Fresh and Green

The other painting

The painting above, Fresh and Green, is one of the other paintings that got me into the Indiana artist club. I recently finished a large studio painting based off of this work. This painting has a lot of design work involved and isn't particularly true to the exact scene that was in front of me. It was more about the patterns I was seeing and trying to organize it in a way that made sense to me. There was so much happening in the lower half of the scene that it had to be edited down and re-arranged to be an attractive showing of what was there. I'm a fan of visual rhythm. If I see shapes that repeat it doesn't matter what the subject material is. It could have been cars, boats, dogs, etc.., as long as it is has a flow. Anyway I need to get back to work. I am doing line and marker drawings of people using a a couple of websites. http://www.artsyposes.com/index, http://lovecastle.org/draw/. Check them out.

A rolling rhythm

What I've been up to

Since my last post

- Finished the plein air week with Wyatt
-Won Outstanding pastel at the Hoosier Salon
-Accepted into the Indiana Artist Club
-Paintings accepted into the Minnetresta: Art about the land show
-just got whipped by two paintings today

The last one is all I have been thinking about since putting down the brush today. I need to come up with a game plan if I'm going to start painting the figure and portraits. They both started so  promising. The drawing and composition was good enough, but after putting the brush down with color it was a slow motion train wreck. In a strange way it feels good getting kicked around by the painting process. It makes me think harder about what I'm doing. I will add figuring out the figure to my giant list of things to learn. 

The picture above is one of the paintings that got me into the Indiana artist club. "A rolling rhythm" I should start posting about the week long plein air adventure next, whether I do or not will be discovered shortly.

Waldron show in December

Waldron show in December
Long time, no post.

This is the poster for an upcoming show I will be in with Wyatt LeGrand in December. Here is a link to the Waldron's site (http://www.ivytech.edu/bloomington/waldron/ ) Here is a link to Wyatt's site (http://www.legrandartstudio.com/) I'm excited to be doing this show. We will be painting all next week starting and finishing in Bloomington and working our way across the south and central parts of the state during the week. If you want to come out to paint or watch, please do. Drop me a line or head to the area and search us out. We will be making large studio work for each of the seven days as well as the plein air pieces created on site.
 

HCAA paintout

Noblesville



It has been close to a month since I've posted on here. It has been much longer since I have had a plan of what I'm doing with the blog. That is something I need to think about more and is better left to another post.
The painting above won 1st place today at the HCAA paint out in Noblesville. I painted with Jerry Smith and Mary Anne Davis in some nasty weather. The thing that I think a lot of people would benefit from by going to the plein air events is to find someone to paint with that you enjoy there work and listen and watch them. Plein air events are great because you are out there putting in the work and learning from your self as well. Basically question what and why you are doing things and give yourself something to think about while you are working. If you learn one thing while you are battling all the physicality of painting in an open environment you have done something useful with your brush time.
Some times I find myself painting out in the full sun, actually more than some times. When out in open I get to squinting a lot and it is really hard to see what you are doing with your edges, especially when the values start to get similar. Today I was thinking about how I get my camera to refocus when it is on auto setting. I aim it at something light in value, focus it and then take it back to whatever I'm wanting focused on and focus. Today after I had been squinting for a while I would look up at the clouds and look for colors other than white. Once I found them I would take a few steps back from the painting, look at the painting and the scene. Things would look a whole lot crisper. I'm not sure why it seemed to help but it is something for me to think about next time I go out. Anyway thanks you everyone who talked to me at the show. It's always good to know some body likes what I'm spending my time working on.

More under painting thoughts

More under painting thoughts

My last post was about painting outside Franklin. This past Wednesday I went back and got a lot of painting done. This painting was done in front of the farm house of the people that let me paint on their farm. I was looking past one of their fields at a farm on a parallel road. There was water standing in the closest field with mustard in the grass water sheds. With everything in the foreground along with the buildings beyond the fields, the scene is interesting to me.

One of the things I've been working on my pastels is the under painting. In this painting a lot of the under painting is showing through. What I'm trying to do with my plein air and field studies is use the minimum amount of pastel strokes to get the necessary information for the scene. In my studio paintings I'm doing my best to use the under painting as base to use intuition from. Since a lot of the decision making that is spontaneous is eliminated from working in a controlled environment, using the under painting in this manner is a welcome technique. I've also found that when laying down the darks in the under painting it is important to get the warm/cool shift in each shape as it comes forward/recedes. In the foreground of this painting, the field and water shed is warm red/green respectively and the red/green becomes more neutral and tapers off into a cooler version in each as it recedes to the next field. Keeping all this in line along with the higher values as things recede on that plane is a lot to think about. Throw in the fact it has to fit in with the next plane back and the next behind it, everything begins to become complicated quickly. Simplifying even more is the next big step. I think I do a decent job of it now but I still over think things and fudge decent ideas all the time. Perhaps next time that is what I will write about.

Out Driving

Out Driving

Today I had the best laid plans. I would drive to Franklin and paint down on the old square. After looking at the weather I started to have my doubts. It was supposed to start storming this afternoon and it was already an overcast day. When I arrived in Franklin there was a lot of people walking around down by the square which makes me not want to paint unless there are other people painting. It makes me feel like a spectacle when I'm the only painter. I just kept driving. I thought I would head down to Edinburg and paint with Rick Wilson but he was busy working so I headed home. On the way back I saw a side road that looked wide enough for me to pull off of so I took a left and went down it. About a mile off the main road I came across this scene. It was a trail back to a field that is probably going to be disked up within the week. While I was painting the owners of the land came up and thankfully didn't run me off. After finishing this painting I got another one in and talked to them before I left.  They were nice people and said I could come back and paint again so hopefully this is the start of a good little series of paintings from this farm. There is a nice stand of trees that acts as framing for a ton of paintings up on top of a hill to the left of this scene.

In the painting above I used a watercolor under painting on a handmade sanded paper panel. If the watercolor under painting has the values some what close the painting almost paints itself. Lately I've been working on letting as much of the under painting show through as possible and while the top half is almost covered, the bottom half of the painting has a lot showing through. I think getting better with value will allow me to stretch the under painting even further into the final work as time goes on.  Anyway its just a thought, tomorrow I will post the other painting.

Another Field Study

Since returning home I've been looking over the paintings, photos and sketches I did in New Harmony. While there, I only did a few oil sketches. Most of my time was spent with pastels. This little oil sketch was also one of my paintings stamped for field to finish. Looking solely at this sketch it seems busy but when I got to looking at it and the photo it is quite simplified. The farm this scene was located at was just loaded with potential paintings and I will returning there next year as well. This sketch probably will not be used for the competition but it will be re-examined and turned into something else. Yesterday I started doing small pastel studies of the few sketches I got done on site. So far I'm really excited with what has been happening with them. Soon I will begin the largest paintings I've done to date and these sketches are giving me a lot of confidence and ideas to run with.

First Brush of Spring

During this past week and weekend the First Brush of Spring happened in New Harmony Indiana. It was my first time at the event and I really enjoyed it. Artist were allowed to enter work that was done from Thursday morning up to Saturday morning into a contest Saturday afternoon. The winner of the show was an oil painting by Jeanne McLeish http://www.home.earthlink.net/~burkettmcleish/. The composition was killer and the color was amazing. I don't have a picture of it but hopefully she will have it up on her website soon. 

The whole experience was memorable. I had the chance to stay and paint with Larry Rudolech http://www.rudolech.com/ and also paint with Wyatt LeGrand http://www.legrandartstudio.com/.  I got meet two artist from arkansas, Jason Sacran http://jasonsacran.com/, and John Lasater http://home.centurytel.net/Lasater/home.html that I'd never seen before. They had some awesome work that I really enjoyed looking at. Those are just a few of the amazing artist there. Check out Indiana plein air painters website http://www.inpainters.org/ for some of the other artist there and perhaps photos from the show soon.

Anyway the painting above was done from the Indiana shore looking across to Illinois. The sun was going down and the scene had to be painted. The composition and color were something I couldn't have thought up better myself with all the time in the world. I had this piece and a few others stamped for next years field to finish. This will most likely be the entry for that show.

This is my first outdoor still life. I've painted outdoors and still life, but never have married the two. It is more difficult than painting still life in the studio. The sun peaks in and out of clouds and the heat can get unbearable if you are right up next to the still life while its sunny. It does help you see the color of the light and makes you work quickly. When I first finished, I was not happy with it. Partly because my neck was burnt and the sun made it impossible to see the value I was putting down . I did  enjoy how the bowl turned out. The inside was silver lined and it took in all the cool color of the sky while the outside was a dark reflective metal that was picking up the reflection of the sun off the cloth. Now I enjoy the painting with it in my studio. Painting still life outdoors is something I plan on taking up more often this year. Next time I will find a nice shady spot to stand in.

Practice on the little stuff

Even with the good weather I've still been working a lot on still life. Part of the reason is to build up enough work to show together, and the other is working from life on this scale is good practice for me to do large outdoor work. The little geisha doll painting above was done back in February. It has been sitting in the room that we did still life in at the pump house for as long as I can remember. It always caught my eye but seemed too complex and small for me to tackle. After looking at it so many times I finally decided to paint it by breaking it down into small shapes. Once this painting was done I started challenging myself to paint more complex items. So far it seems to be helping with my plein air work. It is getting easier for me to see the abstract shapes instead of the preconceived idea of an object. A problem I have outdoors is bringing form to objects as they recede. The more I'm thinking about it, color and temperature change seem to be what is stopping the objects from being modeled in my outdoor landscapes. Now I continue to practice on still life and apply it to my other work.

Treading Ruts

Occasionally I will go through dry spells where I don't feel motivated to paint or the paintings just don't turn out like I think they should. Usually they only last a couple of days but sometimes it will be closer to a week. Usually I decide to do something out of my normal habits to pick myself back up. With the painting above, I walked through the house and painted the first thing that caught my eye. Cristina likes to leave her shoes laying around and I see these all the time. The buckles fascinate me. They serve no purpose besides to look neat. This is just one example of how I get out of a rut. Other times I will get into my pile of doodles and do abstract paintings. Other times I will just take all of the paint on my palette and start making a design using only the colors available. Other times I will simply put my paints away for a day or two until I've gotten excited to paint.

For the past few days I've been in a rut. Today I will be doing some abstract paintings working on brushwork, color, and design. I found this bulk pack of little 4x4 canvases so I'm going to do a series of these abstracts until the rut is either so deep I can't get out or I work myself loose of it.  Until next time...

The more I have worked in oils, the thicker and more varied my paint application has become. The painting above is a simple design of a single pomegranate on its side. This is an extremely simple composition and it let me play with my brush work. It may be hard to tell but the paint is thicker than previous paintings (this was done back in December). At the time I was in such a rush to find a style that I wasn't experimenting as much as I should have been and this little painting helped me see that developing a style takes a lot of time. Up until this painting I was content on my application of paint and was more focused on developing my compositional sense.

Recently I picked back up my palette knife after setting it down to work exclusively with the brush. For me I need more time to experiment with as many tools as possible. The thing that was stopping me (I was stopping myself but this is my way of blaming others) was being surrounded by so many good artist here in the region that paint in a specific manner. Whether it be exclusively brushes, knifes or a mix of both, these artist have put in the time and realized what is needed to convey what they want to show people. Patience is a virtue and its something that I'm doing my best to build up. With more time and practice my technique will improve so I can get down to showing what I see.  One day perhaps I will find that elusive style that flows from me. Until then I will search under all the rocks around not knowing what it looks like, but will just enjoy flipping over rocks.

All about Still Life

My last post was about getting back outside to paint, but I would like to make a few post about still life while it is fresh in my head. The painting above was done in the middle of what I would call my still life season. From the end of  November until the beginning of March I spent most of my painting time working in still life.

Perhaps it was the desire to work from life that got me on such a kick to paint still life or maybe too few field sketches and reference photos. Regardless, still life was the focus of the past few months and now my appreciation for artist that do good work in still life is great. I regularly follow quite a few artist that work in the subject to see what they have to say. A thing of interest for me is to see how an artist works out composition with their still life. I've seen artist that use one angle and concept to do all their work, while others will use a different angle and experiment with new (to them) concepts all the time. Here are a few of the artist that I am watching. http://www.qiang-huang.blogspot.com/, http://carolmarine.blogspot.com/, http://lisadaria.blogspot.com/. These are all artist on DailyPainters. If you follows blogs and daily painters, chances are you know who carol marine and qiang-huang are.  Lisa Daria is some one that I just noticed a couple months ago, but she has been painting much longer than that. I'm a huge fan of their still life paintings and every time they post something it is worth checking out just to do some analyzing and see what they are thinking about.

The painting above was done back in January. At the time I was looking at distorting edges. The knife in the painting has a lot of hard and crisp edges while the apple is softer and almost ethereal in appearance as it recedes into the background.

Time to get back outside

Welcome back! It has been a while since my last post.  This time of year is exciting for plein-air painters. The chance to get back out in the field without worry of losing grip of the brush and feet freezing to the ground. The last part is an exaggeration, but it certainly feels that way when its freezing outside and your wearing heavy boots. This was my second attempt at painting outside a few weeks back. There have been a few warm streaks so far this year and I made sure to take advantage of them. Now it looks like there will be a longer warm streak. I've been boxing up my still life objects and filling out all the paper work for paint outs. I will be posting regularly again now that I can get outside to paint. Also I was painting almost exclusively in oil during the winter months. Yesterday though was a day of re-arranging my pastel palette. Once I get outside the pastels will be good to have out again.