Phantom Bluff, Again

Phantom Bluff 12x16 oil

Monet painted his haystacks over and over again, and I keep going back down to the boathouse to paint Phantom Bluff because I want more practice at painting from life, but I seem to end up with nearly the same painting each time.  I think it must be a lack of vision on my part, because I see the same thing, or maybe it is that I am painting what I believe to be there rather than what I see, so my left brain keeps interfering....  I should probably change my palette and force myself to paint it in different colors, rather than trying for what I see objectively.  Maybe next time?

Early morning is definitely the best time to get out on the lake to paddle; there were no boats this morning, smooth water, and we saw a bald eagle, several osprey, a great blue heron and an otter.  Where else in the world is it possible to feel like one lives in a wilderness while being in the middle of a large metropolitan area?  I marvel at the beauty of it all.

And finally one more from France:

Along the River

Through the Cottonwoods 16x20 oil

I had doubts about trying this one, given the deep shade of the foreground and the double V of the trees, but in the end it did give me a feeling of the place and the light beyond the shadow.

The River is Low 12x16 oil

Just to shake things up, I tried using Thalo Blue instead of a Prussian or Ultramarine for the sky.  Though this one was dashed off quickly, I think there is potential in working with the thalo, if it is knocked back a bit with some earth color or red/orange.  The photos seems a little fuzzy, though the painting was left a little fuzzy itself.

Beneath These Boughs

Beneath These Boughs 16x20 oil

I had little time and no paints with which to work while in Greece, so I have to settle for working from photo reference and what memory remains.  I was struck by the immensity of this olive tree, the deep shade on the parched ground, and the little trailer awaiting the crop of olives to come.

La Boissiere

This is an 11x14 inch oil of the view of my friends' home seen from a distance, with the warm glow of the rising sun.  I think that had I been painting on site, I would have had a better feel for the local color and nuance of the various crops, but instead I went for a more stylized treatment.

Aprés Vacances

The Road to Soumensac. 12x16 oil

It's been a long while with no posts, and no painting, either.  Blame it on the vacation to Greece and the south of France.  The above painting is my first attempt since returning.  The view is from the property of my friends where we stayed for a couple of weeks, waking each morning to a glorious pastoral view of 180 degrees which will fuel some efforts over the coming weeks.  The group of buildings on the right is Les Boissieres, a working farm and vineyard that is the only close neighbor.

Our trip began in Athens, with the requisite visits to the Parthenon and museum.  But we did manage to head to the beach north of Athens for dinner with a cousin.

Then we were off to Zakynthos, an island in the Ionian Sea south of Corfu.  There were the classic postcard images, like this one below:

But my preference was for the quiet interior, undisturbed by the tourists who stuck close to the beaches.  The vast groves of olive trees (1.8 million on this island), the cicadas, the sleepy villages were all more foreign to our American eyes than were the crowds of Brits swarming the tavernas.

After flying to Bordeaux, we rented our car and drove due east to the Lot et Garonne, where our good friends have lived for the past seventeen years.  The visit centered on the social, the family connections, the cooking and eating and drinking, but the landscape was like yet another welcoming friend: it is perhaps my most favorite landscape in the world, with rolling hills of vineyards and wheat fields, small woods harboring wild boar, old hamlets with ancient churches, and narrow roads ideal for wandering.

My family stayed in the guest house of our hosts, and rose each morning to breakfast on the terrace overlooking this view:

Now that we are back, my intention is to get caught up on household and business issues quickly and then keep those brushes wet.

Painting Competition

Barrels  11x14 oil

The local plein air competition has now concluded and while it was largely rained out, I found other reasons to dislike it.  I guess I really prefer a more collaborative and friendly approach to painting and I'd love to see an event that centered on painters sitting around talking with each other while paintng instead of one based on the presumption that someone is going to "win".  I only signed up at the insistence of two painting buddies who did it last year, and I assumed we would be able to paint together, but they both bugged out and went to the beach, leaving me to dutifully pack my gear around in search of some spot that wasn't overrun with the public.  While the above subject isn't fascinating, it at least provided me with a place to perch off the trail along the river, mostly out of sight from all the dog-walkers and joggers.  It's an old metal container of some sort left over from ages past, and teenage boys love to jump off the top of it in the summer, ignoring the signs that tell them not to do just that.  I did make an effort to include some softer edges, as I have recently realized (how slow I am to learn!) that edges are perhaps my biggest weakness.  

A second piece I will also submit (and I'm only submitting anything at all just to force myself to expose my insecurities) is this one from just down river at Tryon Creek Cove.  We go there sometimes to let the dog swim, even though there are signs that tell us not to do that (I guess there's a teenage boy in all of us somewhere.)

Tryon Creek Cove 11x14 oil

One thing I would do better to avoid in painting plein air is anything architectural or structural.  It's so hard to make straight lines in the field.  And water, as always, is so hard.  In the end I find myself slipping into mindless automatic mode, slapping dashes and lines in an effort to create movement.  I know that there is a time pressure outdoors, but if I can't find a way to slow down and use more care in my work, I'll never be able to move forward.  And yet that's one of the nicer things about plein air, because there isn't time to get precious and it's the impression that counts the most.

End of the Trail 16x20

I include this last piece only because it began with such hopes, and then part way through it I realized that I had wanted the little bridge to be lower in the composition, so that the entry into the dark wood was a focal point in a better location.  As it is, it seems to get lost a little.  I stopped working on the tall grasses in the foreground and I almost considered starting over on a new panel, but the rain came.  I might give this one another go someday.

Same Old Haunts

Phantom Bluff 16x20 oil

The Paint Out in Lake Oswego is only a few days away now, and there isn't much time left to sharpen up my dull blade of a skill in plein air painting, so I scamper down to the boathouse to paint yet again the familiar scene.  There is always something different about it; at the very least the surface of the water changes throughout the day.  But it also seems like I'm painting the same painting over and over again.  I make an effort to simplify, get rid of extraneous detail, focus on values, try to direct the attention from here to there.  The morning light hits the bare rock on the bluff and brings out the pinks and mauves and the rusts and mint greens of lichen, and maybe one day I will be able to match those colors and find a place for them in a painting, but for now the struggle is just to find the right greens to differentiate the far and the near evergreens.

Rob Adams

Sometimes I stumble across the website of a painter previously unknown to me and it feels like such a treasure trove of exciting images.  Rob Adams is a British artist whose skill at drawing and composition and color is fascinating to see.  All of the images in this post are from his website, and it is a tiny sampling of what is to be found there.

It is clear that he is adept at the use of pen and ink, drawing with washes of color, watercolor or oil.  His grasp of perspective in architectural rendering is impressive.

A big bonus is that he also appears to be quite prolific, and he posts frequently to his blog. I find myself envying his lifestyle, which seems to include a great deal of travel and painting on location with friends.

In the Field

It's been time to get out and about, with balmy days and time enough to scout locations.  Yesterday Randall Tipton and I drove out to the gorge to paint near Herman Creek at a quiet little spot I discovered last year, but the Columbia River was so high that we couldn't get to the location I had in mind without wading through water covering the trail, so we found a little spot of shade and made do.  Here is a shot of Randall painting in one direction while I painted in another:

A few days earlier we had been to a plein air demonstration by Leland John on the campus of Clackamas Community College.  It was interesting to hear the stories of someone who has painted outdoors for much of his long life.

I'm glad to see that more and more people are discovering the pleasure of painting outdoors, but it's still a rarity to run across a painter in the wild; golfers and fishermen still outnumber us by far!

While not every painting is a success, it seems that frequently enough there is something to notice in these works, either an idea to be developed, color to be recognized, or even a glimpse of the feeling one had on site.  

Grisaille Method

Virginia Wolf 11x14

I am investigating the classic method of underpainting the tones in raw umber and white, reserving all other color for glazes once the underpainting has dried, and I can see merit in the system, though it takes a lot longer than the alla prima method.  It does focus me on the form, learning how to turn through gradual blending, rather than being distracted with involving change in color temperature as well.  I will see how this turns out once the color phase goes on.

The thing about painting, whether outdoors or not, is that it is guaranteed that there will be duds along the way, and I have run into a series of them lately.  Sometimes the original idea is exciting, but somewhere along the process it begins to fade, and the result, while bearing the fruit of some aspect of the idea, like color or mood, is not a finished painting.

Suffocating in Green

While walking the dog this morning, I paused in the midst of the forest and looked around at the sea of green: everything was nearly the same green, the ground had a green cast from the reflected light, the light itself bounced around green, and though it was as delicious as a Kurasawa film, and the richness of the color was as stunning as a club to the head, there was no way to paint it.  I might as well just use a house brush and cover the canvas with the one color.  There were slight variations in tone, and little details everywhere the eye moved, but it was too, too much.  Spring has arrived and suddenly the world is a green jungle; the trails are overgrown, the ferns are as thick as herds of sheep, and I find myself walking with one arm raised in front of me to ward off the spider webs that are now suddenly crisscrossing the path.  Life asserts itself and I have to take a step back to reconsider my approach to this dance I have been dancing, where Life shows something wonderful and noteworthy and I try to find a way to translate that into paint, all the while trying to learn the language necessary to talk with a brush.

I have been trying to get out more, paint from life, and work up speed while doing it.  One of the readiest subjects is down at the lake, where I can at least lounge in a chair while painting familiar subjects like Phantom Bluff.  I'd say it was taking the lazy way out, except for those 290 steps on the climb back up to the house.  Some of the work I have done outside seems like a failure until I look at it under proper light, and then I see a little something in it of value, something about the quality of the color and the light effect, but in the end, many of these fall short because they are a little brutish and roughly painted.  Painting is a pasttime that is constantly humbling (much like golf) and it takes real dedication to a goal not to become discouraged.