Easel Talk...

Learn to paint by looking at paintings...

2011-06-12T07:52:00.000-07:00

You can stand in front of nature for hours but if you want to really learn to paint...look at paintings. Put yourself in front of the best master works possible but choose carefully. Even the greatest painters made mistakes and you don't want to copy them.

You learn to paint trees by observing how the great masters painted them. Learn their language in paint. See how they treated edges and structure. Look for the simple shapes depicted. Observe how they showed the light coming through foliage, the openings and their design.

Vernon Nye used to tell us, "You're not trying to educate people with what trees look like...trying to get the species right. Just suggest them."

To put it another way, paint how you feel about them. Sounds a little esoteric but in fact that is what we're trying to do with the entire painting.

Studio lighting...

2010-02-12T14:47:00.001-08:00

Thought you might like to see the results of a new lighting installation over my easel and how it seems to have improved the initial white balance in the file photos I shoot of my work. I'll post the before and after images.
The first was shot in my old studio which had a combination of common fluorescent tubes and incandescent spotlights over the easel.
The second image was shot under new full spectrum fluorescent tubes with a little incandescent light from halogen spots added in...

If you're interested in the lamp details, send along a note through the "Ask me anything" link on the right and I'll pass the information along.

Horton Farm View
11x14 Oil on linen

Your Signature...continued

2010-02-12T14:36:00.000-08:00

"...it all started with drip paintings on the floor of my parents garage."

That signature is your personal voice or statement. It's not necessarily something you need to develop. It's evident in your work now whether you see it or not. Of course there are ways to increase that visible amount. This can be the elusive thing. We want our work to be distinctive, to have a unique style.

Some have said that if you want to be truly unique, you shouldn't look at work by other artists. Then from that place of isolation, your own personal view will emerge. That is virtually impossible.

When I was twelve or thirteen, I started producing drip paintings, using my little jars of model paint dripped onto pieces of cardboard laid out on the garage floor, letting the paint splatter and drip into abstract patterns and lines.

I've thought about those projects for many years. How did the idea for that process come to me? I have been born to this profession but I'm just not that brilliant. I seriously doubt it was a result of a cosmic, mind meld connection to the spirit of Jackson Pollack. I must have seen an ad or article or television clip about him and the way he was working. I have no such memory but I'm almost certain that the exposure occurred at some time prior to the creation of those drip paintings in my garage. Even during those years, long before the information superhighway, I was undoubtedly effected by media.

We are heavily influenced by what we see and have seen. Today, mass media imagery, and content is crushing us with tsunami force every millisecond of the day.

Let it wash over you, embrace it. You brain is a wonderful filter. Learn to trust the mainframe in your head. You've already done enough 'seeing' in your lifetime. If you never looked at another tree, you would know how to paint one. Now it's just a matter of getting all that information out onto canvas. If you embrace your experience, you can find your way through this maze and create with your own personal view.

In a future post, I will describe a working process that has allowed me to inject more of my personal handwriting or unique voice into my work. Stay tuned...

Why blog?...

2010-02-12T14:12:00.000-08:00

Making time for thoughtful conversation is as important as breathing. If we open our hearts and minds to other kindred spirits, the returns may more than balance the time invested. If you believe that we can do something extraordinary together, we will. We can find a new energy, new artistic expression and a new understanding of life, experienced through the eyes of an artist. And there IS one...deep inside each of us.
So let's talk...

Your signature...

2010-02-12T14:05:00.000-08:00

We are the product of our experience. No matter how we try to disguise our signature...the handwriting will always leave the telling marks...

The big notes...

2010-02-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

Hawthorne On Painting
Published by Dover Publications, INC . New York

It's just a short book but it has a powerful message for the painter. I hadn't picked it up for awhile and did so the other day. I've been focusing on the landscapes section. His words bring things back around to very basic truths.
"The weight and value of a work of art depends wholly on its big simplicity-we begin and end with the careful study of the great spots in relation one to another. Do the simple thing and do it well."
You can still find this book in stores or online. And if you've lost track of your copy, pick up another.
I sometimes collect extra copies and give them away to deserving art students with that determined gleam in their eyes, hungry for knowledge and understanding. In many ways I'm still right there with them. I have explained many times that we've probably forgotten more useful techniques and working methods than we'll ever be able to use in one lifetime. We are constantly absorbing information and ideas, coming up with new "swing thoughts", to use a golf analogy. And we don't always continue the things that are working best. I think back to the work I was doing in my twenty's and in many ways it was stronger then than most of the paintings I'm producing now. I can't tell you why this is so. Maybe I saw things more clearly then, before the weight and struggle of life cluttered my brain with noise.
It may be time to find ways to let some of that clarity return. Go find your voice today. Go paint the important thing. See the big color notes and shapes. See life in it's most basic form.
It's just you, paint, a brush...and the canvas!