Step by Step

I've been working in my studio all winter (I'm not an extreme plein air painter, sorry) but sketches and photos have been getting me through. The weather is changing, though, and I hope to get out again in the next month.
Here's a painting from sketches done in Alaska.

"Bones of the Earth"  watercolor   15" x 22"

Sketch in pencil

First pass. Keeping it loose and soft.

Defining values and shapes

Final pass. 

Plein Air with Friends

Nothing like getting outdoors with friends and doing what comes naturally - painting!

I roam around Bucks County at least two times a week, loaded up with painting gear, hunting for that perfect landscape. The fact is that a good artist can find a good painting no matter where they look, so spending time looking for the perfect composition is wasted time - time that could be spent painting.  One of the artist's jobs is to rearrange the elements of the scene to MAKE it a better composition.

Sometimes a good exercise is to close your eyes, turn around a few times then open them. Then, create your painting from whatever happens to be in front of you. Do it enough and it will get you out of the habit of seeking that ready-made landscape.

This week the Bucks County Plein Air Painters visited one of Bucks County's covered bridges. The Loux Bridge is unusual in that it is white rather than red as are most of the others. Constructed in 1874 of hemlock, it sits over Cabin Run Creek.

The weather was perfect! We parked ourselves on the side of the road and spent the morning painting. My friends worked in oil, but I decided to try a small watercolor. I was working on Arches 140 lb. paper and am fairly happy with the way it turned out.

"Loux Covered Bridge, Bucks County" 9x12 watercolor

Less is More...sometimes

How much information do you need to provide before the painting "reads" as the scene or object you were trying to convey?

I've been enjoying experimenting with my watercolors and making small, very loose pictures. In trying to keep everything loose and spontaneous I sometimes work from the opposite direction of my normal method. Instead of having a subject then painting it, I just make some marks and let the paint flow. Then I look and see what it suggests to me. A few details added and I'm done. It is great fun working that way, but can include a high percentage of failures....Oh, my aching ego!

Here's a couple of little abstracted landscapes with maximum fun and minimum detail. The subjects suggested themselves after I randomly applied the strokes to the paper. Then I deliberately painted shapes to bring out my subject matter. Color has a strong pull for me and all day the cool blues I was using kept suggesting winter and snow.

Snowbound   5x7  

Rock Pattern Study  5x7

*Tip: 

If you'd like to try this, brush clear water onto part of the paper, pick colors you like, and brush them onto the wet and dry areas. Passages will be soft and diffused where the paper is wet, and sharp where the paper is dry.

Use different brush sizes, maybe even flick on a little color on and watch what happens. 

Let it dry a bit while you study what you have, and see if the shapes and colors suggest anything. If they don't, play a little more. 

When the paper is dry you can begin to emphasize shapes and colors in order to push the forms toward what you see in your mind's eye.

It's like walking on a tightrope, so don't be surprised if you fall off.....a lot.....but the more you do it, the better you will get.

Watercolor Play

Decided to drag out my watercolors and do some small paintings this week. They are almost like color sketches and are looser than my oils. Very liberating! When I go back to the oils I hope to carry over some of that looseness and intuitive way of working.

"Little House on the Rocks"  watercolor   4x6

"Mid Winter Snow"   watercolor   7x9

"Outbuildings"   watercolor   7x9

How to Make a Plein Air Pochade Box

Many say that there is nothing like the immediacy of painting en plein air ( outside, in the open). So, I'm gonna try it! I have painted outdoors a few times, but this year as I work to get my painting skills back I'm going to spice it up by packing up and heading out into the great outdoors on a regular basis.

Okay, okay...... so maybe at first I am just going to walk down the road a bit, but still, it IS outside.

First I need the proper equipment and that means a pochade box. A pochade box is a paintbox that is an easel, palette, and canvas carrier all rolled into one. Traditional pochades boxes are much smaller than a french easel.

OMG!! I went online and those suckers average $150 -$350 !!!  Take a look at these pochades.

Beautiful, but I can't afford them.

So, I've decided to gather up supplies and make my own. Won't be nearly as nice, but if it's functional that's  what I need.

Step 1: I'm off to Michaels with a 40% Off Coupon to buy a simple, light wooden box. 

Here's what I wound up with. It measures 9" x 12" x 3 1/2"(outside dimensions) and is unfinished.

Not very rugged....yet!

I rubbed in three coats of boiled linseed oil to help protect the wood.

Step 2: Add wood slats to make a "shelf".

I glued two slats, shorter than the depth, to each side so that I could later sit a tray on top of them. The slats will keep the tray from touching the bottom, which will be serving as my palette. I don't have to scrape my palette when done. I just close everything up and walk away.

Step 3: Replace the hinges.

 

The hinges were flimsy things, so the next thing I did was buy three sturdy hinges and add them to what was there. The old hinges weren't even screwed in, they were just punched in like big staples.

Step 4: Create the palette area.

I cut a piece of plexiglas and piece of white watercolor paper the size to fit exactly into the bottom (hard to see the plexi in the photo).

Then I cut plexiglas for each side, the height of the shelf.

The white paper goes into the bottom, then the plexiglas goes on top. Then I set each of the side pieces in it's spot.

Now the secret: I ran silicon aquarium sealant around all the seams to make it waterproof and hold it in place. Now I can squeeze out my oil paints directly into the bottom of the box, use it as a palette, and clean the center with the wipe of a cloth! But you can leave the paint that you squeezed out around the edges.

Step 5: Now, off to the hardware store for latches (one for each side) and a hinge to hold the lid in position so that I can lean a canvas against it. Also nuts bolts and washers to attach the handle.

The screws that came with the latches poked through the wood on the inside, so I will use my trusty Dremel with a cutting tool to cut the points off.

Step 6: Create a handle of some sort. Hmmmmmn.....what do I have lying around?

I took a flat, nylon dog leash, cut it to size (melt the cut edges so they won't unravel) and fold the ends under about an inch.

With my Dad's old soldering iron I melted a hole through the nylon at both ends and after drilling a couple of holes through the box, I used nuts, bolts, and washers to attach the strap to the box (the washers distribute the pressure and make it less likely to pull through).

Step 7: Make a tray.

Using foam core (carefully cut), glue (I used E-600), and some white duct tape for waterproofing I make a tray to hold supplies and cover the palette area beneath. We used to make things out of foam core all the time in my college art classes.

The only thing I am missing is the hinge (store didn't have the right size), so that the back lid can be used to lean my canvas against. I'll get that next time I'm out.

Finished!

And I'm so happy with the way it turned out I may make another for my watercolors!

Box (main expense), hardware, sealant, plexiglas, etc. all wound up costing about $35.

Color Palette Possibilities

People always seem to be interested in what my palette looks like, what colors I use and how I arrange them, so here it is:
For oils -

When I first started painting at age 13 my teacher showed me this way to set up my palette and I have done it this way ever since. I always know where the colors are and this saves me from searching as I work.

Upper left corner - Titanium white

Across the top, light to dark warms - Cad. yellow lt., yellow ochre, Winsor red (or Cad. red lt.), permanent rose, burnt sienna, burnt umber

Down the left side, light to dark cools - sap green, veridian green, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, and sometimes Thalo blue


I often try out other colors and over the years some colors I use have changed, but this is my basic palette at the moment. Oils dry out on the palette, so once dry they get scraped off and thrown away.

For watercolors -

I never tackled watercolors seriously until I was in my 20s and my palette is set up differently, like a color wheel.  Think ROYGBIV! Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, (no violet, I mix that). Then earth tones down the right side. I use the same colors as in oils plus alizarine crimson, new gamboge, aureolin, manganese blue, thalo blue, raw umber, sometimes cerulean blue.

Because I work much faster in watercolor I have colors on my watercolor palette that I would mix myself if I were using oils. Saves me time that way.



I used to imitate the palette of whatever artist I was admiring at the time, but just because I was using the same colors didn't mean that my work looked like theirs. So, don't fall into that trap.

However, it did mean I got to try out a lot of different colors and find the ones that worked for me!

Tip: I never throw out watercolors, because even if they have dried out I can remoisten them by misting them and then putting a damp sponge inside the closed palette (all my watercolor palettes have lids). I just squeeze a little fresh paint on top of the old and I am ready to go!

Still making kits.....yuk!

Celebrate Color

I believe that color (or its absence) is probably the most exciting and influential element in artworks. Though it is second to design in its importance, it exerts an immediate and spontaneous influence on us as we look at a work on art.

Basic Color Wheel

And, I have always loved the color wheel, in all its many manifestations. But, I hardly ever use it! From the time I first began to paint I have always used color instinctively, knowing what colors to mix to get what I needed. Studying color theory when I reached college only served to reinforce what I was already doing, and explained why what I was doing worked.

But if color doesn't come easy for you, you can learn how color works and how to utilize that knowledge.

Here's a good place to go, if you want to learn more about color.

Color possesses four qualities :

Hue - what we usually just call "color"

Value - the lightness (a tint) or darkness (a shade) of a color.

Intensity or saturation - emerald is more intense than olive, but they are both green

Temperature - there are warm reds (cadmium red) and cool reds (alizarine crimson), etc. This is true for all colors. In the watercolor below, can you see warm blues and cool blues?

Honey Jars in GA - Dottie Hoeschen

In a future post I will talk more about colors that I use and why......