art technique

Upcoming Drawing and Painting Classes at local libraries

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libraries

I’ve got some classes scheduled at both Your Home Public Library, Johnson City NY (YHPL), and Broome County Public Library, Binghamton NY (BCPL).

All courses consist of five 3-hour weekly sessions, and attendance is required at the first session of each. Find details and registration information on all on my Classes and Workshops page.

NEW – Fundamentals of Drawing: How to See Like an Artist, at BCPL. Based on ideas and exercises from “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards, “The Zen of Seeing” by Frederick Franck, and my own experience, this course will help you with rendering 3-D objects in 2-D by learning to SEE like an artist, to draw what you actually see rather than what you think you see. It can also help you with the two painting courses below. Thursdays, 5-8:00 p.m., January 12 through February 9, 2017 – no cost.

Exploring Oil Painting, at YHPL. Using methods and techniques from my own experience and “Still Life Painting Atelier” by Michael Friel, this course guides you through the process of making a studio-based still life painting from life, from composition and underpainting through finishing touches. By request, the still life this time will consist of all glass objects: a fun challenge! Mondays, 1-4:00 p.m., March 20 – April 17, 2017 — $15 supply fee covers all five sessions.

Oil Painting from Altered Photographs, at BCPL. Learn to see your photos differently, how to make them more suitable for oil painting references, and how to enlarge the resulting composition onto your canvas panel using the grid method. Then paint your composition, from underpainting through finishing touches. I utilize methods from “Creative Painting from Photographs,” by Rudy de Reyna, and my own work to illustrate and guide you in using your own photos. Painting materials are supplied at no cost; participants bring a list of low-cost items from a list supplied at registration (also at my Classes and Workshops page as part of the course description). Thursdays, 5-8:00 p.m., May 18 – June 15, 2017

I love teaching these classes — we have a lot of fun. Kudos to both libraries for offering them to the public. Hope you’ll join me!

Moon Watcher

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Moon Watcher - 30 x 40 in., oil on canvas
Moon Watcher – 30 x 40 in., oil on canvas

After a long time off the easel, Moon Watcher — the latest in my “Watchers” series — is finished! The Watchers are all based on statuary I love, imagined into strange and significant places.

The depiction of moonlight was really tricky — the reference for the background was not originally moonlit — but once I added a cobalt violet glaze to the sky it really worked, and gently popped the foreground figure’s orange-y tones.

I’ve left this piece pretty loosely rendered, maybe more so than usual. Here’s how it went together:

Click in any of the tiled photos below, to switch to a slide show of progressives. To exit the slide show, click the small X in the upper left corner.

Moon Watcher 1: underpainting well underway! (oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in.)
Moon Watcher 2: underpainting finished! Let this drt for a couple of days (while I work on River Watcher) and then start blocking in the colors. Really pleased so far.
Moon Watcher 3: blocking in some colors. A long painting session yesterday!
Moon Watcher 4: Highlights and midtones going in on the figures.
Moon Watcher 5: another evening’s work – midtones and darks in the figures, hazing up the sky with a greyish-white glaze.
Moon Watcher 6: a long time off the easel, but cookin’ again! Went into darker darks, clearer midtones and forms in the foreground, experimenting with background foliage. Seeing the original statuary a couple of weeks ago really helped.
Moon Watcher 7: adding more depth with lights, darks, and focus. Planning to glaze the sky a bit darker, finish the foliage…
Moon Watcher 8 — finished! Formal photo at top of page. May submit this for Rude and Bold Women…

Inspiration, impetus, or … just making art

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Inspiration is for amateurs
::: inspiration: noun in·spi·ra·tion \ˌin(t)-spə-ˈrā-shən\  1. something that makes someone want to do something or that gives someone an idea about what to do or create : a force or influence that inspires someone  2. a person, place, experience, etc., that makes someone want to do or create something  3. a good idea ::: impetus : noun im·pe·tus \ˈim-pə-təs\ 1. a force that causes something (such as a process or activity) to be done or to become more active 2. a force that causes an object to begin moving or to continue to move  / Merriam Webster Dictionary

I’m a great adherent of Chuck Close’s declaration that “inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” There’s more to that quote, about the work producing the direction, and how you won’t get much done if you wait for inspiration. I don’t know; maybe that’s a purist’s point of view, and maybe I’m too old to become a purist. But I’ve been in a slump for months, now, and not painting much at all (except for the demo piece for my last painting class, and that was dreadful). I’ve been meaning to sew — an art I also love — but not doing that either. Meaning to clean up my office and studio, getting a bit done but not much, and of course, meaning to paint. But not. Even meaning to doodle and sketch, for pity’s sake, but not doing much of that either. I’ve been reading, mostly. Reading good stuff — mostly Margaret Drabble — but not painting with any will.

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Breakfast at the Roycroft Inn

However. A couple of weeks ago on a Sunday, Sweetie celebrated my 65th birthday by taking me on a rural New York State ramble, unbooked, unplanned, heading roughly in the direction of Niagara Falls via secondary roads. The weather was perfect, the scenery beautiful — I’m sorry I took so few photos! Stops at the Glen Curtiss Museum, a stay in Brockport, a brief excursion past the falls in Canada, a stay at the wonderful Roycroft Inn (and campus), and finally, a long stop at the amazing Corning Museum of Glass, before heading for home under the threat of thunderstorms… so refreshing.

Bronze statue of Artemis and a deer - Greek or Roman, Late Hellenistic or early Imperial, 1st cent. BC or 1st cent. AD
Bronze statue of Artemis and a deer – Greek or Roman, Late Hellenistic or early Imperial, 1st cent. BC or 1st cent. AD – Metropolitan Museum of Art

The following Saturday, I got on a bus for NYC with a group from the Fine Arts Society of the Southern Tier, and spent a fabulous day in the City looking at great art with fine companions — including a visit to the Met’s John Singer Sargent collection and the Artemis/Diana bronze (which is the basis of my current painting, Moon Watcher).

And I’ve had this bunch of lovely new-to-me paints, given me out of the blue by a colleague, just waiting to get into a real painting instead of minor dabbling…

So: was it inspiration that got me painting again? Or impetus? Is there a difference? Would Chuck Close see one? I kinda think not, but that’s the way that cookie crumbles. I’m just happy to be working again.

 

River Watcher

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River Watcher
River Watcher: oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

I worked on River Watcher and Night Watcher (see the previous post) concurrently, switching off as one dried enough to work on, and then the other did. Each time I switched – rolling my taboret cart from one to the other, shifting the left-hand easel (River Watcher) to fit the taboret between or beside each piece – it was emotionally difficult to leave the one I was quitting. But I’d gamely work into the current piece, and eventually be reluctant to leave that one! Guess I’m a bit obsessive.

GreenBoat Studio
Working concurrently in GreenBoat Studio

I have a penchant for the 19th-century visual sense, both the popular esthetic and the experimental high art of the time, and it’s showing more and more in my painting. Maybe it’s hokey, but it’s me – at least for the time being. The figure in River Watcher is from the same photo shoot, same cemetery in Manchester, NH, as the one in Night Watcher – another muse-like beauty. She’s placed beside the Susquehanna River in Endicott, NY.

This is the first piece I’ve done, since childhood, which features an expanse of water, and I’m quite pleased with it. A lot of the underpainting is left to show, and I like the resulting depth.

River Watcher presented more challenges than the previous piece, as you can see in the progression below.

Click in any of the tiled photos below, to switch to a slide show of progressives. To exit the slide show, click the small X in the upper left corner.

 

River Watcher 1: underpainting started
River Watcher 2: underpainting coming along nicely.
River Watcher 3: underpainting finished!
River Watcher 4: beginning of color block-in, with light grey-blues in sky and river; greyish browns, greens, pinks on hillside. Underpainted trees show through, to be painted in again later.
River Watcher 5: color block-in continues. Greens added and wiped back in river, white/veridian green semi-transparent glaze over the figure. Some re-drawing on the foot.
River Watcher 6: blocking in the lights on the figure, more darks in the river, and added lights on the river in the same hue as on the figure, for color harmony.
River Watcher 7: values blocked in on figure – a bit too angular.
River Watcher 8: thinking maybe I should lighten up the figure again, after the dark glaze. Definitely have to cut some sky color back into the foliage (can’t believe I thought this was almost done).
River Watcher 9: thought I was nearly finished — just needed to delineate the geese, cut some lights into the darks of the trees and the figure — but I wound up re-painting the entire figure. It was just too choppy and muddy. Much happier with it now, but have to do some more work on the form of the wrist/hand. (The darks under the new surface inform it nicely, I think — I did as much wiping out as I did painting in.) Then lights to thin the trees, and subtle clarification of the geese. This one’s taking a while!
River Watcher 10: finished! just a little clarification of the geese, hand and wrist corrected, lights cut into tree foliage, and blues greyed down just a bit.

Night Watcher

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Night Watcher – oil on canvas, 40 x 30 in.

On with my Watchers series. This is Night Watcher, a piece I’ve been meaning for a very long time to do.

It was an oppressively grey late afternoon when I went for a photo shoot in a large old cemetery in Manchester, New Hampshire. We’d driven by it many times since we’d moved to Manchester, and I had always meant to go back with a camera. The place was FULL of 19th-century statuary and elaborate gravestones – obviously it had been a resting place for the wealthier dead. The day I finally went back was a bad one for me – I’d gotten a flu shot the day before, and had woken crushingly depressed yet restless. I had to do something, get out of the house, and for some reason the cemetery seemed appropriate. The light was diffuse, so there were very few clear shadows, yet it was bright enough and low enough to make the figures into mostly silhouettes. At best I’m only a point-and-shoot photographer, and the digital camera I used was not all that good – the year was 2005, and I didn’t even know how to eliminate the timestamp on the images. I also didn’t know just what I was going to do with these images. But it was a satisfying task, and I found out the next day that the flu shot that year had caused depression and anxiety in many people.

I’ve tried a few times to use this particular image in artwork – I still have a couple of attempts in colored pencil, and one in graphite pencil – but until I gave the landscape and figure a night sky, it hadn’t really worked.

Here’s how the painting went together:

Click in any of the tiled photos below, to switch to a slide show of progressives. To exit the slide show, click the small X in the upper left corner.

Night Watcher 1: rather than starting with a detailed underpainting, I began with a toning of dark blue
Night Watcher 2: color block-in, but got values a bit off.
Night Watcher 2b: color block-in detail
Night Watcher 3: lightened up the value of the sky, differentiated the colors in the sky, started the landscape below. A whole lot easier to say than to do!
Night Watcher 4: detailing the figure… a bit too much, I think, so will probably glaze over it next, and work on the foliage. Stars (yes, stars!) will be last.
Night Watcher 5: figure glazed with a blackish violet, tree branches feathered with sky color.
Night Watcher 6: Might even be finished. I’ll let it simmer for a while on the easel… Landscape finished (and I love the way it’s turned out); stars give the whole thing depth and contrast, and more defined direction.

The First of the Watchers

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Woods Watcher, 24 x 36 in., oil on canvas
Woods Watcher, 24 x 36 in., oil on canvas

I still haven’t figured out how to show a progressing project with alerts to my followers, so I’m continuing to post progressives on my professional Facebook page. But here’s the whole progression (below) of the first of my “Watchers” series. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s turned out, and I’ve submitted it for the Arnot Regional.

So, what is a Watcher? It’s a concept I picked up somewhere in my youthful reading — Watchers were pagan religious symbols, or figurines, or minor deities, ensconced or trapped in tree trunks along hidden paths. The idea took root in my mind, and when in middle age I lived in the back hills of northern Pennsylvania, there were a couple of standing tree stumps along the road that I mentally christened “the Watchers” — they seemed alert, attentive. Statuary sometimes strikes me that way, especially in incongruous or unexpected settings. And then I ran across a mannequin head in an Etsy shop that triggered the “Watcher” alert in me. With permission from the generous shop owner, I’ve commenced a series of paintings based on her mannequin (this one), as well as more statuary, mannequins, and other humanoid objects as they dispassionately observe the impending disasters of our world. There is something in them that is positive — not hopeful, not despairing — but also not clinging, and open to whatever comes.

I don’t normally explain my work and motivation like this, but this piece comes from deep within me. And that I can’t explain. I can only let whatever is in me manifest itself in my work, with little or no conscious input from me. As I tell my painting students, don’t put any effort into expressing yourself or your emotions — that will happen despite your best efforts, and it’ll be more genuine if you just let it happen while you’re concentrating on other things. After so many years as a rational planner and designer of publications, I myself find this a hard lesson.

Click in any of the tiled photos below, to switch to a slide show of progressives. To exit the slide show, click the small X in the upper left corner.

New year, new paints, new paintings, new process

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newpaints.jpgOh boy — new professional-grade paints arrived yesterday from Blick: Gamblin* oil colors in my basic palette! (And a free sample tube of Titanium White Alkyd!) Compositions and canvases were all ready… and today I started two new paintings: Winter Solstice, 30 x 24 in., and Watcher 1, 36 x 24 in. Both are still in underpainting stages (one simply tinted). I’m continuing to use Blick* student-grade oil colors for tinting, but I’ve added a couple of new pieces to my process: first, I’m giving up acrylics for tinting oil canvases: the colors just aren’t as translucent or luminous as oils. Second, I’m very roughly brushing in the painting subject in the tint — before gridding — as a first stage of the underpainting. I’ll correct the drawing in the values phase (as I have in Winter Solstice).

For several years now I’ve published albums of “progressives” — photos of and comments on my new paintings as they progress through various stages — on my “Artist/Designer” page on Facebook. But this year I’m going to try tracking that progress here on my blog, instead, in the form of galleries. My only puzzlement is how to let my blog followers know when a new photo has been posted in an established gallery. Hmmm. If you have a suggestion, please let me know!

*Neither Gamblin nor Blick Art Supplies has paid me for these endorsements. I just like them.

The Holidays,and my 2015 card

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"Solstice"
Solstice — original digital montage, my 2015 Yuletide/Christmas card.

Another year, another Christmas card panic, but this year my solution was different; I’d found an earlier un-executed digital montage I meant for a card a few short years ago, and thought I’d like to use it this year. So I started (way too late, of course!) a painting. It’s coming along well, but I realized I’d never have it done in time to send a photo of it off to Shutterfly in time for Christmas, so I simply played with the original image in Photoshop. So pleased with the way it came out! The cards may be a little late in going out (and what else is new?) but they’ll be lovely, I think. And right, my hand never touched the image — my definition of “art” includes that I must be able to touch it — but it IS original. Enjoy!

However you celebrate, wishing you all lovely winter holidays.

 

A fine first class in Exploring Oil Painting

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Session 1 - Exploring Oil Painting, 7-20-15
Wish I’d photographed the underpaintings later — what a strong showing.

The conditions were not perfect — a scorching hot and humid day, so the blinds were closed, limiting natural light; the window-unit air-conditioner making that low humming noise that makes chat so difficult — but what a strong group I gathered for this rendition of Exploring Oil Painting at Your Home Public Library. 014 The underpaintings were wonderful, and everyone was so helpful in helping me clean up at the end. There were lots of questions, including a request towards the end for a full critique. I did my best in all of this, and in return got hugs, thanks, and promises to come back next week. I do love teaching this class. It’s so varied in enrollment, and filled with people who really want to learn. I do my best to oblige. Thank you, YHPL, for this teaching opportunity! And thanks to the students, who continue to challenge me, and grant me such rewards.