I've been interviewed by Creative Spotlite!

Recently I was interviewed by Creative Spotlite's Ralph Serpe.  In the interview, I respond to Ralph's questions about my journey as an artist and my art career thus far. Ralph is the founder of the Creative Spotlite art instruction website and blog, both of which feature an ever-growing collection of free art lessons, demos, links,  and a wealth of other resources for artists. In conjunction with the interview, Ralph has also featured my plein air demo for my painting "Vineyard Patterns" on his site. Thanks Ralph, for featuring me and my work, and for creating such content rich sites for artists!

Small WIP & value sketches amid the rubble

A series of wet gray days have kept me from painting outside, so I've spent some time putting my studio(and myself!) back together in the aftermath of the workshop. For me, "spring cleaning" always seems to make things look worse before they get better.

I have little piles around me...piles of books, of paperwork, and also a small pile of unfinished paintings. Among the latter is this demo painting that I started in the workshop, which I may noodle around with and bring to a more finished state. It's small, just 12x9", so we're talking maybe just orzo or macaroni-sized noodling.

I started this workshop demo talking about composition and values and how they related to each other. Since we were working with the limitations of photographs, I wanted to try to get folks to think about the possibility of composition beyond just what they saw in front of them in the picture. When I'm painting en plein air, I will often do a series of small value sketches before I jump right into painting. I will use this same approach too in the studio, to develop my design.

Along with a contour sketch, it is extremely helpful to do this in a very abbreviated quick grayscale, so that I can get a general idea of my value relationships and the overall design that is created not only by the placement of line but also by the pattern of dark and light:

This is not a new concept, of course. Artists have forever been studying and writing about the arrangement of values (lights and darks) to compose a strong design. The artsy fartsy term for this is "Notan". Okay, it's actually Japanese. Notan sketches can be fleshed out in recongnizable contours (like mine above) or they can be very quick and gestural thumbnail abstractions created for the purpose of identifying the underlying design.

The values are generally limited to four or less.  I used 2 markers; black and light gray, deriving my middle gray from a blending of the two, and letting the white of the paper stand as my lightest value. 

Of course, in life we see a much wider range of values, but in designing and executing a painting, I'm learning that simpler is often better.  If you look at many of Monet's paintings, you might notice that many of them have a very small range of values indeed, and he used color temperature and very soft edges to add a wonderful sense of atmospheric depth to his work.

A quick Google search for "Notan" yielded some good results for further exploration:

• A good series of Notan lessons from Virtual Art Academy
• Artist Robert Genn discusses Notan in his inspirational newsletter "The Painter's Keys"
• Painter Ed Terpening does it!
• Katherine Tyrrell does too.

How about you?

Looks like I've "Made a Mark" this week!

Thanks to Katherine Tyrrell, uber blogger of exhaustive art resources extraordinaire, for mentioning my articles on plein air painting easels in her weekly post called "Who's made a mark this week" . If you're an artist or art lover and haven't yet discovered Katherine's blog "Making A Mark", do yourself a favor and check it out. Each week she provides an exhaustive list of art links and blogging resources, as well as frequent posts about her wonderful pencil drawings and other art related subjects. Looks like she may have discovered my articles by following a link from David Cornelius's blog post on his own search for plein air easels. So thanks for the mention (and link!) to you too, David, and keep up the great experimentation, inside and out. 

Upping the Ante

It's been a while since I've listed a new "Art for Food" auction for the Central Virginia FoodBank, so I'm upping the ante by listing a new acrylic painting. This is a 7 day auction with an opening bid of $24.99. This one does have a low reserve ($50) but it's still a bargain and 95% of the proceeds go to the FoodBank.

"Lavender Valley" Acrylic on heavy acid free card (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

It's been a while since I've worked in acrylic and I had a lot of fun with this one. I'm listing this one in the evening because I'm heading out for most of the day on Friday to do some plein air painting. Have a great weekend!

Scenes from the painting workshop

I'm baaaack! Fell in a black hole of the blogosphere for a while and am slooowly recovering from a very busy and intense workshop at my studio this past weekend. Church Hill Photography took some great environmental shots of one of the demo portionsof the class on the first day, so I thought I'd share them here. (BTW, Elaine Odell of Church Hill Photography also made the excellent portrait of me in my studio, so be sure to check out her website if your looking for a photographer who really knows her stuff!) While I've taught off-site at other hosted locations, this was the first time I've actually hosted a workshop myself, and preparing for it was quite a bit more work than I'd imagined because I had to prep both my lessons and the space itself.  The participants did some great work though, and were enthusiastic and so much fun. And it was really exciting for me to share ideas about color, shape, values, and composition. Hopefully everyone felt like they learned a lot. I know I did!

After a brief discussion of color mixing (and especially mixing greens) I did a little landscape demo. This is a good long shot that shows me sketching out my composition at my setup, as well as the studio beyond. The participants worked in the front two rooms, so we had to configure the space in a way that would protect those beautiful wood floors. Hence the lovely blue spill-resistant floor coverings!

Here's a cool shotthrough the easel. There's a large mirror to my back, which I use to check my compositions in reverse. It really does help to give me a "fresh look" at my work. That cutie just over my shoulder in the gray tee is my talented niece Molly, a fine emerging artist who I was delighted to have come all the way from Texas to take the class and visit. The "man in black" looming in the doorway is my husband and partner Dave. As always, he was a HUGE help to me, keeping everything running smoothly.

This shot shows the demo piece, coming right along.

The workshop was pretty action packed, but by being in the studio we were able to really focus some of the more important elements of painting as they pertain to the landscape, in conditions that were controllable. I hope to do some plein air classes too in addition to the studio intensive, as this "takes it to the next level" and throws a whole other slew of concerns into the pot. Luckily I hadn't planned a plein air class for this past weekend though, as we had some really varied weather ranging from cloudburst thunderstorms to overcast damp chill.

On Monday Molly and I took a road trip up to Charlottesville so that she could see Jefferson's Monticello. Wow! What an absolutely gorgeous day--the redbuds, fruit trees, dogwoods and tulips were going crazy. I hope I can get up back up there some time soon to paint some of it-- and paint some local plein air scenes as well. Right after I take care of a few neglected household and business matters, that is. Whatever I paint, I'll be sure to post here first, so stay tuned....