Gray Scale Markers

Friends, I'll be away for three days and back to blogging on Monday.My God son is getting married on Saturday and I will be tied up with wedding and all the falderal that goes with it through Sunday.



I promised my friend Jean Hood HERE, who is a fabulous painter, that I would show a WIP of the design painting. I know it looks like a train wreck, but hope springs eternal.

Notes From the Studio

I was very naughty today. I went to the art supply store and bought a new set of 11 gray scale markers from 1-10 in grades and one black marker. I always try to keep a set in the studio, but they get misplaced over a period of time and used up, so I was down to three of them. That is just not cutting it with all the design work I do for my paintings. I feel positively decadent with all new ones and can't wait until next week when I will have some time to play at the design table. It costs around 40.00 to buy them but when you think of the long term use of them, that's pretty cheap. They last a really long time. I try to remember all of the crappy value paintings I avoid by using them first, so they are worth every penny.

A lot of artists study Notan (Dark/Light) with watercolor and a Chinese brush, but I prefer the gray scale markers. The control of values is much more consistent and reliable with the markers. The work is also very very fast with markers, much faster than painting.

Sometimes I will simply take my gray scale markers out on location and do nothing but Notan studies, rather than painting. They are the very best way to study light. If I do them on quality paper, like watercolor or rag paper, I can paint right over the gray markers back in the studio and get some very nice little paintings to sell or give to friends. The important part is the learning process.

Starting a Design Project

Brewster Farm Trees
20x24 inches
acrylic on wood panel
Notes From the Studio
Now I have to get down to business and stop goofing around riding around the farms. I finally got back to my painting for the design job I need to do. It is due by February. I spent part of yesterday looking at reference photos and trying to make a decision on the image most suitable.

After some cropping work at the design table, I started a painting. I have four actual scenes that would make good paintings so it was hard to decide. In the end, I decided to do the one which was the most striking visually. It has powerful contrast in the lighting and very strong diagonals in the image, but it is fairly minimal in detail. It is also a verticle image, which might work better for reproduction.This I think, will be a powerful iconic image for the project. I think for this kind of work, the visual impact has to be a major factor. It has to be representative of the location and have strong forceful imagery. This is not the time to do pastoral, intimate work. A bold statement will be a better choice. I'm using acrylics so that it will dry quickly.
Starting it this early gives me time to get one finished to show the project manager. If she doesn't care for it, I will have time to complete another option before deadline.

I like this sort of challenge now and then, though I have become spoiled in being able to paint when and whereever I wish to for the last few years. I do fewer commissions than I used to. It is so difficult to get inside the head of someone else, to see through their eyes and mind. I enjoy doing landscape, floral or still life commissions very much, but found after doing a few portraits that I really am not suited in personality for portrait work.


As soon as this project is completed, I have several new reference photos of Evinston I want to work on through February. I have several new images of Fair Oaks and of the Wood Farms. Then I will be back on the road for a full two months doing all plein air work again.

Looking Through Other Eyes

Fair Oaks Farm Palms

12x16 inches

oil on wood panel

alla prima

See my paintings HERE



Notes From the Field

Yesterday, I took my friend Leslie Long on a tour of Fair oaks Farm, my favorite farm in all the world. Leslie is the Event Planner for several of Florida's biggest and most prestigious paint outs. She is a dynamo and leaves no detail forgotten. She was here for a strategy meeting with the paint out team. She wanted to get a look at some of the painting venues for the event in April.

Leslie, Henry and I jumped in a golf cart and off we went. What does this have to do with my painting process? For some artists it would have nothing. For me, it gives me an opportunity to see the place I love through new eyes. Not through an artist's eyes but through a nature ,art lover & talented photographer's eyes as she is all three. It gave me a new perspective and view of what she loved about the farm.

It's all too common to become too accustomed to a favorite place, a favorite palette, a favorite brushwork, a favorite method, block in , subject, and strategy for painting. Driving around the farm with her gave me some things to think about that I might not have before. She used many unusual camera angles I would not have thought of. She likes areas and vignettes of details I would not have noticed. She talked about what moves her emotionally about what she saw and related stories to me about her childhood in Florida. We shared memories of what it's like to camp, hunt and grow up a Florida child, before computers I-Pods and Wii were around to keep children inside away from the natural world.

Thinking Outside the Routine for Sky Color

Paynes Prairie State Park
20x24 inches
oil on wood panel
SOLD

HERE

Notes From the Studio

I think a lot of painters limit themselves because they only think about blue sky with puffy clouds. Though I do my fair share of those, I like to think outside of the normal routine of painting skies. I like to use unusual color sometimes to make the sky a part of the landscape. In the harmony painting I finished yesterday, I used a trans oxide/white under painting of the sky and glazed a FUB over it like a light stain. Though it is not the traditional approach to sky painting, it is indeed appropriate for that particular painting. The result is a much deeper, richer variation and subtlety of color in the painting.

In fact I have painted skies, gray, yellow,brown, pink, purple, and green,as well as the more traditional sky colors. A lot depends on the mood of the painting, how harmonious I want it to be, whether the sky is an important component or whether it is negative space, or resting space as some call it.

A lot of artists put strong color in the sky. I do that occasionally too, but generally, I am trying to fit the color harmony of the painting chart into the painting in a way that is pleasing but not ridiculous. It's interesting that many of my patrons comment on how much they like the skies that are unusual colors.

The Finish

Hidden Field at Fair Oaks
20x24 inches
acrylic on wood panel
HERE

Check out Katherine's new and wonderful resource blog for Landscape Lovers HERE

Yesterday and today I got a bit of free time to work on my Harmony Palette painting and finished it. I am beginning to love this 2010 palette. I have been tweaking it some from my first draft and I'm sure it will go through some more tweaking but I am really liking it's versatility and the more subtle neutral quality of it compared to my 2009 palette.

Here is the palette revised:

Sap Green
Yellow Ochre
Titanium White
Ivory Black
Cobalt Blue
Cerulean Blue
Transparent Red Iron Oxide
Flesh
Cad Red Light
Magenta
Cad Yellow Light

From that broad palette I can pick and choose a more limited group for each painting. For example, the harmony painting I am doing now has the following palette:

Sap Green
Yellow Ochre
Cerulean Blue
Cobalt Blue
Ivory Black
Flesh
Titanium White
Cad yellow Light
Flesh

The Cad Yellow Light and Cobalt Blue become my accent colors, used in one of the trees only to pop it just a bit. So the majority of the painting has 7 colors with the flesh being my common color throughout each mixture.

I find that I am transitioning again in my work, though my subject is constant. This is a good place to be right now in my painting journey. It provides me with stability and change at the same time. For whatever reason, I am looking to the more neutral palette while still desiring the intensity of accents and contrast. perhaps a quest for contrast is upon me, who knows? But I am liking it, whatever it is.

Creating Harmony Palettes

This is the block in stage of the painting I pre planned with my design kit. It looks like a train wreck right now but hopefully that will change as I make adjustments.

For this painting I am using a common mixing color to create harmony throughout. I am using flesh (Old Holland) as my common mixer. It creates some very nice neutrals mixed with my normal palette. Varying amounts of the flesh is included in all of the mixtures. I put out a large amount of the color in one spot on the palette and continue to add it to each mix. The more I add the more it effects the mix;in this case, lightening the value. Since most of the painting has green, the mixtures will be slightly grayer than a normal painting, due to the neutralization of compliments. it will also have a warm bias to the grays, unless I make the greens substantially cooler, which I will do in the distant tree masses.

I do these harmony palettes from time to time because I love the subtlety in the palette and the soothing harmony which is guaranteed. Sometimes I will use a cool common color, like cobalt blue or a warmer than flesh, like a cad orange.

It is somewhat akin to using a color tone on your canvas either cool or warm, but this is much more effective in creating harmony. Using this method takes some skill in understanding values because if you are not careful you will end up with a constant mid toned value and a very bland painting; depending on the common harmony color.

I also do these harmony palettes when I feel I am losing control of my color palette. This happened to me not long ago. I ended up completely changing my palette to a new one in early December. I just seemed to be having trouble with the one I had used for a year or two. This seems to happen to me now and then. I know painters who use the same palette for years, but my taste changes I guess and after a year or two, I need to start fresh and change my palette. I am going through that process right now, searching and tweaking the new one here and there. It's a very exciting process and it takes me up the skill set ladder a bit more each time.

Thinking About Nature

Gator Pond
30x30 inches
oil on birch panel

See my paintings HERE

Notes From the Studio

For me, landscape painting has a lot to do with my relationship with the land and the natural world. The more time I spend involved with nature, the more focused I am on my paintings and my emotional connection to them. I spend a lot of time hanging around the farms, and rural lands within 50 miles of my studio, hearing the birds, the rustle of small animals, feeling the breeze and enjoying the view. I'm training myself in the ways of nature, learning to respect the land.

Yesterday, I spent some time outside, gathering seed heads from dried flowers in my yard. They reach for the sky every year in late summer, bloom like mad in fall, and stand tall and dried in winter. I love this rhythm in time. Every year I carefully gather the blooms and dry them so I can use them on wrapped paintings to send to patrons. I save the seeds and divide them into glassine envelopes to send out to my patrons in my winter newsletter, sharing them far and wide with those who supported me in the previous year.

I believe this experience enhances my work, giving it an authenticity that would not be possible by hiding in the studio day after day. I don't do as much plein air work as I did at one time, but I spend even more time now in the field observing and immersing myself in the landscape. I have discovered that this is far more useful than actually painting there. I see so much more, observing the light, the atmosphere, the gradual change of the seasons and the repetition and harmony of nature. This teaches me about the world of the landscape.