And Now for Something Completely Different

Just wrapping up the week here at the Sedona Plein Air Invitational in Arizona. We’ve had an unusual cold snap come through with some freezing painting temperatures. But all have managed to produce nice work despite our numb little fingers and frostbitten noses. Other than this weather anomaly, it’s truly a spectacular place to paint.

For growth as an artist, I feel you need to step out of the box and try something different to spur new ideas on a fairly frequent basis. Since painting is such a solo endeavor, I find this to be vital. No one is looking over my shoulder telling me to do this or that, so these little experiments have taught me a lot. Forcing me to open my eyes and look at things in a new way.

Driving around Sedona admiring these magnificent mountains, sculpted into a myriad of colorful peaks and spires. Their breathtaking beauty gets your mind swimming with ideas for paintings. I’m usually drawn to the shadows in scenes I end up painting, but here I was amazed at the color shifts in a fully lit mesa. Some of these flat lit expanses with very little shadow were intriguing and it got me thinking about color in a single value. I’ve always admired the work of Dan Pinkham. His understanding of color is far beyond most artists and yet his work is simply put in a subtly beautiful statement.

Which brought me to the painting above: could I paint a uniformly lit scene in one value step using only color to define depth and form. “Colorforms” above, was my 6x8 plein air attempt at that goal. For better or worse, I was amazed at the difficulty and could see how someone could spend a lifetime studying this approach. But I also gleaned a lot of useful information on how certain colors worked in adjacency to one another. I began with mixing one of the orange colors in the main bluff, trying to find a color that represented the form and yet sat in its place depth-wise. Then throughout the rest of the painting, it was a matter of mixing a color that worked but did not step up or down on the value scale of my original color note. I ended up being oddly pleased with my attempt and utilized some of the green combinations as a solution in my very next painting.

While I don’t think I’ll go in this direction as a painter, the study and change of pace was refreshing. I believe these exercises can pump new life in ones work. Color can be your friend, but you certainly need to work hard on that relationship. Enjoy!

My Wave, Baby

My apologies for taking so long to post. This has been an extremely busy time with three plein air shows in a little over a month, commissions to finish, and two good friends staying with us: artists Ken DeWaard and Jill Carver. So, I’ve had a few hats to wear!

With the close of the Laguna Invitational event yesterday mixed with spotty weather, I thought I’d discuss my approach to the beach and waves. Since I’m near the ocean, painting at the beach is a popular subject for me. But even as I’ve done my share, the ocean and its waves are endlessly challenging. The above scene, titled “Foam Rollers” was one of my Laguna entries, a 9x12 plein air painting on our first sunny afternoon late in the week. I usually prefer the afternoon here on the west coast as you get some nice shadows on the crashing waves. And with that, here’s my take on painting waves.

First up is composition: I like the juxtaposed angle of the incoming waves as opposed to the angle of the bluffs, if I have that scenery option. Both are little wedges that lead the eye into one another and that creates a natural “S” composition, which is the solution above. Next up is observation and study of the wave sets to choose what I want in my painting. There are several sea “events”: flat ocean, the start of a cresting wave, the wave just beginning to break, half breaking/cresting and a fully broken wave with a roll of whitewash. Once I’ve chosen (I mostly go with a mix of breaking and cresting) I sketch in my placement of the wave(s). Planning is critical for me to end up with good results. Next is understanding the shape. When you watch the ocean, it’s usually a jumbled mess. There are so many lights and shadows happening that it doesn’t seem to make sense. To simplify the process, I try to visualize the wave as a cylinder and how the angle of sunlight will create a highlight at the top, putting the whole side in shadow. I then observe a middle shadow color for the foam and paint it in. This unifies the shape without getting confused by the action of the surf. I’ll vary the blueish whites and purple notes to give it interest, then hit the top of the wave with a yellow/white highlight to create the top of the “cylinder”. Same goes for the cresting part, but I'll add a dash of lighter water color at the tip to give the appearance of light penetrating the wave. I also make sure the foam rushing in on the wet sand has a “thickness” to it by painting a shadow at the base. Adding touches of yellow and/or viridian in the whitewash helps keep the whites more interesting.

This approach to painting waves has given me better success in believability. Thinking of it as a basic shape keeps it simple, but I’ll spend a lot of time working on the little color and edge nuances to make it look and feel complex. Enjoy!

Decisions Decisions

Since people have commented on how much they enjoyed seeing the original photo as compared to the final painting and hearing the thinking process … here is another. This 12x11 studio painting, “The Breakfast Goers” was created from a poor image taken on my cell phone camera (left). While eating an early breakfast on a painting trip, I noticed the intriguing light quality, backlit figures and my thinking that I could do something with it. It would be a bit different than my usual landscape, but that was also the appeal.

I usually start composing a painting with the question “what to keep in” and “what to change” instead of “what will I delete.” After the keepers are chosen, the rest is omitted. Kind of like picking fruit at the store, you choose a select few and move on instead of sorting though the entire bin, setting the bad ones aside and seeing what your left with. My thought process went like this: Keep the figures, a few items on the table to tell the story and dramatically simplify the background so it highlights the figures. Next, I analyzed the people to see what made sense. When I’m working with figures, what they are doing has to feel right as a painting, and not just a depiction “as-is” in the photograph. So, with the man on the left, I positioned his arm on the table, instead of leaving it mid-air and made sure the bill of his hat and glassed contrasted in the light coming through the window. Next to him, the person is turned and facial features are unseen, so I painted it as if they were looking forward. The distant center figure is being lost in the wood around the window, so I moved that person forward slightly. And, lastly the man’s arm on the right seemed odd. Having him hold a mug of coffee felt more believable.

With the background, the figures on the left are sitting with their backs to a mirrored wall, this would be difficult to portray, especially with the poor information in the photo. So, I painted the windows in a simple flat wall mass. I also made the wall cooler in color so it sat well in the distance. I only kept the items on the table that would re­ad well or broke up other shapes, but enhanced the coffee carafe because that was important to the story. I kept the table color warm to keep it in the foreground and created my own light reflections based on the where the windows were positioned. I cropped the bottom of the painting so you only saw a slight edge of the dish, keeping the utensil to point into the painting. If I used the whole bowl and made the painting taller, my focal point figures would be pushed up too high in the scene. I utilized the foreground coffee mug for its size, perspective and the way it broke up the dark area under the table (great tips from Gregg Kreutz’s book). It also leads your eye upward, and I added a hint of a handle to make it clearly a mug.

I rather liked the fact that none of figures were interacting. It gave it that Hopper-esque feeling of loneliness that seemed to compliment well with my minimalist colors. Enjoy!

Depth and Atmosphere

Above was my award-winning painting from the San Clemente show two months ago. This 11x14 plein air scene, “Crystal Rocks,” was painted down at Crystal Cove beach in Laguna in the late afternoon. I love the great atmosphere that can pick up at this time of day. And if you hit a low tide too, the rocks can give you wonderful compositional choices.

The challenge for me is trying to capture the shear depth of the beach and bluffs. I love the golden haze, but it’s usually not that hazy in actuality. Value stepping and edge work becomes critical here. Making sure I get the right amount of hard to soft balances and utilizing a full value scale can make or break the illusion of distance. I started with a pencil map of where I wanted my rocks placed. In reality, they were pretty much as shown, but actual size, shape, distances between and whether they overlap were all adjusted slightly. I did this to eliminate repetitive shapes but also to create visual contrasts. For instance, the closest large rock on the left was enlarged so I could create the top white highlight and have it contrast with the dark rock behind it. Also, the second rock was raised a bit so the small wave behind it was visually “broken” and I could further contrast the whitewash with the right side of the rock. This gave me some nice focal points, plus created a sweeping arc that leads your eye up to the main splash on the rocks behind.

In the painting process, once I established my values in the foreground rocks, I made sure to make the mid-ground rocks lighter, and the far bluff even lighter than that. These conditions existed, but I pushed the values to create greater depth in the painting. Ditto for the sand and water. With the far bluff, I began on the right side, established a value I felt appropriate, and then gradually lightened it as I proceeded to the left and most distant part of the scene. The structures were painted as shadow and highlighted sides to suggest buildings but not drawing your eye there directly. I added the slightly darker cloud shapes in the upper left to force your eye back in the painting and lastly a handful of figures to complete the story.

Even in plein air, I find you need to adjust everything a bit to make a painting sing. Enjoy!

Big Bottoms

Fresh off the Just Plein Fun show plus wrapping up my three-day workshop. I’ve noticed my appeal of a large simple weight at the bottom of a painting. As I study my contemporaries and look for my own compositions, this area interests me more and more as solution to not having a piece feel “top heavy.” I touched upon it briefly when teaching and thought I’d share my thinking.

While I enjoy low horizons in other artists works, I rarely find them appealing myself. I usually like to put my horizon in the upper half of the painting and use the weight of the land as an anchor. This has some built-in benefits that immediately work: One, the large shape gives the scene a simple bottom mass to rest upon (think of a matted painting .... the mat is usually cut with a thicker bottom width than the top and sides). And two, it creates a nice, easy entry up to the focus. I like to use some simple brush work or a directional line such as the buoy rope or mast reflection in the above two paintings to move your eye in. For me, this also creates a smaller focal area to worry about and plenty of breathing room around the subject. In the paintings above, it helped me from getting the boats too big and crowding the edges. It also allowed plenty of space for other items to support the boats, such as buoys, buoy lines, masts and rigging lines. I felt that including these better told the story especially when my subject matter was so simple.

In these two 12x9 paintings completed at the Just Plein Fun event, I tried not to get carried away with detail in the bottom portions. Trying to add temperature changes instead of value changes in the one with the large sand mass. On the single boat, I needed a bit more interest in the water since the boat was so subdued. I added a couple of highlights on the water ripples for added interest and eye movement.

So, in honor of Spinal Tap’s 25th anniversary ... “Big Bottoms, My Works Got ’Em.” Enjoy!

Next week: Paintings that go to eleven.

Compositional Placement

I recently completed a small series of koi paintings that always interest me for the opportunity to push color and explore compositional design. This was one of a couple of studio pieces compiled from a series of images I took at the Mission in San Juan Capistrano when their lily pond was in bloom. The above painting “In Circles” is 16x12 in size and I chose the vertical format for a different feel.

The fun thing about these paintings was that this scene is entirely invented. I used multiple photos with different elements and placed them compositionally where I wanted them. This provides many possibilities and is a nice change to all the plein air work I do. So, for this one, I chose to play up the circular elements, since everything is a circle in these scenes. I began by sketching in the lilies and started working them in an arc on the left side of the painting. I made sure to overlap some here and there for variety and also used the little V-shaped stem areas to direct your eye. I placed the main lily flower in the upper “golden” third quadrant as a focal statement. I then drew in the large black koi in the bottom right to curve you back into the lily pads. I also enjoy the fact that you don’t see this fish upon first glance or from a distance, once you get up to the painting, this koi becomes apparent. The other two koi were placed to complete the swimming circle. These two were just invented from memory. Next were the water reflections. The blue of the sky was to be my main weight at the bottom, then I wanted to create a greenish brown foliage reflection to diagonally come down the right side and create a complimentary arc there that opposes the lilies. All the vertical reflections were added to break up the circles. And lastly planned was the water ripple to complete the theme.

The painting basically painted itself. I just tried to keep everything simple in the beginning and added detail towards the end. I pumped up the foreground color for extra drama and made sure to gray out the lilies as they receded in space. I was conscious of my edges to give focus where needed, soft in the distance and harder in front. Lastly were a couple of small color splashes for little bits of matter that are always floating on the surface. I used this for my secondary eye movement.

Sometimes it feels good not to be such a square. Enjoy!

Editing Confusion

Just returned from the always fun Easton Plein Air event out in Maryland. Above is one of my entries for the competition, “The Mildred Belle”, a 9x16 painting of a historic Chesapeake Bay “Buy Boat” that caught my eye on this overcast morning during the event. This boat was used as a middle-man for oyster and crab fishermen to bring their catch to market in the early 1950s.

I was drawn to the wonderful cool whites against the gray blue water and was interested in seeing if I could capture that effect. The trick was eliminating all of the confusing background that competed with the boat itself. I’ve attached my photo of the scene so you can see what was omitted. (This piece was painted entirely in plein air and my photo was only for documentation.) Good editing is always needed in any painting, but I had to be much more inventive for this one. The large lighthouse that was behind the boat was virtually the same color, limiting my impact of whites to contrast the boat. I deleted that entirely and used the red building behind it as a better shape. Its deeper rust color helped that small white piece of the bow to pop. I had to walk around the lighthouse, catch a glimpse of the red structure, then painted that in loosely from memory. It was the same on the left side of the scene with the other large boats directly behind. I deleted those too, but needed something in the distance to suggest the harbor, so I painted the two distant boats from a couple that were much farther to the left. I continued the green tree mass behind everything for added simplicity. Now I had a quieter, complementary background to support my main interest. I painted the Belle next but further omitted small, unsightly items such as the orange cooler and aft canopy, plus a few ropes and other items that were unnecessary. I added the American flag on the back and few more rust streaks, but pretty much stayed true to the ship.

The result was this simple portrait instead of a confusing mess of shapes. If we can’t see the forest for the trees, sometimes a beautiful scene can be overlooked. This was one time I didn’t mind that the sun never appeared. Enjoy!