Abstracting a landscape

A few days ago, Kate Withers started a new thread on the Composition and Design forum of WetCanvas: 'breaking the rule of centering' (sic). She explained that she likes a centred composition and doesn't defer to the many art books and teachers that tell you not to centre your centre of interest. Kate included her recently complete painting 'Queen of Spades Range'.

 

I was hooked at first sight. I just knew that I had to paint my vision of this scene. My compulsion was a slight overdose of Frank Lloyd Wright via a student of his: Milton Stricker and his online book on "Design through Abstraction – The Wright Source to Art and Architecture". If you are struggling as I am with trying to see and paint the abstract shapes of nature, I recommend reading this excellent publication. It's not all about art and abstraction, but the images alone make it a worth while investment of the time needed to traverse this document.

Google (Queen of Spades Range) turned out to be no help at all. Not a single photograph of this area which surprised me so I had to work from Kate's painting. I cropped the image she had posted and then stretched it back to a square composition. From this image I drew a light pencil sketch on 200# Saunders-Waterford CP watercolour paper. Using a ruler I straightened the curves with darker lines, some of which I extended beyond that lines of the original sketch. I then used some recently acquired Decocolor Acrylic paint markers to trace over the straight lines. I used red for the mountain and black for the lower slopes.

I turned the painting so that the sky was tilted downward. First a wash of water with just a hint of Raw Senna, followed immediately by another wash with a bit more Raw Senna and finally while still very wet, a third rich wash of Raw Senna. I then removed the tilt and encouraged the paint to granulate by shaking it slightly. It was then allowed to dry completely. The mountains got a similar treatment using Ultramarine Blue with some darker blues dropped in after the main washes. The foreground received a wash of Raw Senna with some darker yellows added to give contrast. I hope you like it.

Northville Art House: 6th Annual Member Exhibition

Art House, Northville, Michigan

If you happen to be in the Detroit area between February 3 and 18, 2012, and have a spare hour, drop in on the Art House in Northville and see the 6th annual members show. I was amazed at the quality of the work considering that it is a non-juried show. Most of the works are for sale and judging by the number of sales during the hour or so I was there on opening night, I would expect that a large percentage of he paintings on display will be sold.

Art House

215 W Cady St. (just north of 7-mile and Sheldon)

Northville Michigan

248-334-0497

Gallery Hours 1-5 pm Wednesday-Saturday

If you miss this excellent mini-show, there is a sale, 'Art from the Attic' on the evening of Friday, February 24, and during the day on the Saturday and Sunday. I expect some keen prices. Joan gave me the heads up that an Alexander Calder lithograph is being offered in this show-sale. Not too shabby for a small town art gallery.

Composition: Practice what you Preach!

For almost all of the past year I have been studying visual composition. Reading books and everything I can locate on the Internet. Taking part in forum discussions regarding composition and looking over images and sketches related to composition. The one thing I haven't been doing is practising composition.

During my first year of watercolour painting I discovered that nothing but nothing beats practice. You can purchase the finest brushes, the best watercolour paint, expensive palettes, top quality paper, watch DVD's by great artists, read their books, debate the pros and cons of a particular artists techniques, but unless you put brush-water-paint to paper, you will never learn how to paint.

Also during that first year, I watched with amazement and eventually a growing irritation, one member of an artist on-line forum, debate, research, discuss, and expound on: brushes, pigments, paper, palettes, easels, and even water containers. During that year, R never posted a single painting, but he became and 'expert' on most-all things watercolour, holding forth at great length about almost anything related to watercolour painting. Then one day, one of the forum moderators grew tired of his opinions and publicly challenged him: “Put up or shut up!” This resulted in another very long complaint thread on how it was wrong to insist that members should post their work to the forum. Eventually R relented and posted one rather weak example of his work. Shortly there after, he offered all his large collection of painting supplies for sale on the forum swap shop and that was the last he was heard from.

There was nothing wrong with most of R's posts. They were knowledgeable and well researched. The only problem with R is he never painted or made any used of the excellent brushes he had accumulated. Malcolm Gladwell in 'Outliers' describes the 10,000 hour rule. Basically it takes 10,000 hours of practice to be come expert at a skill. Larry Seiler advises to paint 120 paintings as you need this many to work through your mistakes. Whatever the number, if you want to learn to paint watercolour paintings, paint watercolour paintings! Nothing else works!

...and if you want to learn composition, you need to practice composition, and I haven't practising composition until this week when I re-started attending the local adult education watercolour painting class. I missed all but one of the autumn classes due to working on our new (to us) condo. In fact, I didn't paint from July until November. Starting back painting was a big problem. I found it very difficult to get back into the grove of painting every day. With the start of the winter session of adult education classes, I decided to go along, to force myself to paint more. A New Years resolution to myself was to paint at least 4 hours a day.

I did manage to attend class for 1 day in the autumn session. The new instructor was offering a lesson series of near 'paint by numbers' watercolour subjects. A pre-composed scene with instructions to draw of trace an outline, paint this wash in this colour. Then... The same type of lessons I had from my first tutor. Zero creativity and self expression and in my opinion little learning. Oh you learn to paint a painting that looks like the one the instructor painted, but you aren't learning how to paint. A Bob Ross watercolour lesson. I didn't like it then and I don't like it now, so I decided that I would use each weekly lesson as a composition exercise. Each week I would take the components in the lesson and design a new and hopefully interesting composition.

• I would look at the original components, think about how some or all of them could be rearranged into and interesting design.  
• I would do some thumbnail sketches to try out these design ideas.
• Would a format change be of benefit?
• Do value plan/pattern need to be changed?
• What abstract armature will work to organize the space division?

This the image the tutor supplied for us to paint for this week.

 

I decided I would try to paint within the two and half hours of the class, a completely different composition based on the photo that the instructor provided. Needless to say, I didn't manage to finish the painting, but I did manage to make a start. After a few minutes thought, my could see that a quarter sheet portrait format wasn't going to work for me. I envisioned a over long, 2:1 portrait format for my new composition. Here is the page from my sketch book with my thumbnails.

 

I admit that they are not the best thumbnails you will find. I hope you can see from the bottom left sketch that I wanted an over tall portrait painting, but I only had quarter sheets of watercolour paper with me, so I resigned myself to a working within that format in the classroom. I sketched a best fit image onto the quarter sheet, and with half an ear listening to the tutor I proceeded to paint this rather poor watercolour.

The white block near the bottom was going to be the buggy. I added a stone wall in the foreground as that was what the rest of the class was doing at the time and my brook in the middle ground didn't work out either. Thoroughly discussed with the results, I put this project aside for a day. After a break and more thought, I did a full size contour sketch with the 2:1 format I originally envisioned.

Using this sketch, I painted my second attempt at this subject. After some time, I realised this this was working either. I would say that the four horizontal divisions is one too many divisions.

Which brings me to my final offering for this particular subject. It's still and over tall portrait format but now reduced to a foreground, middle ground, and background-sky. It thinks this one works.

 

I hope you enjoyed this little design exercise and maybe there was a small lesson in it for you.

Cortona Italy: a watercolour

Here is yet another trip to the Tuscan roof tops. This time I used Cortona, Italy as a starting point and with the help of GIMP, made some minor rearrangements. I have been having a struggle and continue to struggle with settling down to paint. I turned off the tap back in June for a holiday break with Jill. Then the condo sale went through and I was very busy working on it until the end of November. Christmas was taken over by a bad head cold that dragged into January. I tried to paint throughout this time, but it seemed to be such an effort even with the new studio.

Browsing through my image library, I decided to return to my love of the Italian countryside, walled cities with red tiled roofs. I've done a couple of these Tuscan landscapes and I greatly enjoyed to process so when I came across some photos of Cortona, I decided, maybe it was time to return to this subject. Getting started on Cortona was a struggle, but once I got past the initial washes I started to get into the flow. The more I painted the better I felt and the better I felt, the easier it was to paint.

I still haven't overcome all the down feelings I have, and it remains a struggle to paint, but I know that I can choose another Tuscan scene as get back into the groove. I'm not very well pleased with the result. I expect that I will have to re-visit this scene sometime soon and try harder. I hope you enjoy it.

East of Kayenta

A month in England mid-summer and a new Condo to fix-up and move into in late August has keep me away from the easel for more than 5 months. There is a never ending supply of jobs to do around the house, but a couple of weeks ago, I went downstairs, and started to sort out the basement. All mundane stuff: set-up the art tables, unpack the reference books into a new book shelf, lay out all the materials I use on a daily basis, store the others in desk the previous owners left behind (thank you!), and install new overhead lamps and power outlets. There was only one power outlet in the entire basement. ...and finally, last but not least, start painting again.

I had promised Jill, that I would paint a picture of the Anemone Roses that grow against the back wall of my house in Surrey. We were just sitting there one afternoon when Boom! The image of the green stems and white flowers against the red brick wall coalesced into a composition that demanded to be painted. I got out my digital camera and took a dozen or so shots of the area I wanted to paint and another dozen or so reference shots of the flower heads and stems. True to my word, I started on this on a full sheet of 200# CP, but it's going to take a while as I have to mask off all the mortar joints, the flower heads, and all the stems and leaves before I can start with the first wash.

I've progressed a fair way towards the first wash but I wanted to get back into painting that I decided to make several starts. While reading the 'Southwest and Western Art November Challenge' I decided to have a go at:

and here is my interpretation: 'East of Kayenta' 22x15 on 200# CP Saunders-Waterford

50 sheets of watercolour paper

When I could finally see that the condo was starting to approach a finished state, one that you could comfortably live in, I ordered 50 sheets of watercolour paper from Cheap Joe's. I thought it was a bargain and they would ship it for free. As it turned out, the condo wasn't as finished as I had hoped, and before I got a chance to use even one sheet of this beautiful hoard of paper, CJ's offered the same paper at a 10% discount and free shipping! I know the old saw: “an hour late or a dollar short”, but sure as 'grass grows green and the sky is blue...', if I has postponed my purchase, I would have finished all the jobs on the condo and sat around waiting for a small more expensive paper order to be delivered.

Anyway, the 50 sheets represents my commitment to painting for the 2011-2012 winter. Starting on the first of November, I cleared a space in the basement of said condo, set up my Ikea art table, moved the left behind desk over, installed the salvaged book shelves from the dumpster at the apartment we use to rent and started to unpack my art books, supplies, and the necessities to start painting. So far I haven't had any time to paint as the jobs in the condo continue to multiply but I did get to an artsy project. Jill wanted my “Cherry Hill” painting hanging.

I had temporarily re-framed it by reusing a one of the three frames and mats from the “Winter Weeds” series, but the burgundy mat clashed with outdoor “Cherry Hill” image so a couple of days before Jill asked me to hang it, I restored the trio of weeds to their frames. OK. Old frame + new mat will work and yes, I have some mat material that if not exactly compliments “Cherry Hill”, at least doesn't clash with it. Where's the mat cutter??? Two hours later, having twice moved everything in my large collection of art supplies I finally found my mostly black mat cutter in the bottom of a black drawer, under a pile of black electronic accessory cords. I only have myself to blame. That aside, I cut a new mat, re-framed “Cherry Hill” with the new mat, and hung it in the entrance hall. The first painting in our new (to us) condo. Not much to show for three hours effort, but at least I have a better idea where everything is, art material wise, after the move. Maybe next week will bring some time to paint. Gosh! I surely hope so.

New York, New York (So Good They Named It Twice)

New York, New York, New York, New York, New York, so good I painted it 5 times!

Actually this is about the third or forth time I've painted a New York skyline, but this time I've painted the lower Manhattan skyline as a series of 5 watercolours, a pentaptych. All the paintings are 22x15 inches on 200# Saunders-Waterford rough paper. The left most one was painted first and I have to admit, it shows. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do when I started. By the time I started the third panel, the centre one, I was well into the grove and by the time I finished the last panel, I needed a break for this subject. The last panel, the far right one is my favourite. Jill, my personal mentor, life partner, likes the this one best also.