Painting Workshop: Day 4: Afternoon Tree

For the afternoon, I worked on this beautiful tree that I saw in Underhill, Vermont. The main reason for working on the tree was because it was a complex scene and I could see how well I remembered my "massing" notes.

So, I massed out the basic values like I normally would. I noticed that the area behind the tree contained a lot of trees that were fairly bright. I also remembered that, if I put full detail on the trees and did them as bright as I thought they were, they would look like they are coming forward in front of my main focal point. So, I just added more blue to their structure and then blended them out so that you knew that they were trees, but not distinct enough to make your eyes focus on them.

The longest time took on modelling the tree. Both Karen and Jack reminded me that a tree is a study of greys with hints of reds, browns, and blues/violets at various points. So, I laid down my base mass of the tree in various levels of pure grey. From there, I added some color on different parts to give it texture and interest. However, I made sure that I didn't break up the underlying mass and that the drawing of the various areas of the tree were correct.

For the foreground, I added some warmth near the bottom to bring the bottom of the picture plane closer to me. The part that Karen pointed out was that I needed to combine all of the dark shapes at the base of the grass into a single shape, rather than a lot of dots.

Painting Workshop: Day 4: After the rain

After the rain. During my painting workshop, it finally stopped raining, but the cloudy/damp weather was still here to stay. So, the next thumbnail (4 x 5) that I worked on was the drive into Cambridge, Vermont.

As you can see the background mountain is totally occluded due to the cloudy weather. There is the standard progression of light to dark (from rear to front) with the center tree (in the foreground) being the darkest. I also altered my standards for doing grass to show the variations in the grass.

When doing this painting, there are two parts that I was not doing correctly. The first part was the shadows of the background trees. To give the trees some texture, I applied the shadows as dots. As Karen pointed out, the dots were too distracting. Therefore, she took my brush and smoothed out the entire dark section. This linked the darks into a continuous path.

For the foreground, Jack noticed that there isn't a lot of texture. You need to add some texture to the foreground so that the viewer gets the feel that he is standing at the scene. So, he added some grass and bushes. In that situation, Jack painted the sides of the bushes first, then did the shadows, and finally added the top planes (highlights). This helped give the painting some depth.

Painting Workshop: Day 1: Atmosphere

For the afternoon exercise, we went out near a farm to paint a nice field, etc. This was an absolutely gorgeous site and had lots of potential.

For this painting, I chose a scene where I had a major tree as the focal point and all of the land segments pointed to it. This was extremely difficult for me. I was totally lost about how to approach the problem.

So, Karen and Jack went back to some of the basics that I forgot to focus on. 1) The darkest parts of the scene get darker as they come forward. The mountains are not darker than the treeline. The tree line is not darker than the tree in front. Any darks in front of the tree are darker than the tree.

2) Mix a large batch of the atmospheric paint. Use more of it as you go farther towards the mountain. The scene should be less intense/less green as you recede in the distance.

3) Don't outline/draw the tree. Draw the dark mass of the tree and place some highlights. Don't draw the individual trees in the treeline. Just mass the dark area of the tree and the light tops of the tree.

4) Add some darks to the front of the scene to help establish perspective. This will help the front portion to not be flat. Gives the entire painting more depth.

By the time that Karen had shown me how to make the adjustments, I was still floundering. However, at least, I was able to get the perspective distances worked out. The reason for taking a workshop is to improve. If you are not floundering, then your not improving. The point is not to create sellable paintings, but to see how to create ones, in the future.

Painting Workshop: Day 1: Thumbnail B

Due to time constraints, I was not able to finish the second thumbnail. In this situation, I was working on the grassy area in front of the area defined in Thumbnail A.

The hardest part of this was to create flat ground. Since there is no sky or mountain, the atmospheric effect is not as noticeable. However, notice that there a "splotch" on the left side of the painting? This was done by Jack Winslow. Rather than looking at each portion of the landscape individually, I needed to look at the pieces in relation to each other. So, to create a ground surface that "flattened", I needed to pay attention to the fact that the ground got "greyer" as you receded into the distance.

The points that I learned: 1) The treeline in the back of the painting needs to be a LOT greyer/cooler than any other portion of the painting. This will help push it to the background. A perfect mixture would be the lilac/blue-grey mixture done in Thumbnail A.

2) The colors closer to the viewer will typically be richer and the darks darker. In addition, there will be more detail. This is not always true, but seems to be true most of the time.

3) A trick to see relative atmospheric effects. Take a standard grey viewfinder and open it up to show just a slit. Since you have taken the actual objects out of the equation, it's easy to see the effect of the atmosphere on each part of the picture plane.

Painting Workshop: Day 1: Thumbnail A

The first thumbnail that I was able to complete turned out pretty well. Due to a large fire in Canada, the sky was pretty smoky. This helped with defining the background mountain lightly and the middle plane.

In this painting (4 x 5), the painting is divided into distinct planes: background (sky and mountain), middle (middle trees), forward middle (light bushes), and foreground (ground).

Items that I learned: 1) The rule that I need to learn is based on atmospheric values. The darkest part of the further item cannot be darker than the plane before it.

Therefore, the darkest part of the mountain cannot be darker than the treeline. The treeline's darkest portion cannot be darker than the bushes. The bushes darkest portion cannot be darker than the ground are immediately in front of the user.

2) Adding purple to the middle area helped the middle area push back closer to the background. Without the atmospheric purple, there were no real distinction between the treeline and the bushes. The purple mixture was created using Lilac + Cerulean Blue. It was then modulated with some Cadmium Red Light and various greys.

3) Yellow Light paint was added to the foreground (grass) to bring it forward a little more. This also provided a way of showing the bright sunlight on the ground and direct your eyes towards the bushes.

4)Yellow highlights were added to the front of the bush to create a more rounded appearance. Since the closest dark is to be the darkest, a mixture of Alizarin Crimson + Ultramarine deep provided some nice darks for the shadows.

Painting Workshop: Day 1: Thumbnails

Today was the first day of a week-long plein air workshop taught by Karen and Jack Winslow (Cambridge, Vermont). I took my first oil painting workshop with them almost one year ago and have been attending a weekly still life class taught by Karen Winslow for about 8 months. They are fantastic instructors and I highly recommend that everybody should take a workshop with them.

The method that they teach is massing of the shapes/values. No detail. This was, as far as I understand, the technique taught to them from Frank Mason at the Art Students League about 30 years ago or so.

Since the weather was incredibly beautiful today and, tomorrow, Vermont is expecting rain, the order was switched up so that we could go outside and take advantage of the nice weather. First order of business: thumbnails. In this case, I took an 8 x 10 canvas panel and divided it into 4 different scenes. The purpose of the thumbnail was so that the painting was too small for detail, but enough to get the feel of atmospheric effects on the values of the scene.

I will talk about each one, in turn. The massing exercise helped to define composition and let me decide what was important to the scene and what could be left out.

Plein Air: Lilac Bush and Road

Today, the weather was absolutely beautiful and I got to go paint at the Shelburne Museum (Vermont). They were having their lilac festival and my wife was working one of the tables.

So, I set up my easel outside of the tent where she was at. This was a pretty fun painting, actually. The point of it was to have the eyes follow the road to the lilac bush. Since the background was fairly dark, the bright flowers made for a nice contrast. The hardest part (which is always the hardest part of plein air painting) is that the background lightened as the day went along.

Overall, this painting took about 1-1/2 hours to do. It's a small 8 x 10 that I'm trying. I'm hoping that the small size forces me to focus on shapes, rather than detail.

Plein Air: Blooming Trees at Lake Champlain

Today, it was a beautiful day in Burlington, Vermont. Got a chance to go down to the lake and work on a plein air painting. When I came across this area, I was absolutely astounded by the brilliance of the purple bushes and the white trees. Decided that it would make a cool painting.

As usual, I laid down the basic shapes and colors to just see how the composition looked. It's amazing how many people came by and told me how beautiful the painting was. I was just laying down shapes.

The hardest part of this painting was getting the purple of the bushes. It was a bright luminescent color and, no matter how hard I tried, I could not match it. I then realized that I was focusing too much time on the color. The painting is about values and the color relationships, not the colors themselves. Once I stopped focusing on color and went back to the basics (Where is the brightest area, Where is the darkest area, Where is the light coming from, etc), the painting turned out better.

The other thing that I need to remember is that, for me, plein air painting is about practicing how to edit/see the world around me. It's not a finished painting. It's a study.

Plein Air Study: Lake and Mountains

Today, decided to go out and get some plein air work done. Haven't done it since last summer and the winter is finally working its way out of Vermont. Granted, the weather was about 40 degrees out there and after a couple of hours, was starting to get a chill.

This study was okay. Mainly I wanted to check out my setup and see if there was anything that was missing. For this study, I primarily focused on the mountains and sky just above them. They turned out okay. Not great, but not bad (one of the passers-by said that they liked the mountains).

I don't really care for the foreground or the island. I'll have to try it again someday. The interesting part for the day was dealing with a totally grey situation and all of the colors tended to be pretty muted.