Archive for April, 2011
Plein Air Painting Is for Me
The fact the I am a painter is a miracle! All my life I have studied the sciences and never took one art lesson until five years before I retired. Now, however, I love painting en plein air (French for “open air”), traveling and meeting new people.
When I was a child, we lived on a small acreage with a wooded area on a back corner. Occasionally, I visited that area and enjoyed seeing the different plants and shrubs and how the sun danced on the leaves. Perhaps that is when I learned to love trees. Much later I had a wonderful opportunity to take free art lessons at the nearby university. After I moved away, I went to the local gallery and continued with lessons. Several years later I moved to Maryland where I met plein air painters. We actually took our easels out to a field, set up, and I was overwhelmed! What do I put on my 8” x 10” canvas from that vast array of scenery? At the same time, I was hooked! It was exciting to be out of doors. As the poet said, “It doesn’t matter whether I got bee stings or sunburn, lost my brush or my picture didn’t turn out well, I still had a great day.” Now I enjoy beautiful trees everywhere, but when I want to paint, I look for those which grew in an irregular fashion or have seen many years of wind and storms, perhaps losing limbs in the process. Those are the ones that speak to me so I set up my easel and we have a face-to face conversation.
The Value of Play
Recently, someone wrote to Robert Genn, Canadian artist, asking him, “Do you ever fool around experimenting with your paints, papers and tools?” Genn replied that, “Anyone familiar with the miracle of acrylic painting has tried throwing in texture-enhancing items.” Genn said he couldn’t resist adding sparkle, confetti and streamers, also internal workings of clocks, radios, springs, pebbles, bones, shells and many other things. The point is that play has value in being creative.
The following are quotes from others on that subject. “Play is the essential feature in productive thought,” said Albert Einstein. “Whoever wants to understand much must play much.” (Gottfried Benn) “Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” said creativity coach Roger von Oech. “It is a happy talent to know how to play.” (Robert Waldo Emerson) “In art, everyone who plays wins.” (Robert Genn) “Your work isn’t a high stakes, nail-biting professional challenge. It’s a form of play. Lighten up and have fun with it.” (Sol LeWitt)
Little Bets
Peter Sims wrote a book, Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries. The idea is “fail often in order to succeed sooner.” When students are encouraged to do many small works, they can get through with the bad ones earlier and can get on with the ideas that work better for them sooner.
Suggestions: Prepare a large number of small supports. Choose a motif that appeals to you. Start painting everything that comes to mind, no matter how glib. Don’t get hung-up on out right duds. Go from one painting to the next – don’t waste time. Ideas breed ideas. Keep your strokes fresh, creative and confident. Always be in a state of acceptance and rejection. Steadily sort your work.
This reminds me of the teacher who divided her art class in half and said one half would be graded on the best painting they could create. The other would be graded by the pound – the more paintings, the higher the grade. The best paintings of the class came from those graded by the pound – they had painted the most!
The Workshop in PA
It was great to see Betty and Suzanne again. I showed them the paintings I had created over the winter and told them about a workshop I had just learned about.
When I took my car in for its oil change this past week, I had the pleasure of meeting Anna, a local art teacher. She told me about a wonderful workshop called the Haneau Workshop she will be attending in Belleview, Pennsylvania, near College Station, in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains. The workshop is May 9-15 and is for plein air painters. The cost is $90/day plus $25 for food, and overnight cabins are available at no extra charge. One can go for 1 day or for the whole week. The web site is http://www.snicholasart.com and Susan Nicholas Gephart is the artist and the one with whom to speak concerning this event. Her phone number is 814-360-2116.
When we spoke with her today, she made it sound like a wonderful place for plein air painters with much land available from which to choose a site for painting. My friends will think about all we discussed, but I think we will be making a trip to PA in about 2 weeks!
My Group
Now that I’m back in Maryland, my group will start meeting again on Mondays to paint and talk about painting. Tomorrow, it’s the latter.
We met as students of John Losonczy, art teacher at our local gallery several years ago. For a while we met on Mondays at Val’s extra house in addition to class time on Thursdays. Eventually Val needed the house for something else and our teacher had a terrible accident and was no longer able to teach. However, some of us continued meeting at my house.
At this point, Charlotte takes care of her grandchildren and Lee has moved away. We had a new member for a while -Leslie – but she is a practicing physician and when she stopped working, she took many workshops and now is far superior to the rest of us. We still paint with her sometimes, but most of the time it is just Suzanne and Betty who come on Monday. Tomorrow the three of us, dedicated plein air painters, will meet for the first time in a long while, discuss what happened over the winter and plan for our painting escapades in the coming weeks!
John Carlson’s Painting Procedure
John Carlson’s book Guide to Landscape Painting, originally written in 1928 and reprinted 4 times is a classic. The methods he used have affected thousands of classical oil painters of landscapes and are still used today. Here are a few of the procedures he used:
First, he makes a pencil drawing on paper, then draws on canvas with a half-dark mixture of neutral, warm violet-gray. Next, smear in the masses, darks first. He paints the colors slightly darker than they will finally be, then sets the canvas aside. A few days later he repaints the canvas, careful to not obliterate the underlying color, modifying the intensities as needed. He starts the canvas with palette knife and bristle brushes because they apply paint in a “fatter” way, ending with sables which drag one color over another. He is careful not to grind the colors together as that destroys the vibratory luminosity which results from the juxtaposition of pure hues.
Once the big color relations have been established, he binds these together in a “unity of light”. This requires a lot of slightly changing the tones that are out of harmony. He does not repaint such tones, but jabs other colors into them until they are swayed into harmony. This procedure ensures color vibration within the masses and engenders luminosity. He paints his darks with pure colors, never black or brown pigment. After deciding what the dominant color of the “black” is to be – cool, warm, or hot – he mixes the shade with deep blue, deep red and deep yellow or viridian green. While he paints his darks with pure colors, he is careful not to load them with too much paint. He puts the paint on thick then gives it a swipe with a palette knife, reducing the pigment to a nice “fat” enamel-like texture. If a tree is adequately treated as mass, volume, color and value, very little detail of branches and leaves is needed – the less, the better.
John Carlson’s Technique
The book I mentioned yesterday went on to discuss Carlson’s approach to painting. When starting an oil painting, Carlson encouraged his students to relax and “give nature a chance to sing to you.” Analyze the idea, not nature, then paint the idea.
Take a long time to compose the picture because the composition will either make or break the painting. Make changes as they suggest themselves. Turn your back on the scene and compose your painting in its entirety. In that way you will be likely to conceive the picture as you feel it. Afterwards, consult nature as much as you like for facts of color, texture, etc. This checkup will encourage you to fill every part of your canvas with interesting material.
When I paint, some scenes appeal to me, some don’t. When planning it on canvas, I try to follow the rules: don’t put the tree in the middle, cover the entire canvas, even allowing the picture to flow off the edge. If I have a really interesting spot or focal point, place it where the lines of the “tic-tac-toe” game would cross. Sometimes I even draw a sketch in my sketch book if I need to rethink the placement. I get excited about my picture and hope my feelings will transfer to the painting and eventually to the viewer.
John F. Carlson (1875-1947)
Recently, I read a book which listed twelve US painters of the early 20th century and described their methods of painting. The one which interested me the most was John F. Carlson, an institution in the American art world. His awards in watercolors and oil painting fill a long column in Who’s Who in American Art. His book Elementary Principles of Landscape Painting, written in 1928, was reprinted in 1953, 1958, 1970 and 1973. Recent additions have been titled Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting.
His words: “I would rather be in the woods than any other place on earth,” said John F. Carlson, one of America’s foremost oil painters, “ and I’ve spent a good part of my life painting trees. Naturally, I’ve gotten acquainted with them. Trees are a lot like human beings: rooted men, possessing character, ambitions and idiosyncrasies. Those who know trees see all their whims; see their struggles, too; struggles with wind and weather, struggles to adjust themselves to their society. For nature will not allow them to run amok. Heedless of their neighbors, their individual propensities must conform to the cosmic laws within their own democracy. Thus there is a certain rhythm in a wood; a flow between parts, a give and take that is rigidly observed”. What a great love for trees and the out-of-doors he had!
Home Again
Thursday afternoon I arrived back in Maryland! Although I enjoyed visiting with family and friends on my trip north, it was so good to be home after several days of traveling.
I know what I shall paint first! On my morning walk, there is one location where I can see a variety of trees, each a little taller than the one in front. I’ve looked at this scene often as I take my walk, but yesterday it was particularly appealing to this plein-air painter because each of those trees was a very different color – each was wearing its spring costume. One had flowers, one was dark red, one green, etc. So tomorrow, bright and early, I shall set up my easel and paint – even before I have seen my friends!
Plein Air Day
Art shouldn’t be confined to studios, museums, and trade shows. That’s why I love to hear about local initiatives to bring art to communities in new, interesting ways. For instance, the State Indian Museum and California State Parks are sponsoring the second annual “Plein Air Day.”
Artists are invited to the grounds of Sutter’s Fort State Historic Park – where the State Indian Museum is located – to paint and sketch the scenery. The artists can bring whatever materials they need to complete their work. The surrounding community is invited to walk through the grounds and view the plein air art as it’s being created. This sounds like a fabulous way for the public to interact with artists, and for both groups to learn from each other.