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.

Watercolor & Gouache

Today felt like a good day to get the watercolors out. The last time I started a new medium, my watercolors improved. I think it has something to do with seeing the paint in a different light. Before using pastels I only had watercolor to paint with so there was nothing to compare it to. After I started using pastels the watercolors started to become more understandable. I had another point to compare the medium and started to favor watercolor in man made objects and close ups. The pastels seemed to be better suited for natural landscapes. As I've developed my pastels toward a certain style the watercolors started to change as well. Now that I have oil as another reference the watercolors are starting to seem better defined in my mind. Working with oil there is no need to hurry or fuss over detail. It helped me relax and slow down when using the brush. While there is a certain speed required for the watercolors, I'm thinking I was over rushing things. The gradation change in the front trees would have gotten me worked up before but this time seemed different. I took my time and then used a heavier brush to push the pigment around even though it was slightly drier than typical. With it being drier it didn't push too much pigment like is typical and make the area almost bare. There is a lot of difference between oil and watercolor but my understanding of the pigments is starting to make sense. Also like last time I got out the gouache. There were areas that I thought needed lightened up and the gouache is very good for that. Mixing the gouache and the watercolor is still strange. It doesn't quite work out as well as I would think, but it is slightly better than last time. Just like pastel and oil, gouache is also another point of reference in the great scheme of painting. The plan is to learn all there characteristics and strengths. With time I think my paintings in the different mediums will start to mimic and become more like one another. Only practice and time will tell.

Sun against your back

This morning I wasn't planning on going outside and painting. It was sprinkling off and on so it seemed like a good day to stay inside and get work done. It started to clear up so I got a hold of Donna Shortt to see if she was going to be out painting. She was looking to get out once the rain let up so we met up at a fellow painter's place in whiteland which is only a few minutes drive. At first I thought it was in the town but it went from urban to rural in less than a mile. It was really nice being out of the city to paint. When we got there it started sprinkling so we looked around for some good places to paint. Thankfully the rain didn't last long so we set up and got to painting. When we started there was a lot of overcast and it felt amazing. It was cool, there was a breeze and no direct sunlight. That changed about 30 minutes after setting up. It went from wonderful to feeling like the sun was sitting on your shoulders. The thing that always gets me when setting up in overcast is that I don't get behind a tree or in the shade somewhere. When that light shines on your paper or canvas it gets hard to tell what value you are laying down. A month ago I finally went through my palette and arranged all my colors by value so that helps combat getting values that are wildly off.

This was the second painting that I set up, the first never had its under painting dry. For anyone that does under paintings using mineral spirits or turpentine, I would suggest that you never use turpenoid natural for plein air. The turpenoid natural is thicker and when put on it made some interesting runs down the paper, but it set in the sun for 3 hours and didn't dry. If you are going to do an under painting and set it away to work on the next day turpenoid natural might be something that you look at, just don't try it when you want to get down to business. When it does dry I will try and paint it from memory using one of my value sketches. Unfortunately I forgot my camera at the house today so I wont be able to use that to help me. Who knows that could be a good thing with helping me re-invent the scene using only my drawings and imagination.

Edinburg paint out

 Yesterday I failed to post anything so today I am showing two of the plein air paintings from the Edinburg paint out. Last night was spent going through all my hard pastels and breaking down the large pieces to manageable sizes, thinning duplicates, and rearranging them. The two paintings shown here were the last two that I did today. This wasn't a great day but I've had far worse painting outside. This morning it was extremely foggy. The check-in was at 8 but sunrise was at 7 so I got there at 6. There was no sunrise. All the street lights went off and it got lighter, but I still couldn't see anything that wasn't directly in front of me. After I made it home and was cleaning up a lightbulb went off. Break down everything into as few of shapes as possible. The paintings that im not showing are from a creek and instead of breaking everything down to as few as shapes as possible I tried to paint everything that I saw. That is almost impossible with pastels at the size I'm painting. These last two were out in the open on farmground and I'm not sure if it was me starting to come into it or painting these scenes often that made me do it, but I followed that advice. For now on the mantra will be followed and we will see what that does to my work.

Field Study turned pastel

Today I started the pastel leg of this adventure. This is from an earlier watercolor under painting and today I applied pastel over it. I learned quite a few things today. I've used this surface before for watercolor and it has been sitting around a while. The paper is arches 140 lb cold pressed although it has far more texture than the 300 lb rough paper. Next pastel that is done on watercolor paper will be on something with far less texture. I'm not a fan of textured paper and as soon as I see the pattern start to emerge my instinct is to fill it in. This can lead to some major problems with pastels. Thankfully I was only using hard pastels and you can keep applying but that could be a real problem with soft pastels. Anyway like I said yesterday value scale and relative shape value are my main focus points right now and this painting did an alright job with that. This is a very simple landscape with four total shapes. There are three horizontal bars and a tree line shape. With such a limited amount of shape variation it is easy to focus on value. The sky holes in the tree need work so that is on the agenda next time but other than that I like the trees. The thing that I liked the best about the painting is right under the foliage on the trunk of the tree I used a vibrant violet purple. Typically this would stick out like a sore thumb in a painting. When I applied it all the colors around it shared the same value which helped it settle into the shape instead of popping out. Perhaps next I will look at chroma alongside value scale. This was a good exercise and will definitely help with my larger paintings.

Off to paint in Plein Air

Yesterday and today I am taking off from painting my daily paintings to go outside and paint. This is a pastel painted from the front steps of my parents porch. It is soft pastels on black sand paper. The scene is calming and I grew up seeing this everyday so I stopped and painted it. Today I'm going to try and paint a few more places I'm familiar with.

On a side note I got an email today from Melodie (http://www.photographicmelodie.com/) who runs the Southport art committee. Duane King (http://www.duaneking.com/) forwarded an article from Outdoor Painter that I made it into. Here is the link. http://www.outdoorpainter.com/featured-events/indiana-ohio-groups-paint-together.html. When I say that I made it into the article, I don't mean that my art made it in. I was standing in front of some amazing work by Ronald Mack. I wrote about the event previously. This is from the Richmond plein air paint out. Anyway it was a lot of fun. For those in or around Northern Indiana there is a paint out on August 5th & 6th on the Dunes. Check it out.

Red Barn

Today I painted a red barn that I saw out west of Indianapolis. It was a simple picture with not a lot going on so I figured it would be good practice for getting used to these brushes. There was water spilled on the left tree and the bottom layer of grass could have used more interest. The bottom should have been raised on one side and lowered on the other. For now on I wont let a straight line run horizontally completely across the page. It should be broken up or only go across part of the way.

The direction I want to go

After my painting today and thinking about where I would like to go with all of this, I've decided to set some parameters for myself.
For 30 days I will paint according to a set of guidelines that I have set for myself. At the 15 day mark I will review the previous days and decide to continue or slightly alter my guidelines for the rest of the timeline. At the end of the 30 days I will write a synopsis on the process as well as the paintings. Occasionally I will post extended views of 120 to 180 days.
My current guidelines are for the next 30 days I will be painting 15 photographs twice. These photos will be altered when I do value studies and color plans. The first 15 paintings will be watercolors and the last 15 will be in pastel. The watercolors will be done with materials that I am not familiar or comfortable with. The pastels will be done with techniques that I struggle with and only in hard pastels.
By the end of this time line if I like 1/3 of the paintings I will consider that a huge success. Within six months the plan is to have the numbers down to 1/2 to 1/2.5 paintings that I like.
The painting above is from back home. This is about 2 miles from my parents house. My dad farms the field I was standing in and the one I was looking at. With time I will paint all the farm ground and equipment.