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6″ x 6″ oil on canvas
When my wife saw this one she seemed disappointed that she couldn’t recognize the clip. I want to lose the objects in the paint. I think my efforts are a bit self concsious at this point, however.
Archive for July, 2008
29
Jul
08
grapefruit
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6″ x 6″ oil on canvas
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27
Jul
08
Yellow Still Life
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8″ x 8″ oil on paper
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I was delighted to spend the last three days painting with my friend Elio Camacho. Elio did his best to coax more color into my plein air paintings and I resisted as much as I could but I think he may have gained some ground on my precious grey palette.
Elio studied with Ovanes Berberian (some of his work can be seen here), who studied with Sergei Bongart.
My paintings got progressively worse as the workshop continued and I think that’s a good thing because it means I was trying new things and I expect that, as I’m able to find my way with these new ideas, my work will be better for it.
It was great fun to finally meet Elio, after coresponding with him over the internets and blogosphere for the past year or so. I hope we get to paint together again.
18
Jul
08
glazed head
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8 1/2″ x 12″ oil on board
I did this a while ago, playing with glazes.
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Here are two more paintings from my idyllic solo paint out yesterday.
8″ x 10″ oil on canvas panel
8″ x 10″ oil on canvas panel
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13
Jul
08
Sauvie Island Hayfield PA
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8″ x 6″ oil on canvas
This was my perfect plein air painting day. I stood in the shade of a row of cotton wood trees in a deserted field and the only disturbance was a small group of black tail deer and a bald eagle. I did three paintings and even put my head down on my pack and dozed a bit before starting the last one of the day. A really lovely relaxing day.
This was the first and worst painting of the day.
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. warning, long winded and somewhat rambling opinion follows
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8″ x 8″ oil on canvas panel
disclaimer: I am not pretending that this painting is done in the style of Classical Realism
In my travels among blogs, I’ve read several complaints about the value of college art programs and I want to express my thought about it.
Even though I also feel that I didn’t receive a very thorough training in college, I think that I got what I should have expected. My opinion is that, at least in the U.S., students who enroll in college art programs usually have little or no training in drawing or painting prior to entering the program. Usually, as in my case, they’re kids who like to draw and were always told they were talented and, (especially in my case), have no interest in academic study. A four year Bachelors program has barely enough time to introduce it’s students to the rudiments of several different media or approaches to making art. By the time a student is in his/her senior year, they may have decided which media they think they might want to focus on but haven’t had time to really develop a mastery of it.
Graduate school, as I understand it (I didn’t attend grad school), is focused on developing imagery, not on technique. Technique is supposed to already be mastered.
Further, the instructors who staff these institutions are working artists who are passionate about their particular art. In the seventies, most of my instructors were working abstractly and, in fact, conceptual art was in vogue, in which there was not necessarily an artifact produced as a result of the art making. The idea was the art. Realism was not highly thought of at the time. And as far as developing technical skills, in four years of introductions to multiple media, it was more like dabbling than immersion.
I don’t have a problem with any of that. I was very excited about those ideas at the time and I enjoyed spending time with real working artists getting a sense of what it meant to be one. Having an exposure to printmaking, sculpture, photography, ceramics, etc was a good thing.
I find myself trying to fill in the gaps because now I’m interested in those technical skills I didn’t develop earlier but I don’t blame the schools I attended for not teaching me. I think undergraduate school is just not the place to develop those skills.
I’ve spent some time, recently, reading about atelier style study and wonder if it might be an appropriate step in a young (or older) artist’s development to spend some time in an atelier style environment. It seems to me that, even if one isn’t interested in ultimately painting in this precise and methodical way, there is a lot of benefit in learning to draw and paint precisely. It seems helpful to know the rules to break them intelligently.
There are a few blogs by artists who have studied this style of painting. The paintings are often really wonderful and one of the blogs in particular was really interesting to read. Sadie Jernigan Valeri, in her blog, gives an account of her pursuit of this study over about three years as she attends workshops by some of the masters of the style like Ted Seth Jacobs and Julia Aristides, and attends atelier schools, like the Gage Academy in Seattle and Studio Escalier in France. She’s also a very good writer. I read her entire blog, over a couple of days and, although I don’t know if I have the patience for this study now, (I know I don’t have the time, since many of the workshops are weeks or months long) I do wish I had done it.
Other blogs concerned with atelier style study and Classical Realism include:
Timothy Stotz and Michelle Tully of Studio Escalier
06
Jul
08
Still life with cherries
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6″ x 8″ oil on paper
This pitcher is kind of a weird color because it’s a very tarnished silver vessel.
I had a little too much fun with this one. I couldn’t restrain myself from overdoing the shiny or semi-shiny surfaces. It’s been a while since I’ve done a still life in the studio and I indulged myself.
I’ll try not to let it happen again.
Click on the images for a larger view
5″ x 8″
3 1/2″ x 5″
3 1/2″ X 7″
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03
Jul
08
roof with a view
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10″ x 8″ oil on canvas
The house we’re staying in has a sod roof from which there is a commanding view of the mountains, coastline and ocean. The sun finally came out yesterday so I hauled my paint box to the roof. The view of this painting is looking west (obviously) and the rock in behind the trees is, I believe, the same one I painted yesterday from a different point of view.
Below is a shot of my setup and view.
Gear:
This is the first time I’ve used one of these umbrellas. It really helped with controlling the light on the panel and palette but it made the paint box unbalanced and it’s huge to carry. I may have to find a smaller lighter solution.
I also am not completely happy with the EasyL backpack I bought to haul all my painting gear. I’m always interested in how others handle these logistical problems. If anyone has experiences or solutions to share I hope you’ll leave a comment.
01
Jul
08
Bird Rocks PA
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6″ x 8″ oil on panel
Second day at the coast. I hiked down to a beach that’s only accessible, at high tide, from a trail through an incredible rain forest of giant twisted Sitka spruce and hemlock. It was another cloudy day and I had this stretch of beach to myself most of the time.
I find that painting in the open air makes the paint act differently than in the studio, so my project for the day was paint consistency. To get the look I want, I have to build up a substantial layer of paint to paint into. When painting PA, I’m limiting what I take with me to mainly the primary colors and I only use OSM for thinning the paint. I know some painters use the paint as it comes out of the tube with no medium whatsoever. I played with that today, trying different consistencies of paint, painting thinner paint into thicker and visa versa.
Here are a couple of warm up sketches I did in my sketchbook.
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