Category: Work from the studio

Color on black Friday

November 29, 2019

Today is considered black Friday in shopping circles in the United States. Personally, there’s nothing I really need, or at least want bad enough to go fight the crowds for a black Friday sale. The things that I do want but don’t happen to have, can’t be found in a big box store anyway.

That being said however, I decided to spend the day in the company of my sweetheart and work at my easel. I didn’t have a particular person in mind but wanted to practice on the human face. This experiment is with direct but slightly back light on a female face.

I like some of Vermeer’s chiaroscuro  lighting because of the drama but I didn’t want to be quite that severe so I just played with the puzzling of how light and dark behave in this instance. It’s been fun and good to keep stretching my knowledge through practice.

So today, I give you a little bit of color on black Friday.

Inertia wins the day

November 16, 2019

Today has certainly not followed the way I planned it but sometimes you just have to make a judgment call and roll with it. I was having a lot of fun this morning painting those horses that you saw in the post at mid-day, so I decided to sit down at the drawing board and keep going.

2 years ago I was at the Farm Museum on Washington Island for an event over the 4th of July, and I painted a plein-aire of a little calf that they had in a pen there. It was a sweet little thing and I enjoyed painting him. I called the piece, New Friend. Last year, when we set up camp again on Washington Island at the Farm Museum, I noticed they had two adult cows and sure enough one of them was my friend. Now of course the cow is an adult but I recognized the spot pattern and his affection for daisys. Since today’s theme seemed to be around painting animals that I like, I went ahead and painted that calf now grown. I guess I’ll have to name this painting Old Friend, in honor of the 1st painting. I’ve enjoyed painting all day. I hope you had a fun day as well.

Remembering the Little Bighorn hills.

November 16, 2019

I’ve been thinking about our wonderful trip out West last June and decided to revisit a few of our stops and scenes through the course of this Winter in the studio. That’s what I take those pictures for, after all.

This morning I was thinking about how we would encounter the wonderful wild horses at many of the places we stopped. I’ve always loved horses anyway and find myself taking pictures of them whenever I see them in the fields. In this case, they would often walk by where we were parked and I would just stand fascinated … because it’s their turf, not mine. This morning’s study is a small canvas, 11 x 14. It’s a quick study of a couple of the horses from the Little Bighorn battlefield area. This mare was a little bit nervous about me being anywhere near her colt and other mares began to move to the forefront to protect her.

Quickly done, it is good practice and fond memories.  Not sure if it’s done, but I’m done for now. Enjoy.

Process that traces reflection

November 4, 2019

The series of small images on the right are shots I took through the process of painting this last weekend. 

The canvas is relatively large for me at 24 by 30″ but I’ve been finding that painting a little larger allows me the freedom to use the larger brush and to be more gestural as I lay it out. The subject matter for this one was a little bit of an aggregate of several images that I had. First was a photograph that I had taken years ago close to home that had great light behind a good storm cloud. It wasn’t your basic thunderhead, but more of a whole weather front and it intrigued me.

Second, I’ve been wanting to try to capture one of those wonderful waves of rain that come out of a storm cloud in a thunderstorm so this was going to be a try at that too.

In addition to that challenge, I had just gone back and  watched one of the episodes of Outlander and been enjoying the wonderful vistas they filmed of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina. They really are lovely hills and I have seen them many times in person. 

As a result I put all those elements together into this new picture. The final photo is taken at an angle while the painting is on my board so that you can see where it stands right now. It may be considered done, or it may be that I’ll dither with it a little more, but it’s close enough to show you. Sometimes paintings are just about the learning process; discovering how values laying next to each other affect our perception of that color; discovering how detail or lack of detail can control the wanderings of the eye; or how we can control and vary the lighting in 2 different places on a landscape.

My thanks to an artist friend and our conversation on Sunday. You gave me a great deal to ponder. Sometimes having something mulling around in your mind while you’re at the easel helps by running two conversations at the same time like sub processing while you’re working. Enjoy this final painting titled “Watching the Storm from the Ridge”.

Painting while I think

November 3, 2019

I’ve spent some time the last several days thinking about a conversation I had with a colleague last Wednesday. We talked about art and time spent with other artists talking about their work, and it got me to thinking again about what constitutes good or bad work, the learning process, and whether we should be open and transparent about what we do. I found myself kind of excited at one point — I would say more frustrated and angry — and this colleague laughingly told me the best thing I could do was to go home and get it out of my system and paint something. I realized I do that more often than I care to admit … channel emotions out onto a canvas. This little oil sketch is the piece that happened as I worked my way through that process. By doing this I was able to examine and address the feelings and put them in perspective. Sometimes it’s good to do a little painting to cleanse your palate or align your emotions before you start the next one. I hope you enjoy it.

The next post I do will be to show the process, or at least 4 or 5 captures, of the new painting I started on Saturday. I had conversation with another artist friend of mine this morning and it was most helpful to continue the introspective process I had begun, encouraging me and adding energy to that one on the easel.

Stay tuned.

 

Copyright conundrum and personal consumption.

October 20, 2019

I have talked before about copyright as it applies to painting an image that you do not have the rights to, and here is a prime example.

In one season of the Starz production of Outlander [based on the Diana Gabaldon book series] I had seen a picture of an actor (Sam Heughan) and liked the lighting. As a result, I decided to paint the image. Here’s where copyright comes in. Copyright law dictates that I cannot display the finished painting in a gallery, sell the original, or make prints of it until I get back permission from the actor and from the owners of the movie. It’s too bad really, but I completely understand it. Intellectual property, whether it be the creation of who you are and your place in the world, or the intellectual property of the person who made the movie or owns those rights, must be respected. I enjoyed painting it and I share it here at an angle in my home so you cannot reproduce it. The photo doesn’t do it justice as it lacks the quality that seeing it truly does. I had fun, and it was good practice. 

Painting something like this makes me wonder about the folks who do fan art, and whether or not they worry at all about such things? Perhaps it’s because I have aspirations of notoriety someday, but I do worry and I sure don’t need to have the wrath of lawyers down on my head. If you’re a friend of the actor or know who to ask about the movie permissions, let me know. 

So for your enjoyment, in a voyeuristic kind of way, I give you Jamie looking contemplaitively out the window at Lallybroch.

Opportunities continue to arise.

October 10, 2019

Today I am so pleased to hear that the book I illustrated for author Michelle Minor Smith has come off the press. She is a horsewoman with a passion for God’s creatures and her story is about a racehorse who was no longer earning his keep – considered past his prime. 

I am proud to have illustrated the book and to help her in her efforts to help with racehorse rescue awareness. 

It will soon be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and a Christian bookstore near you. Michelle will also do book signing events at bookstores and libraries, and I hope perhaps I can join her on occasion.

Continuing to evolve.

August 25, 2019

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we, as artists, accumulate information and use it in what we create. We continually think about comments we hear and think about images that we see and internalize what we admire or dislike about them. We live and work and rejoice and cry and absorb bits of everything into a fluid and cumulative story. 

If we take the time to analyze even some of the barrage of input coming at us, as an artist it can’t help but influence our work. That should never be something that causes angst. It is not a frightening evolution but instead an exhilarating and stimulating one.  For those who have been watching my painting progress over the last 4 years, you know that I have gone from a much more tight and illustrative style to a slightly more impressionistic and gestural one. I have always admired the impressionistic looseness and how that imbues life and vibrancy.

My personal style is admittedly not as loose as those artists found within that artistic movement. Some of my current peers that I admire greatly are also gestural and impressionistic in their medium handling. I love the look that they are achieving, and it can’t help but influence my work and change it somewhat.

We are an accumulation of what we admire and absorb. My own transition has been intentional and part of a growth process. Painting in plein aire has been a tool to help me with that process and I am seeing a positive effect. I had an opportunity to show someone unfamiliar with my work, one of my paintings on my phone. Their reaction was, “Oh, I could never paint that loosely” . I found myself slightly startled and then pleased. I couldn’t help but think of how far I have come from a very strict pre-CAD pen and ink style, to a much looser handling of oil on canvas.

All of the paintings shown here are considered oil sketches, done en plein aire if you will, and considered exercises to help me continue to evolve. 

 

Completed painting.

June 20, 2019

I believe that the painting can be considered complete at this point.

I was able to work on leaves on the trees both Monday night and Wednesday night for a little while.  When I sat down this morning I saw there were a few, last little touch up bits here and there that I could do before I went to work.

Tonight I got a chance to shoot it. I know that I can continue to find little things to work on but I’m trying to teach myself to just stop.

This was an interesting painting to do because working this large is new territory for me. Oh, I know, I have done murals but that’s a whole different venue. So, that being said, it was kind of fun. I have gotten used to reaching for small canvases that I know people can find room for in their homes, but working large is so fun! Who knows, maybe I just need to paint for myself and stop worrying about whether they can be integrated into someone’s home.

Part of the motivation for this picture was my love of the Hudson river school, and the luminists who tended to paint large canvases of bold places in nature where mankind is a very, very small element. I feel humbled when I’m out in the woods or when we travel and I see vistas of mountains and quick rivers and cool woods.

I hope you enjoyed following the process with this one. I have sure enjoyed painting it. Don’t hesitate to tell me what you think…it’s how I grow.