Diminuendo II

More work on my indoor painting…with much adjusting of values and shapes, trying to build a beautiful surface all the while.  It’s an oil -primed linen mounted on panel that I primed myself, and the linen has a fairly coarse, handmade thing to it.  I think it suits what I’m attempting perfectly.  If I can do more priming like this I will, definitely.

For the duration of the work on this painting it’s:  simplification of masses, values, adjustments of color, maybe a glaze to warm things here and cool things there.

untitled 18 x 24″

It’s also great to be making use of so many of the loose reference sketches scattered about my studio.  They are so much more useful to me  than I could ever imagine photographs being.

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!

 

 

“Maybe It’ll Rub Off” ~One Way I Studied Composition

These are some old gouache studies I made years back to study composition.  My task was to replicate a painting I admired into five values; white, black, and three middle grays, one being the gray of the paper itself.

 

Not an easy task for several reasons…it starts with translating color into a value, but the most difficult part was having to designate every tone into only five categories.

 

Some of these studies also received an overlay where I tried to find some rationale to how the space was divided.

 

Trying to distinguish a dominant line was another interest, as well as recurring shapes.

 

Fantin Latour is a favorite of mine.  His arrangements always struck me as having a simple elegance that I hoped might be “learnable”.   Not so in my case, but  I’m left to appreciate more deeply his wonderful taste and individual gift for arrangement and pattern.

 

 

Yoshida Hiroshi was great woodcut artist of the 20th century who is too little known. He would be of Edgar Payne’s generation, and  his color and compositions are beautiful and effective.

 

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