This week on the easel: Val d'Orcia W.I.P.

Just a quick post to share what is in progress on the easel this week: My studio time (which includes painting, but also varnishing and framing, website updates, emails, blogging, photography, sales/marketing, office work, etc.) is now limited to a few hours every other weekday. Painting takes precidence, but every now and then I really must play catch-up with "everything else". So it was with Monday, and I only had time to do the layout in sepia:

Upon my return to the easel, I tackeled the block-in (first pass) which is still mainly shadows and midtones:

Time ran out before I was able to get to the hilltop buildings, but I was happy to have covered the rest of this 24x30" canvas in about 3 1/2 hours. Because I can't always get back to an "open" painting, I at least want to return to a canvas that is brought to the same level of completion in all areas.

This is a view I have painted before (a number of years ago) and I am returning to it now to see if I can use a looser approach. There is quite a bit of information in this scene, and my aim is to relay a feeling of the variety in the landscape of Tuscany, but in a more unified, simplified manner, without articulating everything in minute detail.

Rooftops, St. Cirq Lapopie (final)

I've been struggling with a killer cold or allergy or something for over a week now, so it's really thrown me for a loop in the studio. But I have now finished the French village painting I have been blogging about in my last couple of posts (here and here). I did not have a chance to take any more progression shots due to the amount of time I lost, so my apologies to those who were following the progression of the work-in-progress.

"Rooftops, St. Cirq Lapopie" Oil on Linen, 30x24"

There was a certain quality of light I was after in this painting...a slight haziness that comes on a warm day when the sun begins to filter through the clouds after a soft rain (the weather when I visited there could best be described as "changeable"!) So there are a soft edges and close values to tackle, especially in the middle and far distance.

St. Cirq Lapopie is a fortressed village dating back to the Middle Ages. Sitting high above the Lot River, it is, as I mentioned in my prior post, dripping with so much charm that it really does invoke fairy tales of knights and damsels in distress!Narrow cobbled streets wind their way through cliffsides, leading up to a fortressed peak that allows stunning views of the steep tiled rooftops and the Lot valley.

St. Cirq Rooftops WIP (cont'd)

As it turned out, there was too much weather and too little opportunity to do any plein air painting last week. But I have been plugging away at my studio painting of St. Cirq La Popie. The images below show my continued progress thus far. Laying in my lightest passages, I worked on the sky and distant cliffs and ruins first. Next, I started on my rooftops. In this region, I noticed that there were a lot of gray-blue undertones along with the terra cotta-tiled rooftops, so I experimented with laying in a gray base to start. I am not really sure if doing so helped me or hindered me, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

At this point, I need to refine, work on the garden, and bring out my highlights, so this is what I'll be working on today. This painting is all angles and not much actual landscape, so my progress has been a little slow going at times. Nevertheless, the composition and the concept interest me. I do miss plein air painting, but I have decided I need to make the most of being studio-bound by experimenting, working on new challenges, and working out some new ideas.

Of Paint and Palette Knives

Here is a recent message I received from a reader that I thought I other blog readers might find of interest: Q: Can you tell me if you use painting knives or if it is all done with brushes? And do you have a favorite brand of paint? -N.M

A: Hi N.M-I paint primarily with a brush, but here and there I have been using the palette knife as a painting tool (rather than just a tool for mixing). If you can get your hands on Richard Schmid's video on painting the landscape (June in particular), he has an excellent demonstration of how he uses the palette knife in his paintings. I am experimenting with his technique (as I understand it) but, not for every painting. So I wouldn't call myself a palette knife painter by any means.

As for paint brands, I'm looking at my paint bins now, and I see Winsor Newton, Gamblin, Holbein, Daniel Smith, M. Graham, Rembrandt, and Old Holland! I probably use Winsor Newton and Gamblin most often, but I have had good experiences with all of the above. I often base my decision on which brand to buy by the pigment I am after. Some pigments seem to be pretty particular to one brand. But even paints that go by the same name can vary quite a lot in hue, value, or color temperature. For instance, Winsor & Newton's Cadmium Yellow Light is warmer and I believe, a bit darker than Gamblin's, which is more lemony. That's not necessarily better or worse-- it all depends on what you're after.In any case, I make sure that I buy professional grade paints, rather than student grade. They are more expensive, but there is a big difference in quality.

I hope this helps, and happy painting!

Tuscan Vineyard (remaining progress pics & final)

Here are the final images for the Tuscan Vineyard W.I.P. I have been posting about. Again, the progress images are not color corrected, though the final is. The linen canvas I used originally had a clear primer on it (as opposed to a white gesso). While it is an archival product, the surface seemed more absorbant, so I applied a couple of additional layers of my own white gesso (and sanded in between) to get the paint to sit better on the top. Even so, it still ended up with more of a surface texture, which compelled me to use a lot of thick paint. As a result, I had a really hard time photographing this painting because I kept getting glare in some spot or another.

Okay, now that I'm done with my disclaimers, I'll wrap this up! Having worked out my compositional problems, I next spent a good deal of time developing the treeline in the middle distance.

My aim is to keep the edges soft but defined. I want to lead the eye to the out-building, and not distract from it, so I put slightly more definition in the pale sivery trees directly behind the building.

Next I work my way forward again, to resolve the farmland around the building.

And finally, I put the finishing touches on the vineyard.

"La Vigna Privata" (The Private Vineyard) Oil on Linen, 24x30"

Tuscany vineyard W.I.P.

I spent some time late last week and Monday working on the painting I had sketched out in my last post. I will say before I begin, that these photos are not color corrected due to limited time, but hopefully you can still get an idea of how the painting is developing. Sketch in transparent oxide red, with some shading...

I usually lay in the sky first, but since there is so little of it in this painting, I have decided to start laying in the ground. More or less, I am working front to back.

At this point I had to step back and think about the plane trees I had sketched in on the upper right. As much as I love the plane trees, I was afraid they would be too busy in this painting, when there is already a lot going on. You might even be able to tell that I struggled with those trees from the outset, by all the transparent red oxide rubbed into that side of the canvas. I kept wiping them out and putting them back in, until finally I surrendered and took them out for good. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't say everything you want to say in a single painting.

I still wanted something in the upper right for balance, so instead I massed in a "less interesting" tree. I also changed the skyline slightly so as not to feel so hemmed in. The sky is pretty washed out here but my sky, while very light and simple, has more color (pale golds and blues).

Up to the point pictured is about 5 or 6 hours' work. I started this late Friday afternoon and came back after dinner (and after the baby went to bed) to work on it some more. I just wanted to get it to a point where the whole canvas was brought up to the same level of "finish" (more or less) so that it would be easier for me to pick up again when I returned to the easel.

Once upon a time I was a total night owl and I'd habitually paint late into the night (this was before I started painting landscapes). I haven't done this in a really long time, and I'm not sure it's such a good thing for me. I only meant to work for a couple of hours but it was close to midnight by the time I cleaned up and I was so wound up I couldn't sleep for a while. Maybe I'll get used to it in time, but as it was, every time I'd go to clean up I'd tell myself, "just five more minutes!" Afterwards, I felt like I had had an entire pot of coffee! I kept telling myself it was time to stop, but now that I feel so often on a time crunch, any studio time is a real treat.

Back to Tuscany; Vineyard W.I.P.

I think I will just make a deal with you readers (and, for that matter, with myself) to stop making lofty statements like, "I'm finally getting a regular schedule!" because something (like a 9 month-old cutting new teeth or reaching new milestones, for instance!) always seems to come up right afterwards. Still, I know I am fortunate to be able to do anything art-related at all, and  I have finally worked out my compositional pencil sketch for the next studio painting that  I thought I'd at least share. (Incidentally, I just want to say thank you to those of you who have sent me such nice, encouraging comments lately. I am glad to know that these W.I.P.s offer some interest. It's a format that works well for me in that it keeps me posting regularly here on the blog, so I will try to stick to it at least for a while.) This is again a scene of the visually dramatic area in Tuscany known as La Crete.

These little sketches are definitely not meant to be any kind of finished drawings, but with all the stops and starts in studio time nowadays, I am finding them really helpful. They help me to determine whether the composition will work , what I need to  edit out and include, how I might create interest with line,  light and shadow, etc. Though more detailed, they serve a similar purpose to the thumbnail sketches I have used from time to time while plein air painting.

Watercolorists know this approach well, but until recently it has typically not been my way with my studio oils. It takes a little bit more time when some days all I want to do is just dive right on into painting and get ON with it already! But with little sleep and even less free time, it's helped me to feel less disjointed and to backtrack less when I am standing in front of the easel, bleary-eyed with a cuppa jo, trying to get my brain to start.

In case you can't tell what this is to be, it's a vineyard in the fore with a small outbuilding in the middle ground and a little Tuscan hamlet in the distance. What interested me most about this scene is the movement of line from front to back. There is a lot of information in this scene, (maybe too much? We'll see...) and not much sky at all to speak of, so I feel that in order to make my present plan work I should use a canvas of at least 24x30". Well, that's a whole lot of writing for such a simple little sketch, but what can I say? Baby girl has napped well this morning. :-)

Pigeonniere W.I.P. (continued)

Here are a few more progressive shots of the French landscape work-in-progress that I posted about last time. Since I have to spend a bit of time cropping, resizing, and uploading each photo, I again don't have much time to write if I also want to paint today. So let's hope the pictures will be at least a hundred words. ;-) Developing the clouds:

And the pigeonniere:

Now I will spend some time refining (working on edges, tweaking shadows, developing highlights, etc.) The challenge for me is usually at this stage--to refine/change but to still keep it fairly loose and avoid overworking. We'll see how well I do in today's studio session!

Painting on a colored ground

Every so often I'll get a question about my painting process that I think might be an interesting topic to share here on my blog. Recently an artist friend asked me about the red ground I prepped my canvases with at one time (I think he must have seen the "Springtime Glory" demo from my site). I'm sure I've addressed toning a canvas a few times here on the blog, but since I've been asked about painting on a red canvas a number of times, I thought it would be a good idea to address this question specifically. Here is his question, followed by my response: Question: Are you still using red underpainting most of the time? Is that landscape specific or do you switch up for sky/water? 

My response: As for the red ground, I never use it any more. I really only used it for landscapes. It was fun because the underpainting gave vibratory effect due to it being a complement to the greens.  But it was too much of a distraction for sky and water, and ultimately I personally found it so for all of my landscapes, especially as I moved a little closer to realism.  Plus I got too lazy to tone my canvases that color as I'd have to let it dry first. Otherwise the red would lift and get mixed into my painting too much. Now in the studio I either just paint on a white canvas, or tone it with just a quick wash of transparent red  oxide (a.k.a PR101- the color I used in the tonal underpainting here).  That still adds a warm tone but is muted enough that it doesn't distract. It also isn't as high staining so I can apply a wash and then start painting immediately after.

*This artist is a studio painter, but I'll add here for the benefit of my blog readers that if I'm painting outdoors, I pretty much always use a mid-toned canvas of either gray, or a wash of trans red oxide or raw sienna, as sun on the white canvas creates too much  bounce and glare.

Bellagio from above; more oil painting w/out solvents

Following up from my prior WIP, here is the final painting. This is a view of Bellagio from a hike we took up to Villa Serbelloni. The villa is now maintained by the Rockefeller Foundation, who uses it as a retreat for  the Bellagio Study and Conference Center for artists and writers (wouldn't that be nice?) For this reason, we couldn't go inside the villa when we visited, but we could tour the grounds, which offers gorgeous views over Bellagio.

"Bellagio From Above" Oil on Linen, 20x16"

SOLD!

Both this piece and my previous Lake Como painting, were done without the use of solvents or any other medium other than small amounts of walnut oil to clean brushes and thin paint when necessary. But even when used judiciously, the walnut oil served to slow drying considerably. At present this is not a huge problem, as I am spending most of my time painting/renovating/preparing home and life for the new baby! But it does change the nature of things and the overall result became more impressionistic due both to the behavior of the paint, and probably also the gaps in my working sessions.

I know that an oil painting requires a certain length of time for all of the layers to fully dry (sometimes as much as 6 months or a year.) But normally the top layers will dry to the touch in about a week's time.  Not so with the walnut oil method, which seems to require at least an additional week to my usual handling time.

Maybe it's just that my painting habits are not particularly suited for this method, or maybe I just need to get used to new ways of doing things. Overall, except at the very beginning stage, I don't paint in thin layers. In fact, while I don't lay it on with a palette knife, I do paint passages that are relatively thick and juicy. But oddly, I experience the most difficulty in the lay-in, (early stage) which I am used to having set up rather quickly.

First of all, in order to follow the "fat over lean" rule, I have been trying not to make the paint too "fat", too soon. So I keep the walnut oil I use in my initial lay-in stage very spare. The result is that instead of a thinly painted initial sketch and color block-in, I find myself with trying to move paint around that has a definite drag and is less fluid. The lay-in becomes more often a "rub-in" with a rag or a "scrub-in" with an old brush, and the edits and corrections are very hard to lift off the canvas.

On the other hand, if I use more walnut oil at this stage, the paint can get too smeary and unmanageable for successive layers, not to mention less stable (with any medium you use, you should only use no more than 20% total volume when mixed directly into the paint, and I usually err on the side of caution and use rather less than that.)

One solution may be to use a runnier paint in the lay-in stage. M. Graham walnut oil paints are such a paint. I do have a few tubes on hand, as I've tried them in the past. As much as I wanted to like them, I normally prefer more body to my paints. But they might just work for my purposes now--but still probably just in the initial stage only. (Incidentally, it's perfectly okay to mix walnut oil with linseed oil based paint, so even if you want to paint solvent-free, you do not need to buy their paints exclusively.)

Aside from walnut oil to thin,  there are other oils to try. Linseed oil is commonly used by artists, both in mixtures of ground paint and in various mediums. And while both linseed and walnut oils are considered to be "drying oils", linseed tends to be the faster-drying of the two.  However, I seem to read a lot about how linseed oil tends to yellow over time. Maybe this is an exaggerated worry, but a quick look at experiments like this one swayed me to first try the walnut oil over linseed.

So, to sum up from this layperson's perspective, some of the pros of using walnut oil to thin/clean are:

• Non-yellowing
• Non-toxic/ solvent-free painting (though other oils can also serve to achieve the same thing.)
• Odorless
• Does not evaporate like solvents, so it seems fairly long-lasting
• Conditions brushes nicely

Cons:

• Walnut oil is expensive! (If you are only using oil to clean your brushes, you could probably get by with a less expensive oil.)
• Slows drying considerably (this could actually be a "pro", depending on your painting technique.)
• Compared to solvent, it requires using more brushes and/or more wiping of brushes between colors in order to keep the color clean.
• Walnut oil is expensive!

Alla prima portrait study

In my previous post I mentioned an out of town trip last weekend. I was over in Colonial Beach VA pursuing one of my main 2009 goals (exploring the figure) by taking another class with painter/portrait artist Robert Liberace. This class was a 2 day workshop on alla prima portrait painting. Since this is the way I am accustomed to painting with my landscapes (particularly smaller works and those done en plein air) I was really drawn to the class. Rob is as enthusiastic and energetic as I remember him to be from my first class with him in figure drawing last semester at the Art League School. I am continually enthralled by his masterful demos, and I found it interesting that the process he set forth for this style of portraiture was very similar to the method I use to paint my landscapes.

The palette we used, however, was quite a bit different and more expansive than what I typically use for my landscapes; burnt umber, cad yellow light, followed by several reds, several blues, two violets and a couple of greens. He also used two different kinds of white, Titanium (a very strong, bright white) and Lead White (the most opaque of the whites.)

Rob began with an imprimatura (toning) in burnt umber on Ampersand panel, and a very quick and sketchy (though amazingly accurate) grisaile. From there he then built his way to layers of color from shadow to midtone, halftone and finally highlights. Of course he made it look so easy, but I soon found out otherwise!

The model I painted on this first day was a very stunning young lady who looked to be about 15 or 16. Turns out she was actually only 12. I think for her age and energy level she did exceedly well sitting for us, and it was a real visual treat to paint her. By the luck of the draw, I found myself setting up in a spot that put the model in complete profile. I'm not normally overly excited with profile views. In fact I find them boring. But the model had a great hairdo and a nice twist to her torso that actually enlivened my view and made it fun to paint:

She was wearing a great red satin dress in the Asian style, which went well with her beautiful golden skintone and almond shaped eyes. Unfortunately in the remaining time we had left to work (after Rob's excellent demo) I got none of the dress, save for a brief outline. I did take a photo of her though, in case I decide to work more on the painting. But most times I leave my workshop studies as is, to serve as a reminder of what I learned and in what areas I still need to grow.

In any case, I  learned a lot from this first sitting. First of all, just as in plein air painting, it's important to get your drawing down accurately and commit to your big idea as soon as possible. While the lighting in a portrait studio doesn't change the way the natural light does en plein air, what does change incrementally is the model. It's really hard for a model to get the exact same pose and facial expression after a break. And it's also really hard to hold a pose for any length of time (especially if you happen to be 12 years old!) So while it's tempting to jump right in to color, Rob wanted us to spend a good deal of time first developing a strong grisaille and really fleshing out the portrait in it's proper porportion, placement, light, shadow, and halftone-- BEFORE putting down the first dab of color.

Another very important thing I learned once I moved beyond the grisaille had to do with painting children. As in landscape painting, it is oh so very easy to overdo it by getting lost in details. It's an interesting dance; because while you want to accurately record what you see, too much unnecessary detail can detract from the character of the subject and weaken the overall painting. At about an hour into my painting I was well into color, painting in every shadow I could possibly see on the model's face. I knew the likeness in her profile was pretty accurate, but still  I wasn't getting her character--her "glow".

Then Rob came by and said, "You're aging her." Taking my brush, with literally two sweeping strokes he pulled some of the middle skintone I had put down on her upper cheek and quickly swept it downward, blending away almost all of the shadow work I'd done around her mouth and nose, leaving only part of the cheekbone shadow and the shadow work I'd done under her jaw. I just stood there and chuckled. It was like one of those "miracle line eraser" wrinkle ads you see on the Internet.

"You just took 10 years off of her, " I said. Ah, if only it were that easy in real life!

p.s. The above 20x16" study was after about 2 to 2 1/2 hrs. of work. The sketch in the upper right corner of the canvas was a hands-on instructive from Rob early on, because the initial lines of my grisaille around the eyes were too juicy and lacked definition.

Landscape painting demo of southern France- conclusion!

Well there's nothing like computer woes and an out of town trip to keep up the momentum for a painting demonstration! But at long last, here is the resolution to the demoI started in late April:

When I last left off, I had my concept and composition well planned out, so now I set to work on finishing. This involves painting in the foreground and punching up the highlights of the middle distance and background, where needed.

But something happens at this point. I kind of get too lost in the irises, making them too defined and pronounced. Soon I find my tunnel vision has gotten me so lost in the irises that they start to take over.

Argh! Attack of the irises! They've taken over and are rather too big and too saturated, creating more of a competition with the old abbey. I've also lost the lower wall in the middle distance almost entirely, which I rather liked, as it helped to lead the eye further into the painting.

My solution? Basically I scraped down the entire lower portion of the painting! Eh, it happens. The paint had become too thick to really rework, and sometimes it's easier and less distracting to just scrape it off in order to open it back up. In this case I felt a "do-over" was warrented.

"Irises at Abbaye Nouvelle" Oil on Canvas, 40"x30" Click here for more info!

Ahh...better. (At least I think so!) I've gotten my herb-covered wall back, and reworked the irises in the foreground so as to frame but not overpower. I've treated them a bit more impressionisitcally too,  to flow better with the rest of the painting. I also decided to tone down some of the greens and golds in the middle distance to make them "sit back" in the picture plane.

At this point I'll conclude. If I touch it any more it will be only a tweak here and there. I've shot and reshot the final several times but we are getting such dark days lately with all this rain that I can't seem to get the nuances in the colors quite right in the photo. This picture is close, but I'll likely try another shot once the sun comes out.

Southern France painting demo continues

This post continues a demo I started last week. To start from the beginning, click here!

Before going too much further I like to get a good feel for my area of interest, so I lay in the general colors and highlights of the wall of the Abbey ruins. I've worked wet into wet to blend the purple shadow colors with the warm local colors of the Abbey wall, which gives me a nice mixture of golds, browns and muted violets.

At this point I am ready to dig in to the rest of the landscape and get that canvas covered. To keep the flow going, I try not to be "stingy with my paint". For this painting I'm using a somewhat more expanded palette than I do when I paint on location.

I  want to have large enough puddles of the colors I see so that I don't have stop every five seconds to mix up more paint. This process is pretty organic so it's difficult to give a step by step process of mixing colors. In addition to blending paint wet-into-wet on the canvas, I also tend to dip into various larger puddles to make new blends as I go along. The most important thing during this process is just to compare one color, one value to the others, constantly asking myself, "Darker or lighter? Warmer or Cooler?"

I also decide to indicate the basic iris colors so that I know where I'm at. I have to be careful here--even the middle value of the purple/blue flowers has a lot of white in it, so I really don't want to paint these too thickly or it will be hard to control the darks, making them muddy and less pure. A lot of these preliminary iris lay-ins will need to be restated, and, of course defined, but I felt like I wanted some indication of them in there at this point so I wouldn't get lost (if that makes any sense!)

Here you can see that I've continued on working my way down the canvas so that eventually everything is pretty well laid in. I've held off putting down much of my strongest highlights. That will be among my next steps, along with further refining, defining, tweaking, and adjusting.

Up to this point I have used just a few brushes. Aside from the one round I used for the linear drawing of my composition in the earliest stages, I've used my larger flats and filberts. Being the very messy painter that I am, I can't tell you the size numbers of any of these, as there is old smeared paint on all of my handles, completely obscuring any info that once was printed on them! I think probably the smallest in use is around an 8 or 10(flat) but the ones I used the most were the largest filberts I have, with widths ranging from 1 and 1/4" to 1 and 3/4". I love these large filberts, as you get a nice thin edge at the tip and a broad flat side too, making them very versatile for my purposes. I could even stand to go to a larger size brush for this size painting, but I need to conserve my expenses so I'm trying to use what I have on hand right now. Even so, if I use the broad side of the brushes I can get a pretty broad and loose stroke and avoid getting too fussy with too many details too early!

To be continued...

Back from the ethers with a new WIP/painting demo

My lapse in posting has probably made it seem like I fell off the face of the Earth or something. In fact, I was in Texas last week (which actually did feel a bit like another world to me --just kidding Texans!) I had to slip away unexpectedly to assist my mom, who was just released from the hospital after major surgery. The good news is that she's been doing great, and I'm back home now and back to painting. It's been far too windy and rainy this week to do any plein air work, so I've decided to continue my French landscape series with nice big 40x30" linen canvas in the studio--a vertical painting of an ancient church in ruins among a field of irises.

I started with a monochromatic tonal wash in transparent red oxide:

While this is a representational painting, my approach to the work is in the abstract. My aim at this stage is to express the pattern of lights and darks in a fluid and interesting manner. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember a plein air painting I did of this same site last summer. Even though this larger painting will be of a different view from that location, I will use my plein air painting and my experience from that work to inform this piece.

The finished painting will have a lot of irises in the foreground, but I don't bother drawing them in at this point. My main concern early on is to connect my darks in such a way as to create an interesting underlying armature that will provide a structure for any detail, and also hopefully provide enough interest so as to lead the eye around the canvas.

Painting in this monochromatic, thin wash helps me to develop my overall composition without great commitment. Transparent red oxide is not a highly staining color, so if corrections or changes are desired, any marks I make at this stage can easily be wiped away with a paper towel dipped in solvent (I use Gamsol).

Incidental staining is not really a concern any way, since I usually like a toned canvas. It's sort of like I'm making a grisaille painting and toning my canvas at once. In this instance, I decide to leave the lightest lights (in the sky) mostly completely white, as I will next use the white of the canvas to develop the shape of my clouds:

Basically I'm painting the negative space of the sky with the blue paint mixture. Working on linen is a real pleasure. It makes it really easy to use my paper towels to smudge and wipe away paint so as to refine shapes and create those soft, wispy edges.

After I established the basic cloud pattern, I start to add paint, color and shadow to the white of the clouds. I also begin to develop my darks, and give some definition to my area of interest; the ruins of the old abbey.

Further developments are under way and forthcoming soon....Stay tuned!

A few announcements

Being heavily immersed in summer activities I'm afraid I've kind of fallen off the blog wagon lately. But things have been happening behind the scenes, and I'd thought I'd share a few interesting tidbits of what's coming down the pike.

• France in 2009! I've just gotten the word that my dates for a 10 day plein air painting workshop at Le Vieux Couvent have been confirmed! If you've been reading my blog, you've already heard my raves about this beautiful, enchanting part of Southern France.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to take a group there myself, for 10 days of painting, touring, eating, and just soaking in the atmosphere. Dates are June 3-13, 2009. This year during that time period I had word from the workshop host that the poppies were in full bloom and the roses were going crazy in the garden. I'm preparing my brochure now and should have it up on my website by next week. If you have an interest in joining me for this wonderful creative adventure, please check back, or just contact me and I'll send you a brochure with all the details as soon it's done

•  Moving ahead. Well it just seemed like yesterday that I moved into my beautiful gallery space, but the time has come for me to make another move. I don't have a lot of details to share yet, but come fall I will be letting go of the downtown gallery location. I'm sure I'll be writing on that in the weeks ahead but a lot of details need to be ironed out before I really have anything solid to share.
•  Warm up to Plein Air! Since the time of my last workshop this past spring, I've received a number of inquiries asking when I'd be having another class. Due to the aforementioned upcoming move, I had to wait a bit to schedule anything solid. But here's what I'd like to do: In September I'd like to offer some one-day plein air modules in the Richmond area that I'm calling "Warm up to Plein Air."  If you are a painter who has always wanted to try plein air painting, this will be a fun opportunity to give it a shot. Experienced plein air painters can benefit as well, as this day-long module will include a demo and time for painting. We'll talk about the tools of the trade that I've found useful, plus tips to make the most of your time outdoors. I'm limiting these modules to a very small size so we can make the most of our time together. Dates and details will be posted on my website, hopefully also by next week. Meantime, feel free to contact me if you're interested.

I've been interviewed by Creative Spotlite!

Recently I was interviewed by Creative Spotlite's Ralph Serpe.  In the interview, I respond to Ralph's questions about my journey as an artist and my art career thus far. Ralph is the founder of the Creative Spotlite art instruction website and blog, both of which feature an ever-growing collection of free art lessons, demos, links,  and a wealth of other resources for artists. In conjunction with the interview, Ralph has also featured my plein air demo for my painting "Vineyard Patterns" on his site. Thanks Ralph, for featuring me and my work, and for creating such content rich sites for artists!

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?

Scenes from the painting workshop

I'm baaaack! Fell in a black hole of the blogosphere for a while and am slooowly recovering from a very busy and intense workshop at my studio this past weekend. Church Hill Photography took some great environmental shots of one of the demo portions  of the class on the first day, so I thought I'd share them here. (BTW, Elaine Odell of Church Hill Photography also made the excellent portrait of me in my studio, so be sure to check out her website if your looking for a photographer who really knows her stuff!) While I've taught off-site at other hosted locations, this was the first time I've actually hosted a workshop myself, and preparing for it was quite a bit more work than I'd imagined because I had to prep both my lessons and the space itself.  The participants did some great work though, and were enthusiastic and so much fun. And it was really exciting for me to share ideas about color, shape, values, and composition. Hopefully everyone felt like they learned a lot. I know I did!

After a brief discussion of color mixing (and especially mixing greens) I did a little landscape demo. This is a good long shot that shows me sketching out my composition at my setup, as well as the studio beyond. The participants worked in the front two rooms, so we had to configure the space in a way that would protect those beautiful wood floors. Hence the lovely blue spill-resistant floor coverings!

Here's a cool shot  through the easel. There's a large mirror to my back, which I use to check my compositions in reverse. It really does help to give me a "fresh look" at my work. That cutie just over my shoulder in the gray tee is my talented niece Molly, a fine emerging artist who I was delighted to have come all the way from Texas to take the class and visit. The "man in black" looming in the doorway is my husband and partner Dave. As always, he was a HUGE help to me, keeping everything running smoothly.

This shot shows the demo piece, coming right along.

The workshop was pretty action packed, but by being in the studio we were able to really focus some of the more important elements of painting as they pertain to the landscape, in conditions that were controllable. I hope to do some plein air classes too in addition to the studio intensive, as this "takes it to the next level" and throws a whole other slew of concerns into the pot (watch this page for future workshop listings). Luckily I hadn't planned a plein air class for this past weekend though, as we had some really varied weather ranging from cloudburst thunderstorms to overcast damp chill.

On Monday Molly and I took a road trip up to Charlottesville so that she could see Jefferson's Monticello. Wow! What an absolutely gorgeous day--the redbuds, fruit trees, dogwoods and tulips were going crazy. I hope I can get up back up there some time soon to paint some of it-- and paint some local plein air scenes as well. Right after I take care of a few neglected household and business matters, that is. Whatever I paint, I'll be sure to post here first, so stay tuned....

New spring landscape painting workshop forming now

 Note: This workshop is now full, but if you'd like to receive future workshop notifications please contact me by email, and I'll add you to my workshop mailing list. Just a quick announcement  to say that I'm now accepting registration for a new landscape oil painting workshop at my Richmond, VA studio:

Painting the Landscape in Oils (Studio Workshop) When: April 11-13, 2008 Friday evening 6-8 Saturday 10-5 Sunday 10-5

Where: Jennifer Young Studio & Gallery 16 E. Main Street Richmond, VA 23219 1-877-DIAL-ART (1-877-342-5278) 804-254-1008 (within VA)

Here are the workshop details and registration info...

Slideshow demo: Provence cafe painting start to finish

While I diligently documented the progress of my latest Provence painting, I was remiss in posting about it here on the blog. So to make up for it, here is a short demo that shows the development. The painting is of an al fresco lunchtime scene in the lovely French village of Roussillon. To see a the slideshow (with captions), click here:

 

"Dejeuner a Roussillon", Oil on Canvas, 36x24". Click here for details about the painting.