Alone in the Woods

Boulder Creek Falls - 12 x 9" - oil on linen panel

Until today, I had been on my own as far a finding good places to paint. Well, now, the park superintendent offered to take me to Boulder Creek Falls, a place I would otherwise not be able to visit, because my car is not 4-wheel drive. The whole staff was so friendly there, and really went out of their way to make me feel at home.

We drove for what seemed like miles, up a road that would be impassable with my car, forded a stream, then walked through the woods, uphill (thankfully he carried my pack) to the site of this beautiful waterfall! Then, he left, and said he would send a ranger to pick me up at 3:00. There was no one there, no buildings, nothing. The sound of falls was so loud, it was all I could hear. This made me a little uncomfortable at first, but then I really got into it!

By this time, not only was I sleeping massive amounts, I was hungry all the time. Good thing I had food with me. I looked around for bears every time I opened something to eat!

When the ranger came to pick me up, all I had down on the canvas was an underpainting, which is the browns and grays you see here. I put in the green leaves and whites of the water after the underpainting had dried. That way, I could lay the white on, without it mixing with the brown underneath.

Detail

 

I hope you have a chance to get out in nature today and enjoy the beauty of this world!

 

 



John Cosby Workshop

Yellow Truck - oil on canvas panel - 14 x 11"

Painting  is a process of continual learning. Each painting is a learning experience! And, in order to accelerate the process, I try to take a workshop with another artist every now and then. The painting above is one I painted during the John Cosby workshop in Lodi, CA. John is an excellent teacher, and there were some very advanced painters in the class, but he made all of us stretch ourselves!

John teaches a painting process that can be adapted to most painting styles. He starts by mixing four or five color puddles that represent the different values in the scene. Then, he mixes all the rest of the colors from those puddles. Also, he really stressed drawing and composition. I drew the truck in this scene by first drawing a box, which had the same proportions as the truck, then drawing the truck inside the box. And the composition is a three-point, with the three main elements being the truck, the palm tree, and the telephone pole. Can you see it? I really had to subdue the bush, which, in reality, was a bright, bright green! And I used shadows to balance the composition. Just making my own reality... Fun!

Decisions, Decisions...

"When you get scared, go for the clothes!" -- Joy Thomas

I have been working on a portrait, the first oil portrait I've done in years. Wow, it is so easy to get rusty, and forget things; like which colors to mix so the skin won't look chalky. So... taking a break from the struggle to get the skin tones right, I went for the shirt. Here's where it is so far. I looked at it and realized this is the kind of unfinished look many contemporary artists use in their portraits. Here's an example. Should I leave the shirt loose and unfinished looking? Another decision!

By the way, you may have noticed that I haven't posted in awhile. Well, Blogger would not take my photo uploads. Today, I told myself I would do a blog no matter what! I cleared the cache, the cookies, disabled the popup blocker, and a bunch of plug-ins, all to no avail... Finally, I downloaded the Chrome browser, and it worked! (I had been using Firefox.) It feels so good to be back online again!

Hope you had a good weekend!

Crockett Paintout

I spent this morning painting plein air, as part of the Crockett Paintout. This is my view of the Carquinez Bridge, from the Carquinez Strait Regional Shoreline Park.  Here, I have completed the underpainting, to establish the basic composition and value pattern.

It was horribly windy, and I had to keep holding the easel to keep it from blowing over. Several times the umbrella "released" and just fell over (which is what it does, I guess to keep the easel from going over).

People kept walking by and saying nice things about the painting, and of course, I invited them all to the exhibit, which is next Sunday. Each artist may show three paintings.

The Tree Challenge

Moonlight on Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire - William Trost Richards
Photograph courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 Sometimes, we see something so compelling, we feel it in our bodies. That's what happened to me, back in pre-internet days, when I was a university art student. I saw a piece of art that turned my thinking around. At the time, I was subscribed to Art News, a magazine about what's happening in the (mostly contemporary) art world. In one issue, in the back pages, I came upon the picture above.

It was magical! The mood, the mystery, the stillness, the emotional connection, it all came together! In all the years of reading that magazine, I had never seen anything that I connected with so deeply. And it wasn't even contemporary art. This image is graphite and watercolor on green/gray paper, and it was done by William Trost Richards in 1873! In school, at that time, my professors would probably have flunked me if I had done anything so "illustrational."

But, I kept the picture, and still love looking at it.

And for all these years, in the back of my mind was the desire to make an intensive study of trees. Now, I plan to be doing more drawing, and studies, and paintings of trees. I will be doing an online class on drawing and painting trees with Deborah Paris. It will be challenging to do something so "old fashioned" and yet so demanding of both creativity and technical skill.

"The knowledge of how a thing is built induces an intimate sympathy, giving us constant pleasure: and the landscape painter must have as true a knowledge of the branch anatomy of a tree as a figure painter has of the anatomy of the human form."          

 -- Rex Vicat Cole, The Artistic Anatomy of Trees

I invite you will come with me on this exploratory journey, in my blog. What do you think about this? To leave a comment, click here.