The Way It Was

Almost everything about this painting was just "the way it really was," a statement I often hear from my students.  But I made one crucial change.  The right side of the building was white, but the front of the building was a lime green with white trim.  It looks odd in person, so I felt little obligation to paint it as it really was. 

So this is just a reminder:  If something looks odd or unnatural, do not feel compelled to paint it "accurately".  Color harmony demands repetition and some contrast, but an odd color that doesn't repeat elsewhere in the composition will strike the viewer as unbelievable, as well as being out of harmony with the rest of painting.  Keep it simple, and keep it harmonious. 

Life in the Slow Lane

Sometimes I feel compelled to drive around, sometimes for hours, looking for the perfect spot to paint.  Even this winter while staying in the guest house of some friends in Naples, Florida, I still drive around town searching out an interesting venue.  Meanwhile, right off my porch is a peaceful little pond with a mermaid fountain.  I've painted her before, and yesterday I just felt like staying close to home.  So I set up my easel on the shore of the pond near a banana plant and painted a familiar subject.  

I certainly simplified the background which featured a pool cage tall enough to encase full grown palm trees.  Try to say only a couple of things in each painting.  A painting is not a portrait of a place.  You must take into consideration all the "rules" of composition, and sometimes that requires leaving out things that don't come in aid of the focal subject.

Familiar Scenes

Many times when painting en plein air, artists return to old haunts and well known scenes.  I have sometimes felt bored and frustrated that I am forced to return to a site I have painted many, many times before. 

The challenge is to paint it in a new way, or from a slightly different angle or to use different colors.
You can also take a close-up view or a long view.  A bird's eye view or a worm's eye view.  This repetition forces us to re-think the approach and what we want to convery about an old subject.

I've painted this fountain in Bayfront Plaza here in Naples four or five times.  This time I decided to take the long view.  The surrounding architecture is always interesting to me, so this time I decided to include it.  The fountain is still the star, but the supporting actors of building, palm trees, street lights and distant statue were all interesting to me.

Sensing a Series

When sketching, I sometimes detect a pattern as to the subjects I choose.  This winter, I take my sketchbook with me to lunch and have found myself sketching the restaurant or the bar area.  These may later develop in a "watering hole" series which they did two years ago.  It's good to keep your hand an eye busy while waiting for the weather to cooperate for some plein air painting.

You can see in many of my drawings that I tend to make the greatest contrast in values around the focal point.  The rest of the sketch tends to fade out.  This is a technique I employ in my paintings as well.

Painting Trees

Sometimes I think that people paint their "idea" of a tree instead of a real tree.  They rely on their childhood concept of a tree  instead of observing how an individual tree is growing.  The trunks are straight and the foliage looks like a balloon. 

The other major problem concerns the way foliage is painted.  I see artists dabbing at the paper, trying to depict individual leaves.  Instead it is more desireable to paint the mass of foliage.  You can indicate the individual leaves at the edge of the mass, but leaving space between each leaf results in a spotty mess.

Also, observe the values and color changes in the  big shapes.  Some masses are warm and lighter in value because they face the sun.  Others are dark and cool because they are in the shade of other leaves.

Trunks are not one color and value either. If you think a tree's trunk and limbs are all the same value and color, you will end up with a dark brown or gray everywhere--again, a child's version.  Look, and you will see pinks and blues and greens and yellow ochres. And the values depend on the sunny and shaded sides, as well as the cast shadows.

Look at different species of trees.  Think like a portrait painter when painting a tree.

Small World

While painting at the Naples Dock this morning, a couple dropped by and started a conversation. They asked me if I had a gallery and I said I did, but it is in Maine.  They said they love Maine and go there with their boat every summer.  I asked where, and they said, Boothbay Harbor.  "That's where my gallery is!"  They said they get off their boat and go straight to Gleason Fine Art.  "That's my gallery!"  Then they said they have bought eight of Andrea Peters paintings. And the last one they bought is hanging in their boat.   "Andrea is my friend,  next-door neighbor, and her husband is my landlord!"  Absolutely the definition of "small world!"

Here is the painting I did at the City Dock this morning. 

On The Road

The sketchbook is out again.  It's too difficult when I'm en route from one location to the other, so out come the pencil and paper.  Here's a scene I sketched while my friend Connie and I were having lunch under the trees at Mar Vista Restaurant on Longboat Key, Florida.

Ideas and techniques

When choosing subjects, know what about the scene appeals to you so that you can exaggerate it. 

In this view of a New York City street, it was the golden glow on the pavement.  So I then chose neutral grays  to help emphasize that colorful area.  The placement of dark values in that area also draws your eyes to the area of greatest contrast.

In other words, firmly fix your idea of the scene before you begin to paint.  Purpose precedes and determines technique.

Sketches of Life

 

 

 

 

 

On the way down to Bradenton, Florida, I spent the night at Homosassa Springs Resort, on the river that Winslow Homer fished and painted.  This is the view of Monkey Island from their restaurant.

I've said it before:  Take your sketchbook with you to record your journey, your experiences, the things that impress and delight you.  Maybe the sketches will someday be translated to paintings; maybe, not.  No matter.  Concentrating your attention for 20 minutes on your surroundings is what being alive is all about.

The "L" Shape

The building in this scene is an L shape on its side.  I often use this as a pointing device, in this case, having the lower part of the building point to the multi-storied part.  The boat and the truck also point to the tower.  The telephone pole also joins with the boat to form another L.  (I later rubbed the bottom of the pole so it didn't look like the pole was groing out of the top of the boat!)

Knowing what you like to paint is important.  I often look for two things in a scene:  interesting shapes and lacy things against the sky.  This scene has both.

When rendering lacy things, be sure to vary the value of the objects.  Overlapping also helps.  If the lacy stuff is all dark, it  will read not as lace but as pasted on things. It will also place all the lacy things on the same plane. 

Go easy on the paint when painting lines and lace against the sky.

Foreground Shadows

Here's another painting which uses the technique of throwing a cast shadow across the foreground to create a frame.  The trees on the right lean into the painting and the trees on the left are lighter, being in the sunlight.  The cast shadow creates a middle dark that moves the viewer's eyes over it to the focal point of the oysterman tonging for his oysters.

Framing the Subject

Framing the focal point is a tried and true compositional technique.  In this view of a church in Apalachicola, the viewer looks past the large tree on the right and the two palm trees on the left.  The third framing element is the cast shadow across the road.  These combine to form a kind of tunnel on the way to the church.

I often use a cast shadow in the foreground to create another element to look over on the way to the subject.

Line

One of the elements of composition is line. In this painting of "Docked", the dominant lines are the verticals: mast, dock, pilings. The secondary lines are horizontal: dock, far shore. The tension lines are oblique and found in the distant sailboat and the foreground dock. They provide pointers, leading to the focal point.

Consciously design your composition with the use of line.

Breaking the Line

When composing a scene which has a lot of rectangles and straight unbroken lines, I always look for ways to break the lines. In this scene of a warehouse in Eastpoint, I "borrowed" an old rusty barrel in which trash was being burned and put it in my painting. The barrel and the smoke serve the dual purpose of breaking the line of the bottom of the building as well as the cast shadow of the building. The roofline actually had the electrical post in the middle of the roof where the cast shadow is. I moved that to break the line of the roof, and stop the roofline from pointing off the page. Its cast shadow points back into the painting, too.

Happy Martin Luther King Day and Happy Inauguration Day!

Rainy Days

Not all beautiful days are sunny. I like rainy day paintings, although it is nearly a requirement to paint them in studio. The "Three-Steps-Forward approach applies on days like this. Also, the use of an atomizer will keep the page wet in places where you want the paint to run or an edge to be soft.

These cannons are resting at a little historic intersection in Apalachicola.

Focal Point and Values

 

 

 

In this scene of Scipio Creek, the darkest values surround the focal point in order to accentuate the boats. The viewer's eye seeks out the highest degree of contrast. In this case, the dark area behind the boats forces the eye to land in that area.

Use darks to emphasize areas that you want the viewer to focus on.

Plein Air and Secondary Colors

Since I've been here on the panhandle of Florida, it's either been too windy, too chilly or too rainy to paint outside.  I painted some real "dogs" in my room.  I think it was primarily because I was painting with the board flat.  I'm used to the action created when the board is vertical and gravity does its wonderful mixing on the page. 

I also decided on a secondary triad--green orange and purple--for the color scheme.  It may not be an accurate reproduction of some of the neutrals I got, or the warmth of the greens, but I enjoyed limiting my palette.  And yes, artists do make conscious decisions about color choices. 

This effort also made use of painting the negative space to pop out the foreground trees.  The distant trees were painted with more neutralized light and positive shapes of the trees. 

Happy New Year!

Getting Back in the Saddle

I've decided to use this scene as a way to get back into the saddle and feel comfortable as well as inventive until I can get outside and paint again.  Choosing a scene you can play with, experiment with, try out different color schemes, zero in, zoom out....takes much of the frustration of figuring out what to paint, and puts it back on composition, color, value and playfulness. 

Meanwhile, Happy New Year, Everyone!

Biding My Time

I'm trying to be patient, but even though it was sunny today, it was still too cool and windy for painting on location. So tomorrow I may have to drag the easel up the stairs to my second story room and paint inside.  Good thing I have some sketches to work from. 

Here's one I'll probably use tomorrow.

Sketch Hunter

Robert Henri coined the term sketch hunter to describe a state of mind when a painter goes out to find potential subject matter.  Today I went hunting in Eastpoint where the oyster fleet drops anchor.  First warm day, I'm going back to paint this spot.  I love showing three different overlapping planes by using three values.

Merry Christmas to All

Just....A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christmas Greetings

Painting Christmas cards for your family and friends is both a way to send them best wishes for the holidays, and also a gift that they can cherish long after the holidays have passed.

I use a sixteenth of a sheet which I tape with masking tape to my board.  After the painting is finished, the tape is removed, leaving a nice border.

Here are some cards from last year.

Shapes Say It Best

When I first started to study watercolor seriously, I often heard instructors say, Make interesting shapes.  I thought that just meant the outline.  Now I'm starting to realize that the shape says it all, and details can often ruin the effect.  A silhouetted shape allows the painter to say what the object is without supplying every single window and brick, especially if it's a landscape and the objects are in the distance. 

In this painting of my hometown, the Lutheran church and the City Hall are described with their shapes, not with interior details or accurate colors.  Even the train station in the foreground is nearly free of details. The values and overlapping shapes are enough to convey the place and the mood.

Soft Underpainting

Building a painting is like building a house.  You need to establish a good foundation first.  Sometimes, I like to lay down a soft underpainting to establish a unity of color.  Usually two colors will do it.  Then I place the subject matter on top of that, using the same colors and possibly another one or two colors in the same family.

The subject of this painting is St. Francis de Sales cathedral in South St. Louis.  This church has the highest spire in all of St. Louis.  To suggest a spiritual feeling, I refrained from suggesting any vegetation that would hint at a physical place.  And  I decided to keep the bottom of the building soft, undefined and light so the emphasis would be on the facade of the church.

Here also is the preliminary wash to illustrate what I meant about the soft underpainting.

Change is Tough

I'm sorry I've been away for a bit.  I bought a new computer and have had some difficulty connecting to the internet.  Hours and hours of tech support for the past three days may have solved the problem, but even now I'm not totally confident.

Moving forward, in technology or painting, is frustrating, and sometimes you feel like giving up.  I've had a lot of days like this in my painting journey, unsure if all the struggle is worth the possible outcome.  Somehow, however, I couldn't help the jump back in.  Going forward usually involves some painful confronatation with change.  I hope the effort will be worth it!

This Is Your Hometown

One of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs is "This Is Your Hometown".  By now, you faithful followers know that Kirkwood, Missouri is my hometown.  I paint Florida, I paint Maine, but my friend Larry M. wanted to know if I ever paint scenes here at home.  So here is one of my favorite trees which stands on the lawn of the Kirkwood Library.

But the best news is that yesterday, my alma mater Kirkwood High School won the Class 5 State Championship in football for the very first time!  So proud of the Pioneers!

Editing Your Reference Photo

Ram Lighthouse is located off Ocean Point in East Boothbay, Maine.  I took the reference photo while taking a ride on a party boat.  In the photo, however, there is another building between the keeper's house and the lighthouse.  With three structures for the viewer to look at, I was afraid the focal point would be unclear.  I also wanted the keeper's house to be the main focal point, so by slightly enlarging it, I kept the lighthouse as a subordinate.  The lighthouse conveys location, but the light on the house and island is my real concern.

The right side of the composition was a little bare, so I re-located the other building, showing only the roof.
Adding a small pine tree acted as an eye stopper.

In planning your composition, feel free (and obligated!) to rearrange, edit, and enlarge elements to achieve the maximum impact.

Monochromatic Color

It is easier to concentrate on values when you don't have to worry about color choices at the same time.  In "Race to the Cuckolds", I decided to use a couple of  blues to depict the sky and water, and to carve out the sails of the sloops.  I'm still using the darks to surround the carved out light shapes and force the light shapes.  Adding a few textural strokes helped suggest the action in the scene.

By eliminating the color complications, it was easier to concentrate on the values and textures.  Try a monochromatic palette to simplify your composition.

Spare Me the Details

Many times I see students rushing to paint the details in a scene before they have gotten the big shapes
down.  Details will never save a poorly conceived composition.  Get the dress on before you add the jewelry and the perfume.

I am including a photo of this painting at the halfway mark.  You can see that all the really important information is already established.  Adding a few windows and railings spice things up, but the real composition is already there.

A word about windows.  Be judicious about which windows to  emphasize.  Windows facing the light will not register as black holes.  It's also a good idea not to darken windows in places that force the viewer to look at because of value contrasts.  The windows on the porch are necessarily darker because they are in shadow.  But they are also dark because it draws attention to the tower which is the focal point of the painting.

Think big before you think small!

The Final Voyage of the HMS Bounty

Sometimes you paint what's weighing on your heart.  It doesn't mean it's going to be your best painting, but the tribute is real.  RIP, HMS Bounty.

HMS Bounty

The seafaring world lost a great ship  this morning.  The HMS Bounty was often up on the ways for repairs in Boothbay Harbor where I spend the summer each year, and I've painted her many times.  This morning she sank off the coast of North Carolina.  Two crew members are missing with l4 rescued by the Coast Guard.

Here are some photos of the ship and some of her female crew members that I talked with this past summer as they repaired the Bounty's hull.  I hope they are safe.

Forcing the Lights

These bridgehouses are in Bad Kreuznach, Germany where I taught English at a Defense Department school in the early '70's.

Forcing the lights requires painting the majority of the painting in middle dark midtones to dark values.  The tricky part of this is getting a dark enough value in the first wash.  The white paper can fool you into thinking that the first wash is darker than it really is.  Ed Whitney used to say that if it looks like it's right when it's wet, it's wrong. 

Surrounding the lights with midtone and dark vlaues will force the lights into a more dramatic effect. 

In this painting, I also decided that the lights would be a warm yellow.  Yellow's complement is violet, so that determined the coolor on the central bridgehouse.

Go bold in the first wash, and surround the lights with dark midtones.  Add the darks, and that will force the lights for a dramatic lighting effect.

Using Contrasts

Contrasts in colors, textures, shape sizes, and warm and cool colors create interest and direct attention towards important areas of the painting.

In "Burning Off" the greatest contrast in value is on the dock near the lobster boat.  The warmest colors, red and orange, contrast with the cool blues and neutral violets in the rest of the buildings.  The roughest textures and smallest shapes also appear on the dock, contrasting with the softer textures and larger shapes in the upper half of the painting.  And to make the sky shape more interesting, the warm yellow sun symbol contrasts with the blues on the outer edges.

Sometimes painting is like solving a puzzle.  Being conscious of contrasts helps the viewer find the area of interest you want them to find. 

Revisiting Familiar Subjects

This scene is in a neighborhood community called Bayville near Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  The building with the red roof is the post office.  This painting was commissioned by the couple who own the house with the gazebo in the background.  I've painted it over twenty times because I love the roof of the post office.

If you find a scene that pulls you back time and again, use it to experiment with different colors and techniques. 

Peopling Your Paintings

Figures can enliven a landscape and give it movement.  Some scenes even require a number of figures to be included.  For example, painting a site like Epcot without people in it wouldn't ring true as an authentic depiction of the location.  Chinatown is a lively colorful spot, but it is always full of people.  To remove them would be to deny the reality of the place.

Sketching lots of figures in motion will give you plenty of material to draw from.  Don't excuse yourself because you "just can't paint figures."  Practice, practice, practice!

Baseball

Pardon the interruption in my teaching blog, but last night's Cardinals come-back victory in the ninth has me reeling with joy! 

Quite a few years ago, I went to a party where Stan "The Man" Musial was one of the guests.  I had just painted this baseball pitcher and had a photo of the painting with me.  I was thrilled when Stan autographed it for me!  So here's a photo of the photo of the painting with Stan's good wishes.  It seems like an appropriate memory for the day after a memorable win in Cardinal baseball history!

From Sketch To Painting

Yesterday I finally got back to painting after a nearly three week hiatus.  When thinking about what to paint, I went to my sketchbook for an idea.  After I decided what to paint, my intuition started to take over as far as color is concerned.  Once I put down the basically green underpainting, the choice to paint the buildings with green's complement --red -- became obvious.  Then I worked from the center outward to build the values.  

It's good to be painting again! 

Working From Your Sketchbook

This is a sketch I did last week in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.  This will be today's painting subject.  And it will be the first painting in over two weeks since I've been on the road.

My sketchbook gave me an idea early this season in Maine.  After putting down the first wash, I begin to work from the focal point outward,  with the darks and more colorful tones near the focal point and fading out to the edges where lighter values and more neutral tones preside.  At least that's the plan for today!
Check back to see if it worked out!

On the Road Again

The Finger Lakes Region in fall is spectacular!  The rural countryside, the mountain streams, the foliage, some formal gardens, a waterfall....so much to paint, so little time.

That's when the sketchbook comes in handy.  Here are some photos of the sights and a couple of sketches I did today in Canandaigua, New York.

Limited Palette

This is the lobster pound next to Knickercane Island.  For years when I painted it literally, it was most unsatisfying.  Using local colors and adhering to actual colors, I failed at making a clear statement about the subject.  The sky was blue, the trees were green, and.....so is the building.  And that's the way I painted it.
I often wished that the building was painted another color so it wouldn't so closely match the trees behind it.

One day, the lightbulb went on.  What if the owners painted their shack white?  Then I could paint it white and it would stand out among the green trees in the background and form a more interesting shape!  So I made the decision to paint it white.  I also decided to render the trees in colors that were more in unity with the colors elsewhere in the painting.  Soon I had a limited palette that helped unify the painting in a way that literalism had failed to do.

Try a limited palette on a familiar subject.  Then try another limited combination.  Always consider the rights of the picture over literalism.

Tomorrow I start the wandering journey home to St. Louis.  If I find something interesting to paint or sketch, and I have the time, I'll post from the road!