Layering in multiple painting sessions? Or pushing wet paint around in minimal painting sessions? Does it matter?
Sloppy startTexture on the distant forest. I just make this stuff up because real life is much too messy to duplicate.Trying to be careful with color and light placement means paying attention to detail instead of saying, “Oh well, I’ll catch it on the next layer.”
Sunny Sequoias #34, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, SOLD
No matter the method, the Sequoia Gigantea trees get painted convincingly on 6×6″ canvases, and eventually they will sell for $60 each (plus tax, because it cost a ton of money for California to pay for its wildfires.)
The other challenge is getting the photo/scan on screen to look the same as the painting looks in person. (WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE? I NEED PEOPLE FOR THIS!)
P.S. Today’s painting at Anne Lang’s Emporium
Sunny Sequoias XXX, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60
P.S. TODAY’S FEATURED ANNE LANG’S EMPORIUM PAINTING
Oak Grove Bridge XXV, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATHRYN!! (It is today, yes. . .??)
I am a pencil artist. With the exception of portraits, I am able to draw almost anything in a manner which pleases both me and my customers. I love to draw.
Oil painting is much more difficult for me to achieve the results I want. I could quit a painting at almost any stage, and my paintings would fit someone’s idea of a decent piece of artwork. But I think my customers, collectors, friends and blog readers expect a certain level from me.
(Art is so subjective – good, bad, mediocre, genius, or why bother?. . . “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.)
I prefer realism, combined with great light, accurate details, attractive colors (as opposed to repellant ones) and believability. No big deal, eh?
Sometimes I start a painting with heavier paint and a deluded notion that I will be able to finish the painting in one session. Later I end up seeing missed spots, weird colors, and ways to make it better, so it ALWAYS takes at least one more session. This approach only works on forgiving subjects, so I don’t try to copy the photo, but just use it for guidance.
Other times I decide that there is no rush, multiple layering is the best way to paint, I will take as much time and as many layers as necessary to turn the painting into something that I am happy to sign. Depending on the subject, the calendar, and the number of paintings in progress, this approach takes 4-8 layers. (EIGHT?? I MIGHT DIE OF Git-‘er-dun by then.)
There are other ways to approach oil painting – plein air (standing outside in the shifting shadows and sneaky sunlight with bugs chewing on me and wind threatening to topple the easel), palette knife (thick clumps of paint smeared on with a palette knife as if one does not have access to brushes, for Pete’s sake, WHY?), and those are just the ones I can pull off the top of my noggin.
WHERE ARE MY PENCILS?? I NEED TO DRAW.
Stop it. There are 2 oil paintings of Giant Sequoias to paint, so you need to stay at the easels and focus, you doofus Central California artist.
Sometimes I have to parent myself this way.
P.S. Anne Lang will be closing her Emporium in Three Rivers on Dec. 31. She has 12 of my oil paintings. As a way to encourage you to visit her place (this is the LAST week of the deli – you MUST go have a turkey melt!), I will be posting one of those paintings per day while she is still open.
Kaweah Post Office XIII, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×10″, $125
We last saw the cabin scene oil painting when I was confused about the conflicting light sources:
With each successive layer, cohesion and coherence gets restored. (Aren’t big words great?)
I’m still missing the details needed to confidently paint this side of the cabin. My photo is outdated, and I have word out to some people who might have the necessary visual information.
It is rather astonishing and somewhat disappointing to me that I don’t have the details of every cabin memorized. One would think as an artist. . . but one would be wrong.
I just bumble along like the rest of the world. So, enjoy a closer look at the left side of the painting. It might be finished, sort of, maybe, but then again, I might want to continue adding details.
That’s what pencil artists do with enough time when handed oil paints and tiny brushes.
For the past 20 years or so, I’ve been part of a group called the Kaweah Artisans. We put on a little boutique-sale-show-event each year on the Friday and Saturday following Thanksgiving. We’ve been at the Three Rivers Arts Center for many years, but this year we will be somewhere else in Three Rivers.
We will transform this empty building into a Christmas boutique.
THE PERFECT GIFT BOUTIQUE
41849 Sierra Drive, Three Rivers, California
Thursday, November 23-Friday, November 24
10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
If you are heading uphill/upstream and get to the Chevron station, you’ve gone too far, so turn around, head down, and this time it will be on your right. If you get to the candy store, you’ve gone another mile too far, so buy some chocolate, then turn around, head downstream, and it will be on your right, a few buildings after the Chevron.
PARTICIPANTS: Nikki Crain (weaver), Anne Brown (potter), Carole Clum (metal sculptor), Sam McKinney (gourdista), Elizabeth Mitchell (jeweler) and maybe even a few surprise guests. Oh, and me! Me too!
Making a cabin scene is different from just making a scene.
A cabin owner requested a painting of her cabin as a gift for her husband. (He only looks at the blog when it is about Mineral King AND she forwards the link to him, so I’m not ruining any surprises here.) She wants it to include a view that normally doesn’t show with the cabin, and requested a square format.
Because this is a little difficult, all this mind-reading, designing, and putting together things that aren’t normally together, I didn’t make a scene but began with sketches.
If you recognize this cabin, SHHHHH, IT IS A SURPRISE!!
She asked for square, so I showed her two squares plus a 6×18″ and this cabin painting; she agreed with me about this size and shape working well for her idea.
I thought I was out of this size of canvas, so I ordered some more. After they arrived and I was putting them away, I saw that I already had some that size. Someone around here could use an assistant, or perhaps a better administrator. Oh well. . . they won’t go to waste.
Will this fit?Yeppers, it fits, so get some paint on this canvas!
They all start ugly. No need to be afraid for me or the painting or the customer or the husband. No one will need to make a scene. (But wait! Is this creative??)
Starting with what I know, I put paint on Farewell Gap in the distance.The trees are next. They are just a mass of greens with some variation in the values (ArtSpeak for lights and darks).
A risk of this sort of photo-combining is that the 2 photos might have the light coming from 2 different sources. Would the customer or the viewer notice? I might be able to cheat, but it might bug me forever. So I began reworking the color on the mountains, because it is easier than figuring out how the cabin shadows could be reversed. I pushed more paint around until my fingers got cold and my efforts felt ineffective. This is far enough for now.
Realizing the problem of conflicting light sources almost caused me to make a scene, but that would have only served to upset Tucker and Scout.
On Friday’s post I said that the only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King, by Jane Coughran and me, published by Cabinart Books in 1998, is to get lucky on eBay or on Amazon.
Then I decided to look for myself. Nothing on eBay, and this is what was on Amazon. Whoa. Here is a screen shot of the first listings:
$85 is the lowest price for a book that sold for $50 as a hardcover, and this one says it is paperback??
Then I went down to the more expensive books. Check this out:
Now that is what I would call a Peculiar Sight.
I contacted the last 2 sellers on the listing to ask them if they really and truly meant to list the book for that price. I’ll let you know if I hear back. . . (and yes, I signed my name and told them I thought I did a nice job on the illustrations but their prices seemed a bit high.)
P.S.The seller called FastShip replied:
Jana, Thank-you for bringing this to my attention. We have about 70K books.
They went on with a lengthy explanation of how books are priced and how some fall through the cracks, but they didn’t say if they were planning to reprice the book.
In 1998, Jane Coughran and I published The Cabins of Mineral King*. Some of the drawings crossed over the center seam of the book to cover 2 pages. Some of the drawings were an odd shape to accommodate words.
This is one of those drawings (only photographed, not scanned and touched up for the web, so the background looks gray instead of white):
A member of this cabin family asked me if there were any drawings of the cabin remaining. I remembered this very large drawing with its odd shape. He and I looked at it together to see if it could be completed, and how he’d like it to be completed.
This is the result of that conversation. Highly satisfying! (but that little rude voice asks, “Yes, but is it creative?”)
*The only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King is to get lucky on Amazon or eBay. Good luck!
A drawing student of mine recounted a conversation she had with an elderly artist from here in Tulare County. She told him she was taking oil painting lessons from someone in the area, and the old artist said, “That’s not creative – that’s just copying”.
Ow. That struck a nerve with me. What is or is not “CREATIVE”?
To be clear, it was not the words of my student that caused me to say, “Ow”. It is the subject matter that causes me insecurity and doubt. My drawing student is a lovely person; by reporting this interchange, she opened up an opportunity to discuss it and examine why it is a difficult topic.
I draw from photos, almost 100% my own, and way more often than I like, I have to combine photos to CREATE the scene I’m looking for.
I also teach people to draw, by COPYING photos.
How else can they learn to see?
How can you be CREATIVE with graphite if you don’t know how to see proportions, understand values, drive a pencil in a manner that it is an extension of your hand?
How can you be CREATIVE with oil paint if you don’t know how to see proportions, understand values, mix colors, or drive a paintbrush in a manner that is an extension of your hand?
How is it not CREATIVE to take a color photo (or several) and make a picture look beautiful and interesting in black and white and shades of gray?
Sorry, Elderly Artist. I think you are nice and usually a friendly man, you mean well, and you paint prolifically. Your work may be CREATIVE, but personally speaking (which is the only way I can speak), I think your work is just weird.
So there.
Working from a photo isn’t creative? Working on a canvas of different proportions than the photo isn’t creative? Figuring out the arrangement, filling in the gaps, figuring out a new background–not creative? And turning this ugly beginning into something attractive isn’t creative?? It might not even work out to be worth the effort. . . an artistic adventure. . .
P.S. This topic is reminiscent of the ongoing conflict between studio artists and those who paint plein air. I imagine there is a similar situation between those who read music and those who play by ear. IT IS ALL VALID, PEOPLE, ALL OF IT!
