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| Into the Flow, 12×16, oil |
I like to paint, but I don’t like to frame. For me, framing is a completely different craft. In my mind, anything that has to do with framing – all the way from simply picking out a ready-made to building your own frames – has nothing to do with the craft of painting.
We’ve all been told that, in a buyer’s mind, a nicely framed painting is the complete package. A painting without a frame is incomplete. It’s like buying a custom car without the paint job and chrome. I want to be the mechanic who builds the engine and the car’s other important systems, but I’d love to leave the chrome and color choices to someone else.
Of course, I can’t do that. I can sell my demos and sketches unframed, but any finished painting really needs to go in a frame to look, well, finished. (Gallery-wrapped paintings always look unfinished to me.)
There are two problems with framing. First, although there are some basic principles that govern framing, framing is a personal choice. For my oil paintings, I like simple “plein air” frames, either gold or silver, or black with a little gold or silver fillet. I put gold on paintings that are dominantly warm, silver on ones that are dominantly cool, and black, of course, goes with most anything. A 3-inch moulding works for 9x12s on up to 16x20s. For my pastel paintings, I still use a mat, though I’ve started going toward matless framing. My color choice principles still apply.
But I have buyers who come to my gallery who are adamantly opposed to gold – or to silver, or to black. If I have a frame in stock that they prefer, I’ll reframe the piece accordingly. But I’m not a frame shop, so if they want something I don’t have – maybe an ugly Rococco frame with plaster epaulettes and genuine gold leaf – I offer to remove the frame and deduct my cost. This always satisfies the buyer.
The second problem is expense. Good frames aren’t cheap. You can buy cheap ones, but they are always cheaply made with inferior materials. I’ve bought cheap frames, and most of them are made of composite and wood filler that chips and dings far too easily. I like frames made of real wood. Still, there are places where you can get good frames that don’t cost too much. (www.classicgalleryframing.com is one.) I also look for sales on ready-mades. As much as I like to support the local guy, it’s usually more expensive to go to a framer and have something custom-made. But they do know what they’re doing, and sometimes they’ll make you a deal if they have some extra moulding left over from a special order.
Often, you can find beautiful frames for not very much at yard sales. The painting at the top of this post is one such frame. It’s not a frame I would have bought, but I really like it for this painting.
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| Mitten Ridge Sketch, 12×9 pastel |
Students are often curious why I work in two media. Well, many professional painters work in more than one medium, just as they may work in more than one genre. It’s like going to a liberal arts college rather than a technical school – a broader education makes you more adaptable. It also makes life richer.
But, in my case, why specifically oil and pastel? These two media are peculiar in that one informs the other. Because every color in pastel is available in several shades or tints, pastel is a great medium for learning how to keep values separate. This is an important aspect of plein air painting, and oil painters would do well to learn this skill. The problem with oil is, anytime you add color to a mixture, you change the value whether you meant to or not. “Value slippage” becomes a common failure among oil painters.
Oil, however, is all about mixing color. Pastel, not so much. Because pastels have such a range of colors to choose from – 525, if you have the full set of Senneliers – pastel painters rarely learn the skill of mixing color. Pastel painters who haven’t learned how to mix color get into trouble with a limited set of pastels. Playing with oil, or any liquid paint, can be a great help to the pastel painter who goes out in the field with a limited set.
For most painters who work in two media, one will be primary and the other, secondary. I, however, tend to work in each about the same, partly because I get as many students who paint in oil as in pastel. When I’m painting on my own, I still paint half and half. I don’t let subject dictate the medium; I can paint any subject equally well in either, and I never feel that pastel is more appropriate to a certain subject than oil. But do I prefer one over the other? I do, but it’s personal.
By the way, Trina and I are in the process of renovating a 1400+ sq ft, 3-bedroom house with a perfect studio space. This house is in our community, and we’d love to have another artist here! Two hours from Phoenix and only 10 miles from Sedona make this the perfect summer or winter home. We’ll be pricing it under $100k. Available soon. For details, visit http://sedonahomeforsale.blogspot.com/
- Red Rock Quiet, 9×12, oil
Students ask me how to price their paintings. When I first started out, I didn’t have any idea, either. What was a reasonable price for a 9×12 pastel – a hundred bucks? A thousand? Judging from some of the prices I’d seen in galleries, it seemed like the range was pretty wide, and price didn’t necessarily relate to the quality of the work or the artist’s reputation.
My mentor, Ann Templeton, introduced me to her gallery in Ruidoso, New Mexico. The owner liked my work, and I liked the gallery. So, I asked her what she thought she could get for my 9×12 pastels. She named a price – $300 – and so that’s where I started. Since that time, I’ve raised my prices annually if things were selling, and kept them the same if they weren’t. (I have yet to drop the price.) It’s been a good policy, and I think my work today commands what I consider a fair price.
Whenever I go to a new area looking for a gallery, my procedure is to ask what they think they could get for my work. Sometimes it’s higher than what similar work is priced somewhere else. And that’s okay. I know the received wisdom is that prices should be the same across all galleries, but I disagree. The price is whatever the market will bear. Some galleries have access to a wealthy clientele; some don’t.
As for different sizes, I price by the square inch, but as the number of square inches increases, the price per square inch drops. Bigger paintings cost less per square inch than smaller ones. I built a little spreadsheet that does all the calculations for me. One important thing to take into account is to make sure you consider framing and the gallery’s commission. If you charge $500 for a painting, your gallery will take $250 (if you have a 50/50 deal), and if the framing cost $100, that will leave you with only $150. If you’re shipping work to an exhibition, make sure you take shipping into account, too, as it can eat up your profits.
Sometimes I’ll offer sketches and demonstration pieces for sale. These I usually price lower, since they are often unframed and, well, sketches and not finished work. I price them reasonably, keeping in mind that often these go to students or to people who’d like a piece of original art but just can’t afford a finished piece.
There are many ways to price artwork, and this is just what works for me. Check with other artists to see how they price things and what their philosophies are. The bottom line is, if you’re trying to make a living at this, you want to get paid a reasonable rate for your work – and to make sure it gets out the door at whatever price. (Click here to see more of my plein air paintings.)
How do you price your work?
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| “Red Rock Quiet” 9×12, oil – Zion National Park |
Students ask me how to price their paintings. When I first started out, I didn’t have any idea, either. What was a reasonable price for a 9×12 pastel – a hundred bucks? A thousand? Judging from some of the prices I’d seen in galleries, it seemed like the range was pretty wide, and price didn’t necessarily relate to the quality of the work or the artist’s reputation.
My mentor, Ann Templeton, introduced me to her gallery in Ruidoso, New Mexico. The owner liked my work, and I liked the gallery. So, I asked her what she thought she could get for my 9×12 pastels. She named a price – $300 – and so that’s where I started. Since that time, I’ve raised my prices annually if things were selling, and kept them the same if they weren’t. (I have yet to drop the price.) It’s been a good policy, and I think my work today commands what I consider a fair price.
Whenever I go to a new area looking for a gallery, my procedure is to ask what they think they could get for my work. Sometimes it’s higher than what similar work is priced somewhere else. And that’s okay. I know the received wisdom is that prices should be the same across all galleries, but I disagree. The price is whatever the market will bear. Some galleries have access to a wealthy clientele; some don’t.
As for different sizes, I price by the square inch, but as the number of square inches increases, the price per square inch drops. Bigger paintings cost less per square inch than smaller ones. I built a little spreadsheet that does all the calculations for me. One important thing to take into account is to make sure you consider framing and the gallery’s commission. If you charge $500 for a painting, your gallery will take $250 (if you have a 50/50 deal), and if the framing cost $100, that will leave you with only $150. If you’re shipping work to an exhibition, make sure you take shipping into account, too, as it can eat up your profits.
Sometimes I’ll offer sketches and demonstration pieces for sale. These I price lower, since they are often unframed and, well, sketches and not finished work. I price them reasonably, keeping in mind that often these go to students or to people who’d like a piece of original art but just can’t afford a finished piece.
There are many ways to price artwork, and this is just what works for me. Check with other artists to see how they price things and what their philosophies are. The bottom line is, if you’re trying to make a living at this, you want to get paid a reasonable rate for your work – and to make sure it gets out the door at whatever price. (Click here to see more of my plein air landscapes.)
How do you price your work?
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| My studio palette, wrapped up and waiting. |
In my previous blog post, I wrote about a problem I have with pastels. To be even-handed, today I’m writing about a problem I have with oils.
I love oils. I love the way I can push color around on my canvas with a brush. There’s something relaxing – and yet curiously energizing – about watching color flow and change.
However, oil paint is expensive. Good paint, anyway. And if you’re painting properly, you’ll always have a certain amount of waste. One of the worst things a plein air painter can be is stingy with paint. Putting out a pinhead’s worth and then trying to cover, say, a 9×12 will cause you to stop and remix too often. When you’re running a marathon, you can’t stop for a granola bar every mile. You’ll lose focus, motivation – and probably the race. (Not that painting should be a race!)
I always end up with perhaps a half-tube or more of paint on my palette. Some of it is still clean, some of it isn’t. The dirty paint I scrape up into a pile and slide out of the way to the far right of my palette. This paint makes a nice grey for toning canvas or dulling color mixtures. If I’m painting the very next day, I’ll just cover the palette with plastic wrap and tuck the wrap down around each pile of paint. This keeps oxygen away from the paint, which “cures” by oxidation. If I’m not painting for a couple of days, I’ll also stick my palette in the freezer. Oxidation is slowed down by cold temperatures. This way, my paint stays reasonably fresh until the next time I go painting.
However, sometimes I go much longer without painting in oil. (I paint half the time in pastel.) Or, if I’m travelling, I may not have a freezer or even plastic wrap available, and usually my palette is being kept in a hot car. When this happens, I have to throw paint away. That breaks my heart. The most expensive paint I use regularly is nearly $30 for a 37ml tube. And I have used $60 tubes.
Some of you might say, Raise the prices of your paintings. But I won’t – and that’ll be the subject of a future post.
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| Faber-Castell Polychromos |
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| Mount Vision |
Back when I first started painting in pastel, everything I painted was a custom size. I cut my paper to fit the scene. Instead of 9x12s, 12x16s and so on, I ended up with sizes like 13×17. This meant that every framing job was a custom job – and thus somewhat expensive. On a beginning artist’s budget, it didn’t take me long to figure out that painting to standard sizes would save me money, because I could buy readymade frames and precut mats.
I did this for years. But standard formats began to cramp my style. Sometimes, a landscape would demand something other than a 9×12 (or a 3:4 format), such as a double-square (1:2) or even a triple-square (1:3). As I began to explore design, I found that I was hurting myself by sticking with the standard formats. Yet, I felt that I needed to stay standard, since any sketch might turn into a masterpiece that I’d have to frame.
But when cutting paper for standard sizes, I always seemed to end up with odd-sized scraps. I began to use these for quick little sketches outdoors. I began to really enjoy doing “scrap” paintings. The practice was liberating, because I knew I wasn’t going to frame them.
Somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking about the framing altogether. I started thinking just about the painting. If, I thought, an odd-sized piece were to end up being good enough to frame, then I’d deal with it when the time came. I’d come full-circle regarding sizes.
These days, when I take my 9×12 sheet into the field, I’m likely to take a piece of tape and mask off a smaller area that fits my scene better. This always leaves me a scrap for later. Here are two sketches I did this week on a single 9×12 sheet. Neither design would work well in a 9×12 format.
By the way, we had a day of overcast and snow squalls. These were painted on that day.
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| Painting Scrap 2 (2.5×11.5) |
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| Painting Scrap 1 (6×11.5) |
I spent the last week in historic Tubac, Arizona, teaching an oil-only advanced plein air painting workshop. We had fantastic weather – crisp mornings, warm afternoons – and equally fantastic scenery. One of the things I like most about Tubac, besides the consistent January weather, is the architecture. Thanks to a few hundred years of history, starting with the Spanish in 1752, the town has many fascinating structures. Although I hadn’t intended for the workshop to focus on buildings, we painted adobe houses in Old Tubac, parts of the Spanish Presidio and the monumental structures at the Tumacacori Mission. It wasn’t until the last day that we relaxed a bit and painted views of the less-challenging Santa Rita mountains.
I’ll be offering a Tubac workshop again next year, January 15-18, 2013, through Katherine Reyes Workshops. Put it on your schedule now, and stay tuned for details. In the meantime, here are a few paintings and photos from this week.
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| Demo – Tumacacori Mission, 5×7 oil |
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| Demo – The Tortilla Lady, 9×12, oil |
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| Demo – Adobe Home, 9×12, oil |
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| Demo – Otero Hall at the Presidio, 5×7, oil |
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| Demo – Santa Rita Mountains, 9×12, oil (knife) |
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| Demo – Tubac, the Ninth Hole, 9×12, oil |
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| Tumacacori Mission – Detail |
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| Tumacacori Mission – Detail |
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| Tumacacori Mission |
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| Tumacacori Mission |
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| Tumacacori Mission |
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| Dos Silos Ranch |
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m one of about 30 artists who have been invited to demonstrate and teach at the very first Plein Air Convention & Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, April 12-15. The artists include such luminaries of the plein air universe as Scott Christensen, Clyde Aspevig, Matt Smith, Jeremy Lipking and Ken Auster. I’m honored to have been invited and excited to be in their company. If you’re coming out, you should be excited, too. The event is an all-you-can-eat plein air buffet!
There’ll be plenty of events to attend, but I’m looking forward to the painting sessions at the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. To minimize traffic in the conservation area, the Expo’s organizers (Plein Air Magazine) have thoughtfully arranged for buses to take participants in. Once there, you’ll get to pick and choose whom to watch, and you can watch as many of us as you wish. But in addition to painting, there’ll be formal demonstrations and lectures plus keynote events with John Singer Sargent expert Richard Ormond and California Impressionist historian Jean Stern, among others.
Although I haven’t been to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, it sounds like it’ll be a really great area to paint in. Here’s a little about the area from the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) website:
Red Rock Canyon was designated as Nevada’s first National Conservation Area. Red Rock Canyon is located 17 miles west of the Las Vegas Strip on Charleston Boulevard/State Route 159. The area is 195,819 acres and is visited by more than one million people each year. In marked contrast to a town geared to entertainment and gaming, Red Rock Canyon offers enticements of a different nature including a 13-mile scenic drive, more than 30 miles of hiking trails, rock climbing, horseback riding, mountain biking, road biking, picnic areas, nature observing and visitor center with exhibit rooms and a book store.
The unique geologic features, plants and animals of Red Rock Canyon NCA represent some of the best examples of the Mojave Desert. One million visitors each year enjoy the spectacular desert landscape, climbing and hiking opportunities, and interpretive programs sponsored by the BLM.
The conference will be based at the Red Rock Casino, Resort & Spa just outside of Las Vegas, and they have a special rate for participants.
It’ll be a great time. I hope to see you there.
I’m looking for new landscape painting workshop venues for 2013 and 2014.
Would you or your group be interested in inviting me to teach in your town? I have a new program, “From Sketch to Studio,” in which students will spend time out in the field gathering reference material with cameras and sketchbooks and then go to the studio to create finished works. I’ll show my process and cover the finer points of creating finished studio paintings from the reference material.
I’ll work in oil or pastel, but students may work in any medium. Length of the workshop may be anywhere from two to five days. The program can also be customized, such as an all-plein-air workshop or one that is based totally in the studio.
If your group hosts art exhibitions, such as an annual members’ show, I’m also available to judge or serve as a juror in conjunction with a workshop.
For more information and pricing, please contact me at mcj.painter@gmail.com.
If you’re part of a group, feel free to send this entire post on to your program director.
About Michael Chesley Johnson
An award-winning landscape painter, Michael has taught for art centers and art groups across the country for over ten years. A Contributing Editor for The Artist’s Magazine and a frequent writer for The Pastel Journal, he has authored several books and videos, including Backpacker Painting: Outdoors with Oil & Pastel. Artist’s Network TV offers two of his full-length demonstration videos. In 2009, he gave two well-received demonstrations to the biennial International Association of Pastel Societies convention in Albuquerque.
For more about Michael:
www.MichaelChesleyJohnson.com
http://www.michaelchesleyjohnson.com/html/schedule.htm (Michael’s current schedule)
www.PaintSedona.com (winter/spring mentoring plein air workshops in Arizona)
www.PaintCampobello.com (summer/fall plein air workshops in the Canadian Maritimes)
http://mchesleyjohnson.blogspot.com (A Plein Air Painter’s Blog with helpful tips for the student)
A Plein Air Painter's Blog 