Plein Air and Miscellaneous

I'm gearing up for a return to plein air.  I'll be out tomorrow, Sunday.  Get in touch if you want to know where.  It's supposed to be in the 80's, after a cold, blustery few weeks.  I'm planning a major painting assault on the wine country, as soon as the vines bud out.  Paint-outs and plein air classes.  Let me know if you want on the list for updates.  I don't post where we're going until after we've been.

I'm painting today on a 20 x 24" landscape of the Sedona red rock.  I started it awhile ago and ran into design problems. Yes, think twice, paint once. Looking at it yesterday, I saw a way out of the impasse.  We'll see.  Dogs walked, check.  Breakfast yogurt down, check.  Palette clean and ready, check. Go.

PS, I want to go back to Sedona. I'm adding it to the paint-bucket list.

The Plateau was beautiful, warm and balmy with a gentle breeze.  The small amount of green in the grass from recent rains made the color palette so different from December.  It was Sunday, so there were horses, dogs and mountain bikes everywhere.  Wonderful.


Wednesday looks like rain, so we may do a studio day or push the paint-out to Thursday or Friday.  Watch this post for details.

Claude Monet at Work

This is footage of Claude Monet painting his water lily pond at Giverny.  He is working on a very large canvas, but notice the two white umbrellas that diffuse the light on his canvas and palette.  The brim of his hat also helps him see color.

Notice how often he looks at the scene.  Each time he looks at the scene he makes only one or two brushstrokes and then looks again.  Observe, observe, observe!

Don't be ambiguous. Commit.

I have been working on some paintings that I started in the past but had not finished.  With each one, even though they were started, I have had to go back to the beginning.  I thought at first this was because I had lost my train of thought and needed to find my way back into the painting.  It is more complicated.  I had to go back to the beginning because in each painting I had not done the work that needs to be done at the start of a painting.  I had not decided what it was that I wanted to do.  It's probably why I never finished the paintings.

I had not made basic, essential decisions about the value distribution in the design. About shapes.  Really, I had not decided what the painting's story was. You can't reach a destination if you don't know where you want to go. I'm rather shocked by the ambiguousness of my block-ins, about my reluctance to make decisions and commit to a direction.  What I am having to do with each of these paintings, is to decide.  Is to commit.

What shape exactly do I want a field to be.  What is the purpose of this tree to the design.  Do I want the painting to be about the sky or the land.  What is the focal point.  A blob of a tree is randomly placed because I didn't stop, observe what was happening in the landscape and decide how the tree was useful. I didn't make a decision about what to change and what to keep.

This has been an important lesson.  Block-ins are loose, but they are the bedrock of the decisions that make a painting.  Don't be ambiguous.  How can the viewer understand what I am seeing, if I am not clear about it myself, and not clear about how I want to organize that information.  Decisions about value, shape, placement and design have nothing to do with style, or whether a painting is loosely or tightly rendered.  They are the artistic process itself.  I need to confront and solve each painting from the moment I pick up my pencil or brush.  You can experiment with possible solutions (and there are many), but you can't paint the painting until you commit to one solution. Then, everything you do must support the direction you the artist have chosen.

Peter Wileman

I've discovered a new landscape artist, Peter Wileman.  The links below are to the video promos for his two videos.  They are short but he says some true things.  (Things I say!)

Wileman's book is "Painting Light in Oil". He works the design process and pays attention to the abstract composition behind the painting. The bold shapes are reminiscent of Colley Whisson and the subject matter and light are reminiscent of David Curtis. Curtis focuses more on the envelope of light, or atmosphere. The abstract focus of Wileman's paintings give them a very contemporary feel while still being representational. The pictures below click up to a larger size.

Plateau Reconnaissance

June, Vicki and I were at the Santa Rosa Plateau by 7:30 a.m. with cameras and sketchbooks.  My goal was to check out various vantage points at that time of day.  The sun was well up and the light was beautiful with lots of color.  The plateau needs that color because, at this time of year, the grass has weathered to browns and grays. 

We checked out four locations.  Stop One was the two trailheads from the main entrance at the Visitors Center.  The trails were too "in the trees" to offer a vantage point.  We could see only tree trunks, not entire trees.  Along the path the vegetation was waist high and prevented a view from any direction.  It has shade and possibilities for an intimate, close-up landscape.  (Visitor Center, henceforth.)

Stop Two was at the south Sylvan Meadows parking lot.  A half a mile hike, uphill, revealed a vista of large hills, dotted with California oaks and long views of the distant mountain ranges.  Great for the iconic California landscape.  The light, however, was either looking into the sun or with your back to the sun.  The scene was flat. This might be a good location in the late afternoon.  (Sylvan South)

 

The view from the south Sylvan Meadows lot, looking across the street to the north Sylvan Meadow parking lot was more interesting.  The shadows were falling from left to right across the scene.  No distant hills, though.  It is a mid-distance view of oak trees. This is a short, level hike from the parking lot.  (Sylvan North)

Stop Three was from the Vernal Pools parking lot, on the Los Santos trail.  A short, level hike of about a quarter of a mile ended in a close range view of very rolling hills, studded with oak trees in the close to mid distance.  The drama of the sweep of the hills would make a dynamic painting.  (Vernal/Los Santos)

Stop Four was at the end of Tenaja where June, Tim and I painted earlier in the year.  This is a view of a meadow and rock-studded hills in the foreground, with oaks in the middle distance and a far view of the San Jacinto mountains.  (Tenaja Meadow)

By 9:00 a.m. the shadows were shortening and the color from the light was almost gone.  When we finished at 10:30, the light was flat.  If we want the morning light, we need to be set-up by 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. and finished by 9:30 a.m.  June and I are going to return to all of these locations to assess them in the late afternoon light.

So, for morning color spots we will need to start early on the first day of the Plateau workshop. We will schedule a late afternoon color spot session, too.  I will be taking photos in both the morning and late afternoon, for you to work from in the studio part of the workshop.

I am going to create a Flickr account for plein air photos from our locations, so you can access them all.  I believe I can set up a group that will allow all of us to download photos, so we can share them. 

When we went on hiatus in June, all of you had reached the point where the next step was to work the process of making a painting.  We have the difficulty of being without a classroom, but the potential to move to the next level with the plein air and studio work is huge.  In the coming months, we will return to our several locations (MIssion, Plateau, Fallbrook, Temecula wine country) in the different seasons and build a body of work that really comes out of what you know.

The attached photos may not show the best light, but you can get a feel for each location.

September Paint-outs

I will be painting at a number of locations in September.

• Thursday, September 8th, Rancho Bernardo Winery, with the San Diego Art Department, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.; 13330 Paseo del Verano Norte, San Diego.  Members and friends.
• Saturday, September 10th, Tuna Harbor Park, San Diego, with the California Art Club, 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m; Tuna Lane at the foot of G Street, off North Harbor Drive in the Marina District.   Members and friends.
• Wednesday, September 21st, Santa Rosa Plateau, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.  Students of Mary Mulvihill.
• Saturday and Sunday, September 24th and 25th, Los Angeles County Fair, with the California Art Club, 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m.; 1101 West McKinley Avenue, Pomona.  Registered members and friends.  (I'm registered!)
• Wednesday, September 28th, San Juan Capistrano Mission, 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.;  26801 Ortega Highway, Capistrano.  Students of Mary Mulvihill.

Anticipation Frustration

I literally had placed the second brushstroke on a canvas, when life butted its head into my plans for the day.  There was no workaround except to accept and let go of art until tomorrow.  But, all day I felt anticipation frustration. There are times when I don't know what to paint, or how to paint or even why I want to paint.  I find myself doing anything but paint.  I've been known to count chocolate chips.  Those days have a pain all their own.  But today I was bursting to go hammer and tongs to work through some paintings with issues.  Design issues.  I felt the frustration of not painting ... all ... day ... long.  I wanted to kick life in the teeth.  I will paint tomorrow.  The flame is still burning.