You can solve any problem if you stare at it for a week

Glenwood Barn

If there's any secret to success, it must be stubbornness.

I had a feeling when I started this one that the photo I started with had some problems I couldn't quite pinpoint, but the colors were nice, the light was good, the composition was pretty good, and I really wanted to paint this barn. I liked the fence and brush-filled wash in the foreground and thought it added an interesting counterpoint to the building.

When I had everything blocked in and the background colors and grass mostly complete, as I began to get the details of the barn nailed down, the foreground looked less and less compatible with the rest of the painting. I experimented tinting the foreground shadows with different colors from the rest of the paining—red, red-orange, blue—but nothing improved the problem. I painted it darker; I painted it lighter—neither helped. I did the same thing on the fence—highlighting it took too much attention from the barn, and darkening it made the whole foreground look like a dreary afterthought to the rest of it. I lightened it back up and left it all.

I stared at the painting for several days without getting any ideas. I thought about starting another one, but knew I'd never go back to this one if I left it. Finally, yesterday afternoon I got the idea to enlarge the lightest area of grass—what I'd copied from the photo—from a very narrow band across the center of the painting. I stretched the highlight down to cover most of the grass and pushed the darker grass into the foreground, and everything looked better.

This morning I wanted more change because the bottom foreground was still too strong, and pulling down the energy of the whole painting, so I stared at it again for a few hours and finally noticed a hint of pattern in the right side of the grass and knew I wanted to make that stronger. When I painted in the diagonal streaks of richer gold, the whole composition changed. The pattern created just enough of an 'X marks the spot' effect at the near corner of the barn, and it pulled the whole painting together. The foreground suddenly balanced the trees, and the barn itself took on as much importance as if I'd put a spotlight on it. I believe what it did was add a design element in the grass that somehow highlights the barn. Who knew?

None of that was in the photo. There wasn't as much grass, there were more shadow stripes, and the foreground was darker. It took me a whole week to figure all that out, but it feels so good to win one!

Here come the barns

I'm finally getting to all the barn photos I've taken since last fall. I decided to just try quick workups on paper of as many of them as I can get done, just for practice. As usual, I'm mostly trying to be loose and not get hung up on detail, but just have fun. Many of the photos were taken in pretty soggy weather—and one even when it was snowing—so I've made adjustments in a few. But what the heck, I'm not doing a documentary, I'm just painting. A few of them did have blue buildings, though, which was fun.

I started with the one I thought was hardest, and it went down surprisingly easily. I was expecting the tree to give me more trouble, but it didn't.

This red barn was probably the crappiest photo I had, but parts of it are okay. I think that the longer I look at this one, the more things I'll see that I should have done differently. For instance, the sharp line around the rectangle of plants on the right of the tree trunk that really attracts too much attention because it's so sharp. Also the lopsided look of the front tree that really was that way, but just looks awkward in the painting.

The third one came out really simple.

In fact, when I stopped, I thought, this is too simple—I've gone too far to the simplistic side, and I really need to push the pendulum back a bit. But then I thought, no, I need to just try and stay here a little while, and get used to working more simplistically, until I really get the feel of it. It's hard to give up putting in too much detail—I want to make sure I'm cured.

I'm thinking that we naturally notice and remember the small details and the sharp lines just because those are the things that attract our attention, and giving them most of our attention keeps us from seeing the overall composition and how the bigger shapes and forms of things relate to each other.

In painting, focus on forms or details or both becomes part of the painter's style, and paintings that are all detail or all simplicity can both be successful with viewers. But whatever the style, it all has to work together within a painting; it has to be coherent at some level that the viewer can both grasp and enjoy.

For myself, I love the precise mathematical detail of physical nature, but I don't like it in paintings. I love details in photographs, and I want photographs to show me those details. In paintings, I want shapes and forms that relate to each other, layers of complex colors, and rich textures that evoke the impression of details that aren't really there. I agree that the mind creates details in an image it understands, when they're not actually in the image. I'm especially interested in paintings that evoke a feeling or emotional response, and details in paintings just don't do that for me, even though details in real life fill me with awe, respect and love for the cosmos.

I've still got another dozen or so old barns and houses. More to come!

Barn in the big picture

In the Shadow of the Nine

I wanted to get more of the trees and show the barn more in proportion to its surroundings, so I took a wider view on this one. Today was sunny and I was able to get the last of the highlights and darks.

Barn #5

No clouds today, but I wanted to try something different anyway. I've been looking at a lot of Expressionist and Abstract Expressionist paintings in six books I got from the library last week, and I thought I would try something more abstract. I wanted to see if I could capture more of the feeling of the little barn under the tall, tall trees. It's not what you'd call finished, but I find something compelling about the simplicity of it.

A simple one I like

Barn #3

Third time is seeming like the charm for my barn paintings. I painted from the same location but used a slightly different view, and this one finished up in one two-hour session, plus ten minutes the next day to tweak a couple things to strengthen the composition. I started out with a plan to just paint in the major blocks of color first, thinking that would be my underpainting that would set the mood and tone of the painting—but it ended up being the painting. There's a lot less detail, but plenty of texture, and the feeling is fresh, spontaneous, and alive. Nothing over-thought or over-worked. The cold press surface of the unprimed paper really contributes a lot of texture.

The first day, there was more lighter-colored foliage in the firs, and the background brush in the left center was lighter, with no texture. The second day I made all the fir branches uniformly dark, and that balanced the mass of the barn better. I also added some darker tones and a bit of texture to the brush, and that unified the shapes more.

I'm still doing cloud sketches. They really are a great way to just unwind. All the ones so far have been looking just north of due East, toward Mt. Hood and the Gorge.

Clouds #2

This was a bit later, getting towards evening, when more colors were appearing in the clouds.

Clouds #3

This was a bit earlier in the afternoon. It's a really common configuration when we have moist air coming up from the South, and rain clouds build up over the Cascades.

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.