Boat Ramp Low Tide, 8x10

As Spring slowly moves in we begin to see low tides during the day and, when the clouds cooperate, it's possible to slip in between wet skies to actually do a painting.  The subdued light still make vibrant color a stretch to find but in this one they were in the shadow of the dock and rocks and I like those little jewels of blue and green.

This is a painting with no preliminary drawing.  Using the mass of trees in the distance I blocked in around the top half of the shed.  Next came the rectangular shape of the shed.  After that it was just a matter of adding all the other doodads.  Big shapes and doodads...that's about it.

Sunny Valley Lineup, 10x12

You can put your ear to a shell and hear the ocean.  You can put your head in a Tupperware bowl and experience this winter in the Northwest.   We are all thirsting for sun...

Having gotten rained out several times in the last week (and wiped off the paintings)  I'm posting this one from last October.  Soon all this water will pay off in scenes like this that make me want to take off my shoes and stroll through the warm grass. 

Wednesday, No Fish, 8x10

Another day with sun and few clouds and, between chores, I stopped long enough to paint this which I had been meaning to get to for at least a year.  I can't help myself.  Try as I might to tone things down I still see all this color which hypnotizes me into its spell.

By the time I was cleaning up the tide had made the boat and dock level and much of the charm had vanished.

Cloud Break, 8x10

When the Spring weather breaks begin to happen we know that Summer will be somewhere close behind.  This painting starts the plein air season for me and a pleasure it was to once again sit in the sun, talk to the passing dogs (who always want to sniff the paint), and put a brush to canvas.

My hand feels a little outdoor rusty but with luck we will have improving weather and more paintings will loosen things up.  Come and join me...

Gouache is Not Hungarian Hotdish Revisited

The gouache workshop was a great success, although at the end I was completely 'bushed'.  Despite a hectic pace we all survived and put out some fine work.

Here are two of the demos I did for the class.  The first is on toned paper and relies on the opaque qualities of the medium.  The paper combines with the paint and shows through in places, but most of the piece is thick paint that obscures the paper.

This quick second demo only has a few opaque parts with the majority of the white paper glowing through, relying on the the ability of gouache to look and work like watercolor.  Well, it actually is watercolor.

The first exercise was to learn about the paint by playing on toned paper using three primary related colors.  Exciting and colorful results were generated and all were such different expressions reminding me of how uniquely we all see and experience the world.

And here they are playing intensely in an exercise I call 'Interior Landscape".

 

This group got me re-enthused to not only paint more in gouache but to have another workshop.  It's so much fun to have had a room full of artists willing to try whatever I threw at them....and actually look like they were enjoying themselves.

Snively Tug, 8x11

Just another reminder that the Gouache Workshop begins Friday evening.

Snively Tug is from this morning when I thought that I had better see if I could still paint in gouache.  You never know.  The magic may have suddenly taken a vacation and I'd be left high and dry.  Fortunately my confidence was renewed and this medium re-mesmerized me with it's ability make interesting paintings with a minimum of work....actually more like play.

Gouache is Not Hungarian Hotdish

Friday and Saturday are scheduled for a workshop on painting in one of my favorite mediums, gouache.  The first exercise we will do is experimenting with color.  While it is a good idea to make color charts, they are time consuming and a bit too linear for me.  (Yes, I do them anyway.)

Instead, we will be doing abstracts.  In this illustration I've selected three primaries and just using two at a time made small paintings in which one of the two hues is emphasized.  The last two use all three pigments.  This is a good way to play with color, shape, value and composition while still finding out some of the color possibilities without making a chart.

Interested?  Sign up by Thursday evening at Oil and Water Art Supply.

Two at Roby King, 10x12 and 20x20

This month Roby-King Gallery is featuring paintings with water themes.  Here are two of the four that I plan to show.

The first is from a magical place that changes every time I see it.  The rocks and water are always flexing their colors and shapes.   It's up the Kootenai near Florence, MT on one of the many painting trips to the area with good friends Cathe Gill and Bob Phinney.   The water doesn't just flow, it dances it's way to the valley below.  Hey, that rhymed.  See.  I told you it was magical.

 
This 20x20 is somewhere around Poulsbo.  If you squint you can see that its about some simple shapes of light and dark intertwining with one another.  Sky and water form the bulk of the light.  Distant shore, docks, boats and logs form the dark.  The trick for me was describing the water in such a way that it wasn't dominant but created enough visual interest to pull the viewer across the surface and into the painting.

A Few Repairs, 7x9

 

A true boatyard for working vessels is hard to find so when I found this fishing boat in dry-dock it called to be painted.  I like the contrast of the differing reds.  Actually, it's pretty much a red, blue and yellow piece with variations of red/brown dominating.   Amazing how a sense of place and size can be put into such a small canvas.

Bouquet for Tuesday, 20x24, and Sergei Bongart

Tuesday night.  What to paint?  I realize that most of my still life postings have 'demo' after them because that's what many of them are, including this one.  Still life is a great teaching tool, especially during the cold rainy winter months.   The energy a demo generates translates to the painting and, when they work, are fun to look back on and remember that, due to limited time, these are so much 'seat of the pants' paintings.

A closeup so you can see the colors, not all of which show up in the photo.

I stumbled upon this the other day....a photo of Sergei Bongart teaching the movie star Jeanne Crain dated 1962.   Many people have been influenced by his paintings and teaching.  You can find out more about him at his wife's website HERE or in the five star book by Mary Balcomb HERE or at the Scream On Line HERE. 

The Tuesday Painter, 11x14

How many hours have I stood in front of an easel like this madly muttering under my breath because something wasn't going right and I had absolutely no clue what it was?  On Tuesdays persevering painters get together to try and figure out what makes a piece work and another flop.  While I try to tell them what I know, much has to come just from doing it again and again.  It's amazing how we can learn the most difficult things.

Too much time giving them my advice doesn't leave room for those personal 'ah-ha's' so I keep myself occupied in the background.....and this student became my target.  It also allowed one more inclusion of the still life already posted a few days ago.

Since I have a couple larger pieces in the works I'm going to take a small blog break so I can concentrate on finishing them.   Later.

And the Winner is....

The Free Painting Contest has Ended!

Deep in a hidden underground vault, sworn to complete secrecy, our highly trained staff has used a sophisticated random generator to carefully select a winner from almost fifty entrants across the country.  Transported by trusted carrier pigeon to our central office the sealed envelope was opened with shaking hands.  Even WikiLeaks didn't know!

And the WINNER is: R Teske!!  Congratulations!

BUT!  Since there were so many applicants there is a Consolation Prize.  Once again the staff had to go underground and pick another winner.  The following painting, A Bunch of Us Are Getting Together 8x10,  goes to: J Bentley!! 

If you didn't win I want you to know how much I've enjoyed your emailed comments and be assured that I'm going to do this again.  Just stay tuned...

White Roses in Two Versions

 

First Version:  3.5 x 4.5 inches, palette knife on paper.  A palette knife painting usually ends up with lots of pure vibrant color as once the paint has been placed it's simply there....no fudging the color with a brush.  It's just mix and place, mix and place.

Second Version:  16x20, demo with a brush on gessoed board.  These paintings were done a week apart.  While the forms are more easily recognizable and the color ended up pretty similar, it loses some of the abstract quality.  I like them both as different expressions of the same still life.  Someday I'd like to do a palette knife painting in a larger size but I'll have to save for some paint as they use a lot.  A bit more like sculpting clay...but with thirty dollar tubes of paint.

Tomorrow will be the announcement of the winner in the painting give-away.  There will also be a surprise coming with it.  I can't wait.

Marker Workshop Demo

This is the toned paper demo using warm gray markers done for the marker workshop we had on Saturday.  What a great group.  Everyone was willing to throw themselves into the unknown and try whatever I asked of them.  That takes courage.

Speaking of courage.  RN, the owner of Oil and Water Arts, certainly exemplifies that.  Three or four years ago, while riding his motorcycle in Oregon, he was hit by a semi that was passing him and didn't allow enough distance when pulling in front.  The long and short is that RN lost two fingers on his left hand....details of which you don't want to know.

Then we went into an economic downturn which has greatly hurt the arts...and art stores.  Despite returns that were initially not good RN decided to weather it out and his store and school have shown remarkable success.

Two weeks ago we had some heavy snow.  The roof of the little two story mall began to leak.  Being a good neighbor, RN decided to go up on the roof and move the snow to prevent damage to other businesses....his own was fine.  Coming back down, the ladder slipped and he fell about 15 feet onto a cement/tile floor.  Yesterday he had surgery to fix the four broken vertebrae.  Monday he will have his shattered right heel operated on.  The left heel, ribs, and head are healing on their own.   He's had two weeks of unbearable pain because the hospital missed the broken vertebrae. (!)

This is the clincher:  Less than 24 hours after surgery we were talking to him on the phone and he had new ideas about how to make the store/school even better.  A Timex watch could take lessons from this man.   Tick, tick, tick...

Life is a Beach, 12x15

Did you know that it rains in Seattle?  My friend Gillian, desperate for a hint of sun, set up a beach scene for our Thursday painting group to work from....indoors, of course.  She turned it into an outdoor scene but, since I'm somewhat of a slave to reality, I painted what I saw.  Ah, the 'tyranny of reality' as Robert Genn would say.  For you painters, this was done without any line drawing....only the dark or shadow shapes were blocked in quickly and then I began with color.

Before doing the piece I sketched two with markers.  Here is one of them using warm gray markers:

If you compare the two you'll notice that in the painting I increased the distance from front to back to give it a more spacious feeling.  The drawing was only carried to a stage where I knew where I was going with the painting.

The marker workshop is this weekend so I'll post some of the folks drawing next time.

Remember to enter for the free painting.  Go to my actual blog (click HERE) to find out more....look at the last two posts.

Oops! I goofed!

Oops....I didn't think of those of you who use an outside mail server.  The directions to enter for the free painting (last blog entry) would be frustrating for you.  Here is an alternative.  Click HERE and you will be taken to the 'Contact' page of my website where you can see the actual email address to use.  Enter now.  There is still time.   If you've already entered....thanks, I'm having fun with this.

The drawing is digital with absolutely no purpose in mind other than to entertain you.

'Celebration' With a Painting Give-Away!

Sometime in December this blog published it's 100th posting.  Now that's not a lot of postings but it seemed like a celebration time to me.  That plus beginning a new year has left me wanting to give away a painting!  

This painting, appropriately titled 'Celebration', was done in November 2010.   If you would like to be part of the drawing for this piece here is what you do.  Go to my blog by clicking HERE.  Once there, look for my picture on the right hand side and click on 'View my Complete Profile'.  You will find a link for emailing me on that profile page.  Send me an email with "I'm in!" in the subject line and you will be part of the drawing to take place on January 31st.   Easy.  I'll even ship if for free to anywhere in the U.S.  Outside the U.S. we'll work something out.

Classes are Beginning!  This week my painting classes resume.  For the first time I'm opening the subject matter to landscape photos students want to bring in as well as the usual still life.  On Saturday is the workshop 'Value Sketching With Markers', based on my book.  Contact Oil and Water Art Supply for more info.

Garden Variety, 20x20

Tomorrow I may wake up, see a glaring error and wish I hadn't posted this.....but this is today's effort set up by a painting friend, Wendy.   An amorphous pile of red leaf lettuce was difficult to make convincing but I think it gets helped along by being surrounded by veggies and in that context becomes 'lettuce'.

This is acrylic which I like to use for several reasons.  In this case I wanted to experiment with color changes which, because the medium dries so quickly, makes it easier to quickly throw on a color to see how it works and not have everything get muddied around.

Painting garden stuff I'm reminded that the days are getting longer once again and every time I remember it I have a little internal celebration....often several times a day.   This is something folks in the Pacific Northwest understand.

Hamilton Farm, 12x16

Isn't it fun to find money in an old pant pocket?  That's sort of the feeling I get when I run across an old 'iffy' painting and realize that with only a few strokes it's a keeper.  Not only that but it resolves one more thing in my life!

For those that are interested I made the roofs more varied in color, added a little blue in the grass and some more sparkle in the yellow 'whatever it was'.   Mostly just correction of values.  The rocks almost got eliminated but keeping them gave the pasture a more interesting shape so they stayed.

New Book by Catherine Gill

My very good friend, and in my estimation the finest watercolor instructor I know of, has just been published by North Light Books.  (She co-authored the book with Beth Means.)  While the many paintings printed in the book are watercolor or mixed media, I would recommend this to painters in any media (I ordered one...).  Cathe has a unique way of breaking down complex compositional and painting issues into easy to understand solutions no matter what tools you work with (she is also an excellent oil painter and print maker).   I predict this will be a foundational book for every artist's library. 

Having spent countless hours painting with Cathe I've watched her take scenes of what I saw as nothing and turn them into inspiring works.  Just look at the front cover of the book.  What might have been humdrum has been changed into intriguing shapes and color.  You can take a look at her book HERE.  Get one from her website and receive a signed copy plus an extra freebie.

(Just don't eat her peanut butter and candy corn sandwiches....)