Just a reminder, my 1/2 price Holiday Sale is ending January 5th. There are more than 100 works available in my online store currently, starting as low as $50, free shipping!
This is another study of clouds. I’m working on increasing the volume/weight of clouds, trying to render them much as you would a still life object. Enjoy!
Santa Paula Sunset, Oil on Linen, 8×10
The holiday weeks are a great time for me to paint. It’s a time of reflection, hope, appreciation of friends/family, and just general “good feeling”. I need the right, positive mindset to paint–and I think it shows in my work. At least, it’s the right start.
I painted this study in Ventura yesterday–it’s just a camera phone shot, so quite a bit of glare, but you get the idea. I like paintings like this with no sky, as it gives me a wider range of values for the land, and I don’t have to worry about having the sky and ground be harmonious. I can have more fun with local color. Without knowing it, this became a study in complementary color, always an interesting color harmony. One issue I have to think about in this study is the nearby hill in shadow (at the top of the painting) is too close to the green plants in shadow along the riverbed. I probably should have studied more closely these colors and separated them by temperature or hue (see my March ‘07 post on “color separation”). It’s unlikely these colors were this close.
Ventura Riverbed, Oil on Linen, 8×10
This morning I painted with David Stonesifer and Marge Levine. Marge is visiting the Bay Area from New Jersey, and emailed me a couple of days ago to see if we could paint together. We met at the Palace of Fine Arts and had a good time painting–between the tourists. There were hundreds of them in-and-out during the morning (bus loads), so it made it a bit of challenge, along with weather shifting from sun to clouds every 15 minutes. But hey, that’s plein air! It’s always a joy.
My first study was “a scraper” (wiped the canvas clean). I tried to follow the light back and forth, and it just didn’t work. I should have split my canvas in half, as Camille Przewodek always advises on days like today: one half for the scene in sun, the other is shade. But good came of it. As I was running out of time, I did a quick 20-minute study in hazy light. I kept it loose and simple, which often results in my best work. Nothing spectacular here, but that’s what studies are for: just capture and generalize the large value areas and keep the composition simple.
I’m finally back! I’ve been visiting family in Southern California, and unfortunately, no WiFi was available to post. Time to catch up.
This video demo shows a how I interpreted a Colorado sunset in paint. I took snapshots throughout the painting process and string them together in this video. There were many shots taken, so you’ll get a better idea of how I go back and forth to adjust a painting before it’s done. I’m still struggling with dark values. I wanted the sky clouds/colors to be rich and warm (ie, as little white as possible, because white dulls color and cools it), so I get the ground and hills relatively dark. You’ll notice in the video that 3/4 of the way through I lighten up the hills (particularly those in the distance). Perhaps the warm clouds should have been lighter? I need to learn Photoshop, so I can play with these “what if” questions on my PC. I recall that Kevin Macpherson wraps his paintings in plastic and paints over them, to check alternative color/value, and also as he works on larger works and wants to check his color mixing.
The video looks darker than the original, so keep that in mind.
Colorado Sunset - Oil on Linen - 12×16
Here’s another sunset painting (see 1, 2) done from reference photos taken while on my recent trip to Casa Cosmos (Mexico).
Clouds are fun to paint, because they make flexible compositional devices. No one’s going to notice if a cloud is a slightly different shape, or in a different position, than the actual scene. But clouds are a challenge to paint, because they need to have volume. All too often, clouds appear stuck on top of the sky, flat. I’m certainly guilty of that. Some clouds do appear that way, because they’re thin and have little volume. This painting has a few of those, but the big cloud on the left side was larger, and so I had to show the clouds weight. In general, the light side of a cloud needs to be lighter than the sky, and the dark side darker. This usually means that you have to seek a very close value relationship, as well as temperature shift. I’m happy with the volume I was able to convey in this one. It took time, lots of adjustments back-and-forth between the underside of the cloud, lit side and sky.
Sunset #3 (Casa Cosmos), Oil on Linen, 12×16
SOLD
The other big challenge painting sunsets is color. It’s easy to go overboard! Yes, the colors are intense, but there are also lots of neutral grays in sky, and in fact those neutrals provide a calm stage for the intense colors to shine. The other big challenge with color is value. To check the values in this painting I converted the color photo above to gray scale. This is a great way to check that your values are accurate. Compare the color image above with the gray scale version here and you’ll see what I mean. It’s difficult to judge value accurately with intense color.
Casa Cosmos #3 in Gray Scale
Point Lobos has so much to offer artists, and I’ve painted it many times. This painting was done from a reference photo, if I recall correctly, from the area around Cypress Cove. Many artists have captured this awesome place, including classics by Percy Gray, F. Childe Hassam, Guy Rose (1, 2), and contemporary painters Kevin Courter, Brian Blood and Robert Lewis. Here’s a Google search result of Point Lobos paintings with lots of others.
Point Lobos is a place of sharp edges. Monterey Cypress branches angle sharply against the wind; the jagged rocks fight relentless, active surf; the ocean’s dark green/blues show the great depth of the inlets. With steep terrain like this, dramatic light effects are common. This view shows the late afternoon light fighting through the trees and rocks, creating slivers of light on the ground and treetops.
If you ever get to Northern California, don’t miss the opportunity to paint at Point Lobos!
Point Lobos Light - Oil on Linen - 12×10″
SOLD
In October I painted a couple of studies of the historic Palace of Fine Arts buildings built for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, built just a few short years after the devastating 1906 San Francisco Great Earthquake and Fire. That exposition was instrumental as it introduced important art movements from around the world to American artists. Today, it’s not a traditional art museum, as you may expect, but houses the Exploritorium, one of my favorite museums in the city. It’s a museum “of science, art and human perception”, it continues it’s role as a place of all things “new” in the arts.
The buildings have just finished a restoration, so the scaffolding that has been surrounding this dome are finally gone! I may paint here again this weekend, as there are lots of compositional opportunities and the weather is perfect.
I especially like the later afternoon light, which is when this was painted. It illuminates the dome in about 1/3 light from across the lake. When painting structures, I think it’s important to capture them in partial light and shadow. Just as with the figure, this approach allows you to best convey form and structure. If the building from this angle where in full sun or shadow, I wouldn’t have been able to convey the shape and solidity of the structure.
It’s for sale in my online store. Enjoy!
Here’s a second painting of sunsets from Casa Cosmos. I wanted a bit more sky/light in this, and I found a great reference photo. Perhaps more to come…
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