More French Characters

"Fromage Anyone?"

oil on linen panel, 8" x 10"

Today was nice, but not as spontaneous as the last few paintings. Not sure why. Maybe, I am naming THINGS (like shirt, shelf, cheese, sign, sleeve, nose, etc) instead of painting shapes of color and value.

Oh well . . .! It was better than working! ;-)

This guy was famous on our trip to France last summer. He was notorious for holding his knife at the point where the customer said to cut a wedge off the side of a cheese slab . . . then, just as he was moving into the downstroke with the knife, he would move it so the wedge was larger than the customer wanted. At 45 Euros per kg, that isn't a casual slip of the knife . . . .that translates to $30 per pound!

I couldn't resist his face, though. He even looks a little rougue-ish, don't you think? :-)

Maybe if I sell this painting, it'll make up for the cheese I purchased from him! heh heh !! ;-)

Big Brushes Again

"Herb Vendor" oil on linen panel, 8" x 10"

Another exciting morning! Today I tackled something else I have yet to paint in oil . . .the human face. Everything I do in the studio I regard as an experiment . . .another challenge to advance the learning.

This gent is an herb vendor we came accross last summer in Eymet, France at their weekly open market in the village square. I have a gallery of similar rascals that I may attempt.



Using the big size 12 flat first to block in the whole piece I found myself humming and singing as I slopped thin paint around in the shadows first then the light. That lesson that came ringing in a few weeks ago, plus what I learned yesterday in "Perigord Pasture" just seem to fit together and make this process seem easy. The cool thing about oil is that one doesn't need to be too worried about mistakes and errors because one can scrape and re-do all day long till it is right. And the opacity of the paint makes it easy to carve out shapes as one progresses into the finer parts of the painting.



(In looking at this photo on two different monitors, I can see huge differences in what is actual and what the monitors do to murder the intensity of the colors . . .or to press contrast to such an extent that the image makes no sense. Does anyone out there know how to adjust the contrast on the new hi res monitors in MS Vista?)



Some of this stuff is actually beginning to make sense!

Hee'zzz Baaaaaack !!!!

"Perigord Pasture"

oil on canvas panel, 12" x 16"

Take a deep breath, Mike, and exhale! Again. Now, once more.

Whew! It has been toooo long! So, after posting my new year greetings this morning, I fired up the new computer (with the big jazzy monitor) and pulled out a 12 x 16 canvas panel and painted this piece! I can hardly stand still, I am so excited!! If you are painting in a studio from photos, then this is a tool you cannot be without! There is so much one can do to the photo to stimulate a great painting . . . .well . . . .at least it'll get you excited and raise your hopes!! ;-)

Today, I began this with a size 12 flat brush and didn't put it down until I was ready to begin highlighting with higher key values. Keeping the paint thin while I blocked it in, I kept my darks transparent and thin so I could layer those juicy highlights over them. Having never painted a cow or four legged creature in my life, this was a challenge I had been avoiding. So, true to the stuff I teach, I decided that it was NOT a cow. It was just a combination of shapes of color. Having talked myself into that, the number 12 brush skipped along with no problem.

I tried a few 'cute tricks' too. Palette knife work with some broken color in the tree, branches, and a few little lines at the base of the painting. Also, having painted a warm, medium value orangish color where the lit grass is, I scumbled over it laying a big dry brush on its back. All sorts of wonderful stuff happened with just a light touch and effortless pass just grazing (that is an intended pun) over the canvas.

What a way to welcome myself back!!! I am dancing a jig!!

Laying Low

The last few weeks has been wonderful, but hectic. Lots of time away from the studio. I have been 'Laying Low' and not getting anything off the easel . . . .but sure am thinking about it a lot!

Now it's time to rethink and redirect where I am going in this coming year. It is time to set some goals for 2008.

I am in the studio as I write this (yup! A new computer just for the studio!) . . .and calling up something to paint from by bank of photos. I should post in a day or two to get the ball rolling again. Meanwhile, please accept my best wishes and thoughts for a peaceful, yet eventful and rewarding new year!

As Arnold says, "I'll be back!" ;-)

So Behind !!

Hi all!

Just a quick note to say that the season has swallowed me and spouse up so that we seem to be running continuously and rarely seeing the studio.

I have had two or three starting attempts, but some alarm goes off in the distance about something and that finishes the start right there. Someone said once, that you get baked in the squat position when that happens! All crouched down preparing the jump and there you get frozen or baked . . . .or whatever . . . .finished before you really start.

Keep checkin' in. Something is bound to appear soon!! Meanwhile, guests are coming this afternoon from out of town and I am off to prep the dinner and party for this evening . . . .instead of painting. (Friends matter too, Mike! Life can't be all at the easel!) Actually, considering that Santa is in the neighborhood, I might as well enjoy the moment . . . .I mean, when you think about it, this really IS the important stuff! So, I will be trying to get to the easel, but there is sooooo much QUALITY TIME to be spent with others in the next few weeks, that daily painting . . . . . . . .well . . .I don't have to explain it. "HO HO HO !!" will suffice

Meanwhile, I hope you are enjoying the holiday season and that it is good to you and your loved ones! All the best from our house to yours!

Thaaaat's What He Meant!!

"Perigord Morning"

oil on linen panel, 8" x 10"

Isn’t it interesting how we hear something over and over and over, then one day the true meaning comes crashing in with a shock?

That happened in today’s painting session. Kevin MacPherson, modern impressionistic painter extraordinaire, writes about, preaches about and demonstrates how a painter must keep their color efforts confined to two families; light and shadow.

Well, here it is, Light and shadow. His point is simply this . . . . .that the values for the shadow family should never cross over into the light family . . .and conversely. I discover today that variations within the light and within the shadow families should be temperature changes . . .eg, color changes . . . warms to cools, etc . . .rather than value changes to show volume.

Today I forced my hand to fully paint the shadow family of values into the painting first. This sets the composition for early on and sets the stage for the light pattern. Working with roughly three different values within that group, it sets the mood immediately and opens the shadows to having more luminous color. Nice! And does it ever work!! I can smell the air in this painting!

And, yes, I caught myself saying out loud, “Oooohh! That’s what he meant!!

In Case You are Wondering . . .

I painted today . . .and Sunday. But I cannot post the image because it is a Christmas project that must remain confidential until after Christmas.

I did, however, write something I might pass along to my classes . . .enjoy!

I called it "Sunday Musings." . . . . . .

So far, since opening this blog to talk about and show my beginning oil painting experiences, I have covered nearly 150 canvases . . . give or take. What I set out to do was to rapidly roll up painting experience. One cannot do it at workshops or read about it or watch demos or even by watching DVDs. Pure and simply, to coin a phrase, you just gotta do it.

In the culling out of the inventory, I could clearly see that in just 7 months time there has been a lot of growth. There is a big difference in today’s paintings versus those of just a few months ago. And the differences are on all fronts. Here are a few things I have learned about painting . . .

Some people believe there are ‘rules.’ For geddaboudit ! Paint regardless of them. The only rules one must religiously obey are those for personal safety. Paint and see what happens!

Fear exists in every artist. It is there in all forms and is characterized in many odd ways. It’ll always be there. Read “Art and Fear” by Ted Orland. It is a great book that speaks directly to each of us on a personal level. Frightened? Intimidated? Heck with it! Paint anyway!

Sometimes, there is burn out. Invariably, something will appear and kick new excitement into the mix. If one wants to learn, paint anyway.

Art is not about painting ‘things.’ It is about painting relationships. Not love and friendship and that stuff. Creating relationships on a canvas has to do with developing true harmony and unity and, yes, contrasts or conflicts between colors, values, textures, shapes, sizes and directions. Details matter very little. If the relationships are right, the details just don’t matter. So, paint!

Very exciting ‘detail’ in a painting really isn’t detail. It only *looks like* detail.

The best paintings leave something to the imagination of the viewer. A little ambiguity can create a lot of excitement. Try to paint some!

The best teacher is experience, personally wrought, personally struggled and personally won. That also makes for much more pride in your own work. So, learn to love the struggle; Paint!

I have also learned that one can never quite reach their vision of what a completed work should look like. Our skills will always lag what our mind thinks we should be able to produce. It is like the mule attempting to reach the carrot at the end of the stick . . .one never reaches the carrot, but covers a lot of ground in the attempt. Chase the carrot; paint!

The learning is in the doing. Just do it!

In The Presence of Breakthrough!

"South of Carmel"

Oil on wood panel, 12" x 16"

Another challenge to which I need to rise . . . . . .

My paintings are too dark. This is not something that is new for me. Looking over 50 or 60 paintings, done in the last six months, I realize I need to slide my value scale to a higher key. That doesn’t mean to paint in entirely a high key, but to keep the RELATIVE value differences in a slightly higher key. The recent paintings of the cypress trees is a good example of being too dark.

I see this because these paintings aren’t answering my purpose. I have been looking hard at them and decided I didn’t like the shapes either. They are not what I set out to do.

So, today I went to the studio only after sketching for an hour and meditating about what I would do today. Then I ran to the studio and hastily painted this piece. Even though it is a practice piece, Today is breakthrough day!!!!!

Yup! I definitely feel the presence of a breakthrough!

I painted on wood panel . . .no canvas, no linen . . .just gessoed, sealed wood. I also began mixing my paint with a palette knife . . .I am too stingy with paint when I mix with a brush. This way I can shovel load the brush and lather on the paint. This was FUNNNN!!!! Using the knife to mix, I put it to work on the painting, too. And I am very happy with the result. (I know, a year from now it won’t look so hot, but for now, I am excited.) With just sketches and general ideas in my head, the tree was all I began with. The rest . . . .well, you could say I winged it and it was rushed. All I was interested in was the tree, the values and color and working the knife, too. So, I got what I was after . . . but much more . . .

The combo of brush and knife opens soooo many doors to variety! Yesssssssss !!

Finish the Idea

" Del Monte Summer"

oil on stretched canvase, 16" x 20"

Yesterday, I began a painting full of lots of stuff which needed to be knoodled before I could post the final version. So, today's painting is knoodling yesterday's . . . if that makes sense.





Of the things I was determined to practice in this piece was, of course, more edge management, keeping things fresh and suggested and, finally, use my palette knife in places . . . do some line drawing with it, define a few edges and create a teeensy bit of texture. Lastly, to focus on my brushwork . . .show some looseness and let the brush do the talking.





After watching Matt Smith, yesterday, and carefully observing what he did to load the knife, it was actally fairly easy. I gotta admit I would have stumbled around for years and never come up with a good clean stroke with it had I not seen how he did it. Nice!! It is pretty easy, however, to get carried away with it, so I practised on an old painting until I was sick of doing it and felt comfortable making the thing do its dance across the canvas.





The next thing was edges. I learned that edges aren't necessarily **Blended** to appear blurry. That is what I thought a soft edge meant. Edges can be ragged . . .as in the edges of foliage. They can be extremely sharp as in a corner of a building where there isn't a gradual slope into a darker value or edges can be transitions of value from dark, to medium to medium light to light as when a tree trunk rolls from the light into a darker, shadow side. So, internal edges matter, too . . . .from one color or value to another inside shape of a different color or value . . .and not necessarily blended from one to the other. See why I was having difficulty in really understanding what was happening? So, when you do understand, you are supposed to execute it . . . . .duh! ;-) That was another good thing to watch more than once and to get the real feel of doing it. It is going to take some more time, but I do feel much more comfortable with it than I did before.





The last thing was brushwork. I am almost giggling to myself as I write this! That feeling of a painting being so treasured that you don't dare do anything to 'spoil' it has gone away. Today I felt free to ruin the canvas if necessary and to go for it. So, I did. I have more to learn in this respect, but I am sensing a new feeling coming over me and my trusty little hairy stick. More fun!!

Work In Progress

The drawing and the block in . . . .

All blocked in . . .16 x 20 stretched canvas . . . .

Starting to establish form and a some degree of texture and detail. The sky holes are in . . . may need some changing . . . the grass field needs edge work. At this point, I am happy with the effort so far. Now it is a matter of building up the paint, establishing the textures and fiddling with the tree trunks . . .they will need value and color changes in each.

Having painted this subject before, I think I know what needs to be done . . . . we'll see if I can do it . . . . . .

Thanks to David Darrow a few months ago, he referred Smartflix to his blog readers. It is a DVD rental company which handles all sorts of “how to” videos. I rented a few of them in order to watch someone else paint and see the methods they use and how they get the paint from the palette to the canvas. I have to say it is might interesting and very instructive.

Seeing Richard Schmid paint a landscape in May was a revelation! No kidding! Watching him, I finally understood why they say thick over thin. Just so MANY effects can be achieved by doing so, not to mention all the beautiful variation with clear, clean color that can happen. I also showed me how my thinking had wandered off into a corner and gotten stuck there.

Last night, I watched Matt Smith paint the Sonoran Desert (Arizona). That guy blew my mind. He is simple, straight forward and an excellent painter. Let me just say that I have been wondering HOW edges are softened . . .in terms of brush technique . . . .there are always vague answers, but this guy made it as plain as day. Also, if anyone who reads this has ever tried to paint a field of ‘weeds’ . . . .no kidding; weeds! . . . .they know that it can be overwhelmingly difficult. This guy laid in paint on top of paint on top of edges on top of paint on top of more . . . no shapes . . .did not paint ‘things’ or objects . . .just put in strokes of color and value. Stroke, soften, another stroke, re-stroke, add another, soften. I had to watch it twice.

Then the final piece fell into place to help me learn to use the palette knife. Seems easy enough, right? Nope! But watching Matt (and using the rewind / slow mo buttons) was just perrrfect.

I went to the dentist this morning and had a few errands to run, which kept me out of the studio till 2:30 in the afternoon. In two hours I tackled a fairly ‘detailed’ painting of those Monterey Cypress trees again. What a difference in my attack and how the painting is going together.

I am posting a few work in progress shots to show where I am, so far. I have to hand two shows in different towns in the next few days. So, the rest of today (and a good part of tomorrow) is going to be spent doing that. Hopefully, I will be able to finish this painting, before it dries out.

An Unlikely Friend

"Sunset iii"

oil on linen panel, 6" x 8"

We artists have to develop some very unordinary skills. And they have nothing to do with brushwork, or paint or seeing in some special way. They have to do with getting really chummy with a deeply dreaded character in our lives; FAILURE.

Yup! You read it correctly. Failure is a huge, ugly demon in life whose bark is greater than its bite. The fear of it keeps artists from stepping into the ‘untried’ and ‘unacquainted with’ parts of art. In other words, many of us are fearful enough of failure that we remain in the warmth and safety of the comfort zone. Any suggestion of moving away from, or out of that zone scares hell out of most.

If we actually examine it, we find (usually) that failure is not some gnarly, nasty, covered with spikes, 200 mile per hour motor scooter diving off the edge of a rocky cliff. In the world of art, Failure is the name of our teacher(s). It is in the crashes that we find our best lessons . . . that is in life, too, usually. And those lessons are remembered well!

Unlike the Indy 500 race or any other race where there lurks the grim reaper if a mistake is made, we must court failure as a welcome passenger all through our ride through the art jungle. One could almost say that in art, failure is the mentor.

It is from that mentor that questions are generated and answers sought. It is from disappointment that we seek to improve. It is from knowing where we want to go and falling short that we hear the voice “try again.” No one ever died or sustained serious injury from a mistaken painting. Yet, unexplainably, some artists absolutely avoid any risk of shortfall at al costs.

I’ll put my bets on those who are willing to be embarrassed in exchange for a lesson. There are good bets and long shots. Those who set aside pride in favor of ‘not succeeding’ in order to try the unknown will, by far, pass those who remain in the ‘comfy zone’ and never venture out and take a risk .

Now . . . .where is that machete? I need to hack my way through this jungle of color and pigment and mediums and drawing and perspective and all that stuff. There are snakes afoot, too! But so what?

Play Is Practice, Too

"Sunset ii"

oil on linen panel, 6" x 8"

(please excuse the glare of the paint strokes)

There are times when there just isn't a single twist of seriousness in me. Those times come up from time to time and prevent me from concentrated focus. Maybe it is fatigue or a mental stall. Perhaps it is just a need to disengage.

Yesterday, I watched a video that came in the mail on Friday. My back was having muscle spasms, it was cold outside. So I sat with a heating pad on my back while I watched Richard Schmid do a painting. I had never seen him paint before. While I have his book, this was an education. And it was a sharp needle that injected pure confusion into me. Confusion because I found myself questioning all that I have been doing. So, while I wanted to paint today, I could not get serious about making a painting without slipping into being Mr. Schmid. I suppose that is what we artists do; we become influenced by other artists.

So, instead, I played with the paint. Just tried a few things with color to see what would happen. I even caked on the white of the sun. In a frame, this little 'game' painting sure gives off light. It was fun. And . . . . . . .I learned from this too. So, playing isn't always a waste of time. Brush mileage is brush mileage, right?