Cleaning House

For the past couple of weeks, since I finished all of the paintings that I needed for exhibitions and was so encouraged by my new pieces, I have been using my time to clean out my studio.

Since I am trying to be an environmentally concerned citizen, I have reclaimed everything that would be reusable. The Wallis pastel paper is one of these things. I have found that I can dust off the loose pastel into the trash and save the paper to later be used for pastels or oils.

To do that, I just have to add a few drops of water to the paper and smear it around until I have an even tone of grey-brown which will served as a good mid-value ground for pastels. I can also take an old brush and gesso over the Wallis and use it for oils.

I save all mats that are clean and can be reused. Since I mat the pastels with a hinged mat and put a layer of foam core on the back of the mat to create a spacer for pastel dust to fall into, I have already invested some money and time in them and love it when I can reuse them.

In spite of all of this, I still have a large black plastic trash bag in the middle of the floor full of old paintings that just aren't worth saving, dirty mats, scrap, etc.! But I feel better knowing that I will never have to dig through those old pieces again, knowing that I don't feel good enough about any of them to show them in public.

I do have one quandary – what do I do with the ones that are acceptable to me, like these two oldies, but goodies below? I would like to sell them a bit cheaper to make space in the studio and give a starving collector a chance to buy them at a good price. But this is a no-no for a lot of artists. I'm not sure I agree with their philosophy, so, if you have suggestions, please add a comment below!

The Weaver

Luz Marie's Shop

Painting on a Deadline

This past weekend I wanted to paint some new pastels for the upcoming 19th Annual Southeast Invitational Miniature Show at Germanton Gallery in Germanton, NC. The show opens Friday, December 2, 2011.

I knew I should probably deliver the two pieces before Thanksgiving. With that schedule I had to make a decision about what to paint and get on with it. Luckily I have many, many photos to choose from and several photos of people that I have singled out as favorites, so I chose two and jumped in.

I began with an acrylic underpainting on an Ampersand pastelbord which is a surface I have never used before. Oh, yeah, I am also one of those people who tries out new recipes on holidays and when guests are coming!

This pastel surface is really nice to work with. I like a sanded surface and this one seemed to be just the right texture for me. The acrylic underpainting helped me get the big shapes and values down quickly and also filled in a lot of area so that I didn't need to be so heavy handed with the pastels.

The keys to what made these two pieces almost paint themselves was this:

• Taking a different approach from what I normally would use when in a hurry, I slowed down and became very mindful of each stroke I put on the paper.
• While I was still fresh and focused I worked on the most important areas - the areas of the painting that I wanted to "sing." These included the most contrasting values and the dominant colors. In both paintings it was the area between the heads of the figures and the shapes of their legs and the shadow/highlights on the sidewalk.
• The supporting cast of receding backgrounds and sideline objects were easy to add once the hard part was done.
• I did minor touch-ups to each of them once I had them photographed and could see things that could be improved upon, but I resisted my usual urge to FIX things. I have ruined a lot of good work while trying to make it better!

Les Trois Femmes

Fribourg Market Dealer

Details for the show:
Reception - Friday, 5:00pm - 8:00pm
Saturday - 11:00am - 4:00pm
Sunday - 1:00pm - 4:00pm
Germanton Gallery and Winery, 3530 Hwy. 8/65, Germanton, NC 27019

Foreign Landscapes

Last week I spent five days in a workshop at the Scottsdale Artist's School in Arizona. This was a plein-air to studio workshop in pastels with Marc Hanson. Marc is a wonderful artist and a great teacher too, but I sure did struggle with that landscape!

I tried to figure out why I had so much trouble and I honed it down to a few causes:

• I am a big shape kind of painter, and other than the obvious big red rocks the size of small mountains sticking up out of the ground, there weren't any big shapes.
• The vegetation is all very similar in value. How many shades of green-grey, brown-grey, blue-grey, yellow-grey can you put in one painting?
• I was unfamiliar it.

This Arizona landscape challenged me.

Since the last cause is the only one I can control, I decided that to get the best result from a workshop in an environment with which you are unfamiliar, it would be wise to consider going a day or two early and immersing yourself in the feel of the place and doing some plein air studies.

When I was directing photo shoots in my former life, we would sometimes spend some time doing just that - we called it scouting out the location. I think this would be a good practice for artists planning to spend money and time on a workshop in a place that is new to them.

The sunsets were incredible, but I was way too slow to catch that on a canvas! Marc did it beautifully.
Maybe someday I can do that.

The Laziness Factor

This morning it occurred to me that often my paintings succeed or fail based on how lazy I am. In the past, I have been given advice by teachers and peers that I know is sound, but I am too lazy to do what they recommend consistently, if at all. I know I am not alone in this, so read on if you want to see if any of these apply to you:

• A sketch done before you begin painting will save you a world of hurt later. Get you basic shapes and value patterns down on paper. Make alterations to the less than perfect scene you have chosen to paint until it becomes a good composition. Don't skip this step!!!
• Use a mirror to look at your painting as you progress. This works! It will make mistakes jump out at you like you've never seen that painting before.
• Think before you apply paint - take your time. My way to fix a bad painting used to be to apply more and more paint as fast as I could and hope for a miracle! That doesn't work.

You've probably heard all of this before, but when you are learning anything, it seems you only absorb what you are ready to hear, so I'm tellin' you one more time in case it's your day to listen.

In my last post, Wasting Time, I was working on a painting with a bad photo for reference and the inability to recognize that fact. I went back to that piece and analyzed what had gone wrong, and here is the outcome. It is better than my first attempt and I learned a lot from the experience.

Keep painting!

Wasting Time

This weekend I spent most of two days trying to paint a painting for which I had not prepared myself. I started on a new piece, working from a photo that I had taken last year. I knew something didn't feel right about the composition – it clearly had a disturbing feeling of being split down the center. Also, the photo was taken with a wide angle lens so things were out of whack already.

A bad reference photo needed to be analyzed more thoroughly.

My mistake was that I made a quick sketch or two, convincing myself that I had thought through the design problems and then dove into the painting. This resulted in painting, wiping off, repainting, wiping off etc., until I finally made myself put down the brushes because I was only wasting time and paint.

What did I learn?

• Resolve your composition issues up front – they won't resolve themselves.
• When you know you are not patient enough to paint mindfully, stop and go back to it later.
• Some days are meant for yard work or cleaning where you can turn your brain off.

Will I remember not to pick up my brush when this happens next time? Maybe not, but I'll try.

On a more successful note, earlier in the weekend I finished up a painting that I started outdoors. I broke my own rule about not touching a plein-air piece when I get back to the studio but was able to justify this, because I really needed the painting for an upcoming show.

The piece was going well enough that I was pretty sure I could finish it without disaster. I did follow the rule about not looking at a color photo, though, and I really believe this is crucial. I relied on the black and white photo to guide me as far as details and values but stayed true to the color that I had placed on the canvas when I was out in the field. I was happy with the outcome.

I got good results by keeping the colors I applied originally.

You will learn something every time you paint!

Outside In

How to successfully paint a bigger painting from a plein air study has always been a mystery to me.

I have learned a couple of things from D. Eleinne Basa – a wonderful plein air artist who taught a workshop that I was lucky enough to attend – that made it possible for me to finally do this.

1. Treat your plein air paintings as studies – information gathering exercises.
2. Don't mess with them when you get back to the studio.
3. Paint another painting to make improvements rather than re-working the original.
4. Don't look at the photos you probably took out there when you were painting. If you must look, change the image to greyscale on your computer and follow the color in your study.

There are good reasons for all of this. I have ruined so many potentially good works by trying to improve them back in the studio where the light is totally different. The photo I am looking at looks nothing like the real thing, and I am now confused about what I really saw out there.

For the past week, I have been working on a larger painting done from a small plein air piece, and this is the first time I have ever felt that I was successful.

I actually covered the study with plastic wrap so I could mix my colors and put a dab on the plastic to check my values, etc before applying them to the larger painting.

I did need to look at a photo, because I was painting a larger area of the landscape than I had done in the study and also was adding figures to the piece. But the greyscale image allowed me to keep my colors harmonious with the landscape I had originally painted.

Maybe these tips can help you achieve this out too!