Diminuendo

I began to lay-in something new in the studio over the weekend, a painting constructed from painted studies and my own imagination/recollections. Very liberating and fun after my last outdoor piece, which required a lot of physical effort and direct response to natures’ quirky comings and goings, what I call “chasing the light”  for lack of a better description.

Most every plein-air sketch painted after the sun begins to wane will suffer from an under-exposed look. The darks, when later viewed in normal light, will appear weaker than you painted them and there can be a bit of a washed out, timid look to the color, which is simple to understand because in those circumstances the artist is making decisions while painting in what amounts to a darkening studio.

If you want to understand this better, go into a dining room with one of those dimmer switches on the overhead light.  Look at a white object, say a dinner plate, in full light on the table and then gradually begin to turn the light down 30%.  The white object is still a white object, but it’s not white anymore, it’s a gray of some sort, and 30% darker from where you started. So are all the other tones.  This is going in the direction of low-key painting, where the lightest lights and subsequent supporting tones are all subdued, the edges soften, and the darks cluster into shapes and  silhouettes.

For that reason, it’s important for me to study the effects of early evening light with the idea that I’ll be replicating them mostly from memory later.

 

untitled, 18 x 24″, hand-primed linen mounted on panel

I have a number of small early-evening sketches that are adequate to remind me of the effect I want in this painting, but I know I can’t rely on them completely.  So, for this piece I get to dream and recall those precious times alone after I finish working outdoors on a late afternoon piece, when my light effect is gone and energy spent, and I’m just in that envelope of late-dayness, where you finally put everything aside and you are simply glad to be there.

The composition itself is a collection various experiences cobbled together, a tree or two from one place, a cliff from another.  Let’s just keep that between ourselves, though.

I foresee thin and thick paint built up in quiet shape-touches of broken color for this. A rich surface.  I hope I can do it, and I hope it will be beautiful.

 

 

“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.

 

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.

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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.

Rethinking watercolor, part II

We’ve got a big prickly-pear cactus growing here at home, the kind with the foot-long, beaver-tail shaped branches (pads).

It started as a single pad planted  in a dry part of the yard.  The pad took root and after a while the one pad became two, and then two became four or five.  Left alone, the cactus exponentially rambled into a seven foot plant, throwing itself out in every direction. But here’s the important thing.  At a certain point  the most developed branches, those burdened with the most weight, began to bend and eventually broke off, took root and began a new plant. And that’s apparently how they work.

I may regard “breaking” as something to be avoided, but it’s how life moves forward, too. In this sense one can consider the difficult rethinking of their work, in this case watercolor, a really good thing and the breaking a happy necessity for growth.

Much of what I thought I needed to discard is turning out to be old attitudes and mindsets. I’ve unknowingly been playing to the invisible critics (they pursue all artists) without questioning their authority or jurisdiction often enough.  My task now is to loosen their grip on me, primarily by recognizing them, letting them go, and replacing their influence.

Replacement Therapy

When Martin Luther wrote his small catechism, he took the Ten Commandments, and with clarifying remarks amended the Shall Not’s with a positive behavior, sort of a shall do. I guess he knew that it’s best to re-direct existing energy towards a good instead of just saying something is bad.

Because I’ve already exceeded brevity in this post, I’ll simply rewrite the shall do notes from my own critique. They’re personal, written in the terms I use with myself, and may not be the words others might choose.  The parenthetical ( ) statements are my simplified reminders of the new directions. The replacement therapy. I don’t know how successfully they’ll take root yet,  that’s why it’s work.  But I’m finding a new joy and lift in the work again.

From my sketchbook :

What I’d like to see more of…

-Innovation…in subject and viewpoint (enjoy more)

-Richness in values & design (plan more)

-Emphasis on suggestion over delineation (look more)

-Clarity of communication (think more)

a.  Selection, with emphasis on essentials.

* A whole that is greater than the sum total of it’s parts.  Effect first…what is the big effect? Paint that with emotion. See the routine as extraordinary.

DSC_0102 Untitled, watercolor  11 x 15″

2/12/11 A Small Figure Study

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A 45 minute pose from my figure drawing class this week.

Cont’e and pastel on 9 x 12″ paper, and a good exercise in selection and restraint. How much does it take to say just enough?  I’ve developed a motto that has served well in such instances:  “Suggest, don’t explain.”

That doesn’t imply that  I wish to  maneuver around the difficulties inherent  in art by rationalizing (aren’t you weary of artists offering the disingenuous  “less is more” as a justification for an actual weakness in artwork?), but likewise, there is a line one can cross where the display of technical ability, what Hilary Holmes once termed  “muscle flexing”, will get in the way of poetry and create coldness.  The task of the student and the work of the artist aren’t the same; a point which is becoming more apparent to me.

To that end, in my next post I’ll offer a little drawing from my files that has always been a an ideal of where I’d like to arrive one day.

Cast painting in oil, revisited

Coming across this beautiful old plaster cast kindled the desire to revisit the discipline of cast drawing. It’s a training exercise for refining one’s ability to see  truthfully. The cast itself is a large one from the old days, over three feet across, and molded originally from the South Frieze of the Parthenon, if I’m not mistaken.

Elgin Horse castParthenon cast, oil  22 x 24″

I  haven’t really touched anything like this in many years, but I do enjoy the discipline and so happily devoted a number of Friday afternoons at the Honolulu Academy school to making this study, for me  a rare opportunity. Tall windows cast daylight on the cast and my canvas, which was a good 12′ or more away from my vantage point.  The softness of the daylight, as opposed to the hardness of artificial light, comes across in the painting I think.

I decided to approach this as I’d paint any other subjects, because I wanted to see what I’d learned since the early nineties (when I last did this) so I allowed myself to be selective to the degree of “finish” in the study.  The background is appropriately sketchy, and the paint is handled as I would in a landscape or portrait, with a varied handling reflecting my effort to capture the true, big look of the object in space.

Well worth the time.

An Old French Pastel Set

Back in the days when I was searching for my direction as an artist, I began to visit the collection of the Portland Art Museum, which my school at the time, the Museum Art School, was conveniently attached to.  Among the pieces that caught my eye were two beautiful pastels by the French master who would  become among my favorites in the medium, Léon Augustin L’hermitte.

L'HermitteThe Man

I trace my interest in the pastel medium back to that very pair of pictures. There is a richness of color, sophistication of composition, and tenderness of touch in his pastels, many painted before nature, that I admire more now than ever, and my one existing color catalog of his works is sadly worn because of this.

With all of this in mind, imagine my recent excitement when a friend  called and mentioned  a recent acquisition … a pastel set from France, from what appears to be  L’hermitte’s own time, the mid-to-late nineteenth century.

pastel set

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The first thing that has surprised me is the size and the beautiful colors. Sharpened, I suppose, by the prior user, they are firm in consistency, rather like a Cont’e crayon.  The markings don’t give an indication of an actual manufacturer, just some references in French to two Paris Exhibitions of the century.  And my generous friend has allowed me to borrow the set and paint some pictures using it. More on that when I get something worth showing done.  A portrait sketch of his wife is already intended.

And that led me to a bit of a quandry…how wise am I  to actually use them?  It’s a bit like when some scientists found a frozen Mastodon, and then ate it.  You get a once-in-a -lifetime experience, but at a price.  Thoughts?

Drawing from life- some pieces from Linekona

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I love drawing.

I love the discipline mingled with the exciting possibilities, the reminders that occur as I examine how wonderfully we’re put together.  The lines, shapes, the unbelievable functions, and how they complement one another.  The economy of it all. We’re vessels in many ways, vessels that house a soul and spirit as well as mechanisms.  What better use of time than to spend an evening each week  drawing the figure of an enthusiastic model?

My usual practice is to use a good quality paper,  and draw the sequence of poses on one or  two sheets. This can result in a more interesting final piece, if  things work out. That’s the point of using a decent paper, I want something archival for those times when I get something truly worth saving. One never can tell when that will happen.

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For the gestural poses, those five minutes and under, I look for the relationship of the three main masses and a line of action. Sometimes I use block forms, sometimes not. I compel myself to do things that are not the usual, like beginning with the placement of the feet and working up the figure. or making all of the quick poses tiny, and creating a montage of them in serial form, arranging them to create a pattern on the page. One can do whatever one wishes, and for a professional artist it’s great to be able to play with no strings attached, no public to please.

For longer poses, those up to one hour, I simply do as much as I can. “Seeing the whole”, measuring well, finding better ways to express a form,  and hopefully creating a  palpable image…. these are my goals.

Here are a few of the things I’ve done in the last six months or so.  The bad ones get tossed, and  believe me, they are plentiful.  But some evenings, you pull something together with some quality that you are pursuing, and it’s delightfully rewarding.

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If you’d like to join me and some like minded enthusiasts, I conduct  a life drawing studio class at the Academy School at Linekona.  Call 808.532.8742 to get enrolled. It’s great, and it’s open to you.