On Color and Social Media, Obsession and Restraint

Is it possible to be addicted to a paint color? I'm not sure that's a good thing, as I don't like the feeling of being overly-dependent on anything.  So I am really trying to temper my use, while at the same time exploiting the values of having it around. This also describes my experience with Social Media, and particularly with Facebook. I imagine Facebook still has some value to the small business, but on a personal level, it can prove a real time-waster, not to mention maddening, irritating, and downright invasive. On a personal level it's also a source of inspiration and community and sharing, which is why I joined up in the first place. But it is really hard in this case to exploit the positives while also avoiding the darker temptations and traps, so I am limiting myself overall.

"Afternoon Breeze, Rockland Breakwater", Oil on linen, 20x24"

For a long time I was resistant to jumping on the Facebook bandwagon. And it could be argued that when I finally did sign on, I may have come in at the tail end of an era where the platform provided a real benefit to small businesses for little to no investment other than a bit of time. As time went on, though, Instagram and Facebook began to replace blogging for me. After all, it was faster and seemed likely to reach many more people quicker than I could through blog subscribers alone. 

"Forsythia and Blue Delft", Oil on linen, 20x24"

That's still an argument that can be made, but aside from the fact that Facebook is very much in the headlines these days, (and for reasons that are not all that flattering to the company) it seems harder and harder to find the same kind of reach that one could find in the good old days. I guess that's by design, in order to tempt users to buy ads. That's fine. It's a business model, and business is business I suppose.

But the price to be paid goes beyond money. It's the price of time, and yes, privacy. Say what you will about the fact that "nothing is private online." I don't argue with that or hold any illusions. I have never taken the silly quizzes or posted anything deeply personal that I haven't minded sharing. I understand that all of my info that I share is "out there". What bothers me is that my privacy decisions affect the privacy of my friends and vice-versa. Not only that but friends of friends. And not only them, but it turns out Facebook will even track the internet habits of people who never signed up for the service at all. That bothers me.  Facebook argues that anyone can go in and lock down third party apps and ultimately control a lot of what is shared. I have gone in and done that as much as I am capable of understanding how to do it. The problem is that in doing so, it renders the ease of sharing posts across platforms nearly impossible without spending an excessive amount of time on it.

Aside from all of that, I've found that my over-reliance on an outside platform to promote my work has resulted in the neglect of my self-hosted blog, and to a lesser extent, my website and even my studio time. I'm so incredibly short on time these days, and, let's face it, even peeking at your news feed or groups makes Facebook  a real time-suck.

Truth be told, I'm not sure how many people even read blogs any more, but I feel they still hold value, and think it would be a good idea to give blogging another shot. My hope is that people who are truly interested in my work will come find me here on my own domain first, with social and search serving as feeders. That seems to be the way it should be, but it's not the way it's been. 

"Winter Light at Stony Run Trail", Oil on linen, 20x24" 

I'm still sharing my work on social media (my preference these days is Instagram) but I'm going to step back from it a bit and give the old blog a little more love. As for the other obsession I mentioned, I have left a few clues for you in this post. These are a few of my recent paintings that I've shared on social media that I had neglected to blog about. The commonality among these pieces is the predominance of that certain color. Any guesses as to what it might be? Let me know in the comments and I'll 'fess up about it in my next post. 

Independence Day

It was hot and humid and overcast. Our baby had been sick part of the week prior and through the long weekend with a 102 degree fever and hand, foot and mouth virus. And to top it all off, we woke up on July 4th sticky and without power from a tremendous summer storm the night before. But believe it or not, I had a great morning, as I was allowed the privilege of escaping getting outside early to do this little plein air painting.

The location is Young's Pond in nearby Bryan Park. I've painted this location before a number of times, and this approximate scene once before, which you can see here. There were a number of nearby spots I could have chosen, but on an overcast day it's nice to paint a water effect, as then you have some luminosity built in, when the light is otherwise fairly flat.

I spent about 3 hours on site working on this piece, which was longer than I normally would do on location. But I think the combination of fairly steady light conditions, and my private glee at having the entire morning completely to myself kept me lingering longer than I would have otherwise.

Here's a shot of my setup right before I started.

Next time I would like to get out even earlier than I did, to try and capture that wonderful atmosphere (aka humidity) before it settles into just plain old hot heavy air. But with a baby, you gotta do what you gotta do, and I was happy to get out at all. My setup has remained pretty consistent over the years, with my Soltek easel still being my go to plein air easel due to the ease of use and quick setup time.

The sun made its appearance often enough that shading myself, my painting, and my palette was a concern. I brought my umbrella with me, but it is a pain to set up and doesn't really work that great with the Soltek (one of the easel's down-sides...I've yet to find a really compatible umbrella that can attach to it without falling over.) So If I can get away without, I usually do. This often means avoiding standing in the blazing sun, even if it means forgoing a preferred view. Otherwise my painting ultimately suffers (not to mention my skin.)

In this photo I've set up my painting panel so that the sun (when it peeks out) is behind it, making it shaded. I am relatively shaded by tree branches overhead. Since I am right-handed, my subject is to my left, so that I am not having to reach across my painting when I look/paint. Often times I can shade my palette simply by wedging another panel between it and my painting. In this case I am using a flat wet panel carrier called the Art Cocoon.

This is actually a pretty neat concept for a wet panel carrier, which I read about some time ago on another artist's blog (when I still had time to read them) owned by Ed Terpening . The advantage is that you can use the carrier for different sized paintings with the provided inserts, and it is nice and lightweight and not bulky. But the down side for me is that it is made out of cardboard, which eventually warps (especially in our hot Virginia climate) and when that happens it stops protecting the painting effectively.

For that reason, my go-to wet panel carrier is still the RayMar. It's a little more expensive, and bulkier, but still lightweight. And its coroplast construction means that while it won't last forever, it lasts a good long time and doesn't warp.

Bellagio from above; more oil painting w/out solvents

Following up from my prior WIP, here is the final painting. This is a view of Bellagio from a hike we took up to Villa Serbelloni. The villa is now maintained by the Rockefeller Foundation, who uses it as a retreat for  the Bellagio Study and Conference Center for artists and writers (wouldn't that be nice?) For this reason, we couldn't go inside the villa when we visited, but we could tour the grounds, which offers gorgeous views over Bellagio.

"Bellagio From Above" Oil on Linen, 20x16" ©Jennifer Young

Both this piece and my previous Lake Como painting, were done without the use of solvents or any other medium other than small amounts of walnut oil to clean brushes and thin paint when necessary. But even when used judiciously, the walnut oil served to slow drying considerably. At present this is not a huge problem, as I am spending most of my time painting/renovating/preparing home and life for the new baby! But it does change the nature of things and the overall result became more impressionistic due both to the behavior of the paint, and probably also the gaps in my working sessions.

I know that an oil painting requires a certain length of time for all of the layers to fully dry (sometimes as much as 6 months or a year.) But normally the top layers will dry to the touch in about a week's time.  Not so with the walnut oil method, which seems to require at least an additional week to my usual handling time.

Maybe it's just that my painting habits are not particularly suited for this method, or maybe I just need to get used to new ways of doing things. Overall, except at the very beginning stage, I don't paint in thin layers. In fact, while I don't lay it on with a palette knife, I do paint passages that are relatively thick and juicy. But oddly, I experience the most difficulty in the lay-in, (early stage) which I am used to having set up rather quickly.

First of all, in order to follow the "fat over lean" rule, I have been trying not to make the paint too "fat", too soon. So I keep the walnut oil I use in my initial lay-in stage very spare. The result is that instead of a thinly painted initial sketch and color block-in, I find myself with trying to move paint around that has a definite drag and is less fluid. The lay-in becomes more often a "rub-in" with a rag or a "scrub-in" with an old brush, and the edits and corrections are very hard to lift off the canvas.

On the other hand, if I use more walnut oil at this stage, the paint can get too smeary and unmanageable for successive layers, not to mention less stable (with any medium you use, you should only use no more than 20% total volume when mixed directly into the paint, and I usually err on the side of caution and use rather less than that.)

One solution may be to use a runnier paint in the lay-in stage. M. Graham walnut oil paints are such a paint. I do have a few tubes on hand, as I've tried them in the past. As much as I wanted to like them, I normally prefer more body to my paints. But they might just work for my purposes now--but still probably just in the initial stage only. (Incidentally, it's perfectly okay to mix walnut oil with linseed oil based paint, so even if you want to paint solvent-free, you do not need to buy their paints exclusively.)

Aside from walnut oil to thin,  there are other oils to try. Linseed oil is commonly used by artists, both in mixtures of ground paint and in various mediums. And while both linseed and walnut oils are considered to be "drying oils", linseed tends to be the faster-drying of the two.  However, I seem to read a lot about how linseed oil tends to yellow over time. Maybe this is an exaggerated worry, but a quick look at experiments like this one swayed me to first try the walnut oil over linseed.

So, to sum up from this layperson's perspective, some of the pros of using walnut oil to thin/clean are:

• Non-yellowing
• Non-toxic/ solvent-free painting (though other oils can also serve to achieve the same thing.)
• Odorless
• Does not evaporate like solvents, so it seems fairly long-lasting
• Conditions brushes nicely

Cons:

• Walnut oil is expensive! (If you are only using oil to clean your brushes, you could probably get by with a less expensive oil.)
• Slows drying considerably (this could actually be a "pro", depending on your painting technique.)
• Compared to solvent, it requires using more brushes and/or more wiping of brushes between colors in order to keep the color clean.
• Walnut oil is expensive!

Time and process

Well, for the most part, my resolve last week to get "back to painting" crumbled, as I found myself distracted by a number of other issues. I haven't been in the best command of the schedule I'd set up for myself, setting aside my painting time to do a million different errands and tend to personal issues as well. The tendinitis continues to bother me, too, which isn't helping my stick-to-itiveness.  In hindsight, in spite of my injuries, I  probably should have made myself stick as much as possible to the same schedule regardless of whether I'm actually "painting"-- filling the gaps with new art-related activities (like reading one of my gazillion art books!) In any event, I am starting again--finally-- with a color block-in which I'm including below:

Because of the shoulder/arm thing, I've had to make a few changes to the way I work so that I'm not in a huge amount of pain by the end of the day.  I've lowered my entire painting setup, paint for shorter intervals, and also set a timer when I am painting to go off every 30 minutes. It reminds me to stop and stretch and give my muscles a chance to release the locked position I tend to take when I'm hyper-focusing during painting.

Coincidentally, artist Robert Genn wrote an interesting little article last week in his twice-weekly newsletter about the timed exercises he uses for  attention and focus, (which naturally caught my attention!)  In the article, Genn suggests that by imposing shorter time limits on a work session (in his example 37 minutes), one is required to come into sharp focus, thereby energizing mind and spirit (and often one's painting as well.) I don't think Genn is suggesting that one should always commit only 37 minutes to complete a painting! Rather, these are exercises to 'shake things up' and breathe new life and energy into old, comfy work habits.

It's a good idea. And it's one I've implemented myself (thoughI used a kitchen timer rather than an elusive 37-minute hourglass.) While Genn required his students to complete small paintings in his timed exercises, I've also found that the practice works great for plein air and larger studio paintings when you want to track how long you spend working on each stage of the process.

For instance, in plein air painting, where the shifting light already imposes a certain time limitation, the amount of time you spend establishing your composition is important not only to the painting as a whole, but also because it will dictate how much time you have left for the block-in and finishing. So for a smallish painting, I might wish to limit myself to 15-20 minutes to lay in my composition- DING! And 40 minutes for a block-in-DING! That leaves another 30 minutes to (possibly) an hour to make changes, refine shapes and edges and finish before the light changes too drastically (DING! Brushes down.)

You can play around with division of time if you wish, but the result, as Genn suggests, is often that you learn to hone your focus and think better on your feet, without giving yourself the chance to "noodle around" endlessly or jump into detail  too early in the game. It helps in more ways too, than just keeping you on track. For some reason, the timer helps to address all of the canvas during each of the timed stages, thereby avoiding the tendency toget lost in only working (or overworking) one section of the painting to the sacrifice of the others. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's just that using the timer stage-by-stage causes you to take a more deliberate, conscious approach at each stage, making the approach more methodical by breaking things down into digestible chunks.

While the timed-stages works particularly well for plein air painting (when time is truly of the essence,) I've found the same principal can also be worthwhile when applied in the studio, either by similarly timing myself at different stages in larger pieces, or, as Genn suggests, by (attempting to) finish an entire smaller piece in a short interval, as an exercise drill or a warm-up. So I thought I'd try it for the painting above, timing the initial compositional sketch and the color block-in at 15 and 40 minutes, respectively. I don't intend to finish this piece in just an additional hour. It's a 24x30" canvas and I certainly don't want it to look completely slapdash. On the other hand, I do hope to keep it as fresh as possible to re-energize myself now that I'm getting back to work.

Of course, anything can be annoying if taken to the extreme, but I can see how using the timer periodically can serve a useful purpose. It also provides good insight for me about my process, and just how much time I am spending therein.

How not to succeed at your goals while really trying ;-)

Happy New Year everyone! This past week, I've taken some time to reflect on the common practice of new year goal-setting, and I've enjoyed browsing around the blogosphere to see what others (and particularly other artists) are writing about the subject. Actually artist Katherine Tyrrell has made this task easy for me with the  great series of year end roundup posts she's provided on her blog Making a Mark--  the topics of which extend far beyond goal-setting (though there is a good deal of that too, including Katherine's own set of goals for the new year.) *Note of thanks to Katherine for foot-noting my blog posts on studio lighting in her "art studios in 2009" subsection of "Who's Made a Mark This Week". For myself, unlike previous years I am taking my time and being a bit more reflective about goal setting. Obviously there is value to goal-setting --otherwise there wouldn't be so many people finding satisfaction in doing it. But why is it that so often goal- setting fails to achieve the desired results? I think that in the past I've sometimes been guilty of goal-setting just for the sake of getting things accomplished, without really examining whether the goals are really worthy ones. Taking this approachleaves me feeling either unfulfilled even if things get "done" or disappointedbecause I didn't accomplish more. It also keeps me so in the mode of wanting to "get there already" that I don't enjoy the process nearly as well. 

So in thinking about how to set more meaningful goals for myself, I've also been thinking about why goal-setting so often doesn't satisfy. There are any number of reasons, of course, but here's a shortlist that I've come up against.

How not to succeed at your goals while really trying:

• Don't ask "WHY?" Why do I want (or think I want) to do, be, have, or achieve this? What do I hope to gain? How will this improve my life, my work, or the lives of others? These seem likeobvious questions, but without asking these essential questions first, it's easy to find yourself pursuing goals that aren't meaningful, and sometimes aren't even yours! (see bullet #2) In a nutshell, asking the essential "Why?" helps to get to the heart of what is driving you. 
•  Set goals that deep down you don't really care about just because you think you should or because others think you should. For an artist, these might include things like setting a goal to get work into a gallery or earn a certain dollar amount from your art, for fear that failing to do so will mean you will be perceived as "unsuccessful". Or setting a goal to paint in a certain manneror by a certain method because you feel others think it is a more legitimate form or method than some other one. Mind you, none of these are wrong choices as long as they support what you want deep down. But here's a tip; if there are a lot of "shoulds" in your goals, that's worth examining before you commit to them, to see if they really serve you. Otherwise, setting these kinds of goals can often set you up for feelings of "failure". If your heart isn't really in it all the way, you're likely to go for it halfway or not at all. 
•  Be unrealistic- It's been my personal experience that my trouble has not been the size of the goal, but the timeline I set to achieve it. Setting far greater goals than you can possibly achieve in a given timeline creates more stress than inspiration.
• Set goals that aren't challenging enough- Being realistic about time and/or resources doesn't meanyou should feel bored. If your goal leaves you feeling flat-lined, are you really going to be inspired to devote the time needed to go for it? In order to motivate myself, my goal has to be beyond my comfort zone. I want any goal I set this year to make my heart go pitter-patter. It should inspire, excite, ignite and sometimes maybe even feel a little scary.
• Be over-expansive. It has taken me a number of years to get this, (41 to be exact) but I think (I hope) I am finally learning that setting too many goals in a given time-period is not only hard to manage in terms of time, but it also splits my focus too much. I'm finding it's better for me to limit myself to fewer more meaningful goals in order to really give them the proper attention required.  This doesn't mean that I won't break the big stuff down into smaller milestones, but the milestones and activities should support one of my main goals, not set me off in 100 different directions.
• Set goals without making a plan to go about it. It does me no good whatsoever to set even meaningful goals without breaking them down into plans of action. In order to track progress, a high level goal could then be broken down into:
  • milestones along the way (these should be measurable)
  • activities needed to reach those milestones
  • a scheduleto carry out those activities (monthly and weekly schedules are good, but for me it has to be daily).
• Lack balance- This is a very personal matter. Some people do just fine with letting other matters drop for a while in order to hyper-focus on achieving one goal. Not so with me. I'm already an "uber-focuser" and unless I intentionally set goals that address all important aspects of my life, I miss out on fun stuff (like, oh,  sleep, proper diet and exercise, fulfilling relationships,  and time for fun, for instance!) And without those things in balance, soon there is no joy even in the things I dearly want to achieve artistically.

It's easy to jump into a litany of to-do's, but it may take a little longer to step back first and examine the big picture to see if your goals really speak to the greater vision you have for yourself. As I go through my own process I am finding I do have an overarching theme that I want to focus on this year in relationship to my art.

Back to school

Ideally this would include "real-time" instruction and mentoring, and I am hopeful I will be able to find the time and resources to pursue that. But after all, I have a ton of art books to keep me busy and they will help me to commit myself to a regular staple of study through experimentation, self-guided lessons, etc. *Note: For a fascinating and inspiring look at one artist's documented learning processes, check out Paul Foxton's wonderful info-packed site Learning to See.

Also, I love landscape painting and I will continue with this tract, but I'm feeling a great desire to become reacquainted with and develop a greater understanding of the human form. Along those lines, I will make a greater commitment to paint much more often from life--if not daily, nearly so.  Whether this means painting en plein air or still life or portraiture, (or even if it is a 5 minute sketch waiting for my haircut) I continue to see so much benefit to this practice and its time to commit to working from life as a regular discipline.

Obviously all of this will need to be worked out in greater detail into more specific goals and a measurable plan, but this is where I'm heading as for the year ahead. I guess if I had to boil everything down to one word I'd say that what it is I'm after is to achieve a greater level of mastery with my work.

Mastery

Now that's a big, expansive scary word if I ever saw one! And  while it's really too broad to write down as a year long goal,  it can be a guidepost by which my artistic goals can be set. It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve mastery at something. Whether or not this is exact, what it tells me is that it's not something that's likely to be attained in a year!  It's not as if I'm starting from zero, but even so, in truth it may not even be attained in a lifetime, for that matter, even with a disciplined plan.

I do wonder though, as an artist, how do you really know you've arrived? Do you suddenly wake up one day and say, "I'm a master!" It seems a bit of a moving target. Each new level of understanding inevitably leads to new questions, new challenges, and raising the bar ever higher. To quote Gertrude Stein, "There is no there there."

To my mind, arriving really isn't the point. The way I see it, mastery has more to do with a state of being than a state of arriving. It's more about process than it is about product. It's a state of flow. Certainly there is tangible accomplishment produced as well, and I guess the accomplishment part is what we tend to focus on when we think of someone mastering something. But I really see those kinds of results as more of a by-product of something much greater. And yet, it is the by-products that are the most measurable so that's the starting point I'll use to make my plan.  Better get to it. 10000 hours is a long way off.