A beautiful day!

I don't much write about "politics" on this blog (if that's even what you'd call it?) but I couldn't let this momentous day pass without noting my own sense of joy and national pride as we prepare to inaugurate Barack Obamato the presidency. A big part of me wishes that I could have been there in person on this historic day, in spite of the mobs of people, and in spite of the fact that I will likely see more of the actual inauguration on TV than I would do on the ground. As it is, I'll be celebrating by drawing (as one of my nephews would say) "nekked people" ;-) . I'm attempting to make good on one of my artistic goals this year by working more from life and tackling the challenge of the human form. To get started, I've enrolled in weekly class up in Alexandria, VA studying under the very fine classical figurative painter/portraitist Robert Liberace. Liberace is making a name for himself and he'sbeen featured a few times in American Artist magazine and other publications.

This class is a big one. Not surprisingly he's a popular teacher and in prior years students were lined up outside the Art League School for a chance to enroll in his drawing and painting classes. In light of that the school has expanded his class size to accommodate two classrooms full of students. So at this point I'm not too sure how much face time I'll really get with the instructor. Outside of the first demonstration, I didn't see him much in our room on the first day of class. But I'm hoping this will change as we all settle in to a routine, so that I'll at least be able get more of his input if even indirectly, by watching him interacting with other students my classroom.

Having said that, it was inspiring to watch our instructor's elegant handling of his drawing. I wish I had thought to get a picture of his demo with my camera phone, but I'll try for it next time. Meanwhile, here's one of my first efforts in life drawing in a verrrry long while. Boy did I feel rusty! I'm posting this drawing not because I think it's great, (actually, it looks pretty tentative, like a cave-man drawing compared to the masterful sketch of my teacher!) But I wanted to mark a starting point to track my progress (hopefully) as I go along.

How not to succeed at your goals while really trying ;-)

Happy New Year everyone! This past week, I've taken some time to reflect on the common practice of new year goal-setting, and I've enjoyed browsing around the blogosphere to see what others (and particularly other artists) are writing about the subject. Actually artist Katherine Tyrrell has made this task easy for me with the  great series of year end roundup posts she's provided on her blog Making a Mark--  the topics of which extend far beyond goal-setting (though there is a good deal of that too, including Katherine's own set of goals for the new year.) *Note of thanks to Katherine for foot-noting my blog posts on studio lighting in her "art studios in 2009" subsection of "Who's Made a Mark This Week". For myself, unlike previous years I am taking my time and being a bit more reflective about goal setting. Obviously there is value to goal-setting --otherwise there wouldn't be so many people finding satisfaction in doing it. But why is it that so often goal- setting fails to achieve the desired results? I think that in the past I've sometimes been guilty of goal-setting just for the sake of getting things accomplished, without really examining whether the goals are really worthy ones. Taking this approachleaves me feeling either unfulfilled even if things get "done" or disappointedbecause I didn't accomplish more. It also keeps me so in the mode of wanting to "get there already" that I don't enjoy the process nearly as well. 

So in thinking about how to set more meaningful goals for myself, I've also been thinking about why goal-setting so often doesn't satisfy. There are any number of reasons, of course, but here's a shortlist that I've come up against.

How not to succeed at your goals while really trying:

• Don't ask "WHY?" Why do I want (or think I want) to do, be, have, or achieve this? What do I hope to gain? How will this improve my life, my work, or the lives of others? These seem likeobvious questions, but without asking these essential questions first, it's easy to find yourself pursuing goals that aren't meaningful, and sometimes aren't even yours! (see bullet #2) In a nutshell, asking the essential "Why?" helps to get to the heart of what is driving you. 
•  Set goals that deep down you don't really care about just because you think you should or because others think you should. For an artist, these might include things like setting a goal to get work into a gallery or earn a certain dollar amount from your art, for fear that failing to do so will mean you will be perceived as "unsuccessful". Or setting a goal to paint in a certain manneror by a certain method because you feel others think it is a more legitimate form or method than some other one. Mind you, none of these are wrong choices as long as they support what you want deep down. But here's a tip; if there are a lot of "shoulds" in your goals, that's worth examining before you commit to them, to see if they really serve you. Otherwise, setting these kinds of goals can often set you up for feelings of "failure". If your heart isn't really in it all the way, you're likely to go for it halfway or not at all. 
•  Be unrealistic- It's been my personal experience that my trouble has not been the size of the goal, but the timeline I set to achieve it. Setting far greater goals than you can possibly achieve in a given timeline creates more stress than inspiration.
• Set goals that aren't challenging enough- Being realistic about time and/or resources doesn't meanyou should feel bored. If your goal leaves you feeling flat-lined, are you really going to be inspired to devote the time needed to go for it? In order to motivate myself, my goal has to be beyond my comfort zone. I want any goal I set this year to make my heart go pitter-patter. It should inspire, excite, ignite and sometimes maybe even feel a little scary.
• Be over-expansive. It has taken me a number of years to get this, (41 to be exact) but I think (I hope) I am finally learning that setting too many goals in a given time-period is not only hard to manage in terms of time, but it also splits my focus too much. I'm finding it's better for me to limit myself to fewer more meaningful goals in order to really give them the proper attention required.  This doesn't mean that I won't break the big stuff down into smaller milestones, but the milestones and activities should support one of my main goals, not set me off in 100 different directions.
• Set goals without making a plan to go about it. It does me no good whatsoever to set even meaningful goals without breaking them down into plans of action. In order to track progress, a high level goal could then be broken down into:
  • milestones along the way (these should be measurable)
  • activities needed to reach those milestones
  • a scheduleto carry out those activities (monthly and weekly schedules are good, but for me it has to be daily).
• Lack balance- This is a very personal matter. Some people do just fine with letting other matters drop for a while in order to hyper-focus on achieving one goal. Not so with me. I'm already an "uber-focuser" and unless I intentionally set goals that address all important aspects of my life, I miss out on fun stuff (like, oh,  sleep, proper diet and exercise, fulfilling relationships,  and time for fun, for instance!) And without those things in balance, soon there is no joy even in the things I dearly want to achieve artistically.

It's easy to jump into a litany of to-do's, but it may take a little longer to step back first and examine the big picture to see if your goals really speak to the greater vision you have for yourself. As I go through my own process I am finding I do have an overarching theme that I want to focus on this year in relationship to my art.

Back to school

Ideally this would include "real-time" instruction and mentoring, and I am hopeful I will be able to find the time and resources to pursue that. But after all, I have a ton of art books to keep me busy and they will help me to commit myself to a regular staple of study through experimentation, self-guided lessons, etc. *Note: For a fascinating and inspiring look at one artist's documented learning processes, check out Paul Foxton's wonderful info-packed site Learning to See.

Also, I love landscape painting and I will continue with this tract, but I'm feeling a great desire to become reacquainted with and develop a greater understanding of the human form. Along those lines, I will make a greater commitment to paint much more often from life--if not daily, nearly so.  Whether this means painting en plein air or still life or portraiture, (or even if it is a 5 minute sketch waiting for my haircut) I continue to see so much benefit to this practice and its time to commit to working from life as a regular discipline.

Obviously all of this will need to be worked out in greater detail into more specific goals and a measurable plan, but this is where I'm heading as for the year ahead. I guess if I had to boil everything down to one word I'd say that what it is I'm after is to achieve a greater level of mastery with my work.

Mastery

Now that's a big, expansive scary word if I ever saw one! And  while it's really too broad to write down as a year long goal,  it can be a guidepost by which my artistic goals can be set. It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery at something. Whether or not this is exact, what it tells me is that it's not something that's likely to be attained in a year!  It's not as if I'm starting from zero, but even so, in truth it may not even be attained in a lifetime, for that matter, even with a disciplined plan.

I do wonder though, as an artist, how do you really know you've arrived? Do you suddenly wake up one day and say, "I'm a master!" It seems a bit of a moving target. Each new level of understanding inevitably leads to new questions, new challenges, and raising the bar ever higher. To quote Gertrude Stein, "There is no there there."

To my mind, arriving really isn't the point. The way I see it, mastery has more to do with a state of being than a state of arriving. It's more about process than it is about product. It's a state of flow. Certainly there is tangible accomplishment produced as well, and I guess the accomplishment part is what we tend to focus on when we think of someone mastering something. But I really see those kinds of results as more of a by-product of something much greater. And yet, it is the by-products that are the most measurable so that's the starting point I'll use to make my plan.  Better get to it. 10000 hours is a long way off.

Oil painting substrates; Multimedia Artboard

The last few paintings I've featured from my recent France travels are done on Multimedia Artboard. I posted about this surface before when I was getting ready for my trip, and I thought I'd write a little more about it as a follow up. I really enjoyed this surface, especially for traveling and painting en plein air. For one thing, it is very thin, so you can pack a good number of these boards and not take up a ton of room in your suitcase. You can also cut the board to size very easily with either a guillotine-type paper cutter or an exacto knife.

In fact, it is so lightweight that when I first ordered this material I thought I had been sent the wrong product. I was expecting a board, and what I got was something that seemed more like a rigid watercolor paper. I even called the manufacturer to ask about it. I will say that the manufacturer was extremely helpful, and was almost at a point where he was willing to ship me some board from his own stock so that I'd have some for my trip, even though I hadn't originally purchased it from him. But he told me, "If it's my board it should be very rigid. In fact, it will shatter if you try to bend it." Sure enough, when I put it to the test, it did.

That's the one thing to be careful of with this product--but protect the corners in travel and don't drop it from a balcony, and you should be fine. It has a rough side and a smoother side to it, so you have a choice on which side to paint, depending on your needs. I also like that it accepts a variety of media--watercolor, acrylic AND oil. It can accept oils either as is, or primed, if you wish, with gesso. I double primed mine, but it was a little slick, so I think next go around I'll try it unprimed to see what that's like.

While the board is rigid, because it is thinner than a "board", I taped mine to a larger board (gatorboard or coroplast) to give me a stronger work surface.  For framing, I can simply pop it in a frame backed by a sturdier board and it's ready to go.

I am finding the Multimedia Artboard much easier to mount and frame after the fact than the other surface I took with me, a fine-weave primed linen. And while linen has luxurious qualities all its own, I can easily and happily see myself going back and forth between these two surfaces for my plein air painting travels.

Plein air panels for travel

This whole week I've been walking around telling myself that I was leaving for France in two weeks. What I realized today is that I'm actually leaving in a week. Ack! :-0 Yes, I have been known to fall down the worm-hole of time unless I am stringent about staying on a schedule. Many distractions at home have gotten me off of that lately, and here I am wondering where the time went! So since I've nothing much to say about the all the new work I've not done lately, I thought I'd still at least post something useful about traveling with art materials. I've written about this before, but it always seems to take me off guard when I actually have to get down to deciding what I'll take and what I'll leave behind. I'll be traveling to a very rural part of France , (okay, so it's not the jungle! But art supply stores are generally hard to come by in the countryside), so I really want to try not to be in a position of "need' when it comes to my supplies and my gear.

At the same time, I can't pack "everything but the kitchen sink", because for this trip I will be traveling solo to and from my destination. My husband, who named himself "Le Pack Mule" during our travels abroad, is sitting this one out (I can't imagine why? ;-) ) This means I have to be able to carry everything without relying on batting eyelashes for assistance. I haven't fleshed out my complete supply list, but my obvious "must haves" are also the things that can cause the most weight-- the easel and the painting substrates. Since it's been pointed out to me that I've spent so much time lately talking about easels, I'll mix it up by addressing the substrates:

Lightweight but still archival

I'll be painting on location for anywhere from 7 to 10 days. I really have no idea of an exact itinerary, but I always try and plan for the max. It is certainly possible to buy canvases overseas, (Hello? France? Home of the Impressionists!) but the problem is that since we've never gotten on board with the metric system here in the U.S., I'd have to deal with custom framing each non-standard canvas once I got back home.

Canvas mounted on lightweight panel is a better optionfor travel than bulkier stretched canvas. In the past I've used birchboard. It's lightweight and compact compared to many other hardboard options (masonite, plywood, etc.), but if I consider that I may be painting two to four canvases each day, that's a whole lot of birch and the weight and volueme adds up fast.

Gatorfoam (gatorboard) is a great option, in that it is offered in archival form and is also one of the lightest supports available. It is basically a very, very strong foamcore board, offered in a variety of thicknesses.

Picture framers often use Gatorboard, and this is what a lot of plein air painters use as a support for primed linen or canvas. Cheap Joe's and other art supply stores sell various size sheets,  and there are also companies that specialize in making panels of this material. But even if you make your own panels with this material, it can be pretty expensive when you start to consider any amount of quantity, and then there is the bulk of carting it all overseas.

One of the newer materials on the market is Coroplast. Coroplast is essentially corrugated plastic, and like Gatorfoam, it is extremely lightweight. However, while not as inexpensive as plywood, Coroplast is more economical than the Gator.

Interestingly Coroplast seems also to be getting the archival nod, and a conservator for the National Gallery of Art has noted that it is virtually inert in terms of interference with the substrate. I've also found references to the use of Coroplast on art and museum conservator sites for packing and storing fine art. The biggest beef with Coroplast for a plein air panel seems to be the fluted corrugation between the sheets of plastic. The fear from conservators is that over time the canvas, if mounted directly onto Coroplast without an intermediate barrier, would adopt this same fluting texture.

...Enter Multimedia Artboard

Multimedia Artboard is another somewhat new material, designed to be an archival substrate for a variety of media from watercolor to acrylic to oil. I've seen several references to the use of this product by traveling plein air painters. This board is made of paper and epoxy resin and unlike canvas, it is rigid but extremely thin and lightweight:

It has a smooth side and a textured side, both of which can be painted on. For oil painting, the common practice seems to be to gesso the board for a less absorbent surface ( though the company claims compatibility with oils without gessoing) and then clamp, mount, or to tape it to a larger piece of coroplast or gatorboard for painting on site. Since this surface is pretty thin, it would need to be backed or mounted to some kind of board with an archival, reversable adhesive before framing.

I've ordered some of this Multimedia Artboard and have a funny story about it that I'll save for another time. I had hoped to experiment a lot with this material prior to my departure, but given my current life pattern this may not happen! So here's the plan: I'm taking a number of pieces of gessoed MMAB as well as pre-primed linen in various sizes; all of which I will tape or clamp temporaily to a larger firm support of Coroplast on location. (I'm going for the Coroplast because it won't dent if clamped- Gatorfoam might.) Any painting could then be backed or mounted in a more permanent way if I want to frame it up at home.

Supplies:

• Multimedia Artboard ( I chose 16x20 sheets, which could be cut down to a variety of sizes- 8x10, 11x14, 6x8, 9x12, 12x16, etc.) Sources: Multimedia ArtBoard's site, Jerry's Artarama, Dick Blick (to name a few)
• Gesso (for above- any art supply store)
• Primed linen canvas, (many sources for this) cut to size (allow about 2 inches on all sides if you want to stretch the canvas when you return home, or 1/4 to 1/2 inch all around for shrinkage if you intend to glue these to a panel.)
• One 14x18 or 16x20 inch Coroplast board to use as a firm support for paintings on location. Sources: Check local sign companies- they may be willing to sell blank sheets. Otherwise there are online suppliers for this.
• Painter's tape and/or clamps (for temporarily adhering substrate to support)

Don't feel like doing it yourself back home? You can get prepared lightweight panels from commercial sources. Here are just a few:

Sourcetek

Wind River Arts

New Traditions Panels

Raymar (not as light as other options, but less costly and still much lighter than plywood. BTW- makes great, lightweight wet panel carriers out of --you guessed it! Coroplast!)

Small WIP & value sketches amid the rubble

A series of wet gray days have kept me from painting outside, so I've spent some time putting my studio(and myself!) back together in the aftermath of the workshop. For me, "spring cleaning" always seems to make things look worse before they get better.

I have little piles around me...piles of books, of paperwork, and also a small pile of unfinished paintings. Among the latter is this demo painting that I started in the workshop, which I may noodle around with and bring to a more finished state. It's small, just 12x9", so we're talking maybe just orzo or macaroni-sized noodling.

I started this workshop demo talking about composition and values and how they related to each other. Since we were working with the limitations of photographs, I wanted to try to get folks to think about the possibility of composition beyond just what they saw in front of them in the picture. When I'm painting en plein air, I will often do a series of small value sketches before I jump right into painting. I will use this same approach too in the studio, to develop my design.

Along with a contour sketch, it is extremely helpful to do this in a very abbreviated quick grayscale, so that I can get a general idea of my value relationships and the overall design that is created not only by the placement of line but also by the pattern of dark and light:

This is not a new concept, of course. Artists have forever been studying and writing about the arrangement of values (lights and darks) to compose a strong design. The artsy fartsy term for this is "Notan". Okay, it's actually Japanese. Notan sketches can be fleshed out in recongnizable contours (like mine above) or they can be very quick and gestural thumbnail abstractions created for the purpose of identifying the underlying design.

The values are generally limited to four or less.  I used 2 markers; black and light gray, deriving my middle gray from a blending of the two, and letting the white of the paper stand as my lightest value. 

Of course, in life we see a much wider range of values, but in designing and executing a painting, I'm learning that simpler is often better.  If you look at many of Monet's paintings, you might notice that many of them have a very small range of values indeed, and he used color temperature and very soft edges to add a wonderful sense of atmospheric depth to his work.

A quick Google search for "Notan" yielded some good results for further exploration:

• A good series of Notan lessons from Virtual Art Academy
• Artist Robert Genn discusses Notan in his inspirational newsletter "The Painter's Keys"
• Painter Ed Terpening does it!
• Katherine Tyrrell does too.

How about you?