A Gate of Opportunity, watercolor on paper, 12x9

This week I painted on site at Harvard in Cambridge, MA. I set my tripod easel in a tight corner in front of the tourist information office, about the only spot protected from the rain and from the groups of tourists. I painted directly, without a preliminary sketch or any drawing in pencil.


Many artists and students have concerns about using M Graham and other honey based watercolor brands in plein air work, especially those who have folding palettes with wells on the lid... But I used a folding palette and M Graham colors on this painting and even though it was a warm, very humid day, the paints did not run or spill. I stored my palette vertically in the bag, and kept a wet brush inside it, and it did not cause any problems. The paint was tacky in the wells when I reopened the palette at night in the hotel, but there were no spills. One reason is that the paint had been poured in the pans much earlier; if I had just added fresh paint the night before I may have had problems. At any rate, the only M Graham colors I have tried which have cause spills at all have been cobalt teal and cobalt violet--I no longer carry those colors in my plein air kit for that reason.

Crested Butte on the 4th of July

We had a wonderful trip to Crested Butte to visit our friend and great artist Peggy Morgan Stenmark. What a beautiful place, and so many subjects to paint! After the 4th of July parade, I did a couple of sketches and completed this 12 x 9 inch plein air study on Elk Avenue. I set up in the only quiet, shaded spot I could find amidst the buzz of the tourist crowd. The stage with the band and the food court were only a half block away... The shade did not last long, a couple of families congregated on the same spot, and there were many passers-by who stopped to view, ask questions, comment and tell me about their own home towns. And I did not realize I had been painting in front of a gallery until artist Ann Sharkey came out to introduce herself! I did not do any planning and just tried to capture a bit of the scene and ended up overworking it, but it was only meant to be good practice and fun, and so it was.

RRWS National Exhibit Bronze Medal

 

June has been full of nice surprises. The latest was the Bronze Medal at the RRWS National Exhibit in Moorhead, MN. I was not able to attend the opening ceremony last Tuesday, but did have a chance to see the show before it opened and the worker in charge of setting up the lights was kind enough to take this snapshot of me by my painting "No Left."

This piece retires from exhibits with a nice history. Initially, it was not successful and collected several rejections at shows, until I revised it by darkening the building and shadow on the right, and created a lead into the painting with the spatter on the foreground. After the adjustments, it was accepted into a local, a State and two national shows, and won an Honorable Mention and a Third Place Award.

It is a painting I love, not only because it shows one of my favorite places, San Francisco, but because its overall realism is undermined by the abstraction in the shadows and details, and I find the interplay of the two very intriguing.

Just Before the Storm

The Red Garage in Winter, watercolor on paper, 9x12

This winter in Colorado has been very kind to plein air painters. Lots of sunshine and mild temperatures. Last week, for instance, we had a cold front and very low temperatures on Monday and Tuesday, and then warm days again towards the weekend. I managed to get a long lunch break on Friday to paint this scene in Old Town Niwot, just before the next storm moved in and brought snow for the weekend. My plein air group was painting at the canyon west of Boulder and I did not have enough time to travel that far, so I set on this location roughly five minutes from my house.

The muted colors of winter make colorful elements such as this red garage by the old Grange building really stand out. I am using a technique of direct painting, without a pencil sketch, with just some general guidelines in permanent orange to define the major shapes. It is exciting to paint without the pencil boundaries but the drawing accuracy suffers.

I parked the car, opened the passenger door and painted from the passenger seat, with the tripod easel set in front of me by the open door. Only five minutes into it, and the owner of the restaurant next door was sweet enough to come by and offer me a more comfortable chair. I politely declined; I wasn't going to be staying long. Ironic that 99% of the time I stand to paint and no one had offered a seat on those occasions... And I was too focused on the painting to realize I should have taken the opportunity to order a cup of tea or coffee...

Mountain Town Best Buddies

Mountain Town Best Buddies

It was very satisfying to work on this painting of a back alley in the mountain town of Silverton, Colorado. A couple of weeks ago I pulled out the black and white print and the pencil sketch I had done a couple of years back. Several times before I had put them away not know exactly what to do with it, but I now spent some time remembering the light and atmosphere of the day, thinking through some of the challenges, and then proceeded to paint quickly to my plan, without any struggles.

I wanted to keep the detail to a minimum, just suggested, and I wanted to celebrate the simple joys of small town life, the quiet and piece that allow people to enjoy friendship, and I believe the painting suggests those themes well. I like the path of light, and the frame within a frame composition formed by the dark wall, the shadow and the pole.

Another from the Sketch Pad

Here is another study done without any pencil drawing on my 9x12 sketch pad. Using only planning marks made with a brush is very different from painting over a full sketch; it is not unlike painting in oils. I had used this approach before, but only in plein air and not in a series, as an exercise. I have been enjoying the challenge this represents--I have to pay much more attention to the placement of shapes of color, rather than the shapes of objects in the scene. Precision suffers, but there is a more painterly feel to it. (The photo is not great--taken with my iphone)

Demo at the Front Range Community College

Lunch Break, 16x12

Last month I had the opportunity to return as a guest to the FRCC in Longmont for a demo. This time I chose to demonstrate painting a street scene on Aquabord. Thanks to Camille and her students, they were engaged and attentive and asked excellent questions. They had a chance to observe how the paint reacts at a near vertical angle on this clay support, and how color can be easily lifted and areas reworked on this surface.

Aquabord is made of kaolin clay, and needs to be "flushed" (saturated with clean water) before first use. After that it accepts watercolor in a similar way as paper. Color lifts easily, so care must be taken when painting in layers not to disturb the previous application. The benefits are that corrections are easy, color can be lifted all the way to white, there is no buckling and the piece once finished can be sealed and framed without glass.

The image below is the result of the 1.5 hour demo.

The image above is the finished painting, after another couple of hours of work.

Demo Photo

Long Wait, Drive On

Long Wait, Drive On, watercolor on Yupo, 16x20

This is the finished painting that I started last month as a demo (see previous post). It resumes my experiments with Yupo and with urban scenes--I like the variety of perspectives and textures that this subject provides, and enjoy the challenge of portraying details on the slick surface of the synthetic paper.

The problem (or solution) is that Yupo makes it so easy to subtract pigment and repaint an area that it invites endless revision... I had started with a much simpler and more muted sky that I liked better, but the intensity of shadows and the brightness of the street color called for an intense blue sky, so I added more cobalt turquoise. It does look better in real life than on the photo.

I have several paintings and ideas in progress, I hope to start posting more often, as it is quite fun to share ideas and images.

Demo at Front Range Community College

Last week I had the pleasure to do a demo at the Front Range Community College in Longmont. My subject was an urban scene on yupo. Due to the longer drying time on yupo, I was not able to complete the painting during the class, but that was not the objective anyway. The goal was to share some of my experience and techniques for working on this new surface. During the one and a half hour session, I described both the thinking process and the many forms of paint application and removal--from the use of stamps and templates to watercolor sticks and sponges. The students participated with their comments and questions, and it was a very enjoyable time overall. The image shows the painting in progress.

ArtWalk Demo

The Dicken's Opera House, Longmont, Watercolor on paper, 22x15

Last Friday night, I did a live demonstration at a street fair. It was the first time I did a demo outdoors in the evening. The Main Street in Longmont was closed to traffic at 6:30pm and then all the setup activity started, so I was not able to start painting until 7pm. I anticipated I would not have daylight for long, so I took a photo of the street corner scene I wanted to paint two days before, and used that as my reference. I also did all the pencil drawing ahead of time, so that I would be able to complete the painting during the demo.
I brought a daylight lamp, but that meant intense glare on the paper and less than enough light where my palette was. But I did complete my painting and was quite happy with it, and the viewers gave good feedback as well. This is a view of the Old Opera House in Longmont, a very nice building... so nice in fact that I accidentally allowed it to compete too much with the other focus area of the scene, where all of the figures were.

This is a photo of my setup. I used M Graham watercolor paints (mostly azo orange, cadmium red light, viridian, cobalt blue, cobalt teal, ultramarine blue and quinacridone rust, in addition to some neutral tint) and squirrel mop brushes, and a synthetic round for details. I worked on a half sheet of Arches 140lb Rough paper, and it took me one hour and 45 minutes.

Upcoming Demo at ArtWalk

A week from today, on September 16th, I will be doing a painting demonstration, this time in Longmont, as part of the ArtWalk festival on Main Street. I will probably do a street scene of that very location. I always have fun on these occasions, the dialog with the viewers is stimulating and I end up learning a lot from verbalizing the process to the audience and getting questions and immediate feedback. If you have a chance, please stop by! The demo starts at 6:30 pm, at the ArtWalk demo booth on 4th and Main, across from Ziggy's Coffee.
(Photo courtesy of Gene Youngmann)

Urban Realism Workshop with John Salminen, part 2

Royal Street, New Orleans, watercolor on paper, 15x21

This is the painting I completed during the urban realism workshop with John Salminen. I used M. Graham paints, Arches 140lb cold press paper, a squirrel mop brush, flat and round synthetic brushes, and a round kolinsky for details. I had chosen my reference from a photo I took in 2001, and did all the drawing in advance of the workshop. I will comment on some of the aspects of the painting that illustrate learning points from the workshop:

1. The tonal plan corresponds to John's guidelines to use value to differentiate the planes of the picture: The background is built with light values, the middle ground with middle values and the foreground with dark values--the exception is the main figures, but that was done as a form of focus. John's demo and the work of other participants showed that the association of planes and values can work in any combination (middle>dark>light, light>dark>middle, etc.) and produces a successful feeling of depth. I also tried to use a wide range of values, from the white of the paper to very dark grays.

2. A lot of the light details were saved with masking tape and cutting knife, some were lifted with Mr Clean Magic Eraser--this allowed for the creation of very thin lines and fine detail.

3. The reflections on the sidewalks was done using John's method of wetting the paper, dropping color with vertical strokes of a flat brush, and softening the transitions with a hake brush.

4. The dark walls on the right were painted mostly with ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, which created a warm dark value that was competing with the warm color walls on the left. If I'd tried to cool the color down by brushing further layers of color, I would end up with a very dull surface. Instead, to fix that problem, I masked around the wall shapes and sprayed with blue color through a mouth atomizer, which cooled the color without significantly altering the value or luminosity of the shapes.

The resulting painting is successful in capturing the mood and atmosphere of a hot, humid New Orleans morning. John Salminen pointed out the role of the foreground darks in making the middle value shapes glow with reflected light.

Urban Realism Workshop with John Salminen

I have just completed a workshop on Urban Realism with the master John Salminen, in Colorado Springs. This workshop had been in my goals for a few years now and I finally had the opportunity to attend, and it delivered: John is a great artist and instructor; his wife Kathy the perfect assistant! The three day workshop was instructive and inspirational, and the twenty participants did a wonderful job under John's guidance. Some of the highlights were:

• John emphasizes a value plan, but unlike other instructors who used this as a device to maximize contrast in center of interest, John stressed the way to use values to separate the planes of the space and create depth.
• John demonstrated different ways of reserving whites, and of rescuing light areas, and shared his recipes for warm and cool grays and darks.
  
• We learned the use of a mouth atomizer to adjust value and temperature in our paintings.
• We also learned practical techniques for creating soft and hard edged reflections.
• One of the most important takeaways in my view was the importance of related middle values.

Another fringe benefit of the workshop was the opportunity to meet a group of wonderful artists, most from the Colorado Springs area, including the master Tom J. Owens.

In my next post I will include more notes and a photo of my painting from the workshop.

Demo at the Colorado Watercolor Society, part 2

This is a detail of the finished stage of the painting I started in my demo at the CWS general meeting last week, as reported in my last post.

The detail shows the variety of the color, texture and brushwork that went into the piece. Some shapes have been refined, added, lifted, taking advantage of the characteristics of the Aquabord support, whereas other shapes remain as first placed during the demo.

Below is the image of the complete painting:
A Morning in Inistioge, Ireland. Watercolor on Aquabord, 16x20.

Demo at the Colorado Watercolor Society

This week I had the honor to be one of several artists invited to perform a live demo at the Colorado Watercolor Society, as part of the program for the February general meeting. There was great attendance and the responses were very positive.

I did my demo of a painting sketch on Aquabord, for the benefit of those who were unfamiliar with this support. My subject was the same street scene in Inistioge, Ireland, which I had portrayed in my sketchbook and posted on this blog before.

During the allowed time of one hour, I did my best to answer questions and narrate the thinking process behind the painting, while battling very dry conditions from the air-conditioning and paint runs on a near vertical board. I worked with my usual squirrel mops, sizes 6 and 8, and synthetic rounds, sizes 12 and 16, and used a limited palette of ultramarine finest, perylene maroon, quinacridone burnt orange and cobalt turquoise, with some touches of sepia, cadmium scarlet and neutral tint.

Despite the furious pace and loose approach, I did not complete the painting, but there was enough opportunity to discuss and show the characteristics of the materials, demonstrate some techniques and offer a glimpse at what the normal process would have been like. Below is an image of the study at the point where the demo ended, I will work on it further and later post the completed painting.

Cloudy Irish Day

The images and stories of my visits to Ireland in March and May will continue to find their way into my sketchbook and my blog. This time around, I decided to practice by doing a sketch of a street in Inistioge, a beautiful, scenic village where I stopped for lunch on my way to Kilkenny. I was sitting outdoors at a cafe, and this was the view uphill from us. Only occasionally would the sun break free of the clouds in that afternoon in March. My goal here was to capture the atmosphere and the light conditions, using some muted yet interesting colors. It was a fun sketch and brings back good memories.

Trying a New Sketchbook

A page from my sketchbook, showing a sunset view of a back alley in Boulder, captured with a quick sketch in watercolor.

I have experimented with a lot of different papers and surfaces for my paintings, but had stuck with the same sketchbooks for quite a while. I have been using Moleskine sketchbooks, for their great format and sturdy cover, even though it is a bit of work to overcome the paper's resistance to watercolor. There is a watercolor version of it, but I don't really like the landscape format. I also use Arches 6x10 spiral pads, but it has the opposite problem, it is great for watercolor studies and small paintings, but does not work well for simply sketching.

This time around I am giving the Aquabee Super Deluxe 6x9 sketchbook a try. It contains 60 sheets of 93 lb neutral white paper, very slightly textured. It is a little bulkier to carry than what I've grown used to, but the spiral allows for more freedom during use--I don't have to hold it or clip it open. I included a photo above, and you can see it took watercolor well and ended up only a little buckled, even when I used wet washes--as opposed to my old Canson sketchbook pages that buckled severely and acquired a crackly sound when they dried. I have only filled out a couple of pages in this new book, but am enjoying it so far.

Grattan Bridge, mistake corrected!

Before: Grattan Bridge, Dublin, watercolor, 11x15 (detail)

After: Grattan Bridge, Dublin (detail)

In my post of April 10th, I wrote that my painting "Grattan Bridge, Dublin" had a factual mistake. Commentators were very perceptive and got it mostly right: It had to do with the direction of traffic, but I need to clarify. After having started the painting, I decided to ignore some of the figures I had originally planned in the center of the painting and replace them with a third car--I even thought the red tail lights would add to the interest of the scene. When I was done, I looked at the painting and realized to my surprise I had just placed the brown car going the wrong way, on the wrong lane, on a one-way street! So the problem was not that the cars were all wrong as suspected, it was only one car that was facing the wrong direction.

I could have left it as was, as a curiosity, or changed the location to make it all acceptable, but I opted instead to correct the problem. I lifted the color carefully and then painted the car again. You will notice that in the detail image above, the car now faces the viewer, as it should be.

Painting Ireland 4, What's wrong with this picture?

Grattan Bridge, Dublin, watercolor, 11x15 inches

This is another image of Ireland, but unlike previous posts, this was painted back at home, not during my trip. This was the evening of St Patrick's Day, and I was strolling around Dublin with friends. I took a reference photo of Grattan Bridge just before we headed to the Porterhouse Pub for live music and a pint. It was cold at the time and the sky was still bright with a soft glow, but back at home I decided it would be more interesting to make it a rainy day. This was painted on Fabriano Artistico Cold Press paper, with Schmincke and Winsor & Newton colors.

After I had finished the painting, I noticed a serious factual error (my apologies to Dubliners for it). Of course I took artistic license and modified a lot of things, simplified details, added elements from imagination--actually the entire effect of the rain was imagined--but there is one thing that is completely wrong and not intentional at all... Let's make it fun: I'll give people a week to view this and maybe leave a comment with the solution, before I post a detail picture with the explanation.

The Season Bells

The Season Bells, watercolor on paper, 12x16

This was an exercise in which I worked without any preliminary sketch or pencil drawing, and used mostly two colors: perylene maroon and phthalo green, with some cobalt blue and cadmium red. I started drawing/painting directly with color, with the bell tower, and worked my way out and down from there. This approach sacrificed some of the perspective, which became skewed, especially in the case of the foreground buildings. This was based on a photo of Venice on a dark, rainy day. It made me think of a cold Christmas eve and the church bells calling the devout to navigate the labyrinth of wet streets for their prayers. So I introduced figures in procession towards the church. The main couple was taken from another sketch I made of rainy Venice... This was a fun exercise, but definitely challenging.