Capturing Light Workshop

 David recently gave a workshop called Capturing Light. We spent the weekend examining some of the lighting conditions that can occur in nature. With the use of a 9 value palette a 5 value scale and some simple instructional sheets the students were able to learn to get the lighting effects. Working from 1 photo reference David demonstrated sunlight, diffused light and overcast light the first day. Then the students chose their own reference and did the same exercise. The second day David demonstrated backlight, frontlight, and moonlight. We had a great group. Quite a few are professional painters. The intermediate painters kept right up with the more advanced painters. There was such a great energy in the room.

                                           David beginning his demonstration

Sunlight, diffused light and overcast light. Worksheet on the left.

The finished demo including sunlight done in color.

Joe getting to work.

Howard and Gray working on the exercises.

Jen with that great hat.

Mark's finished work. Nice!

Joe's finished work. Beautiful.

Gray's finished work. Awesome!

Second day demonstration.

9 value palette

We are all enjoying the demo. The young man with the camera is our apprentice, Peter.

This is backlight, frontlight and moonlight. Moonlight is in color also.

Jean, Rita and Sharon working.

Peter decided to work really big.

Some of Howard's finished work. Nice job!

Gray putting on the finishing touches.

Composition Workshop

Last weekend David gave a great workshop on composition for the landscape painter. The first day he explained to us that we would be working with small sketches or photo references and turning them into larger paintings, but first we would study different compositional possibilities and pick the strongest one for our piece. David drew many different compositional ideas using one photo reference to demonstrate. Then we took turns doing the same thing. He then did the block-in for his 24"x30" painting. Next it was our turn to do a block-in.

The next day David showed us even more ways to compose a scene. It was fascinating to see all the possibilities that could be painted from one reference. Then we took turns drawing our ideas. This could be a new parlor game for artists like pictionary.  It was really fun! Then David painted his large painting for us. I've posted some photos of the workshop.

-Pam

First Kick-Off Event

On Thursday August 27th we held our first kick-off event for our project at the Town Farm on Drift Rd in Westport MA from 4-6pm. We set up our outdoor display tent and hung fifteen paintings. Five of them were of the Town Farm that we had painted en plein air a few weeks before. During the kick-off, we spoke with people and the press about our project and what it is all about.



Our goal is to work with land preservation groups all over New England and to paint in all 67 counties. We will host kick-off events in all 6 states that make up the New England region; Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine.



Over the course of the next few years, we will also have other small events in numerous counties to enlighten the public about our project. We want to raise awareness towards the continued need for preservation of the precious landscape that many of us take for granted. If we continue to destroy tracts of land to development at the present rate, we will lose the New England that we love along with its vital history.



This project will take a minimum of three years and will culminate with a book titled 'Painting New England - Preserving the Landscape' We will also have an exhibit of the very best paintings completed during this time that will travel throughout New England.



At each kick-off we will work to raise funding for the project by selling paintings and offering incentives for public donations. By doing this we will be able to give back to the different preservation groups that work with us along the way.



At Thursdays kick-off we had our first sales and a nice response from the public. We are excited as we think of the possibilities of the adventure that lies ahead!

Painting New England - Preserving the Landscape

We are embarking on a new adventure called Painting New England - Preserving the Landscape. We will be painting all over New England for this project during the next several years and we will post blogs as we go from place to place.

Stay tuned shortly for more information about what this large project entails and also for our first of many many blogs.

It will be fun!

A Few Thoughts on Composition

The dictionary defines 'composition' as the act of combining parts or elements to form a whole. The word 'act' literally means anything done, being done, or to be done. When we go out to paint the landscape we are well aware that there is work to be done but we must realize that nothing is more important than the time we spend planning out how the elements in the scene are going to fit into the space of our canvas...

No amount of beautiful drawing skills, color sense or paint application is going to be enough to make a painting work if it is not well composed. So many times we will bring students to locations that have subject matter for numerous paintings but they fail to see anything but the very obvious one. In so many cases, students will hold up their 'viewfinder' and then proceed to slavishly copy the scene that fits into that little rectangle. I know what they are thinking. If they can copy what is out there, they will make a great painting...

Many years ago, I saw a copy of Harry Ballinger's book 'Painting Landscapes'. This is a great little book that defines landscape painting in very simple terms. In it, he describes compositional ideas like the circle, the L, the S curve, Radial composition etc. The Edgar Payne book 'Composition of Outdoor Painting' which was reprinted in 2005 is a great book but also very technical. It's not an easy read by any means. For the beginner to intermediate, I would recommend the Ballinger book for its simplicity overall. This book can be found on ebay for very little. While the reproductions of paintings in the book are not very well done, the information in the book is simple and to the point...

This weekend we teach an indoor composition workshop. We look at a small plein air painting and decide how to compose it into a stronger piece for a larger painting. Sometimes, a small painting can be enlarged just as it is and be a strong piece. Many times though, with a little bit of thinking about compositional ideas, we are able to make it better. In the workshop we also talk about and demo different types of compostional formats. Students then take a study and work to improve it and make it into something as small as 16x20 or as large as 24x30...

Next week we will post some images from the workshop and talk more about composing...

A Colorful Idea

I thought we'd stick with color since we've been on the subject. Pam and I taught a color workshop last weekend that was a way of exploring palette ideas. We worked from our standard 12 color palette, first taking a look at where each color fit on the color wheel and discussed color theory, moving around the warm and cool side of the color wheel. We delved into simple three- color (Triad) palettes. We also talked about complimentary and split-complimentary color palettes along with other color palette ideas...

On Sunday, along with the demo we discussed how color is affected by the light source and what this means to the light and shadow side of an object seen under that light...

A true color triad is when you use colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel. However, some of the color palettes that George Bellows and Robert Henri experimented with were not so evenly spaced. I made up a chart for the workshop of four triad palettes that Bellows was particularly fond of using...

On Saturday, after a talk about the palette and some more general ideas about color theory, I painted a demo using the palette R-O, Y-G, and B, or Red Orange, Yellow Green and Blue. These three colors become my primary colors. I also mixed up my secondary colors from these three primary colors. From there I proceeded to paint this winter scene. I worked from a painting recently completed on site as well as a photo of the scene. Because, I am working with a cold yellow, in this case, yellow green, the overall tone of the painting will be a bit on the cool side. That is not to say that I can't produce a feeling of warmth in the painting, I am speaking about the color relationships of the palette overall...

Here is the demo from Sunday. I used a triad of R, Y-O, B-G, or Red, Yellow Orange and Blue Green. This is essentially a warm palette and so my completed painting is going to take on an overall warmth that the first painting did not have...

Both paintings work, and I've used these two palettes before when painting outside under different lighting conditions. The slightly cooler palette is more like an early morning light before the suns warmth has permeated the landscape. The warmer palette takes on that feeling of afternoon light...

Here are the two paintings side by side...

It sure does open the mind to the possibilities doesn't it?

Color Notes Too

Before we go into more about the color palette, we have to post about how absolutely beautiful the weather was here yesterday. David spent the entire day painting outside with Jack and Peter and it was great. It's fun to paint snow and not have to be bundled up like an Eskimo to do it. The snow is patchy at best around here at the moment, but in North Woodstock, because they tend to be in a bit of a snow belt, there are still some good spots. David drove by a favorite painting spot on the way home yesterday and was amazed to find that it was still fairly snowed-in looking. We'll be back there on Friday to paint for sure!...

In this post we want to share how we mix up the palette to get the secondary colors. It's a bit of an experiment when you haven't tried it before. Consider this a refresher for those who have studied with us and an offer to explore for those who want to try it for the first time...

We mix an orange from permanent red light and cad yellow light. The idea is to get at a true orange, the color note that is exactly in between the red and the yellow. Anything else will be more of a yellow orange or a red orange...

We like yellow ochre as a color but find the tubed color to be somewhat gritty and not pliable enough. Why not learn to mix it yourself and understand what type of color note yellow ochre really is! By taking a good base of cad yellow light and mixing in some cad red light and a small amount of viridian, you will arrive at a rich and buttery yellow ochre color note...

Rembrandt cad yellow light is a remarkable yellow in that it does not lean towards green nor orange. We think it is a real true yellow. It can easily be moved towards a warmer note by adding a small modicum of orange or on the cooler side with the smallest amount of viridian. The key note here is very small amounts. Sometimes we will mix up piles of the warmer and cooler versions onto our palette...

Okay...so what IS lussier blue you ask? It's what you get by mixing equal parts ultramarine blue deep with viridian and a small amount of white to bring it to almost a cerrulean blue. We once heard from a painter who wondered why on earth do we put viridian green on our palette when you can get a version of it with cerrulean blue and yellow. Our answer is two-fold. One, we don't like cerrulean blue out of the tube. The lussier blue is very much like cerrulean but has better working properties and is in harmony with the rest of the palette. And two, viridian is an essential color note on the palette! Although it is an unatural looking, very man made color, when used in mixtures it cannot be replaced. Viridian is not meant to be used by itself...ever. It belongs in mixtures...

The other three color notes we mix on the palette are versions of purple. By mixing permanent madder deep with ultramarine blue deep and white in varying proportions, we arrive at a blue purple, purple and red-purple. Again...the key is to push the notes to the right place on the color wheel so that you have a purple that is exactly in between the red and blue and then a note that is true red-purple and a note that is true blue-purple. Adding small amounts of white will bring out the color so that you can see the color note...

One more note! We mix big piles of paint onto the palette in order to be able to take advantage of the working properties of painting in oils. Oil paints are meant to be pushed around. if you like paintings that are rich in brushwork...you must come to the realization that you can never get that look without loading your brush with some pigment. It's important to find out what pushing around oils feels like...

One thing painting is NOT. It is not learning to paint up-to-the-lines with a timid approach...

This sounds like something for a future blog...for now here is an image of one of David's paintings done from yesterday. He set up to paint something to the right of this subject but when he shot a glance to the left he immediately saw this painting and decided to tackle it.

Color Notes

It doesn't matter what workshop we're teaching or how we've spelled out the plan of the day verbally, every student wants to first hear about our color palette. "What colors do you have on your palette?" is always the first question. Another popular one is almost more of a statement than a question, "Your colors look so edible...what are they?" We kid you not...

We think of substituting the word 'edible' for 'harmonious'. So it's more like,"Your colors look so harmonious...what are they? From this we arrive at the conclusion that a palette that is in harmony is going to invoke an emotion right from the start. It 'feels' right....

The basic six color palette in itself is enough to start working from ,but it's the six other colors that we mix from this basic palette that will truly showcase it's harmony. Armed with this complete color palette, we now have a fighting chance at having our painting sing in tune.
We mix the other colors in big piles and place them on the palette along with the basic six...

The basic six are: Permanent Madder Deep, Permanent Red Light, Cadmium Yellow Light, Viridian, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber...

From these we mix: Orange, Yellow Ochre, Lussier Blue, Blue Violet, Violet and Red Violet...

In reality, we have taken a primary palette and mixed a secondary palette from it. If we mix these secondary colors from the primary palette, we can't help but arrive at a set of colors that all look and feel right. By mixing them and placing them on the palette prior to painting, we have more visual clues that we can work from than if we just mix these secondary color notes as we need them during the painting process...

We've been working with this same palette for close to twenty years! When we think about what can be done with a palette that you know inside and out, backwards and forwards, the possibilities are endless. Color is something that will never stop demanding more thought...

In the next blog, we'll write more about this color palette and how we use it, until then, here is a little beauty of Pam's from a studio series she is doing...

Diving In

So why 'plein air pair' you ask? Well...the name comes from our very first web site URL where we got our feet wet with the Internet idea. We liked the name, especially since we teach plein air workshops together and paint all the time together as well. Come to think of it...we spend ALL our time together which some people might see as a miraculous or impossible feat! Somehow it works for us which is kind of what we had hoped for when we got married ten years ago...

So we had this web site and then we learned a lesson in not letting a URL name expire for more than thirty seconds because ours was gone just like that! We tried an online art web site and didn't like the generic quality to it. Now we have our gallery website which we just love. We had it built so that it has our 'own look' and in such a way that we are able to maintain the entire site ourselves...

There are a lot of people out there who tell us that they miss the plein air pair name and we are still known in certain parts as such, so........in making this blog, we decided to bring back the original name and, well here we are...

The plein air pair has decided to get more acclimated to the wholeness of the Internet. We are both using facebook now, separately, which apparently means that we don't do really do everything together, which is probably causing a big sigh of relief for some of you..right?! And we are working on updating our website to bring it up to speed, going online with our newsletter and working on some videos that we can post...

I guess we could say that the plein air pair has gone from getting their feet wet to 'diving in'...

Next time, we'll give a heads-up about how we use our color palette. In the meantime click on our 'painting of the week' and our 'small collectibles' links.

The winter painting below is the 16x20 that I did this past week. It's called 'Melting Snow'