Watch Me Paint

Sketchy

2012-01-25T08:48:00.001-08:00

In church

This is the second year I’ve bought into the Sketchbook Project and then felt my muse desert me as soon as the package arrived in the mail. It’s ironic, because I carry a sketchbook everywhere I go, a habit that started in elementary school.

My school notekeeping was a total fail from an academic standpoint—full of drawings, with notes occupying a very minor role. My current sketchbooks look exactly the same.

I now realize that drawing in school allowed me to cope with undiagnosed ADHD at a time when school was extremely regimented and bad behaviour still punishable with a ruler to the knuckles. And I received my share of thwacks for drawing in class, believe me. But as a parent and painting teacher, I encourage both my children and students to do the same thing. Unfortunately, most teachers are still opposed to it.

I know it works (as long as the information being presented is verbal and not visual). For some reason, it’s perfectly possible for the mind to listen, learn and retain a lecture while drawing something entirely unrelated.

For me, drawing takes the place of the anxious fidgeting that is part of ADHD. Educators have begun to recognize that allowing such kids to move paradoxically makes concentration easier. But they don’t generally recognize that drawing can achieve the same goal.

I bring my sketchbook to church, to appointments, on errands—in short, anywhere there’s a possibility I will cool my heels. I make no pretence to style, and don't think about content or composition. (To do otherwise would interfere with my listening.) My goal is simply to record what I see. It’s totally process-based; I never think of the sketches as anything other than practice strokes or visual notes. Which may be why the Sketchbook Project never works for me: it can’t help but turn process into product.

(L-R) In a pinch, you can always draw your own jacket thrown over a chair; couple in church; gesture drawing of horse at Walnut Hill.

(L-R) Or, you can draw your non-dominant hand; people almost always have a few ears hanging around; patient at the neurologist's office.

(L-R) Quick value study of a path (I could paint it from this); man in church; my son's big foot, at the pediatrician's office.

(L-R) I've pretty much mined my dentist's office for subject matter, but there's always the woodwork; poofy gown from a shopping excursion; man in church.

Urban painting/Queensboro Bridge

2012-01-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

Usually, when we say “field sketch,” people think of pastorals, but the term can apply equally to urban landscapes. I went on a tear painting the Queensboro (or 59th Street) Bridge with my friend Kristin. Here are a few examples.

Construction on the Queensboro Bridge, oil on board, 12X9

Just as urban plein air painters complain about the “endless green” of the woods, pastoral painters are overwhelmed by the grey of the city. But just as there are many different greens, there are many different greys. The trick is to find them, and to find the accidental notes in either landscape.

Queensboro Bridge approach, oil on canvasboard, 16X20

How do you avoid dreary, dull greys? First, avoid using black as a base. I was taught that this was because of the large grains in carbon-based blacks, which may or may not be true. But for whatever reason, black has a way of making cool colors look muddy and warm colors look more opaque, and that’s a bad basis for greys.

Under the Queensboro Bridge, oil on canvasboard, 12X16

I normally paint foliage using a matrix of nine mixed greens plus one from a tube (chromium oxide). There are at least that many greys present in the urban landscape. I prefer to mix them not in matrices, but in threads, so that every permutation is easily available.

Some of my favorite grey threads, from left to right:

Cadmium orange and Prussian blue;

Raw sienna and Prussian blue;

Yellow ochre and quinacridone violet;

Burnt sienna and ultramarine blue.

Remember, every manufacturer’s paint handles somewhat differently, and unless you’re using RGH paint, you’re unlikely to duplicate my results exactly. But the principle is simple: just choose two colors from opposite sides of the color wheel and add white.

In addition, I think it’s very helpful to use a warm-toned canvas or canvas board.

Black Eye

2012-01-07T16:26:00.000-08:00

Michelle's shiner (detail)

It’s not often you get a model showing up with a black eye, and that’s irresistible to paint. (Before you get worried that she’s the victim of domestic abuse, she’s a dancer and occasionally her face gets in someone else’s way.)

A flesh tone matrix, a little more complex than what I usually use, but you get the drift

During the interregnum between open painting and figure, I usually set up my palette in a flesh-tone matrix. This is how I’m able to do a credible figure painting in three hours. Today, a number of interruptions stopped me from doing that, and I ended up doing the first hour of painting using pigments scarfed from a student’s palette. On top of that, I’m working huge for a sketch—this canvas is 48X36. So most of this is a rough underpainting, and I’ll be finishing it next week.

Michelle's shiner, in draft form

A note about this model: she’s a wonderful, adventurous nut, who allows me to wrap her up in Saran Wrap.

Michelle as a shrink wrapped vegetable, 18X24, oil on canvas

A more formal figure painting

2011-12-31T11:31:00.000-08:00

Nude, oil on canvas, 40X30

This commissioned work is a formal portrait of a mature woman who desired a nude painting reflecting her Central American heritage. The client wanted an impression of the beauty of a woman not matching the cliché of the commercialized American ideal of willowy, leggy and fair female imagery.

The composition features an S-curve created by the background and gold lace mantilla and subtly reinforced by the rim lighting bathing the model’s knees and leg.

Figure Sketch

2011-12-19T14:14:00.001-08:00

(Michelle reading, 24X36" oil sketch on canvas.)

I have been doing fewer 3 hour figure studies, because my pal Marilyn has blown down to Florida. This is from Saturday’s session. I love the pose.

Three hours for the figure, about another half hour for the background.

Excuse the reflections; at this time of year, paint dries really slowly.

Join me at the Irondequoit Inn this weekend

2011-07-27T08:44:00.000-07:00

Piseco Outlet 12X9 Oil

(click for a larger view)

Irondequoit Inn's 2011 featured artist

Mark your calendars for a meet the artist reception on 7/29 from 6pm to 8 pm and a roundtable discussion on "Why Art Matters" on 7/31 at 1:00pm (click to sign up).

Carol Douglas is a well-known Rochester artist and teacher whose work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions throughout the East Coast including several Chautauqua National Exhibitions.

View from Irondequoit Inn

Sunny Day 11X14 Oil

(click for a larger view)

She studied figure, anatomy for artists and painting at the Art Students League in New York with Joseph Peller, Cornelia Foss and Nicki Orbach, among others.

She is a former state chairperson of New York Plein Air Painters and a signature member of that group. She is a member of Oil Painters of American and Landscape Artists International.

She teaches studio and figure painting in her Brighton studio and plein air in the Rochester area and in workshops. Her work is primarily in oil and pastel and is in public and private collections nationwide.

Crossing Big Bay on Route 10 14X18 Oil

(click for a larger view)

Today’s little exercise, a one hour sketch after my class.

2011-07-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

West breakwall at Irondequoit Bay, some smallish size or another, oil on canvasboard

Kamillah Ramos was game to paint another hour with me after class so I did a quick study. The problem I'm finding is that the paint hasn’t the gamut for the water color. (It's rare in WNY to have that insane saturated aquamarine, but we’re having strangely clear skies). On top of that, my camera hasn’t the range to record the color in the painting very accurately, but I’ve given it my best shot. Ahem.

I see this scene as a Maxfield Parrish kind of thing, in unearthly light. I think it’s worth repainting in a more studied format; do you?

Here’s the set-up… again for benefit of my students. Laid down darks first, then midtones, then lights; then refined the shapes.

How to set up a field sketch, for my students' edification

2011-07-14T17:20:00.001-07:00

Cottage at Sea Breeze, 12X16" oil sketch

This is for my students... a primer in setting up a painting. This is not a finished painting, and it's probably a bit on the "tight" side since I was doing it solely to demonstrate how I want them to work tomorrow, but so be it.

My goal was to finish this in three hours, including set-up and tear down, since that's what I expect of them.

I did a sketch in watercolour pencil; then followed that by blocking in the darks.
Then I blocked in the major shapes, working from dark to light, in the right values and hues.
Then I added such details as I was able to finish in the time allotted.

Done in 2 hours, 45 minutes, actually. Would have put the fence details in with a rigger brush but I forgot to bring it. And it was time to go canoeing with my kids.

Painting on a dock on the bay...

2011-07-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

I spent a few hours on Irondequoit Bay this morning, painting Mayer's Marina, across the swing bridge in Webster (a hundred feet by water, miles away by car until the bay closes to marine traffic and the swing bridge is moved back into place). Nothing brilliant, just an exploratory oil sketch. A more finished picture would have more room to the right, but it's the road behind the old building that interests me most.

Mayer's Marine from the Swing Bridge, oil on canvas, 16X20

And I did this fast (five minute) oil sketch of a fisherman for Zoe Clark. Took a photo and gave it to him... he wasn't catching anything, so at least he came away with a 'snapshot' of his day!

Fisherman at Irondequoit Bay, oil on canvas, 6X8

Travels with Friends: Recent landscape paintings of Carol L. Douglas

2011-05-06T09:42:00.000-07:00

I called this show "Travels with Friends" because most of these paintings were done with either Marilyn Feinberg or Kristin Zimmermann. A great plein air partner is a true treasure.

Erie Canal, 40X30, oil on canvas

Saturday, May 7 · 11:00am - 4:00pm

Cobblestone Gallery

The Mendon Academy of Arts & Moveme

16 Mendon Ionia Road, Route 64 South, Mendon, NY 14506

See Carol Douglas’ new plein air work from the 2010 summer season, painted across New York from Niagara to the Adirondacks to Manhattan.

Ms. Douglas will be demoing painting during part of the Grand Opening, and there will tours of the facility and other artisans on premises.

The show will hang until May 24, 2011. Hours are:

Monday: 9:30-11:30 AM; 4-7:30 PM

Tuesday: 9:30 AM-12:30 PM; 4-7:30 PM

Wednesday: 9:30-11:30 AM; 4-7:30 PM

Thursday: 9:30 AM-12:30 PM; 4-7:30 PM

Saturday: 8 AM-noon

For more information: (585) 315-2300

The Mendon Academy of Arts and Music is located in this cool cobblestone schoolhouse in Mendon Center, NY. Neat place, and it's great to see the Cobblestone Gallery up and looking fabulous.

Skelly in love (bloom where you are planted)

2011-04-18T16:03:00.000-07:00

If I could get painting students to do one thing, it would be to draw every day. It’s cheap—$5 will buy you a sketchbook, graphite pencil and eraser—convenient, and portable, and the fastest way to see progress. But so few people take me up on that suggestion.

This hasn’t been a productive year, art-wise. I’ve spent the better part of it loitering in waiting rooms. Tough on the schedule, but with an elderly mom, four bio kids and a few spares, I’m used to waiting.

One can either read bad magazines or use the time for something useful. This skeleton is at the office of physical therapist Joanne Panzarella. I started off drawing detailed studies of the bones—the vertebra (very tough to understand), pelvis, skull, the fascinating details of toe bones and how they attach to two different heel bones.

One day Skelly showed up in a blonde wig and pirate scarf and I knew I ‘knew’ him. It was simple to draw him in all his bony splendor without worrying overmuch about how many ribs he has or where his vertebra attach to his pelvis.

Today he was cuddling with his Easter Bunny. A quick sketch—perhaps 25 minutes—but it gets to the heart of Skelly. Who says that a man without soft tissue is without feelings?

Meme of the Day—Kim Jong Il Looking at Things

2011-02-04T10:19:00.000-08:00

Abi's stuffed opossum and green wine glasses, 8X6", oil on canvas

Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things is my current favorite blog. I suppose it amuses me because it reduces a frightening, insane tyrant to an object of ridicule. (I sure hope he doesn’t see it and melt half of Asia in response.)

Much of the time, he’s wearing a grey-and-lavender parka similar to one my dad used to wear. I assume they have no heat in North Korea and his factotums freeze during these photo ops, but, hey, he’s the dictator.

It dawned on me that in his parka he looks just like the opossum who was camping out in our basement, so that’s how I painted him. Used Abi’s “pet” opossum because the live one has been relocated to public housing elsewhere in the county.

Meme of the day--I'll catch a grenade for you! (Right.)

2011-02-03T10:32:00.001-08:00

Rag doll and GI Joe, 8X6", oil on canvas

Sometimes this business of painting catches you by surprise. I was all set for the GI Joe toy to give me fits, but it was the rag doll that was hard to paint—all shades of creamy browns, highlights both warm and cool.

Meme of the day--Back it up!

2011-01-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

My new hard drive that just arrived in the mail, 6X8, oil on canvas

A note about these still lives: they’re exercises before my “real work”, a sort of a meme-inside-a-meme, considering how popular the painting-a-day movement is. They take an hour, more or less. And I do them because I find the classic still life boring to paint, but it’s too cold for me outside to paint plein air.

I figure by the time spring comes, water reflections will seem awfully simple in comparison to all this plastic wrap, tinfoil and bubble wrap.

Meme of the day--Statement Jewelry (OK, OK, it's not a meme, it's a trend.)

2011-01-27T15:14:00.000-08:00

Jennifer Jones' statement jewelry, 8X5", oil on canvas

Still life set up by my student, jewelry designer Jennifer Jones. If you're interested in seeing her work (which really looks better than my still life) see it here.

Neko-nabe, or fat cat in a dish (with notes about how to draw the ellipse of the dish)

2011-01-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

Neko-nabe, or fat cat in a dish, 8X6 oil on canvas

An ellipse is a plane curve with two foci which is symmetrical on both the vertical and positive axes, and intersects with these axes perpendicularly.

I recently heard a student tell another one, “She means not a racetrack and not a football.” Works for me, as long as it’s symmetrical both ways, as below.

Use that boring old method, a pencil held up in space, to measure the distances above the bowl's ellipse and below it. You'll be surprised at how often the bowl has very little showing below the rim, and a lot above the rim.

There is nothing like a contour drawing to check your composition. This is not time consuming, but the most important work you can do. The mantra of my studio is, "draw slow, paint fast" (and thank you to Rhea Horowitz for coining that). It's a lot easier to correct mistakes in a pencil drawing than in a mush of paint.

Meme of the day--Ginger is so last year, but so's this purse!

2011-01-24T10:28:00.000-08:00

Sandy's ginger purse, which I found lying on the floor, 6X8, oil on canvas

These memes of the day are tiny (6X8) still life paintings, warm-ups for my "real" paintings, and if they take me more than an hour, I get quite grumpy. (Girls, can I send this purse away now, or should it kick around your bedrooms for another few years before being properly buried?)

Internet meme of the day--girl falls into fountain while texting

2011-01-21T16:55:00.000-08:00

Girl falls into fountain while texting, 6X8", oil on canvas

And the steps to do it, in about an hour:

I start with either a watercolor pencil drawing. Easily erasable with a wet paper towel, allows me to fiddle endlessly with composition.

Then I block in colors and values, very roughly.

Then these shapes are gradually refined until I have to go pick up my son or yell at the dog or answer the phone..

The water reflections were added last. After I raised my phone up on a small support, I poured a pitcher of water over the rest of the stuff.

Winter evening at Twelve Corners

2011-01-20T15:07:00.000-08:00

Winter evening at Twelve Corners, sketch, 12X16 or thereabouts, oil on canvas

I was waiting for my son at Brighton High School and amusing myself by taking photos of the streetlights with a handheld camera. Never thought of the photos as a painting until it was suggested by my friend Pilan. Here it is in an expanded sketch.

Internet meme of the day--that's just crazy talk.

2011-01-20T14:23:00.001-08:00

Tinfoil hat, 6X8" oil on canvas

Tinfoil is just not that easy to paint alla prima. This was my second try.

But check out this tinfoil, done with a rather more careful approach, in colored pencil:

http://www.kenygalleries.com/images/ac-tolstedt/tolstedt-bio.html

(BTW, I can make the tinfoil hat itself in less than a minute.)

Baby Monkey Riding On A Pig

2011-01-15T11:59:00.000-08:00

Going backwards on a pig, baby monkey...

Unicorn with double rainbow (for my kids)

2011-01-06T12:32:00.000-08:00

"Unicorn reindeer visiting my front garden with a double rainbow in the background" 8X6, oil on board.

Today for my one-hour still life I returned to an old idea, painting an internet meme. I could find only half the props needed for “baby monkey riding on a pig,” so I fell back on that old standard, “unicorn” and added a newer element, the “double rainbow.” The unicorn is, of course, disguised as a florescent reindeer because I’ve been dying to paint this fellow.

My palette doesn’t have the gamut for his lovely pink mane. Carmine, naphthol red, quinacridone violet, quinacridone rose—none comes close to sufficient saturation. The blacks are much easier—two lights and two darks, warm and cool, covering the various lighting situations in my studio.

I flipped through my landscape sketches intending to use the first one with sky as the setting. It’s my own front-yard—well, what could be more appropriate? I decided to make it winter, however.

Pretty in Purple

2011-01-04T15:22:00.001-08:00

A student left some carbazole violet behind; I did two small sketches in the holiday spirit.

"Mary's shoes,*" 6X8 oil on board

"Happy New Year,"
6X8 oil on board

*To answer your questions: Mootsie Tootsies; silk; for a prom; yes, they were on sale at Kohls; they came in black too; no, you can’t borrow them.

A Still Life

2011-01-03T17:27:00.000-08:00

Two peppers snagged from pizza-making, oil on canvas, 8X6

For several years I asked myself when would be a good time to take a sabbatical from career development, to focus only on painting. Economic malaise presents the perfect opportunity, so I took 2010 as a year to pursue intentional isolation. My plan was simple: no marketing, only one show, even less blogging. Instead, I would spend my time in my studio painting and working with those students who were at hand.

The year of stillness is now done, and I am glad of it—both that I did it and that it’s finished.

Some of the risks proved real—for instance, when you stop showing, you stop selling. Students wander off, and if you aren’t looking for new ones, you eventually find yourself pretty lonely. On the other hand, you’re able to look at your own work independent of others’ opinions, and you become very invested in the students you retain.

I’d like to be able to recount some sort of spiritual journey which resulted not only in enlightenment but also in a tidy little book deal, but if that happened, I missed it. On the other hand, I did get much better at sketching every day—especially in church.

I also got into the habit of doing a daily small still life (6”X8”). These are “gesture paintings.” With rare exceptions, they take me 1:20 or less to finish. This is from New Year's Day, 2011—a new year, a new decade, and back to engaging with the world.

Five plein air sketches by a student and friend

2011-01-03T07:40:00.000-08:00

Students do wonderful things. Here are five landscape paintings recently entered by Marilyn Feinberg in the GVPAP show at Barnes & Noble—all five were accepted.

Expressway entrance at South Winton Road, about 12.5X10, oil. (These are not titles, but descriptions, since I don't know the titles.)

My backyard when the roses were in bloom, about 12X12, oil.

Adirondack swamp, about 8X8, oil.

Marilyn's backyard, about 8X10, oil.

Our grill, about 8X10, oil.

These paintings will be on display in the community room at Barnes & Noble, 3349 Monroe Avenue, Rochester, through January 27. The reception and awards ceremony will be on Saturday, January 8 from 4 - 6 pm.

Marilyn is certainly talented—no doubt about that. But she brings to mind that famous Thomas Edison quote: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration. Accordingly, a ‘genius’ is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.”

And on that note, I’m getting to work.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-23T07:42:00.001-08:00

My male friends can go back to alphabetizing their Beatles collection. My middle-aged women pals will recognize this as a bottle angel—what we were making while they were building forts and playing that ugly Danelectro guitar in the family room.

She was made in 1968 or thereabouts, which is why she is wearing a chic turquoise burlap gown with cotton batting for trim. She’s bedraggled and filthy and her dress is unraveling, but she has been on our Christmas tree ever since my mom decided I was finally old enough to take care of her (I was 35 or thereabouts). This year my mom gave me her own tree angel, a delicate porcelain doll with batiste skirts that glow in the tree lights. My own bedraggled angel moves over to join the psychedelic reindeer and the blonde German Santa in the niche.

My friend Kristin Zimmermann paints portraits of sentimental things that must move along—her Kitchen-Aid mixer, her Christmas ornaments, and her Singer Featherweight sewing machine, among other things. They are delightful paintings. I’m trying to paint a small still life every day before moving on to more important things—6X8, not to take more than an hour. I think I’m going to borrow her idea for a while.

Goldenrod

2010-10-12T15:39:00.001-07:00

Fall in the Finger Lakes, pastel 17X20, sold

Rained out!

2010-10-04T15:36:00.001-07:00

I love October in the High Tor wildlife management area south of Canandaigua Lake. This area is full of deep ravines with waterfalls, such as this one:

You can get some unusual fall colors there, such as these pink trees:

But it is the muckland at the bottom of the lake, with its tawny reeds, that most fascinates me, and today I painted it from above.

About a decade ago, M. and I braved a driving October rain to work down among the reeds. Perched on the footings of a collapsed bridge, we tried to ignore the driving rain and wind until our paintings were literally washed off our boards. Since then, we’ve painted in a lot of stupid settings, but that remains the epitome of cold to both of us. Even painting in deep snow in a hilltop vineyard didn’t seem as cold (although M’s paint froze; a real inconvenience).

Today, we were both prepared for cold and wet. Waterproof boots, thermal underwear, rain gear, mittens. And we still couldn’t handle the 42º F driving rain. Especially when it again threatened to wash the paint off our boards.

Tomorrow is another day. Unfortunately, there’s rain on the forecast.

New classes starting this weekend

2010-09-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

Studio in Art and portfolio preparation—starting Oct. 2, 2010

Saturday, 11 AM-2 PM

(Oil, pastel, acrylic, watercolor)
This class focuses on still life as a fundamental tool for developing drawing and painting technique. It is appropriate for both beginning and advanced students. Instruction emphasizes direct painting, where paint is applied solidly rather than through glazing. For watercolor and acrylic, the emphasis is on alla prima techniques.

Tuition—$100/month

Uninstructed Figure Workshop—starting October 8, 2010

Friday, 1-4 PM

Model fee. Please contact me if you’re interested.

Rye Art Center 10th Annual Painters on Location

2010-09-26T15:10:00.000-07:00

Boston Post Road Bridge, Mamaroneck, 24X20, oil on board

The Rye Art Center Painters on Location is my favorite event of the year, a fundraiser for an excellent organization that takes good care of its artists. It includes many excellent New York regional plein air artists, and it's always wonderful to see my friends and paint in such a lovely location.

This is a site that's intrigued me for several years. It's a creek that releases into the harbor. Nothing exotic about it, but I love the sense of mystery about what lies behind that bridge.

Here is my setup, below the Boston Post Road in Mamaroneck, looking back at a bait shop and its boats. I am working very large for an on-site painting—about 24X20, so I have my pochade box and another easel. They are tied together with a bungee cord and on this day I was glad for the weight of that guerrilla box, as the wind threatened to take my painting into the harbor.

Boats in a tidal harbor present a dilemma: either you’re on a floating dock moving up and down with the boats, or you’re on land watching them go up and down (and compensating for the constant changes). I prefer to be on the dock. But it makes for an impressionistic painting, since floating docks are constantly rocking and rolling.

There are about a hundred paintings I could do in this location, including this wonderful stone wall.

This is at the end of my first day, about twelve hours into the painting. Frankly, the lighting scheme was more coherent at this point than in my final painting… something that happens when you paint in the same site for two days.

End of my first day painting.

And here is Bruce Bundock with his fine painting of Rye Nature Center—by a fluke hung right above my painting.

Bruce Bundock with his lovely painting of Rye Nature Center.

10th Annual Painters on Location, Rye NY

2010-09-16T04:37:00.000-07:00

Low Bridge ( Erie Canal at Gasport)
30x40 inches - Oil

The Sentinel Tree (Keuka Lake)
30x40 inches - Oil

Here are my two submissions to the silent auction at Rye, NY this month. They can be bid upon long distance: contact Emilia Del Peschio at artscoordinator@ryeartscenter.org or at (914) 967-0700 x33.

Both are 30X40, framed in gilt hardwood. The first is a sentimental painting for me; that’s where I spent the better part of my childhood and the years after my oldest kids were born, and that’s my (now adult) Julia on her bike in the painting. The vineyard near Keuka is one of those magical places—they grow vines on rock shingle that one can’t imagine supporting anything.

To see other work from this fine show, go here. And if you’re in the Long Island Sound region on September 24 th and 25th, come watch the artists at work.

Painting at the Irondequoit Inn in Piseco, NY

2010-09-16T03:59:00.000-07:00

Beaver Dam near Speculator, NY. 14X18.

Canoes at Irondequoit Inn, 8X10.

Apple tree at Irondequoit Inn, 8X10.

Piseco Outlet in a spitting rain, 14X18.

Reed beds at Irondequoit Inn, 16X20.

Here are some oil sketches I did this weekend in Piseco and Spectator, NY. It was unseasonably cold, ranging down into the 40s at night to the high fifties during the day, and spitting rain non-stop. I did six sketches and gave one to the innkeeper, and here are the other five.

I plan to do a workshop at the Irondequoit Inn next autumn (the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise). It will not suit the person who wants a Jacuzzi and a thousand cable channels. But if you prefer rockers on a veranda with a million-dollar view, free-range eggs and organic pork sausage for breakfast, beautiful vistas, access to miles of hiking trails, wonderful kayaking and canoeing, and above all, fascinating company, this is the place. I’ve stayed and painted there twice now, and recommend it highly.

Paint Way Down East July 11-18, 2009

2008-12-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

Following up on last year’s highly successful workshop, I am offering a painting adventure next summer to the moody, rock-bound coast of Down East, Maine.

This workshop will be based at the lovely and historic West Quoddy Coast Guard Station in Lubec, ME. This early 20th century station is located on the edge of Quoddy Head State Park. The station was recently renovated and opened as a guesthouse by Bill Clark, who developed Randall’s Ordinary Inn in North Stonington, CT.

Your fee of $1150 includes instruction, all meals and seven days of double accommodations. (Other packages are available from $1050.) Non-participating spouses are always welcome; please contact us here for more information and pricing.

See a brochure here.

Book by Feb. 1, 2009 and save $100 off the cost of your workshop!

Among the attractions to paint are:

West Quoddy Head Light (c. 1858)
Passamaquoddy Bay
Historic Lubec waterfront and harbor
Grand Manan Channel
West Quoddy Peat Bog
Sail Rock
Carrying Place Cove
Mulholland Light
Lubec Channel Light

Area attractions include:

St. Andrews, NB, and the Bay of Fundy
Historic whaling community of Eastport, ME
FDR historic site at Campobello Island
Whale-watching

For more information, email me here, or call Carol L. Douglas Studios at 585-201-1558.

Looking forward to seeing you in Maine!

Junior League of Rochester Holiday Market, Oct. 18-19, 2008

2008-10-14T07:59:00.000-07:00

This weekend, I will participate in the new Junior League of Rochester Holiday Market at the Dome Fair & Expo Center, 2695 E. Henrietta Rd, Rochester. The show features fine arts and crafts, gourmet foods, and services.

Hours are Saturday from 10 to 6 and Sunday from 10 to 5. Tickets are $5, 12 and under free. They will be available at the door or with advance registration from the Junior League office at 585-385- 8590.

I will have original artwork and prints and notecards for sale. Some of my prints are available online from the publisher, here.

New York landscapes to please any art lover
Ten high quality note cards with envelopes, packed in a clear acrylic box. $9.95 (to order cards by mail, contact me here).

Coast Guard Station

Toys in the Snow

Catskill Farm

Campbell's Field

Seventh Annual Rhinebeck Paint-Out

2008-10-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

Around the Bend, 12X16, oil

On Saturday, Oct. 18, I will participate (long-distance) in the Barrett Art Center’s 7th Annual Rhinebeck Paint-Out and Art Auction. Painters will work from 9-3 in the greater Rhinebeck area, with a reception starting at 4 PM, and a live auction from 5-8 PM. The auction will be held at Good Shepherd Church, Father Brogan Parish Center, in Rhinebeck.

Because I have an event in Rochester on the same day, the organizers graciously allowed me to paint on Friday, October 10. I chose the lovely Queen Anne house at Wilderstein for my subject. This was the home of FDR’s cousin and confidante, Margaret (Daisy) Suckley. The landscape of this estate was designed by Calvert Vaux (Olmsted’s co-designer of Central Park) and features prospects of the Hudson. I dithered between the “million dollar view” created to seen from the house, and the house itself. House won.

Wilderstein, 14X18, oil

Among the fifty or so artists who will paint in this event are Kathy Lynn Buist, Bruce Bundock, Frank Cannas, Margaret Crenson, Sallie Lyon, Nestor Madalengoitia, Seth A. Nadel, Crista Pisano, and Phyllis Tarlow.

For more information contact: Barrett Art Center, 55 Noxon St, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601 845- 471-2550

Waterworks Postcard

2008-10-01T06:11:00.000-07:00

Lilac Preservation Project presents The Water Works Exhibition

2008-09-24T05:24:00.000-07:00

October 3-5, 2008 — North side of Pier 40, Manhattan

Migrating Geese, by Carol Douglas, 12X9, oil, is among works by thirty New York artists.

New York, NY - The Lilac Preservation Project (LPP) is pleased to present The Water Works Exhibition, featuring the works of thirty artists from metropolitan New York and the Hudson Valley. The show is curated by Lilac’s artist-in-residence, Amy DiGi. All works are for sale.

Artists featured in the exhibition include: Liz Adams, Yasue Arai, John Baber, Amy DiGi, Carol Douglas, Victoria Estok, Mary Ann Glass, Marilyn Harari, Linda Hubbard, Rick Michalek, Maddy Morales, Sharon Nakazato, Rein Singfield, Christopher Staples, Ruth Ternovitz, Joe Vacara, Diane Waller, Marcia Wiley, Elizabeth Winchester, Kristin Zimmermann and others

The Lilac, built in 1933, is an historic, decommissioned US Coast Guard vessel that served as a lighthouse and buoy tender in New Jersey. She is the last surviving vessel in her class. (For details about her history and the mission and work of the LPP, see here.)

The Water Works Exhibition is open to the public Friday through Sunday, October 3-5, from 10 AM to 6 PM. The public is invited to a reception on Saturday, Oct. 4 from 6 to 9 PM. All Lilac exhibitions are open to the public free of charge.

Subway: Take the #1 train To Christopher Street. Walk west along Christopher Street to West Street (West Side Highway), cross to the Pier and walk south 2 blocks to Pier 40. Or take the #1 train to Houston Street and walk west along Houston Street directly to the Pier.

Bus: Take the 8, 10 or 21 bus lines. PATH directions: To Christopher Street Station. Walk west along Christopher Street to West Street (West Side Highway), cross to the Pier and walk south 2 blocks to Pier 40.

Car: Pier 40 is located 2 blocks south of Christopher Street off of West Street (West Side Highway).

Rye Painters on Location 2008

2008-09-15T16:07:00.000-07:00

Here is my set-up along the shingle.

Well, dang me, I managed to delete my own painting from Rye from my camera. (That’s what I get for photo-editing when overtired.) Hopefully, the Rye Record will have a copy of it.

However, my experience at Rye was (as it seems to be every year) wonderful. I decided to paint at a small rocky promontory at Edith Read Sanctuary behind Playland. A young man was there fishing for porgies and bluefish—he was disappointed that the surf was making his day off so difficult. He gave up fairly quickly, but not before modeling surf casting for me and showing me pictures of his two young sons on his cellphone.

I sketched him a bit thinking I could integrate him into my painting but it seemed too contrived. In retrospect I wish I’d redesigned my composition around him, but he was gone by then, and photo reference violates the spirit, if not the rule, of this paintout.

Rye has changed its format this year to include two days of painting. There are many painters who can put together a polished, credible entry in four hours. I am not one of them. I paint for every hour available, struggle back and forth from overdone to fluid. This was no exception; at 2:45 on the second day, fellow painter Sally Lyon kindly helped me hoist my stuff back off the beach to my car to get it framed and wired by the 3 PM deadline.

Along the coast, the tide goes in and the tide goes out. You can freeze it in a photo, and that makes for simpler painting, but in plein air you work essentially from imagination and memory, substituting the rocks that show for the rocks that are submerged. I love the freedom of this approach, but it can be quite disconcerting the first time you try it.

It has rained all summer in the northeast. This weekend was no exception. By the end of our first day, it was pouring buckets. It killed me to quit, because the light was low, lovely, and moody, but I generally quit when the medium and rain are emulsifying in the cup.

This photo, taken the Mill Pond as I left, shows the rain and failing light. A few minutes later, when I saw cygnets following a swan beside Manursing Way, it was impossible to even take a photo.

The second day, back at the beach, the surf was down and the light was flat. I attempted to recreate the prior day’s darkness and moodiness, but I should have followed new conditions (one never knows).

That morning, I saw a seal potting along the shore. Shorebirds such as gulls, cormorants, and herons are numerous beyond mention. What a lovely place it is!

New York Social Realism

2008-09-15T13:55:00.001-07:00

A Pool With A View (Cunningham Rd) by Bruce Bundock

32" x 20", Acrylic

Today I’d like to write about an artist who also did the Rye Painters on Location this weekend: Bruce Bundock.

It takes an extraordinary mind to see the beauty of Tyvek, T11 siding and an above-ground pool set serenely in Eden. This is a legitimate extension of the social realism of Millet or Hopper, but we are so blind to working-class, rural New York that we don’t immediately recognize it. (New York has the highest and fastest growing income disparity in the nation*.) What interests me is that Bruce seems genuinely fascinated by these modest houses; there isn’t a shred of sentimentality in his work.

His subtle social commentary wouldn’t work without impeccable technique. I am personally fond of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, and I see intimations of it in Bruce’s work, particularly in the discrete steps used instead of gradation to indicate tonal range. The best of his paintings remind me of old-fashioned commercial lithography, particularly in the wonderful flat greens of the trees. None of this, of course, would work without his superlative drafting.

Botanical by Bruce Bundock
11.5" x 8.25", Acrylic

This weekend, I acquired Bruce’s “Botanical”, above. I presume by the title that Bruce thinks it’s about the flowers, but once more I see a modest but proud house set in Paradise. As I’m sure I’ll see him someday in a major national gallery, I am thrilled to have such an archetypal example of his work.

Rye Beach Pavilion, by Bruce Bundock, September 13, 2008, acrylic

His Rye painting, of an old Spanish-style building at Playland, included that motif, appropriately muted. A painting which might have been postcard-sentimental was elevated by the inclusion of construction equipment in the foreground, which was perfectly integrated into the composition by skillful balancing of form and color.

To see more of Bruce’s paintings, go to http://artid.com/members/bundock

8th Annual Painters on Location

2008-09-10T06:41:00.000-07:00

Saturday, September 13, 2008, Rye NY

The Rocks Would Cry Out
18X24, oil on canvas

To bid on this work, call the Rye Arts Center at (914) 967-0700 x 33 before Saturday, September 13, 2008

Tomorrow I leave to participate in the 8th annual Painters on Location paintout and live auction in Rye, NY. This is an event I look forward to with great excitement and a little nervousness.

43 artists choose locations along the Long Island Sound Shore and have 32 hours to paint, frame, and deliver a wet canvas to the Rye Arts Center. That evening (September 13) the paintings are auctioned off at a charming gala event.

The reception opens at 5:00 PM, by which time I hope to have my face and hands reasonably scrubbed and be changed into some paint-free clothing (it doesn’t always happen). The auctioneer begins the live auction at 6:15. The reception is free but anyone who is interested in attending the live auction is asked to purchase a $10 bidding paddle. Guests are encouraged to purchase bidding paddles in advance as seating is limited.

(frame detail)

A Silent Auction of existing works by these artists is now on view in the gallery. The opening bid on my silent auction piece (above) is $600 and you are welcome to bid in advance by calling (914) 967-0700 x 33. The silent auction ends fifteen minutes after the live auction, on September 13.

Painting in Maine

2008-09-09T09:44:00.001-07:00

This is my favorite painting from my recent Maine trip. It’s quite small—6X8—and was done during a downpour on a shingle beach in Penobscot Bay. I like the color and the energy. It comes close to my sense of what the ocean is about.

(I plan to teach in Maine next July so if you’re interested, please let me know.)

After painting in Maine, I saw All Things Bright and Beautiful: California Impressionists at the Katonah Museum of Art. What a different world they were painting! It’s an excellent show, and runs until October 5, 2008.

So you want to go to art school?

2008-09-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

You wouldn’t consider applying to music school without taking private lessons, so why would you apply to art school that way? Carol L. Douglas is an experienced painting and drawing teacher who can help you create a portfolio tailored to the school you want.

"Ms. Douglas helped me develop my portfolio to meet colleges’ expectations and taught me the fundamentals of painting and pastel. I was offered scholarships to several art programs including RIT and Pratt. She is an excellent teacher for the student willing to work hard to develop potential."

— Zeyuan Chen, Brighton HS ‘08, Stony Brook University ‘12

"I visited Pratt and realized my portfolio would not get me in. Ms. Douglas worked with me intensively to fill the gaps, and I am now at Pratt with a Presidential Scholarship. I would not have gotten in without her help."

— Sandy Quang, MCC ‘08, Pratt Art Institute ‘10

Carol L. Douglas Studio
410 Oakdale Drive, Rochester, NY 14618
585-201-1558
email: cdouglas@frontiernet.net
www.watchmepaint.blogspot.com
www.goaway-letmepaint.com

New Classes for Fall

2008-09-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

Studio in Art
Wednesday, 10:30 AM-1:30 PM
Saturday, 10 AM-1 PM

(Oil, pastel, acrylic, watercolor)
This class focuses on still life as a fundamental tool for developing drawing and painting technique. It is appropriate for both beginning and advanced students. Instruction emphasizes direct painting, where paint is applied solidly rather than through glazing. For watercolor and acrylic, the emphasis is on alla prima techniques.

Tuition—$100/month

Figure
Saturday, 2-5 PM

(Oil, pastel, acrylic, watercolor, drawing media)
This class focuses on the figure. In addition to working with live models, we study human anatomy, drapery and clothing. The class is suitable for both beginning and advanced students. Students without a background in figure drawing are encouraged to begin in charcoal.

Tuition—$137.50/month

Portfolio Preparation
Saturday, 10-1 PM
(Oil, pastel, acrylic, watercolor, drawing media) High school students who are interested in applying to art school are encouraged to take this class. Emphasis will be on identifying appropriate colleges and developing a portfolio matched to their choices.

Tuition—$137.50/month

Paintings in RiverWinds Show

2008-05-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

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Riverwinds Gallery

"Wanderings" - Paintings by Carol Douglas and Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone

May 10 - June 7, 2008

Shelli Ardizzone and Carol Douglas at RiverWinds Gallery until June 9

2008-05-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

From left: Virginia Donovan, Carol Douglas, Mary Ann Glass, Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone, and Linda Hubbard. (Photo by Jim Cypher, The Cypher Agency)

Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Monday 12 - 6pm, Beacon Second Saturday 12 - 9pm
RiverWinds is located on Main Street, in Beacon - number 172 - one and a half blocks east from Route 9D on the north side of Main Street - just past Hudson Beacon Glass in the old Beacon Firehouse 162 Main Street.

The gallery is easy to find, not far from Dia: Beacon or the Train Station. And there is lots to see and do in Beacon. Check the http://www.beaconarts.org/ for information about restaurants, shops and other galleries Beacon.

Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone

Carol L. Douglas

What a delightful opening we had! RiverWinds Gallery is operated by three delightful and professional women--Linda Hubbard, Mary Ann Glass, and Virginia Donovan. The show is beautifully curated and the opening was delightful, with friends old and new in attendance.

For more information and images from this show, see here.

Lilac's 75th Birthday

2008-05-19T10:17:00.001-07:00

When in New York recently, I joined a friend painting on Pier 40 (at the foot of Houston Street). I painted a small oil sketch of two of the tugboat Lilac's stacks, which reminded me, for some reason, of my twin daughters. The oil sketch will be available—among many other works—at the celebration of the Lilac’s 75th birthday on Memorial Day weekend.

Hours are:
Saturday, May 24—10 AM to 6 PM
Sunday, May 25—10 AM to 6 PM
Monday, May 26—10 AM to 9 PM

(I won’t be at the artists’ reception, but it’s from 4-8 PM on Monday.)

A percentage of the sale of paintings will go to support renovation efforts for the Lilac.

"Twins"
8x10 oil sketch by little ol' me

The Creative Process--the Story of Me

2008-04-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

Carol L. Douglas, The Joker, figure, oil on canvas, 40" x 30"

Renée Phillips at Manhattan Arts International just published an essay by me on The Creative Process. It is an artist statement I wrote for an upcoming show, which she liked enough to use. Thanks, Renée!

Enough about those kids!

2008-04-05T14:50:00.000-07:00

One of my adult students, Anne Christner, with her pastel portrait of her daughter Sarah. It’s an excellent likeness, and a real step forward. Brava, Anne!

The Kung Fu Fighters are both accepted at Pratt

2008-04-04T09:33:00.000-07:00

Not only were they both accepted, but both were awarded Presidential Merit Scholarships. Good going, girls!

Trip to Ghost Ranch in Abiquiú, NM added to Taos workshop

2008-03-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

"When I got to New Mexico, that was mine."

That was how Georgia O'Keeffe described her instant love for northern New Mexico, which she first visited in 1917 Although she never owned Ghost Ranch, she eventually purchased a small home there and later a home in nearby Abiquiú. (Learn more about Ghost Ranch here.)

We have added a guided tour of this area (which she loved, explored, painted, and lived in for over 50 years) to our "Paint the Magic and Mystery of Taos" workshop, from June 15-21, 2008. This is optional and requires a ticket at $25.

Tour update

This trip is selling well, and we have a few openings left. I’m getting pretty jazzed about it myself.

I plan to pick up tour participants at Albuquerque Airport on Sunday, June 15 (if you arrive at a different time, there’s a shuttle available to Taos). On Sunday evening, we’ll relax over dinner at the Sagebrush Inn and get to know each other.

I am always excited to get to work right away and I bet you’re the same. In the morning, we’ll get right down to the business of painting. Then, while you eat your lunch and relax, Shelli or I will demo in a variety of media.

We’re visiting Ghost Ranch on Friday. We’ll bring our supplies so we can get one work session in that day. On Saturday we’ll help you pack and ship your stuff and get you back to Albuquerque for the trip home.

Your fee of $1200 includes workshop instruction, five days of painting in special selected plein air locations, lodging and two meals per day at the historic Sagebrush Inn. (http://www.sagebrushinn.com/)

Painters are welcome to work in oils, pastels, acrylics and watercolor. Materials list and daily schedule will be supplied upon registration. A branch of Artisans art store is nearby. (http://www.artisan-santafe.com/)

Travel arrangements and fees

Call Jeannie at Esplanade Travel to reserve your workshop space with a $550 deposit. She’s at (718) 597-1414 or jrw.esptravel2@verizon.net. She can also help with your flight arrangements if you wish.

Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone has led workshops for 8 years at the Women’s Studio Center, LIC, and at Great Neck Arts Center. She has been awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center and grants from National Academy School and Art Students League.

Carol L. Douglas (moi) is the chairperson of New York Plein Air Painters and teaches plein air, studio and figure painting in Rochester, NY. She studied at the Art Students League and elsewhere. (http://www.watchmepaint.blogspot.com%20/and http://www.goaway-letmepaint.com/)

For a brochure you can print, go here.

The Kung Fu Fighters

2008-01-29T08:16:00.000-08:00

I have recently had the opportunity to work with two young artists preparing portfolios for college. (Their work follows in the posts below.) They are laughingly called my Art Slaves since they have been in my studio seven days a week. One of my adult students wondered why they make such swift progress and she doesn’t. “If you’re willing to be chained to an easel seven days a week and do what you’re told, you can do it too,” I said. (But the charm of adult learners is that they are individualistic, stubborn, and idiosyncratic, and I wouldn’t have them any other way.)

Neither Sandy nor Ze had ever painted in oils before December. That they each have an oil painting in their portfolio is an indication of how hard they’ve worked.

Completed portfolio: Sandy Puifong Quang

2008-01-29T07:31:00.001-08:00

Sandy Puifong Quang is 19 and will graduate from Monroe Community College in May with an AS in liberal arts and a GPA of around 3.5. Although she has always loved design, Sandy didn’t know she loved art until she began taking studio classes at MCC. Sandy speaks three dialects of Chinese along with some Russian and French. Her family are refugees from the fall of Vietnam and run a restaurant in Rochester.

Sandy started working with me seriously in the summer of 2007, although I have known her for many years.

Self-portrait with catalogs, graphite on paper, approx. 18X24, 2007

Peonies life drawing, graphite, approx. 18X20, 2007

Skeleton life drawing, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2007

Peonies life drawing, pastel, approx. 9X12, 2008

Patrick, oil on canvas, approx. 18X24, 2008

My parents’ restaurant, graphite on paper, approx. 16X18, 2008

Sneakers and keys, graphite on paper, approx. 18X18, 2007

Gourds and squash, watercolor, approx. 20X20, 2007

Fred, collage, approx. 12X9, 2006

30-minute figure sketch, graphite on paper, approx. 18X24, 2007

My room and gnome, collage and graphite, approx. 12X12, 2007

Figure sketch, graphite on paper, approx. 18X24, 2007

Figure sketch, graphite on paper, approx. 18X24, 2007

Figure sketch, graphite on paper, approx. 18X24, 2007

Completed portfolio: Zeyuan Chen

2008-01-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

Zeyuan Chen is 17 and will graduate from Brighton High School in June with three APs and a GPA of around 3.7. Ze emigrated from Kunming Prefecture at age 9. Her native language is Mandarin but she speaks flawless English. Ze’s father is a professor in China and her mother trained as a mathematician but works as a waitress here. (She completed this portfolio while maintaining excellent grades at one of the top 100 public high schools in the US.)

Ze started studying with me in Fall 2007, although I've known her for much longer than that. She has studied Chinese calligraphy and painting, which is evident in the delicate brush work of her piece, Qing Yi, which is a setting of a friend's poem.

Self-portrait, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2007

Sandy’s parents’ restaurant interior, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2008

Gail as Isabella with the pot of Basil, oil on canvas, approx. 18X24, 2008

Four bananas, colored pencil, approx. 18X24 overall, 2007

Peonies life drawing, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2007

My shoe, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2007

Qing Yi, colored pencil and ink calligraphy, approx. 18X24, 2007

Skeleton life drawing, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2008

Sock, graphite, approx. 18X24, 2008

Pile of shoes, marking pen on newsprint, approx. 18X18, 2006

Foot, graphite, approx. 9X12, 2008

Shoes, colored pencil and marking pen, approx. 18X24, 2005

Classroom window molding, graphite, approx. 18X24,

10-minute figure sketch, marking pen, approx. 18X24, 2005

Mary as John the Baptist (unfinished), acrylic on canvas, approx. 18X24, 2007

Paint Taos June 15-21, 2008

2008-01-17T12:22:00.000-08:00

Save $100
Register by February 20, 2008
Esplanade Travel (718) 597-1414
jrw.esptravel2@verizon.net
artzoneny@earthlink.net

Along the Rio Grande, by little old me

June is the perfect time for plein air painting in Taos! Join workshop instructors Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone and Carol L. Douglas and experience the beauty and majesty of the western landscape that captivated Georgia O’Keeffe, Nicolai Fechin and many others.

WORKSHOP

The fee of $1200 includes five days of painting, lodging at the historic Sagebrush Inn and two meals per day.

There will be both morning and afternoon painting sessions en plein air with a midday break for lunch. The days will also include individualized instruction along with instructor demos.
Painters are welcome to work in oils, pastels, acrylics and watercolor. Materials list and daily schedule will be supplied upon registration A branch of Artisan-Santa Fe art store is nearby.
For more information about instruction, contact Shelli Ardizzone.

TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS AND FEES

Call Jeannie at Esplanade Travel to coordinate flights and lodging reservation, at (718) 597-1414 or email her here.

Reserve your workshop space with a $550 deposit by March 1, 2008.

INSTRUCTORS

Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone has led workshops for 8 years at the Women’s Studio Center, LIC, and at Great Neck Arts Center. She has been awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center and grants from the National Academy School and Art Students League. (http://www.shellirobiner-ardizzone.com/)

Carol L. Douglas is the chairperson of New York Plein Air Painters and teaches plein air, studio and figure painting in Rochester, NY. She studied at the Art Students League and elsewhere. (http://www.goaway-letmepaint.com/)

Handle with care

2008-01-14T17:14:00.000-08:00

The saddest sound in the studio is the plink of a pastel stick shattering on the floor. (It sounds like the ka-ching of a cash register.) But there are many ways to damage pastels.

A student had stored these pastels in a nylon carrier which holds six plastic boxes. Each box contained a selection of hard and soft pastels in roughly analogous colors. Because there was no rice or foam or compression holding the pastels in place, they danced jigs against each other. The resultant grey slurry coated the sticks, making it impossible to tell what color each pastel was.

We are cleaning them and putting a bed of rice in the bottom of each tray, but the process takes hours. Better to avoid the problem.

White rice (uncooked, please!) is a tried and true method of keeping pastels clean. It is cheap and renewable. (Be careful disposing of it, since it might tempt small animals.) Nevertheless, little rice-filled boxes are a pain in the neck to handle en plein air.

My favorite pastel box has hard panels which press in place with Velcro seals. These hold my pastels securely between two sheets of foam. My local art supply store has discontinued it because it isn’t well-made (I’ll vouch for that) but rather than show you some commercial alternatives, I’d suggest that you look at this delightful rendition made out of a cigar box. For my purposes, it’s too small, but I do like the price.

Cori Nicholls' cigar box pastel pochade. Devilishly clever, follow her link, below!

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Articles2/47843/611/

I have an old Dalor-Rowney wooden pastel box which might be perfect for making a larger version of Cori's box.

The Magi in Alabama

2007-12-14T10:07:00.000-08:00

John has posted his comments about the Adoration of the Magi in the Snow at The Shepherd’s Staff. He paints a wonderful word picture of Alabama which is well worth reading.

The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow

2007-12-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow (1567)

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Oil on wood panel, dimensions not available
Oskar Reinhart Collection, Switzerland

This Nativity by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is the second picture I am considering with my pastor friend John Nicholson at The Shepherd's Staff. John’s from Alabama, where today they expect a high of 78° F and sun. Here in Rochester we winter under a perpetually gray sky with much snow. The gloom and the oddly trudging figures swathed in black look natural to me but probably seem exotic to John.

My students have spent a lot of time in the past two months talking about composition. They would tell you that it is passing strange to have that Nativity on the edge of the canvas, partially obscured. Many critics have noted this and concluded that this is really a just a Flemish village scene with a Nativity tossed in. I disagree.

Pieter Bruegel’s birth was unrecorded, but it is thought to have been around 1525-30 in either Liège or Brabant. Just as there is ambiguity about his birthplace, there is no record of whether Bruegel died as a Protestant or Catholic. (He was shrewd—he asked his wife to burn his papers after his death.)

Bruegel’s youthful world was wholly Catholic. His training and early career were excellent and orthodox: apprenticeship to a leading Antwerp painter in the Italianate style (Pieter Coecke van Aelst), further studies with an artist-priest (Giulio Clovio) in Rome, a now-lost church altar in 1550-51. The anomaly was Coecke’s wife, Mayken Verhulst, an artist from Mechelin. This city was an early center for peasant genre painting, and she is sometimes credited with transmitting this idea to Bruegel. (She also trained his young sons after his early death in 1569; art history knows her mainly as the root of the Brueghel painting dynasty.)

Bruegel worked with three themes throughout his career: peasants, landscape and religion. In his early work, these converged and diverged in no particular pattern. As a member of a successful atelier family (he married the Coeckes’ daughter) he flourished; he had a high degree of skill as well. But his most brilliant paintings were at the end of his life. Was that simply because he had grown to maturity, or was he responding to the trials of his times?

One of the decrees of the Council of Trent was that religious painting must be suitably elevated; saints must be set apart from mere mortals in dress, demeanor and activity. The Church recognized that saints with dirty feet were a dangerous endorsement of the Protestant concept of a priesthood of all believers.

By then, Reformation was smoldering in the Netherlands; Anabaptists and Calvinists met secretly and illegally. Bruegel left no record of what he thought of this or anything else. But from a Catholic standpoint, his paintings became positively impertinent. Of these paintings, three deserve mention. Bruegel located his Tower of Babel (1563) in a Flemish city and dressed Nimrod as a European king. The Sermon of St. John the Baptist (1566) is militant—subversive, actually—because it clearly depicts a contemporary Calvinist or Anabaptist service. In it he identifies the heretic Protestant preachers with John the Baptist. The Adoration of the Magi of 1564 is a straight-up Nativity scene, but anything but saintly. Notice Mary’s droopy veil, Joseph’s distraction, and the brutish faces of the peasants to his right.

One could ask whether these reflected the views of his patrons or his own religious convictions. I would guess that the two were so intertwined that the question is meaningless. (One of Bruegel’s most important patrons was Cardinal Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, a leading European statesman and Counterreformer, but if Caravaggio's experience was an indicator, we shouldn't read too much into that.)

How powerful art can be! In 1566, the Reformation ignited in the Low Countries. It did so over the issue of art, in the form of the Beeldenstorm (“picture storm”), in which church art was systematically destroyed throughout the Netherlands. Spain responded by sending the cruel Duke of Alba to Brussels (where Bruegel had settled) to extirpate the rebels. This reign of terror—in which thousands died and many more were dislocated—led directly to the Eighty Years’ War.

It was during the height of this terror that Bruegel painted The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow. It’s lovely, but it isn’t peaceful. The central stream of figures is very nearly on the march.

This weekend I uncrated a set of porcelain crèche figures. They are terribly clichéd and indistinguishable from millions of others worldwide. (I treasure them anyway.) Our museums are full of similar Nativities—some brilliant, many not. Some religious art slipped over the line to idolatry, and much was commissioned for base reasons of power and prestige. The Beeldenstorm set out to destroy the fruits of these bad intentions, but it destroyed indiscriminately. In his last years, Bruegel was feeling his way along the narrow space between the Beeldenstorm and the Duke of Alba. Today we see his Adoration as quaint; we don’t remember that it was radical.

The Protestant impulse forced a new way of painting. Artists couldn’t produce idols, so the pattern books of their faith—unchanged for a millennium—were closed to them. How, then, could they articulate their religious feelings? Bruegel actually painted three winter scenes of the Biblical Infancy Narratives. The others are The Slaughter of the Innocents (1565-66) and The Census at Bethlehem (1566).

Slaughter of the Innocents, detail (1565-66)
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Oil on wood panel, dimensions not available

Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Bruegel was addressing a problem which bedevils our own age: how can the artist tell an ancient, unchanging story in a new language? He solved the problem by quoting a traditional icon in the context of a new reality. In these three paintings, the new context was the Protestant priesthood of all believers, represented by the peasantry. Today we call this “appropriation art” and imagine it’s a new idea.

The Nativity (particularly the Virgin and Child) is the most commonly painted subject in art. Even in our secular age, even among non-Christians, it is universal. Bruegel’s brilliance was in realizing that he didn’t need to spell out the scene inside the stable; everyone knew it. In fact, in not doing so, he allowed us to regain something mysterious and personal about that night.

I must mention Bruegel’s technical prowess. Since he invented the winter landscape, he can also be credited with chromatic modeling in snow, in the form of violet shadows and the warm highlights. Note how the roof in the building on the top left is shaped by these shifts in color rather than with darker grey shadows. (This was an artistic choice; the snow on a dark winter day is generally flat.) The dark mass of people sweeps in an arc to the Nativity, pulling it back up into importance. Bruegel emphasized this sweep by making it the busiest part of his painting, and by making the figures darker and in greater contrast than the surround. This arc of humanity plays off against the perfectly composed diagonal lines of the surround.

Bruegel was an acute observer of reality. I respond to his winter scenes because they are true to my own experience, even if the details have changed beyond all imagining. I respond to his religious vision because I myself am feeling my way along the narrow space between two religious traditions.

A blessed Advent to you all.

Plein Air Taos 2008

2007-11-26T06:37:00.000-08:00

Taos, by Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone , 2007

I will teach plein air in Taos next June with Shelli Robiner-Ardizzone of New York. Here is some information about her previous trip to Taos. We will be sending materials out at the first of the year, but of course, if this trip is what you want for Christmas, contact me here.

Poppies in a Taos yard , 2007

Joan of Arc from a theological standpoint

2007-11-21T04:33:00.002-08:00

My friend John has finished his essay about Joan of Arc on his blog, The Shepherd’s Staff. (see the prior post for details). Please visit his blog and see what he has to say...

Joan of Arc

2007-11-05T08:08:00.000-08:00

My friend John Nicholson and I have decided to try a new project. I will choose a painting based on a Biblical theme and write about it from an artist’s viewpoint; John will write about it from a pastor’s perspective on his blog, The Shepherd’s Staff.

John is a Baptist pastor from Alabama; I am an artist from New York. Can we find enough common ground in our Christian faith to make this work?

Joan of Arc, 1879, Jules Bastien-Lepage (French, 1848–1884)
Oil on canvas; 100 x 110 in. (254 x 279.4 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jules Bastien-Lepage’s portrait of Joan of Arc at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York never fails to make me catch my breath. I wander away from Rosa Bonheur’s gigantic The Horse Fair, which is a monumental, formal study of controlled energy, and am slapped in the face by The Maid of Orléans.

Joan of Arc was born into a bleak moment in French history. France and England were entering the penultimate phase of the Hundred Years’ War. The English had captured huge swathes of territory and secured the French crown under the Treaty of Troyes, which also declared the Dauphin Charles VII illegitimate. The French countryside was bearing the brunt of a century of fighting, depredation, and the Black Death 75 years earlier.

At about age 13, Joan began to hear voices. Eventually, she sorted these voices to be those of St. Catherine of Alexandria, St. Margaret of Antioch, and the archangel Michael. These coalesced into visions. At her trial, she said: “I saw them with these very eyes, as well as I see you.”

By the time she was 16, her heavenly counselors had become more insistent and specific. She never recounted her visions at her trial, but there is a record of them that slightly predates the relief of Orléans. A Flemish diplomat named De Rotslaer recorded “that she would save Orléans and would compel the English to raise the siege, that she herself in a battle before Orléans would be wounded by a shaft but would not die of it, and that the King, in the course of the coming summer, would be crowned at Reims, together with other things which the King keeps secret.”

The story of her initial rejection (“Take her home to her father and give her a good whipping”) and eventual triumph is worth studying. Two details touch me. The first is that the Dauphin subjected her to a careful theological examination before entrusting his troops to her. The second is that her career ended abruptly after her visions were fulfilled.

Jules Bastien-Lepage was part of a movement in European art and literature known as naturalism. This embraced realism but often was invested with an awareness of the condition of the poor, which in some cases makes the art into manifesto (see Charles Dickens as an example). At the same time, the nineteenth century saw an enormous population shift from the countryside to the cities, so there are elegiac overtones in the genre.

Jean-François Millet (1814-1875)
Gleaners, also called, The Gleaners
Oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay
(for a far better, copy-protected reproduction, see here)

Bastien-Lepage was temperamentally the heir of Jean-François Millet, who painted the incomparable Gleaners. About Millet, the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 said, “he has shown us how the trivial can be made to serve in the expression of the sublime, and how the Infinite and the Divine can be discerned in the humblest existence.” Vincent Van Gogh, Honoré Daumier, and Bastien-Lepage also had that sympathy, although it was tuned differently in each of them.

Bastien-Lepage painted Joan of Arc after the Franco-Prussian War. With their empire ruined and Alsace-Lorraine taken, the French identified powerfully with Joan. Bastien-Lepage’s painting is thus nationalistic, but to regard it as mere propaganda would trivialize it.

For one thing, there is the question of identification. Both the artist and the subject were from Lorraine. Joan was a peasant heroine and Bastien-Lepage was a peasant painter. She must have been an irresistible subject.

Jules Bastien-Lepage
Hay Making (Les foins), 1877
Oil on canvas

Musée d'Orsay (see here)

Bastien-Lepage’s most famous painting was Hay Making. Because it is a smaller and simpler canvas than Joan of Arc, you can make out the technique more easily on your monitor. His technique looks peculiar to us today. He married controlled realism in the figures to Impressionism in the background. These are two radically different ways of seeing and painting. As odd as this seems now, photography and Impressionism were both new in 1877, with no rigid rules. In fact, he synthesized the two approaches beautifully.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Tricoteuse, 1879
Owned privately

To understand the academic virtues of his painting, compare Joan of Arc to William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Tricoteuse, painted the same year (Bouguereau vies with Caravaggio as the best painter of feet ever). The figures share the same perfection of drawing and modeling. But there the resemblance ends. In his best work, Bastien-Lepage used perfection only where it advanced his narrative, and there he pushed it to a photographic clarity—Joan’s loosely-laced jacket, the muddy shoes on the reaper. Bouguereau distilled detail to an ideal. His girl is an archetype of poverty, frozen in time.

In Joan of Arc, Bastien-Lepage introduced Catholic symbolism archaically, so we can almost read this painting like an icon. Joan’s own discarded spinning wheel (covered with wool so coarse we can practically smell it) stands in for St. Catherine’s wheel. Michael’s sword (Joshua 5:13–15) hovers in the air as a portent of the sword Joan would later find behind the altar in the chapel of Saint Catherine de Fierbois.

You can easily see Bastien-Lepage’s Impressionistic brushwork in the background of Hay Making, but it is also the device that allows the three saints to shimmer in Joan of Arc (we just can’t see it online). Moreover, he shoves us into the picture with Impressionist abruptness. We sense we’ve stumbled across Joan in her back garden. Compare this to Gleaners, which is profoundly powerful, but far more classical in its structure.

Nevertheless, Bastien-Lepage was not remotely an Impressionist. It is always Joan’s face to which I first respond. Her moment is awful in the deepest sense of the word. It is not that she has shut us out; instead, she seems to have stopped completely. Today many people see that frozen look as a failure, the result of painting from a reference photo. I disagree. It is a face of transfixion, of awed intelligence. After all, the face of the tedder in Hay Making, is hardly photographic, even though the painter was using the same technique. She is loose-jawed, beyond exhaustion.

This is where Bastien-Lepage diverges from the earlier naturalist painters. Millet saw nobility in the peasants’ suffering; Bastien-Lepage looked forward to the bleakness of the coming century. In the eyes of Joan and the tedder in Hay Makers, there are glimpses of the deep psychological pain of the German Expressionist Käthe Kollwitz.

Bastien-Lepage died young (at 36) and much of his work is either schmaltz or unformed. But some of it veers into greatness. I have to wonder what he would have produced had he lived longer.

(You can peruse Bastien-Lepage’s œuvre online here. You can read the transcript of Joan’s heresy trial here, and the nullification trial here.) In researching this, I also came across the delightful and idiosyncratic Hay in Art.)

The Opium Eater, Addendum

2007-10-10T07:40:00.001-07:00

A reader sent me two more images of languid women for consideration.

Repose (Nonchaloire), John Singer Sargent, 1911, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Repose_(Nonchaloire).htm

Again, look at the hands which bring tension into the pose.

The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog, Thomas Eakins ca. 1884–89, Metropolitan Museum of Art
http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/eapa/hob_23.139.htm

To me this is the most difficult position to paint. It's easy to inadvertently make the figure rise in steps like a Ziggurat. That's especially risky in this situation, where the gown stands so off so intensely from the background. Eakins twisted the torso slightly and further modified the blue shape with the shadows at the front of the skirt and the bodice, creating a lovely, flowing gown.

The Opium Eater

2007-10-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

This week’s figure class featured Gail Kellogg Hope modeling a Civil War era gown of her own devising, minus the ruffled hoop. (Readers interested in historic clothing can see Gail’s work here.) Because Gail’s hair was down and she was recumbent, I thought she looked charmingly like a 19th century laudanum addict.

I wanted to begin this essay on languid poses with an American painting, but I was unable to find an American Victorian example. I’m not sure such a painting exists—it would have been contrary to our national myth to see womanhood as anything other than industrious, thrifty, and alert.

“Baudelaire's Mistress Reclining,” Edouard Manet, 1862, Szépmüvészeti Museum, Budapest. http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/manet/p-manet35.htm

Off to decadent France, then. The portrait above is of Baudelaire’s mistress, Jeanne Duval, who was a native Haitian of mixed race. Thus her coloring is more realistic than one might first suppose, although the blackness of the painting is Manet at his rebellious and intellectual best, as is the iconography (you can read an incredibly tedious essay on the subject here, although it doesn't answer what is to me the most interesting question: why the title—not Manet's doing—doesn't dignify her by name).

“Lady Agnew of Lochnaw,” 1892-93, oil on canvas, The National Gallery of Scotland http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/online_az/4:322/result/0/5396?initial=S&artistId=4829&artistName=John%20Singer%20Sargent&submit=1

The fin de siècle painters were much more comfortable with slouching. I’ve included this example by Sargent largely because the chair resembles the one in my studio—before a century of wear and grime and burst seams. Sargent’s lady reclines, but she is anything but debauched. Instead, the pose is one of aristocratic grace. Although Lady Agnew levels her gaze at the viewer with the same assurance as Jeanne Duval, her chin is down and demure. Notice the right arm culminating in a firm grip—it belies the rest of the pose and points to why Sargent’s portraits are never dull.

“The Baths of Caracalla,” Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1899, private collection http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/image.asp?id=610

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema was proof that not every Dutch painter was brilliant, although he gets my respect for being silly and exuberant. He was, of course, a fine technician. Although not strictly a Pre-Raphaelite painter, he shares with them the tendency to see women as sensual and emotional creatures. In this painting, his Roman matron sinks comfortably into a hard marble bench. Perhaps the background hints that these baths were built by Rome’s most psychotic emperor, but the matron’s couture, coiffure, coloring and companions are strikingly, calmly English.

“The Green Sash”, Henri Matisse, 1919, Art Institute of Chicago http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/citi/object?id=59919&artist=Matisse&keyword=

After that, it is a relief to return to the ambiguity of Matisse. This painting is austere; in fact it has a lot in common with the Manet above. There is no “setting” per se. As in the Manet portrait, the gown has presence and meaning of its own.

Note that in the portrait of Lady Agnew, Sargent is using Matisse’s patterns while in this painting Matisse is using Sargent’s beloved black paint.

"#13 from the book, 41 Etchings Drypoints," 1965, Richard Diebenkorn, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco http://www.thinker.org/imagebase_zoom.asp?rec=6339304212900030

We recognize this last work immediately as a mid-century American drawing by the hemline and the hair. As cloying as that was with Alma-Tadema, it is a virtue in this etching by Richard Diebenkorn. Why is that?

With the hand resting on the abdomen, we have come full circle back to the photo of our model. There seems to be nothing strange about that pose to me, but will future viewers see it as an idiosyncrasy of our age?

Where the movie "Big" was filmed

2007-09-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a week downstate. The culmination of this was the seventh annual “Painters on Location” of the Rye Arts Center in Rye, NY. Last year I was overwhelmed by the landscape, the parking, the driving and the event, yet I had a wonderful time. This year, Daisy dePuthod (see her work here) took me under her wing and with the logistics more manageable, I was able to relax and paint.

The artists’ boards were stamped at 3 PM on Friday, since rain was threatening on Saturday morning. Daisy and I gathered our boards and lunches and headed to the Playland boardwalk. Playland was built in 1927 and is the only Art Deco amusement park left in the United States; it’s a National Historic Landmark. The part on which we painted is a public beach. (To learn more about Playland, see here.)

Many people pointed out that the section I chose to paint was
used in a scene in Tom Hanks’ Big. Does this look familiar?

The boardwalk and bathhouse are set on a long curve, which makes for some intriguing arcs. I stood within a stucco arch and focused on the long curving sweep of the roof. Even though the subject of the painting was the bathhouse with its two towers I knew the picture depended on the sweep of the blue roof.

By the time I committed my drawing to canvas, the light was gone. It was a beautiful evening, with lights twinkling along the boardwalk, but useless for painting.

The next morning I arrived in Rye shortly after 6 AM.

No box easel! I can never find anything in them.

My set-up under an arch was a good idea, for it was rainy, cold and dark.

My first task was to refine my drawing in charcoal. Normally, I don’t do much charcoal drawing, but the buildings are complex and I was working fast.

Daisy scoping out the scene...

And Daisy painting the scene...

It was hard to choose among the architectural gems in this place...

I concentrated on painting the orange beams first because I needed them to be believable.

Note that I got rid of the man peering into the Museum windows. I think that was a mistake—he lent good foreground interest. I replaced him with a couple walking a dog—ubiquitous on the boardwalk, but too far away to lend any depth to the scene.

The finished painting:

"Where Big was Filmed"
16X20, oil on Ray-Mar canvas board, sold, Rye, September 15, 2007

Voila! The new studio.

2007-09-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

New studio space—spacious, with focus spots, color-corrected ambient lighting, and plenty of north daylight (when the sun is shining).

The project which consumed my August is finished. Here is my new teaching space, a lovely, calm, graceful room with great light. And here are my fall classes, for those readers in the Rochester area:

Studio in Art

Saturday, 10-1
Wednesday, 10-1

(Oil, pastel, acrylic, watercolor)

This class focuses on still life as a fundamental tool for developing drawing and painting technique. It is appropriate for both beginning and advanced students. Instruction emphasizes direct painting, where paint is applied solidly rather than through glazing. For watercolor and acrylic, the emphasis is on alla prima techniques.

$100/month

Figure

Saturday, 2-5
Wednesday, 2-5

(Oil, pastel, acrylic, watercolor, drawing media)

This class focuses on the figure’s relationship with the built environment. In addition to working with live models, we will study human anatomy, drapery and clothing. The class is suitable for both beginning and advanced students. Students without a background in figure drawing are encouraged to begin in charcoal.

$137.50/month

Five questions from Paul Abspoel

2007-09-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

My friend Paul Abspoel (here) asked me five questions to be answered on this blog. I apologize for the time it’s taken, but here are the questions and the answers:

Please comment: ‘God is an Artist, but his art is not very accessible’

“Accessible” art has a message we easily grasp. Our response to Creation is visceral and consistent: from the molecular to the cosmic level we react with awe.

As the Book of Common Prayer says, “At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home. By your will they were created and have their being…”

Who do you consider to be the greatest Dutch painter: Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, Vincent van Gogh, Pieter Mondriaan or Karel Appel? Tell us what you like about these famous Dutch painters and give us your explanation for the fact that there are so many artistic highpoints in the historic scenery of my flat little country.

Let us start with your last point—why your nation produced so many brilliant painters. Your weather (so damaging to frescoes and tempera) is the reason we have oil painting in the first place. It was developed by the Early Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyk.

Before there was the modern Netherlands, there were the Low Countries. This was the locus of northern Renaissance painting. There was a northern sensibility that was Protestant and Gothic, and which shaped a painting style that was intimate, naturalistic and religious. Unfortunately the Early Netherlandish painters are outside the purview of your question; they include many of my favorite artists.

Your country was birthed as a multicultural, polyglot nation. Flemish capitalists, Sephardic Jews and French Huguenots transformed sleepy Amsterdam into a wealthy world capital. That hybridization was similar to the one which created America, and it seems to work not only for commerce but for culture.

The Dutch Republic was unique in that your wealth was held by merchants and skilled tradesmen, not with the church or nobility. Your bourgeoisie's tastes ran to portraits, still lives, landscapes and genre paintings, in an “accessible” style.

On to your painters:

I have often wondered how Rembrandt ever sold a single painting, since he cared so little for Dutch virtuosity. His sensitive character assessments, intentional gawkiness, and fluid brushwork were more suited to Romanticism than to his time.

Rembrandt’s work is often subject to crackpot theories of attribution. Art critics can’t believe that someone so great can be so awkward, but it’s essential to his work. There is a Rembrandt at the Frick called “The Polish Rider” (here) which has been the subject of raging debate about authenticity. I believe it is his, and it illustrates how his technical unevenness contributes to the greatness of his painting.

There are only 35 definitive Vermeers known, so we are blessed to have several in the United States. I am always struck by how tiny his canvases were, since he seems to open the window on entire lives.

Vermeer’s genius lies in the way he reins in his superlative skill. Not for him the luscious, overblown still lives of his peers. We understand that he could paint anything, so what he chose to paint matters. He was a brilliant narrator, opening a tiny window into a story or principle. My mother has had a print of “The Lacemaker” (here) hanging in her dining room for forty years; I appreciate the moral tale (diligence and concentration) but at the same time it is also a lovely painting.

There is another Golden Age painter I’d add to your list: Franz Hals. He is known for his virtuosity, and people assumed he painted in one fast pass. Recent analysis shows that he built his work up in the traditional manner and then applied loose brushwork at the top. His hardy, carousing Dutchmen match my inner vision of your country. His “Banquet of the Officers of the Civil Guard” (here) show how gifted he was, but his intimate portraits like this young knucklehead (here) are what I love the best.

Van Gogh is probably the single most important painter of the last two centuries. He stood between the Impressionists and the Expressionists but there is no easy label to affix to him. There is no theoretical detachment in his color study as with the Impressionists; there is no disregard for subject as with the Expressionists. His work was always yoked to drawing and composition, and it is a mistake to assume he worked in one pass, for his work was carefully considered and developed. His paintings were never intellectual exercises or mindless pastorals. He was not distorting reality, but rather painting his own reality.

I admire his landscape technique beyond words, but I also empathize with him as a failed missionary and preacher. There is no way I can pick an iconic painting for him so I will point out an unusual one: “The Good Samaritan” (after Delacroix, here).

Pieter Mondriaan was interested in Theosophy, which makes sense when considered along with his move from expressionism to intellectual color theory. His grids are nicer in life than as reproductions, since they have a hand-made quality that is lost in photos. They are, of course, beautifully composed. However, I would select the beautiful “Molen Mill” (here) as his iconic painting, even though it’s not what he is remembered for.

Unfortunately, Karel Appel doesn’t do a thing for me. Willem de Kooning was more sensitive, less retrograde, and had a better color sense. But neither belongs in a list of greatest Dutch painters. Sorry.

What is your favourite Psalm? Please also tell us why.

The 23rd. It’s short and memorable. The first three verses are a promise about the Kingdom of Heaven on this earth. The next two describe our special relationship with God. The last one points clearly to our resurrection, as it neatly segues from this life to the next.

What special qualities do you appreciate in your husband and children?

I met my husband at age 15, in high school. We have been married 27 years. He is a brilliant and talented man with utterly no hubris about him. He’s sacrificed a great deal of his personal ambition to support his family, but he’s stoic and uncomplaining. He is not a rigid thinker and therefore my best guide to working through a complex question. He is not particularly reverent, which makes him very funny. And he loves art and history, so we travel happily through life together.

My daughter Julia (18) is an outgoing, entertaining girl with the heart of a missionary. Laura (also 18) is introspective, intellectual, and very loyal. Mary (14) has the soul of an artist, and I think she is most like me: often in trouble, but with a good heart. Dwight (10) is too young to categorize, although I would describe him as affectionate, funny, and unusual.

Outside this interview, what's the best question someone has ever asked you?

“Do you accept personal checks?”

A bit of a plug

2007-08-26T07:08:00.000-07:00

I am featured in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle's "Artist Spotlight" today, which you can read here. Thank you, D&C.

More about Sir Stanley Spencer

2007-08-11T14:17:00.000-07:00

An excellent story about this great English visionary painter in today's Guardian, here.

Short break to move studio

2007-08-05T06:01:00.001-07:00

I am painting this week with a much larger brush, relocating my studio to accommodate more students. I love to paint, no matter if it's on a wall or a canvas. Back soon with another "how to paint" adventure!

Visiting Paradise with Susie and Marilyn

2007-07-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

When my friend Susie arrived at the farm where we’d agreed to meet, she raised her arms and said, “Paradise!” It was a lovely farm alright, but Paradise?

We wandered. We looked at bales of hay in a pole barn and hiked to a rise where we could look down on the dairy barns. (Marilyn and Susie had previously met the farmer.) This was indeed a well-run and beautiful farm, set in a gently sloping valley.

I asked them why they liked this place. Susie said she was enthralled by the colors and the roll of the land. Marilyn said she saw the human figure in the sinuous twists of the hills.

The Bristol Hills aren't breathtaking but they are gently beautiful. Long ranges of blue hills overlap in the distance. I never respond to these hills in their purely natural state. I need to see that slash of pale gold in a faraway upland field to understand the lavender and indigo and green of the woods.

The Kingdom of Heaven is in some ways a cooperative venture between God and man. So is this landscape. No wonder Susie called it “Paradise.”

I continue to try to paint in the spirit of the Group of Seven and Tom Thomson. This isn’t really their kind of scene, but the wide disked field presents some of the paint handling issues they addressed. I chose this view for the difficulties presented by that large neutral foreground.

I was working on a 16X20 canvas, a breath of fresh air after all the small studies I’ve done this month. I started with an underpainting in Gamblin’s Transparent Earth Red. You can read more about their transparent Mars colors here.

Although I’ve been trying to work much dryer, the transition from board to untoned canvas makes that a little more difficult. The shadow above the hills is from erasure and isn’t really part of the value study.

Here is the midpoint of my painting. I have decided to do a potentially ugly thing and include the fringe of green at the bottom. As long as the value of the green and the brown are close, I don’t think it will be too awkward-looking.

I still have to unify the sky (yes, there were clouds; they showed up after I started). I have to figure out a paint-handling technique that works for the disked field and make some drawing adjustments on the hill to the right. But, oops! My easel fell and dumped my painting into the ditch.

There are bits of gravel, seeds, and dirt all over the right side of my canvas. The solution is to stop painting, let the surface harden up, and knock the debris loose with a palette knife. Oh, well. I was ready to quit anyway.

BTW, this is my painting buddy Susie:

And Marilyn:

Ironically, when they aren’t wearing billowing white shirts and off-kilter ball caps (to keep the glare out of their eyes) they are both very elegant women.

Field sketch to finished painting

2007-07-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

Here are two paintings by Tom Thomson which demonstrate how he went from a field sketch to a finished painting. He changes the aspect ratio a bit but it’s blown up roughly 3.5 times in the final work.

“The Opening of the Rivers: Sketch for ‘Spring Ice’” (1915)

oil on wood-pulp board21.6 x 26.7 cm (8.5X10.5 in)

“Spring Ice” (1916)

oil on canvas72 x 102.3 cm (28.3X40.3 in)

Both are owned by the National Gallery of Canada, http://national.gallery.ca/ and displayed on http://cybermuse.gallery.ca/.

Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne

2007-07-27T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Ingres,_Napoleon_on_his_Imperial_throne.jpg

My husband and I saw the show “Citizens and Kings” at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Three months later, the painting which sticks in my memory is Ingres’ Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne (1806).

Most paintings are better seen in life, and this is no exception. The marble ball on the throne simply floated in the dim light of the gallery. Ingres was a superb draftsman and renderer of surfaces (see here and here, for example). In fact his crystalline accuracy is one of many things which annoyed his early critics.

http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/Ingres/Ingres/HTML/el_ingres_inter.htm

Despite his skill, Ingres was no photorealist. He was, in fact, deeply sympathetic to medieval art, and you can see that in the rigidly symmetrical composition and symbolism of this portrait. Napoleon holds Charlemagne’s own sword and hand of justice to shore up his legitimacy. Compare this to Jacquie-Louis David’s portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps (1800), here, and David’s portrait of the Emperor when things started going sour (1812), here.

Ingres’ early career was promising. He won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1801, which entitled him to study in Rome on the French government’s tab (the government, however, was too broke to send him until 1806).

This portrait of Napoleon, however, damaged his career. It was shown at the Salon of 1806 to great criticism, including by his painting master David. He was panned for his imagery, harsh color scheme and his cold precision with paint. But what most baffled his audience was his deliberate quotation of pre-Renaissance art.

Ingres was so stung by the criticism that he remained in Italy more or less until 1841. His career was stunted by persistent criticism of his Salon entries over the years. For a while he earned his bread as a street artist doing pencil sketches of tourists.

In addition to the Napoleon portrait, Ingres showed three portraits of the Rivière family at the 1806 Salon. Compare his portrait of Mlle Rivière (1805), below, to DaVinci’s Lady with an Ermine (1485), below that.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/The_Lady_with_an_Ermine.jpg
http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/ingres/p-ingres6.htm

The two portraits above have far more in common than Ingres’ has with his contemporary David’s portrait of Madame Récamier (1800).

http://cgfa.dotsrc.org/jdavid/p-jdavid13.htm

While modern art viewers understand and value this kind of historical reference, it was unappreciated at the beginning of the 19th century. But I am not sure that was why this painting was reviled at the Salon of 1806.

Ingres depicted something ugly and disturbing about Napoleon. He was not the only painter to depict Napoleon in Imperial garb, but to me this portrait walks a fine line between hagiography and caricature. Perhaps Napoleon’s stiff stance makes him seem a bit of a poseur. Perhaps it is the bland arrogance of the expression (probably not painted from life).

To me, Ingres goes someplace dangerous in this portrait. I think the critics lashed out at Ingres in their fear of the Emperor. At the time, it must have seemed like stupidity on Ingres' part. Now it reads as brilliance.

Delaware Water Gap

2007-07-25T16:05:00.000-07:00

A water gap is a place where a river cuts a notch sideways through a mountain range. Geologists tell us this indicates a river which is older than the mountains it flows through. Pennsylvania is rich in these water gaps, and one of the most well-known is the Delaware Water Gap on the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Above: Lighting at 8:30 AM, 11:30 AM, and 2:30 PM

I started this painting around 8 AM or so and finished about 2:45 PM. The light shifted radically during this time. While the copse of trees on the opposite shore was delightful in the early morning, by midday the rock faces across the gap had emerged from mist. I was facing due east, so I knew the sun would track directly above me, gradually illuminating the scene before me.

I started by making a terrible mistake. That plant you see to the left of my palette is New Jersey’s state flower, poison ivy. I had dumped my painting supplies on top of it without noticing. My paper towels went into the trash; the rest of my stuff (and my feet) I washed with baby wipes as well as I could. Nonetheless, I await the rash with trepidation.

I started with a rudimentary sketch for placement. I was working on a small canvas (9X12) and I needed to scale the big landscape down to a workable size.

Next, I refined my sketch into a value study (meaning a sketch of the placements of darks and lights). This study is good for two things. You work out a pleasing composition, and you practice and refine your drawing.

As I continue to study the Canadian Group of Seven, I realize how they framed the landscape in overhanging branches and screens of tree limbs. I have avoided this kind of device because in my hands it looked tacky. But I was determined to try it here. I realized that these branches couldn’t be an afterthought. Instead, they must be part of the original composition, as carefully drawn and realized as the rest of the painting.

I mixed colors for the far hill with my palette knife. To paint with authority, you must mix enough paint. Mixing with a brush is bad for your painting and your brushes. The three colors at the bottom are for the trees—warm highlights and cool shadows on this summer morning. The two colors above are for the rock. Even though the slope hadn’t emerged from shadow yet, my knowledge of the Water Gap told me the faces would be pinkish with violet shadows. My midtone for the rocks was burnt sienna.

I am painting very dry—no turps and no medium, in an effort to keep each color clear and separate from its neighbors. This leads to my second error, about which more below.

I’ve added three higher key colors for the closer mountain, on the right. As you can see, my palette is creeping dangerously close to the poison ivy again.

The problem I mentioned earlier becomes apparent. Because I’m painting very dry, there is little blending going on between paints. In the past I’ve relied on the underpainting to mute my painting automatically, but that wasn’t happening here. I had to go back and “dull” the background colors before I could begin to paint the foreground.

Here is my painting at the point when I quit. I need to resolve the sky a bit and reset the water on the left, which should be more of a grayish olive.

Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

2007-07-25T15:07:00.001-07:00

Since Monday was a day of heavy rain, painting outdoors without shelter was out of the question (eventually the paint starts sliding off the canvas). The Cathedral kindly gave me permission to paint inside. I know the Cathedral fairly well, and have always been enthralled by Dutch church interiors (for example, see here, here, and here.)

My husband asked me, “How does it compare to Canterbury Cathedral?” It doesn’t have the patina of a thousand years of continuous use, but in fact it compares pretty well. For example, the stone carvings near the high altar are sensitive and traditional, yet very fresh and lively.

A serious fire swept through the north transept of the Cathedral in 2001, damaging tapestries, organ pipes and stone work. Today, the chancel and choir have been thoroughly cleaned and the great nave (601 feet long) should be finished by this fall. Perhaps this is my only complaint—I wish that in a thousand years, a docent could point high above to the vaulting and say, “These marks are traces of the Great Fire of 2001,” as a memorial to New York’s annus horribilis. For in addition to the World Trade Center cataclysm that year, the second-most-deadly plane crash in American aviation occurred in Queens in November. Although the Cathedral fire was far less important than the other catastrophes, it was etched into stone laid for perpetuity.

The Cathedral is a continual ongoing project. Although the cornerstone was laid in 1892, work has progressed in fits and starts (dictated by finances and two world wars) and is at this time moribund. I am totally charmed by the cinderblock-and-corrugated iron sheds along the south wall, which were built as temporary structures. It takes no effort to see them as wattle-and-daub huts pressed against medieval cathedrals-in-progress.

The light in the Cathedral was very dim, with the nave closed off and the high chancel windows dark on such a dreary day. That made paint mixing difficult, since I was literally guessing at color. Many tourists stopped to visit while I was painting, and I never let on that I was not from Gotham—it would have spoiled their fun.

Gwendolyn enters the room

2007-07-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

Gwendolyn is a beginning watercolorist who is reengineering the world of plein air for her classmates (and for me). She has made her French easel more functional than I ever imagined possible. Look here to read her first entry, which explains her innovations to date. I plan to make one of her noodle brush holders tomorrow myself. Brava, Gwendolyn.

How did I end up with more than fifty tubes of paint in my studio?

2007-07-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

OK, it's not that I'm a packrat exactly, but how long do you suppose this tube of paint has been kicking around? (For the record, there are also 58 tubes of watercolors...)

I have the terrible habit of buying paints without checking my inventory first. There are paints from my teen years, squatters left by former students, and orphan colors I bought but don’t like. There are also specialty paints, including a few metallics and zinc white.

But most of the tubes of paint in my studio are there because of my carelessness. That’s how I ended up with seven started tubes of titanium white, five different dark reds ranging from alizarin crimson to mars violet, several phthalo green mixes, and many other overlapping pigments.

There is a four-character colour index international (CII) code listed on every tube of good paint. Recognizing pigments from these codes is an important skill for the painter.

Just as Benjamin Moore uses names like “Yukon Sky” to peddle grey paint, art paints are often marketed with evocative names. Generally these names appeal to our sense of tradition, even when the old paint has no relationship to its namesake. For example, Indian Yellow was once made from the urine of cattle which had been fed mango leaves. Today it is made from lightfast diarylide yellow (PY83).

Other obsolete paints are approximated by blends. Naples Yellow started as lead antimoniate, but today is approximated by a blend of four pigments.

Then there are the modern synthetic organic pigments, which I enjoy tremendously. These were developed for industrial purposes and have no historical antecedents. They are great for their high chroma and clarity when tinted with white. The problem comes when they are used to mimic more expensive pigments. For example, I once bought a paint called “viridian” which was not genuine but a blend including a phthalo green. It looked like viridian coming out of the tube but stained like crazy.

When I was sorting today, I found three tubes of cerulean blue. One is Gamblin’s cerulean (PB35), which is “true” cerulean, made of oxides of cobalt & tin. This is a pricey paint but invaluable in the plein air paint-box. The second is cerulean blue hue, which is a much less expensive paint designed to mimic the color and opacity of PB35. It is a mix of zinc white and phthalo blue (PW4, PB15). The third was an off brand which I chucked before noting the contents.

There are places I can substitute the hue for the real thing, but why buy a mix to do it when I already own both the phthalo and white? A good general rule is to stick to single pigment paints whenever possible and mix your own colors. This gives you the greatest latitude.

There are great resources on the web to learn more about pigments. For oils, see Gambin Paint, here. For watercolors, see Bruce MacEvoy’s Handprint.com, here. (I am personally grateful to my friend Kristin Zimmermann for teaching me about CII pigment identification.)

Rip-rap on the Lake Ontario Shore

2007-07-16T19:22:00.000-07:00

I learned two important things today.

When electronics (like your work camera) go missing, it’s wisest to start by looking in your teen’s bedroom;

It costs $.25 per picture to upload photos from your cell phone.

This is my way of apologizing for not having “in progress” shots of this little sketch of rip-rap on the Lake Ontario shore. This was an extremely quick study, done in a few hours. The most memorable part was the surf rising and spraying my easel, my palette, and my feet.

These big rocks appear to be white marble and something else hard—gneiss? The prevailing stone here is Medina sandstone, which is soft and tints the soil pinkish. These big, hard white boulders look alien here. Although they are weathering beautifully, I hesitate to paint them in detail because they aren’t part of my essential Lake Ontario.

One more painting I want you to look at

2007-07-15T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here is another picture that has been on my mind recently. It’s Sir Stanley Spencer’s The Resurrection, Cookham (1924-27, Tate Britain).

http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13675&tabview=image

Sir Stanley Spencer is really three painters wrapped into one—a religious with a gentle, sweet view of “the resurrection and the life,” a superlative landscape painter, and a sexually tortured, brutally honest figure painter.

In April I visited the Church of St. Martin in Canterbury, which is England’s oldest parish church in continuous use, founded as the private chapel of Queen Bertha of Kent in the sixth century. As you can imagine, its graveyard is crowded.

I attended a funeral of a sweet eight-year old boy on Saturday in an old burial ground in rural New York. It doesn’t look that different from the churchyards at St. Martin’s or Cookham. What a comfort to imagine Tyler’s resurrection just as Sir Stanley Spencer saw it.

Talking about paintings in class

2007-07-15T10:27:00.000-07:00

We are currently analyzing paintings in class. This week, Gwendolyn brought Franz Marc’s “The Yellow Cow,” 1911, Guggenheim—NYC.

Franz Marc, Yellow Cow (Gelbe Kuh), 1911. Oil on canvas, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, NY.(http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_work_lg_98_5.html)

Franz Marc is hard for me to peg. On the one hand his painting clearly evokes the anxiety of Europe at the beginning of a century of world war (the artist died on the battlefield in March, 1916, near Verdun-sur-Meuse, France). On the other hand, there is something Chagall-like in his delight in these animals, which is very appealing.

Opinion in class on Marc’s cow was decidedly mixed. While some responded positively to the color, others found the palette and angular cubism disturbing.

Marilyn brought J.E.H. MacDonald’s “The Tangled Garden,” 1915, National Gallery of Canada—Ottawa.

The Tangled Garden, 1915, Oil on Cardboard, National Gallery of Canada—Ottawa) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:JEH_MacDonald_-_Tangled_Garden.jpg#filelinks)

“The Tangled Garden” shares some traits with impressionism, in its color handling, wet-on-wet painting, and rich impasto. (The delightful color shifts are not as apparent in this high-contrast reproduction.) However, it is a very carefully drawn and mapped painting, and MacDonald makes no attempt to mask his draftsmanship.

J.E.H. MacDonald is one of Canada’s Group of Seven painters. We share a lot of landscape features with the Great White North so I think it will be interesting over the next weeks to consider more work by the Group of Seven painters and their associates. (See McMichael Canadian Art Collection and National Gallery of Canada for more information on the Group of Seven.)

From 99 º F to 65 º in two days

2007-07-14T18:39:00.001-07:00

At Rochester, the shore of Lake Ontario is flat and covered with fine cobblestones. The shoreline is very even. It is hard to break up the strong horizontal and diagonal lines, except by putting in the dark overhanging trees.

What the lake lacks in architecture it makes up for with incredible light and color. On a windy day, the water shifts from violet to emerald as cloud shadows fly across its surface.

It was 65 º F when we got there with steadily strengthening winds. By noon, the wind was so strong, there were whitecaps on the lake and my hat had blown away. Of course, this fellow was happy…

I start with a crude sketch in Transparent Earth Orange (Gamblin’s transparent version of Burnt Sienna). My first pass is a very static composition, since I’ve divided the canvas into three equal spaces with two well-balanced lumps in the foreground.

I move the horizon line up gradually. I’d wanted clouds racing across the sky but realize you can’t have it all. I hope to break the bottom diagonal with little hummocks of plants along the shore.

The horizon moves even higher and only the clouds distant over Ontario remain. In truth, the only darks are in the foliage on the shore but I don’t want to weight the bottom of my painting so much. The shadow color on the water ranges from tints of ultramarine to quinacridone violet, depending on when you look. The green ranges from yellowish to emerald green.

My first pass is mainly to establish darks. Often the highest chroma in Lake Ontario is at the horizon line and the color of the water becomes less saturated the nearer you are to it. (This is the opposite of most long views, where the color becomes lower key the farther away you look.)

Next I establish an overall color scheme. I like this little sketch at this point, but I am concentrating so much on the water lighting that I don’t notice I’m “regularizing” the shapes in the foreground. The mind wants so much to balance things, but that same symmetry will dissatisfy me farther on. (The lump on the left is a young box elder and the wind at this point was bending it nearly double.)

I need to set the diagonals of the breakers, which appear to change angle as you scan the shore because they are rolling in from the west (over my left shoulder). Although the angle changes, the waves break at about the same distance from the shore no matter what direction you are looking.

I begin to consider the interstices between the breakers and develop the foliage in the front. Unfortunately, my painting pal has to leave, so we call it a day.

My biggest issue with this painting is to make the foreground shapes more interesting. I also want to refine the waves. But again, I want to do this on location, rather than in studio.

Painting on top of a ridge

2007-07-14T18:00:00.000-07:00

This study is about half finished. It was done on a ridge above Naples, NY (in the Finger Lakes region). Since I don’t want to work from photos, I will go back next week.

The thermometer read 99º F; later we found out that was as high as it would go. The photo was taken at the end of our painting session and the light was then much bluer. The mountains were a more complex color earlier in the day.

My goals for next week are to refine the drawing/painting of the tree line and the fields in the foreground. There is an unfortunate confluence of line where the tree meets the valley—I need to resolve that too. My painting is a little cramped horizontally, but I won’t try to fix that on this draft; instead I’ll paint it again.

Here is the view from the top of the ridge.

One more time with feeling--Tilt-a-Whirl

2007-07-14T17:54:00.000-07:00

My last attempt at blogging was so difficult it scared me away. But here I am, back for more.

This was done last Saturday at Seabreeze Amusement Park in Rochester. It was painted from about 30 feet away. The figures are imaginary because the cars were whirling too fast to see people. I loved the odd pulsating thing on the right which rises up and down like a sea monster. The canvas and lighted bulb actually conceal the mechanical arms of the Tilt-a-Whirl.

The best I could hope for in the chaos of an amusement park was a straight rendering of what was happening. I finished at dusk so was able to suggest the lights coming on.

I realize after the fact that most people hold themselves very rigid as the Tilt-a-Whirl spins. My figures are too relaxed.

Painting a small study using an indirect method

2007-04-27T17:56:00.000-07:00

Note: I first posted this in April but managed to lose all the illustrations. Embarrassing for someone who prides herself on her computer literacy. I recently realized I was overworking the thing, and ought to just follow the software instead of trying to bend it to my will.

During Wednesday's class I demonstrated a method of indirect painting where one starts with a monochromatic grisaille and then paints into it. I had so much fun with the demo that I decided to finish it, working with the monochromatic underpainting while still wet. (In true indirect painting, the grisaille is allowed to dry completely and then color is glazed into it in transparent layers. What I am doing is more properly called scumbling.)

I am working on a 5X7 RayMar linen art board (so these images are actually quite small). I start with a mix of two earth pigments, Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber, thinned with Turpenoid.

The advantages of cartooning in paint instead of drawing are numerous: you can wipe out what you don’t like, you’re inclined to work in masses instead of lines, your sketch is temperamentally closer to the final painting, and you concentrate more on your painting than your drawing skills. Rubens drew in paint, as did Rembrandt.

Those who were in Wednesday’s class know that my first sketch had two figures. But when I returned to it on Thursday, I could no longer remember where I was going with it, so I wiped it out. I decided (for no particular reason) to paint “Ruth amid the corn” for my subject.

While the first drawing was a sensitive rendering, it is a static composition, completely in profile. So I wiped it out and redrew it. The second draft is a rather brutish woman, but I liked the pose.

At this point I began to consider what I wished to say about Ruth. In the Bible story, she is starving, but remains beautiful enough to attract Boaz. She is an alien, but her story culminates in her being the great-grandmother of King David. She is both a poor woman and the ancestor of a King. The other women working in the field are separated from Ruth but aware of her. (The Book of Ruth can be read here.) I developed this stage by adding layers of paint and wiping it away where necessary. These layers were not completely dry as I was working over them, in contrast to a true grisaille, but I was able to add additional pigment without disturbing the lower layers. The goal at this point was to clearly develop the values (darks and lights) and begin to add texture. As I was not working with any reference (either a model or photos), the figure and face are unfortunately somewhat stylized.

I chose a transparent palette with mainly 20th century pigments: chromatic black, phthalo emerald, hansa yellow, Indian yellow, napthol red, quinacridone violet, ultramarine and phthalo blue. I chose this palette based on personal preference, because it certainly isn’t historically correct. Since the 20th century pigments were developed for direct painting, the end result is kind of quirky.

I glazed Ruth’s dress in blue as befits the ancester of a King (see representations of the Virgin). When the color was added, I noted a number of drafting errors—in the arm, in the basket, and in the placement of the eye. I could have corrected these in the transparency but didn’t feel like scrubbing them out on such a small canvas. Instead, I will correct them with opaque paint.

At this point I added two whites to my palette: zinc (for glazing) and titanium (for opaques). Zinc white tends to be warmer and more brittle than titanium white, which is extremely cool. It is important to begin using medium at this stage.

I began to experience the limitations of my brushes. I have been direct painting for so long that I no longer have sable or synthetic brushes. The hog bristle brushes I have are adequate but leave brushmarks unless you overwork the surface. I also have no tiny brushes, and I am working on a very small surface. Oh, well.

As I began adding white, I was also modeling chromatically. By underpainting in a warm tone, I have set up the painting so the light areas must be cool and the shadows warm. In these blues, I used a combination of violet and phthalo in the highlights, phthalo blue and emerald in the shadows, and ultramarine in the midtones.

I became aware of an annoying composition problem in the lower right corner, where the leg slices off a triangle. I could solve this by reducing the contrast and chroma in that corner, or by changing my drawing. I don’t like the bare leg that much anyway; it might contribute to a sense of motion, but is nonsensical for Biblical-era women’s dress.

I began to add the white to the flesh tones, which only emphasized the difficulties in the lower right corner. Note that scumbling the transparent (zinc) white over the wet transparent earth tones in the blouse results in warm and interesting shadows.

I realized I need to add some opaque colors in order to develop the skin tones and background. I choose yellow ochre, chromium oxide green, and raw sienna (modern earth pigments are more opaque than the historic ones). It’s a little picture, so I put out small amounts of paint.

The flesh is rather flat (I'm blaming my brushes), and my drafting errors have become more obvious. Note that I don’t strive for transparency in the skin tones at all. Rembrandt had a delightful way of painting solid faces into figures which were essentially transparencies (here, for example). I love it, even if I am not particularly good at it.

I decided to reduce the size of the figures in the background, and integrated a pale sky into the painting. Note that I was constantly refining the figure, the draperies, and the face with every iteration. In addition, I was reducing the contrast in the blue drape.

It was time to rid myself of that pesky leg. (I could have fixed the drafting, but that wasn't the leg's primary problem; its position was the issue.) Note that I used chromatic modeling on the white skirt even though the russet tones weren't pulled up from the underpainting. Also, I was steadily reducing the contrast in the blue drapes while increasing the chromatic range.

One issue with using 20th century pigments was becoming apparent. Many of them (the phthalos in particular) are high-stain colors. With little provocation they will bleed or track into neighboring sections of the painting. The painter must take extra care to manage this.

But—gack!—that eye! I’ve put up with it in the wrong place long enough. I had great fun introducing a stone wall and ruffles on the white skirt. It’s become somewhat more opaque than I intended but there are still passages which are transparent. Have developed the background figures as far as I want to… I think.

In that I have to teach tomorrow, I will let it dry thoroughly and then look at it again. There are shadows which need resetting, but perhaps I will take my friend Toby's advice and work this up as a larger painting.

Just for fun, here are some other renderings of Ruth.

Marc Chagall, The Meeting of Ruth and Boaz

William Blake, Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Ruth im Feld des Boaz