Chicago lessons

Last week I went to the Art Institute of Chicago with my wife and artist Jessica Kirby and boy did I learn a lot about good paintings. To wit: great painters give themselves the advantage...that's why their work looks masterfully effortless...we acolytes sometimes hamstring ourselves. Particularly in choice of subject matter. 
Not everything is paintable...EVERY good painting I saw that day had one thing in common: the subject had paintable information. 
What does that mean? Well, the chosen subject could be translated into brush marks because:
1. It had distinct shapes. OR, it joined with other things of similar value to make a distinct conglomerate shape.
2. It had a focal point that looked specific because it was painted large enough to be done without wearing a jeweler's loupe and using laparoscopic surgical tools. Hence it could be done with ease and energy.
3. The "background" was generalized...but because the artist did 1and 2 above, you often thought it was detailed even though it might just be a schmear of lovely color..
Check these examples:
Look at these abstract light shapes on a dark ground. There were other paintings in the same room - good ones - I just can't remember them.

Or this other Sargent..which I think is one of the most perfect pictures in the history of painting...the woman, her husband, the fountain and her painting equipment amalgamate into one big light shape on a dark to medium value field (lest you think this is mere travelogue read Jessica Kirby's blog at right or read up on Sargent's travels. This is a painting about the act of painting and painters personalities. It's as artsy as artsy gets).

At the size it appears on this blog it looks nearly photographic. Yet every  stroke in this gem is simple...anyone could make them...they're just the right color in the right place.

Homer does likewise with a big dark shape in a medium field - with select light accents. 50 years later Robert Motherwell and others did the same thing...they just kept their marks from looking like anything familiar. With Sargent and Homer I can have the cake and eat it too, so to speak.

So what are these geniuses doing that eludes me? Here's an example of the kind of thing I used to attempt (it was shot from the window on the train ride home). It was a beautiful evening, but let me list the problems with this as a paintable image.

1. The "particular" stuff - or focal point - is at the back. The foreground is all non specific stuff.
2. The focal point is small in area and the surrounding area is large. If I "zoom in" it's ambiguous spatially...especially if I render the atmospheric perspective which is part of it's charm.
3. The value range is close. Only the sky contrasts and it sits over everything. The shapes don't cut into each other. There was a gloriously boring triptych of the French landscape (also seen from a train) by Ellsworth Kelly in the modern wing.

The moral of the story? Pick paintable stuff...good shapes, discernible contrasts and do it big enough that it's easy to render. Painting shouldn't feel like defusing a bomb.

Upcoming show and classes

LAST MINUTE CHANGE, note new date: I will be having an exhibit of some recent watercolors and oils at Art Domestique Gallery in Washington, IA. The reception is Tuesday April 19 from 6-8pm. The gallery is on the east side of the square, next door to Cafe DoDici. Here's a sample:

On many of the works I tried to get a somewhat unique palette as well as a more patterned, shape conscious design to the work, reminiscent of Japanese woodblocks where appropriate. As a kid, that was the only original artwork we had at home. We had posters of Manet, Degas and Tolouse Lautrec too. All of them were influenced by Japanese woodblocks so maybe that's why I'm fascinated with that look.
I'm teaching a 3 day Plein Air workshop in conjunction with the exhibit, April 22-24. It will be for oil, pastel or watercolor and I plan to demo in the mediums most people are using...maybe all 3?
The foliage should be quite nice by that time.

Sticking with it

Two posts back I pondered how a plein air image might benefit from some changes. On location I pretty much took it as was and used my best guess as to how to do it.
 Since then I did some drawings (this one is China marker and sharpie pen on grey Bogus paper).

Then some watercolor sketches...

and a new studio version...

And here's the original...

I tried to get stronger shapes, juicier color, fewer tangents and hopefully fewer inconsequential details. It's still a bit "oil painty" but better...getting closer to a new look.
 I think doing something over a few times in a few ways pays off, so I'm going to try and spend more time in my sketchbooks. It's liberating to just launch at something without expectations. Here are a few I think could become pictures...

Honestly, I know better...

It was beautiful weather Friday so I went painting in Bentonsport with Gin Lammert, Jessica Kirby and Deb Baughman. Most of us got enchanted with the limestone walls left over from the foundation of the town's millrace, much of which has been cleverly converted to a large walled rose garden.
Too enchanted in my case - I forgot basic stuff even beginners know. These two watercolors have several problems.

1. Overworked - these were better subjects for oil or pastels for starters. If important stuff is a light passage in a dark or medium field, watercolors are not a good choice.
2. Too many strokes -  there was just lots to see and I didn't pick a focus and stick with it. AND I didn't think about simplification. I just kept finding stuff to put in. The artistic equivalent or hoarding or binge eating potato chips.
3. Unconsidered composition - no focus, no lead in, even the orientation of horizontal or vertical wasn't addressed. A thumbnail would have sorted all that out.
4. Worst of all, I was basically ok with them till I got home and looked at them a while. 
Amusingly, I got some clues after Jessica sent out our traditional group photo. 

She commented that she looked like Alfalfa from the Litte Rascals. 

I disagreed, citing lack of cowlick and freckles (we're still debating the freckles) and suggested Sargent's portrait of Rosina Ferrara was closer to the mark.

That reminded me to look at some of his other works using the same model. Here's Rosina next to a stone wall in Capri not too unlike the environs in Bentonsport. 

Being Sargent, he didn't make Preston mistakes. 
1. He has an obvious focus - Rosina - but it could have been something inanimate too. All the major lines or shapes lead to her, or frame her shape. 
2. The background and foreground are gloriously simple BUT NOT dashed off. From even a short distance they look quite resolved. HE SAW THEM IN RELATION TO HIS FOCAL POINT, not one at a time by themselves. Honestly, I know this stuff...
3. If anyone could pull this off in watercolor he could...but he knew light accents on a deep toned field isn't the medium's forte.
4. Diagonals - walls cut your foreground off from your background. It can be done but it requires fancy dancing.
At home I  did a couple 3x5 sketches in my sketchbook - like I SHOULD have done first. 

At least I figured out a horizontal orientation was better but a diagonal leading to a focus - or even just into deep space - would have been better. If you're going to run something right across your picture plane it needs to be a VERY engaging shape.
Oh well...

Growing Pains

  Its just natural that creativity and change go together. I'm sure there's something in science that demands it. For a few years now I've been changing slowly, partly from circumstances but mainly from whatever the dynamics of that creativity thing entails. Working plein air more is part of it, though that is actually a return to my "roots". The hard part is sorting out what to paint and why (though I'm not sure one needs to know why...just that you must). But maybe how is an issue too. 

 I'm convinced there's a a part of me that's too prose and not enough poetry. 

 Take these two images from last Saturday (an exceptional day weather-wise and a great time painting with fellow artists Carrol Michalek and Jessica Kirby - check them out at right). I like both images but that nagging feeling they could go farther too....

First the bridge into Farmington Iowa. I just went at it as is, with minor changes. The available shapes offer better opportunities, maybe?

 Next are the wetlands at Mt. Sterling Iowa. I took a few more liberties in hopes of getting the feel of the glaring light. 

Places like this don't offer too much object-wise so you have to be all about the light. I had a clue but maybe didn't follow it far enough?

I don't know. The only thing I'm sure of is that way down inside,  something rumbles and wants to be different. 

 Both could be done in other media...possibly that's an approach. More graphic? Juicer color? This artist thing doesn't get easier with time! Stay tuned in case I do studio versions.

Brush finesse

While this booger surfs my respitory system I've been surfing the net and found a really good YouTube by Liu Yi. Here's a sample of his stuff:

He's a wonderful painter, but the filming angle and lighting of this video lets you see aspects of brush handling and paint manipulation better than most. The video is just an intimate little landscape with rocks and foliage, but you can see the brush orientation and can gauge the consistency of his paint. That's not easily verbalized in demos because a lot of that is tactile. There's no commentary on it but that's a plus - you just watch.

Here's the link https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iCgsLBBzPU8 And here's what to watch for.

1. The brush casts a shadow on the paper, forming a "V", the point of the letter being where the hairs contact the paper. If the "V" is narrow, the brush angle is shallow, contacting the paper on its side. If it's wide the brush angle is more vertical, using the tip. You'll catch on.

2. Note how light the touch is. He's not painting this like the trim on his house. He's leading and coaxing liquid around most of the time. Beginners - and too often experienced painters - dab and stroke away with dry-ish paint because it SEEMS more controlled. 

3. Yes, you will see him press down on the brush and splay it, but that's to get a specific mark. THE THING TO WATCH FOR is whether it leaves a little puddle of paint or a small bead he can lead along the surface. That means the brush was loaded with runny paint. If you don't see a puddle or bead, he's working with a dryer brush or stiffer, darker paint.

4. Note he uses a 9x12 Arches block with a relatively small oriental style brush - very like the Happy Dot brush many of us use. On other videos he uses just about every brush type there is...and different papers...so it's NOT THE GEAR. He knows the condition of his paper and the consistency of paint he's bringing to it.
5. Most of the video is classic light to dark watercolor process. There is one point where he scrapes (or rather squeegees) some light branches into a dark passage. It's not magic - you just have to wait until the water is BELOW the paper's surface and the paint on top is still moist. Then scrape it off. The mark stays because there's no water on the surface to flood paint back into that area.

Some day my paper prince will come...

Last post I touched on the role of sizing in watercolor paper and it's effect on the paper's behavior when wet. I've puzzled it some more and come up with this. I'm Using Arches and Bockingford as comparisons - there are too many papers to comment on all of them and these are popular examples of two basic types. There are no really awful papers in my opinion (though Strathmore Aquarius comes close). Just papers that wouldn't match your profile on ePaperHarmony.com.  The purpose of this post is to shed a bit of light on why each might perform as it does, in the hopes you can experiment and find a suitable match...

First, there are a lot of variables and I'm basing these comments on the use of UNSOAKED, UNSTRETCHED PAPER. The comment in points 4-7 will be even more important if you soak and stretch.
1. Is the size IN the paper, ON the paper or BOTH?
 That corresponds to, respectively, internal sizing, surface sizing or the two together. Bockingford is an internally sized paper, and this is typical of "student" papers, though for reasons below I find it outperforms them all and most "artist grade" papers too. Arches is both internally and surface sized which is typical of artist grade papers.
2. How much size is used on the paper? Here I have to guess and go by feel. I'm going to say Bockingford feels pretty heavily sized and Arches uses less internal sizing because it gets the additional surface sizing (possibly there's a limit to how much sizing is desirable?..I don't know and the manufacturers are understandably mute on their process). Bottom line, one has more size close to the surface and the other has it all packed into the paper. The behavior is noticeable as it should be.
3. What is the sizing made of? Arches uses an animal gelatin (in either or both sizings...I'd say both) and Bockingford uses something else. Possibly the synthetic gelatin called Aquapel? Bottom line, they paint differently.
4. How easily does it soften when wetted? The Arches size seems to loosen up faster than the Bockingford. Perhaps because your initial paint application is hitting size alone?
5. How long does it stay wet before it hardens again? Arches, once loosened, seems to stay moist longer. Possibly that's because Bockingford is a wood fiber paper and Arches is cotton which should be naturally more absorbent. This and the point above are probably why Arches was the paper of choice for the American School of watercolorists from 1930-1970. Their working method was rather specific.
6. Does surface sizing sink in? Seems so, especially if your brushwork is vigorous.
7. Is some of it removed by the brush during the painting process? Seems like it does. On both papers colors look "furrier" in heavily worked areas. Either that or water and brushwork push it into adjacent areas. This brings up another issue: does your painting style redistribute sizing unequally?

Final observations: The whole trick to watercolor is knowing what the condition of your paper is, so that when you bring a particular consistency of paint to it, you can make an educated guess as to the result. All the above factors affect the condition of the surface and need to be noticed from one brand to the next so you know WHEN to go into the paper with the desired paint consistency. Your frog may be a prince...but they all need to be kissed differently.