Update: on the easel

Just a quick update, I got another couple hours developing the current painting.  It’s coming along well, and I’m refining some areas while getting more adjustments in the values and shapes.  Great fun to work this large, and the old easel holds up like a champ, in spite of some wind gusts that would send this canvas sailing otherwise.

A skewed but representative image at the end of this morning’s flogging.

 

            A slightly better studio shot…

My friend Geoff Stone was able to come by and work on his painting as well.

                                                               Geoff at work.

Lay-in at Sun-up

Very excited to begin this 30 x 40″ field painting this morning.  Conditions were quite good, and I was able to get the design in place and lay-in the first skin of paint in about 3!/2 hours without rushing.

              Untitled, 30 x 40″, oil on linen

I have a really good feeling for this one. The shapes are interesting, colors have a good warm and cool mix, the working spot is ideal.  Wind was completely a non-issue, which is a potential hazard with a canvas this large. I’m hoping for good even weather so that I can build the painting up, I want to develop this slowly and richly.

Sorry about the not-so- great photo, I was jamming!

 

 

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″

New Figure Study in Oil from Life

We have a great model in my portrait class, and I think it’s beneficial to arrange to have us paint a nude study to break things up and get us all away, briefly,  from fixating on the head alone.  This is a multi- hour pose, and I’ve worked on this 9 x 12″  study between making the rounds in the group.

 

Above all else, I’m trying to find the color notes, state them simply and let them do most of the talking.

Two Watercolors from the Honolulu Museum Visit

Our class “Painting the Model en Plein Air” had the opportunity to do some painting within the grounds of the Honolulu Museum of Art two weeks ago.

The curator and all of the staff were welcoming and as obliging as could be, and about a dozen of us spent over six hours in two sessions in their remarkable Mediterranean Courtyard.

Everyone worked diligently, but I’m just now tweaking-up the two paintings I managed to get done while  teaching.

Tamara in the Sun 9 x 7″ watercolor

Can’t wait to do this again, it was fantastic.                                         

Friends Painting 11 x 15″ watercolor

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?