Grudge Match

Summer Song

25 x 21

Some paintings just seem to fall off your brush effortlessly. From the first whisper of an idea to the last little tweak, they proceed as if the conclusion is forgone and inevitable, gracefully coming to fruition just as you imagined in your mind's eye. This was not one of those paintings.

This painting came kicking and screaming every step of the way. It started as the demo piece for my workshop in Taos. After bringing it back, I decided I didn't like the composition or the color harmony. I chopped it- from a 30 x 24 to its current size. Now, this is something I never do. But, it needed it, so I took a saw to it. I glazed it, reglazed, it got too dark, I scumbled it, and glazed it again.

More glazes, and then some glaze impasto. Too warm, I glazed it with a cool transparent blue on the left side. The top foliage wasn't right. I painted it out and scraped it back a half dozen times. Some velatura passages in the foliage. Glazes on top of that. I gave up on it. I came back to it. I hated it. Then I liked. Later the same day I hated it again.

Finally, there were little glimmers of hope. I kept at it, finally getting down to a few small adjustments. And then it was done, or I called it so. I've made my peace with it. But, I still hold a grudge.

All images can be clicked for a larger view.

Autumn-Morning Mist

Autumn-Morning Mist
12 x 12

There was most definitely some wishful thinking going on in the studio when I painted this. Hard to imagine that fall will ever come, but I was able to conjure up this painting of those lovely autumn mists from memory.

Velatura

Moonrise Over the Pines

36 x 30

“Trenta, quaranta velature!” (Translation: glazes, thirty to forty)
Titian

Velatura- don't you just love that word? Go ahead, say it a couple of times...doesn't it just roll right off your tongue? I've been doing some research on terms that were used in the Renaissance to describe what we refer to as glazing or to indirect techniques in general. Velatura seems to be used here by Titan as a synonym for glazing. But, other information indicates that this word referred to a milky or translucent glaze made with opaque paint rather than transparent paint. So, a scumble, right? Well, maybe. But, the distinction, at least among some writers, seems to be in the consistency of the mixture- a velatura being a more fluid glaze like consistency and a scumble being a dryer mixture. Whatever it was, Titian is said to have put it on with his fingers.

What comes through loud and clear is that all of these techniques were used in various ways, combinations and with great inventiveness in order to achieve desired optical effects and create form. For example, in Titian's case he used methods used in the earlier Flemish school, those developed in Venice and his own unique variations of those. Later, Rembrandt did the same, combining directly painted passages with voluptuous layers of both transparent and thinned opaque paint.

I started this painting as a demo back in April when my workshop group was here. Since then, I've worked on it off and on and added many layers- glazes, velaturas and scumbles. I've also used passages of glaze impasto- something I've been unable to find an historic term for, although Rembrandt used them. Whatever you call it, I love the look it creates. These details give a good idea of what the surface looks like and the soft, atmospheric look it creates. It also shows how much the larger image "tightens" up in the photography.

Velatura. Say it slowly...

My New Best Friends

Every once in awhile, it's good to ask yourself why you do what you do. Here is an example. The other day I started thinking about why I use brights. When I first started painting again about 20 (!) years ago I used filberts because the artist I was studying with did. Eventually I switched to brights- tried flats briefly but they were too floppy for me, and I liked the square touch I got with a bright. Of course, I was painting in a direct, alla prima way at that time.

Fast forward to five or six years ago when I began exploring indirect techniques. My brush obsessions became about finding out what worked best for glazing (sable watercolor wash brushes) and for the drybrush transparent underpaintings I do (beat up versions of the aforementioned brushes).

Bristle brushes, at least the brights I was using, did not work well for the translucent and opaque passages that I layered on top of glaze layers and the scumbles I used in my skies and for forms in the distance. So, I used the sables and more recently some mongoose brushes made by Rosemary. But still, they were brights.

One of the challenges of the technique I use is to "marry" the transparent passages with those other ones- translucent, opaque, scumbles, drybush, etc. A heavy handed application will look out of place- like it should be on someone else's painting. And, worst, of all, it will destroy the atmosphere and mystery I work so hard to achieve. So I tended to keep those passages thin, which also tended to level the paint quite a bit. I use Liquin as a medium and it is a wonder for glazing- increases transparency and flow and in doing so-levels the paint. Even used sparingly, it still tends to bulldoze a brushstroke.

So, for no particular reason except I have been rattling these issues around in my head now for years, the other day I pulled out a couple of well worn rounds which belong to my husband and a tube of Galkyd Gel which I experimented with in direct painting about 10 years ago. And this is what happened. (click for a closer look).



And this.



And this.




The Galkyd Gel tube says it increases transparency and creates impasto. I thought upon reading that- "yea, right". Well, it does! Somehow, it combines high viscosity (no flow) with transparency to create a glaze impasto! Which means those particles of opaque-ish paint are suspended in a glaze like stroke- so it looks like it belongs with the rest of my painting. And the rounds were stiff enough to create a brushstroke, but gave me a freer, less angular paint application that suits my work perfectly.

I tell my students that it is important to make time for R&D (research and development) to explore new ideas and techniques. I guess I need to take my own advice.

Finding A Balance

In the Pines
24 x 20
detail

I like to think that mystery plays a big part in my work- like a character in a novel. Not surprisingly, my painting process reflects this. The layers of glazes and scumbles obscure some the initial information in the underpainting and create areas of visual uncertainty. But I have also found that I crave some beauty in the surface itself- areas of deep dark mystery surrounded by suggestive passages of paint. Enough form to satisfy our lizard brain's powers of recognition but not enough to destroy the playground of imagination. It is a difficult balance, and I am always veering off one side of the road or the other.

I have had a wonderful response to the announcement of the Little Everglades Ranch Florida workshop next spring, with many taking advantage of the Early Bird Special for those who register this month! Also, just in time for summer, the online course The Painted Sky returns next month. Details here.

Morning Fog

Morning Fog at the Pond
11 x 14
Available at Deborah Paris Fine Art

When I did the under painting for this piece a couple of weeks ago, I had something else in mind entirely. But lately, we've had this lovely morning fog and it was all I could think about when I got back to it yesterday. Technically the challenge was to keep the values as close as possible yet high key while using shifts in color temperature rather than value to give the painting visual interest. I love the way fog softens, envelops, hides the forms in the landscape.

Telluride Plein Air- Day 3

Morning at Leopard Creek
10 x 8

Leopard Creek is a small stream that runs north-south "down valley" as they say here in Telluride. I actually discovered it last year when I was here but never got a chance to paint it. So I headed there on the first day. The greens in the grasses are actually a bit cooler and more intense - the product of a last minute scumble with thinned cadmium green.

One of the many challenges of this week- in addition to the ones I mentioned in my last post- is integrating my "new" indirect painting method into plein air work. Plein air painting is an alla prima sport - the high wire act of painting. My strategy has been to do as many under paintings as possible the first couple of days, let everything dry, then glaze. Risky business since we have to have all our work ready by Thursday!

By the way, we are allowed to pre-sell all work so if anyone out there is interested in this piece, please contact me and I'll put you in touch with the Sheridan Opera Foundation (show sponsors) to complete the sale.

Panels & Palettes

The Pool at Dusk
Oil 20 x 30


After my last post (thanking everyone who responded), I got several emails this past week from people wanting to know what I had discovered on my quest to reproduce the Magic Panel. I got a huge amount of information and some differences of opinion, all of which I appreciate immensely. Right now I am doing my own little R&D project by testing out three different gessos (Artisan, Utrecht, and Art Boards) and Gamblin Ground on hardboard, gatorboard and birch. The plan is to make a bunch of different panels with different grounds and supports, paint on them, then report back.

I've also had several emails over the last few months asking about my palette. I talked a little about that and my technique for doing under paintings followed by layers of transparent color here. When I started to paint again about 18 years ago (yikes!), I started with a limited palette because that's what my teacher and mentor, Ned Jacob, used. I stuck with it for a long time and I'm glad I did. Limited palettes are great for teaching you how to mix color and making you focus on the components of color (value, temperature and chroma). As time went by, I modified the limited palette to suit my needs, but pretty much stayed with primaries, ivory black and white. Last year, when I started working in a more indirect manner, using glazes and scumbling, I knew that I needed to address opacity vs transparency, something I'd not ever really thought much about.

I started out by working with the transparent colors that are well known and obvious- ivory black, burnt sienna, sap green, ultramarine blue. I also already had a color called Shale by Vasari on my palette which is a rich warm transparent dark with a violet undertone. An artist friend suggested I try Indian Yellow - and that was all it took- I was hooked. Wow! what a color! Where had it been all my life!! What other colors had I been ignoring?!?

A little research quickly led me to Gamblin. I was already using some of their products (Gamsol, primarily) so I checked out their line of transparent colors. Now many are in my paint box- transparent orange (every bit as wonderful as it sounds), transparent earth yellow, transparent earth red, ultramarine violet, brown pink (delicious!), hansa yellow light, terre verte, olive green and indanthrone blue. I've also added naples yellow, which is opaque, but mixes beautifully with many of these transparent colors.

So that is how I went from three colors to a "joy ride in a paint box"( as Churchill once famously said) .

J.M.W. Turner in Dallas- Part 2

This is the second post on my visit to the exhibition J.M.W. Turner at the Dallas Museum of Art. You can read the first post here.

As I mentioned in my first post, I always feel a bit like I am entering a shrine when I go to an exhibition of this sort. Both as an artist and a lover of art (and those can be two completely different things) being in the presence of the work of an artist I admire and revere is a humbling and reverent experience. In Turner's case, it is perhaps doubly so because his work has had a profound and transformative influence on the art of landscape itself and on the work of so many artists including me.

It is not exaggeration to say that Turner, along with his contemporary John Constable, charted the course of landscape art from a backwater, second class genre to the towering achievement of late nineteenth century art, Impressionism. Turner has been called the first impressionist but I think that is a simplistic, linear way of looking at what he achieved. What he set out to do and did was to express the idea of light, air and atmosphere in his paintings.

When Turner turned to oil painting he came to the medium as an accomplished watercolorist. His early works were completed in a traditional way on a dark toned ground and worked up with a fairly well developed under painting followed by opaque touches and some glazing to bring the whole to completion. As his career progressed, partly because of his watercolor background and partly because of his fascination with Venetian painting techniques, he began to experiment with the use of light colored grounds which would be more reflective and create luminosity, especially when used in concert with glazing. Turner was avidly interested in the new pigments which were becoming available, particularly in yellow and whites, which he believed were necessary to express light in his pictures. He often used a mixed media approach, using both oil and watercolor in the same painting. His experimentation has unfortunately led to some of his paintings being in extremely poor condition - even during his own lifetime.

His quest to portray light and atmosphere also resulted in the forms in his paintings becoming less substantial, often dissolving into or emerging from the light through veils of translucent color. Contemporary accounts of his painting methods indicate that he relied heavily both on glazing and scumbling to achieve these effects. The result are works which appear startlingly modern. Subject matter was essential to Turner but light and color became the most important formal concerns of his art. In that way, he seems to actually leap frog over the Impressionists into modernity - toward Helen Frankenthaler and Rothko.

But Turner most certainly loved the landscape and his devotion to its many facets comes through in these works. He used light and color to describe the idea of the Sublime with which he believed the natural world to be imbued. It is that, for me, which gives these works power and timelessness.

Starts and Finishes

Over the last couple of months I have gotten several emails asking questions about various aspects of my painting process. Since I don't have a small painting to post today, I thought it might be a good time to write about that... if anyone happens to be interested. First, I should say that my painting process has changed pretty radically over the last year, so what I say here isn't something I've been doing a long while or am even sure is the way I should be doing it. Previously and for many years , I worked in a fairly direct way- not exactly alla prima (except outdoors) but definitely direct. Now, I am painting in a more indirect method which involves using layers of paint - and more passages of transparent paint. So here is a typical lay in using a color made by Vasari called Shale. It is the workhorse dark on my palette- I like it because its transparent and has a warm violet undertone. I used to thin my paint with OMS for this stage, but now I often use an almost dry brush technique to put this first layer down because it will show through in portions of the finished painting. This is also why I like a linen with a little bit of texture so that I can also use that texture to describe elements of the landscape, like here, where the texture of the canvas and the drybrush help describe the field. I also use a rag to wipe out lights and a palette knife to scrape out finer lights.

Here is the next stage of the painting where more transparent layers have been added to the trees and also the field. When you are planning to use layers of glazes you have to be very careful not to get things too dark too quickly. Unlike a more direct method - where you can always adjust the value of a shape with another coat of opaque paint- if you want to keep that area transparent, you have to get it exactly right from the start (which is always a good idea anyway!). In addition, because successive glazes will darken the glazed area, you have to start a bit lighter than you plan to end up. I will also use a scumble occasionally( a thinned translucent layer of paint, usually containing white or some other light opaque mixture) to lighten an area, or to soften edges and create atmosphere. I use Liquin as a medium. I also use it between layers to "oil out" the painting- that is to bring the colors and values back to their original state so another layer can be accurately judged against what has already been laid down. Here, the opaque portions of the painting, the water and sky, haven't been laid in yet but the light value of the canvas "stands in" for that value. Using transparent paint in the darks and opaque paint in the lights is pretty standard procedure, but I like to mix it up sometimes, using mostly transparent paint for the entire piece like here or transparent paint in some of the lights, like here.

Here is the finished painting. The sky and water have been added with opaque paint (Naples yellow and Gamblin Brown Pink + a touch of white) and then glazed over with several transparent layers. More layers have been added to the trees and ground plane, creating what I hope is a rich color harmony. This painting is available at Ernest Fuller Fine Art in Denver, Colorado.