I am delighted to announce the 17th annual SNOWCAMP Workshop from Saturday, February 28th throughMonday, March 2nd. That is three days. I charge 400 dollars per person, a 200 dollar deposit up front, and 200 dollars final payment at the event. Please understand that this is a nonrefundable deposit. If you sign up I will hold your spot in the class for you, regardless of whether you actually are intending to come. That is what your deposit hires me to do and guarantees you will receive. So please don't sign up unless you actually are intending to take the class. SNOWCAMP is a winter workshop. It might be cold, I will still run the workshop even if it is cold, actually, cold is good. In New England, cold means blue skies and beautiful light . . . usually. The class size is limited so everybody will get some personal attention and I stand a chance of knowing each of you. Each morning I will do a demo and in the afternoon the students will paint and I will run from easel to easel and teach each student individually. I have several painting exercises to help build the students' skills in landscape painting. We meet for breakfast and dinner. After dinner, I will do an evening lecture and slide show on design, snow painting and historic New England art. SNOWCAMP is a lot of fun, and I hope to teach you as much as I possibly can, in the three days it runs. I can save you YEARS of screwing around! This is as intense an experience as I can figure out how to make it, and you will do little else but paint, eat and sleep while you are there. I will work you like a borrowed mule. The Inn is in the most beautiful and dramatic location, and the views of the White Mountains are incredible. It is a GREAT place to paint. The Inn is a little isolated, and that is good. I park my car in the lot and leave it there until the workshop is over. I just think about painting for the time I am there. Camaraderie is an important part of the workshop and we will all be good friends before the workshop is over. One of the important things I teach is the opalescent color of snow. I will show you a system for creating the look of snow in light using broken color. I will explain what colors I have on my palette and what their characteristics are. I will show you how to develop a painting in monotone if you need to separate the problem of drawing from that of color. In the evening lectures, I will show you strategies used by the great painters to solve the problems of arranging a painting. SNOWCAMP usually fills, so if you want to come, let me know. The Inn takes care of all our needs and it is required that you stay there to participate. If you absolutely must stay off campus, a day rate can be arranged with the inn. All of the lodging and reservations can be made with The Sunset Hill House. If you go to their website or call them, be sure to ask them for the special rate they make for the workshop. The Inn has a dinner meal service for us and a bar and wine cellar. We are able to keep our equipment in the lower level of the inn so we won't have to drag our kit back to our rooms or sleep next to wet oil paintings at night. Artists generally arrive at the inn on that Friday night and check out on Monday morning from their rooms. The workshop will continue until late afternoon and we will all drive home then. IN the event of a blizzard and difficult driving conditions you might want to choose to stay Monday night too. Usually the inn will allow you to continue with the rental if you need to. Weather up in the White mountains can be very dicey. The procedure is this: first call The Sunset Hill House at (603) 823-7244 and book your room, then call or email me to sign up. My number is (603) 216 5559, my email is stapletonkearns@gmail.com. I hope to see you there! -- Stapleton Kearns

 

I have a new teaching "thing". Some of you who have read the blog might be interested in some personal coaching. I do the occasional workshop, and I have instruction available through New Masters Academy but I am adding a new mentoring program on Mastrius.com  teaching a handful of students via Zoom. Mastrius is a platform that allows me to do a monthly group class and provides a navigator, sort of a teaching assistant who will work with students between those events. I will be able to assign projects and then review them, like homework. The students can also submit what they would like to learn. Each student will provide me with a profile of what they have done and where they are in their artistic development so I can tailor my instruction to them. Mastrius has put me into their "accomplished" bracket, so in theory I will be teaching people who are trying to break through from being strong amateurs to being professional. That's a big jump, and I don't know how many people can actually do that, but I have done it myself and I can certainly explain how I did it. I think I can make them "more" professional though. I will show the skills and ideas that have worked for me. I will also critique the art the students make on an individual basis and deliver lessons with pictures and graphics somewhat in the style of this blog. So it is going to be like a little art school online. I have a bundle of knowledges that I think are essential, or at least very useful, I have written a lot about them, things like having an entrepreneurial mindset, being a consistent worker, knowing your materials and building your skills, knowing your art history, understanding aesthetics and what YOU want to make, and how to cope with dealers and the market place. I am excited by this, I think I can be real useful to a small group of people who are in the class. If you are interested click on the link above and check it out.

Color vibration

Well, here I am again, I haven't written a post in a long time. But I am announcing this years dreaded Snowcamp and I will append that to the end of this post. I have been traveling and painting (as always), I did a show at the Guild of Boston Artists with T.M. Nicholas and David Curtis and also have been serving on the board of that institution. I am renovating my old house here in New Hampshire, losing my hair, and writing a book, so I have been very busy even if I am not writing the blog. My old friend James suggested I write about this post about vibrating color so here we go......

Vibrating color, or broken color is a way of enlivening the passages of a painting. Instead of laying a flat tone like a house painter might, the paint is applied in dots or rice like strokes that the viewers eye assembles at a distance. This confounds the eye a little, mimicking the complexity of nature, producers more interesting color than a flat tone, and gives a shimmering and lively look to the painting. Vibrating color is a form of pixilation, but unlike on your TV screen or in a newspaper photo is large enough to be noticeable, but still small enough for the viewers eye to read it as an image. Here is a demo I did on how to lay a painting in with broken color. Painters have used color vibration since the renaissance, but the impressionists are characterized by its use. Here is a passage from the Willard Metcalf painting above.

In the shadow passage here you can see Willard dropping little brushstrokes of different values that give transparency and life to the shadows. The shadow is made transparent because we look within it and perceive those darker marks. In fact, that is how you get transparency into a shadow, put something in there to be perceived, the viewer looks into the shadow and sees something within, hence it is transparent. A couple of little dark accents will do it, without those the shadow would read as flat. If you were to slide a wedding ring across this painting virtually everywhere you would find a blizzard of little strokes of different color, rather than a single flat tone. If you look in the lower right hand corner you can see the different strokes of color assembling to show the color of the earthen path there. Instead of mixing all of those colors he sees in that path into a single note, which he certainly could have done, he lets them mix optically. Sometimes this is called divisionist color. It looks much more lively than a flat tone would.
 Below is a Hassam that is full of broken color.

and here is a closeup.

This method gives the painter out on location a number of advantages, first, it is really fast, with changing light, time is very important. Hassam isn't painting individual rocks but the appearance of the whole area. Because his brushstroke or pixel size is "fixed" he doesn't need to add ever smaller detail such as little cracks between the rocks, he has thus limited his resolution. The viewer will imagine all the little details for himself. This is also more like the way we really see, broadly without examining all of the little details of a scene, apprehending the entire scene at once instead of a hundred closeup photos stitched together.
Here is a Pissarro.

Here is a picture that is entirely made of broken color. It has the look I call "colored rice". There isn't a flat area in the whole thing. The treatment here has made the picture. It is not "what it is a picture of" but "how it is a picture of" that is important here. This could have been a very matter of fact  picture, but Pissarro makes it exciting because of the way he chose to handle the paint. The painting dances before us in a joyous flurry of febrile excitement. It is deliberately both nature and paint at the same time.

Below is one of Monets Haystacks series.

and here is a closeup of that.

This is the same technology pushed to a greater extreme than the previous examples ( which were made later, incidentally) Monets only interest is the effect of light, There is not much expression of the solidity or form of the subject. This was sort of a series of science experiments for Monet as he was more interested in this point in perfecting the broken color technology than picture making. But when he had it figured out he returned to making pictures using these new ideas. Here is a water lilies painting that is a picture.

You can see his use of the divisionist color particularly well in the water in this one.

People are enthralled by broken color brushwork and they will remark on how the painting looks like nature from viewing distance but when they walk up to it find only abstract looking marks. They are entertained by the slight of hand. This is a method or a tool however. Like most ideas or methods in painting it brings advantages and disadvantages, there are always trade offs. This type of handling can destroy form, some of the French Impressionists sacrificed form to get the effect of scintillating light, some of their work, Renoirs for example can look as if they are made of feathers. The painters of the next generation modified this kind of technique to reclaim form in their paintings and still get the benefits of this kind of handling. When next I write I will go into that a little.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here is a view from Sunset hill, where I will be teaching the dreaded Snowcamp again this year February 25th, 26th, and 27th. If you would like more information please click here.
Here is a link to the Inn at Sunset Hill

James Gurney, a review of his new video

James Gurney sent me a copy of his new video and I enjoyed it. This is not really a basic how-to video, his books cover that. If you haven't read those, they are excellent and have been best sellers for years now. Here is a link for those. James Gurney is a best known for his Dinotopia books. I don't care much about fantasy illustration, for me, James is interesting because he draws so well. He lives with a sketchbook in his hand and can explain clearly how he works. Almost everyone who paints can learn a lot from his two books, "Light and color" and "Imaginative realism".
I was introduced to James at a party in Connecticut by Thomas Kinkaid ( of all people) before either one of them was particularly famous. James referred to me as a plein air painter, I had seen the word in print, but it was not in common usage, in fact I had never heard it spoken aloud. In those days we just painted outside. He had with him the first painting for what would become his Dinotopia book. I was impressed by his draftmanship. There were very few people doing "realist" art in those days, and fewer still operating at that kind of level. The party was full of New York illustrators who were trying to figure out their next move as that market was rapidly contracting. I had just opened my first gallery in Rockport a few years before, so it must have been in the mid eighties.
James has a long running blog called Gurney Journey, and within that he has posted an exhaustive explanation of his painting technique and nineteenth century academic art. Many of you have already found it, but if you haven't you need to go have a look. James has given away a nearly boundless amount of information. His interests reach into cutting edge science, robots, and lots of Paleontology. But if you search his archives there is every sort of advice on how to make paintings. Here is a link to that.
Blogging is, as I know from experience, not a paid effort. One blogs, at least in this part of the art world, to be useful to your fellow artists. It does build reputation and name awareness, but compared to the massive effort involved it would be easier to promote your art in the press and galleries. Those of you have read my blog may have noticed I never blanket recommend that starting a blog is the way to artistic success.

Back to the video. It is divided into two chapters, the first has James on location painting a street scene. He adds a flying car, and shows how he uses a small toy on location to do it. I can't imagine putting a flying car in one of my pictures, but who am I to say, having featured the occasional burning phone booth? The value of this is watching a master of drawing slice up a location picture like a roast. It is an excellent demo of outdoor painting skill, done with a bit of humor.

The second part of the video is where the best information lies. Gurney takes an idea, a typical science fiction kind of idea, a giant and malicious robot visiting the modern suburban landscape with unpleasant results. He shows how he develops the idea through sketches. With a few false and subsequently rejected ideas, James shows how he builds an imaginary scene. He shows his rejected ideas and explains why they aren't working the way he wants. He then makes studies of construction machinery out in the field and uses their aesthetic and engineering principles to design an enormous robot that looks as if it was built by the same makers. Which is probably how it would happen should we decide we need such machines. Again, I don't care much about the fantasy genre, but the way that Gurney goes about this is the same way that illustrators like Rockwell or academic painters like Gerome approached the same problems. How do you make a convincing representation of something that doesn't exist? Gurney makes sketches, little models that he can study, and eventually several sketch versions leading to the final painting.There is a lot to be learned from this. I always think that knowledge in this art is so hard won and attaining it so time consuming that anytime you can spend a little money and shortcut some of that labor it is well worth it. There is a lot to be learned from this, particularly if you are interested in painting history pictures or want to construct paintings based on your ideas, rather than scenes you can set up in front of.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snowcamp!

The annual dreaded Snowcamp workshop returns to the Inn on Sunset Hill, above Franconia, New Hampshire. I will be teaching on Saturday the 5th through Monday the 7th of March 2016. This is my favorite thing I do every year. You can join the group for an intense ( to say the very least) workshop overlooking the White Mountains. The views are enormous and we will paint from the grounds of the hotel itself. That means no caravanning around in cars. I teach all the aspects of landscape painting besides just snow painting and in the evenings I do a power point presentation on designing paintings and the history of landscape painting. This is a breakfast till bedtime workshop. We do nothing else for three days. I will work you like a borrowed mule.
The 150 year old inn is as New England as can be, it is under new ownership and is the ideal place to do a workshop. We will take our meals there. I generally park my car in the lot and leave it there until the workshop is over.

If it is actually snowing there is an enormous covered back porch that overlooks the mountains on which we can paint . The camaraderie is wonderful and many students repeat year after year. I limit the class to about a dozen, so if you want to come, sign up using the button below. I is required that you stay in the inn to participate in the workshop. Before you sign up you probably want to call them first and book your room. Their phone number is 603-823-7244, they have a special package rate for my students. The total cost of the workshop is 300 dollars, the button below will allow you to pay the deposit and the balance will be due at the event.

Arthur Wesley Dow, and a disjointed ramble through late Victorian design fads.

The above illustration is from a book "Composition; Line, Notan, and Color by Arthur Wesley Dow (1857-1922)  who lived in Ipswich, Massachusetts. He studied in the 1880's in France at the Academie Julian and with Gustave Boulanger and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre. He trained alongside both Edmund Tarbell and Willard Metcalf  .Upon his return to Boston, he began studying the Boston Museum's great collection of Asian art, particularly Japanese prints. For a time he was actually the assistant curator of those. Dow opened a teaching studio in Ipswich, the surroundings must have made it a great place to study, Ipswich has more standing architecture from the 1600's than any other town in America. Here is a photo of what it looked like then.

Here is a photo of Dows home, where he taught summer workshops.

Dow as a teacher was concerned about the emphasis on realistic description that dominated the art instruction of the day. He, like Whistler, supported a more artistic approach based on the parts of painting apart from actual representation. Color was one of those, not transcribing color as it sat before the artist in nature, but building inventive and deliberate arrangements of color. But his greatest concern was with composition.Dow spent a lot of time studying not only Japanese prints but oriental rugs, Arabic script, and decorative arts from around the world. He became an exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement.


To place Dow in context I am going to show some Arts and Crafts history real quick.This was a late 19th century to early 20th century return to simpler handmade , (or handmade looking) decorative objects which often made a point of showing their construction. Below is an example of an arts and crafts interior. 

Along with this style came a great surge of interest in design, and particularly pattern design as might be found in fabrics and wallpaper. William Morris (1834-1896) was a Scottish designer who was a leader in the Arts and Crafts movement. Below is an example of several of his influential wallpaper designs.

Many of the ideas underpinning this style came from James McNeil Whistler (1834-1903) who advocated "art for arts sake" That is, art was to be beautiful because of what it looked like, rather than having a purpose, like advancing a political or sociological agenda. Its whole purpose was its appearance, not a moral to be taught or a narrative. The earliest phase of these ideas were mostly manifested in the decorative arts and architecture. Owen Jones (1809-1874) published in 1856 "A Grammar of Ornament". This was a profusely illustrated catalogue of ornamental designs from all cultures and periods. Artists and designers plundered the book for the rest of the century, mixing and matching styles and patterns to create the Victorian styles, of which the aesthetic period was a late variation, This style was only popular for the 1880's.  Below is an example of aesthetic movement design, Whistler's Peacock Room, from 1877. Below that is an example of aesthetic period furniture.

There were also enormous amounts of Japanese influenced pottery produced in Staffordshire, England that was modestly priced, mass produced, and ubiquitous for that short period. Below is an example of that. If you are looking for something to collect, e-bay is full of affordable examples today.

There was also a fad for designing "tiles". The artists of the day were very interested in decorative design and made and exchanged small square painted tiles of geometric and naturalistic abstract design. There were clubs started where artists would do these designs together and often present them to one another. This became a fad, but was seen as a good way to build design skills. Here is an example of that from Dow's book.

 See? we are back with Arthur Dow! The book is a lesson plan for teaching design and is full of suggested exercises. He leads his readers through increasingly complex design ideas. The earliest lessons are about linear design, but as he continues, he leads into Notan. Notan is an idea that Dow borrowed from the Japanese that means designing images in several flat values in a tonal manner. It is rather like thumbnailing as a means of arriving at the arrangement of a picture. This is a purely art for arts sake system, as it is not about transcribing nature, although it may incorporate natural forms. The idea is to create an arrangement of shapes that is beautiful in and of itself, rather than because of its skillful reproduction of a scene before the artist.

Above is an example of the simplified Notan sketches that Dow advocated. As you can see he is pushing a single picture idea through various treatments of value and arrangement, looking for an artistic presentation of his subject. They are all of the same house and tree but with different value arrangements and different "treatments" had by varying his interest in different parts of the image. Some emphasize the tree for instance and others the architecture. In some he switches the values about at will using a dark tree in one and a high value tree in another.

His values and drawing are slaved to his design!

Here is an example of Edgar Payne,in his book "composition of outdoor painting" a generation later espousing the same ideas.

Dow's book is available still, reprinted by Dover. Here is a link to that. It can also be read online at archive. org  here is a link to that.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snowcamp!

The annual dreaded Snowcamp workshop returns to the Inn on Sunset Hill, above Franconia, New Hampshire. I will be teaching on Saturday the 5th through Monday the 7th of March 2016. This is my favorite thing I do every year. You can join the group for an intense ( to say the very least) workshop overlooking the White Mountains. The views are enormous and we will paint from the grounds of the hotel itself. That means no caravanning around in cars. I teach all the aspects of landscape painting besides just snow painting and in the evenings I do a power point presentation on designing paintings and the history of landscape painting. This is a breakfast till bedtime workshop. We do nothing else for three days. I will work you like a borrowed mule.

The 150 year old inn is as New England as can be, it is under new ownership and is the ideal place to do a workshop. We will take our meals there. I generally park my car in the lot and leave it there until the workshop is over.

 If it is actually snowing there is an enormous covered back porch that overlooks the mountains on which we can paint . The camaraderie is wonderful and many students repeat year after year. I limit the class to about a dozen, so if you want to come, sign up using the button below. I is required that you stay in the inn to participate in the workshop. Before you sign up you probably want to call them first and book your room. Their phone number is 603-823-7244, they have a special package rate for my students.

Dearest Blog readers. I am doing a book for Pequod books. As part of that project, I have been labeling old posts and working on the back end of the system. Because of that some old blogs have popped to the front page here. Some posts may now be out of order. But they are all still here in their enormity. I am glad you have come to read them and please bear with any glitches that may have newly formed,
.....Stape

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS Potato edition

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS
POTATOES

Another find from the Nevelson master this painting is a fine example of a design flaw. Painted on the lid of a White Owl box, ( the artists white is suspected to be the ground up plastic mouthpieces from those same smokes ) this small painting contains a design problem called potation. What is that, you might well ask?

POTATION, THE REPETITION OF THE SAME SHAPE AND DIMENSION INSTEAD OF VARIED AND INTERESTING SHAPES, GIVES AN AMATEURISH AND ANNOYING ARTIFICIALITY.

If you again look at the painting above, or in your pamphlets, you will notice that the trees and the clouds are all of the same potato shape. Everyone who begins to paint makes this mistake. The ability to make interesting and varied shapes is developed and not instinctive. Like everything else in painting it must be learned, no one gets much for free.

When you see granny's paintings sold by her disgusted heirs at a yard sale, this is one of the most common faults. E-bay is full of modestly priced paintings by retired executives that are full of potato shapes. Someone once remarked that all amateur painting looks the same, and much of it does, because they all contain the same things unlearned.

So don't POTATE! as you paint, and when you study your work, police your shapes. Look for repletion of the same elements and intervals between them. The more different your shapes are from one another the longer you will hold the viewer.

Scholars researching the Nevelson master may have discovered his identity, one Dirk Van Assaerts from East Delft. Letters and civil records have come to light showing that he was a successful teacher and arts administrator too, winning numerous grants and subsidies. Van Assaerts left volumes of correspondence, opening to scholars a unique view into the life of a 17th century tyro. In coming posts I will reveal what contemporary scholarship has to say about this remarkable man.

safety studio post

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

My little studio and a line of tape on the floor.

My studio measures eleven by twenty feet. That's big enough for me. If I were doing portraits or  figures I would need more space, but for what I do it works just fine. I start all of my paintings outside, the studio is where I operate on them when they come home.

My  studio is a miniature version of one I had in the seventies in the historic Fenway Studios building in Boston. The studio is the former garage next to my house that I have reworked. I removed a roll up door on steel tracks and closed up the hole where it had been. The garage had a cement floor and bare wooden studs for  walls.There was a low ceilinged second floor above. I removed half of that and kept the back half as a loft area for my stretchers and failed paintings. The front half of the room where the easel is has a 14 foot "cathedral" and dormered ceiling. There is another set of small french windows set into a dog house dormer above the window in the photo, so I have lots of light. The studio is wainscoted in dark wood, extra high, and has oak floors. The floors take a real beating because this is a workshop. The windows are true divided lights and also stained dark walnut like the rest of the woodwork.  The walls are  linen white. The walls go up so high that all that white  counterbalances the dark wood and keeps the studio from being darker than the inside of a cow.

For me, a north light studio is essential. The studio is a big light box, like a camera, there are no other windows on the sides of the studio so the light only comes from one direction. North light is unvarying over the course of a workday, any other direction and the sun will strike into your studio. That would mean that if you painted a still life, the shadows on the objects would move over the course of the day. Under north light they do not. I don't paint still life, but the glare of full sunlight streaming through  a studio window makes it hard to work. I want soft, cool, and even natural light. Late in the day I do get a little direct sun beaming in, and I take a break as the bright  parallelograms cross the walls behind me.

My easel has a simple homemade rack sitting on it that has a 1"by4" extension six feet long. I can place two 24" by 30"s next to one another, The rack takes the level of the tray of the easel up about 2 feet, I like that because I am tall. Also sitting on the tray of the easel is a three by four piece of plywood to which I can tape photos of paintings that I find inspiring, or references.  Above the easel on arms of carefully selected #3 pine hang several fluorescent fixtures. I prefer not to  paint under artificial light. Sometimes I have to work at night to get things done, so I have them.  Studio lighting can be set up much better, but I get by with this. I don't want to mount any light fixtures on my window wall, it wouldn't look pretty.

Here is a closeup of my taboret, the table on which a painter sets his palette when he works. Mine is a very heavy homemade cabinet full of drawers, upon which a key grinding machine once lived in a Maine hardware store. Steel casters allow it to be shoved about as needed. I want it to be heavy so it is stable. On one side of the taboret is a hook where I hang the backpack I use outside, so whatever I keep in that bag is close at hand.

My open paint box is on the sideboard behind me. I have only one palette and paintbox. When I come in from outside, I take the palette out of the box, and set it one the taboret. The dozen or so drawers on the right hand ( not visible) side of the taboret hold paint that I buy in quantity and tube myself. That adds weight too. The top of the taboret is heavy oak and will withstand great abuse. I use it like the bench in a woodworkers shop when the palette is removed.

On the floor is a cheap rug from Home Depot which I replace every few years when it gets too splattered with paint to be presentable. On that rug about five feet away from the easel is a piece of masking tape.

 I paint from two different points in my studio. 

If I am doing small or tightly detailed work I stand right at the easel. I almost always work standing. But when I am finishing full sized paintings that I have started outside I stand back from the easel on the taped line. I observe the painting from this point, I mix the note on the palette beside me, and then I walk up to the easel and make my brushstroke(s). Then I return to my distant observation point again. Doing this causes the paintings ideal focus to be out about five feet from the canvas. That makes a big difference in the way a painting looks and helps me keep a more impressionist look in my pictures.

I have found I get better results if I stand back from my easel. I get a broader looking picture if I work from this distance. It also seems quicker to me, I do try to use the largest brush I can and at that distance working in bigger marks is easier. It really does make a big difference in the way a painting looks. The distant viewing station gives a more impressionist and looser look than standing right at the canvas.

Would this be a better painting if I put a burning phone booth in it?

How many times have we all asked ourselves, would this be a better painting if I put a burning phone booth in it? Well in this case, yeah!

The painting above is an example of the work of the forgotten Dutch painter of the 17th century, Dirk Van Assaerts. I have written a number of times about this tyros depressing oeuvre and if you would like to see those posts, click on "The encyclopedia of dumb design ideas" over there in my sidebar. Dirk Van Assaerts is sometimes referred to as the Nevelson master because his work was discovered behind a Louise Nevelson sculpture which was moved for cleaning. Scholars and curators agree there may be many more scattered about behind the other Nevelsons around our nation, but generally feel that the artistic merit of the paintings pales beside the inconvenience of moving one of her assemblages. They do agree the that the artist's oaken panels make excellent shims.

Dirk received a subpoena to submit a painting to the prestigious annual exhibition at the local Organs of Compulsion treadmill. The competition was spirited for a place on their mildewed walls.  He had a painting in his studio that had lain long unsold, called "The old mill on a dreary afternoon". Below is a photoshopped recreation of what this daub must have looked like. 

 The painting had a number of problems. Mostly it was static. The two interesting areas, the tree and the windmill balanced one another too much.

The two elements here are both about of equal strength in pulling the attention of the viewer. 

 Incidentally, objects in a painting can be balanced not only across the picture plane. but into it as well, a foreground object can be balanced by another object far into the painting.  To illustrate this I would have you recall all those diagrams and the filmstrips of Dirks's era that show the two little boys on a seesaw, they show a side view of the foppish boys, but imagine if the shot was made looking over one of the boys shoulder at the now distant other boy.That is balance into space.

 The addition of a third object turns the painting into what is sometimes called a three spot composition. Below is a remarkably lucid illustration showing just that. 

The burning phone booth at 2 is dominant over the other two "spots". Generally it works better to design with an uneven but artistic balance of elements. The eternally burning phone booth dominates the picture for a number of reasons. It is close to the center of the design, it is brightly colored in a painting that is otherwise grave, and  is relieved by the gloomy sky behind it. The booth also breaks the  too dominant horizontal line across the painting.

There are times such as in religious art where a static or very formal design is wanted and putting something deliberately in the middle of a painting works. But generally in landscape painting it doesn't. However there is a little trick that Dirk knew that would allow almost that. Dirk set the phone booth up against that middle line. That often works pretty well. The booth kisses that center line, but all of it is to one side of the line. Below is an extraordinary diagram of that.  

 

Dirk had the good sense in this failed painting to at least keep the sky simple. If a painting has a lot going on in it, it is often a good idea to keep the sky simple. You gotta cut em a break somewhere.

Dirk's painting was well received by the conniving judges at the treadmill facility. But the guards in their rusting chain mail Nehru jackets complained that the wretched women and children "treaders" marched more slowly in front of the picture. The filthy treaders in their bronzen chains moaned "Wat betenkent het? Wat betekent het? What does it mean? What does it mean? Dirk, when pressed for an answer replied.

THE ILLUSION OF MEANING.....IS MEANING!

screw em!

The triumph of reason and your favorite Hollywood starlets supine

I will begin by announcing a show of Cape Ann art that will open this week in Gloucester, at the  North Shore Arts Association. There will be 125 examples of historic Cape Ann artists work. There are Hibbards and Gruppes and Harry Leith Ross, and a knockout Lester Stevens, a wonderful Harriet Randall Lewis, a Winslow Homer drawing, an Anthony Cirino, a Jane Peterson still life, a William Meyrowitz, and a Teresa Bernstein, and lots more. These paintings came from private collections and most are seldom seen outside their proud owners homes. If you are in the area this is something you should see.The parking lot of the art association provides one of the best views of  Gloucester harbor too.

I have been keeping a yellow legal pad handy so I can write down ideas for blog posts. I have filled a whole page so I think I will unload a few of those at you tonight. They will follow in the form of brief  one paragraph rants.

People who see me painting often come up to me and say "it must be nice to be so talented". I think they underestimate what it took to get here and imagine that had they been "lucky" like me they could do it too. I tell them
  " well, I am six foot four now, but I have been every height below that on my way here". 

I had to make some God awful crap along the way. The ability to paint is a learned skill, some learn faster than others, and few slower than me. I have known only a few natural painters and they seem able to intuitively master only one aspect of their craft. For me it has been about endurance. I pose as if I sprang like Athena, fully armored from the temple of Zeus, but what I really am is a plugger. If I had died at 30 I would be best remembered as the guy with all the hair. I have known some fine painters who weren't all that bright, but I have known none who were not incessant workers.

I had friends in high school who liked only the Beatles.They said they were the best rock and roll band. They probably were. But for these friends the fun ended there, they identified who they thought was best and looked no further. They missed Quicksilver, Spirit and Savoy Brown, Dr John and Ten Years after. The same thing happens in painting. OK, Sorolla is a fabulous painter, but there are a hundreds of other fine painters who can thrill the viewer as well. Have you seen Mancini or Shiskin? How about Rosa Bonhuer or Richard Parkes Bonington? I fell in love with Seago years ago when he was pretty much unknown in this country. I suggest you should seek out as many artist's work as you can, there are lots of voices out there. There are lots of artists to enjoy, not just two or three. Go look up Eugene Boudin, J. Enneking, and  Alfred Munnings. Do you know Anthony Thieme? How many early twentieth century Scottish etchers  can you name? I mean  other than

Muirhead Bone.

I try to be a picture maker.What you observe before you when painting is not a picture. It is nature. If you want a picture on your canvas you have to put it there. I try to make things for people to hang in their homes and enjoy, stuff to be lived with that will unfurl gradually as they observe it. Pictures are not a matter of factual transcription of nature, random and chaotic. They are designed and have emotional content. Those things are installed, not observed. That's why having your own voice is so important. Technique is grammar, picture making is about content.

• Don't forget to put in the art!

Having your own voice, that's important. There seems to be a lack of interest in originality lately. I see artists lauded as important and new masters, whose work is simply an imitation of another more famous painter. Often they win major prizes and are written of glowingly in magazines. They look just like Richard Schmid or Scott Christensen so they have got to be good! A painters art should look as if only they could have made it. The worst thing that can be said about a painter is that he paints just like so and so. Don't play in a cover band, write your own stuff if you want to do anything really worthwhile. To be near Vermeer, is to be mere veneer. Try getting a couple of different heroes, that helps. They oughta be dead too.


Poeples art expectations. When I had a gallery of my own in Rockport ( and I might again, I will let you know) Once a guy walked in and asked if I had that picture of the old tyme sailor guy with the bell.

He wanted a zillion dollar painting and assumed that since I had an art gallery I would have it in stock. Sadly I didn't. There is only one of those. I reflected on that a long time and what I figured out told me a lot about how my customers thought. He had seen a painting he really liked and every time he walked into an art gallery he looked to see if it was there. That it was a one of a kind object never crossed his mid. He thought that every artist made a unit like that. "Nope! he doesn't make that one!" He thought it was like shoes, every shoe company makes a penny loafer, it's a unit, not an original. There was no way he would ever buy anything other than the Homer. He probably ended up with some Chi-Com ripoff of the painting. Many of my visitors could never be sold a painting because they had seen one painting that they  liked and forever would walk into galleries looking for it. Nothing I had would do. He wanted that Homer! That it was my job to make my own paintings never crossed his mind. He only liked the Beatles.

There are challenges to being a pro that many artists never imagine. I routinely see art made to compete in competitions. The artists is out to get a knockout punch. They want to make the largest damndest thing they can make. That might be the way to win prizes, but it s not (at least usually) the way to make a living in the field. In order to make a living you need to be able to produce a steady stream of salable paintings. Over a career that might mean hundreds of them. You have to be reliable and consistent. The idea is to be valued not discovered, at least in the art world I inhabit. I have seen lots of flash in the pan , this years hero artists appear like a shooting star only to disappear in the blinding light of the next greatest thing. It is usually a marathon and not a sprint.. The key might be style. Each painting must be informed by the artists unique personality more than the subject. People seem to want pictures more than manifestos. Hans Christian Anderson wrote a story called "The most incredible thing" that seems to address this idea here is a link to that.

OK that's enough for tonight! Thanks for tuning in!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have a workshop coming up this weekend in Connecticut that is sorely undersubscribed. The weather report looks great and I intend to make it a near shattering experience for those who dare come near. It will be in Kent, Connecticut on August 23 through the 25th. and is sponsored by the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury. Kent was one of those old impressionist art colonies from the late 19th to early 20th century. This is the southern end of the Berkshires. I teach about ten hours a day or more. We paint together and eat together all day and into the evening. You will do nothing but paint and sleep. 

Here is the link to sign up

Oh,Hello!

Waiting for spring 24 by 30

Oh, Hello! This blog was to have been a one year effort that stretched to about three years. I wrote a post every day for nearly a thousand days, setting out to write down everything that I had learned over the years that I thought a painter should know. It was a specific project, and I did it as well as I could. I wrote it all out and gave the information away. Even though I seldom add to it now, I occasionally check my stats and see that there are a whole lot of people still reading it, so the blog is out there being useful. I am painting away  as always, and have volunteered to sit on the board of the Guild of  Boston Artists, which will be a new project for me. The picture above was done on one of many snow painting trips to Vermont this winter with my friend T. M. Nicholas. I fooled with it for a few days in the studio too.

Recently T.M. and I were talking about finishing pictures in the studio. That method is typical of the past New England painters we both admire. We both photograph every location, and agreed that it was a useful practice in case we lost the light or didn't get down far enough into the painting to remember if there were returns on that gable or not. But neither of us really look at the photos much, we invent a whole lot of what is on the canvas, or at least simplify it. Then he said something that made me think, he said....when I am working in the studio

 I AM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT

 WHAT THIS PAINTING NEEDS!

What I think he meant was that when you have a photo, you have lots of information to draw on, but when you work without looking at it, you get a different result. Rather than transcribing from your photo when you look at the painting,you are asking yourself not what goes here, but what does this painting need? The idea is that in the studio you add art, not necessarily information. The answer might come from the rest of the picture. Perhaps the painting needs more weight here, or this line needs to lead this way. Sometimes it is about the pattern of shapes or the harmony of colours. Often it is the "treatment" that you are applying to the subject. When my paintings fail (I have quit painting on panels because they are too hard to throw away) it is seldom because they lack for information, but because they are matter of fact

What your painting should look like might come from your emotional intent, such as "I want this painting to be joyous" or" I want this picture to be lugubrious and sodden". You can put feeling into a painting, but it will come from within you, not from your reference photos.

But most importantly, when you are working out of your head and not from a reference the decisions you make are more individual. It will give your paintings a personal look. What you make up, eliminate or invent will be unique to you in a way that photo references are not. This will give your paintings more style. They will look more like they were done by you, rather than anyone else.

.Information is not art! The artist selects from the myriad bristling details and uses those which advance his intent and discards those which do not. That selection is called simplification, or sometimes breadth. We forget the little details and remember more about how the place made us feel. My best paintings often look remembered, rather than observed. Using photos often leads the artist to an accounting of the particulars of a scene and away from invention. Invention is personal. That which you invent in your paintings will give you your own unique style, that which you transcribe will be comparatively neutral. So most of the time I am in the studio, I don't use references at all. Now and then I will check some element in my photos but the general look, effect and handling come from me and not my references.

I should probably qualify all of this a bit by saying that this is grad-level stuff. I have taught a whole lot of workshops and spent most of my time in them drawing attention to the appearance of nature before the flailing student.The first skill that must be acquired is the ability to represent the scene before you with accurate drawing and color.You absolutely must get that DOWN, gotta have that! It is also important to make lots of outdoor studies in order to build a mental library of  what nature looks like and how different conditions and lighting effect that.

 I suggest you work on paintings in the studio out of your head as much as possible. Your paintings will be more individual and expressive. This is the key to making paintings that are uniquely your own. You want the viewer to look at your work and recognize in it your "style". That will come from putting yourself into your paintings, when they look at them, there you are!



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

WORKSHOP

There is only a single workshop on the docket at this time. It will be in Kent, Connecticut on August 23 through the 25th. and is sponsored by the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury. Kent was one of those old impressionist art colonies from the late 19th to early 20th century. This is the southern end of the Berkshires, I guess, and is in what is called the Connecticut hill country I have researched the paintings that were made there and it looks to be a promising place to paint. One of my favorite Metcalfs was painted on a visit to Kent. 

Here is the link to sign up

Copying from drawings

Ingres, portrait of Pagini

A friend was telling me recently that he wanted to make a copy of a painting. He had reproduction of a Van Gogh that he had found online and intended to use. I told him that I thought copying great art was a wonderful exercise for the learning painter. However I did offer a few caveats. Here is what I told him.

Copying used to be discouraged when I was in art school. I have no idea if it is now, but then, the argument was that it wasn't creative. They were right. However it is still a great learning tool and teaches discipline as well. You will spend a lifetime making your own original art. A short time spent building skills seems useful, even at the expense of making a few pieces that are not original or creative. Creative is not the idea with copying , the idea is to "get inside the artist's head". While there is  value in sketching versions of the masters, making a careful and accurate copy is most instructive for a student.  It requires the closest possible examination of the subject work to be copied. The nuances of handling and line, edge and color (if present) only yield to the observer after careful scrutiny.
But I think, more importantly, the discipline of crafting a reproduction of the greatest fidelity is essential. We live in  times that often value the quick or nearly instant over the carefully wrought. Too many art students like to bang out quick work that allows them to quit on a piece before really digging down into the excellencies that a more finely crafted project would exhume.  I advised my friend that if he is going to make a copy of a masterwork, to make the most accurate copy he can.

In the early 1970's, before I studied in Boston, I did a number of very careful copies.  I copied the artists that in the preceding century had been considered the great draftsmen. I copied Ingres, Rubens, Michelangelo and Holbein, Jean Clouet and Degas. I copied their drawings.

Later, I copied a few paintings in museums, but initially, I copied drawings. Here is why, I could get better reproductions of drawing than of paintings. There were inexpensive books available of the drawings of the masters AND they presented the drawings in nearly the original size.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO COPY, COPY FROM THE ORIGINAL IF YOU CAN, IF NOT, COPY FROM A REPRODUCTION CLOSE TO, OR THE ORIGINAL SIZE OF THE HISTORIC WORK!

This is important, copying a painting six feet across from a reproduction the size of a postcard will give you some information, but not the fineness of handling, edges and line. Drawings reproduced on paper are more like the original  works . I advise that you find monographs of artists drawings rather than working from a computer screen , a drawing reproduced on paper looks more like the original than the backlit version on your computer screen. After doing copies of drawings you may want to do copies of a few paintings,then I recommend you go to the museum and copy from the original.  Some of you may live in places where there are no museums. If that is the case for you, the next best thing to do is to copy from a print.  Finds a high QUALITY print that is similar if not the same size as the original. The museums and online merchandisers sell such things. The niceties I mentioned before appear better if at all in an actual sized reproduction rather than in reduction.

Tracing the image is counterproductive, Measuring a half dozen or so points and marking them on your paper or canvas does seem like a good idea though. That is easy, a particular point in your print might be six inches down from the top and four inches in from the right. Use a ruler and mark a few  points about your version to avoid distortions and heartbreaking corrections later.

Try to work the whole image, at least at first. Few things are more disappointing than discovering a carefully rendered passage is in the wrong place compared to the passage adjoining it.

Work on a quality paper, something that will stand up to erasure. Use quality pencils in a couple of appropriate hardnesses. Get  a kneaded eraser and a Pink Pearl  for ripping out your mistakes. If a line isn't right, tear it out! Do it over.

There is only one "right" there are a billion versions of wrong.

Don't walk away from the project when it is half right, hold yourself to the project as long as it takes. Put it away and return to it again. Pull a tracing of your version and lay it over the original and check your work for accuracy. Pretend you are a forger. A fine copy, finished, will be a great thing to hang on your studio wall for a reminder of the skill you have observed in your artistic hero. A weak copy will not, it will only remind you of the cursory attention  you were willing to spend on the project. You could tape an apology below it, I suppose. Begin that with the phrase,"I was just trying to...."

I think Ingres is a great draftsman to copy. His incisive, elegant and rhythmic line taught me a lot about artfulness and representation. I was able to copy from the originals years later at the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, but I am grateful for the time I spent in my early years copying Ingres drawings from books.

Old plaster picture frames and a couple of little tricks I know.

this years blue night scene, I think this is the 33rd year I have made one of these.

Stape, is this sort of frame of any value to use for paintings?
........................... Myrtle Durgin

Here is what I think on 19th century plaster frames. THEY SHOULD HAVE NO DAMAGE! Repair is time and skill intensive. I know you are about to ask if you can do it yourself.  It takes a gilder  to do that. It would take you months to have that skill, and years to perfect it.  I have done some gilding and been married to a gilder. I have repaired and restored several old frames and helped do some more. You can do endless scut work. There is lots of sanding and fine dust , wear your mask! and breathe through your ears! .

 To be worth investing the time  and extremely high materials cost, the frame has to be sold for serious money but it is a long way from that now,.
To repair that frame properly is a big job. You could just do the amateur  Sculpey and dab method, Everybody thinks they can do it, just like painting! Then the only market for the frame will be the flea market or  roadside cooperative antiques and collectibles hive. That's where things go that are "almost right, or pretty good!" Please don't imagine that your first foray into frame restoration will come out "finest kind". People work a long time to master this little known trade. The nice folks at the Society of Gilders will be delighted to teach you how to do this, by the way.

Badly repaired, the frame will be a white elephant. Eventually someone will put a mirror in it. Now I know you are thinking."well OK, but I could just put some stuff on there and metal leaf it, or maybe spray paint it some and it would be alright, I'll put it on one of my own paintings. It COULD be a valuable frame, but then it needs to real gold!  Probably about 500 dollars worth or more, that's just a guess. Metal leaf, you know, the stuff they put on the Chi-com frames? That won't give that look you need. Worse still, would be the gold spray paint the owner of the distressed frames you have pictured recommends, while making  spraying motions with his hand, and saying "you know".

I restored some old frames in the early eighties when quality old frames were more commonly available. I had some very excellent old frames, but they were arts and crafts style original frames not the sort you are contemplating. I wish I had them now. The Beal family kindly gave me what had been Reynolds Beal's old frame stock from their cellar, an awfully nice gift to a struggling young artist. These were wide Whistler frames with both the cap as big as your bicep and a three inch liner, with fluting in there by the rabbet. They were  in big sizes in excellent condition and most of them in gold . I suppose they were from the nineteen twenties. I used most of them myself and sold a few to a dealer.

If you had an arts and crafts era frame, of the the sort I described above, it might make more sense. Here's why, the market, at least in my experience, prefers simpler frames. They see the floral plaster frames as being fussy or too fancy ( note; this is not a matter of  they shouldn't think that way, rather an observation that they do) I have never had much luck trying to sell my paintings in decorative frames of that sort. There are some exceptions, if you are working in a Hudson River school style the floral plaster frames might be OK. Very classical figurative stuff might work in a decorated plaster frame as well. But in order for them to sell for anything more than a dorm refrigerator, again, they need to be finest kind. Artists who routinely make sales, present their work in quality frames. If the buyer has a little problem with the frame, most of the time the sale is  over.


Here is a system for making repeatable batches of color.

 Sometimes I need to make a pile of color and record how I did it. Then I can make more later if it runs out before I have finished the painting. I used this method to make the blue color that pervades most of the blue painting above. Using my ruler I make several lines on my palette. I then put one inch increments on those lines.

I squeeze out so many inches of each color along my lines, right from the tube. In this mix I have three parts of white to five parts of umber. I make a point of jotting down the ratios of the colors I am mixing. In some instances I might have three lines bearing different pigments.

 

Then I mix them together. If I don't get the exact note I need I will return to one of my lines and add another inch of one color or another.

Once I have made the quantity of the note that I need, I preserve it by wrapping it in saran wrap. It will last for months that way. When I need a little more  I open up the little saran wrap package and transfer some  to my palette with a CLEAN knife.

 

 Sometimes the ferule of my brush will glint annoyingly under certain kinds of light. I wish they made the ferules a dull gray but they don't, so I wrap a little duct tape around them as shown above. It usually comes off in a day or so, but it solves the problem for today.

Tonal landscape drawing

A snowy road near Rochester, Vermont

Oh, here I am!  I have been traveling, teaching workshops and always painting. I get e-mail routinely, asking as civilly as possible, "wheres the next post? That makes me feel useful. Here it is.

When last I wrote, I talked about confusing color with value. I see that a lot when I teach. Students add color instead of lowering the value of an object. The shadow side of a green tree becomes greener, not darker in value, the deepest shadows down within the tree become greener still.

I have just finished teaching half a dozen workshops in New England, Mississippi, and in North Carolina. As I taught those, I kept in mind that I wanted to find a way to make the idea easy to grasp for my students. Here is what I think might work.

Many of you have programs on your computer like Photoshop, or photo correction programs that came preloaded into your computer, or installed by your digital camera as part of its software package. There are two adjustments always offered, there are zillions more besides including one that makes your photo look like it was done by Monet, well sort of. But, the one above is important, this slider controls lightness and darkness push the slider one direction it gets darker and the other it gets lighter. This slider is controlling values.

Below is the second important control offered you, this is for saturation, or the amount of color. Like the slider above, if you push it one way the colors become more intense, push it the other way and they become less colored or grave. This slider doesn't make the colors darker or lighter, just more or less colored.