Learning to paint clouds

I made a commitment to try to learn how to paint clouds this winter. I'd like to get to the point where I know them well enough to be able to invent realistic looking clouds. My goal is to finish ten small cloud paintings. I've just finished my third and have started my fourth. I forgot to put the first two up here, so here they are. Both are of Spring clouds in the Columbia Gorge, looking north from the Oregon side of the Columbia River, in the vicinity of Tom McCall Preserve, west of Hood River.

It's all about the Composition

Goat Mountain Sunset

I've spent an awful lot of years learning to get the colors I want in a painting, and I'm getting good enough results now—not necessarily easily, but eventually—so it's time to get on to the next part of learning to paint: the paramount importance of composition, and how to create a good one. I take thousands of photos a year, and maybe 1% of them I recognize instantly as having a great composition. I've watched other people do value studies, and I've done some myself, but only a couple days ago, as I was contemplating what to paint next, I finally understood that it's during the value study that you adjust the composition until it acquires what it needs to attract attention. I always end up trying to fix the composition in the last third or less of the painting process, because I've been so focused the whole time on getting the colors right.

I frequently repeat the saying I read long ago, that "Painting isn't hard—you just have to get the right colors in the right places." So I was focusing on the right colors; now it's time to focus on the right placing.

I did a monotone value study for this last painting as the first stage, and I think it's been this experience that's made me fully absorb the process, and be able to think about it clearly. The study looked like this:

Then when I started painting over it, I first went with a blue violet palette, looking for something dramatic.

I decided I didn't really like that, and shifted more towards aqua hues, as I kept reworking the shapes and adding details, until I had the underpainting finalized.

And then I finished it, using a new trick to make sure I was capturing the composition that attracted me to the photo in the first place. I like to use my iPad as my color source now, but looking at an image that large (anything bigger than 5" on the short side) makes it really difficult to see the larger shapes—my brain just gets lost in the detail. So I print up a small image of the reference, no more than 4" on the long side, and tape it to the easel post right above the painting. When I stand back 8-10', I can easily compare the shapes in the painting to the shapes in the photo, and see how to fix things if I've gone wrong. Ta-da!

This view is not in the Columbia Gorge, it's from near Cornelius, at the edge of the coastal range.

Getting the lines right from the start

White Salmon Canyon Overlook (SOLD)

I've only been realizing the last couple paintings that I've done a poor job of the overall lines and shapes from the get-go, before I finish the painting. It never used to dawn on me till well after I'd finished glazing and framing it. This one, I figured it out in time (I hope) to partially fix them. The problem was, I had made the outlines of the yellow hills too rounded, making the composition look cutesy, and not the impressive vista I had seen. I also made the foreground slope not steep enough, but was only partly able to correct it. However, the change I made was enough to drop the cartoonish look and make it more true to my memory. I hope next time I'll make more certain of the major lines while I'm still at the drawing stage.

I've felt all along that the overlapping triangle shapes was the big attraction about this composition, along with the opposing blue darks and yellow lights, not quite a harmony but interestingly close. I'm thinking that having those lines and proportions correct is key to capturing the visual feel of a landscape--not to mention the demeanor of the whole composition—the big zigzag here is what I always think of when I see this, or remember first seeing it at sunset on a brisk fall day in the gorge.

This view is looking north up Washington Hwy 141 from White Salmon, with the river off the left side.

The Moon In The Window

Back to doing sketches. I've gotten all wrapped up in learning how to make silver jewelry, using wire and clay, with multiple steep learning curves and lots of brain work. But Robert Burridge's facebook painting challenge made me get my brushes out again. I've had pictures of the moon through my bedroom window for years and wanted to paint it, so I started it a few days ago and made more moves on it this morning. I'd like to learn to see the minimum essential elements of an object that sufficiently define it for the viewer, but are enough to carry the mood, the feeling of it. I think you can often do that better with a rough sketch than a finished painting.

I want to do a lot more of these sketches; it's been a long time since I put in any time just playing with the paint.

I finally freed my inner painter—and I like the result

Chili Box

I've been working on this painting with only one real goal—to put on whatever color felt like, without thinking about it. I worked on it several days, gradually shaping it into a pleasing value pattern, and stroking on colors from the palette in whatever way made me happy. I just kept playing with it, enjoying myself, and when I noticed things I wasn't quite happy with, I painted over them, not worrying about whether that would look right or not. I just planned to keep putting on paint till I liked it all. Then last night, after making a dozen small changes and additional glazing, I actually knew I knew I was done, except to sign it. I didn't think it—I felt it. And as soon as I stopped, I felt very content. I took some photos, looked at them, and made one more change.

I know this doesn't sound very earth shaking but I don't remember ever feeling quite so content, or being so relaxed throughout the whole exercise. I wasn't trying to do anything except enjoy myself, and make a painting I like. So I think what happened is that I actually painted this 100% the way I wanted, with no particular expectations or real goals except to make an interesting, beautiful painting. All I really consciously chose was the color palette and the squares format.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS to EVERYONE!

Merry Christmas

and 

Happy New Year!

Bromeliads

Bromeliads

This was the most interesting and challenging photo I had from Villa Catalana from last year. I've never painted gravel, or bromeliads, and I wanted to try. Once again I turned to copying a photo, because it was a splendid photo, of truly splendid bromeliads in a beautiful environment. I have not yet gotten good at the art of making up paintings out of my head, there are too many things I want to paint that I don't know how to.

I believe it's the colors that I like most about all these plants, and about the painting.

I've been thinking I need to go on a painting binge again, so today I went through part of my backlog of photos and made a point of picking out the ones that I had a feeling about, mostly the feeling that I had when I took them. Not all of them seem like ideal candidates; some are very simple in composition. I want to see if I can put in any of the magic of place I felt in those locations, and make them come alive.