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| “Evening Light” 8×10, oil |
The painting above is obviously about the garden bench and the beautiful evening light spilling into the shadows. The trees are supporting characters, but important ones; they serve to create the shadows that serve as contrast for the light. The shadows, in a sense, make the light. They also make strong vertical elements to oppose the horizontal of the bench and the diagonal of the sloped ground. Finally, they are cool in color, a red-violet to contrast with the complementary yellow-greens.
One might generalize my statement on shadows and light to “Contrasts make the painting.” A painting is built of so many different kinds of contrast. I like to think of contrast pairs: light/shadow, vertical/horizontal, cool/warm, dull/rich, hard/soft, transparent/opaque, plus a dozen more you can probably think of. One member of each pair should be dominant. This way, it makes the other, subdominant member more striking. In this painting, dark and cool are dominant, which make the warm light seem even warmer.
This is an older painting, one I did many years ago while living in the southern Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. It’s our garden bench, nestled among the alligator junipers and pinons.
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| Sally’s Birdhouse – 6×8, oil – available |
In between studio work and pulling images for my new book on the Southwest, I’ve been getting out to paint, too. Above is a little piece I did last week when we had a shot of sunshine. I painted it with the new Cobra water-miscible oils, with which I’m still experimenting.
June is traditionally the month in which my group, Plein Air Painters of the Bay of Fundy, has its annual paintout and exhibition. This is our sixth year. Over the past years, we’ve alternated locations between the US and Canada. This year, we’ll be painting in both countries. You can get details on all of this at our website, www.pleinairfundy.org.
This Saturday, June 9th, we’ll be painting in St Andrews-by-the-Sea in New Brunswick. St Andrews is a gem on the water. It’s a resort town with a scenic waterfront, beautiful historic buildings and lots of good restaurants. The weather is supposed to be superb this weekend. It’s also the annual seafood festival, so there’ll be lots happening. Some of us will be down by the waterfront painting. I hope you’ll come visit us. There’s also a reception at the Europa Inn at 48 King Street from 5-7 pm Atlantic Time. If you didn’t find us out in the field, you’ll certainly find us there. We’ll have some good paintings to show, too.
Other events include a paintout in Eastport, Maine, June 23 & 24, followed by the final paintout in Lubec, Maine, and on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, June 30 & July 1. We’ll have a reception and show at Friar’s Bay Studio Gallery on Saturday, June 30, from 5-7 AT. I hope you’ll join us for that one, too! (On August 1, you’ll be able to see all the work we’ve done on our website.)
Every other year, Master Pastelist Doug Dawson comes east from Colorado to lead a mentoring workshop in Lubec, Maine. If you don’t know of him, in 2008 he was inducted into the Pastel Society of America’s Hall of Fame and is the author of the out-of-print Capturing Light & Color with Pastel. A Founding Member of the Art Students League of Denver, he has many awards from organizations like Knickerbocker Artists, the National Academy of Western Art and the American Watercolor Society. Doug is truly a master and a teacher who is very generous with his time and knowledge. I’ve known Doug now for about ten years, and I always learn something new from him.
Doug’s workshop will be a paint-along style workshop. Even so, each day will be filled with critiques, art talk and lots of hard work. Besides painting in Lubec, where the workshop is based, the workshop will venture onto Campobello Island, N.B., to paint there, as well. The workshop runs August 20-24. Doug is limiting the workshop to only 8 intermediate-advanced painters. Although Doug will work in pastel, participants are welcome to work in oil.
Doug does not teach many workshops each year. For details on this rare opportunity, visit www.dougdawsonworkshop.com. For more about Doug, visit www.dougdawsonartist.com. I hope you’ll join us!
Below is a selection of his work, much of it done during his time here or from references. (All images Copyright © Doug Dawson.)
I’m painting for a show that’s coming up at Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre (St Andrews, NB) that will start July 20. The theme is “Buildings in the Landscape.” In addition to my typical plein air work, which seems to have developed a certain style, I wanted to do a few studio pieces. In the studio, I like to depart from my plein air look. In my book, that’s not a bad thing. Studio paintings are created under completely different conditions, so why should I try to make them look like the plein air work, or vice versa? Of course, the studio work may end up looking so different that it won’t fit in the show!
This piece happens to include a prominent boat as well as a few buildings scattered incidentally in the distance. (Perhaps I’m stretching the concept of “buildings in the landscape” here.) For it, I had several goals in mind. I wanted to work on things that are difficult to do in the field, given the time constraints. I wanted to:
- Keep the shapes simple and more abstract than I do in my plein air pieces, which tend to have more detail;
- Build a more satisfying composition than I have time for in the field; and
- Develop a color scheme that is at once more harmonious and more exciting than what I often get in the field.
Here’s the reference photo. The color is a little dull, there’s too much detail, and the composition, though interesting, needs work.
Now here’s my first take on the painting. I really liked the way the color harmony was developing with a complement pair – red-violet/yellow-green – in conjunction with the yellow ochre I was mixing into my sunlit colors. I also worked hard at keeping shapes simple and the key in the upper end of the value scale.
But there were a couple of things I didn’t like. I didn’t like the shape of the foreground beach. I was trying to create a curvey lead-in for the eye, but it just wasn’t working. It was crying for too much attention and was taking away from the boat and darker shapes in the background. I also didn’t like the color of it. It was too warm and pink; it needed to be greyer, more like the color of the rooftops.
I corrected these things and also darkened some of the shadows under the boat. But just slightly, since I wanted to keep the high-key feeling. Pulling the water down to the bottom of the frame helped, too. I wanted to keep a curvey lead-in for the eye, though, so I added a subtle sense of either a wavelet or a partly-submerged rope in the foreground. (It doesn’t matter which.) Finally, I cooled off some of the sunlit grasses behind the boat. Here’s the final version:
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| “Spring Greens” 12×12, oil (Gamblin Fastmatte) |
For my St Andrews-by-the-Sea fans, this is the boat that was hauled up by Quoddy Bay Fish Market for several years. It’s gone now, having been smashed to bits in a particularly high tide. Observant readers will note that the little lighthouse in the distance – the Pendlebury Lighthouse – has replaced that big house at the water’s edge.
Some fun products have been arriving on my doorstep this week. I’m about to embark on a little research for an article I’m writing for The Artist’s Magazine. The article is on surfaces for pastel. One of the products that arrived is a 2 lb bag of finely ground pumice. This is FFFF (4F), which is about as fine as you can get it.
As some of you may know, I’ve been doing critiques through Artists Network University. Not long ago, ANU decided to add a curriculum and invited me to teach a workshop. The workshop development is now complete, and you can register online for my Getting Started in Plein Air workshop. The workshop starts June 26th and runs four weeks. Participation is limited to 20 students.
One might very well ask, “How can I learn plein air painting through an online workshop?” Good question! Well, you’ll have a book download – my friend Bob Rohm’s The Painterly Approach – as part of the course, plus a series of videos to watch. Each week you’ll have an assignment plus homework to do out in the field. You’ll upload your completed assignments through our Blackboard interface. I’ll critique your work, and you can ask me questions and get answers. I’ve never done this before, but I think it’ll be lots of fun!
If you’re new to plein air, or would like to get into it but have been afraid to, this is the course for you. I’ll cover the fundamentals and lead you through my process for painting outdoors. Please join us!
I’ve started writing a few guest articles for plein air painting-related blogs. Here’s one for Plein Air BC, the British Columbia plein air group. (Their website is www.pleinairbc.com.) It’s about picking a subject. I’ll just post the first paragraph, and you can click the link to read the rest of it.
Picking a subject is like taking the first step on a journey; you always want to start out in the right direction. One problem I run into when teaching workshops is that many students don’t know how to pick a subject suitable for a plein air painting. [read more]
By the way, if you’re looking for plein air workshops for summer, please visit www.PaintCampobello.com.
If you’d like to visit us on Campobello Island, please visit www.FriarsBayGallery.com.
You can read more blogs by me at http://mchesleyjohnson.blogspot.com.
And if you’re in the area and want to see Plein Air Painters of the Bay of Fundy painting or the annual exhibition, please visit www.PleinAirFundy.org.
I’ve started writing a few guest articles for plein air painting-related blogs. Here’s one for Plein Air BC, the British Columbia plein air group. (Their website is www.pleinairbc.com.) It’s about picking a subject. I’ll just post the first paragraph, and you can click the link to read the rest of it.
Picking a subject is like taking the first step on a journey; you always want to start out in the right direction. One problem I run into when teaching workshops is that many students don’t know how to pick a subject suitable for a plein air painting. [read more]
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| Spring Greens at the Seaside Barn, 6×8, oil |
Now that we’ve settled in after our long, cross-country drive, I thought I’d go out painting with a few new items I’ve come across. We’ve had absolutely gorgeous weather these last few days, and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to play before getting back to work. Of course, painting is work, but I call it playing when I introduce a few new items to my materials or equipment. (Actually, I have been working; this week, I created the syllabus and materials for my online course through Artists Network University, started an article for The Artist’s Magazine, and promoted my Paint Campobello plein air painting workshops.)
Although blackflies aren’t a problem when I start teaching my workshops at the end of June, we always have a run of them in late May. I came across “Bye Bye Blackfly,” a DEET-free ointment that comes in a nifty can. We do have blackflies now, and I can swear that this product works.
I’ve always used those free plastic bags from Wal-Mart for disposing of my soiled papertowels. I hang one from the side of my pochade box. But one problem with these bags, in addition to their being bad for the environment, is that a windy day will often send it whipping around, often right into my palette. Paint gets everywhere. I now have the Bajer Pop Open Caddy, thanks to a student of mine from Ohio. Originally designed as a shower caddy, it’s perfect for trash. I have to admit I do line it with a plastic bag.
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| Besides the Pop Open Caddy, you’ll note the Art Cocoon, which I have written about before. |
Finally, when I was at the Plein Air Expo in Las Vegas, I was given a set of Cobra paints, a new brand of water-miscible oil paint from Royal Talens, the people who make Rembrandt paints and pastels. They’re better that the Grumbacher Max brand which seems to “clump” when thinned with too much water. Yes, I know you can buy a medium that will thin without clumping, but for me the point of these paints is to minimize what I have to carry. Cobra paints thin well with just water. I like the consistency of them, too.
At the top of this post is the little piece I did this morning. With all these new toys, you can bet I had fun painting it!
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| “Head Harbour Shadows” 9×12, oil – available One way of managing greens is to avoid them! Although there was a great deal of green in this scene of the Head Harbour Light house, I chose to minimize their coverage. |
The vigorous, vegetive greens of summertime overwhelm the landscape – and often the painting student, too. I’m not talking about fast-moving kudzu that can swallow up a whole town overnight, but about greens that are so dominant that they swallow up all other color. In much of the eastern U.S. and Canada, it’s hard to see anything but green in summer.
Students often cower and retreat before the onslaught, uttering one of two statements. Either “there’s too much green out there” or “I just can’t find the right green.”
Even as an experienced outdoor painter, I have to admit that I, too, sometimes wish for something other than green. But if you want to paint outdoors in the summertime, you may have no alternative than to engage the enemy.
First, let’s look at the problem of too much green. Green is supposed to be a restful color – that’s why hospital corridors are often painted that color – but in the landscape, too much can be claustrophobic. One trick painters use to mitigate green is to tone the canvas red. The theory is that little bits of red will pop through the overpainting and make for a more vibrant finished piece. I don’t find this very helpful, though; green strokes over red vibrate like bad op art and give me a headache. Instead, I like to use a near-complement. If the green is, say, a pure secondary green, I prefer to tone with red-violet or red-orange. The vibration is a lot less but still makes for an exciting painting.
Now, let’s look at not being able to mix (or, in pastel, find) the right green. The “right green” that you see in the landscape isn’t necessarily the “right green” you want in your painting. Don’t try the trick of mixing up a batch of green with your knife and then holding up a sample against what you see in the field; that mixture will look different – and wrong – once you apply it to your canvas and it’s in the context of all your other slightly-off mixtures. Instead, consider the mood you are trying to create, and then get the colors in your painting to work well together. Also, you may consider using the concept of simultaneous contrast to get the green you want. Green surrounded by red will seem more intense; surrounded by blue, it will seem tinged with orange and warmer.
I’m ready to confront greens this summer. Are you?
A Plein Air Painter's Blog 