I finally found myself a painterly approach

For years I've been trying to loosen up my painting style and stop being locked into a purely realistic approach, and this painting feels to me like my first truly conscious achievement of a naturalistic painting that used brushstrokes as a fundamental element of the design. Participating in the Van Gogh immersive show last year was perhaps the final impetus to making that happen. Having the oil paints with their workability definitely helped.

I used mostly two brushes, a 1/8" flat and a 1/4" bristle bright, and adding a small 1/16" synthetic round for the foreground flowers and grass. Normally I would have switched to the small round to try to get the distant trees to look more like trees, but I've finally accepted that that's not what makes a painting good. What makes a painting look good to me is a good composition, an interesting or pleasing color combination, and some opportunity of mental or emotional connection.

I'm finding that I really enjoy painting the magnificent landscapes of the gorge and I want to paint as many of these beautiful places as I can. Coyote Wall is part of the Washington Syncline, a U-shaped fold with the youngest layers of rock on the inside. The other half of this U is on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge. I'm not sure how the wall formed but it looks like a slump/slide to me. It's another famous climbing site, one of several in the Gorge. I took the reference photos in April of 2019, the year of the Balsamroot Superbloom.

It was a bit of a revelation to me when I first brushed in the trees, to find that they looked just like trees to me, and I remembered what I've heard many times from artists I admire that engaging the viewers' own imagination helps them connect with a painting. A realistic or naturalistic painting is an illusion that invokes a response from the viewer, and imagination is what makes that possible. So there's no reason to feel like you have to paint detail, unless you want to.

Big fish: How to solve the biggest problems

Do You See Me?

I recently read the book "A River Lost: Life and Death of the Columbia" by Blaine Harden and was persuaded to enter an art show about the topic of the book, which was all the engineering projects that were done to the Columbia, with their resulting human and nature costs and consequences, the small benefits and the big losses. I was moved to try to give 'voice' to the inhabitants we rarely see outside of plastic-wrapped food packages—the salmonid poopulations that are hovering on the edge of extinction due to the consequences of the slowing of the river and the consequent increase in water temperatures, exacerbated by global warming.

When we view the Columbia River, we see many different types of work and play, but unless we’re actually fishing, we usually don’t see the salmon there. They are an inextricable part of the ecosystems of the entire Columbia watershed, feeding many of the peoples and the other animals, yet they are nearly invisible to us. This painting is to give viewers an up-close and personal view of what salmon look like in the river. It is based on a photo taken by Mark Conlin and published in Hakai magazine on the web.

Forest science studies show it was the fish spawning and becoming food for land mammals that provided the nutrients for the great forests; fish that used to come upriver in groups so dense "you could walk across the river on them," a perfect and seemingly inexhaustible food supply for the entire region, and this year the run was so small that fishing had to be closed months early. I keep wondering what it will take for us to mend the damage we've caused.

There was a great special on OPB this summer about two groups who were fighting over the "owls vs. loggers" dilemma who started spending happy hours together, drinking, becoming friends, and talking about each other's viewpoint, and wouldn't you know, they worked up a solution between them for how the loggers could do their harvesting and at the same time protect the owl populations.

Right now we have separate populations arguing their needs are the greatest, the most important, and that others' needs should be set aside. Maybe what we need is to argue instead that all the interests are important, and start working on ways to cooperate to meet everyone's needs. As soon as we recognize the equal importance of all the things we want the river to do, we can stop wasting time defending our interests as "the right ones" and start working on balancing solutions that allow us to do all those things--maybe in different ways--so that all those goals are achieved.

The paintings that don't kill us make us...

Rain Clouds Over Mt. Hood

...frustrated? humble? or just more stubborn?

This painting started out as a formidable adversary, and never let up till the last brush stroke. Which may be partly because I had a really clear vision of how I wanted it to look. I wanted the perfect combination of blue-violet and yellow-orange—tertiary colors, and complements—and I wanted Mt. Hood to look as massive and impressive as it feels when you see it, despite its distance and the more overwhelming drama of the thick, dark rain clouds.

It didn't help that for the more than two months it sat on my easel I was never able to give it more than one or two sessions a week, and some weeks, nothing. It's been so long since I started it that I don't even remember all the problems I ran into, but I do know the two biggest were giving sufficient detail to the bluffs and getting the colors balanced to give me the harmony and mood I wanted.

I really hope it's true that the more you struggle with obstacles, the more you learn in the process. But I guess if this demonstrated again that the key to success of any kind is to not quit till you're happy, then that's lesson enough for me. Never give up! Never surrender!

Painting rocks and pushing colors beyond the "real"

Horsethief Butte

Hiking around Horsethief Butte last fall with friends, I got a great photo that I hoped to make into a painting. These massive basalt formations are on the Washington side of the Columbia River just northeast of The Dalles, next to the Columbia Hills Historical State Park, which is also a worthy destination for the collection of Native American pictographs and petroglyphs there.

The interesting thing about these formations—and all the other exposed basalt bluffs and cliffs around them—is that from a distance, like across the lake from them, they look BLACK. But the closer you get to them the more colors you see in the stone and the lichens that grow on them—reds, browns, ochre, yellow, even green. Before I started painting I studied every photo I'd taken that day, then googled for images of basalt, and finally decided I wanted to show both how black they can look, and how colorful. That meant I had to invent my own colors, which is always more complicated, but also more fun.

I really wanted to paint the formations as accurately as possible, so I used my digital projector to draw in the outlines, and the first painting I did was to establish the angular vertical shapes of the stone in both buttes with a color value underpainting. After the initial blocking in I ended up adding multiple layers of thin washes, including violet, gray, burnt orange, brown, and black, lightening and darkening alternately until it finally looked good to me. By far, the most difficult part was getting the highlights on the left butte to look right. It took me three days to finally hit on just the right hue and value of grayed red-ochre.

The bottom line is that I kept trying different things, and if I liked it, I left it, and if I didn't, I painted something else over it. I particularly appreciate how easy this is to do in acrylics. You don't have to use medium, although you can, and I used to—now I just thin the colors with water. It's taken me a couple years to learn (and remember) what you'll get with all different dilutions of washes, from barely visible to barely transparent. I do give them at least a full day, preferably more, to cure before I put on the gel medium isolation coat and protective layer, and when I brush that on, I do it with a very soft brush and very carefully.

I cheated on the big version

Underwood Fire, 7:14am

I finally got to making a larger, more finished version of the Underwood Packing Plant fire last October. I enlarged it to 18"x24", which gave me a chance to do a lot more work on the smoke clouds,  and the foliage detail in the left foreground (which still barely shows in the photograph). But after struggling with the proportions of the barn in my last painting I really wanted to get them right from the beginning in this somewhat historical subject. I didn't want to have to draw a grid and then paint it out, so I got out my old Artograph opaque projector and used that to draw in the outline from the photograph. I feel like it saved me my usual hours of re-drawing and repainting when I'm 3/4ths done with the painting and suddenly figure out that the angles or shapes or sizes of the elements are off enough to make the painting look awkward.

The bigger a painting is, the harder it is for me to get all the proportions and placements correct in the initial drawing. I feel like all the extra time and paint it takes me to fix those errors is a waste—I'm not getting any better at drawing on large canvases. If I were, it might be worth continuing to try drawing the outlines the hard way. I give up. I want to spend all that time working on the painting part, getting the colors the way I want them.

In fact, with plans for more large gorge paintings in the works, I decided to buy a relatively inexpensive digital projector with a bright LED lamp that I can use during the day, unlike my old Artograph. A preliminary test showed me that I can use it fairly easily in my studio, and I'll share more details on it when I start using it later this winter.

In the meantime, I'm starting a big abstract.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Wishing you and yours all the best in this holiday season, and the best year ever in 2018!

Christmas 2017
Crown Point and Beacon Rock
Columbia River Gorge

Paintings, a party, and friends

'A Bigger Gorge' is all installed! Had a great time celebrating with many friends. Word is that it's been very well received by the tenants, and the building owner did a fantastic job of hanging it—which took him four hours using near-zero-tolerance theft-proof brackets. Hopefully, it'll be there for a long time. You can see it in The Gotham Building in North Portland, at the Page Street entrance, 722 N. Page Street. Have a cuppa at the Little Gotham Coffee Shop, right there!

Thanks to all my friends for their support and encouragement that helped me get there, and of course to the Hilderbrands!

Cheers!

Why cell phone cameras are a good thing

Underwood Fire, 7:14AM

I was at my friends' house and went out early my last morning there to take some pictures of the city lights across the river, and I noticed sky light reflecting on the river so I turned to the east to shoot one of the pre-dawn sky, and this is what I saw. After I pounded on the window to get their attention I whipped out my phone and took 3 quick shots, two of which were blurred. Sitting in the living room, occupied with books and computers, none of us had noticed it.

The fire was about an hour and a half old at this point, and I was definitely anxious as we watched a new, big flare-up about every 3 minutes for far too long, as the packing plant fruit boxes and parts of the pear shed caught fire, one after another. We got on the radio and found that our guess from looking at maps was correct. I really felt helpless watching the destruction continue, wondering if it could possibly jump to the trees and head toward us. When I heard they had six engine companies on it and more were on the way, I relaxed a little. About an hour later, they had all the flames out, leaving a smoldering, smoking ruin.

Another blue and orange painting! (With a little teeny tiny bit of yellow.)

5,184 square inches of painting

A Bigger Gorge

I finished the painting last night, after some rework on the foreground and the strip of sky. Haven't heard back from the client yet but there's nothing more I want to do to it. I don't think I could make it better without repainting large portions of it. It is what it is, and I'm willing to accept it as such.

I certainly do still want to paint a lot more pictures of the gorge, try different painting styles, different colors, and also different seasons, different angles and lighting, like doing more portraits of the same person; try to capture more moods, more facets of their personality. But I need to switch to other subjects for a while. A lot of other things are starting to pile up in my head and I need to get them out.

The most difficult aspects were all related to it being so big, and painting it in such a flat, semi-abstract style, minimizing texture in favor of colors. As I was working out the final selection of hues and values in the river and foreground, I decided to keep them simple, not to let them pull the eye away from the predominant focus on the far end of the river and the hills around it. I spent several days thinking that choice through and decided it was the right one for this work.

The PBS series American Masters profiled Tyrus Wong last weekend, whose landscapes combine traditional Chinese themes mixed with a simplified style and non-traditional colors. They quoted him as saying that large amounts of detail are childish, and what the painting should show is the painter's enthusiasm for the scene. I found his paintings dramatic, evocative, and very beautiful, and that coupled with my decades of admiration for the works of Georgia O'Keeffe helped me settle on simplicity. I'm not saying it's the right approach for everyone, or for every subject, but when it works, it's great.

The only real surprise was that it took about three times more paint than I thought it would. I'm really glad I tackled it. My greatest fear was that I was going to damage one of the panels carrying it back and forth to the living room for photos, and when I accidentally brushed them with my shoe just walking around the studio. So far they're all in good shape. I just have to glaze them now—I did buy an extra jar of glaze—and that will take several days for all of them. I would varnish them except I have no experience with varnish, and I'm not using these for guinea pigs.

What a difference the brush makes

I finally got all the hills looking pretty much the way I want them to, and moved into the finishing touches stage on all three panels, and for the last week I've been working on the clouds. I saw two problems with them, the first being that the clouds in #3 really didn't add anything to the composition. Panel #3, the right-most end, isn't the focal center of the painting anyway, but I didn't want it to be just an add-on, I needed it to have something in it that would catch the eye and be interesting to look at. Otherwise, why have it? Since the cloud area is where I have the most freedom to improvise, I decided to add an interesting cloud pattern that would draw the eye out all the way to the edge if one happened to be looking at that side of the painting.

Once I got that roughed in I went through all the panels, adding more color detail in the clouds—more colors, more combining colors by glazing the predominant tones by layering each over the others—purple over orange, yellow over orange, and orange over purple and yellow. This doesn't really show up in the photo, but in person it makes the colors look richer and a lot more varied. You can paint in subtle color shifts with a thin glaze that support the 3-D look of shapes. I was using my large flat and bright brushes, a couple different kinds but all with synthetic hairs. The ones I used are fairly soft as brushes go, but I couldn't keep from getting the paint on unevenly and leaving more surface texture than I really wanted in the finer areas. I was getting more frustrated by that because I knew I've gotten a smoother look in many previous paintings, and that's what I want in this painting—a minimum of visible brushstrokes and a maximum of smooth shapes and edges.

Then a few days ago without thinking why, I picked up a different brush, a large filbert Winsor & Newton Eclipse series, which is made of fitch hair, or "black sable". I have a few of them I bought years ago, they're actually for oils, but they work great with acrylics and I've used small ones in a number of landscapes to paint leaves. As soon as I started painting with it I knew this was the answer I was looking for. Fitch hairs are so much softer than synthetic fibers, I can make beautiful unbroken, consistent washes of even thinned-out paint, and because they hold so much paint it's easy to get a nice smooth edge line, or a more smoothly-graded wash. In addition, the softness makes it easier to work wet-over-damp without disturbing the layer beneath, which saves a lot of standing around and thumb-twiddling waiting for a brushstroke to dry.

I looked over the web to see if I could find an even bigger Winsor & Newton fitch brush, and probably because they come from real animals they're quite pricey, not as bad as sable but way more expensive than the White Wonder or Softgrip brushes I use a lot of. I also found none of the big discount sellers even have the #14 I have, and W & N themselves were out of stock on anything that big or bigger. So I looked on Blick again and they do have their own line of fitches, including larger brushes, at a considerable savings over the W & N ones.

Figuring out what the painting wants

I finally got the color I want on the last big hill. It took me three tries over three days. My first guess was too dark and I thought it was too blue. The second time I made it lighter and more gray, and that looked good value-wise, but the color just looked like it didn't fit. I puzzled over it last night, and finally decided to take it back to blue, but a warmer blue, almost matching the rear hill on the left side, so mostly pthalo, with a smaller fraction of cobalt. The other thing I did with this pass was reduce the range of values, giving it more aerial perspective by lowering contrast.

I think the reason it took me so long to get a color that looked good was, again, because I'm really inventing these colors—they only resemble the colors in the photo references I have; and those photos, which were taken in different seasons even, as well as different times of day, are all different from each other. It was too big of a leap for my brain to consolidate all that varied information in one pass—I had to circle around it for a while before I realized I was trying too hard to copy the colors from the photos instead of doing what the painting needs. Last night after I finally marked up a photo with these colors, I saw the symmetry I got by having the rear hills on both sides being almost the same hues.

The white lines are there because you can't cover up blue with Pyrole Orange without a LOT of impasto.

If I still like it tomorrow, then I'm done with the hills. Or mostly done. 😊

Almost 92º outside at 3:30pm. At least we had a nice cool night last night.

Working out the level of detail

I think the left-most (north side) hills are 95% done. Earlier in the week I started painting in the deciduous trees at the base of the middle hill, and took it to a level of detail that really seemed too much for the rest of the painting. I was afraid the overall scene would get lost in that much detail. I know that's the opposite of my main worry when I started (would there be enough detail to be interesting), but there you go. Anyway, I simplified it and darkened it, and I'm stopping work on that section for now. I may refine it more later...or not. I may end up wanting to put a lot more drama in the clouds.

Last night I roughed in the foreground across all three panels, so today I'm starting the 2nd pass on the south side hills. Only five weeks left to finish it!

Discovering a new love of painting

I'm trying to figure out why I'm enjoying working big so much. I've noticed that I'm not worrying about the outcome anywhere near as much as I used to. I think the sketching helped with that, but it also occurs to me that having to work with something so much bigger than I am, where I can only fit a small portion of it at a time in my field of view, maybe I have to trust that what I'm doing is going to fit in.

It's only about 30% done, time-wise, but it's going in the right direction. I've got almost all the shapes defined. I just want a little more shape definition on the north side (left side.)

I think there's something else going on that may be more personal—probably everyone wouldn't feel this way, but when I load up my big brush and step up to the canvas and apply the paint with a big stroke, it just feels like the most natural thing on earth. It feels like I've been doing it for centuries, and I'll keep doing it as long as I possibly can. It's not like I'm any good at it yet—I'm still doing a lot of repainting. But it feels like I've finally—finally—found something that totally belongs to me, and it's not a thing—it's a movement, it's a dance with color and form. It's even better than having a really good gardening day. It's like being myself in the most clear and unfettered way I know.

I love how it fills my visual space with color while I'm working on it—I really do like being surrounded by colors. But now that it's looking more like actual landforms, it's almost like looking out a big picture window at something 'real'. Glazing over this underpainting is what I'll be doing for the next several weeks.

Almost to the fun part

I've been making slow progress on the painting, and have almost finished the underpainting. After getting the more detailed photos I wanted, I'm tweaking the shapes of the bluffs on both sides of the river—and taking a lot more time than I thought I would need to do it. But I've started putting in some shape details and playing with colors a little on both the land and the clouds, which is fun doing this big.

I finally rearranged the easel setup so I can see the tv in my studio while I paint. I'm so used to watching dvds or streaming while I'm painting, I was really missing it.

It's going to be really hot here for the next week and a half, to hot to do anything outside besides water, so I should get a lot done.

I need more paint

Three and a half days of work later, I'm still working on the underpainting. I emptied another partial tube of paint—my cobalt green. I had just placed another order with Blick two days before, so I had to switch to a different green, permanent green light, and adjust the mix appropriately so it's good enough for now. I really underestimated how much additional paint I would need for this. And this is just the underpainting! Who knows how much more I'll need for the glazing!

Other than that, it's going well. I'm getting more detailed photos of the hills to work with, and once those get drawn in, I'll be able to start playing with more hues and layers of glazing.

I would say at this point that being able to work across two canvases at once is pretty much a requirement, for efficiency if nothing else, and especially when you have a design that requires continuity of line across those seams.

The whole three yards

I was sitting in the living room staring unconsciously at my sofa when I realized that its length and poufy cushion makes it possible for me line up the canvases out here so I can see them all together, and from more than three feet away. The only way I can see them lined up in the studio is to stand to one side and use a fresnel lens:

Obviously not a great solution.

So! On we go. For the first two days I couldn't help spending time saying to myself, "What was I thinking?", even as it was taking shape. I would stand looking at just two panels together and think, that is huge! But being right up there next to it, with those intense colors filling my field of view, mixing big globs of paint and brushing it on with large, bold strokes—it feels great!

I have to take my 40% coupon to Michael's this morning and get more purple and diarylide yellow paint, but right now I'm just excited to see it all together. And, very, very happy that I can see it all together.

Making room for a big canvas

The first day of work on the painting I put each canvas up on my regular easel one at a time and blocked in the top band of purple. When I finished that and lined them up, I saw that even with the drawing, there was a big difference on the sides of the #1-#2 seam. I knew then that I really needed to work on two at a time.

So today I moved my regular easel out to the garage and brought the rack back in, and set it up in the studio in the only place there's room. I set up a table on either side, and used the counter behind me to hold everything else.

Once I got a workable setup and started putting on the paint, it became fun. I'm really going through paint as I block in the basic shapes. I wish I could put all three up, but there just isn't enough room, in my 13'x15' converted-garage hobby room/studio.

A Bigger Gorge

I'm following in the steps of David Hockney and Robert Burridge and taking on my first ever multiple-canvas painting—and it's a big one. A triptych 4' high by 9' wide—three 36x48 canvases. I've done singles that size, even a 36x60 once, but this is a whole new level of largeness for me. It's going to make this studio feel pretty small, I'm thinking.

The design that my client chose is my little gorge sunrise sketch I did in May:

Since the design has so many lines that continue across two of the canvases, I have to have some way to line up at least two at a time for the drawing, the color matching, and the finishing touches—hmmm, that's about 80% of the painting time—so I'll be pressing my folding show rack into service. I was very happy to find out that it's plenty big enough to hold two.

I'll be blogging this all the way to its hang-up in a North Portland office building! I'm guessing it'll take me 2-3 months to finish. I think the biggest challenge is going to be to create enough texture and color detail to make it interesting at that size when the design is so simple. That may not be a problem at all, but it's the thing I'm most concerned about right now. Well, that and getting around in my studio while it's in here. I had to do some clean-up, some clear-out, and move one chair out to the garage,  but that's not bad. I've always wanted to paint big, so here's my chance to find out if I do like it!

And when I'm done, it'll be Autumn!

A new gorge sketch

Here's another of the sketches I worked on early this month, still playing with blue and orange. The scene is looking east from Catherine Creek State Park (again). I stripped out the trees, so the focus is on the shapes of the lands and light, and the sunrise colors.

Morning sun and shadows in a canyon

Canyon Shadows

Yesterday after I finished the last sketch I drew this one onto another 8x10 canvas sheet. I put about 5 micrograms of paint on the bluff tops in the wrong shade of yellow green and said, anhhh, tomorrow. Restarted after lunch today, knowing it had to be more citron-ish. Went through several shades of gray before I got a good general representation of the basalt cliffs, tricky because of the late morning light and blue-sky shadows, and ended up having to wash them all with ultramarine and black before I got the value right. I also had to stand back about 12 feet when comparing it to the photo, in order not to get lost in the detail.

I had a background goal to try to finish this as quickly as I could as a sketch. My watercolor friend says she likes to finish in one or two hours, so I set a goal of two hours, but it took me three and a half to get it to this point, not counting a fifteen minute walk through the garden in the middle.

This one didn't put up much of a fight, but I really didn't set the bar very high—I wanted it loose and I was much more interested in figuring out the colors than in focusing on detail. This is based on the idea that if you get the right colors in the right places, it's going to look pretty much like your subject, and "pretty much" was right what I was aiming for.

I really want to do this one bigger at some point—it's one of my favorite shots from my trip—but I wasn't sure I could handle the detail. It wasn't a problem at 8x10 size, but it'll be a different story at 18x24 or bigger.

So I'll do more sketches first.