Realism without detail?

Garden Steps

12"x16" Acrylics on linen panel $175
You can purchase this painting HERE.

I started this one last August at the Villa Catalana paint-out in Oregon City. That day was so hot, windy, and dry that the paint practically dried on my brush. All I managed to do that day was make a bunch of smears and blobs on the panel, so it was a kind of enforced looseness. Somehow I managed to keep that feel when I started reworking it in the studio, and every time I worked on it I browbeat myself into not getting all tensed up about making it look realistic, and yet it still came out as realistic  as anything I've ever done, maybe even moreso. When I did the stones I made the lines rough and sloppy, really trying to do as little as possible as I put the colors on. Up close I see dozens of blurs and blobs, and yet when viewed as a whole, the general chaos and blocked shapes turns into recognizable plants and architecture. I couldn't resist putting in some real detail in the tree trunk and the rose stems; at least it makes a sort of center of interest. I think any more detail would have killed it.

I still have two other paintings from that day to finish up.

Flowering Fruit Trees

Driveway and Cherry Tree

We get this wonderful side benefit of fruit trees—besides the delicious fruit in the summer and fall, we get the flowers in late April and early May. And this pie cherry tree on a friend's driveway was shining with flowers on this overcast late April day. I was over there on a drizzly day and tried taking a photo through my car window, but raindrops got in the way. I was back a few days later when it wasn't raining and got my photo before the flowers faded.

I finally have time to paint again—my glass work is done for a while. I have a backlog of work I want to do from last fall till just lately, so I'll be working a lot this year. And as I look out at my garden, which looks much more grown than last year, I'm eager to get out there and do more plein air painting!

It's going to be a busy year!

The leftover paint paintings

Once again I finished up my main painting session with way too much paint to throw away, so I got my 12x16 canvas pad and used up the paint having as fun as possible. I decided to paint what was right in front of me, in as loose and abstract a style as I could. I was thinking of Joan Mitchell. I did add a couple more colors than I already had on the palette.

Is it a teapot? Is it a ship? Nope—it's the three young firs growing up in my neighbor's pasture. Every year they get two or three feet taller and are already blocking parts of a view I used to have. At the same time I'm lamenting that loss, I can paint these strong young trees as part of my visual garden, which they are now.

I also decided to vote into this status my little leftover paint study of several days ago, which I played with for two more sessions and also got some valuable lessons from. The main lessons were how beautifully the blue, burnt orange, and viridian and sap greens play together, and also how vitally important that almost black mass is to the mood of the painting.

It really is wonderfully enjoyable to paint for the sheer joy of putting color on a canvas, without expectation, without tension, without obligation to any goal except your own enjoyment.

A new approach for me: Start With The Whole Painting

Ligularia 3rd Day

I have a Ligularia plant right in front of where I've been sitting painting the barn that's been begging me to paint it since I first started painting outside. Its large lily pad-shaped leaves, thick burgundy-colored stems, and very casual but bright golden yellow flowers give it a lot of character. When I first started my barn sessions, its buds were just about to open, and I've been putting it off—not now, I'm busy—but now I'm done painting the barn for now, and its flowers are fully open, so two days ago I got out my biggest canvas pad, 18x24", and started working on its portrait. The first day I got just a sketch of its form, outlined, and a suggestion of values in the background. The second day I went out and made a conscious decision, because it is a portrait, to fully conceive and paint the background either ahead of or in parallel with developing the image of the plant. I'm tired of trying to paint a good background around a complicated subject.

The second day I roughed in the colors of the leaves, stems and flowers, specifically because I knew I had to make every color I used in the background had to support the portrait of the plant and show it off to its best advantage. As soon as I had a good idea of the greens, browns, and mauves that I was going to use for the Ligularia, I started experimenting with the background, roughing in and trying different colors and forms for the background. After that session's work I took this photo:

Ligularia 2nd Day

Most of the colors and shapes are the actual background that I see from my painting viewpoint, but as I was picking and choosing what I was going to include and what I wasn't, a fully formed thought came into my head:

"You don't have to use the colors that things actually are."

In other words, if a deep purple-brown worked better in the area where I wanted to paint one of my mugho-pines-on-a-stick, then it was not only okay, but perfect for me to paint that little pine in shades of deep purple brown, and if the huge green mass of Pineapple Sage doesn't work, it's perfect for me to make it shades of gold. In other words, every single element of this painting must work according to the theme and colors of the finished painting. I acknowledge that I've been getting reminded of this idea for years and years, and yet this is the first time I'm consciously choosing to keep it in mind the whole time I'm working on this painting.

Part of the reason I decided to do this is because every day I'm out there we get one day closer to the cold, wet, rainy season, when I won't have these lovely comfortable temperatures, soft breezes, and brilliant Oregon summer sunlight. I know there are artists who paint outside when it's raining and cold, but I'm not one of them, and I rather doubt I ever will be.

Another principle that I've bought into mentally that I wanted to put into practice was to paint over everything I don't like at the start of each session. I never saw the use of this until I watched the video "Mystery of Picasso", where I learned how much he reworked his paintings while he was working on them, and realized how much more freedom that gives you to try different ideas while you're working.

Today (Day 3) I spent most of the Ligularia session correcting things from the second day that I didn't care for, fixing leaves and where the flowers are. I also worked on the stems, and added the foliage of the different-shade-of-yellowish-green double file Viburnum which actually sits right behind the Ligularia. I didn't like the light colors predominating in the background, and I wanted to see if I could make the dominant color of the whole painting these two tones of green, without having them be confusing or conflicting.

I have a feeling this painting is going to take me several sessions, so I wanted to post what happens while I'm trying this approach to painting.

More plein air

Barn #2

After I finished the first plein air painting, I decided I wasn't happy with it for a couple reasons, even though it seemed a huge improvement over my last one, last year. First, I don't like how dark it is overall, and second, it's way more realistic than I want. It was great practice, but it's not even close to being as good as my best studio work. I looked around for other places to paint but decided to keep working with the barn, try acrylics, and try a limited color palette that I've worked with before.

I started with a one-color value sketch, and each day I added a color or two, gradually building up detail and trying to capture the colors in the scene without overworking it. I stuck with a larger brush for just that reason.

On the next to last session, when I'd done as much as I could without letting the paint dry, I had too much paint left, and the sky was full of paintable clouds. I got a pad of cheap canvas sheets (the one I've mentioned previously) and made an attempt at the clouds, painting as quickly as I could because they and the light were changing every minute. It took me about 15 minutes to get them as well as I could. I haven't had that much fun painting in a long time, and it was a great way to unwind after a session.

Clouds #1

Today I had the pleasure of painting in a pretty good breeze. Every few minutes, a new dusting of fir needles and pollen flowers came down on everything—the palette, the water tub, and the painting. I picked off the big lumps and kept going. By the time I felt that I was done with the painting, the breeze was getting stronger, so I skipped trying any clouds today.


I think I've spent about the same number of sessions as on the first one, and I think I'm done with it today, although I might tweak it a little more. I feel as though I'm making progress, but the big deal for me is that this is the first time I've ever really enjoyed plein air painting. Time to go on to the next one.

Plein air the EASY way

I've finally found an easy way to do plein air—out in my garden! It takes me two trips to get everything down there—I use an old one-gallon bucket to carry all the little stuff. I have a pretty comfortable cloth folding chair and a small metal easel I've taken down and stashed under the overhang of the woodshed so I don't have to carry them down every time. I use two little plastic lawn furniture side tables, one on each side of my chair, to hold everything but the painting. When I'm done, I turn one of the tables upside down and set it on the other one, so neither gets fir sap dripped on it. Fir sap drips on everything out there, even me. Leaving the tables out where I set up means I can get my chair back in the same spot from one time to the next.

I wanted to try watercolor first, just to make it as easy as possible. It took me five sessions of about two hours each to get this one to where I can't make it any better.

The first day I felt very guilty and started telling myself I really should be working. I had to remind myself that I was working—learning how to paint plein air! After the first time that wasn't a problem. It's been wonderful just enjoying my garden for a change. I found that when I sit there long enough for the birds to ignore me, I start seeing the whole place come to life. The clouds blowing around, birds going about their business, an intermittent breeze moving through the treetops, different kinds of insects checking me and my gear out. I got to where I can ignore the weeds I see, look at my plants without thinking of things I need to do, and just enjoy painting.

Fast and loose with the brush

Coralbark In Morning Light

I got this painting blocked in from the photograph, and then looked at all the lovely points on the Japanese maple Sango kaku leaves and thought, oh no, I'm not painting those. Then I argued with myself for a few days over how to make this painting looser than the last one without really changing the way the way I paint. On the third day, the answer came back to me from the Robert Burridge work I did: paint it fast. Go quickly. Don't think, just paint.

I did, and it worked! I didn't worry about keeping it loose, or making it look like the subjects, or how the texture of the paper would affect the brushstrokes, I just loaded the brush up with the colors and put them on. The absorbency of the paper made it pretty easy to get nice texture, and I was amazingly relaxed while I roughed in the first pass. After the first pass was done, I took a smaller brush and put in a few details here and there—probably should have resisted painting the fern fronds, but I couldn't—tweaked the colors a bit, and that was it.

But the whole way through, I had to keep arguing with myself about how much to paint the shape of the maple leaves. They're so small in this 11x14 painting that I'd have to use the smallest round brush I have to get them right, and I convinced myself that I don't want to do that. The gardener in me wants to do that, it wants to show the beautiful shapes and textures and complex colors of every trunk, stem and leaf. It wants to show the magnificent architecture of the simplest ancient flowers, and every luscious satin petal of a camellia, rose, or dahlia. But the artist in me is the one painting here, and I want to convey the feeling of being in a garden, not do botanical illustrations. If the viewer is a gardener who recognizes a little heuchera, a bank of sword ferns, or the trunk of a mature Douglas fir, great. But I'd rather have a viewer see how this spot in my garden looks in the pale sunshine of an Oregon fall morning.

Painting Other People's Gardens

I had the great good fortune to paint the beautiful garden of a friend of mine last fall. Her garden has a fantastic collection of conifers, both dwarf and standard sized, well-established perennials, and Japanese maples. I loved it! Of course I wanted to paint it! (I wanted to own it!) My second visit I spent half an hour just hanging out in it, taking lots of photos from different directions, with close-ups of the smaller plants. From those my friend chose her favorite view. My first effort was to make a sketch to test the color range and the overall design:

Study for Jayne's Garden
Acrylic on Paper

I felt like the overall design and the red-violets and blue-greens worked well together so I went forward with the painting. This was the first time I'd ever done a full color study as preparation, but it really made a difference to have it while I was working on it. It was much easier for me to visualize being in the real garden and remember how the plants stood in relation to each other. In the end, I still struggled for some time to capture the different textures and the rich color palette of the many different plants. Since my friend and her husband own a nursery—the wonderful Meadowcroft Farm in Oregon City—I felt duty-bound to render the foliage at least semi-recognizeably. After a couple weeks of concerted reworking, I eventually arrived at a final version:

Jayne's Garden
Acrylic on Canvas 18x24 SOLD

The painting went to its new home and I have a great experience and wonderful memories, forever. How lucky I am to have friends with such beautiful gardens.

Attempting the Rhododendron Garden

The Rhododendron Garden in East Moreland, southeast Portland, is one of my favorite gardens to visit and photograph. There are hundreds of rhodies and azaleas that bloom from mid-winter through early summer, and the fall color is equally spectacular. And in between the color shows it's still a beautiful, mostly tranquil space with an abundance of quiet paths, rippling streams and ponds, sporting several flocks of ducks and geese, some wild and some escaped captives.

I've even painted en plein air there, and might again, as there are lots of places you can park an easel and a chair without attracting too much attention. But this painting is from a photo I took in May 2007. The rhodies were in mid-bloom and it was a perfect spring day.


It's the most ambitious foliage painting I've attempted. I'm happy with the way the path turned out, and I'm surprised at the sense of depth in it. Now that I've finished it, I'd kind of like to paint the same scene again and see if it comes out any different. I'd like to try making a looser version, and see what happens.

However, I'm not ready to make good on that because I already have another panel on the easel, getting its preliminary drawing done! So more rhodie paintings will have to wait.