Small WIP & value sketches amid the rubble

A series of wet gray days have kept me from painting outside, so I've spent some time putting my studio  (and myself!) back together in the aftermath of the workshop. For me, "spring cleaning" always seems to make things look worse before they get better.

I have little piles around me...piles of books, of paperwork, and also a small pile of unfinished paintings. Among the latter is this demo painting that I started in the workshop, which I may noodle around with and bring to a more finished state. It's small, just 12x9", so we're talking maybe just orzo or macaroni-sized noodling.

I started this workshop demo talking about composition and values and how they related to each other. Since we were working with the limitations of photographs, I wanted to try to get folks to think about the possibility of composition beyond just what they saw in front of them in the picture. When I'm painting en plein air, I will often do a series of small value sketches before I jump right into painting. I will use this same approach too in the studio, to develop my design.

Along with a contour sketch, it is extremely helpful to do this in a very abbreviated quick grayscale, so that I can get a general idea of my value relationships and the overall design that is created not only by the placement of line but also by the pattern of dark and light:

 

This is not a new concept, of course. Artists have forever been studying and writing about the arrangement of values (lights and darks) to compose a strong design. The artsy fartsy term for this is "Notan". Okay, it's actually Japanese. Notan sketches can be fleshed out in recongnizable contours (like mine above) or they can be very quick and gestural thumbnail abstractions created for the purpose of identifying the underlying design.

The values are generally limited to four or less.  I used 2 markers; black and light gray, deriving my middle gray from a blending of the two, and letting the white of the paper stand as my lightest value. 

Of course, in life we see a much wider range of values, but in designing and executing a painting, I'm learning that simpler is often better.  If you look at many of Monet's paintings, you might notice that many of them have a very small range of values indeed, and he used color temperature and very soft edges to add a wonderful sense of atmospheric depth to his work.

A quick Google search for "Notan" yielded some good results for further exploration:

• A good series of Notan lessons from Virtual Art Academy
• Artist Robert Genn discusses Notan in his inspirational newsletter "The Painter's Keys"
• Painter Ed Terpening does it!
• Katherine Tyrrell does too.

How about you?

Last chance to see JMW Turner show in D.C.

Over the holidays I finally seized the opportunity to head up to the National Gallery in Washington D.C. for the Turner show.  This traveling exhibition is a rare opportunity to see some 140 works by a true master of landscape painting (and, I might add, great-grandfather of abstraction). The show was wonderfully comprehensive, and featured so many of his larger scaled oil paintings as well as his intimate watercolors. It's probably an understatement to say that Turner seemed an interesting guy. His work showed a passionate interest in depicting disasters (caused both by nature and by man) in powerful compositions of dramatic color and light.  In painting after painting, one sees snow storms, shipwrecks, thunder, and fire swirling with emotion. The man must have been exhausted! I am not overly fond of the strong narrative element in many of his paintings, but even so, there is much to see and appreciate in these works. Turner was an artist concerned with social and political injustices both past and present and used narrative elements (both visually and in some of his ridiculously long painting titles) to make his points. He had some statements to make, that's for sure.

Turner started out as an architectural draftsman, and mastered drawing at an early age. This was quite evident in his beautiful paintings of Rome and Venice (pictured above). And while paintings of pure landscape were minimal, there were more sublime pieces as well, where the narrative was limited and light was the subject. Some of my favorites of the larger oils were labeled as "studies" or "unfinished". I loved the way these were so fresh and stripped down to their simplified essence of light and color. He was a precursor to the Impressionists and truly ahead of his time. As explained in NGA exhibition supporting materials, these "incomplete" works were just that, and probably not meant for exhibition, but as preparations for "finished" paintings to present to collectors and the Academy. But we can appreciate them with our modern sensibility as works of art in their own right, as well as for their wonderful documentation of this artist's processes.

While the oils were undeniably impressive and painted with skill and bravura, I personally found greatest delight in his watercolors. These just blew me away. Works ranged from highly finished watercolors with a lot of detail  and drawing, to quick expressive sketches (near abstractions) from his sketchbooks.

If you're anywhere near D.C., you can catch this extraordinary show at the National Gallery's West building through January 6th, 2008 . Check out this cool online exhibition preview at the NGA's website! Next stops for the exhibition are Dallas and New York.

Lake Como, Italy painting 6x6" mini

When we were last visiting Lake Como Italy, we splurged on a private boat tour around the lake. It definitely was a splurge for us, but worthwhile because we took different routes than you'd normally take on the larger lake transports (vaporetti). This little painting was done from reference shots taken as we were approaching a precipice near the charming village of Varenna:

"Varenna Vista" Oil on Canvas, 6x6"

The private boat also stopped in intervals so that we could take pictures without worry of camera blur. If only I could find a way to hire a boat to use for an extended period at the lake as a floating studio, the way Claude Monet did  with his studio boat on the Seine. A girl can dream.

From figures to landscapes (and back again?)

From time to time I receive wonderful messages from students who have chosen my work as a focus for their school projects. Here is a recent message I received. My answer follows: I wanted to ask if you could tell me about yourself and your paintings. I am studying A-levels and I am doing a critical study on you. Could you please let me know how you got into drawing landscapes. I would appreciate it.

Thank you so much for your interest in my artwork! As to your question: In college and for some time thereafter I was developing a body of work that focused on the human figure. These paintings were heavily influenced by a number of sources in art history-- Frida Kahlo, Gustav Klimt, and the early renaissance paintings I had seen in Italy and the Netherlands:

One of my favorites from this period "Faith", Oil on Canvas (sold)

So how did I go from that to landscape? Well, in college I held a double major of study in both painting and art history, so I was a lover of art of many different styles and from many different periods in history. I loved the impressionists and the post impressionists but impressionist landscape paintings were not much favored with my professors at the time. Professors at my school were much more attuned to paintings of either a nonobjective nature, or figurative paintings with deep psychological impact. So I developed the figurative paintings as my "serious body of work" and only dabbled in landscapes every now and then.   But eventually I found myself struggling more and more with the figure paintings. They were very large and some of them were filled with a lot of angst. One painting took weeks to complete. Emotionally they were often quite draining and my inspiration was slowing down. When my father died of pancreatic cancer all of the work I had been doing on those  paintings came to a complete halt. I began to question a lot of things, including whether I would ever do another painting. My heart just wasn't in it.   My husband naturally knew of my struggles and, knowing how much I had loved the landscapes of Monet, Sisley and many other impressionist painters, he bought me my very first outdoor easel. He also signed me up for a painting class so I could learn to paint on location outdoors. I loved it from the moment I tried it. I began painting again, and I finally allowed myself to follow my bliss and paint the landscape. After the death of my father I really wanted to do things that were more life affirming, that filled me with joy. I realized life is indeed so very short and I wanted to celebrate it in a way that had meaning for ME, without worrying about whether others found it artistically "important".   Painting the landscape was one of the ways I could honor that desire, and I have been painting them ever since. Nowadays I also enjoy experimenting with other kinds of painting, including abstraction, and sometimes even the human figure again. I believe that an artist has the right to explore it all, if that is her desire.   I hope this helps you with your project!