Here is where I left you last week. By my comments section I know that there are other painters following along here so I will provide some monologue to describe my process. If you are bored by this please shuffle on down to more pictures. This blog helps keep me accountable to some degree so it is a good exercise ; hopefully it has some value to others. The actual scene did not have many of the elements that are roughed in here. What it did have was a great overview to some clay banks and Giants Head Mountain on the far side . The houses and farms below did nothing to further my idea so they were jettisoned to make way for my gently contoured land and some suggested grapevines. I introduced water for some relief from all this dryness . In the next image I've developed a sky scape and background. My tree is almost fully realized and I've installed an old roadway to aid my idea. I apologize for the blurry photos. I am in the thick of it when I do remember to pick up the camera for a quick shot before I dive back in. The next image is after a week of painting, scraping out, contemplation and repainting. Remember this is 3X4 ft so I am stretching myself with the scale of this . Lotsa smiles though. Oil paint gives me plenty of time to move things around. I use pure paint with just a touch of Liquin. As you can see, I have created some cloud interest in the sky. I have modeled them in a formation that is believable and directs your eyes back into the important areas of the composition. If I left us with a cloudless blue sky there is a good chance that your eyes would escape out of the top of my painting and then who knows what nonsense they could become distracted by. Better that I try to corral them back into my world.
Giants Head and the surrounding farmlands are holding up pretty well here. I want those vertical forms to read as one large shape in a common value. Even where the sun washes over the horizontal land I cheat a bit and keep my colour saturation high. That helps to unify things. When you cut your painting up into little unconnected light and dark values it loses its design strength. Remember, I am attempting to compose. I am not replicating the scene. This scene exists nowhere but it FEELS like a typical Okanagan location. The pine tree has been lifted out of the earlier plein air painting. Now I've made it with back lighting so I will use my outdoor experience to model it correctly. I've bent the main trunk and moved some elements around to give it more interest. As the branches reach up into the sky they lose some value and some colour intensity. Likewise the exposed branches. I will try to conclude this painting on the next post. My little chicken flew the coop on the long weekend, off to live in Vancouver.
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I have "My Tribe" all varnished and boxed up ready to be sent off to their first showing next year. I'm referring to 100 portraits that I completed this June. Refer back to previous posts for more info. Now I am working outdoors in the landscape again which invigorates me. I am wanting to paint on a larger scale, so I'll show you my working method. I began with absorbing the Okanagan, painting several views on location. Here I'm responding to the lovely shadow patterns cast by a stand of backlit pines. Past grass fires have burned off the lower growth, and the remaining branches demand to be painted crisply. The afternoon sky has lost some of its summer heat but none of its intensity. Great to be sitting out on a side hill watching the light play across the tall grasses. Again, the backlighting across the grass is dominating this piece. There is a large rock perched above me contrasting with the soft plants. Admittedly this painting went off the rails a bit, but the experience of observing the changing light from the descending sun was invaluable. I will take that feeling with me and insert it into a larger work. I climbed up and over the hill, past the large boulder, and set up in a shallow draw to observe the patterns of sage and considered how they cluster together in masses. Again, a solitary veteran pine tree contrasts nicely. I turned around and started hauling my gear back towards my van when I was distracted by this tree. It is oriented with the sun behind me. I love the shapes of trees. They are all individuals with distinct personalities. To be clear, let me say that these four paintings were born over a period of two days. I arrive at the same spot each day, and if the weather is consistent I can pick right up where I left off. This is something I've learned from studying Claude Monet's methods. He would work on as many as ten paintings at a time, moving from one to the next after short intervals of working on each canvas. Monet was a wealthy man and had a young boy to carry and move his paraphernalia. I'm not and I don't, so I compromise. I decided to paint a large Okanagan scene in my studio. I want to bring the feelings and images that I've gained from doing these paintings and weave them together into a single composition with much consideration given to design. I was sketching in a different location that offered a view with great potential. My sketchbook has vaporized, so I only have one to show you from a different book. I composed the different elements of my outdoor work around an armature or skeleton based on my large sketches. The following roughed-in painting gives you an idea of where I'm going with this. This is 36X48" and so it is a completely different animal than my smaller plein air work. I want to draw the viewer into and around the picture, so the plan is circular with the "heavy" tree balanced by some softer sage on the other side. The contours of the land will direct your eyes into the piece, and hopefully they will settle comfortably ino exploring this typical Okanagan setting. We will see.
I will continue with this thread next time. Hopefully I will have completed the painting by then. I will be teaching a 2-day workshop at the Summerland Art Gallery on Nov. 17th and 18th. My focus will be on helping people to paint from life and to get away from basing their paintings on photos. I believe there are still one or two spots free, so if anyone is interested, the link is http://summerlandarts.com/programs/workshops I am posting this in the comfort of our Westfalia, sheltered from the rains of Niagra Falls. It is a pleasant break from the relentless heat, and we are enjoying the opportunity to catch up on emails etc. We have seen some wonderful art in Chicago and are looking forward to more in the days ahead. I hope to see the national gallery in Ottawa as well as some large commercial galleries. Very inspiring stuff. Above, I am standing with one of the self portraits of my old hero, Vincent.
It has been a long while since my last post. I have been very busy with my portrait project and am happy to announce it is complete. One year and one hundred portraits; meeting many new people who each have a story and experimenting with different techniques while learning to observe the human face in all it's variety. It has been great and it is also great to move on. I'll share some observations and suggestions about portraiture in the days to come but for now I'm preparing for a big road trip. Joanna and I are embarking on a cross-Canada drive in about a week so there is much to prepare. I'm looking forward to visiting some great galleries and also taking time to consider where I want to go with my art. I may attempt some posts from the road if I can get it together. Have a great summer and I'll keep posting asap.
Now I am working in relief, using a small rag that's been dipped in mineral spirits to wipe out areas that need lightening up. Jonas is starting to emerge from the ground. So far I've used a #10 flat brush and a small rag to reach this point. I've introduced ultramarine blue to get some darker values now. A bit of brushwork and this is starting to look like something. This could stand out as a great little study. I quite like paintings at this stage. The trick now is to retain the freshness while adding more elements to make a more interesting picture. A little work on his features, a little peachy warm colour in the lit skin areas and some high values on his shirt. More detail work. A little reflected blues in his hair. More attention to the folds in the shirt. I've scrumbled some viridian over the background. This allows some ambiguous earth reds to show through and helps the background to receed. I like using green with children because it is a colour that symbolizes new life and growth. Time to finish this off. I put down some appropriate colours in the shirt, green stripes and subtle violet in the white areas that are out of direct sunlight. I hope you enjoyed seeing the process. Please put any suggestions in my comments if there is an aspect of my painting process that you'd be interested in learning more about. Until next time.
Come on out to visit local artists in their studios this weekend. They will be happy to share their process and inspiration with you as you view their new work. Go to www.studiotour.wordpress.com for details. I'll have some of my portraits on hand as well as Okanagan landscapes. Hope to see you.
I I am taking part in an open studio tour on the 19 and 20th of May. That is giving me the motivation to refresh my studio space, so I have decided that new paint is in order. Presently my studio/gallery is painted a great green that does compliment most artwork very well, but is a bit dark when working on portraits inside. I think I will go with a more traditional gallery white so I can control my lighting more effectively. You are invited to come out, see some new paintings, and inspect my renovation. I will get the tour info up on my exhibits page. See http://studiotour.wordpress.com/ I am soldiering on with my portraits, so I'll share a few recent ones with you. . .
The big news is today's launch of a new web presence. My wonderful wife Joanna has been laboring over a new website for the past couple of weeks, and it is now time for the birth of this baby. Also, I have been planning to move away from my existing blog host, so it seems wise to launch a new blog today as well. So we have twins! It would be great to get some feedback from you if you have the time to explore the different areas on the site and see if it is intuitive or if you experience any problems. Any comments will be appreciated. If you are an artist looking to have a web presence, we highly recommend Leah Markham's how-to video series. I'm posting a few of my recent portraits as well. Here is Tami. Looks a bit grainy as I only load small files to the blog. Everyone's skin has very subtle hints of green, especially around the nose and mouth, as there is a concentration of blood vessels in those areas. The greenish-ochre background really amps up the green skin hues, especially when contrasted with this mass of violet. I had to be careful to pull back on those colors for this one. Alison actually started off as a three-quarter portrait. I wanted to work on her hands and try to compose something interesting . The original painting works pretty well, but I was limited to painting her face with horrible little brushes; I have unresolved issues with small brushes. I will have to overcome those weaknesses someday but I decided not to at Alison's expense. So I worked up this one, and I'm happy, and it is all about me so........ Kim gave me some great design possibilities with a turquoise wrap and plenty of hair. Nothing is better than finishing off a portrait of someone with some righteous hair. You stand back and use the whole brush. Great fun. Jack has a photographer for a mother, so he has had plenty of experience posing for her I imagine. He copped this pose very naturally. It is tempting to stay with a composition like this and work it up into something that really communicates an idea, but I gotta stay focused on my present project. All these pictures will inform my more ambitious paintings in the days ahead. This is Tula Belle. Wow, she was very easy to paint. Her pose is just so expressive. I was just along for the ride on this one. I have a show on at Little Straw Vineyards in West Kelowna for the month of April. You can preview the pieces that are available there on my exhibition section of my NEW website.
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July 2017
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