Trees, trees and trees

It's been a good summer so far for getting outdoors to paint, and I've been out at least once a week for the past couple of months.  I'm fortunate to have a couple of painting buddies who also want to get out, and while I haven't managed any brilliant painting, I've had a great deal of fun doing it, which is really the point.  Having fun painting encourages me to keep painting.  Voila!  That's all the reason I need!

Randall Tipton focused on his watercolor

Several recent plein air attempts:

More Sketchbook Portraits

In the lulls of the days, with no time or inspiration to do a landscape, I still try to find a little time for portrait studies on paper.

Working the Plein Air

From the Rocky Shore 12x16 oil

There are painters, it's true, who can knock out a plein air painting that is ready for hanging, a little jewel, and there are the collectors who snap them up.  And there are painters who use their plein air work as studies for larger paintings to be completed in the studio.  Those plein air paintings are for color notes and compositional ideas, and many of them, too, could be hung on the wall.

I, on the other hand, tend to think of my painting outdoors as an exercise; it is a way to try to hit the hue and tone and temperature that I see, a coordination between my eye and the brush that needs training, endless, endless training.  Occasionally I will find that I like something I have done enough to let it hang around so I can look at it.  This one above I might hang up for a bit in the studio and ponder.  (Compositionally, though, I think having that band of rocks across the bottom makes it harder to enter the painting.)

Other times, it's simply a disaster: Nothing works, I jab and push and the paint won't dry quickly enough to go over it, the color is off, the drawing is crude.  Those times, I cut the session short and pack up my gear in disgust, trying hard not to be discouraged.  The painting below fell into that category.  It was too hot where I set up, the sun had gone too high (I find the sunlight at noon to be the least interestng of the day) and I was struggling with the matted grasses in the foreground.  So I quickly packed up the gear and literally muttered to myself "Well, that was a waste of paint."

But when I got home and cleaned up the palette and pulled the painting out, put it on the easel in better light, I realized that there was something there in spite of the troubles.  It isn't a good painting, and there are still many things to resolve, as we painters say (in layman's terms, it still looks like shit) - for example, that mess at the right-hand edge, the blotchy grasses, the values that still need to be distinguished from one another.  But still there was a truth to it somehow.  It spoke to me of what I saw, and there was an honesty in the color, the temperature of the day, the dryness of the fields and hillsides.  I find it fascinating that a painting can be a lousy painting and still have something to offer. This painting tells me to not give up, because somehow the practice of trying over and over again to mix color has led me closer to being able to do it in a successful way.

Champoeg Park 11x14 oil

Reworking the Past

The Road to Cunèges 11x14 oil

This above is actually a painting from three years ago, never finished, because I was discouraged when trying to recreate the dappled light.  But I let the painting float around in the studio, something about it that made me feel warm (partly due to the personal connection of walking on the road after having just arrived at our gîte in the south of France, and having a car zip by only to slam on the brakes - I heard a voice cry out "Meetch!", and it turned out it was André Bonhomme, a friend who was taking this little back road shortcut to his town of Cunèges).  So when I look at this painting, I feel the warm reassurance that the world feels better to me when it feels smaller.  I finally decided I wanted to give it another go, and I reworked the entire painting, but tried to retain the warm reds bleeding through the greens.  I think I could do a better job on the dappled light if I painted in a larger scale and was more deliberate, but the feeling I was after seems to come through in this small sketch, and so I may just leave it at that.

Ron Reads Yourcenar 11x14

Not an old painting, but an old reference, so it is even more a visit to the past.  This was at one of my old houses - I don't even remember which one, but I recognize the chair, the table, the lamp.  As I age, I am unwilling to forget about the past, and I revisit it often enough (though I have maintained a connection to the past for most of my life, so I don't mean to imply I'm feeling desperately old...). Life has been too rich and too full of important people and meaningful events to simply never look back.  The hour or two painting this allowed me the gift of imagining what we were up to then, what thoughts filled our heads, what hopes we had.  Ron is now retired and living his dream in the south of France, but thirty years ago, when he was reading this book, that would probably have seemed too fantastical to consider.  Isn't it wonderful that our realities can soar even beyond our dreams?

Revery aside, I look at the painting and wonder if I will ever learn to get rid of those hard edges when they don't belong, I question little bits about the drawing, and the likeness is never truly spot on.  But if I can just believe that I am making incremental progress, I am encouraged to pick up a brush again.

Field and Studio

Along the River 16x20 oil

With the warm weather I am making a serious attempt to spend some time outdoors with the easel, and though the work may not be making the headway I would like, the efforts are rewarding in their own way.  I've found, for example, that Greta, our German Shepard, makes a terrific painting companion; she is patient and calm and happy to be along and out of the house, and she never complains.

Crown Point, 8x10 oil

It may take an hour to drive to the Gorge, but every time I do, I regret not doing it more often.  It is such a magnificent natural wonder, filled with drama and scale and amazing light.  This quick sketch doesn't do justice to the scene, but it was dead-on noon, and the light was not the best, and I was in a hurry to get to Hood River to meet with friends.  I need to go back here with a larger canvas and more time.

And finally, a couple of portrait sketches from the sketchbook:

Plein Air Weather

Phantom Bluff 11x14

Now that the weather has turned warm and sunny, it's hard to resist the temptation to drop everything and get outdoors to paint.  The most reliable subject, painted while sitting on the comfort of my dock, is Phantom Bluff.  I never tire of its special beauty, but when I look back over the various paintings I have done of it these past few years, they seem very much alike.  It's as if I have only one sort of vision and can only see what my mind allows.  Other painters have done series on the same subject, but normally they paint differences in light or in hue or something to challenge them to see more.  I guess I will have to be satisfied with the nuanced improvements I see gradually taking shape as Time goes by.

Mary S Young Trail 9x12

But after that brief preview of summer, the faintest base tan established, the gin and tonics enjoyed and dinners on the deck, the rains are back, of course.  There is always the work in the notebooks, portrait sketches to fill in the pauses of workout routines:

Doing Homework

Sometimes I remember that I should be making studies of great paintings by the masters, and pause to do a sketch like the above, a Lepage painting, I think it was of his grandfather.  These are notebook sketches, not meant for anything other than a little learning.

This above sketch is a copy of a Bougereau painting called "La Tricoteuse" or "The Knitter".  I didn't develop the face as fully as I could; I was more interested in investigating how he developed the mood of the painting by using the faded and loose depiction of the background.

And a recent small painting of the glorious spring we are enjoying.  The greens are exploding everywhere, overwhelming and enfolding us all in renewal.

Vladimir Nabokov

Nabokov 8x10 oil

In my early twenties, I read voraciously, and Vladimir Nabokov was one of my favorite writers during that period, along with Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and on and on.  I recall being stunned by his command of the language, especially since he was born in Russia and English was a second or third language for him.  He is best known for Lolita, though it branded him as something of a pedophile to the population at large, and the body of his work is quite different from that one novel.  Pnin, King Queen Knave, Pale Fire are other novels among the many he wrote over his 78 years.  If Wikipedia is to believed, he spent some time in Ashland, Oregon in 1953 (my old haunt) finishing Lolita and collecting butterflies in the countryside.  

He taught at a number of prestigious American universities, including Cornell, where Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a student and credited him with the development of her writing style.  He was a noted lepidopterist and was the curator of the Harvard butterfly collection at one time.  

Sketchbook portrait oil 8 x 10

Portrait Work

Recently I have done a few portrait sketches in the notebooks, and some of these have been self portraits, trying to work from life in order to hone the ability to get a likeness.  They weren't meant to be great paintings, and in fact I left them with plenty of defects and avoided the temptation to work them longer than the initial rushed hour.  I want to return to the subject with more careful approach soon, but for now, I am exploring different ways of finding the best way for me to get the proportions down quickly.

This one was done with ink pen and colored markers, and I found it interesting.  I may continue to work with this method on other subjects.

Above is the lay-in with raw umber, and below I continued to add a little color to flesh it out.

And finally, a small landscape sketch in order to prepare for the coming plein air outings that are just around the corner.

A Prussian Winter Blue

Prussian Winter Blues 12x16 oil

This piece began as a challenge to myself, to paint quickly with a limit of 30 minutes and then to stop.  I was trying to work on getting the mood right, readying myself for the coming plein air outings, whenever warmth might return to our part of the world.  I did go back in the next day and redefine some things, but I tried to touch very little of the original, because it really does have a feeling of being out there in it.

Morning on the Creek 12x12 oil