When thinking about how easy it is for me to find inspiration to paint, I would be remiss in not saying that I’m very grateful to live in a stunningly beautiful (inspiring) corner of the world. As you can see from the view from our deck we are smack dab in the middle of a mature ponderosa pine and douglas fir ecosystem. In our years there we’ve added to the arboreal diversity by planting literally hundreds of aspen trees. Aspens, imagine that! A boy’s got to have something to paint, right?
“Smack dab in the middle So I can rock and roll to satisfy my soul.”
One question that all
artists struggle with from time to time is how to keep those juices flowing. My
answer is to go to the most direct and simple art making approach in my
arsenal. For me that’s pastel on paper.
Okay guys, here’s one
for the techies – Sennelier and Unison soft pastel on Somerset Velvet Black
printmaking paper. I’ve tried dozens of papers and pastels and this combination
works every time for me. Will it work for you? Well, only you can answer that
question.
If I don’t have a
painting in mind on a given morning, I’ll grab a few pastels and a bunch of
paper and knock out sketches until the light bulb switches on! It may be the
subject matter, the line of the horizon, or an intriguing color relationship,
but at some point in my sketching practice the light bulb WILL switch on. It
always has. So far.
For a while now I’ve been aware that my color preferences change with the seasons. Really! Grey, winter weather brings out warm colors. Lots of reds, yellows, and oranges show up on my canvasses during ski season. As the weather warms and the sailboat goes in the lake, I invariably shift to a cooler palette. I wonder if I’m painting half warm and half cool paintings at the time of the equinox? I’ll get back to you on that.
At one point I tried to figure out why the shift occurred. And after some considerable analyzing and soul searching I came up with my answer: the shift occurred because it did. There is no reason. I’ve come to accept the fact that I don’t need to know why.
“Morning Ridgetop” is
definitely a height of summer painting for me. It seems a little early in
the season for such a pale, cool painting to come to life, but there it is.
It happened! And I don’t need to know why. And the boat isn’t
even in the lake yet!
View of our east pasture, inspiration for “Ancient Juniper.” The subject is a venerable old bush in the east pasture of our Lone Pine home. It sneaks into my consciousness and onto my canvas with some frequency! I painted this from memory.
This is
the painting after the first couple work sessions. My typical painting practice is to work in warm colors one
day, let it dry, then work in cool colors the next day.
Here’s the
finished painting. I spend as much
time as it takes to get the piece to resonate with a sense of place for
me. That is critical. Sometimes
the changes are small, sometimes not so small! Sometimes it happens in a few
days. More often it takes a few
weeks. And infrequently there are those problematic paintings that I just can’t
give up on but end up working on for years. Truly. The changes are always
essential. Unless they are not
essential. That, friends, is the question!
A while back I mentioned that translucent oil colors are an essential part of my painting technique. Here’s the scoop! All oil paints are more or less translucent or opaque.
In the earliest days
of art making oil paints were made of ground up rocks and nuts and berries and
bugs and other colorful materials, that when mixed with some kind of vechile,
made paint. Some oil colors are still made exactly this way.
The difference that I’m interested in is whether paint lets light go through – is more translucent, or stops all light – more opaque.
In the early stages of
my work I use only translucent colors. I like the effects I get when I put one
translucent color on top of another. It gives the painting the color
complexity and visual tension or harmony, depending on the combination of
colors, I strive for in my work. Toward the end of the painting
process I often turn to opaque colors to add a heavier impasto and create
further complexity. That thick – thin contrast is also something I strive
for in my painting. But that’s another subject.
Can you imagine a
Rothko painting without the magic of layer upon layer of translucent colors?
Without translucency Rothko’s work would not exist!
FYI: Gamblin Perylene
Red is hands down my all time favorite translucent red oil color.
If you, like me, are
fascinated by color, I have the book for you. Author Victoria Finlay’s “Color, A Natural History of the
Palette” is a richly detailed, elegantly written, illuminating story of (to
quote the chapter names) ochre, black and brown, white, red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, indigo, and violet.
The book is part art history, part travelogue, part science lesson, and
thoroughly entertaining. This is
no dry treatise on the source of pigments. Rather it is a delightfully engaging rainbow of stories
about our old pal color!
If you’ve ever wondered
where the carmine red in Cherry Coke and lipstick comes from, read on. You’ll never look at a box of Crayolas
the same way again.
Oh by the way, the color
in carmine red comes from the blood of insects!
A few weeks ago I mentioned I was heading into the studio to experiment with a more limited color palette. I thought I’d show you the results of that experimentation.
Shadows on the Taylor Fork Oil on Canvas, 60×40
The painting “Shadows on the Taylor Fork” uses five colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, and blue-violet. OK, truth be told, a little bit of blue’s complementary color found it’s way into the painting. How did that orange sneak in there? But for the most part the painting succeeds on the strength of analogous color harmony.
When using a limited
color scheme it’s the modulation of value, lightness and darkness, of each
color that keeps the composition engaging. My eye keeps moving throughout the painting and slams to a
stop when it hits the orange.
That’s what creates the visual tension I want in my work.
Always trying to keep
things a little off balance guys. Let’s not get TOO comfortable!
We had an amazing visit to Los Angeles County Museum of Art. LACMA has the largest art collection in the West.
I was especially interested in viewing Rauschenberg’s monumental “The 1/4 Mile”. The piece was seventeen years in the making. The 190 panels are, you guessed it, a quarter mile in length.
Completed in 1998 it exemplifies his use of varied mediums and methods, and his lifelong artist practice of experimentation.
What was that I was
saying in my blog a few weeks back about the importance of scale?
The first thing that struck me when we landed in San Diego was how green everything is. Much greener than I’ve ever seen southern California. We’re here for a few days visiting family. The blue green of the succulents is especially vivid. And I found my eye seeking a complementary color element in the landscape. Not likely, the skeptic in me thought! Until, on the walk through the neighborhood, we ran across this.
It’s everywhere you
guys! Astounding color, keep your
eyes peeled.
Here’s what I’m discovering. Strict analogous color composition, green, blue-green, blue, blue-violet and violet for example, results in very harmonious and balanced paintings. Let me say that I believe that in order to paint better pictures, an artist has to ask better questions. So the new question is, can I create a painting using only analogous colors that is less harmonious and perhaps on a teetering on balance point? That is to say, more like the work I love to create.
What, other than color, can I use to achieve a less harmonious, less balanced painting? I decided to try shade and tint. And it worked. It worked really well. Red, orange and yellow look very predictable next to one another. But a lighter tint of red (pink), next to the same orange, with hits of yellow thrown in, becomes visually exciting, edgy, and yes, unbalanced! The painting is immediately less harmonious and I like it better. Red orange next to yellow orange looks boring to me. But push the shade toward a deep dark blood red orange, and place it next to a pale buttery yellow orange tone, and the colors come alive for me. This may seem like a very didactic, constraining approach to choosing colors for a landscape painting, but it’s my idea and I’m having fun with it. It’s definitely forcing me out of my comfort zone color wise. And I’ve always known that forays out of the comfort zone can lead to very exciting places! If nothing much comes of it I’ve still learned something. And I’ve kept the wheels of creativity rolling. Sometimes I’ve felt pigeon holed when journalists and critics refer to my work as “colorist.” Maybe it’s time I moved out of my comfort zone and embrace the fact that, for me, often times color is what it’s all about.
