affect structural or perceptual problems.

DSC_0119

I’m still not (often enough) seeing or taking-in the whole form at once…something I’ve been able to do on occasion in the past.  By this I mean seeing the part, an arm or whatever, and it’s place in the entire figure almost simultaneously and drawing it that way. Tricky stuff, but I know there’s a groove where I’ve managed it before, and when it happens it’s where you know you ought to be.

DSC_0123

I’m thinking that each drawing, good or bad, is a brick in the wall of your experience.  It’s the sharpening of the eye and refining one’s shortcomings that really matters with these, a nice drawing is the by-product. Not that I don’t shoot for a nice drawing each time. I do, but I find my own criteria for that drawing has changed a bit.  I like chatter in my drawings now, and enjoy seeing bits of construction showing about, maybe even a finger print or two.

DSC_0129

I found myself telling a student last night that one shouldn’t “speak in monotone”, that is, draw with a line that has no inflection or personality.  I was surprised that analogy came up, but I think it’s helpful.

DSC_0138

There’s a nice season where one measures diligently, renders exactly, and goes as far as they can that way, as far as their talent, training, and knowledge can take them.  I wish it could last forever sometimes, because to get buried in a drawing for hours, for it’s own sake,  is fun. But, now I need to make use of what skills I may have obtained to make things that find their way into the marketplace, my objectives being in paint these days.
DSC_0125

Thankfully,  I have the blessing of regular weekly classes and motivated students where I can maintain some edge to those skills, an endless process I thoroughly enjoy.

DSC_0135