A Painter's Progress

New Pochade Box

2012-01-14T12:12:00.000-08:00

This week I received my new Alla Prima Pochade Box, handmadeby Ben Haggett, a Montana painter. Iresearched boxes thoroughly before making the decision to go with Ben’s box andall of them seemed a bit pedestrian in comparison. Ben uses powerful magnets for tasks that, inother boxes, are filled by bolts and wing nuts. For example, the support that holds up the panel can be moved aroundfreely and stuck into new positions magnetically. It can also act as a brush holder when thereis no panel on the box. Because I’msomeone who gets ridiculously testy at having to make minute adjustments withnuts and bolts, the ease of magnetic repositioning was a big selling featurefor me. I also like that I can store mypanels in the box, eliminating the need to carry an extra box to hold wetpaintings and panels.

I ordered the Bitterroot box which holds panels up to 10 x12” within it. I’ve been doing a lot ofpainting in my car lately and it seemed like a good size to perch on my lapwhile I sat behind the steering wheel. Itwill be wonderful to get rid of the makeshift easel that I’ve been using todate and to get all of my paints and brushes under control in the compartmentsof the pochade box.

I had the workshop in Mexico in mind when I ordered thisbox, but I’ll be breaking it in here in the chilly Calgary air. I’ll let you know how it performs.

Happy painting!

Painting Workshop in Marvellous Mexico

2011-12-29T20:42:00.000-08:00

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be teaching a one-week workshop in Mexico from April 4 to 11. Both oil and acrylic painters are welcome.

During this total-immersion, life-painting course, we'll explore a range of subjects from vibrant marketplaces and cobblestone streets to lush, untouched jungles. We will use these subjects to tackle the real challenges of plein air painting: massing and simplifying compositions; accurately judging colour and value; and rendering a fleeting moment with honesty and believability. Expect your eyes to become keener and your painting more intuitive as the week progresses.

The workshop will be based at Casa Buena Art Retreat in the Mexican back country near old Port San Blas. Untouched by mass tourism, it's the perfect place to relax, create, and learn. Casa Buena's marvellous hosts will see to the daily needs and comforts of your stay, allowing you to devote yourself to a week of pure painting and discovery.

COST: $1400.00 plus GST. Includes: instruction, most art supplies, 7 days' accommodation, transportation from and to Puerta Vallarta airport, all breakfasts, lunches and some dinners, entertainment and a day trip to the jungle.

Contact me or the Retreat for registration and information. I hope you can join us!

Casa Buena Art Retreat:
Jane Romanishko

janerom@shaw.ca

Telephone in Canada:

1.403.560.0894

Painting Demos

2011-12-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

Wayne - portrait demo

Lauren - portrait demo

I teach two classes a week at the Calgary School of Art and I do a demo of some sort in most of them. And every demo is done on the same canvas board. I call it the Lucky Demo Board now because, while countless studio paintings flop, the paintings that I produce to illustrate a lesson seem charmed. Though I'm tempted to keep some of them and a model once asked to buy a portrait of himself, I've become superstitious: that board is the only one that I want to use for each class. To get a new one is to tempt fate. Besides, there's a touch of the Buddhist in creating something and then eradicating it twice a week, every week. Everything is impermanent.

My students are currently working on painting alla prima portraits from life and we've had two excellent models to work from. Wayne's dark skin was a challenge after weeks of painting fair-skinned models. We discovered, however, that the same palette that we'd used on Caucasians worked for him; just the proportions of each colour changed. Strong, pure ochres, blues and purples were believable in this painting.

Lauren was a challenge because her complexion has the creamy softness and opacity of children's skin. She has few obvious colour and plane changes, though, as I studied her, I began to see tiny, subtle ones. This demo was significantly slower because I struggled to describe the dimension of her face without exaggerating or inventing colour changes. I had to keep the colour delicate and smoothly applied to avoid hardness in her expression and in the mood of the painting.

These two paintings don't exist anymore but the Lucky Demo Board is cleaned up and full of the promise of another painting. The joy is in the creating, not the keeping!

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In Search of Loose Portraits

2011-11-12T17:11:00.000-08:00

Edge Lighting

24 x 20

Even the most relaxed, loose painters can seize up and paint uncharacteristically tight when they tackle portraiture. I own the gorgeous book about the Russian-born Impressionist Sergei Bongart. His work is as loose as it comes with the exception of a few commissioned portraits. When you look at those, you'd never know it was the same hand that made them. In order to secure a likeness, painters often have to push their paintings further than they normally would, connecting all of the dots that they'd rather leave separate.

That effect was what I struggled against recently when I painted this model in dramatic side lighting. To avoid getting too picky, I'd occasionally obscure an edge or mash the paint of her features together ("smooshing" is the highly technical term for this) in order that I could find them again with less precision. I'm pretty happy with this piece, but know that I'll continue to strive to capture a likeness with fewer small brushstrokes. My ideal and goal is to do most of the painting with a brush of at least 1/2" width. There's no way that could look precious! I'll let you know how it goes.

Happy painting!

New Course at Calgary School of Art

2011-11-06T10:34:00.000-08:00

Summer Table

18 x 36

I announced a new session of my course "Painting From Life" at the Calgary School of Art. Gratifyingly, the Tuesday class filled right away. There are still a few spots available on Wednesday evenings from 6 to 9 pm if you are interested in joining. We begin the class on December 7.

The response to this course of study over the past year has been amazing. People who have long painted from photos and had plateaued in their progress, have been making huge leaps in their skill. Quite simply, that's because when we paint from an actual object, there is no need to guess or interpret in the way that we have to when working from photos. Our eyes see more than enough concrete, verifiable information and that can launch our work to a new plane of sensitivity.

So whether you can take the class or not, I hope you'll take a shot at life painting. You'll never regret the time spent.

FCA Figure Painting Workshop

2011-10-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Painting and explaining - a right brain/left brain workout!

I taught a figure painting workshop for the local chapter of the Federation of Canadian Artists yesterday. It went well and was very invigorating for me. The workshop participants were all accomplished artists who knew their way around a brush and were passionate about painting.

While I have no painting to show for the workshop (I gave the best demo piece to our excellent and long-suffering model, Susen who probably needed chiropractic work after the long, reclining pose), you can see some great results in Alice Saltiel's blog. Alice's education included enviable amounts of life drawing and the work that she produced yesterday sure shows it. Enjoy!

In Defense of Oil Paint

2011-10-15T22:25:00.001-07:00

Green Tea

12 x 16

More times than you'd believe, I've had people tell me that a friend, relative or acquaintance of theirs used to oil paint, but quit because it was too toxic. Now, I'm often told, they use acrylics instead.

I find this perception of oils bizarre. There is nothing about oils that is more toxic than acrylics or even watercolours and pastels. All of these mediums use the same pigments, just different binders. Oil pigments are bound with a drying oil such as linseed or walnut; acrylics are bound in acrylic ( a plastic); watercolours and pastels are generally bound in gum arabic. So a cadmium red oil is dangerous and so is a cad red watercolour, acrylic or pastel. It's the cadmium that is deadly, not the binder. This means that all painters, regardless of their medium, should avoid skin contact with their paints. I use nitrile-coated gloves when I work and I bark at my students when they put a brush end in their mouths.

What is toxic about oil painting, is the solvent that is often used for thinning oils and cleaning brushes. But it's entirely possible to be an oil painter and never use a solvent or to keep their use to a safe level. Many painters use only an oil such as linseed or walnut to dilute their paint enough to move it around on the canvas. And brush cleaning can be done entirely in soap and water, or by using a container of a cheap oil like canola to dunk the bristles into and swish the paint residue out, and then following that with mild soap and water. For those who want the swift clean up of solvent, it's possible to limit the amount of time that the solvent container is open so that its evaporation and indoor pollution are kept to a small amount. This may seem unacceptable to some, but they should remember that acrylics dry by evaporating ammonia-containing stabilizers and formaldehyde preservatives into the air. This is far from harmless.

So whenever I hear oils being bad mouthed, I make a point of defending them. Their reputation is undeserved and painters who steer clear of them out of fear are missing out on a wonderful experience. Spread the word!

Painting a Still Life Start to Finish

2011-10-09T09:21:00.000-07:00

Berry Branch

20 x 16

I like the mental exercise of painting still lifes. The set up alone can take an hour or more of tweaking and evaluating every aspect of the objects that I'm painting. Things that I consider are: number, size, colour and shape of the objects; view point; repetition of colour, shape, and value; negative and positive shapes; balancing objects; light source; and much more. If I can set the objects up well, the painting is easier, so I force myself not to skimp on this task.

Once it's set up, then I can work at leisure and that's when the fun begins. I do a few quick thumbnail sketches to determine the overall pattern of dark shapes and shadows and to see if I can connect some of them and make pleasing abstract shapes. Then - finally - I get to paint.

The nice thing is that all of this prep work has made me very familiar with the subject and has allowed me to make a bunch of mental notes about how I'll paint it. I might have noticed an opportunity for the repetition of a colour or the losing of an edge. I knock in the lightest value and colour of the set up; not in a final, polished way, just as a marker to remind me of my tonal parameters. From there, it's all midtones. While the bright, impasto highlights on a subject are often the most exciting to look at, they are also the smallest pieces of paint and so I have to restrain myself and not put them in too early. I like to tell my classes that it's like constructing a house. You can't put the trim around the windows before you've built the foundation, the frame and all of the other less-exciting stuff. But when you do get to put that trim on, it has a firm base, feels right and makes a statement. So I work the midtones in as varied a way as I can, incorporating different warm and cool colours, an assortment of paint consistencies, brushstrokes and edges; all as a means of setting the stage for the lightest, smallest pieces of paint.

The final marks are the juicy hightlights, often applied with a palette knife, and some dark accents. These little notes of paint create order out of soft-focus patches of colour, allowing the forms of the objects to come into focus. It's the magical step and I always get a kick out of it.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving and happy painting!

Rendezvous Gallery, Vancouver, BC

2011-10-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

Wood Sprite

24 x 30

I'm thrilled to have been invited to join the artist roster at Rendezvous Gallery in Vancouver, BC.

I've been waiting impatiently for this piece to dry so that I could send it off with some others to the gallery. For me, this represents the Vancouver way of life as I remember it when I lived there in the '80s. Though it's a huge city, I always felt close to the lush green of the the West Coast rainforest, and I'd often hike down the hill across from the University of British Columbia to lie on the beach. For a mountain-born, landlocked-raised student, it was paradise!

Although my paints are calling from their storage place in the freezer, I'll spend the day wrapping paintings and head to the UPS store. If you're painting on this lovely Autumn day, put on some paint for me!

New Workshop at Calgary School of Art

2011-09-23T09:00:00.000-07:00

There are still a few spots left in an oil painting workshop that I'll be teaching at the Calgary School of Art on October 29th. The workshop is titled: "Loosen Up Your Oil Paintings".

Many painters who sign up to be my students do so because they want to paint in a looser, more spontaneous way, but they don't know how to accomplish that on their own. This workshop looks at all of the ways that paintings can be made looser and bolder from edge treatment, to colour choices, brushwork, and more.

It will be a fun day with lots of experimentation and hard work! If you're interested in signing up, please contact the Calgary School of Art.

Painting with a Purpose

2011-09-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Calendula Bouquet

16 x 12

My classes at the Calgary School of Art started again this week. Once again I'm teaching Painting from Life. Weare going to start with still life, floral and, finally, figures. I like to have a plan for the 12 weeks;something that ties every lesson together. This session will be allabout "painting with a goal".

This summer I began to set myself goalsfor every painting that I did. This seems a bit over the top on thesurface, but it served me really well at a time when I was a bitstuck - okay, really stuck. I was indecisive in the studio, not sureof the point of the paintings that I was doing. They all seemed tobe covering the same ground in much the same way. I was spinning my wheels and it wasn't a good feeling.

So I decided that each painting had tohave a single, clear goal. Several still lifes were done asexplorations of backlighting; it's effect on the colour of objectsand their edges. The beach scenes were done to teach me how to paintwater. I rubbed off a lot of paint on the way to learning thatlesson. And the floral above was an experiment in colour and howlittle of it I could use while still creating the illusion ofcolourfulness. Every colour in this piece is greyed down and thelights on the orange flowers are actually greys and light greens. Yet it reads as a colourful painting with bright orange flowers. Thekey to this one was colour temperature changes.

By setting a goal for each painting, Iforced myself to figure out how to meet that goal. And in this way Iforced myself to learn new things about painting, and, ultimately, toimprove. I hope that my students find this practise as valuable as I did.

Texture and Abstraction in a Painting

2011-09-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

Polka Dot Bikini

21 x 24

In an effort to prolong summer, I've been busy painting beach scenes. They have also offered a chance to work on texture and abstraction in paintings. The water in this piece was done in several stages, starting with a warm, orange tone and lots of splattering and dripping. My medium for these drips was 50/50 oil and odourless mineral spirits. While I prefer the look of watercolour-like drips that you can get from using just solvent in the paint, this doesn't make a strong paint film and I don't do it.

Then I used pure colour without white to lay different warm colours into the water and the figure. Finally, after that had dried, I went back in and added the light effects. I modified the figure with the cool blues of the reflected water and sky, and I dropped blue sky onto the warm colours of the lake. Then I could work on the sun-drenched colours of the girl's skin in the light. This is my favourite part and is very easy to overdo. I love to lay the paint on thickly to get the right value and an interesting texture in those areas.

I debated the level of completion of the face but finally decided that I didn't want the viewer to get caught up in that part of the painting. The important part of the scene was the light and colour, not the specific child, so I kept her features out of it and just suggested a bone structure.

This method of working is not natural for me: I'm usually a wet-on-wet painter, but I enjoyed it. It was nice to be able to lay colour cleanly on top of dry paint. I'll be doing more of these layered pieces to see where it takes me.

Tutt Art Galleries, Kelowna, BC

2011-09-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Pink Pail

12 x 16

Every year I go to Kelowna, BC to visit family and get some blasting sunshine. And every year I pay a visit to Tutt Art Galleries to check out the latest works by H.E. Kuchein, Min Ma, Brent Lynch and other excellent artists. So it is with great pleasure that I can now say that my paintings are hanging in Tutt alongside these painters' works.

The gallery is carrying a new series that I've been working on this summer and one that I'm pleased with. I spent the summer teaching myself how to paint water in a way that showed its sparkle, depth and variety. It was a long and often frustrating process and I wiped off much more than I kept. Then, something clicked and I felt like I was achieving what I was after. The secret was simple: lots of paint and lots of colour. I also make sure to use both warm and cool colours in the water; this makes a believable effect in a way that just using different blues and greens can't.

Then I incorporated figures - my favorite subject - into the water and felt that I was onto something that made me happy. My debt is to Sorolla and Potthast in these scenes of children, sunshine and water, and the series is a natural for a part of the country that is famous for its beach culture.

If you're passing through the Okanagan Valley, I hope you'll stop in and check it out for yourself!

Summer Paintings

2011-08-10T15:01:00.000-07:00

Apricots and Violets - 12 x 16

I know it's a great summer because I'm not getting any blogs done!

I'm still painting every day, though, squeezing it in between a bumper crop of raspberries to pick and an epic battle that I'm waging against the slugs that are trying to eat my entire garden.

Lately, my paintings have become about backlighting. For the past few weeks, my still life set ups are against a window, augmented by a flood (you can just see it at the top of the photo). There's something magical that happens when you see a subject lit warmly from behind. The objects are all influenced slightly by a cool tinge and their highlights can be intensely warm. In the painting, I mixed a good dose of Cad. Yellow Deep with Titanium white and laid it on thickly for the sunlit tablecloth. It worked believably, especially when contrasted with the blue-grays of the cloth's shadows.

By keeping the shadows in a midtone range, I increased the sense of illumination. My first effort had a more Rembrandt-ish chiaroscuro effect with dark shadows and bright lights. This didn't provide the airy colourful effect that I was after. It seemed to weigh down the subject. It also didn't allow me to play with colour interactions as much as I wanted. Something should dominate: value or colour, and chiaroscuro is all about value. Since this subject was so richly coloured, my path became clear.

I used the paint very dryly in this painting - paint consistency is something that I'm also experiment with at the moment. I like the broken look to the brushstrokes as it increases the feeling of sparkling light; it's a bit like the dust motes that you see in a bright sunbeam.

I'll continue to explore the possibilities of backlight and have some plein air ideas for it. If the berries and the slugs give me a break, I'll post them soon.

Happy painting!

FCA Workshop

2011-07-24T09:48:00.001-07:00

Asters and Limes

16 x 12

A couple of weeks ago, I taught a floral workshop in Kelowna, BC for the Federation of Canadian Artists Central Okanagan Chapter. It went really well - to my great relief.

Knowing what I can take for granted when I teach a workshop is the trickiest part. Do the painters know the colour wheel and concepts like complimentary colours? Have the oil painters heard of the "fat over lean" rule? How confident are their drawing skills? Wondering these things invariably keeps me up the night before the workshop, rehashing my lesson plan and painting demos in my mind. For this floral workshop, I spent the wakeful night deciding how many flower forms to include in the bouquet and demonstrations. At the last minute I eliminated some trumpet-shaped tiger lilies as being just too much information and decided to demo only daisies (disk shapes), peonies (half spheres and multiple petal layers), and snap dragons (upright, complex forms).

Between 9:30 and 4:30, we painted the three types of flower forms and then the workshoppers each finished a full bouquet. It was an impressive output made possible by the experience level of the artists. All of them had wrestled with enough paintings in the past to know how to take on a new technique and not panic.

This is, I think, the biggest handicap that painters can throw in their own paths: insecurity. Most paintings start out sketchy and ill formed, but most can be turned into something of value. We just have to keep working at them without giving in to the niggling little doubts that tell us the painting is doomed from the start. Eventually, as we add more paint, things begin to suggest themselves: a repeated colour scheme, a rhythm of shapes, values or patterns, or exciting edges. There are endless ways to make a good painting and we just have to be patient enough to work on and allow these ways to become clear to us.

It was great to be in a room full of painters who understood that. I'll bet they could have handled the tiger lillies, too.

Learning from John Singer Sargent

2011-07-08T20:28:00.000-07:00

After Sargent

20 x 16

I waffle between an allegiance to the colourists and a love of traditional tonal painting. While I lean towards Sorolla in my colour choices, the work of Sargent is what inspired me to try oil painting in the first place, and I still love his paintings. So I decided to attempt a copy of one of his most tonal paintings. This Sargent portrait allowed me to explore several new things: thin paint application, muted palette and a very realistic portrait. It was quite a learning experience!

What struck me most was the thinness of the paint layer that I had to use. Like Sargent, I toned the canvas with a thin wash of gray, then I massed the shadows in earth colours. The pale skin and background were applied with far less paint than I would normally use (I love buttery slabs of paint) and the shawl - in a miracle of minimalism - was created with just a few bluish and cream strokes over a warm underpainting. I only got to pull out the impasto on her brooch and that seemed to sit violently on top of the painting at first. I left it and, by the next day, it had settled down into the painting a bit and looked alright. Some of my students once referred to this as the wonder of the "paint fairies" and I think they were right. Sometimes a day of rest makes all the difference in a piece. I did have to add a bit of thick paint in the background and a couple of marks on the scarf so that the brooch didn't feel too isolated in its thick consistency. And, to be honest, I need to see chunky paint sitting up on top of a canvas or it just doesn't feel like a fun painting to me.

I got into some trouble when I made "one more little adjustment" (always my downfall) to the area beside the mouth on the left. As soon as the paint reached a slightly greater density, her expression hardened. It was tiny, but perceptible. That area only worked when the thinly-painted cheek could butt up and flow into parts of the thinly-painted mouth. As soon as the cheek got one extra stroke, the mouth seemed isolated and in need of repainting. Trying not to panic at seeing her go from fresh girl to hardened harpy, I opted to let the whole thing dry and then laid one single, fresh stroke into the cheek in order to enliven it again. It's not as good as if I hadn't touched it at all, but it's improved.

What I learned:

- Damn! Sargent was an amazing painter!

- A palette that looked like thin puddles of mud could yield a luminous, subtle work. My main colours were: cad red light, yellow ochre, trans. red oxide, ivory black and cerulean blue. I added a tiny amount of cad. yellow deep to the background and to freshen the cheek area.

- Hit the values hard and distinctly in the initial lay in. The impact of this work relied on the strength of painting in her hair, eyes and mouth. They had to be dark from the start.

I'm going to attempt a copy of one of Sargent's sumptuously-draped figures at some point. He could paint fabric like nobody else. I just have to find a good detail of one of his paintings so that I can understand the play of chaotic brushwork that he used in order to create the illusion of light playing on satin and velvet.

If the word "copy" is raising uncomfortable, elementary-school-instilled feelings in you, disregard them and give a copy a try. Your favourite painter may be gone, but his or her work is still here and can teach you so much. Reading about their methods is not the same as actually copying them; the act of recreating a painting is one of the best ways to learn.

AFA Acquisition

2011-07-02T09:10:00.000-07:00

Weeping Birch

32 x 26

Every year the Alberta Foundation for the Arts purchases artworks to add to its collection. This provincial government-funded organization has been acquiring Alberta artists' works since the '70's and has, according to its website, a $10 million collection. The works are loaned to galleries and for provincial and national exhibitions.

This year I submitted "Weeping Birch" for the AFA's consideration and was accepted. The more I ponder this, the prouder I am. My work will play a part in representing the arts for this province. How cool is that?

New Course at the Calgary School of Art

2011-06-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

Ballet Dancer

32 x 26

I'll be teaching a new Painting From Life course in September at the Calgary School of Art.

I hope you'll check out the link for times and dates. Maybe I'll see you in class!

The Portrait Sketch

2011-06-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

"Twelve"

18 x 14

I took full advantage of my son's financial debt to me this weekend and coerced him into sitting for this portrait sketch. I pay my kids $10/hour for their modelling services. Any less and their energetic bodies would be unable to contain themselves; they wouldn't think it was worth it. He listened to an audio book of a Flavia De Luce mystery which kept him engrossed. Even so, I only managed to get him to sit for an hour so I worked at full speed on this painting.

Knowing that I'd be rushed, I opted for a limited palette of Cad Yellow Deep, Ivory Black, Transparent Red Oxide, Cad Red Light, and Titanium White. The resulting painting is more opaque than I'm used to because it only contains one transparent colour and because I barely used any medium, choosing to apply thick, tube-consistency colour throughout. It's also more muted than usual because black is used as as blue. I'd be interested to try another sketch using Ultramarine Blue instead of black. He still owes me $5 for a video game, so perhaps I can talk him into sitting next weekend.

Backyard Plein Air

2011-06-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

Apple Blossoms

16 x12

Wimpy plein air painter's set up

We are finally getting some nice weather and it's making me restless in the studio. But, since I'm not a particularly hardy plein air person, I decided to stay in the backyard and enjoy the plein air experience with ready access to a bathroom.

The apple trees were in full bloom, and while I think they're a better watercolour than oil subject, I had to give them a try. It took a while to figure out how to give a sense of strong light on such pale forms, but I finally found that frequent temperature changes created the illusion that I was after. Each bunch of white blossoms is made up of many colour temperatures layered on top of each other; and none of these colours is actually white. Over the initial cool greenish or purplish grey, I brushed warmer, lighter peach and pink hues. Then, for the final hit of strong light on the edges of the petals, I placed quite intense orange. This made a nice contrast to the cerulean sky, but didn't believably read as light. By throwing one more dollop of cool blue-white on top of the orange, I finally got the sunstruck look that I was after. These many overlaps create a vibration that approximates the luminous quality of actual blossoms. How my amazing tree does it, I'll never know!

Alberta Pharmacists' Association Centennial Commission - the process

2011-05-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

The unveiling in Jasper - photo by Jim Dobie

Completing the Circle

This weekend I drove the spectacular road to Jasper, past glaciers, mountain goats, mountain sheep and even a grizzly, to attend the unveiling of a painting that I did for the Alberta Pharmacists' Association. The association is celebrating its 100th year, and they had decided to commission a painting to mark the event.

Using the Alberta Foundation for the Arts as a advisers, the Pharmacists' Centennial committee had selected a group of painters whose work interested them, and invited them to apply. We submitted CV's and portfolios.

From there, the committee chose 5 artists to paint maquettes and send those along with a written explanation of the work. I was one of the painters chosen, but, when I read the commission requirements, I was daunted. The committee wanted to show both the history and the future of pharmacy in Alberta, as well as the collaboration of pharmacy and other professions such as nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, nutritionists and pharmacy technicians. And the work could not exceed 24" in either dimension.

It took some thinking!

Finally, I settled on a circular composition and placed the figures along it using stock images from the Internet to find poses. Then I played with colour schemes a bit like Goldilocks checked out bowls of porridge: too hot, too cold, just right. In all, I painted the maquette 4 times in one week until one satisfied me. The painting was still a bit sticky in spots when it was delivered, but I did make the deadline.

Happily, my work was chosen for the final commission.

With the help of a lab coat and using myself, my husband, and a friend, who is a nurse, as models, I got photos of all of the poses that I needed and the painting came together over about a month. Because of the complexity of all of those figures, I worked slowly and let it dry many times along the way. It was delivered in October but the identity of the chosen artist was kept secret until this weekend's unveiling.

The painting will hang in the reception office of the Alberta Pharmacists' Association, and prints of it have gone to diverse locations such as pharmacies and associated offices around Alberta. I even had the pleasure of handing a signed print to the Honourable Gene Zwozdesky, the Minister of Health and Wellness.

I've said it in past blogs, but it bears repeating: it's important to join professional associations. Had I not been a member of the Alberta Society of Artists and the Federation of Canadian Artists ,it's unlikely that the AFA could have found my work and brought it forth for this commission. Those memberships have brought me great opportunities and, as artists, we need every opportunity that we can get!

An Homage to Degas

2011-05-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

Pondering Degas

30 x 40

A Woman Seated Beside a Vase of Flowers

Some paintings are special. I keep coming back to them, studying brushwork, colour harmony and composition to see what it is that makes them stand above the ordinary. If I'm lucky, these paintings have been done by me at some point in the past when I was immersed it that wonderful paint zone in which nothing goes wrong and each mark is confident. Usually, however, they have been done by others. Then they become the standard for me to aim for.

My favourite Degas painting is one of these magical ones: "A Woman Seated Beside a Vase of Flowers" which is in the Metropolitan Museum in NY, makes me overwhelmingly happy whenever I see it. I love the unorthodox composition which has a woman placed at the edge of the canvas and peering out of its frame. Both of these facts are no no's according to the many books which state compositional rules - and yet it works. Degas keeps the viewer's eye from following her eyes out of the canvas through the use of the bright door frame edge above her head, and allows us to appreciate her by making her figure simple and calm next to the extravagant, highly-detailed flowers beside her. I love the way that he linked her to the bouquet by echoing the flowers' forms in her ruffled cap and blouse front. Though she is simply painted in comparison to the flowers, Degas managed to make her the the most important subject in the frame. Is this because we naturally look at people with greater interest than objects, or because of the way that he led our eye to her, framing her with the architecture around her, and even punctuating her head with the tower in the painting behind her? The more that I look at this piece, the more complex it becomes.

Because I couldn't get it out of my head, I decided to paint an homage to it. I set up a huge bouquet and roughed it in, and then hired a model, Susen, to sit for the figure. Susen was actually the reason that I plunged in and decided to paint this in the first place, because she has an inward gaze and stillness that seemed just right. She wore a wine-coloured cloche and a lightweight blouse with embroidery around the neckline and these elements led me to enhance the deep reds in the bouquet and use them as a link to her figure. I deviated from the original by adding a dark drape at the front of the table to lead the eye in and by placing a stalk of light flowers to beside her head as a visual stopper instead of a doorway.

It's not Degas - the Met wouldn't sell - but it makes me happy and carries both the original and the new within it.

Setting up a Still Life

2011-05-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Sitll Life with Limes

36 x 24

Still life set ups can be tough to compose. I went to a second hand store and bought several bowls, plates, vases and cups to add to my meager collection of elements and, this new selection suddenly overwhelmed me. It's much easier to set up an arrangement when you only have 4 vases to choose from.

I wanted to use limes in a set up because their colour caught my eye at the supermarket, but I struggled with choosing objects to place with them. I decided that I would use warm colours to contrast with the green fruit. Because the fruit is rounded, I needed to echo their shape elsewhere, so I put a platter at the back.

Too much roundness is boring, so in went the upright glass vase and, for more variety, the short, dark vase.

The small blue flowers are a nice touch of small, irregularity in a composition which would otherwise be made up entirely of large, simple shapes.

The next choice was perspective. I chose an aerial view in order to achieve a sense of spaciousness around the objects and to give lots of room for the warm, light-struck fabric which covered the table.

If you'd like to play with setting up still lifes, have a look at the National Gallery of Art in Washington's site. It's meant for kids, but I had a great time manipulating objects, drapes and lighting in their virtual picture frame.

9th Annual Juried Member's Show at the Leighton Art Centre

2011-04-27T08:09:00.000-07:00

Daydreaming

24 x 36

I hope you can join me at the opening of the Leighton Art Centre's 9th Annual Juried Member's Show on April 29. The opening reception is from 6 to 9 pm and they always have great munchies.

My piece "Daydreaming" was accepted into this show and I look forward to seeing all of the other works that were selected.

See you there!

Linen Revisited

2011-04-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

Dragonfly Cloth

20 x 16

I got another shipment of linen this week: this time I went for the #13 double primed Claessens. It's lovely and smooth and takes the paint in a totally different way than gesso. But, still, there are a few tiny pinholes of light when I hold it up to the light. Fewer and much smaller than the single primed linen, but still there.

This time, I emailed Claessens about it. While one faulty batch seemed reasonable, I doubted that such a reputable company would have lots of them out there.

I got this encouraging reply from the company:

"Pinholes are a common "problem", it all depends on some technical elements. We are aware that this does not look nice. You will probably have seen on our site that all of our canvases are glued before the coatings are applied. This glue is applied for some reasons, one is to protect the linen fabric from the paint used; both our coatings and your paints. The pinholes are just in the coatings not in the glue. If the glue is not well applied it would show on the back and paint would pass through. I suppose this is not the case.

The pinholes will not influence the fact the painting is archival or not. From our experience paint has not a large influence on the canvas in the long run, the biggest treads are the fact paintings are kept in bad conditions: humidity, dust and so on. If a painting is kept in good conditions then we do not expect problems in the future. Can I refer in this context to the efforts museums and galleries do to keep humidity and airflow controlled.

If you are also looking to have an as smooth surface as possible you can eventually decide to add an additional layer, this will brightened at the same time the canvas and cover the remaining pinholes."

I quickly ran out to the studio to examine the back of a painting - no paint had come through! All is well and I can now use my linen in peace. I'm a worrier about the archival potential of my work and so this sort of issue can, literally, keep me up at night.

In light of this information, I've removed the earlier blog about the linen pinhole problems.

Experimental Painting

2011-04-23T20:41:00.000-07:00

Weeping Birch

32 x 26

Robert Genn's recent letter about the importance and fun of artistic play really struck home. Sometimes it's easy to get too serious in the studio and I find myself editing as I paint. Instead of exploring and trying to find new ways to use the paint to express myself, I do the same sort of subject that I've done before, thinking ahead to its placement in one of my galleries. Consistency of work does matter to galleries.

Luckily, I catch myself now and then and allow myself to just play and try new things. "Weeping Birch" comes out of this spirit. I wanted to paint a portrait of the tree in my front yard, making it as multi layered and majestic as the tree itself. Instead of working wet-in-wet as I normally do, however, I made drippy, spattered, warm layer of abstract colour over the entire canvas and let it thoroughly dry. Then I went over it and painted the tree, making sure that plenty of the underpainting was untouched in the final painting. The white, papery trunk of the birch allowed lots of scope for playing with bright, light colours and, by using more medium than usual, I could create textures that didn't immediately look like brushwork. This was a refreshing change in the surface of my work.

I enjoyed this method of working and am going to do more of these. The only thing that bothers me is waiting for the underpainting to dry. Still, if I get several paintings underway at once, I should be able to overcome my impatience.

Next, I think, I'll do a figure using this approach, and I'll do more work in designing the underpainting. This play has, I hope, launched a series.

The Problem with Great Skin

2011-04-17T09:10:00.000-07:00

"Drowsy Model"

16 x 12

This gorgeous, young woman, Julie, recently modeled for my students and me. She has the most amazing skin: like thick cream. She modeled for two classes and in the first one I lit her with the regular mix of colour-corrected fluorescent and halogen spots. It was impossible! Her skin had such a variety of subtle warm and cool colours on it which this basically cool, flat light brought out completely. So when we tried to paint her, the results verged on bizarre: lavender, mint, rose, cerulean - she had them all.

The second week, I lit her with just the warm spots and turned off the fluorescents. Then I moved a spot over each painter's easel so that we were painting under the same light. This is important. It's much harder to get a good, believable painting when your canvas and your subject are lit differently.

The dramatic lighting helped us a lot. Julie's skin took on a simplified warm colour with fewer variations across her form and we had the benefit of a strong value pattern to play with as well.

I'd like to try to paint her again sometime under the flat lighting because I didn't succeed the first time, but I was pleased to have found a way to capture her at all!

FCA Award of Excellence

2011-04-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

Fishing

32 x 32

I was notified that "Fishing" received an Award of Excellence in the FCA Thompson Nicola Shuswap Chapter show which opened this past weekend in Kamloops, BC.

I am honoured and pleased!

Yesterday I went out for some plein air with my son. He fished (with a rod, not with his hands as he did in the painting above); I painted. Luckily, I photographed him fishing because by the time I was ready to put him into my landscape, he'd moved off down the river. Painters are not as mobile as flyfishermen so I couldn't follow him. I will try to pop his figure into the landscape today in the studio. I'll post the results if they were successful. If not, well, it was a great day in the sun anyway.

Calgary Sketch Club Demonstration

2011-04-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

Daisies and Country Roses -demo painting

14 x 18

Last week I did a demo for a local artists' group, the Calgary Sketch Club.

It was a lot of fun and a bit of an experiment. I decided to try my limited palette out for the floral and, because I'm not that familiar with it, I was taking a risk!

It looked like I was going to regret this decision when I tried to mix a reddish purple right at the start. Instead of putting the usual Cad Red Light on my palette, I'd used Cad Scarlet which contains the same pigment: PR 108. They may have the same number, but Cad Scarlet is definitely more of a yellow red; totally inappropriate for purples. Luckily, I'd packed the CRL just in case, so I scraped it off the palette and carried on.

After that, things went smoothly, to my relief. There were lots of good questions which really helped to make me feel at ease and the limited palette surprised us all with its versatility. There's always a wonderful moment the first time I show how ivory black and white make a beautiful, vibrant blue when applied next to warm colours. It seems like magic.

Below are a couple of pictures of the demo in progress and the picture above shows the finished piece. The demo was about 1 1/2 hours, and I put in another 45 minutes in the studio the next day, mainly pumping up the lights.

New Course Starting in April

2011-03-20T19:44:00.000-07:00

Painting From Life

I'm announcing a new 12 week course beginning at the Calgary School of Art on April 12. Once again, I'll be teaching a "Painting from Life" course but, because my students are getting so accomplished, I'm asking that new students have some previous painting experience; not a lot, but it would be tough for absolute beginners to fit into the class.

It's wonderful to see the progress of the painters that I've been teaching for the past 1 1/2 years. I don't put all of that improvement down to my instruction, though. I see the positive influence of working with a group as having had a great impact on the individual painters. Often, when someone is unsure of how to proceed, she'll walk around the room, checking out the many different painting styles. Something about this small stroll acts to inspire and reinvigorate that painter and, when she returns to her easel, it is with some fresh ideas. Each of my students is starting to develop a distinctive and unique style. This, I believe, is the goal of art instruction: to help artists find their own voice.

There are still some spots in this class if you are interested in joining.

Inspiring Still Life

2011-03-12T10:13:00.000-08:00

Daisies and Brushes

16 x12

William Nicholson
1927

Painting from life is wonderful, but it does have me casting about for subjects sometimes.

In my studio, I have a huge bucket of fake flowers that look incredibly realistic. There are also a few vases and some fabrics from the curtain section of Value Village - a second hand shop. But I'm not a knickknack person, so I don't have many props to go with these still life objects. As well, I find myself casting about for pleasing arrangements.

Sometimes I find inspiration in set ups that others have already done. You can't go wrong with Cezanne's still lifes, for example.

The painting above was inspired by the one below it. I saw this gorgeous, simple still life by William Nicholson at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY last year and loved it. The lighting, muted palette and intimacy of a garden table all created a magnetic atmosphere around this piece. Strangely, I also felt the presence of the painter very strongly in the painting; as if he were still lingering in the lovely moment that he created. That sounds weird, but how else do you describe the intense feeling that only a few paintings give you? I walked right past a lot of spectacular work that day with barely a glance, so it's odd that a few primulas and a pair of scissors should make me stop and gaze with pleasure.

It was this atmosphere and colour harmony that I tried to capture in "Daisies and Brushes". How wonderful would it be if someone, someday, felt the need to stop and gaze at it a generation from now.

More on Shipping and Oil Grounds

2011-03-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

Abundance

24 x 36

Happily, my paintings arrived in good shape at the new gallery. Now we're working on getting them to look right on the Artym's website. That's the problem with different computer monitors: I sent images to the gallery which looked correct on my monitor, and these images look washed out and wrong on their website. Something is being lost in translation, but I'll be darned if I know what it is. We'll continue to work on it.

The painting above is another one done on an oil ground. I continue to be pleased with the surface because of its non absorptive quality. If I don't like a colour or a mark, I can just wipe it back to pure white and try again. This reversibility has freed me to experiment more than I used to in a painting and has made my studio time very exciting. Non painters would think I was nuts if they saw me cackling and grinning as I painted and wiped and danced gleefully around the studio, but I know that anyone who's reading this will understand.

Shipping Paintings

2011-02-27T09:50:00.000-08:00

Daisy Days

30x30

My floral work has been accepted into The Artym Gallery in Invermere, BC and I'm very pleased. It's a gallery that I've watched online for years and will be honoured to be a part of. But this inclusion has raised the issue of shipping paintings; something that I've only done a few times in the past, and never with a bunch of paintings at once. I've now spent hours researching how to pack my work so that it arrives without swayed and dented canvases.

The options seem to be cardboard or wood. I'm not patient enough for the drilling and sawing of building a wooden crate, so I decided to go with the cardboard option: this option by Susan Blackwood at Oil Painters of America. Of all of the sites, and Youtube videos that I looked at, this one seems the most elegant, simple way to secure paintings for shipping. I'm off to buy the styrofoam today.

Before I put the paintings in their box, I'll cover the painted side with tracing paper or wax paper to ensure that they don't pick up any bits. Some people use bubble wrap across the front of a painting, but I was at a gallery when a shipment of paintings came in from another city, and I saw what bubble wrap can do. There were little dots permanently imprinted over the entire surface of several large oil paintings. It was an artist's nightmare.

Wish me luck with getting the pieces safely to their destination.

Oil Primer Instead of Acrylic Gesso

2011-02-19T08:59:00.000-08:00

In the Woods
20 x 16

This week has brought a revelation! Those are always good.

I've been flirting with the idea of painting on linen lately, but the price has put me off every time I research it. So I did the next best thing and bought some oil primer to apply over my usual cotton canvases. The canvases have to be gessoed first to stop the oil primer from destroying the fibers. I know: I should be using rabbit skin glue instead of gesso, but I'm not there yet. Talk to me in 6 months and I'll likely be using bunnies.

I spread the thick, heavy stuff on and then I twiddled my thumbs for a week while the canvases cured. Finally, I began to paint. It was amazing!

The experience is nothing like using a commercial canvas. The paint keeps its separate strokes more easily instead of melding marks together as happens on gesso, and the paint sets up much more quickly than I am used to. Using just oil as a medium, the paint was almost dry the next day. That's at least a day or two sooner than on gesso.

But the best thing - saved to last, as all best things are - is the colour. I've never seen the paints look so luminous. When I brought it in from the studio, my son thought it was painted on copper because it had that inner glow that copper paintings have.

I'm still experimenting with application of the primer because the first effort was too thickly applied and created a very slippery surface, but I'm loving it!

Reworking a Dry Painting

2011-02-13T10:04:00.000-08:00

Mandarins and Stocks 16 x20"

I've been enjoying my fabulous fake flowers and painting lots of lush florals in the studio lately. The snow may sparkle outside, but inside it's mid summer.

While most of my paintings are done wet in wet in one session, this piece has had a couple of different incarnations on its way to maturity. I've changed the colour scheme almost completely from the original which had a more neutral beige background. By draping broken strokes of blue over it, I linked the blue in the vase with its setting, and created a nice vibration in the background. This would have been hard to get had the underlying paint been wet.

When I go back into a painting that has dried, I make sure that it is, in fact, thoroughly dry. If you paint over oils that have begun to set and are sticky, you run the risk of premature cracking down the road.

Then I oil the piece out to reduce friction and resaturate the colours. To do this I brush a thin layer of walnut oil (my usual medium) over the whole painting and then rub away most of it, leaving just a whisper of oil behind, When I paint over this, it has the smooth, easy application of wet paint. This extra layer of oil, also helps to fatten up any sunken areas of the painting which have become matte and unattractive as they have dried. This is a particular problem with the darks, which tend to be applied in a leaner way, either through thin application or by the addition of solvent.

I think this piece is done now. I hope you like it!

Composing a Floral Painting

2011-01-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

Mandarins and Bouquet

24 x 30

I've been experimenting with different compositions for still life. It feels like every bouquet that I set up is a repetition of something that I've seen in other paintings in the past. This is particularly obvious when the flowers are in a vase. Richard Schmid, in his book Alla Prima, notes that he does everything possible to avoid depicting his florals in vases, and that remark really got me thinking. Flowers are a wonderful subject, but they do look tamed and conventional in a vase. Schmid deals with this problem by laying flowers on a surface like cloth or a bowl. They are often in a horizontal position.

Another possibility is to change the usual perspective as I've done here. I kept the vase - special because it was a gift from my mother - but put the set up on a low table in front of my easel. I also tried to introduce a greater depth of field by laying oranges on the foreground cloth.

As always, negative space was the most interesting part of the composition for me. I love the spaces between the flowers and their stems more than I love the flowers.

This type of set up is one that I'll continue to experiment with. It's vigorous and interesting to me.

I hope you agree!

Demo for the Calgary chapter of the FCA

2011-01-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

One hour figure demo 20 x 16

After some tweaking the next day

I was invited to give a painting demo at the local chapter of the Federation of Canadian Artists last night and the result is above.

It may have seemed ambitious to do a figure given that I only had one hour to demo (!) but I actually do figures more quickly than any other subject. If you know anatomy, it's very straight forward. Florals, on the other hand, can take me hours more (or as Sharon Williams tells it, I take an hour to do one flower).

The hardest thing about demos is coordinating your painting brain with your social brain. You have to be able to talk and answer questions coherently, and still make good choices about painting. And you have to do it with a large room full of artists right behind your back. It's a bit intimidating.

Still, it was a lot of fun and, like all painters, the audience were a supportive, interested bunch who really enjoy watching how someone else approaches the craft of applying paint to canvas.

Portrait Problems

2011-01-15T15:09:00.000-08:00

"I've noticed in portraiture, if you don't get it right early on, you don't get it. Continuing to fiddle with a likeness generally takes it further and further away until you are looking at some other person altogether." Robert Genn

That comment was in Genn's popular and insightful blog "The Painter's Keys" last week and it really struck a chord with me.

I did these two commissioned portraits recently and noticed the same phenomenon that Robert Genn remarked on when I began to fiddle with the little girl's features.

She is 4 years old, but precocious. Her articulate forthrightness is beyond 4 - more like 8 - and it's hard to represent her at her chronological age because of it.

I take lots of photos for a portrait because I know the kind of lighting that works for me, and also because it helps me to get to know the sitter, and figure out how to portray her. In the case of this girl, I found that the images were evenly split between those that showed a 4 year old, and those that showed a more mature child. I sent the best of each to her mother, and asked her to pick the ones that most showed her child's personality. All of the ones that she picked were mature; she sees her daughter as a strong, independent person and the baby-like pictures didn't ring true.

So, with great gusto, I painted the portrait. My kids, who know her, felt that it captured the girl, and I thought it did, too.

But the painting was in my studio for too long, waiting for me to finish her brother, and I began to second guess myself. Did she look 4? Shouldn't she?

I started to fiddle and tweak, to add volume to the cheeks, and shorten the neck. And the more that I did, the less it looked like her.

Luckily, the paint underneath my additions was dry and I could wipe back to it when I realized that I'd gone too far down the wrong path. I removed most of my changes and refreshed some areas that had become muddy with the unnecessary work, and there she was again. My kids said it looked like her, and I forced myself to stop.

Her brother, by contrast, was easy. The photos of him all showed the same sweet, shy person, and he fell off my brush.

It was a reminder to me to go with my instincts and save myself some trauma and work down the road.

Painting Fresh

2011-01-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

Backyard Bird

16 x 12

This painting has the freshness and spontaneity of a plein air work, but it was done from a photo. I took the picture on a frosty morning when the sparrows were perched like ornaments in the shrubs, waiting for me to fill the feeder.

I aimed to get the right shape, colour, and value immediately, with no underpainting. This isn't usually the way that I work, but each subject calls for its own approach and this direct approach worked well here. There is some layering on the bird which allows me to describe it's subtle luminosity. It also helps me to make the bird the centre of interest despite the fact that he is a dull gray; the snow piled on a fence in the background and the shrub branches actually held more colour than the bird. By layering and using impasto, the bird could be made to compete with his surroundings.

I gave this as a gift to my bird-loving mother. She was pleased. What more can a painter hope for?

Christmas Plein Air

2011-01-01T10:10:00.000-08:00

Christmas Day

12 x 16

Happy New Year, everyone! May you paint often and well in 2011.

Christmas day was gorgeous and above freezing, so I ventured out for a plein air day. My son wanted to try his new fly fishing rod (special because it breaks down into 4 rather than 2 pieces like his old one; the way that I am about art supplies, he is about fishing gear) and I wanted to catch the amazing, clear light. By wearing my nitrile gloves and standing in the sun, I was able to finish this fresh little painting with fingers intact.

The problem with painting in the sun is that your colours look wonderfully saturated and rich while you are working, and then, when you get home and look at the piece in normal room light, they suddenly turn dim. It's a fact that I haven't totally learned to compensate for. But I knew that I'd need to make adjustments, and Christmas dinner was calling, so I left the painting outside in a patio-cushion storage box until I could next get to it. I do the same thing with my palette every night after work. The freezing cold stops the paint from drying, so I can work wet-in-wet for a much longer time. Adding clove oil to your paints (just a drop or two) will, apparently, do the same thing, but I haven't tried this yet.

It wasn't as bad as I feared, however. I just needed to add a bit more orange to the weeds in the snow and brighten the water with more intense greenish blue. I'm pleased with this because it captures the special light that drew me to the scene in the first place.

Saving a Painting that isn't Working

2010-12-21T09:27:00.000-08:00

"Perfect Day in Kananaskis"

12 x 24

Sometimes it's hard to figure out why a painting isn't working. I'll have stared at it for hours and be unable to see it objectively anymore. It's just clear that it's wrong somehow.

Ideally, I'd ask another person for a critique. My husband and children have become very adept at spotting problems at a glance though it takes careful questioning to pinpoint what bothers them in it. But if I don't have another body handy, I use a mirror to dissect the piece. Holding a painting up to a mirror is a way to see the piece fresh, from another perspective. This is the same reason that some artists examine their work upside down, through the lens of a camera, or in a different light or context. Just popping a painting into a spare frame can give you a better sense of what's working and what isn't.

Another great aid is a little piece of coloured cellophane or acrylic that many art supply stores carry. It's usually red, and looking through it turns your painting into a values-only composition in which it's easy to identify weaknesses. Usually, with me, the painting is too mired in midtones. There are too few highlights and too few and isolated darks. Putting in some stronger lights, or consolidating and strengthening some dark passages can work wonders.

The important thing, though, is not to give up on a painting without exploring all of the possibilities for saving it. It's tempting to just toss a piece, but it's awfully satisfying to rescue it.

The painting above needed some mirror work to rescue, but once I boosted the highlights, it all came together.

More Light through Trees

2010-12-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

September Light

16 x 12

Mundane things touch me more deeply than extraordinary things do.

I've got pictures on my computer of fabulous, famous sites from my travels, but when I browse photos for painting references, I never settle on these as options. Instead, I get caught up, once again, in the magic of small moments like the one above.

This was actually done on location in my favourite city park, but it could be anywhere. What I hoped to capture was a universal image: something that we've all seen and enjoyed, but, because it has nothing of real importance, is seldom painted or even photographed. I did take a picture of the place but it contains nothing of the wonder that I found there. It shows a tangle of trees and undergrowth and an area of light in the canopy. This reminds me, again, that I should paint from life, or, failing that, work really hard to notice what it is that I love about a scene. It'll be my memory, more than the photo. that helps to make a painting.

But even on location, I had to work pretty hard to show how special and luminous the place actually was. The tree trunks couldn't be just their mid-tone gray, they had to have a more definite colour and temperature. I find that purple enhances forest shadows and creates the mystery and magic that I'm after. It can also take over a painting as it did with this one on a couple of occasions until I stood back, reevaluated, and toned some of it down. Then, to compliment the blue and red-purples, I leaned the colour of the leaves towards yellow and orange-green.

It's not a realistic representation of what I saw, but it is faithful to the spirit of the place that day. For me, that's what art can and should be.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

2010-12-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

Little Creek and the Bow

20 x 20

Winter Light

11 x 14

I've embraced the season - finally - and am enjoying the patterns of light on snow once again. Jill at Collector's Gallery forced me into this acceptance by mounting a winter-themed, group show which opened yesterday. I had to do snow to do the show!

It's actually pretty tough to paint snow. At first, when you look at it, there seems to be only cool shadow (usually blue) and warm sunlight reflecting off of the white. But, as always, the more that you look, the more you see.

I find it's necessary to add warm reds into the lower layers of snow paintings. This not only creates interesting grays as you layer on different blues, but it also supplies the warm end of the spectrum, without which a painting seems just too chilly and artificial. To my eye, there are all of the colours of the spectrum in every scene, and omitting one leaves a sense of incompleteness to the work. But that might just be me.

The paintings above are two of the works in the show at Collector's, and depict two of my favourite things: a creek in Carburn Park, where I jog every day; and light shining through trees. Both of these subjects make up an inordinate amount of the pictures on my hard drive, and I've painted them many times.

Painting the Painters

2010-11-22T15:28:00.000-08:00

Lyndell

16 x 12"

Winter arrived last week, and it blew in hard and fast. One day I was in sandals, the next: snow boots.
As it does every year, the first snow brought traffic to a halt, and that meant that the model did not make it to my class at the Calgary School of Art. The poor woman spent her evening stuck in traffic.

Luckily, I have an intrepid group, and they opted to paint each other in the act of painting. This is an extremely tricky thing to do: your subject is always in motion and expressions constantly flicker across his or her face. It requires a certain "whatever happens, happens" approach to painting, or you're likely to get pretty tense.

The amazing and wonderful thing was that no one got tense, and everyone got a very good likeness of their subject. More than that, they all produced very emotional, touching works of the people that they knew. It was a stimulating and invigorating experiment that I probably wouldn't have tried under ideal circumstances.

It just goes to show that nothing is predictable in painting, and you should always just give an idea a try, even if it seems outrageous; perhaps especially if it seems outrageous.

Figures in Landscapes

2010-11-14T15:10:00.000-08:00

Alpine Meadow

18 x 20

This painting is unusual for me in that it has a figure, but he's not centrally important.

Normally I do either figure or landscape, but not both at once. There's something relaxing about putting a little person in there for scale and narrative, but not having to render him with any degree of detail or finish.

Though I love landscapes, I have found that they look empty to me without some people or their traces.

I guess that makes me truly urban, or maybe my aesthetic has been shaped entirely by European impressionism and post-impressionism. You'd be hard pressed to find a wild scene even in 19th Century western Europe; the land had been densely populated and cultivated since Roman times. Planted forests have lived and died on that continent. It makes North America seem rugged and untouched.

It's that raw wildness that I'm unable to render in paint. Maybe it's just too huge and impersonal for me to contemplate. It makes my attempts at depicting it seem irrelevant.

The Lure of Instructional DVDs

2010-11-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

Autumn Bouquet II

26 x 30

I was browsing the trailers on the APV Films site the other day and ooh-ing and ahh-ing like a kid at a fireworks display. APV distributes art instruction DVDs and has some very good, international artists.

I love watching even the short promo trailers because they show the working methods of the painters. David Curtis paints as if he's assembling a jigsaw puzzle: he knows where each piece goes and places it unerringly in the correct value, shape and colour. Herman Pekel paints with abandon and glee, using credit cards for tools, sloshy, drippy paint, and layers that you can't believe he's able to apply given the amount of wet, mushy paint on the canvas. Maxwell Wilks starts his paintings in a random, sketchy, and muddy fashion and then pulls a light, pleasing, and harmonious work out at the end. And there are others: all unique.

The thing that stays with me, after watching all of these different approaches, is that it's their confidence that makes these painters and their work so inspiring. They work in a playful, but not sloppy method, using their old tricks, but also giving the impression that they are trying new ones out for size too. Pekel said it best when he advised:"at least once a week, discover something that no-one's told you. That means it's really, truly part of you." I think it's the constant search for something new and exciting about painting that keeps these artists fresh, and watchable.

I'm not sure if I'll order a disc; I think the most important teaching that I can get from these DVDs is to paint boldly and have a great time doing it. All the rest is just detail.

Speed Painting a Model

2010-10-30T09:48:00.000-07:00

Daydreaming

24 x 36

I recently hired a model to come into my studio and Alice Helwig and I painted her. We had her for 3 hours, which seems like lots, but is nowhere near enough time.

The good thing about the time constraint, however, is that I didn't have time to think, tweak, or fuss. I had a big, ambitious canvas in front of me and, if I wanted to make the session worthwhile, I had to fill it with enough information to be able to finish the painting after the model left. It was speed painting!

The first thing that I did was quickly draw the basics of the pose with a thin, brownish colour. Then I switched to a big brush (size 12) and roughly slapped on all of the darks in the composition: shadows on her skin, dark drapery, hair, lips, eye sockets, everything.

Right about then I was cursing myself for not toning the canvas first; it would have reduced friction on the brush and would also have meant less painting for me in the long run because there wouldn't be any pesky white canvas to cover. But it was too late to backtrack and so I sped on, using big bristle brushes to cover the canvas in a hurry, and without the commitment of the definite marks that synthetic brushes make. I love the quote by John Singer Sargent: "Start with a whisk and end with a broom." It sums up the rough, sketchy work that happens under the dashing, dramatic marks that finish a painting.

Next I blocked in some basic warm skin colours for her body and draped a cool, greenish tone over most of the shadows and the places where her form was turning away from the warm light. I kept the shapes big and loose, ignoring any small variations like the little hit of orange light at her clavicle and her facial features.

Then I blocked in a background to kill the white and got down to the business of painting with creamier, more distinctively-applied paint. My favorite part!

The light in the studio wasn't this dramatic as there is no direct sunlight coming into the space, but I had a warm light on the model, and I exaggerated its effect on her body.

When the 3 hours were up, I had enough on canvas to finish the painting later. Her body was done and the face was roughed in. The eyes were closed, but I found her face too blank that way, so I repainted them open later.

This was great fun to paint. I'll do it again, though I might go for a less ambitious size of canvas, or hire the model for a longer stretch.

Fabulous Flowers!

2010-10-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

Autumn Bouquet 24 x 20"

My next workshop is something new for me: florals. Lately, and ironically, given the time of year, I've really started to enjoy painting flowers. A big bouquet allows me to paint for much longer than any other subject that I've found so far, and that's what makes it so fun. I often overwork landscapes because they seem to be done much too quickly. Just when I'm warming up and getting a handle on the subject, I've pretty much filled up the canvas and painted everything of importance. Then I get into the unimportant stuff, then I tweak a bit, and then it's sunk.

Not so with florals. I can roam over the canvas endlessly, adding bits and flourishes. It's very satisfying!

My workshop is on November 6 at the Calgary School of Art. If you're in Calgary, I hope you'll sign up.

Make a Painter of Yourself

2010-10-18T20:39:00.000-07:00

This week I had an email from a former workshop student asking for my help. She no longer lives in Calgary, but hoped that I could still be of some help as an instructor for her. That was incredibly flattering, but I finally had to conclude that I couldn't do long-distance art teaching. So much of teaching well is being able to accurately judge paint consistency on a student's palette, or make a mark on someone's painting to illustrate a point. Technology will never be able to cope with these needs.

Instead, I suggested a few things that she could do in her new town: I told her to look for local, reputable organizations for artists; in Calgary it is the Federation of Canadian Artists, the Alberta Society of Artists, the Sketch Club, and several others. Organizations like these are a good place to look for workshops. I also advised her to scour her town for artists. She might happen across a painter whose work touches her, and who would be willing to teach her.

As well - and this is how I learned - I advised her to get out every book about painting that her local library has. When those run out, find books online and have the library bring them in on inter-library loans. I used the "how to" books to learn the basic rules of oil paint, and then moved on to looking at specific painters or art movements like Impressionism. The more art that a student sees, the more she will be able to figure out what kind of painter she would like to be. Finding an aesthetic is half the battle.

Along with this I spend time looking at gallery sites online. By doing this, I've learned which painters I like (or not) and then I've checked out the other galleries that they are in. In these other galleries, I might find more painters that I enjoy, and follow the links to their other galleries. Pretty soon, I have a long bookmarked list of galleries to look at regularly for inspiration and insight. Studying other people's work has helped me to narrow down what attracts me in a painting: whether it's subject, colour, use of line or types of edges, or degree of finish, and this knowledge has helped me paint with real direction.

Most importantly, I told her to paint as often as she could; to try for every day, but to take anything that was available. Like learning a musical instrument, you have to put in the hours of practise.

And that explains the images shown above. They represent one week's work from two of my students. A mother and son, they paint together on weekends, exploring and extending the lessons that we've done in class that week. They argue about technique, look at painters online, email images of paintings in progress to me, and manage to fit art into full-time working lives. I'm a help, but they have taken the responsibility for their learning and are putting in the time. I have no doubt that they will become the painters that they want to be, and I know that my former workshop student can be successful too. It all comes down to focus, passion, and time spent with a brush in hand.

Developing a Sketch

2010-10-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

Bare Shoulders Study 12 x 9"

Bare Shoulders 20 x 16"

This painting was done from a 45 minute oil sketch that I did at the Zhaoming Wu workshop in the Spring. The day was nearly done and I wanted to get in one more painting before the whole wonderful experience ended.

This is the first time that I have taken a rough oil painting, and used it as a reference for a finished piece. I know it's common practice for artists to do this, but I've never felt it was right for me. My style is a loose and spontaneous response to a subject and I've always felt that repeating it would make it stiff and lifeless. I'm also someone who tends to prefer plein air pieces to studio work; I'm not about polish.

But this sketch continued to hold interest for me so I thought I'd give it a go. Mostly, I wanted to see if I could do something that was less monotonous to her shoulder and back area, and I wanted to tone down the palette. The model had red hair and I had started the whole painting in such a brightly-coloured key that by the time I was doing the hair, I was practically using the paint straight from the tube in order to compete with everything else. It felt pretty out of control.

The biggest help on the revised version, was placing some lavender in her back. This created the coolness that I needed and also acted to visually gray the figure because it acted as a near compliment to her peach-toned skin. The power of using gray is something that is slowly making sense to me. I've read about the importance of it for years, but it's only now appearing in my work. I'm consciously trying to use it more.

From a more muted start, this painting went much better. I could imply red hair with less pigment and her white top became more believable with gray-blue shadows rather than the strong blue I'd used before.

This was so much fun that I think I'll revisit some plein air work and see if I can do a larger version and still keep the spontaneity. It's nice to suddenly have a bounty of new projects to begin.

Gold Award at Art Visions 2010!

2010-10-08T09:23:00.000-07:00

My mom accepting the Art Visions Gold award

"Digging" 30 x 30"

Yesterday was a very happy day! I was once again awarded the Founding Patron's Gold Award at the FCA Art Visions 2010 exhibition. "Digging" did me proud.

Because I couldn't get a last minute flight out to Kelowna, BC, my parents accepted the prize for me, and toured the exhibition. This year the show has grown to include a fourth gallery: Evans Fischer Gallery, along with Turtle Island Gallery, Gallery 421, and Hambleton, which is showing my piece. The FCA even had a shuttle bus to get you from one venue to the other; a very nice feature.

My mom noticed a man examining my painting from a semi-crouched position, and peering upward. It made her laugh because I had once told her that's how I toured the Metropolitan Museum in NY. I'd look at a painting head on and then crouch to see the profile of the paint. There's nothing so instructive as seeing where the paint is thick and where it is just a thin layer. It's nice to know that someone wanted to learn about my paint application too.

But what's really nice is belonging to an organization that promotes and rewards artists for their hard work. I'm grateful to the FCA Central Okanagan Chapter for this honour and for the enormous amount of work that they did to make such a great show.

Art Visions 2010, Kelowna, BC

2010-09-30T16:11:00.000-07:00

Art Visions 2010 is set to open once again on October 7 in Kelowna BC.

I was fortunate enough to be juried into this growing show again this year, and my painting "Digging" will hang in Hambleton Gallery.

The show is unique in that it encompasses 4 galleries in the art district in Kelowna. Last year my work won the Gold Medal and I attended the event. It was an impressive organizational feat, and the Central Okanagan Chapter of the FCA pulled it off without a hitch. We all had a great time mingling and viewing art. Opening night was chilly but the Okanagan wine that was served in each gallery warmed people up nicely.

If you're in the Okanagan, I hope you'll attend this ambitious and exciting show.

Painting Out

2010-09-21T15:50:00.000-07:00

Afternoon in the Rockies

9 x 12

I went out to Banff to paint with Alice Helwig recently and we had a great time.
That's the easy part; the part that's tricky is having a great time AND producing some work.

Both Alice and I talk while we work. I'm not sure that it's always intelligent talk because we're also intently focused on our paintings, but it means that we work well together. I got a painting and a half out of the day. The half a painting is partially scraped out and awaiting revisions to clarify some design problems.

The piece above pleased me because it caught the drama of the light conditions. We avoided our usual rainstorm by a few hours, but the clouds loomed throughout the day, and every time I looked back at the mountain, there was a new shadow pattern on it. That was frustrating at first, and then liberating: I could do whatever I wanted, because I could never capture what I was seeing in the short time that it presented itself.

I tried something new for this piece because the Raymar panel that I was using was untoned, and I had to work fast. Using a muddy mess of mostly Transparent Iron Oxide and Ultramarine - along with whatever was lingering in my brush - I sloshed on an overall dark wash with a mix of odourless mineral spirits and walnut oil (my usual medium). Then I went straight to the most exciting part: the lit-up mountain, and put it on with a few heavy, impasto marks.

At this point I had the lightest light and nearly the darkest dark. It was easy to just develop the mid range from there.

The tricky part was layering over that initial wet mud without contaminating the subsequent layers. I had to watch the paint consistency to make sure it was always fairly heavy and would both cover the dark, and flow off of the brush without much pressure. When I describe this pressure to my class, I tell them to imagine they are petting a bug with the brush. Their goal is not to squish the bug. This image seems to help them ease off the brush and lay strokes on gently and cleanly.

I'll try this very direct method of painting again in the future. It's raw and rugged: exactly what plein air is all about.

New Workshop October 2

2010-09-16T15:49:00.000-07:00

Painting the Figure

The Long Pose

October 2, 10am to 4:30pm

I'll be teaching a workshop on October 2 at the Calgary School of Art.
I thought it would be nice to teach a long-pose figure painting which allows time to develop a finished painting. Normally I work the painters fast and hard in my workshops and have them do 3 to 4 paintings over the course of a day. They leave pretty tired, but with signs of a definite progression.

Nice as that progression is, I saw the value of a long pose when I did Zhaoming Wu's workshop in the Spring. We had a pose for the entire day, and not even a face to work with. I managed to snag this profile view when we were setting up but some painters spent the day looking at a spotlit back. And yet, they managed to do interesting things with that because they had the time to fully explore and develop the painting. We still left tired though.

I'm interested to see what students do with a long pose. When there's no time constraint, I believe they'll start to really notice the small subtleties of form and colour temperature.

The course still has room, so if you want to see what you would do with the opportunity to paint a single pose during a day, sign up and join us.

CIPA Exhibition in Calgary

2010-09-12T11:19:00.000-07:00

Images from the 2008 CIPA Exhibition

I'm very excited to have been asked to be a member of the awards jury for the Canadian Institute of Portrait Artists' national exhibition.

CIPA holds a juried, biennial exhibition in Canada, and this year it is going to be showing at Mount Royal University here in Calgary.
The dates are: September 21 to October 15
Venue: 2nd Floor, Bissett School of Business, Mount Royal University

I'm looking forward to seeing the show in advance and hope that you'll check it out while it's in the city.

Dazzled by Light

2010-09-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

Designs

12 x 24"

I realized while I was on vacation in Kelowna, BC that Calgary's light sucks!

Calgary has a very cool, hard light for most of the day, only breaking into warm, saturated colour in the morning or evening.

By comparison, the light in the BC interior is an impressionist's dream all day long. I've never been to France, but I suspect the light is like what I saw on my vacation: warm, rich, and full of colour bouncing in every direction.

The painting above is from a photo of my son fly fishing in a small lake near Kelowna. When I painted it, I tried to remember the magical, atmosphere and let myself introduce lots of reflected warm and cool light. The underpainting is ochre which softens and warms all the colours on top of it.

I'm glad that I painted this within a couple of days of returning from our trip. Like most photos, the picture that this was taken from doesn't capture much more than the basics of colour and pose. Having the memory of that day fresh in my mind let me recreate the scene as I experienced it with my wondering (and envious) eyes.

Who knew there were so many fly fishermen and women in the world?
Since starting on this subject, I've had comments and queries from all over. Recently, an Italian blogger wrote a piece about my work in part of an ongoing series of fishing art blogs. Here's a link to Mattia Romano's fascinating blog; you can practice your Italian!

http://capitanrustyhook.blogspot.com/2010/08/art-of-week_27.html

Presentation Counts

2010-09-01T19:48:00.000-07:00

Boy

9 x 12

Last week I visited a frame shop in Kelowna that I've wanted to see for some time: Classic Gallery Framing. I've looked at their frames online, but, like most people, I need to see the real thing before I'll buy something. What really interested me was their plein air frames.

When I was in New York recently, I noticed that many galleries frame work in these seamless-cornered, gold frames with no liner. This is not the Calgary aesthetic, but boy do I ever like it! The simplest little painting looks like a million dollars when surrounded by gold. I also like the fact that there is no linen liner to collect dirty fingerprints and dust.

I bought 3 different styles of plein air frame: 2 gold ones and a black one. The picture above is of the simplest of the frames that I brought home and shows just how effective gold can be. If it's good enough for New York, it's good enough for me!

Working out Problems in Small Paintings

2010-08-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

Pony tail

9 x 12

I'm having fun painting these small figurative pieces right now. They help me work out problems and experiment without committing to a large canvas. They're also a great way to keep working during this most distracted, and busy season.

The model for this painting was sitting under warm halogen lighting which created powerful shadows on his body. The accepted rule is: "warm light, cool shadows or cool light, warm shadows. In practise, however, this is never wholly the case. I find that there is always some warm and some cool in the shadow, and everywhere else on the skin for that matter.

The young man's back was predominately warm but, as his torso turned from the plane of the back to the side, there was a distinct coolness. I painted it very green because I prefer a powerful statement to a small one any day. There was also a strong warmth on the side of the body where the model's arm reflected its warmth onto the torso. Then, around to the front, I put in the fun little highlight on the belly which described both the wrinkly nature of his slouched abdomen and the hot, bright light. It's tough to tell in reproduction, but there is a lot of yellow in those highlights. On the palette, it looked far too yellow, but it worked fine on the painting amongst all of those other exaggerated colour statements.

I left the background very rough with a great deal of transparent underpainting visible. When I paint, I'm always trying to figure out when a painting can stand on its own. That's the moment when, ideally, I'll stop working on it. Sometimes I actually manage to do so. Often, I ignore that moment and continue painting until the canvas has dense paint everywhere, and I've lost a sense of freshness and spontaneity. This time I stopped in time. The chair is implied, and the jeans are cursory, but this helps to keep the focus where I want it: on the torso.

I think that I learned a lot from this piece.

Altering an Oil Painting

2010-08-03T15:50:00.000-07:00


Dappled Light

9 x 12

Cows. Not my usual subject by any means.
Sharon and I drove around in the lush, green countryside recently and found a small herd sheltering from the afternoon sun under a stand of trees. Before they decided to move back to grazing, we set up on the road nearby and started to paint them.
Inevitably, I suppose, they did move - a lot. Cows moved in and out of my view, but, because they all have similar colouring and shape, I could refer to another cow to finish painting anyone who had risen and moved on.
Originally this piece had an extra cow in the lower left corner. I thought it would be a good, diagonal lead in to the composition. It wasn't.
Luckily, I hadn't used much impasto paint on that one, so I just shaved off some of the thicker dry paint with a palette knife and painted grass, tree trunks, and the legs of the cow on the left in the newly vacated spot.
I just love the flexibility that oils give to make major changes like these. I couldn't have done that when I painted in watercolour!

Thinking - But not Overthinking a Painting

2010-07-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

Country Roses

16 x 12

My roses are loving the cold summer that we're having: no scorching sun to burn their petals and dry their roots. I'm glad someone is enjoying it.
This painting was a challenge because the roses are such a pale, delicate pink. I had to choose a grayed shadow colour which tied in with the pale, cool background but didn't vanish into it. Some of the background green is in the flowers, but, after a lot of experimentation, I went with a warm, blue-gray for the body of the roses. That, and the background green reflect down into the glass vase and create a cool, curved form within the warmth of the ground colour.
Glass is fun to paint as long as you paint just what you see: shapes, values and colours. As soon as you let your mind note that you are painting glass (and that's been called difficult by many painters) the task becomes nerve wracking. I did my best to subdue that labeling part of my brain and just rely on my eyes.

Different Takes on the Same Subject

2010-07-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

Daisies and Bells 16 x 20

Daisies and Bells 2 20 x 20

Starting in September, I'll be teaching a course in painting from life at the Calgary School of Art.
It's becoming very clear to me that photos are a weak reference for paintings and that I need to work from life as often as possible.
Last week Sharon Williams and I painted a still life of some flowers from my garden. The flower arrangement is holding up surprisingly well, so I've painted it again, using a different colour for the background.
The first time the background was the strong, warm red of my studio wall which, when the light hit it, leaned orange. Because of the hot colour scheme and the lively company, this painting is full of bold, thick paint and drama.
The second time I put the vase against a creamy white fabric. The incandescent light turned the background a pale, creamy cool. That, and the fact that I was alone in the studio, changed the mood of the painting from vibrant and vigorous to muted and more subtle. I found it more natural to avoid big impasto marks and to work more delicately overall. There is a lot of transparency left in this painting, and a greater degree of translucence than in the first one.
I'm not sure that I would have even bothered painting these pieces if I'd only had the photo to work from.

Speed Painting

2010-07-10T22:39:00.000-07:00

This week I taught a workshop in Kelowna, BC on figure painting from life. The people who attended were all experienced painters, and members of the Federation of Canadian Artists, Central Okanagan Chapter. Their questions were keen and knowledgeable, and their skills sharp, which made the day a real pleasure for me.

When I teach a painting from life workshop, I have the students produce 4 works in one day. It makes for some very tired painters!
There are 3 small paintings of 20 to 30 minutes and a longer, and larger piece done in about 2 hours.

The reason for such a prolific day is that I want students to have a chance to make several starts in the technique that I'm teaching in order to solidify it for themselves. Practise is the best teacher. But I also don't want them to have a chance to overwork and fiddle with a painting. In such an accelerated day, there is no opportunity for fiddling, and the result is that everyone produces at least one focused, clear painting.

I feel like I'm torturing the painters sometimes when they groan out loud at the announcement that their time is up, but I soldier on to the end each time because that's invariably the time when someone remarks that it was a good thing to be under such a strict schedule. It forced them to concentrate on the essentials of the model's pose and not sweat the small details.

Maybe I'll set the timer for myself in the studio tomorrow, and avoid fiddling for a change!

Cleaner Brushes Faster

2010-06-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Warm Tones

16 x 12

I hate cleaning paint brushes, and yet I never manage to complete a painting with less than 20 brushes. Mostly it's because I don't want to have my solvent open and evaporating beside me for hours, so I keep it closed until the end of the painting session. In between, I just wipe the brushes briefly in a rag, or, unfortunately for me, grab another brush from my overly-large supply. You really can't have too many brushes!
But clean your brushes you must if you're going to produce nice work. I've looked at some of my students' brushes, and found them to be little more than sticks because of all of the old, dried up paint crusted in between the bristles. There is no hope that those brushes will produce the sensitive, painterly layering that these painters are yearning for.
The good news is that even my 20-brush sessions don't take all that long to clean up. I follow a simple order that minimizes open solvent time and keeps the brushes soft.
First I wipe as much paint off of the brush as I can using a rag. Paper towels are not as effective. A 15" scrap of an old t-shirt will clean all of the paint off of all 20 brushes and it would take 10 or 15 paper towels to do the same thing. This has also encouraged me to clean out my closet with an eye to making paint rags, and that's not a bad thing.
Next I put them in a coffee can of odorless mineral spirits with a grid at the bottom. Scrubbing the brushes against this a couple of times will get almost all of the paint out.
It's important to change the solvent regularly to keep it working effectively. I decant the cleanish liquid off the top and discard the sludge at the bottom of the can into a lidded bucket which, when full, I take to the firehall as hazardous waste.
After this, I wipe the brushes again to remove most of the solvent, and then I put them in a small bucket with a generous squirt of castile soap in the bottom. I fill this up to mid-ferrule with hot water and let the brushes sit in it. They can stay for hours if they're bristle brushes, or just for a few swishes and then a rinse if they're soft synthetic brushes which will permanently bend in hot water. Dishwash soap is a bad choice as it is so powerfully degreasing that it leaves the brushes splayed and dried out. Castile is a vegetable oil soap which is very mild. A gentle shampoo would also work.
And that's it. I don't squish my fingers between the bristles at any point, because it would take me hours, and I don't need to. I never have paint trapped in there after this cleaning routine. If cleaning brushes has been a grind, I hope you'll try this method and get on with the good things in life.
Happy painting!

Commit to your Art

2010-06-22T09:29:00.000-07:00

The Cast 2

14 x 11

As a painting instructor, I find that, though all of my students come to me with the desire to be painters, and an interest in art, not all of them are ready to commit to art. And if they don't commit, they don't improve; at least not as they'd like to improve: dramatically.

To commit, a painter has to leave the old priorities behind - a clean house, mowed lawn, interesting and innovative meals - and put all of that reclaimed energy into painting, looking at paintings, and reading about painting. Above all, to be a painter takes time. Like playing the piano, you can't get better if you don't practice every day. Talent in painting is just a well-trained eye and the patience to create endless amounts of paintings that you will eventually throw away.

And to be a good painter, a person has to need to be one. Simply wanting to be one isn't enough; it has to be an ache, a yearning, a deep ambition. Because learning to paint has such moments of deep frustration that you have to have a deep desire in order to carry on.

The good news is that painting is highly addictive, so the students who begin out of interest, often become painters who decide to commit, and who discover a deep need within themselves that only art seems to fill.
Clean house be damned, we'll be happier and better people if we live our passions.

An Education

2010-06-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

Mermaid

12 x 16

An Education

I went to a Zhaoming Wu workshop in Edmonton this weekend at Pros Art School. It was a fantastic experience. Artist and school owner, Gene Prokov does a very nice job with weekend workshops, right down to the elegantly-presented, home-cooked food that we are served for lunch.
On Friday evening there was a wine and hors d'oevres meet and greet, followed by a 3 hour demo by Zhaoming. What impressed me was the absolute focus with which he moved the piece steadily to completion. There was never a moment when he seemed uncertain about which direction to take in the painting, and it progressed cleanly and clearly from the first sketch of the model to the final, sumptuous painting. That's experience!
On Saturday, we broke into two groups, each with a draped model, and spent the day trying to recreate the precision painting that we'd seen the night before. Not as effortless as it looked!
I backtracked, waffled, fudged and fiddled the day away. It took an hour to make a 2 inch section of shoulder turn in a believable way, with all of the planes cleanly rendered, softened where they needed, and sharp where they needed. In the end, with Zhaoming's help, I found my way and got an adequate result, but it lacked strength and assurance.
I spent the evening reviewing the steps from Zhaoming's demo, and plotting a more successful approach for the next day.
Sunday, after (too much) coffee and a fortifying breakfast, I launched into the second painting. My focus was on the steps, and on the brushwork. Z. uses very precise, crisp, synthetic flats, and the distinctive marks that they leave are important to his style. I'd brought a few flats but most were bristle, and they leave a more open, broken mark. I used these only for the underpainting, and switched to my few synthetics for the upper layers, concentrating on crisp marks. The model breaks were a great opportunity to plan a comprehensive brush buying trip when I returned to Calgary.
The painting above is the result of Sunday's work. It went more quickly and didn't wander. At least, not much.
What I liked about the workshop was that I learned something new, but don't feel like I need to renovate my own style completely. The lessons that I received comprised a deepening of my knowledge and skills, and showed me how progress from my current level to a higher one. An absolutely worthwhile experience!

Practise Non Attachment

2010-06-07T21:18:00.000-07:00

Old Soul

16 x 12

A gallery owner once told me that some works didn't sell because, he believed, the artist was too attached to them. That clinginess lingered in the finished work and turned off potential buyers.
Flaky? Maybe. But it's pretty easy to get attached to a work.
I put my in-progress paintings up on the wall so that I can study them throughout the day and figure out my next move. Seeing them every day can make them feel like part of the decor: an indispensable part, and that does make letting go pretty tough.
But letting go is easier if I concentrate on the process of painting, rather than on the product. If the thrill is in the problem solving and paint application, then, once those are done, the finished painting feels like a piece of history. The experience will stay with me even after the painting has found a new home.
So I practice non attachment, and send my works out into the world with my blessings, hoping that they never return.

Paintings of Nothing

2010-06-03T19:38:00.000-07:00

One of my students remarked that I paint pictures of nothing. She didn't mean this as an insult; she said that I make nothing look good.

What she did mean was that I don't bring in reference photos of scenic lakes and mountains for the demos on landscape, instead, I bring images of - well - nothing, really.

One week it was a picture of a dried out marshy landscape with a line of dusty, winter-weary evergreens in the background. But it did have a point to it: there were some low, scrubby willows in the mid-ground which were beginning to come to life. The branches were an unusual lime-green that I'd never seen in willows before. That was the focal point for me and what I emphasized in the demo. Everything else was just the stage on which this main character could be dropped.

If you really look at what's around you, there are paintings everywhere: in the shadow that a tree casts on the ground, in a puddle in the dirt, or in a cranky child on a couch. There is something interesting, arresting or beautiful absolutely everywhere.

This subversive idea should never be revealed to your non-painting spouses, however. When you tell them that you absolutely must go to Provence for that painting workshop, you need to be able to tell them that France's scenery is so much more paint-worthy than anything that you have at home.

Above is a photo of nothing and the painting that it inspired. The point of this was the unusual light on the field behind the fence of this rubbish-strewn yard. There's beauty everywhere.

People Watching People

2010-05-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

Red Couch

11 x 14

At MOMA in NY there is, currently, a wildly-successful exhibit of a real woman, the artist Marina Abramovic, who sits silently in a chair for the entire day - no bathroom breaks, no food or drink. Across from her is a chair for another person to sit and gaze at her. Some people sit for minutes, some for hours, but most seem moved by the experience of being allowed to look at her openly. Many people cry. Wonderfully, there is a flickr photostream which documents the portraits of these people as they look at Marina and it also notes the length of time that each one sat.
I won't get to see this exhibit but I think I understand something of the intensity of looking at a human face. We all do.
I feel it often when I look at paintings of people in museums. Gazing at the faces of men and women, I'm struck by the fact of their presence - their personalities - fixed on canvas though their bodies are long gone. It's a melancholy experience and has a complexity that I've never felt in front of any other subject matter. I've never wondered about the experience of a tree in an old landscape painting, or whether a piece of fruit in a still life was eaten after the painter was done.
But with a painting of a person, I wonder how that person lived, loved and died. I imagine the relationship between the painter and the sitter, and I think about how short our lives are. All this narrative and emotion from some paint on a canvas. Imagine the thoughts that Marina must evoke.

The Warm-Up Painting

2010-05-22T21:39:00.000-07:00

Spring on the River

12 x 16"

I don't know about the rest of you painters, but I can't do a decent painting right off the bat. Each day I have to struggle through a warm-up painting that is stilted and pathetic before I can achieve a loose and interesting one.
I've learned to make the warm up very small and just get it over with, but I can't skip it altogether and go straight to the good painting, or there won't be a good painting.
I painted the plein air above when I was out with the excellent painter, Sharon Williams.
We chatted through my warm-up painting (my fisherman had a big head and appeared to be made of wood) and fell silent to concentrate for the second ones. Sharon managed to bag both paintings - she's clearly not a warm-up painter - and I got this one.

I'm pleased by the gesture of the cast, and the sunlight and freshness. It was a great day.

Finding the Painter Again

2010-05-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

Quiet Afternoon

20 x 20

I've spent the past several weeks - okay, months - struggling with my work. Nothing quite pleased me.

I tried: different supports: copper, board, smooth, rough; different undertones: bright, earthy, neutral; different methods of applying paint: thin and transparent, palette-knife heavy; and I've tried different colours. Heaps of paint were sacrificed every day and there wasn't much to show for it.
But, in the past couple of weeks, I feel like I've gotten my groove back. It's not the same groove - my palette and application have changed somewhat - but it's related, and boy, does it feel good.
It seems now that the struggle was necessary for me to produce new and confident work.
Not that much has changed on the outside; I added a couple of new colours to my palette and reduced my use of others and I experimented with new subject matter. But on the inside, I feel like a different painter. Having tried so many techniques and styles, I have been able to rule out a lot of options as "just not right for me". Now I can move forward knowing that, while there are a lot of other ways to paint, I've tried many of them and have discovered (or rediscovered) the one that pleases me the most.
That's a relief!

Influence

2010-05-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Fishing the River

20 x 20

"I want to paint like you" is a phrase that every instructor hears regularly. Some bristle at it, sometimes with good cause. I heard about a painter who walked into one of his galleries and thought that certain paintings were his own. They turned out to be those of a previous workshop student, a fellow who notoriously - and successfully - mimicked the styles of everyone that he learned from. And he learned from plenty, from the sounds of it. His style underwent numerous shifts over time as he took more and more workshops.
This mimic is, however, the exception. Usually, when a student says that she wants to paint like me, it means that she likes my aesthetic, the way that I translate the world onto canvas. It's a necessary and positive thing to say because it means that this person is identifying her own interest and future path. She has looked at all of the instructors and their work and decided that mine is the path that she wants to be on.
Finding your own aesthetic is crucial to becoming a confident painter. The time you spend in galleries, on gallery sites and in the library, is vital. When I first began painting, I worked my way through the history of art, one fat, heavy, library book at a time. And when I found a painter whose style I loved, I got out books on him or her and tried to discover how they worked - what their technique involved. Sometimes I'd try to copy one of their works or, at least, their palette or brushwork in a practice painting. It's a good way to learn how they created the magic that they did. My favorites are, to this day, Berthe Morisot, Sorolla, and John Singer Sargent. Of the contemporary artists, I feel like I've found kindred spirits when I look at Russian Impressionist painters like Sergei Bongart.
In this age of self-made men and bold individualism, we unrealistically expect painters to have their own unique styles right from the start. None of us do, however. We all follow someone else's path before we discover how to make our own.
Apparently, even the mimic is now doing his own work. He's discovered the piece of the path that is legitimately his.

Less Can be More

2010-04-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

This week, the New England painter, Nita Leger Casey, posted a painting challenge on "The Nahsua Artists Breakfast Club" blog.
The challenge was to paint her landscape photo using just 2 colours plus black and white. The colours were Yellow Ochre and Burnt Sienna.

I can't resist a challenge, so I gave it a try.

Everyone knows that you can mix every colour from the 3 primary colours: red, blue and yellow, but who knew that black could be the "blue"? When mixed with yellow ochre, it gives soft, muted greens; with burnt sienna, it makes a smoky purple (which I didn't make use of, now that I look at it); and with white, it mimics a muted blue.

None of the colours are dramatic show-stoppers, but they do create a pleasing, earthy range of colours that's perfect for landscapes.

This palette reminded me of Anders Zorn, the famous Swedish painter of the late 1800's and early 1900's. A brilliant figurative painter, he was known for using an extremely limited palette and, somehow, making it look like a bountiful assortment of colours. Zorn's colours consisted of: Vermillion (Cad Red Light makes a substitute), Yellow Ochre, Ivory Black, and White. Occasionally, he'd add Ultramarine Blue or a Cad. Yellow.

The advantage to using so few colours is that you have to think less about which colours are the best for a specific subject and, instead, focus on paint consistency and brushstroke. As well, there's no denying it makes harmonious paintings, because of the repetition of subtle variations of so few colours.
I think I'll try this again, but next time I'll try to maintain more transparency. This piece has some thinly-applied, transparent darks in the shadow forms, but I'd like to see it done with a lighter touch everywhere - less white overall.

If you want to see more limited palette suggestions, check out this post in David Rourke's blog "All the Strange Hours". Maybe you'll want to challenge yourself and give one a try.

Happy painting!

A Fishing Groupie

2010-04-28T20:23:00.000-07:00

Magical Morning

20 x 20

I'm really hooked on fly fishing: not doing it, just painting it. Luckily for me, the Bow River is a world-class, trout river. I don't think that there's been a week that I haven't seen a fisherman or several standing in the current, trying to outwit a fish.

I make sure to carry my camera on my walks so that I can capture the action.

This image is, again, a composite of two references. The pose of the fisherman was taken from a photo with really flat lighting and the lighting came from a reference with no action. Put them together and I'm happy.

I liked trying to create depth through the use of the line and the small splash in the foreground. This and the graduated width of the ripples, helped to create the illusion of a fore, middle and background.

But I think what pleased me the most was getting the mood right. The man in the photos was quiet and focused as he fished, completely lost in the moment. Some of that focus is there on the canvas.

Be a Joiner

2010-04-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

"Digging"

30 x 30"

For artists who want to begin exhibiting and selling their works, one of the best suggestions that I have is that they should join a reputable society.
I belong to: the Federation of Canadian Artists - a national, non-profit organization with over 2000 members and a great reputation; the Alberta Society of Artists - also a non-profit organization which is incredibly active in this province; and the Leighton Art Centre - a non-profit centre which has a gallery and provides art education, events, and workshops. Each of these groups has a gallery and plenty of opportunities to show work in the different, themed exhibitions that they hold throughout the year.
Beyond the chance to exhibit, associations like this are a great way to increase your exposure. The FCA and ASA have websites with individual artists' bios and works featured on them. These sites have brought several commissions my way since someone searching for an artist in Alberta or Canada will invariably come up with one of these organizations.
And the credibility of belonging to a juried groups is very reassuring to a potential buyer. In a world of degrees and credentials, these groups show that you are a serious professional who has achieved peer recognition.
This month I'll have work in a couple of member's shows in Calgary: the "8th Annual Juried Members' Show" at the Leighton Art Centre and the "New Members New Work" show of the Alberta Society of Artists in Lougheed House. The painting above is my entry for the ASA show. If you're in Calgary, I hope you'll check them out.

Mix and Match

2010-04-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

Rarely is a reference photo good enough to paint without making some changes, big or small.
Sometimes I just move a tree, other times I do much more.

The painting above is the result of the combining of two photos: picture A had a great pose and Picture B had wonderful light and a beautiful setting. The hard part was to change the light on the figure in A in order to fit him into his new surroundings. Luckily, he was wearing the same shirt in both photos, so I could see what setting B did to the colours and extrapolate onto the fabric folds from A.
Confused yet? I sure was.
In all, this was a challenge, but also a pleasure. I've wanted to do something with both of these images for a couple of years, but didn't feel competent enough to pull it off. This painting shows me that my skills have grown. That's always a nice feeling.

Trying Something New

2010-04-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get commissioned to paint something that I'd never have imagined myself painting. I've come to realize that this is a good thing. I can too easily get stuck in a rut painting the same subjects over and over. Like any painter, I've got some default subjects: things that I paint when I can't think of a new thing to paint. They're good to have but I they can fill time that should be spent in exploring new ideas.
This past winter I was asked to paint a competitive skier racing down a hill. Not a subject that I've tackled before but one that holds a lot of promise; there's movement and colour and - most important to me - light. Luckily the reference photo that I was given was very well done. All that was required was changing the landscape to make the composition better. I especially enjoyed sculpting the snow with thick paint to get a sense of the terrain and playing with the juxtaposition of hot reds and cool blues.
My client was pleased with the result and so was I. It was refreshing to try something completely new and get out of the well-worn rut.

Down to the River

2010-03-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

Lately, fishing has figured prominently into my life and art as my teenage son has taken up fly fishing with a passion.
I'm grateful that he's chosen such a picturesque hobby. There's something wonderful about watching a fisherman wading and casting, wading and casting, all afternoon in the sparkling water. It's also a good challenge to my ability as a speedy painter; the boy doesn't stay in one place for very long.
Last week we spent a sunny afternoon at the Bow River pursuing our separate goals. He didn't catch a fish but I did manage this small sketch. It's a bare-bones version of my usual style: there is very little underpainting and I didn't even have time to tone the canvas. The sky, unlike my usual complexly-layered affairs, is just blue on white canvas.
My son moved to a different site during the painting so I only had him as a model for 20 minutes. I think that was for the best. If he'd been there longer, I'd probably have tweaked and fussed and killed the piece.
This summer, the boy and the river will be my teachers and help me to strip my paintings to the simple, honest essentials. I know my work will be better for it.

Bring on the Light

2010-03-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

One thing that I'm slowly learning is that you really can't go too light when you place your highlights in a painting.
No matter how light they look on the day that you apply them, they'll invariably have settled in nicely within 2 or 3 days and you'll be glad that you pushed the value as much as you did.
Sometimes I apply my lightest light very early but just in one small spot. This acts as a reminder of where I'm going as I work and helps me to get all of the values on the canvas much more efficiently. Without it, it's easy to keep messing around in the mid values for far too long. The little spot likely won't remain in the finished piece, or it'll have changed shape, but it's useful during the painting process.
I also like to put the lights in thickly and with texture. I try to adhere to the traditional ideal of thin transparent darks and heavy, opaque lights. The change in paint consistency across the surface of the finished painting is something that I really enjoy.
In this portrait, I bumped up the value quite a bit on the child's nose, chin and above the lips and created a rugged texture in these areas to catch the light. Then I balanced the strength of those marks with some touches of intense colour elsewhere in the face. Overall, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Models and Artists

2010-03-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

Emily and two of the students of the life painting workshop that I taught last weekend.

I've taught two life painting classes this week at the Calgary School of Art and found them to be great experiences. My models were both able to hold a pose and to use their bodies with intelligence, showing interesting views to all of the painters in the room. A few years ago, I had the misfortune to draw a young woman who stood in stiff, symmetrical poses (picture frozen jumping jacks and something approximating a fence post) and have, as a result, become very appreciative of good models.

Modeling is a strange and wonderful thing for a person to do for an artist. The model puts him or herself at your disposal and allows you the rare luxury of staring at another human being for hours at a time. We all like to look at other people but seldom get an opportunity to do it. Infants let you stare and strangers sleeping in planes are fair game, but conscious adults are unnerved at being studied, no matter how well they know you. They wonder what you're seeing when you look at them and what judgments you're forming. Are you noticing the way the sunlight emphasizes their wrinkles? Do they look like they need to go to the gym more often? Their minds are busy trying to get into your mind and discover what you're thinking about them.
Good models are able to turn off this self consciousness and simply "be". They accept the fact that they are, temporarily, objects and use their bodies to help you to create your art. They manage to override their uneasiness for the duration of the class and enter a reality in which being stared at is normal. They also accept a bunch of artists discussing the greens that they see in the model's complexion and the shape of their thighs. Artist's are respectful when they talk about these things, but still...
A day in a museum or gallery will show you the importance of models in the world of art, past and present. For the generosity with which they present themselves to us, we try to give them immortality in return.

Getting Outside

2010-03-04T13:38:00.000-08:00

"Hint of Spring" 16 x 20

We're having a wonderful respite in the winter. ( I'm no dummy and I know it's not done. This is Calgary, after all.) So this week I went out plein air painting near the river.

Painters always tell you that photos don't capture the true colours of a scene; that they flatten and kill the shadows and distort values. Well... they're right.

Much as I hate to leave the warmth of the house and shlep all of my gear to a site which doesn't have so much as an outhouse nearby, I have to admit that it does make for a better, more sensitive interpretation of the landscape than a photo does.

The other advantage to painting outside is, surprisingly, the cold and discomfort. It forces you to strip down the scene to its essentials and paint efficiently. I studied the scene for a long time, figuring out what it was that I liked about it. I decided it was the reflective ribbon of the creek winding its way into the river. I also loved the sheets of ice on the water and the bright patches of lingering snow on the shady side of the bank. So although there were some wonderfully twisty and unique trees and picturesque ducks in my line of site, I ignored them and much more to focus on the two elements that appealed to me the most.

Maybe I'll go back sometime for the ducks.

Donating Artworks

2010-02-23T22:26:00.000-08:00

"Fishing 3" Oil on copper

Artists are the darlings of fundraisers.
When it's time to raise money for the school, animal shelter, wildlife preserve or cancer research, many fundraisers email a request to local artists. What they want is the donation of an original work of art so that they can auction or, worse- raffle it for money for their cause. I get a 8 or 10 such requests each year.
Somehow, while the cliche of the "starving artist" still persists, people in charge of fundraising have come to see us creative types as easy money. And, as a rule, we are. Without exception, every artist that I know (myself included) has donated a painting for a cause at some point in his or her career. We've watched our works auctioned- often for less than we could sell them for in galleries or other exhibitions- and the money pocketed by others. And often it's a lot of money.
It's rather bizarre: we create a one-of-a-kind work that will last for generations, frame it at our expense, and fundraisers easily ask us to give it away in return for a tax receipt.
The writer, Harlan Ellison, addresses this penchant for asking artists to donate their work in a hilarious YouTube rant.
His point is: do the people who ask artists to work for free do so themselves? Does anyone even ask them to?
What is it about artists that makes people able to ask for the products of our creative labour for free?
I think it's a basic low self esteem. Many of us have a deep insecurity about the merit of our work (especially on the days when we can't bag a painting to save our lives) and the prices that we should command for it. We often undervalue our time and skill, which gives permission to fundraisers to do the same.
But it needn't be this way.
Instead, on a good day, after a successful painting session, write yourself a note and post it somewhere for all time: "I do good, creative, unique work. I deserve to be paid accordingly."
Or, as Harlan Ellison says: "Cross my palm with silver!"

Think Before You Paint

2010-02-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

Dancer

10 x 14"

I've been reading the very informative Oil Painting Secrets from a Master by Linda Cateura about the artist, David A. Leffel. It's my kind of book: lots of short, thoughtful truths and pieces of advice organized in such a way that you can dip in here and there and find something useful no matter where you read. The reproductions are terrible though: out of focus and dim.
Leffel teaches that every painting should have a concept to be successful. It doesn't matter what that concept is and it can be very simple, but he stresses that you must think of one before you start the painting. Without this clear idea of what you want to express, all sorts of extraneous detail creeps in. He says that "the concept is the structure and framework on which your assembled subject matter (composition, value, and color) is suspended, all working to maintain the shape of the original idea of the painting. As you work, you must keep your concept foremost in your mind."
His concepts are as simple as "light against dark" or "edges" but he keeps the focus on those things and anything that doesn't relate to the concept is omitted.
It's common, I think, for painters to miss this initial, crucial step of thinking before we paint. We're so excited to have the brush in our hand and the subject in front of us that we launch in too quickly. Those are usually the paintings that fail or that you look at and say, "great ___________! Next time I'll know to give more thought to ___________(fill in the blanks as you see fit. There are lots of things that can go wrong in a painting which has some successful elements.)
In the painting above, I focused on rhythm. The line of the indistinct audience echoes that of the posing girl's torso. In the original reference photo, the audience was in a straight line and the faces were individually distinct. Neither of those things enhanced my concept so I changed them to suit me. Glad I did!

Teaching Yourself to Paint

2010-02-01T20:51:00.000-08:00

"Interstices" 24 x 24"

I'm a self-taught painter in a young, North American city. Our galleries are largely contemporary or landscape and there is a lot of Western art. There is no place to go and see the historical European masters of painting and enrolling in a BFA program is not in my cards. In this situation, becoming a unique painter used to be tough. It's not anymore.
Most of what I learned came from the library. Not just those "How to Paint a Tree in Oils" books which are, briefly, a great tool, but also the massive, coffee-table books full of high quality reproductions of the greats. I've borrowed the series of books about John Singer Sargent written by Richard Ormond so many times that they seem like my own. Rembrandt, Manet, Degas, Morisot: all are available for me to examine and think about. The best of them have detailed, crisp close ups of a small section of the painting. In the book: Women Impressionists, there is a detail of a woman's sleeve, painted by Berthe Morisot which is a revelation. The layering and choices of colour and unique, zigzag brushwork are clearly visible.
After a couple of years with the library as my main resource, I turned to the Internet. All galleries put their works online and, a few of them have really great quality images. (Most don't.)
The best one that I've found so far is Greenhouse Gallery in San Antonio, Texas. Their photographer is amazing. None of the paintings are ever out of focus or obscured by glare and the colours never show an imbalance (blues can easily take over a digital photo; I don't know why.) But the best thing is the function which allows you to see each work at high resolution. It takes a little longer to load but the painting fills the screen and then some. Each brushstroke is visible and colours that would be impossible to discern in a 3x4" image suddenly appear in large format.
The gallery contains works by contemporary realists and impressionists, by big names and small, but the quality of the work is uniformly high.
They also maintain an archive of sold works by each artist which is still available in high resolution.
For the study of painting when you have little access to original art, this site can't be beat.

Finding People to Paint

2010-01-25T09:25:00.000-08:00

"The Baker" 8x10"

Lucien Freud takes months and even years to paint a large portrait and his model is in the studio for almost the entire painting time. But Freud's work sells for millions of dollars and he can afford to pay the hourly model rates. Most of us aren't so blessed.
So what's a painter to do if she's inspired by the human body but can't afford to hire a body to pose on a regular basis?
There are, of course, places where artists can go and draw or paint models in a group setting, usually one evening a week. These groups are great for working on proportion and gesture but I find it impossible to get really inspired and absorbed in a room full of distractions.
My recourse is to take photos of people: some that I know and some that I don't.
My children are a huge source of reference images for me as they play and explore their world. The nice thing about photographing them is that they have grown used to having my camera trained on them and are very unselfconscious. They carry on swinging, wading and playing as if I'm not there and that makes for some wonderfully natural pictures.
I also take pictures of people in public places. This is a varied, if unreliable source of material and you have to take a lot of shots to get one good reference. American painter, Karin Jurick takes many thousands of photos every year to gather the images for her lively paintings of people going about their daily lives.
My camera is small and unobtrusive and I never point it in an obvious way, just aim it in the general direction of crowds in markets or at outdoor events. Later I can zoom in here and there and see if there's someone of interest. In most cases there isn't, but occasionally I find someone who has an arresting gesture, expression or light pattern. Sometimes, as a student of mine found out in one of her reference photos, the arresting gesture is a rude one as someone in the crowd noticed what she was doing.
The image above is of a serene, young baker that I was lucky enough to photograph in a New York bakery.

Painting from Life Workshop

2010-01-18T21:08:00.000-08:00

On the weekend, I taught a workshop figure-painting workshop at the Calgary School of Art. It was a fantastic day. The students were enthusiastic and our model was still and lovely.
In all, the students painted 5 works that day: 4 short 15 minute poses and one pose that was over 2 hours long.
Doing so many paintings in one day worked out really well because it allowed everyone to learn the techniques that I presented and practise them several times in succession. With each new painting, I could see improvement and an increased understanding of the process and the medium.
By the final, long pose, everyone was warmed up and ready to dive right in and they each went home with a strong painting.
What everyone remarked on was the enormous diversity of the paintings considering that each student had received the same instruction and had the same model. I enjoyed watching their individual styles and aesthetics assert themselves on the canvases. I don't think that anyone applies paint exactly like another person and it's this fact that makes each painter's work unique.
I've posted a few of the works so that you can see for yourself.

Painter's Panic

2010-01-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

I have a moment of pure panic at some point during almost every painting that I paint.
I'll look at the work and it will seem lifeless, disjointed and hopeless and I'll wonder why I ever thought that I could paint. In the past, when I hit this stage, I'd grab a small brush and start fiddling with details as if I could save a whole painting by fussing over a shadow on a cheek or the shine in some hair. Brutal results eventually convinced me that details never save a painting, bold, big changes do.
Now, when panic strikes, I crank up the Cuban music that I always paint to and grab my big #16 brush. I load it up with a clean, strong colour and dash on some decisive marks with confidence. That it's false confidence doesn't matter. I fake it till I make it.
After those powerful marks are on the canvas, the panic subsides and I'm able to carry on. I resist the little brush and try to finish with courage. Usually I'm lucky and it works out well.
The painting above got the #16 treatment when I'd come to an indecisive standstill and was mucking about repetitively with a # 6 filbert in one part of the back.
I swooped in the strong salmon colour in the background around the woman's right arm and this opened the way for more of the same all over the figure and its setting.
With these huge marks, the painting was finished in no time and the marks of timidity were erased. And it was fun!

Playing God

2010-01-02T13:50:00.000-08:00

"Painting precise locations is irrelevant; simply keep the character"
Joseph Zbukvic, the excellent Australian watercolourist, has this posted on his website under an atmospheric watercolour of a wide, glare-filled street. European? Australian? Imagined? It doesn't matter. The character is there.
This is a difficult mindset to get into at first. Essentially, he's saying that you don't have to paint exactly what exists; you can change it up. Just keep the flavour, the essence of the place.
For students, this liberating idea can be intimidating. They want to render every mountain peak and the reproduce the location of each stand of trees. It's an impulse toward honesty that struggles with the impulse toward artistic interpretation. When they do embrace the power that they have to edit the world to suit the needs of their paintings, there's a huge sense of relief. They stop saying," but there actually was a tree right there" and start to say, "there was a tree right there but I moved it to make a better composition" or "I moved it to emphasize its isolation." This is the moment when they start to focus on the character of the scene and not the literal scene itself.
For me, this is also when their paintings go from depictions to pieces of art.
Happy New Year to you all and Happy Painting!

12 Week Oil Class

2009-12-17T08:10:00.000-08:00

I'm teaching a beginners oils class starting in January and still have some spots left. Is there a better way to spend Wednesday evenings than playing with paint? Not for me!
The course outline is posted below. Hope to see you there!

STARTING IN OILS

Fat over lean? Dark to light? Mediums? Supports?
If learning oil painting seems as hard as learning a foreign language, this is the course for you.

In this 12 week course, we'll demystify this sumptuous, traditional medium and give you a solid foundation in the technical and creative aspects of oils.
You'll learn how to apply layers of pigment to create luminous, rich surfaces which will stand the test of time.

Our painting subjects will include still life, landscape and figurative and there will be plenty of demonstrations and individual instruction.

Cost: $300 for 12 weeks
Class size: Maximum of 10 students

January 6 to March 24
Wednesday evenings from 6pm to 9pm
TO REGISTER: go to the Calgary School of Art website OR call Lisa at 403. 287-3106

People Watching

2009-12-16T15:02:00.000-08:00

Everyone loves to look at people. We watch them
in malls and surreptitiously on buses. We photograph them in foreign countries and, sometimes, we hang pictures of total strangers on our walls. Such diverse painters as David A. Leffel and Malcolm Liepke have made great careers out of this fascination.
My favorite commissions are portraits for this very reason. I know that, more than anything else I paint, these works will be looked at for a long time. A picture of a person is never wallpaper in a room. It has a presence; almost like a real person would.
Today I had the pleasure of delivering two portraits of young children to their mother.
As with all commissions, I had a case of nerves before showing the paintings to her but, happily, she loved them. The personalities of the children, as much as the likenesses, were clear to her eyes and she was delighted.
I've included them here. They're on copper and there is a lot of the warm, brushed metal visible in the works.

Painting on Copper

2009-12-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

Like most artists that I know, I'm never content with my work. I feel there are always ways to improve and new things to try in order to improve my paintings.
Lately I've been experimenting with a new support to paint on: copper.
Copper painting has been around for hundreds of years. Oils used on this surface don't crack the way that they do on more flexible supports like canvas because copper doesn't move with changes in humidity and temperature. I've seen photos online of 400 year old paintings which look as fresh and bright as a 4 year old work. And a painting on copper has great glow!
Degreasing is vital for the paint to adhere properly and, like everything to do with the technical aspects of oil painting, there are as many recommendations for preparing the metal as there are writers on the subject. It's best to spend some time researching and pick a method that suits your own comfort level from rubbing the plate with garlic to sealing with alkyd or priming with lead white ground.
I can't imagine putting a white ground on the metal because it's the natural colour that holds the greatest appeal for me in the first place.
The above self portrait is on copper and has lots of metal showing through. The surface is rich and luminous and the paints seem to have extra saturation on this support. I'm definitely going to do more with copper in the future!

Expression takes work

2009-11-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Parallel Play 12 x 16

Available at Collector's Gallery of Art

Last weekend I taught a workshop at the Calgary School of Art entitled "Expressive Oils". I found that defining "expressive" was the most difficult part of preparing for the workshop! The term became slipperier and more ambiguous the more I thought about it.
What I finally decided was that "expressive" meant that I could see more of the painter than the subject in the final painting and I could see what the painter wanted to show me the most. Expression is a complex mesh of composition, colour choices, brushwork and editing. It uses the reference image as a starting point only and goes its own way from there.
Once I'd decided this, it was easy to prepare for the class. The most important thing then became, "what do you like most about the image that you've chosen and how can you emphasize it in your painting?" If you know this, you're half way to a good painting.
So the first thing that the students did was find the special thing - the focal point - in their photos. Then we worked on simple compositional sketches that led the eye to that point. If this meant that we moved roads and cut down trees or changed the shape of rolling fields, then so be it. BC painter and teacher, Dianna Shyne, tells her students to "play God" when they compose their paintings and she's right. It's our job to create a world on our canvases, not to recreate a photo.
With this careful preparation, the actual paintings just seemed to flow. I was impressed by the quality that the students produced, including two who were painting their first ever oils. Starting a painting with so much thought seemed to lead naturally to completing it in the same way.
As always, when I teach, I feel like I learn as much as the students do and what I learned - yet again- is that I have to do lots of thinking at the beginning if I want a painting to work out at the end.

Getting a Glow On

2009-11-16T13:11:00.000-08:00

"Fishing", Oil on gallery wrap canvas , 30" x 30"

What the heck is "glow"?
Some paintings have it and some just don't. Glow is an amazing quality that many painters completely ignore or don't even know about. It's a vibration in the painting which is revealed with the change in lighting conditions and gives up more colour and depth the more you look at it. It's what makes some paintings magical.
One of the most magical painters that I know of has mastered this glow: HE Kuckein. A real painters' painter, Kuckhein's works are deceptively simple in subject and composition and don't photograph as particularly special paintings and yet, when you see them in life, you can't stop looking. He's represented throughout Canada but whenever I'm in the Okanagan, I make sure to go to Tutt Art Gallery in Kelowna and check out his pieces. The obliging manager has turned the lights off over his paintings to show me how the colours shift and shimmer with the change. There is so much more to his work than just the surface layer.
The folks at Tutt say that he wipes off semi-dry paint and applies new paint onto the roughened, partially-there pigment. That way there are little holes in the colour which show through almost imperceptibly but react to different lighting conditions throughout the day. This is called “broken colour”.
Another method to get broken colour is by adding rather than subtracting marks. Instead of applying strokes of paint in a dense fashion with full coverage of what's underneath, you can use lighter, airy strokes that leave little gaps along the brushstroke. In this way, the underpainting shows through along the open streaks - no matter how subtle and fine - of the subsequent brushstroke.
You can also achieve broken colour by laying a stroke of colour next to another colour and not mingling them. The Impressionists used this technique to wonderful effect.
Still another means to achieve glow is by glazing one colour over another. Fine, transparent layers patiently applied over dry paint, give a superb luminosity. I'm not that patient.
Whatever technique you choose to get the glow, it's always caused by colour choice. Usually a temperature change or a contrasting colour are selected to achieve glow. If you're trying to show the effect of sunlight on a model's hair, instead of just adding white to the hair colour for the highlights, make the colour both lighter and cooler. In the above painting, "Fishing", I showed the light-struck area on the boy's hair by adding successively-lighter variations of green and yellow-toned highlights which contrast in temperature and somewhat in colour with the warmer blues and lavenders in the shaded parts.
Glow is a painting tool that's often overlooked. Painters get caught up in representing what they see but forget that we can do so much more than that. We can use use this tool to make the viewer feel the magic of what we’ve seen.

Switching Mediums

2009-11-04T22:09:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I decided to abandon watercolour and try painting on canvas instead of paper. I wanted to go bigger and brighter and to get away from having to frame under glass. I also really wanted to be able to touch the surface of my paintings without fear of ruining them with any traces of oil or dirt on my fingers. Paper is not easy to keep pristine.
I thought that acrylic would be a natural choice so I went out and bought a full complement of colours, and some canvases and set optimistically to work. It was a slaughter.
The paint fought me all the way. It dried quickly and flatly like house paint; it covered the colours beneath it very opaquely unless I started fiddling with different mediums to make it more transparent or more rigid or more something or other; and it wouldn't glow for me no matter what I tried. I started to question whether I was capable of being a painter at all. This was not a good time.
Luckily a friend suggested that I try oil. I'd avoided it because it seemed difficult and intimidating. It wasn't. The first painting that I attempted wasn't actually that bad and, more importantly, it glowed. From the start, I could see that this was a medium that was as beautiful as watercolour. You could layer it, blend it and play with it like thick, bright frosting on a cake. I was in love.
The painting above is my very first oil painting. It's a picture of the painter Sharon Williams addressing a canvas. The colour is fanciful and unrefined but still, it has energy and heart. I'll hang on to it.

Artists' Models Online

2009-10-30T09:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there's a pose that I want to paint but I don't have a model or one of my own reference photos to refer to. If I want to know just how a leg would bend in a certain seated pose or how a torso twists and affects the shoulder alignment, I can go to a few websites to find out.

http://www.poses4artists.com shows computer generated figures in action sequence poses. The figures are, unfortunately, under flat light so this isn't useful for discovering shadows but some of the poses are useful. I like the dancer series.

http://www.posespace.com shows real people - not all nude or perfectly toned, which is nice - in a huge variety of poses. Also good is that the poses are photographed in rotation so that you can view them from all angles. As well, some of the shots are done with more dramatic lighting so that the form is clearly modelled. The drawback is that you have to pay $5.99 to download the images that you want.

http://www.posemaniacs.com/blog/pose is a very cool site that shows computer generated, flayed models. Yes, no skin. The idealized male and female models manage to project energy and attitude as they pose and show you their uncovered musculature and ligaments. Somehow, it's not at all disturbing. You can use your cursor to rotate the pose 360 degrees and there are even drawing exercises such as a timed 30 second drawing that you can do from randomly-generated poses.

The Internet is a great resource for artists. Let me know if there are any great artist-friendly sites that you follow and I'll check them out for the blog.

Vive la Difference!

2009-10-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

I recently photographed the still life paintings produced by some of my students at the Calgary School of Art. They were all working from one of two set ups of jars of jam and apples and that's where the similarity ends.
As you can see, each artist brought a very personal style to the subject and made it her own. Though everyone used the same limited palette - Cad. yellow pale/light, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, vermillion hue, ultramarine blue and titanium white - and began in the same manner with a purplish grisaille, not one painting resembles another.
Personal aesthetics take over pretty fast when you start a painting. One artist likes pure, clear colours, another person prefers to gray down all but the focal point area in her painting; one artist uses a few large marks, another uses lots of small marks. Both accomplish the same thing: they filter the reality of what they see through their own consciousness and give us a glimpse of they way that they see the world.
Maybe this explains why so many of us are sensitive in critiques of our works: these works are an externalization of our inner feelings, views and aesthetics as well as being technical outcomes. Putting your painting in front of an audience and asking for feedback is, I've always thought, like standing in a room full of people in your bathing suit and saying, "Well, what do you think?" It takes guts!
I'm grateful to my students for allowing me to post their bathing suits. I think they look pretty darn good

October 31 Workshop Fast and Focused Landscapes in Oil

2009-10-26T08:28:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching a new workshop at the Calgary School of Art this Saturday from 10 am to 4 pm! We'll be focusing on finding the essence of a landscape and distilling it to make a strong, dynamic painting. Students will be bringing their own photo references to work from and I'll walk them through the steps from picture to painting. Workshops are always high energy and lots of fun and I'm looking forward to this one.

There's still room for more students so please call Lisa at 403 287 -7448

STUFF TO BRING

A lunch! Never paint hungry.

Also bring a variety of small and large (size 4 to 12) brushes, a sketchbook and pencil, and 4 landscape photos. We'll provide the paint and a canvas. In this class, you'll finish an 11 x 14 painting. Speedy painters might do two!

"The First Quality that is Needed is Audacity"

2009-10-21T20:41:00.000-07:00

I read an interview with Roz Savage, an amazing woman who has rowed(!) across the Atlantic Ocean and is set to row the Pacific in a few months. She said that she had been living the good life in London - husband, big house, good job, sports car - but she was discontent.

One day she wrote 2 obituaries for herself: one that could be written if she continued to lead the life that she was living at the time, and another obit that reflected a totally different, exciting and ideal life. She compared the two and realized how far from her ideal life she was. In a move that not many could make, she left everything behind and pursued her ideal life. Now, years later, she is happier than ever: a single, homeless, jobless ocean-rowing soul. Clearly, as my students pointed out, a childless woman.

However, reading this interview had a huge effect on me and it's still percolating. One of the first things that I did after I read it was grab the painting that I thought I'd completed and slap some big, crude, dark shadows onto it. Then I attacked it with bright, bold, impasto paint and remodelled the areas that I'd thought were "alright" into areas that made a statement. It seemed crucial to not let a tepid painting stay in the world when it was possible to create a bold one instead. Winston Churchill, an ardent painter among other roles, said that: "(t)he first quality that is needed is audacity."

I determined to use my brush bravely and with lots of paint on it and to fear only the timid mark.

I've started a new piece, a large figurative one, with this in mind. Though it's only just at the underpainting stage, I'm keeping Roz in mind with every stab and swoop of the brush. My obit. should not read: "she was a competent painter"; it should say that my paintings were filled with energy, passion and life.

Recycling a Failed Painting

2009-10-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I paint over an unsuccessful (okay: failed) painting when I feel the urge to experiment.
The canvas can't be wrecked anymore and somehow that takes the pressure off and frees me to paint in a relaxed and loose way. The paintings don't always work out but when they do it's because of this playful and low-pressure approach.
This series shows the original canvas - a smeared-off still life of some jars of jam - and it's transformation into a floral.
I find it's easier if you rotate the work from its original orientation so that there isn't an established top and bottom to the piece when you start. It's not a blank slate but it's interesting tone and colour which allows you to paint over it in a surprisingly free way.
When you do this in acrylic, it's a simple matter of just applying fresh paint, but it's different in the world of oils. You have to either paint over a very old, dry work (a year of more), or know the "leanness" of the work that's already on the canvas. I don't do this if the failed work has a full range up to quite "fat" (thick and oily) paint on it. Then I'd have to paint even fatter: in nothing but impasto paint, to follow the oil painting rule of fat over lean and avoid a painting that will crack as it dries.
In the case of this still life, I had rubbed off the majority of the paint while it was still wet and so what was left was little more than a stain on the gesso. I could safely start a new work over this though I didn't thin my paint with any solvent which would have made it too lean; I only thinned with walnut oil. The original colours are still visible throughout the work and add interesting, lively midtones to the new work. I think it's good recycling and fun to boot!

Art Visions 2009 Awards

2009-10-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

I just got back from Kelowna, BC where I attended the FCA Art Visions 2009 Exhibition awards. This is a juried show which is held in 3 local galleries: Gallery 421, Hambleton Art Gallery and Turtle Island Art Gallery.

85 works were juried in out of more than 200 submissions and my "Galiano Girl" got the gold medal and a prize of $2009. She now hangs in Gallery 421, an elegant space in Kelowna's Rotary Arts Centre.
The evening opening was fun and exciting with an opening address by Mayor Sharon Shepherd and the presentation of awards followed by a chance to tour all three galleries, drink great Okanagan wine and chat with artists and art lovers alike. I'm pictured receiving my award from presenter Jim Laing.
The entire exhibition is online at http://artvisions2008.blogspot.com/2009/08/art-gallery-2009.html and it's worth a look.

Speed Painting

2009-10-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

I only had about 11/2 hours to paint today before I went to teach my course at the Calgary School of Art so I took the opportunity to try a fast and loose portrait.
Instead of working long and hard for the exact colour that I was after, I approximated it, focusing on getting a colour to the right temperature in comparison to the temperature of the colour next to it and also focusing on hitting the correct value. For example, the cheeks are a warm colour and the chin and forehead are predominately cool: the eye socket area is darker and cooler than the nose; and the right side of the face is warmer than the left which had natural, cool light falling on it.
Like the portrait in the previous post, this one was done from a low-contrast photo. The child's face was creamy and monotonously-pale against a warm, reddish wall and a dark blue scarf. It could easily have become too flat and graphic so I exaggerated the few value changes that I observed in the face in order to create dimension. And, to be honest, it's boring to paint a simple, creamy oval when you could, instead, paint complex value changes and layer colours over each other. The whole act of painting is fun and I hate it when it ends too quickly!
I just finished in time to grab a quick sandwich and head to class. With more time, I certainly would have refined areas but, as an exercise, this was useful. It caught the essentials without belabouring the point.