Working Dock, 11 x 14

This last weekend it was time again for both the marker drawing and plein air workshops.  To make sure I hadn't forgotten how to paint .... and to find a good spot for a demo ... on Friday I did this one of the ferry repair yard.  It was another of my block in, don't draw paintings.  The dock, the shadowed water and the opposite shore and trees were all painted as a mass with a reddish hue which you can see peeking out in several spots.  I was helped out by a six year old who added, with some help, a few of the strokes in the shoreline.  He and his grandmother were visiting from Oklahoma and asked if it was always so sunny in Seattle.  Snicker, snicker... a week ago we were still wearing our woolies.

Tomorrow and the next day I'll post some photos from the workshops.

Dad! Where Are You?

Waiting for our daughter and her husband I sat on the grass and drew knowing full well that it was impossible for them to bus down and make the ferry on time.  Little did I realize that they had just run up the ramp I was drawing and were calling me as the ferry pulled away....leaving me on one side and them heading for the other.  To top it off, it was an hour before the next boat.  So I drew some more...

Value Sketching With Markers
This weekend the final of the new edition went to the printer and will be available by July 12, 2010.  Here is link to a sneak peek.

Hope you had a grand 4th!

New Book...finally!

This morning I sent a completed file off to the printers and expect a proof back in a few days.  After the inevitable corrections it will be printed again and be ready for distribution by July 12th.

If you have been waiting, thank you for your patience.  There are now over 150 illustrations on around sixty pages....I say 'around' because I'm thinking of throwing in a couple more  before final printing.

You can get a copy by contacting me....see my profile....    I'm not biased or anything, but I think it came out well with it's new layout and additions.

Now maybe I can get some painting done...

Portrait, gouache

Whenever I paint in gouache I seriously wonder why I don't do it more often as it is such a pleasurable experience.  Intimate, simple materials, forgiving....what else could I ask for?  Perhaps it's the need to frame it under glass, because of both the extra expense and a barrrier that then exists between the viewer and the artwork.

I'm still traveling so this is not a current piece....can't wait to get home and swing that brush again.

Plein Air Study, three colors

I'm on the road so this is one from a year ago or so.

Inspired by a friend I did a series of seven or eight paintings in either oil or acrylic using a limited palette.  Burnt Sienna, Thalo Blue, and Cad Yellow Light were the only hues I used in this one, the first of the series.  Later I added Ultramarine Blue to get more vibration in the blues, especially where there was more sky showing.  I'm always impressed at how much you can say using fewer colors.

Summer is here.  The outdoors is calling...

Near Tucks', 10x12

Last week out by Monroe the weather couldn't decide between rain and sun.....but it made for some dynamic skies.  Once again, since I'm working off my laptop, I can't tell how accurate the color is.  I remember the trees as having a less intense green.

This was a simple quick sketch just to capture the sky, particularly those light struck clouds that silhouette the trees.

William F. Reese Memorial

A fierce wind must have howled in off the plains the day Bill left us, trying in vain to fill the huge artistic vacuum he left behind.  Oil painter, watercolorist, pastelist, etcher, sculptor......outstanding in all, Bill approached his craft with an intense dedication.

This pochade and painting, his own, sat on a stool at one end of a simple pine box.  At the other end a charcoal portrait of him done by Scott Burdick.

A dozen years ago Bill told me, "Darrell, my advice for you is when you sit down play your guitar, and when you stand up, paint."  I wish I had followed his advice more closely....

Thanks Bill.
And thank you Fran for sharing him.

Tugs, 11 x 14

Two weeks ago, knowing I had a plein air workshop the next day, I wandered down to where we were going to paint so I could get a sense of the area and the color.  Sitting on the beach  I mushed my way through this one before the tide began lapping at my feet.  It was a good way to get warmed up for teaching.  This begged for a larger canvas....like at least a 20 x 24.  That would have made it even more fun.

Spring Runoff

This was the day before the international kayak competition on the Wild Mile of the Swan River, Bigfork, MT.  I puzzled how to move the focus away from the white operations building down to the turbulent water and finally settled on subduing everything in the background....about what I'd do in a painting.  If I had darkened the trees next to the house it would have made it more of a bulls eye than it already is.

'V' just wrote me that she thinks there is a comedic component to my marker drawings.  Perhaps she meant 'cartoon' and I'd agree with her.  Marker drawing pulls you to simplify and express the essential caricature of a place, finding more (less and less?) of what is necessary to show the feeling and design.  It's what I'm always working on.  Robin Weiss is constantly aware of this also and it shows in his paintings and drawings.  Check out the drawing and painting of his called 'Flatbed Truck' for a great example.

This drawing will end up in the new edition of my book which I expect to be out in early July in time for my next workshop.   (Yes, I know.  It was due out the end of April...what can I say?)

Grasslands, 8 x 14

 

Another field sketch from the Bison Reserve in Montana.  Sit by a stream and move paint around....sounds like heaven.  I simplified the detail in the distant hills to get the eye forward in the piece.  I've recently added Quinacrodone Red and Indigo to my palette for obscure reasons.  Like Turkey Umber, Indigo is just weird enough to make me interested.  

I like the water in this one.

The Crossing

Twenty minutes to wait before picking someone up I stopped the car in the Vietnamese Market area and drew what was in front of me.  The guy kept walking back and forth to his truck so he just fell into the drawing.  Even though there is all the detail and the figure is only 1/2 inch high the eye is drawn there right away. 

Marker drawing is so quick and easy to create a sense of depth and form.

I'll post some more of Montana later this week.

The Coming Rain, 11 x 14

I'm posting this because it has a good story.  Leaving the cabin about 6 in the evening, I headed out across the forest making lots of noise to alert the bear and other critters (I did run across a griz one time doing this.)

Anyway, the drops were already beginning to fall and, although I'm not usually a big vista kind of painter, this is what was easily available with the rain coming.  Mountains first and then I hit the sky because that was changing quickly.  As the rain increased I moved to the bottom and just got in the river as the storm hit.  Everything got soaked.  Rivulets were running off the canvas.   I've been asked why I don't use water soluble oils more often and this is the reason:  The painting would have ended in a color pool at my feet.

This image looks dark on my laptop.  Check back in a few days....I may correct it.

Speaking of critters, two red fox showed up early in the week.  This boulder is less than twenty feet from the cabin.  Later I found that their den was about 150 feet away and I've spent the time watching the kits play as they wait for their parents to bring in the next meal. 

Early Blooms

Just inside the National Bison Range southwest of Ronan, MT we began looking for what to paint.  I roamed about for 45 minutes sketching and absorbing, and thought I had finally found a spot.  Going back to the car to get paints I noticed this ten feet from my bumper and stayed right there.  Like they say, 'When you know, you gotta go.' 

Blocked-in with a purple color it was fairly easy.....until I got to the mass of flowers and reeds in the sunlit area.  The trick was to state it simply with just enough 'stuff' to make the illusion.  Painterly but with some detail.  Perhaps it worked... 

Steven Smallsalmon, 12x14

The Montana Painter's Alliance is a group of twenty five talented artists from across Montana who have regular group paint-outs and were kind enough to include me as their guest.  The morning of the second day they had Steve come in from the Flathead reservation in native dress.  Since I have never painted a Native American before this was a special treat.  After taking several five minute poses to get us warmed up, the group and Steve settled on this one and he posed for about an hour and fifteen minutes.

Here is also one of the warm-up sketches.  Of the four or five sketches I liked this one the best but, alas, he decided on the one that became the painting....which I also like but the shapes in the sketch were more interesting and I wished I could have brought it to a painting.  All the sketches, including this one, were wiped away.  This should give you an idea about how these begin.  Actually, there are more lines here than usual.  Enjoy.

Eagle Harbor Demo, 11x14

This is the demonstration painting I did last Sunday for the plein air group.  We had a great time painting all day in the park with people strolling by adding comments.  Someday I'm going to make a T-shirt filled with passerby comments.  The one that always kills me is from the folks that stand and watch for ten minutes and then, with a quizzical expression ask, "Whaddaya painting".  I don't really mind this at the beginning, but toward the end when there is obviously a boat or a tree or a house in the painting, always gets me.  I never know whether to laugh or cry....but usually choose laughter when they are respectfully out of range.  Art education has been woefully neglected...

Here is a photo of how this began.  It's just past the shape block-in stage and on to beginning color.....and, remember, no line drawing just massing in of major shapes in a burnt sienna like color (it can be any color.  bs just lives nicely with green) which you can see under the green as I started over- painting.  Hard even for me to believe it's the same piece.

Waiting for Thai

Waiting for our 'to go' food, I drew....what else?  The food came as I was at this stage so I went home a little disappointed that I hadn't been able to carry it further with darker values.

When looking at it an hour later I thought it made a good point and decided to post it.  While the next step of adding deeper values would have made my drawing more believable, an initial separation of light from shadow is all that is needed to create form and a sense of dimension.

For a painter, this simple 30 percent value indicating shadow struck areas (a value map)  would be all that you'd need, plus a few color notations, to create a painting.  It could lead you all the way to a finished piece.  Click on the drawing to see a larger version.

I feel an urge to talk about shape painting vs. light/shadow painting......but I'll stop and save it for another post.

Rainy Harbor, 11x14

This should be titled 'Perils of Plein Air'.  I'll save you the details but suffice to say it involved a strong wind, heavy rain and high tide....and several moves.   I ended up under a cedar tree and painted what  I could see through the branches.  The cloud cover, rain and tree shadow meant it was so dark I had to frequently stick my brush out into the light so I could tell what color had been mixed.  What you see here looks decidedly more pleasant than the experience....except that I was painting.

Once I was admiring a harbor watercolor by John Singer Sargent that looked so effortless despite all the natural elements he must have had to deal with.  Later I read that he painted it over the course of two days and had several of his friends come down to the docks and tie ropes on the boats, holding them in position so they wouldn't drift about.  The umpire should have called a foul.

Virginia

A former student of painter Sergei Bongart, beauty queen, singer with Dennis Day and acquaintance of Mel Brooks and Placido Domingo, Virginia has a rich history that is deeper than the few things I've mentioned here....she'll probably kill me for saying this much.

I think it is always difficult to capture people that are friends or relatives.  Perhaps our knowledge of them makes us feel that our attempt at portraiture falls short of who they are as people.  Nonetheless, I'm satisfied with how this turned out... but if I did it again...  

Mud Flats

I like markers because they make me think like a painter and force me to put out the extra effort to get it right the first time and not count on erasing.  On this one, however, a little judicious erasing would have made it so much stronger, although I still like it.  Again, the overlapping marks are more prominent in the scan than the original.  I hope I can eventually get them to be more representative.  Think I'll go draw...

Low Tide

A good friend recently sent me a link to a talk on the website TED by  Elizabeth Gilbert, author of 'Eat, Pray, Love'.  It's about a twenty minute talk on creativity and where creative inspiration comes from.  I found her talk humorous, inspirational and reassuring and would recommend it to any artist, writer....or most anyone, really.  I've watched it twice and will probably watch it once more.

Lately I've been experimenting with some extra wide markers put out by Copic to quickly fill in large areas of tone.  The broad mass in back of this harbor shack got filled in by it, but I need to spend some time deciding if it is an improvement or just one more piece of art junk to carry around.  It definitely is faster in massing the major dark light split.  The areas where the marker strokes overlap  show up more in the scan than in the original.