Back from the ethers with a new WIP/painting demo

My lapse in posting has probably made it seem like I fell off the face of the Earth or something. In fact, I was in Texas last week (which actually did feel a bit like another world to me --just kidding Texans!) I had to slip away unexpectedly to assist my mom, who was just released from the hospital after major surgery. The good news is that she's been doing great, and I'm back home now and back to painting. It's been far too windy and rainy this week to do any plein air work, so I've decided to continue my French landscape series with nice big 40x30" linen canvas in the studio--a vertical painting of an ancient church in ruins among a field of irises.

I started with a monochromatic tonal wash in transparent red oxide:

While this is a representational painting, my approach to the work is in the abstract. My aim at this stage is to express the pattern of lights and darks in a fluid and interesting manner. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember a plein air painting I did of this same site last summer. Even though this larger painting will be of a different view from that location, I will use my plein air painting and my experience from that work to inform this piece.

The finished painting will have a lot of irises in the foreground, but I don't bother drawing them in at this point. My main concern early on is to connect my darks in such a way as to create an interesting underlying armature that will provide a structure for any detail, and also hopefully provide enough interest so as to lead the eye around the canvas.

Painting in this monochromatic, thin wash helps me to develop my overall composition without great commitment. Transparent red oxide is not a highly staining color, so if corrections or changes are desired, any marks I make at this stage can easily be wiped away with a paper towel dipped in solvent (I use Gamsol).

Incidental staining is not really a concern any way, since I usually like a toned canvas. It's sort of like I'm making a grisaille painting and toning my canvas at once. In this instance, I decide to leave the lightest lights (in the sky) mostly completely white, as I will next use the white of the canvas to develop the shape of my clouds:

Basically I'm painting the negative space of the sky with the blue paint mixture. Working on linen is a real pleasure. It makes it really easy to use my paper towels to smudge and wipe away paint so as to refine shapes and create those soft, wispy edges.

After I established the basic cloud pattern, I start to add paint, color and shadow to the white of the clouds. I also begin to develop my darks, and give some definition to my area of interest; the ruins of the old abbey.

Further developments are under way and forthcoming soon....Stay tuned!

Hiking along the James River (and painting there too!)

Happy first day of Spring, everybody! I'll celebrate by posting my latest plein air painting done earlier this week while walking the trails of the James River's North Bank Park.

"Downstream" Oil on Linen, 12x12"  ©Jennifer Young

Funny thing about this excursion- I had gone out the week prior on an initial exploration, but it turned out to be a bust. The weather forecast had called for warmer temperatures, but had really gotten the projected temperatures wrong. Unfortunately, I also had gotten my wardrobe wrong! I've written before about my difficulty with plein air painting in the cold. This particular morning wasn't an icy cold but it was that damp, penetrating cold that just chills to the bone.

So even though I'd found a great spot on "Texas Beach" right the river's edge, I was so uncomfortable that I had to jump ship that morning. Big bummer, because I have only just begun to discover this beautiful part of the river, and I was excited to have found such a great spot that was easily accessible with a few rock-hops, even with all my gear on my back. As it was, I packed up after only about an hour, not having made much progress beyond some murky marks. I probably should have just saved my panel and wiped the whole thing down at that point, but I thought, well, maybe I can just come back later and finish what I've started.

It rained nonstop over the weekend, so I couldn't get back out there until this week. The good thing was, I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I also had a basic composition under way, so I was ahead of the game. Or so I thought.

Being the seasoned outdoor adventurer that I am, it hadn't even occurred to me that the trails would be a little muddy. Maneuvering them with about 15 lbs of art gear on my back was....interesting. And graceful. ;-) The other thing I hadn't accounted for is that the rocks that I'd so easily hopped to get out to my awesome view were now completely under water. In fact, the terrain had so changed that I couldn't recognize one familiar thing. So after sliding around looking for "my spot" for a while (and coming face to face with a huge, magnificent heron along the way) I finally gave up and settled on another view.  It's probably just as well. I liked this painting spot even better than the last.

Plein air painting in the snow

There's a first time for everything. I actually got outside this morning in the freezing temperatures and painted in the snow. I know, I know. It's done all the time. But I'm from the South, so doing anything....willingly...in frigid temperatures is a real milestone for me. And any way, I can't remember the last time we had a snow storm with any kind of accumulation, so I was determined:

"Snowed Under" 10x8" Oil on Multimedia ArtBoard ©Jennifer Young

This is our little crepe myrtle in our back yard. A small, up-close study was about all I could handle this morning. Even staying close to home, this was a challenging experience for me. First off, I didn't consider just how reflective all that snow would be. Initially I set up near my red studio door, but that red bounced all over the place so I had to move. Second, I wasn't prepared for how stiff the paint would get, or how quickly. My quinacridone red froze up so fast--I had to really coax it with some Gamsol just to get it to budge. And third (and I WAS expecting this one) it was damn cold. I did take a few studio breaks because my right hand (the painting hand) became one big painful throb and revolted periodically by losing its grip and dropping brushes.

Any way, I got it done in a little less than 2 hours. I can't say that I'm a convert to painting in freezing weather, but at least I like the little painting. I did find myself wondering why the heck I didn't just paint something from the warmth of my studio, looking out the window. But no.  I HAD to paint that tree from that angle. Well, maybe it's a good thing. As I'm typing this during my lunchtime break, huge chunks of the white stuff are falling off of our little crepe in mini avalanches.

French pastoral WIP and new studio sneak peek

Like everything else these last several months, it has taken longer than I expected to get myself set up in the new studio space. But I love how it has come along; and I'm happy to say that I am at least set up enough where I am working again. I must admit I feel a bit rusty with my painting. At least I've done a little bit of drawing during the chaos, so in that way I have been able to keep my hand in it, so to speak.  But for me, the discipline of painting is a bit like the discipline of physical exercise. It seems to take a while to get "in the flow", but it's oh so easy to get out of shape. (What's up with that?!) The only thing I know to do is just get started and work through the awkwardness.

I thought I'd start up again where I left off--by working on another studio painting based on a plein air study from my trip to the Dordogne. Here is the study:

When I originally posted about this piece I called it a "Work-in-Progress", as it was my intention to finish it. But ultimately I would reap greater benefit from it by keeping it as a study. In misty, foggy scenes, the values are so close together and it can be a real challenge to achieve this effect. So even though this is not a "complete" piece, it had a lot of information for me to reference in terms of accurate values and edges captured on site.

Here is the larger piece (24x30") currently under way:

At this point I've kept everything pretty much as flat shapes and used very limited color, as I work out a general pattern and design. I'll need to keep adjusting the values as I know they are stronger than the study overall, but particularly in the middle distance. I also plan to use a lot more paint and more color variations, all the while keeping color subtle and the edges very soft. That's my aim, any way. It was challenging on a small scale and even more-so on a larger one! But I'm game. (I think!)

As for my other "WIP" (my new studio), I do have some more pics to share, as I've begun moving in setting up workstations. But I'll give my readers a break from "construction-speak" and save that for another post. Meanwhile, just a sneak peek at my painting area:

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Too cold for plein air...? So I'll write about it instead!

Note: This post picks up on a conversation that started in the comments section of my post from a couple of days ago about painting outside in "the elements"....or not. My first plein air painting experience was a disaster. In fact, I don't think I was really won over with the whole idea of painting on location until about the 5th time out. It took many more outings than that, however, before I created anything I considered to be remotely approaching a "success".

There were definitely days when I found myself wondering why I bothered with it at all. Even now that I really love plein air painting, I still find I don't do it as often as I would like. It is certainly a lot easier to paint in a nice cozy studio at any time of day or night without having to haul a bunch of gear around. It's a hassle. You have to deal with bugs, sunburn, wind, rain, or the freezing cold. In some cases you also have to deal with constant interruptions from passers-by (from dogs to people to timed sprinklers coming on unexpectedly to boats parking right in front of your view!)

But even with all of that, there is something exhilarating about it. It can often be the best sweaty, bug-bitten, exhausting, driven, compelling, and highly focused couple of hours I've ever spent. And even in the "wipers" or those that end up in the "circular file" there was often enough of an element-- maybe just a square inch or two-- that hinted at some special understanding and called me forward. In short, there was something this experience was teaching me that I wasn't getting by working in the studio alone.

In order to really enjoy my plein air painting experiences I think I first had to finally let go of the need for a particular outcome. Of course ultimately I want to become a better painter! But just as I'm trying to do now with my life-drawing, I gained the greatest benefit from this practice when I finally started viewing it in terms of what I could learn rather than what I could produce. The shift in perspective helped, because what I found from nearly the beginning was that whatever the immediate outcome, these experiences helped to inform and improve my knowledge and understanding overall, including the work I did in the studio.

Since my work is based on the natural world, there is no better reference than nature herself; and one of the main benefits of plein air painting for me is that I am painting from life.  Plein air painting isn't the only way to achieve that of course. I can also set up a still life  or do some figure drawing and painting (which is one reason why I've gotten back into life drawing myself this winter when I can't seem to get myself outside in the cold for more than 5 minutes!)

But the difference with plein air is that not only are you dealing with painting your response to a "live" subject, you are also having to concern yourself with the changing light and many other things that move and change and can't be controlled the way you can do in the studio environment. It's limiting, but not in a bad way. It pushes you to think about simplifying and making the bold statement without having to articulate every little detail, and doing so with a great deal of accuracy at the same time.

That is not to say that by their nature all plein air paintings are "better" than studio paintings. I'm sure anyone who has spent time looking at landscape paintings has probably seen a good deal of strong AND weak paintings produced by both methods. Ultimately, a painting has to stand on its own.

Both methods have their advantages and their limitations, which is why I like to "mix it up". In some respects the two practices could be compared to short-pose gesture drawing vs. longer, more studied sittings done in life drawing. In either case, I'm sharpening my skills of sight and understanding, but using different muscle groups, so to speak. Hopefully with regular practice the dexterity and skill will grow. That's not all there is to art. To be sure, it's not art without individual creativity and expression. But skill and dexterity in the execution sure make it a lot easier for me to better articulate my creative vision.