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Tag: Monday Morning Art School

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Monday Morning Art School: the twenty-brushstroke painting

Mike Prairie’s twenty-brushstroke painting, in watercolor. He did the whole thing with a single 1.4″ dagger brush.

When I told my Composition and Brushwork students they were going to complete a finished work in twenty brushstrokes, they were skeptical. “You’re going to demo,” they insisted. Once they realized it was easier than it sounds, they—not to put too fine a point on it—nailed it.

Baby spruce in snow, a twenty brushstroke painting by me, in oils.

What will you learn?

The twenty-brushstroke painting is an exercise to loosen up our painting. It emphasizes simplicity, efficiency and intention. It means prioritizing the essential elements of composition. That teaches us to focus on what matters most.

Painting is always about strategy. Limiting the number of brushstrokes forces you to plan carefully before you start. You must think ahead about where each stroke will go, what color it will be, and how it contributes to the overall painting. This sharpens your ability to observe and distill a subject into its most important elements.

That is the basis of making bold, deliberate marks rather than overworking, hesitating or flailing around. Simplifying helps you see larger shapes and forms instead of getting mired in details. Since you can’t rely on detailed rendering, you are forced t focus on strong contrasts, values and color harmony to convey thoughts and feelings.

Lynda Mussen’s twenty-brushstroke painting in oils.

The twenty-brushstroke painting frees us from perfectionism and encourages economy of movement and painterly efficiency.

I do the twenty-brushstroke painting when I’m tapped out. It encourages me to experiment and take risks. It’s almost impossible to do a twenty-brushstroke painting that isn’t energetic.

How do you start?

First I draw… always. In this case, I wanted to understand a baby spruce’s needle and branch structure before I started to abstract shapes.

The twenty-brushstroke painting isn’t necessarily easier and faster to do than a conventional painting. It’s more thoughtful, less frenetic.

Start with a simple subject with clear shapes. A subject with defined forms is easiest, but with practice you can pare down most complex subjects into striking, recognizable shapes. Strong contrast helps.

For my class demos, I snapped a photo of a baby spruce. I drew a careful rendering of the wee tree in order to study how the limbs and needles branched out into space. After that, I drew a composition drawing, because if a picture doesn’t work in greyscale, it’s never going to work in color.

My twenty-brushstroke painting in watercolor.

Since I was painting a baby spruce in snow, a complementary scheme of blue and palest peach was an obvious starting point. I mixed sufficient paint so that I didn’t run out in mid-brushstroke. This is almost counterintuitive in watercolor, where people tend to mix smaller amounts with a brush, but it’s a great skill to develop. You can modulate and mingle the basic colors as you go.

I always test my watercolor strokes on a sheet of scrap paper to make sure the value, hue and chroma are exactly what I want. In oils, I can generally see the chromatic relationships on my palette. Knowing that value is the most important element of color, I get that straight first.

Each stroke is deliberate, with no dithering, correcting or overpainting. Brushstrokes should vary in length, texture, pressure and direction, but every one should have a purpose.

Work from the general to the specific. If you save details for the end, you may find you don’t want or need detail at all. In the watercolor painting above, I used one brush, a squirrel mop. In my oil painting, I used a #10 flat, a #6 bright, and a wee thing that was probably unnecessary. Mike Prairie used this dagger brush for his whole watercolor painting; I was so impressed I now want one myself.

Stop after each stroke to assess the overall balance and composition. Above all, resist the urge to overcomplicate matters.

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Monday Morning Art School: gallery and studio light

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Can you give me information on lighting for artists, especially lights that work well for watercolor painting?” asked my friend and sometimes-student. â€œI have a new table setup in a permanent spot now, but it doesn’t have much direct or indirect light from the windows in that room (they are under our deck on the east side of the house) and I am looking to purchase a light that will give me good natural lighting to paint by.”

It’s a pity she doesn’t have natural daylight, since it is the standard by which all studio light is measured. But we all sometimes need to work in less-than-optimal conditions.

Main Street, Owl’s Head, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The evolution of gallery and studio light

I’ll spare you the candle and gaslight, which were mostly obsolete by my childhood. Besides them, I’ve had incandescent, compact and regular fluorescent and LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) in my studio and gallery spaces.

Fluorescent lights are now illegal in my state and many others. Incandescent and halogen lamps are being phased out, but are excellent light sources for color quality.

In recent years, we’ve adopted LED technology. It’s more energy-efficient, longer-lasting, and offers greater design flexibility. LEDs offer color temperature shifting and dimming potential.

LED lights are now the most common choice for most lighting applications, but that doesn’t mean they are the best for color rendering.

Switching to LEDs can lead to a reduction in color accuracy, which we express as Color Rendering Index (CRI). The higher the CRI values, the closer a light source will be to natural daylight.

Evening in the Garden, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Color Rendering Index and more

“Daylight” balanced bulbs are a start, but they’re not the whole story. What’s most important is the CRI, which is 100 for daylight and usually 80 for LED, which is too low for accurate color. A few years ago, the best you could get in an LED was a CRI of 85. Today you can get CRI-90 and even 95 bulbs.

The CRI number indicates how accurately a given light source renders colors in the space it illuminates. Natural white light from the sun is a combination of all colors in the visible light spectrum. It renders the colors of objects accurately. Incandescent and halogen bulbs also have a CRI of 100, because they’re also broadband.

CRI is calculated by measuring individual colors and then averaging them. However, it doesn’t include some outliers, including R9 (red) and R13 (skin tone) colors. If you’re primarily a figure painter, you might choose light sources with high R9 and R13 values, in addition to a high CRI. How do you find that information? In the tedious small print on the manufacturer’s website.

Cinnamon Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How do LEDs work?

LEDs make white light by combining red, green, and blue LEDs in the same light source or by incorporating white phosphors on a blue LED to generate white light. That isn’t a full spectrum, which means that some colors are missing in the light reflected to you.

LED technology is advancing every day, and getting closer to representing the full color spectrum in white LEDs. The LED bulbs in my gallery are CRI-90 and tunable, with five different color settings.

My gallery has conventional track lighting, but the fixtures aren’t the important issue. Just make sure you have enough fixtures so the light is more ambient than focused.

Reflected light

The cleanest color light can’t override brilliantly-colored walls. My studio has natural wood shiplap, it makes everything too warm. Doug doesn’t want me to repaint my studio walls white (I don’t blame him; they’re natural wood). In the daytime it’s not a problem; at night, white reflectors help.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: cloud painting

Fog over Whiteface Mountain, 11X14, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Cloud painting trips up emerging artists more than any other element. To paint clouds properly, you must first draw them properly. Clouds are not are flat little cutouts, and rendering them like that marks a painting as amateurish. The same perspective rules that apply to objects on the ground also apply to objects in the air.

A two-point perspective grid. You don’t need to draw all those rays, just the horizon line. The vertical lines indicate the edges of your paper.

 Clouds have volume

I’ve written before about two-point perspective. It’s a great theoretical concept but a lousy way to draw. However, understanding it is useful, especially in cloud painting.

Draw a horizontal line somewhere near the middle of your paper. This horizon line represents the height of your eyeballs. Put dots on the far left and far right ends of this line, at the very edges of your paper. These are your vanishing points.

A cube drawn with perspective rays. It’s that simple.

All objects in your drawing must be fitted to rays coming from those points. A cube is the simplest form of this. Start with a vertical line; that’s the front corner of your block. It can be anywhere on your picture. Bound it by extending ray lines back to the vanishing points. Make your first block transparent, just so you can see how the rays cross in the back. This is the fundamental building block of perspective drawing, and everything else derives from it. You can add architectural flourishes using the rules I gave for drawing windows and doors that fit.

As a practical tool, two-point perspective breaks down quickly. In reality, those vanishing points are infinitely distant from you. But it’s hard to align a ruler to an infinitely-distant point, so we draw finite points at the edges of our paper. They throw the whole drawing into a fake exaggeration of perspective. That’s why I started with a grid where the vanishing points were off the paper. It doesn’t fix the problem, but it makes it less obvious.

All objects can be rendered from that basic cube.

(There is also three-point perspective, which gives us an ant’s view of things. And there are even more complex perspective schemes. At that point, you’ve left cloud painting and entered a fantastical world of technical drawing.)

Basic shapes of clouds using the same perspective grid.

Clouds follow the rules of two-point perspective, being smaller, flatter and less distinct the farther they are from the viewer. The flattest part of cloud paintings is at the bottom of the sky. All you see of clouds directly overhead is their bottoms. In between is a steady shift from side view to bottom view.

A flight of cumulus clouds or a mackerel sky is always at the same altitude. That means their bottoms are on the same plane. That’s because clouds form where the temperature changes.

We paint cumulus clouds because they’re ubiquitous and lovely. Luckily, they form up in consistent patterns, with flat bases and fluffy tops. I’ve rendered them here as slabs, using the same basic perspective rules as I would for a house. In reality, their bases aren’t square and their tops are far puffier. This is just so you see how they’re distributed in the sky.

When cumulus clouds start piling up into thunderheads, they appear to violate this rule of perspective, but that’s just because of their vast size.

Basic shapes of clouds using the same perspective grid.

I don’t want you to go outside and paint clouds with a perspective grid. This is just for understanding the concept before you tackle the subject. Then you’ll be more likely to see clouds marching across the sky, rather than pasting puffy white shapes on the surface of your painting.

Maynard Dixon Clouds, 11X14, oil on archival canvas board, $869 includes shipping in continental US.

Painting starts with drawing

In order to paint, you must first learn to draw. Sometimes people point to abstraction to argue otherwise, but simplification actually requires top-notch drawing chops.

That’s why I’m teaching a drawing class on Monday evenings starting a week from today. This class is always a hard sell because people think drawing is ‘hard’ or ‘boring.’ Nothing is farther from the truth. If you’re trying to be a better painter, start by refining your drawing skills.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: draw yourself a very merry Christmas

The ornaments we chose: a simple sphere for me and a globe-spider for Sandy.

I was surprised to learn that a few of the things on my tree are vintage post-war Shiny Brite ornaments made by Corning. That’s not because I’m chic, but because I never replace what ain’t broke. Here’s a Christmas-tree exercise Sandy Quang and I first did in 2017. All it takes is a simple, round, reflective ornament, and you can draw yourself a very merry Christmas indeed.

Those of you who don’t believe in Santa Claus or haven’t found the ornaments yet can find other spherical objects: marbles, snow globes, billiard balls, or even some tiny planetary bodies, if there are any revolving around your house.

Noting the axes.

Sandy was my painting student and went on to get a BFA from Pratt and an MFA from Hunter. She’s also my goddaughter, so it was no surprise that she was hanging around my living room in the runup to that Christmas.

I asked her if she wanted to draw with me. As all my best students do, she had her sketchbook tucked in her backpack. I gave her first dibs and she chose the spider ornament; that left me with the plain globe.

We both added details. Mine were the ellipses on the collar of the ornament; Sandy’s were the beaded legs of the spider and her first markings for reflections.

I’ve written about drawing a pie plate, which is the fundamental skill underlying all column-shaped objects from cups and dishes to lighthouses. Each are a series of ellipses on a central axis. A circle is even easier to draw. And a sphere looks like a circle when it’s down on paper. What could be simpler?

Both of us started with the axis of our drawing. For me, that was the vertical axis; for Sandy it was the axis holding her circles together. I mention this because when people say “I can’t draw!” they seldom realize how much of drawing is simple measurement. It’s best to learn this from life, since the measurement has already been done for you when you work from a photo. You can easily work back from life drawing to working with pictures, but it’s harder to go the other way.

Marking out the outlines of our reflected shapes.

Next, we put the appendages on our spheres. For me, that meant measuring the ellipses in the collar, as I demonstrated in that pie plate post. For Sandy, it was the beaded spider legs. Sandy was starting to note the overall areas of reflection in her spheres.

Sandy and I chose different approaches in the next step, dictated by the paper we were working on. Because I had a smooth Bristol, I was able to blend my pencil line into smooth darks with my finger. Sandy could only work light-to-dark on the rougher paper she was carrying. This gives you the chance to see two different approaches to shading.

We both worked on shading next. I finished my shading with an eraser, Sandy couldn’t do that because her paper was too rough.

Sandy has a shadow under her final drawing because the ornament was sitting directly on my coffee table. I put the reflection of myself drawing in my ornament.

All drawing rests on accurate observation and measurement. Get that right and the shading and mark-making is simple. A very merry Christmas indeed!

Our finished drawings: mine on the left, Sandy’s on the right. From there, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to painting them.

What does this have to do with you?

Yes, I’m on a drawing tear, because it’s the single most important thing you can do to improve your painting in 2025. I still have room in my drawing class starting right after the new year; if you’re frustrated by your painting, start with the fundamentals.

This post originally ran in December, 2017. It’s been updated, of course.

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Monday Morning Art School: treading-water syndrome

Coast Guard Inspection, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Canadian-American mystery writer Charlotte MacLeod coined something she called, ‘treading-water syndrome’. This was, “panic at being out of one’s depth. Fear that, if a case did not quickly yield up its secrets, it would remain forever impenetrable.” The character who said that was a middle-age college professor. By putting those words in his experienced mouth, MacLeod was saying that it happens to us all.

That’s just what happened to me at my first professional plein air event. I was slopping solvent around my underpainting, which made everything dark and muddy. Then I tried to use white to lighten that layer. In fact, I was pretty much breaking every painting rule I’d ever learned. Eventually, a friend came over and brought me up sharp: “Carol, stop this. You know how to paint.” I took a deep breath, wiped out the canvas, and painted the painting properly.

The Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

My friend Brad Marshall called what I was doing ‘flailing around.’ It’s a good description of one way in which we temporarily take leave of our senses. But it’s not the only way. There’s also:

  • Creative block: you suddenly have no ideas at all, or if something occurs to you, it doesn’t seem worth pursuing;
  • Obsessing over details: I’ve wrecked some perfectly wonderful paintings doing this;
  • Avoidance or procrastination;
  • Negative self-talk;
  • Imposter syndrome: “Why did they let me in when there’s so many great painters here?” Bobbi Heath can attest to how many times she’s had to talk me off this cliff;
  • Emotional and physical distress: in moments of stress, I’ve learned to look and sound calm, but my gut always betrays me;
  • Seeking external validation: That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it requires that there’s someone around who’s kind-hearted and intelligent enough to give you the right nudge.
Drying Sails, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed.

First principles

I just heard a story about a very competent musician who couldn’t make it in music. His highs were too high; his lows too low. He essentially never found a way to manage his panic.

One way to get over treading-water syndrome is to get older; you’re less inclined to panic in general. That’s not much comfort to younger people. And there are still times when everyone feels like they’ve lost control. How, then, do you get your ship righted with the least amount of psychic pain?

It helps me to have a plan. I approach painting the same way each time, and if I’m feeling jittery, I slow down on the value drawing until my mind submits. I teach every workshop from a syllabus. That’s primarily so I know I’ll cover the important stuff. However, when something unexpected happens, I can take a deep breath, return to my notes and keep going.

A plan is just an external support to our cognitive flexibility and self-monitoring. You can’t beat it.

Skylarking, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Eensy weensy bites

As you can imagine, there’s rather a backlog here after I’ve been gone so long. I’m pretty disciplined about studio work before housework, but some of these domestic tasks haven’t been done since October. If I try to tackle everything at once, I’m just going back to bed until after the holidays. Instead, I’m going to ignore the big picture and tackle one small thing at a time. It’s my best strategy to avoid total paralysis.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: digital reproduction

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed.

I get several messages a week asking me if I’m interested in selling my paintings as NFTs. My answer is that paintings are one-off tactile objects, not digital assets. Not that the shills for NFTs like taking no for an answer, but NFTs and fine art don’t really mix.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn a lot by looking at paintings online. The world has been immeasurably enriched by museums opening their collections on the internet. For example, the 99% of people who will never see Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch in person can still look at it brushstroke-by-brushstroke on the Rijksmuseum website. And the digital world has had a remarkable democratizing influence on the sale and distribution of contemporary art and music.

Dawn Wind, Twin Lights, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

But a digital image of a painting is never the same as the real thing. Recent research using Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring may validate this argument. Using electroencephalograms (EEG), researchers at the Mauritshuis in the Netherlands demonstrated that looking at actual paintings stimulates the brain differently than looking at reproductions. “The viewer’s emotional response is ten times stronger when they are face to face with the painting in the museum,” they reported.

Vermeer is what’s known as a linear painter, which means he focused on clarity, modeling, structure, and detail. That’s in contrast to painterliness, which means work that is less controlled, relying more on brushwork and expression. The researchers got similar results from the works of two other Dutch Golden Age painters, Rembrandt van Rijn, who is considered painterly, and Willem Van Honthorst, another linear painter. Apparently, it was the paint itself that mattered, not how it was applied.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869, includes shipping in continental US.

You may recognize this composition

Researchers also reported a ‘sustained attentional loop’ unique to The Girl with the Pearl Earring. People who’ve studied composition will recognize this as a classic triangle composition, a series of focal points designed to engage the viewer. While this composition has been used throughout art history, The Girl with the Pearl Earring delivers it as a quick one-two-three punch-up—lips, eye, earring.

More questions

This was a very small study of a very narrow period in art history, but it raises interesting questions. Would similar experiments on a broader range of art and artists show us, for example, whether other periods of art fare better or worse in reproductions? Would that information help us determine whether one kind of painting is objectively better than another?

The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Mona Lisa are both superstar paintings, known by almost everyone. However, Mona Lisa is almost unviewable in real life, due to the immense crowds thronging its gallery. If similar responses were recorded at the Louvre, would that mean that part of the response to The Girl with the Pearl Earring was due to celebrity?

Nighttime at Clam Cove, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $696 unframed.

An aside about scams

Because my phone number and email address are on my website, I get more than my share of scammy messages. I thought I was expert at weeding through them. This week, one of my students apparently texted me, asking me to follow her new Instagram store. When the texter asked me to send back information, I checked the phone number against my records and realized it was a clone.

What shocked me was that the bot seemed to have some idea of my relationship with my student. Was that AI or a lucky guess? I don’t know, but you can never be too careful.

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Monday Morning Art School: the secret to confident brushwork

I always carry a sketchbook with me when painting, and I always start with a drawing. It saves me tons of time.

People ask me how to develop confident brushwork. The answer is to get better at drawing. Yes, confident brushwork depends in part on painting technique, but it really requires that you not flail around changing things in the painting phase.

“Draw slow, paint fast,” one of my students once said, and I’ve found it as good a motto as any for developing a loose painting style.

Confident brushwork is about simplification, and you can’t simplify when the shapes aren’t right to start with.

One painter’s testimony

Pam’s sketch of her doctor’s office.

Pam Otis is a painting student who’s taken my drawing class. I asked her what her biggest obstacle was. “Silencing that voice inside my head that told me I couldn’t draw,” she said. “What finally put it to rest for me was when you talked in class about the developmental stages of drawing and how adults who say they can’t draw are really just people who got to a certain developmental stage but for a myriad of reasons didn’t take it any further.

“Once I realized that it wasn’t a matter of me lacking talent or competence, just that I hadn’t learned the skills I needed to progress, it made the whole thing less mysterious and more a concrete skill that I could get better at with practice. That was truly life-changing in terms of gaining confidence in myself and my abilities as an artist.”

Most people avoid things they find difficult. “Having the technical ability to draw something correctly makes it so much easier to execute a painting without avoiding hard things,” Pam said. Drawing gives me the space I need to ask questions like ‘What would happen if I…?’”

Drawing by Pam Otis.

Pam says the most surprising thing about drawing is that it’s so interpretive. â€œThere are so many ways that you can use line and shadow to tell a story, and what you leave out can often make for a more powerful image. 

“Drawing gives me time to reflect about my goals for a piece of art, lets me play around with the details and easily make changes. One of my sketches (above) is of a waiting room. I did it on site and it was time boxed. I learned a lot from that little sketch. I redrew the chair a couple of times because I wasn’t getting the legs quite right and I wanted the cushion to be nuanced. It was like figuring out a puzzle.

“It’s fun to spend time creating with other artists, but it’s also fun to draw out in public. This autumn we went to a busker festival and I drew some of the performers while they played and had them autograph my drawings afterwards. It was a nice ice-breaker when I was talking to them, and I had a chance to talk to some people in the audience.

Drawing by Pam Otis.

“There’s still a lot of mystique around drawing, and I like to think that by taking some of my projects on the road, maybe, just maybe that’ll be the thing that inspires someone else who thought that they couldn’t draw to maybe take another try at it with fresh eyes. I’m definitely glad I did.”

If you feel your painting skills would benefit from better drawing skills, I encourage you to take my six-week drawing class starting January 6. I can promise you that your painting skills will benefit.

The best laid plans

My assistant (or boss), Laura, who’s 31 weeks pregnant, has been bunged into the hospital for the duration. That means, sadly, that the last step of my Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painting will not be wrapped and beribboned for Black Friday. I can’t launch it without her help. It also means I’m in Albany for some unspecified time, since someone needs to rassle the four-year-old while his dad’s at work.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: questions for artists

Regrowth and regeneration (Borrow Pit #4), 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I’m finally heading home. Although I’ve been in the west for almost a month, it’s in the Hudson Valley that I’ve run into smoke from forest fires. Life can be odd at times.

I’ve been on the road for a month, which has meant lots of driving and painting punctuated by intense social situations. There are certain questions for artists that are asked at every event. Artists should know how to answer them; they’re the equivalent of our elevator pitch. Here are my answers; what are your answers to these questions for artists?

Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How did you become interested in art? 

I’ve been drawing and painting since I could hold a crayon. It’s hard for me to separate art as an ‘interest’. (Most people start life drawing intensively but give it up in later childhood. I don’t know why.)

Art history is really just the pictorial reflection of human history, and I spend almost as much time thinking about it as I do in creating art.

The Late Bus, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What are your influences? 

As a young woman, I was influenced by the Northern European Renaissance, in particular, Albrecht DĂźrer. The Italian Renaissance was based on secular, classical ideals while the northerners emphasized realism and faith.

Today I think more about the Canadian Group of Seven and Australian Impressionism. Both have a passion for place, something shared with great American regional painters like Maynard Dixon, Edgar Payne and Grant Wood, among others.

What is your preferred medium? 

Whatever tool happens to be in my hand at the time. I carry a sketchbook around with me.

What are your goals? 

To continue to paint and teach as long as the body permits.

How do you define success? 

Being able to sleep at night.

What are your most valued skills?

An almost-indefatigable work ethic.

What is your favorite and least favorite aspect of being an artist? 

An art career indulges my independent spirit, but that same trait makes me sometimes work myself to exhaustion.

I’m intrepid, but the flip side of risk is occasional insecurity.

What do you wish you’d learned in school?

How to run a business. I’ve had to teach myself, and it was much more difficult than learning to paint.

What inspires you? 

The beauty of Creation. I used to be far more interested in humanity, but now I mostly think about how much we’re all gasping for untrammeled nature.

When is your favorite time to create? 

Morning.

How do you know when a piece is finished? 

I can’t stand thinking about it anymore.

What is the hardest part of creating a piece? 

Finding uninterrupted time. It’s shocking how much of my day is taken up with the business of art. I always have more ideas than I can execute.

How has your style changed over time?

I am no longer interested in faithfully rendering reality.

What is your point of view? 

My work here, and whatever talent I have, is a gift from God, and my job is to use it to the best of my ability.

How do you handle negative criticism? 

Badly; who doesn’t?

What have you learned from criticism? 

On reflection, I often have to admit that it was at least partly justified. On the other hand, although I believe there are immutable elements of design, there’s no reason to believe that the juror de jure has ever learned them. In the end, I take my own measure.

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Monday Morning Art School: plein air festival etiquette

Country Road, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard, available through Sedona Arts Center.

There is something about Casey Cheuvront and Upper Red Rock Loop Road. Last year, a woman parked herself in front of Casey and gave her clients a long spiel about the magnetic energy of the rocks, while rolling magnets around on a metal plate. Another guide occupied the same spot to talk about ley lines. It’s distracting to have people looming in front of you, obscuring the view.

On Saturday evening, Casey, Ed Buonvecchio and I set up to paint the sun dropping over Sedona. We were careful to follow the etiquette of a plein air festival, which includes:

Snoopy in the shade, 8X10, oil on birch, available through Sedona Arts Center.
  • Respect the venue, and follow any rules;
  • Don’t disturb others’ enjoyment of the natural surroundings;
  • Don’t plant yourself in the middle of a path;
  • Clean up after yourself;
  • Engage with interested passers-by;
  • Be considerate of other artists. This means giving fellow artists space to work, and not getting in their sightlines.

Casey was tucked into the shadow of a juniper, painting the sunset. A swarm of photographers suddenly surrounded her. It was a workshop. Despite there being tens of thousands of acres of open land around us, and paths leading in every direction, they were packed so tightly around Casey that she didn’t have room to move.

Hailstorm over Coxcomb, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, available through Sedona Arts Center.

“Do you mind?” the instructor asked. “We’ll only be a few minutes.” Forty minutes later, they finally shoved off, but the light, and the moment, had passed.

It all starts with drawing

“You don’t always do a value drawing, do you?” Ed asked me. On the rare occasions when I skip one, I regret it.

Unfinished painting of dawn. I spent a morning sketching options, a morning transferring my best sketch by grid. I’ll start adding color this morning.

I’ve been going out at 6 AM to paint the dawn. In two days, I’ve done several sketches and gotten my final idea transferred to canvas. (I still have some foreground issues to work out.) My canvas is gridded because, yes, I do a value drawing and then transfer it to my canvas.

That proved very handy last evening as the shadows changed by the minute. I was able to reference my drawing when the light had gone. When you think you don’t have time for a value drawing is when you need it most.

Painted at the speed of light, 11X14, oil on birch. I haven’t decided if it’s finished.

Show ponies

Hadley Rampton and I were sitting on a fence watching the scrum at our first quick-draw. “I think plein air festivals are like the rodeo,” I mused. “We all know each other, we all go around the same circuit, we compete for the same prizes.”

“I’ve thought about that,” she responded, “but I think we’re more like show ponies.”

And on that note, I’m off to paint the dawn again. I’m sorry these missives are so brief, but plein air festivals mean long days of painting.

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Monday Morning Art School: setting up a still life

I start teaching my Rockport Immersive workshop tomorrow morning, and our forecast is for 100% chance of precipitation. I have a backup plan. Yesterday, in my amble through the woods, I cut various blossoms and berries.

Setting up a still life is great fun, but when you’re doing it for a roomful of artists, different rules apply. You treat it more like a still-life-scape, from which each painter can pull bits and pieces.

Whether you’re doing it for one or ten people, setting up a still life is excellent training. There was a period in my life where I painted a still life every morning, before I got on to my ‘serious’ work. It’s how I learned to paint with assurance.

Choose Your Objects

My theme for this still life was autumn, “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Formerly, I’ve done still lives based on internet memes, nonsense my kids wandered around singing, or things I like to do. Even a simple book of matches can be an arresting still life.

Get in the mood

In autumn, the mood is lush; easy, peasy. Other still lives may not be so simple. They may be austere, luxurious, absurd or romantic.

The color scheme is an extension of mood. In this case, it’s purple and gold, reds, russets and yellow. If I were doing something romantic, it would be lighter and more ethereal. If I’m being snarky, all bets are off.

A variety of shapes, sizes, and textures is more important than content. That’s why I threw in the pewter and aluminum. In this instance a drape would be overkill, but don’t discount fabric as a shape- and pattern-maker.

Two closely analogous items.

There are times when I’m looking for contrast, and times I’m looking for closely analogous objects.

Composition is key

I spent as much time gathering and arranging this still life as I would spend painting it. True, it’s massive, but in some ways, that makes it easier.

  • Do you have clearly articulated focal points?
  • Have you layered objects to create depth?
  • Is there a good pattern of lights and darks? Warm and cools? A good color pattern?

Don’t be afraid to keep fiddling right through your compositional sketch. You may find better ways of looking at the objects.

Lighting

I prefer natural light when possible, as it gives livelier color and a softer shadow pattern. Positioning your still life near a north window will give you the most stable light, but there are times when strong raking light is appropriate—but you must work faster.

Natural light is not always possible. If you set up artificial lights, don’t put them too close to the subject. Make sure there is fill light in the shadows, and think of the composition mainly in terms of the cast shadows.

Negative space

Negative space is the area surrounding and between the subjects. These interstices define and highlight the main elements, creating balance. Effective use of negative space creates interesting shapes and patterns, draws attention to the main subject, and adds depth to the overall piece.

Some artists use still life shadow boxes. I don’t because they excessively control light and composition. When I paint still life, I just ignore what’s behind it. That gives me the opportunity to create what I want in the interstices. It’s good practice in not being excessively driven by what you see.

Be inventive

I’ve painted pretty absurd still lives, including toilet paper, bubble wrap, bacon and a tin-foil hat. Still life is only as boring as you make it. Don’t be afraid to be weird.

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