tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56820814715992865512024-03-19T08:09:54.271-04:00Stapleton KearnsBlog about landscape painting, art and "how to" advice for painters.Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.comBlogger1027125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-55984966673861282852023-02-03T11:52:00.000-05:002023-02-03T11:52:07.753-05:00<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtnkb3cBw94ie4nUX_Q_r2RJn19WsYTrDzmJ_AXPV4QbPp1XgBnT7ozZZ9MHEU3krSWI6jlTgPgimia78Bw-x8B_cbT8c9Bl4NBG7bwDeDkE86wR6Ji26nmyO6JdD3N5wVkRgWoU7BkvLDsq84vPr4-k79oC49WfGuoGt0nMziwNnNNKUz8HFkgXrJw/s1081/img_1_1674670880419.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="825" data-original-width="1081" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtnkb3cBw94ie4nUX_Q_r2RJn19WsYTrDzmJ_AXPV4QbPp1XgBnT7ozZZ9MHEU3krSWI6jlTgPgimia78Bw-x8B_cbT8c9Bl4NBG7bwDeDkE86wR6Ji26nmyO6JdD3N5wVkRgWoU7BkvLDsq84vPr4-k79oC49WfGuoGt0nMziwNnNNKUz8HFkgXrJw/w400-h305/img_1_1674670880419.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>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 <a href="https://www.nma.art/" target="_blank">New Masters Academy</a> but I am adding a new mentoring program on <a href="http://Mastrius.com">Mastrius.com</a> 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.</p>Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-85558802966950497272017-01-15T17:30:00.000-05:002017-01-15T18:59:51.315-05:00Color vibration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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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......<br />
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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<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2011/04/barn-loser.html" target="_blank"> how to lay a painting in with broken color</a>. 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.<br />
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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.<br />
Below is a Hassam that is full of broken color.<br />
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and here is a closeup.<br />
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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.<br />
Here is a Pissarro.<br />
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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.<br />
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Below is one of Monets Haystacks series.<br />
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and here is a closeup of that.<br />
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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.<br />
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You can see his use of the divisionist color particularly well in the water in this one.<br />
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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.<br />
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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<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/09/snowcamp-2017.html" target="_blank"> click here.</a><br />
Here is a<a href="http://www.innatsunsethill.com/" target="_blank"> link to the Inn at Sunset Hill</a><br />
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<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-68921156145423347212016-02-22T15:49:00.000-05:002016-02-24T20:07:02.165-05:00 James Gurney, a review of his new video<br />
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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<a href="http://jamesgurney.com/site/books" target="_blank"> link for those</a>. 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".<br />
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.<br />
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 <a href="http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">is a link</a> to that.<br />
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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Snowcamp!</span></div>
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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.<br />
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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-61789173254489442482016-01-31T13:15:00.000-05:002016-02-01T18:45:24.591-05:00 Arthur Wesley Dow, and a disjointed ramble through late Victorian design fads.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkNHefAaW6LytjHh_myXHD4nvM-ZvRoH76nvzjOE7FHRWMwErsXoY9ijIYqDM29YHF6qK5_8ILiNyNKkClVAgJOqsQihiBL3PTL9nOMeJtKLoClCy_1_RdLupBDjW4DHcMgT-TDjAbXumN/s1600/dow1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkNHefAaW6LytjHh_myXHD4nvM-ZvRoH76nvzjOE7FHRWMwErsXoY9ijIYqDM29YHF6qK5_8ILiNyNKkClVAgJOqsQihiBL3PTL9nOMeJtKLoClCy_1_RdLupBDjW4DHcMgT-TDjAbXumN/s1600/dow1.jpg" /></a></div>
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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 <span style="line-height: 22.4px;">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. </span>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.<br />
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<span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjABeCWPeAmXTpix9_g4jYk1dcl8m2xRzrk3HumV-MTtxJPfmqUvk9J9VpNise7a2hAi2jh_DkNo5KYnTVXMTigq3QRaGpzalIFd65ll0TjCM6S4C0yA2_k2MZPq9xogFKjmaY16lPUfz7y/s1600/Riverfront_at_Ipswich%252C_MA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="217" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjABeCWPeAmXTpix9_g4jYk1dcl8m2xRzrk3HumV-MTtxJPfmqUvk9J9VpNise7a2hAi2jh_DkNo5KYnTVXMTigq3QRaGpzalIFd65ll0TjCM6S4C0yA2_k2MZPq9xogFKjmaY16lPUfz7y/s400/Riverfront_at_Ipswich%252C_MA.jpg" width="400" /></a></span><br />
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Here is a photo of Dows home, where he taught summer workshops.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5eGXap6TC_Rmy1F2e59jWf5JSNcwM613Nk80U0PMLniNoPr3KVaOlDJKXYKX5G3w9V6VV44PSMoJhkhqR_i3oDQZLRk1Dg9IhuG41B6lijbFzmm9be-avnGUCCyqYL4GSyWp-ZsGbDVpC/s1600/Dow+house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;"></span></a><span style="color: black; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5eGXap6TC_Rmy1F2e59jWf5JSNcwM613Nk80U0PMLniNoPr3KVaOlDJKXYKX5G3w9V6VV44PSMoJhkhqR_i3oDQZLRk1Dg9IhuG41B6lijbFzmm9be-avnGUCCyqYL4GSyWp-ZsGbDVpC/s1600/Dow+house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5eGXap6TC_Rmy1F2e59jWf5JSNcwM613Nk80U0PMLniNoPr3KVaOlDJKXYKX5G3w9V6VV44PSMoJhkhqR_i3oDQZLRk1Dg9IhuG41B6lijbFzmm9be-avnGUCCyqYL4GSyWp-ZsGbDVpC/s320/Dow+house.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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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.<br />
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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. <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #252525; font-family: sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.4px;"><br /></span></span></span>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_7Z-7ThOX2oq3zOCGxEZFoQAAJn-w2u11dJxntymdb6CcLR9G61YJS1Cnh-1vAU9_ocrSvKtXt5gBNAb-vHp5eqB0tjxLQkdrbZ9DsixfviD-vXwc2Sw8oKSVtMoTJ0kQP-QOU-I8gcq/s1600/arts+and+crafts+interior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx_7Z-7ThOX2oq3zOCGxEZFoQAAJn-w2u11dJxntymdb6CcLR9G61YJS1Cnh-1vAU9_ocrSvKtXt5gBNAb-vHp5eqB0tjxLQkdrbZ9DsixfviD-vXwc2Sw8oKSVtMoTJ0kQP-QOU-I8gcq/s1600/arts+and+crafts+interior.jpg" /></span></a></div>
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5mAZtoyzHMSApOi3Ky27S4qTVKjHaPCXpRE2VOVOwcITH4Id6HiMrUiVqp7FT0nifxqjYuYiESFQq-Z6xb0zmaTtLSG6trJaT-mNHiAieM_rncQy9SI4vyIUDejIEKN-4IPg-Szl9vi4H/s1600/william%252Bmorris-morris%2526co-1864-trellis%252B5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5mAZtoyzHMSApOi3Ky27S4qTVKjHaPCXpRE2VOVOwcITH4Id6HiMrUiVqp7FT0nifxqjYuYiESFQq-Z6xb0zmaTtLSG6trJaT-mNHiAieM_rncQy9SI4vyIUDejIEKN-4IPg-Szl9vi4H/s320/william%252Bmorris-morris%2526co-1864-trellis%252B5.jpg" width="286" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbA8AutIqd51ydUtwnaB6c6-WFRod4JxVt3puZfpP7m1kfRJ0gFJz2pgXOEPJm6gmwPbbA2Q2roXzia8r7n1Jp0R9qMci5Cw9iKbRBfVTexceg5g7GzqA_6dx9VkxHyAWpEdDX_6jEGtii/s1600/william+morris+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbA8AutIqd51ydUtwnaB6c6-WFRod4JxVt3puZfpP7m1kfRJ0gFJz2pgXOEPJm6gmwPbbA2Q2roXzia8r7n1Jp0R9qMci5Cw9iKbRBfVTexceg5g7GzqA_6dx9VkxHyAWpEdDX_6jEGtii/s320/william+morris+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0u_9OZL8oYFhyphenhyphenQfSiae9x8XabtXbQkYmmhkvNKKzbY6B0nd2HuMjZLGDYA5XXGqFmj2VN_R1VxfoxjVsSHtm7S7dYpOEDKdIsVOXpWq6ZW7Id6CjNTdhLKsMLLq3O0FcIei2D-mFEDcrN/s1600/Whistler+blue+room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0u_9OZL8oYFhyphenhyphenQfSiae9x8XabtXbQkYmmhkvNKKzbY6B0nd2HuMjZLGDYA5XXGqFmj2VN_R1VxfoxjVsSHtm7S7dYpOEDKdIsVOXpWq6ZW7Id6CjNTdhLKsMLLq3O0FcIei2D-mFEDcrN/s320/Whistler+blue+room.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr1aVbY_oJ0ajVB21NdjH3U1rZfGkqQUd_1wTFxA0UiIRBddUG5LWjj2nPE3j05Fg-y9x7Tiv-j4HUCzSs0khCsJC1A_taYxdvgFTQ4G4NTYO6owM41fOElEpQLhVP9sAIDxyQGTkDVWSi/s1600/aesthetic+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr1aVbY_oJ0ajVB21NdjH3U1rZfGkqQUd_1wTFxA0UiIRBddUG5LWjj2nPE3j05Fg-y9x7Tiv-j4HUCzSs0khCsJC1A_taYxdvgFTQ4G4NTYO6owM41fOElEpQLhVP9sAIDxyQGTkDVWSi/s320/aesthetic+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhXfoDq_0GUnLWLFRISryu4yq8CMadAmrQ-tfrgZ7wbYExiTvIaffYhL7syAom0XHeNgxNCkMPcqQPdNEXjBY8I4GOwdMqAymodeR27IOOQTnVBfNojXYfE2fg9013KWAUjDhGqZEiGVfy/s1600/dow+tile+designs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhXfoDq_0GUnLWLFRISryu4yq8CMadAmrQ-tfrgZ7wbYExiTvIaffYhL7syAom0XHeNgxNCkMPcqQPdNEXjBY8I4GOwdMqAymodeR27IOOQTnVBfNojXYfE2fg9013KWAUjDhGqZEiGVfy/s320/dow+tile+designs.jpg" width="274" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Here is an example of Edgar Payne,in his book "composition of outdoor painting" a generation later espousing the same ideas.</div>
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Dow's book is available still, reprinted by Dover. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Composition-Understanding-Notan-Color-Instruction/dp/048646007X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1454255142&sr=1-1&keywords=arthur+wesley+dow+composition" target="_blank">Here is a link to that.</a> It can also be read online at archive. org <a href="https://archive.org/details/compositionserie00dowauoft" target="_blank"> here is a link to that.</a></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-8887864837972000802015-12-11T22:28:00.001-05:002015-12-11T22:37:00.102-05:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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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,<br />
.....StapeStapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-75177556702631953312015-12-08T11:21:00.000-05:002015-12-08T11:21:08.084-05:00THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS Potato edition<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3UadD66WJEr2-fw2sZcXbbOIRfVAIAtJQ7RaojPCePx4axXIiy1597JOE7fVEfSDMCuqzF_sjvYosHQ0CrDprAk2UZvlTdPqEfIc5XsnrHODKrNk6m2BItbI-h3VYyfUN8SYdh0GS20NT/s1600/potatos.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5605452762478365490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3UadD66WJEr2-fw2sZcXbbOIRfVAIAtJQ7RaojPCePx4axXIiy1597JOE7fVEfSDMCuqzF_sjvYosHQ0CrDprAk2UZvlTdPqEfIc5XsnrHODKrNk6m2BItbI-h3VYyfUN8SYdh0GS20NT/s400/potatos.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 316px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span style="font-size: 180%; font-weight: bold;">THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF DUMB DESIGN IDEAS</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;">POTATOES<br /></span><br />
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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?<br />
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<span style="font-size: 130%;"> POTATION, THE REPETITION OF THE SAME SHAPE AND DIMENSION INSTEAD OF VARIED AND INTERESTING SHAPES, GIVES AN AMATEURISH AND ANNOYING ARTIFICIALITY.</span></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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So don't <span style="font-size: 130%;">POTATE<span style="font-weight: bold;">!</span></span> 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.<br />
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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.</div>
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-24673734434817198732015-12-08T11:12:00.000-05:002015-12-11T22:34:39.333-05:00safety studio post<div id="header-wrapper">
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Wednesday, October 2, 2013</h2>
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<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-little-studio-and-line-of-tape-on.html">My little studio and a line of tape on the floor.</a>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXRFEA5pO5UrIg_KzwzAx36uk1_k3gWZyBkxHOYbILW8kwrNCxP7brSGAm7LVnc35ytz5Ba6uZtyDOzfs2kGJs4JlZmKXJdLLHAGanSu99c6SbHkdnDQ8p7D5AZM0t7DEFFn8gQ59ASjk/s1600/studio-edited.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXRFEA5pO5UrIg_KzwzAx36uk1_k3gWZyBkxHOYbILW8kwrNCxP7brSGAm7LVnc35ytz5Ba6uZtyDOzfs2kGJs4JlZmKXJdLLHAGanSu99c6SbHkdnDQ8p7D5AZM0t7DEFFn8gQ59ASjk/s400/studio-edited.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: medium;"> I paint from two different points in my studio. </span></b></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-18432045580299017882014-12-01T20:39:00.001-05:002015-12-11T22:32:49.571-05:00Would this be a better painting if I put a burning phone booth in it?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUhrtBW4u2S7F2_sFiS4xVvliCmhOZPUydusiznQcCfy9ngBFnUOP-Z3MN6fnt1WzgdKx_YDtJMmXkQ4nhu9gnCCkdzDmI_ZZn9QipOyevtmGq0koZCO-ytY3ccCBD6YJRSA2pt2zNl0WO/s1600/phoneboothgood3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUhrtBW4u2S7F2_sFiS4xVvliCmhOZPUydusiznQcCfy9ngBFnUOP-Z3MN6fnt1WzgdKx_YDtJMmXkQ4nhu9gnCCkdzDmI_ZZn9QipOyevtmGq0koZCO-ytY3ccCBD6YJRSA2pt2zNl0WO/s1600/phoneboothgood3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<ol style="text-align: left;">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!</ol>
<ol style="text-align: left;">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.</ol>
<ol style="text-align: left;">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. </ol>
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<ol> 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.</ol>
<ol>The two elements here are both about of equal strength in pulling the attention of the viewer. </ol>
<ol> 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.</ol>
<ol> 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. </ol>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizJJkGSyc3cpTQi9v3kQ3aMUXTxd3nNwvEHkLqt7D6493tvzZsrCh6bLQ5s1to1-isnQIBokHXSaPEbcPEEx84bgrlOmrlJins4XRCyzga1H_n-9mwxNvBAMoSp4K0xu4HP8N5mjbNjf4M/s1600/phonebooth3spot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizJJkGSyc3cpTQi9v3kQ3aMUXTxd3nNwvEHkLqt7D6493tvzZsrCh6bLQ5s1to1-isnQIBokHXSaPEbcPEEx84bgrlOmrlJins4XRCyzga1H_n-9mwxNvBAMoSp4K0xu4HP8N5mjbNjf4M/s1600/phonebooth3spot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<ol>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.</ol>
<ol>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. </ol>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFKhxGa1nw7NqbPKZbBCMC0LeQwI64BGQZ0LOjRUNNzllos9QLta05HuAA-Kujo2YcM56nyUZ_wkZNvgf2OLRkSstnwbQFGea0N6OVCzxXrPM_3Zn2P_mk_zvN7JJ7uuwVyTLpxRqdp6s/s1600/phoneboothsplit2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFKhxGa1nw7NqbPKZbBCMC0LeQwI64BGQZ0LOjRUNNzllos9QLta05HuAA-Kujo2YcM56nyUZ_wkZNvgf2OLRkSstnwbQFGea0N6OVCzxXrPM_3Zn2P_mk_zvN7JJ7uuwVyTLpxRqdp6s/s1600/phoneboothsplit2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<ol> </ol>
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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">THE ILLUSION OF MEANING.....IS MEANING!</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">screw em!</span></div>
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<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-14987849714271164212014-08-19T00:09:00.000-04:002015-12-08T11:09:30.757-05:00The triumph of reason and your favorite Hollywood starlets supine<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcA_XCB7UhDbzX3AFPffpXBGmX4YYPUBlDR5rmDh7h37RNGaJXsf4-phd11YzuGPCdN_Vgqq8t77XaXmVrQnKZwLhvH9A-pY_sleu_C_3Jhg_OCAH2tdJt3CANtxGgKtIbn6HwxYG4maA-/s1600/North+shore.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcA_XCB7UhDbzX3AFPffpXBGmX4YYPUBlDR5rmDh7h37RNGaJXsf4-phd11YzuGPCdN_Vgqq8t77XaXmVrQnKZwLhvH9A-pY_sleu_C_3Jhg_OCAH2tdJt3CANtxGgKtIbn6HwxYG4maA-/s1600/North+shore.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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I will begin by announcing a show of Cape Ann art that will open this week in Gloucester, at the <a href="http://www.nsarts.org/" target="_blank">North Shore Arts Association</a>. 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">" well, I am six foot four now, but I have been every height below that on my way here". </span><br />
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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.<br />
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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</div>
Muirhead Bone.<br />
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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. <br />
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<li style="text-align: center;"><b>Don't forget to put in the art!</b></li>
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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.<br />
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<b>Poeples art expectations.</b> 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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 <a href="http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheMostIncredibleThing_e.html" target="_blank">link </a>to that.<br />
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OK that's enough for tonight! Thanks for tuning in!<br />
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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<span style="color: #999999; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;">.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "trebuchet" , "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 20.799999237060547px;"> 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. </span><br />
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<a href="https://www.mattatuckmuseum.org/civicrm/event/register?id=472&reset=" style="background-color: black; color: #993333; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Trebuchet, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 20.799999237060547px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">Here is the link to sign up</a><br />
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<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-68074797418547020502014-05-23T19:58:00.000-04:002014-05-24T08:08:54.829-04:00Oh,Hello!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waiting for spring 24 by 30</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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<br />
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<b style="font-size: x-large;"> I AM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT</b></div>
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<b style="font-size: x-large;"> WHAT THIS PAINTING NEEDS!</b></div>
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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<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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.<b>Information is not art! </b>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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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!<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>WORKSHOP</b></span></div>
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<b>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. </b></div>
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<a href="https://www.mattatuckmuseum.org/civicrm/event/register?id=472&reset=" target="_blank">Here is the link to sign up</a><br />
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<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-86070519699402746492014-02-13T22:25:00.000-05:002015-12-08T11:09:59.509-05:00Copying from drawings<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHrzjwQAGVec_ZZ6REqatSYr4A63IGC22bwfrrYn6F0QcpoqqhXd3Jw2rJ7-76XIQJM-yOxgbE4jUGyNUeqyn5q0-LJxXQf51EcMhWqzJtNS7zntWObU1bbWWNHLs6bfKc6SfCEWT4rOPa/s1600/paganini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHrzjwQAGVec_ZZ6REqatSYr4A63IGC22bwfrrYn6F0QcpoqqhXd3Jw2rJ7-76XIQJM-yOxgbE4jUGyNUeqyn5q0-LJxXQf51EcMhWqzJtNS7zntWObU1bbWWNHLs6bfKc6SfCEWT4rOPa/s1600/paganini.jpg" width="285" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ingres, portrait of Pagini </td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">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!</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">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 .</span> 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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">There is only one "right" there are a billion versions of wrong. </span></b><br />
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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...."<br />
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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.<br />
<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-18384147012502679642013-12-17T21:19:00.001-05:002015-12-11T22:38:08.381-05:00Old plaster picture frames and a couple of little tricks I know.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCeXXHh4bu9Tfd1UHo0JTMP8wZzM5JD9oKHOKUvU97SGokBm23p4s8VtGkQV_4lvWGPlEdi-58ml_fOaYVlVZwoZBp_xLmAXg7Xrcw36UdPZOJjaDpnH9LpC_B4dwbQPdEIvpaQ0rSiYH/s1600/blue-night-etc-017.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmCeXXHh4bu9Tfd1UHo0JTMP8wZzM5JD9oKHOKUvU97SGokBm23p4s8VtGkQV_4lvWGPlEdi-58ml_fOaYVlVZwoZBp_xLmAXg7Xrcw36UdPZOJjaDpnH9LpC_B4dwbQPdEIvpaQ0rSiYH/s400/blue-night-etc-017.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">this years blue night scene, I think this is the 33rd year I have made one of these.</td></tr>
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Stape, is this sort of frame of any value to use for paintings?<br />
........................... Myrtle Durgin<br />
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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! .</div>
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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,.<br />
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. <a href="http://www.societyofgilders.org/live/" target="_blank">The nice folks at the Society of Gilders</a> will be delighted to teach you how to do this, by the way.<br />
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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".<br />
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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 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_Beal" target="_blank">Beal</a> 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
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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.<br />
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Here is a system for making repeatable batches of color. <br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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. </div>
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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.</div>
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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. </div>
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-86148488070956085702013-11-30T13:26:00.003-05:002015-12-08T11:11:16.109-05:00 Tonal landscape drawing <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVvjX_jelVcKFSDP3PdB2OxwGp9YbpZdFEIiysNpHaAHjv7cDzK6S6R0u8EpaWkV26TFF2PtVpRLZn_ytsDwQez12vMj3tz7zq2AUvZN3efwZPJYaJdxYToDgk_85fdbYZ3kmIMMOPARFd/s1600/vermont+feb2012+045.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVvjX_jelVcKFSDP3PdB2OxwGp9YbpZdFEIiysNpHaAHjv7cDzK6S6R0u8EpaWkV26TFF2PtVpRLZn_ytsDwQez12vMj3tz7zq2AUvZN3efwZPJYaJdxYToDgk_85fdbYZ3kmIMMOPARFd/s400/vermont+feb2012+045.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A snowy road near Rochester, Vermont</td></tr>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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, <b>the one above</b> 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.<br />
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<b>Below</b> 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.<br />
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The upper slider, the contrast or "values" slider is the one I want you to think about right now. It is essential to get the values right in a painting. Values are a part of drawing and help make the vital skeleton that holds up your image. The picture "lives" in this arrangement of light and dark spots and lines. A picture presented in only black and white is still perfectly recognizable. Worry about values first and foremost. If you get the values right, under control, or telling your story, the colors can be applied to them.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"> Some thoughts on tonal drawing</span></div>
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A drawing can be made in paint. The drawing in a given painting can be off, because a painting contains drawing, even if it is not a line based presentation.<br />
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When I use the word drawing in front of workshop students, a good number of them ask if I mean a pencil drawing on the canvas.When they start to paint I see them putting a black line drawing on their canvas with every line darker than anything before them.The lovely forms of nature are represented with lines as black and thick as sewer pipe. </div>
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Drawing can be tonal as well as linear. That is, it can be without lines entirely. On location the tonal drawing will generally look more like nature than a linear drawing. I recomend learning to paint the landscape in a tonal fashion.There are a bunch of ways to lay in a painting outside, but this is the one I recommend you learn first. I have set many struggling students to the monochrome lay in and they have been able to get a better grasp of the landscape than before. The lay in can be done as a blur and tightened up as the painting progresses. Oil paint lends itself to that handling, nature routinely looks that way more than it does a line drawing, and tonal drawing encourages establishing the largest areas of a painting and decorating those with the smaller forms. The painter develops the largest shapes and progresses downwards to the smallest.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">I START OUT WITH A SHOVEL, AND I FINISH WITH A NEEDLE.</span></div>
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Here is a 16 by 20 tonal drawing (in oil paint) on a canvas. I don't always lay in paintings this way, but I often do. This was painted with only burnt sienna , and a little touch of ultramarine in the darkest accents. Most importantly though, it is transparent. There is no white paint on the canvas. The second you touch that white, you lose the ability to easily manipulate your shapes and design. As long as you are working transparently you can always pull passages out with a paper towel to correct your mistakes.<br />
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I worked on this one session outside, and then a little in the studio when I got home. I will probably take it out again and work on it with a few more colors, although given the mood of the thing I may limit myself to earth colors or maybe a Zorn palette. But often, I switch to color as soon as I have the whole picture up and working in monochrome. Maybe it will become a sunset in the studio. I could call it "Novembers apples" </div>
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A photograph of your house will look more like your house than it's blueprints. Photographs when taken outdoors, are dominated by tones more than by lines. Photographs are really just arrangements of different areas of value that cause us to believe we are seeing "nature" The camera doesn't insert a line at the edge of something because it is there, but not visible in nature. <br />
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purely tonal drawing, that is, one without any lines can look flaccid or
blurry. There have been lots of soft and dreamy pictures done of young
women in interiors , without many hard edges. The old
movie star photos looked that way too. They put some kind of goo on
their camera's lenses.</div>
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I
Photoshopped this starlet a little to show you what a purely tonal
presentation looks like. There are painters who work to get this look in
front of nature. If you paint exactly what you see when you squint you
will get pretty close to this look too. I call it</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">NATURE THROUGH A SHOWER DOOR</span></div>
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When I was a student I made a lot of still life, and some landscapes that were all soft like this. You can sable all of the
edges in a painting to flow nearly invisibly into one another. It can give either a refined and elegant look, or at other times ( in my case) just look blurry and lacking form.<br />
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There are lines in nature
though. Even were they not, it would be good to introduce a few of them,
for the sake of a more varied design. Lines are definition. They
provide visual relief from all of those tonal areas. Rocks and fine
branches present as lines in nature. Tree trunks are more commonly a
broad upright band of value that has an end on either side where
something behind them begins, but there is not generally a firm visible
dark line there. This is an example of one shape of a different value
meeting another shape off a differing value, rather than a drawn line a
pixel wide. How emphasized those sorts of meetings of edges are is a place where lots of artistic finesse comes in. Control over the relative hardness and softnesses of the way various forms meet is a little like the focus of a camera lens. It can be used to attract or divert the attention of the viewer from a passage. It can make forms go around (like in the lost and found lines in a woman's portrait by Sargent. It might be used to create distance, or accent the subject of the painting. Handling of edges might make a whole corner of the painting say "move along folks, nothin to see over here"<br />
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Bare trees in autumn give some nice lines. Stone walls and the edges of fields suggest them. Houses and barns in a landscape install some lines and squares to contrast with the rounded and more chaotic shapes of pure nature.You might set up your
easel on a village street. Man made stuff is liney. Landscape painters
have liked the ability to mix the organic shapes of nature among the
linear shapes of architecture. <br />
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I
think that a drawing that has an arrangement of lines AND tones is
optimal, as much art can be contrived by the relationship between the
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Above, is a John <span style="font-size: small;">Constable</span> as an example of "tonal "landscape drawing. When I was a kid I would have said "its been shaded in". It is a clear and solid. It has a strength and skeletal structure provided by some lines, some the meeting areas of adjacent areas of differing values, but there are lines defining those trees for instance.</div>
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even with
all the linearity going on in urban environments, in between those lines are still areas of
tone. I saw this on Facebook the other night.<br />
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Louigi Loir 1845-1916</div>
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This painting has a lovely mix of hard and soft edges. It is full of
soft tones that are accented with the hard lines of the guy in the
foreground and the lamp post to his left. The other hard edges and darks are
clustered along an arch shaped bridge that joins the two. That isn't something that the artist found one evening and said "look at that I will paint it!" He made the scene have that subterranean geometry on purpose.<br />
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There, does that make them easier to see?</div>
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SNOWCAMP 2014</div>
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<b>This years workshop will be held January 18 through 20.</b>
I really have a great time doing this. It has been my favorite event of
the year ever since I started doing it. I have taught a lot of
workshops, but with Snowcamp I feel like I broke the code. The scenery
is fabulous, the inn is now adept at anticipating our needs and the food
is good too. The inn keepers are now old friends and the inn feels like
a second home to me now as I have been there so many times. The inn is
informal and a little funky, here is a picture of the place below. How
old New England is that?<br />
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The workshop will begin Saturday morning and end Monday evening. That's
three days. I charge $300.00 per person, a $150.00 down payment and
$150.00 final payment to be paid at the event. <a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/11/heres-where-you-sign-up-please.html" target="_blank">If you want to sign up, Click here.</a><br />
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Snowcamp usually fills, so if you want to come, sign up.
The class is limited to twelve. So every one gets plenty of personal
attention. Each morning I do a demo and then in the afternoon the
students paint and I run from easel to easel teaching each student
individually. I have several painting exercises that will help build the
students skills in landscape painting that I work in to the schedule.
We meet for breakfast and dinner, the inn provides us with sandwiches
etc. for lunch so we don't lose much time from our work day. Before
dinner is served I do a slide show lecture on design and snow painting. I am working on a new evening presentation with a history of snow painting and I will compare the methods of various snow painters. One of the important things I teach about snow painting is the
opalescence color of snow. I will show you a system for creating the
look of snow in light with broken color. Snow is not white, but bring a big tube you will still need it.
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The camaraderie is an important part of the workshop and we will all be
good friends before the workshop is over. 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 make it and you will do little else but paint, eat and sleep
while you are there.
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-13623923938919132272013-10-25T10:43:00.003-04:002013-10-25T11:44:40.607-04:00Confounding color and value in the landscape.<br />
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Hey Stape:</div>
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Here's a plein air painting I did the other day. Maybe you could critique it for me? I call it "The Road Home" because it reminds me of driving down to visit my mother. How I miss her larder and Ganesh cones.</div>
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"Rusty" Phenolphthalein</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1VVXz88elgTjlt9TaVL52HdiXEhbhH3NRYTkOly9gy0Lc5LtrjL2r_tmnQk5ihzaq-absdg56H3Mjr_mxx4UfglkwE4D668fvtd7DdHf507ndzt2rWi2zwS7RHWOHMKLi5M4UQ6Kdr4r/s1600/the-pathMetcalf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQs7ayB_Sk7qZ7bnp5uytY3GsdO1U5sTTl3gASf9YQIp94tBrFKqV9nsSPcpiKJBGIorkxSb90iBxm-MbDOVXkXLlPyw7b5jbwseH2Gc0LGHYL3wdJO4xi3__eMC2jde7CDGdmlbu6o4gK/s1600/IMG_0052.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQs7ayB_Sk7qZ7bnp5uytY3GsdO1U5sTTl3gASf9YQIp94tBrFKqV9nsSPcpiKJBGIorkxSb90iBxm-MbDOVXkXLlPyw7b5jbwseH2Gc0LGHYL3wdJO4xi3__eMC2jde7CDGdmlbu6o4gK/s400/IMG_0052.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Rusty, you are </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">CONFOUNDING COLOR WITH VALUE!</span></b></div>
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You have failed to make a clear statement of your lights and darks. Look at the Metcalf below. Do you see the <b>clear pattern of lights and darks</b>?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyYLc4Qda6UvJTsG7-Xf7VqAZRSGwXIYxZDouHhBZ0a8aPtqgx0cnzZG8CAO7qUQcrcIFMZhJdtwR638-Cmww4TXobzZcnoLwM0dpSNnBpJMZMxqfqfkoWYymlz8bf-zlbJQ3RWYPu54D1/s1600/blnh;%27k%27.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyYLc4Qda6UvJTsG7-Xf7VqAZRSGwXIYxZDouHhBZ0a8aPtqgx0cnzZG8CAO7qUQcrcIFMZhJdtwR638-Cmww4TXobzZcnoLwM0dpSNnBpJMZMxqfqfkoWYymlz8bf-zlbJQ3RWYPu54D1/s400/blnh;%27k%27.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div>
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or how about in this Gruppe? Squint, that will make it even clearer.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8iwLqh1MtxXo2KebXQy_FGqsBp0d2tazh4oxaERWBHORI8gjCRlbJpyW8mrLw2BZW48DRPp1vhLuPvlkv1J6aYjsbLdNakbGH94DdpqNinvAojiu1byB7J4ll-P4c8rbjaHv_ryuwSktB/s1600/Gruppe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8iwLqh1MtxXo2KebXQy_FGqsBp0d2tazh4oxaERWBHORI8gjCRlbJpyW8mrLw2BZW48DRPp1vhLuPvlkv1J6aYjsbLdNakbGH94DdpqNinvAojiu1byB7J4ll-P4c8rbjaHv_ryuwSktB/s400/Gruppe.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Your painting looks "mushy" because you are making notes of the same value in both your lights and your shadows. Look at your mass of trees at the upper left, and compare it's value with the lower right hand corner that is in the light, common notes. You are including in your lights and your shadows notes of the same value.<br />
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I see this fault in students work routinely. When a note is deeper in value, the student responds not by dropping it's value, but by increasing it's saturation. Conversely, they respond to highly saturated colors in the light by painting them low in value. I have wondered if part of the fault lies in our language. In the everyday world we use the word "bright" to mean both high in value and full of color. We might say that a white room with many windows is bright, and then reject a screaming yellow color for the walls as "too bright". We do the same for the word "dark", a room could be too dark if it lacked light, yet we also might refer to a paint scheme as "too dark".<br />
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The easiest way to understand the difference is to think of a black and white photo, that is a pattern of values. Color doesn't appear. Color and value are both interrelated and hold hands in public. But they are two separate qualities that describe a note on your canvas. On gray days the values may grow very close together, but the division remains, even if the only deep shadow is in your pockets. <br />
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When we paint the landscape outside one of the most important tasks before us is to delineate the light and the shadow. This is drawing, even if it is tonal and not done with a pencil. It could be done in black and white, it is not a function of color.<br />
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"Rusty", look at your painting, see the nearest shadow crossing the road ? It shares values with the field in sunlight to it's left.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOm8Wi_wy9n4SLIyvxRYiJvc-DXyUEi9K5N5rM71ehIOdOUrpUCMHevbOyjWoUeejVWhQ-zazNjcCh_uEyLejMCYKCS-nQeJvc3CAXcK5qag9hfpmaaJnlDGl126fpBRKshGeqgn1aaJa7/s1600/dots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a></div>
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Above is your picture again. Below, I have strewn red dots across it noting where the same middle value notes occur. That value is laced through both your lights and your shadows.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCfr-gp22MlAD0xaPXPhLG4at6woDNGYrtsEmFBR2yBoKBDOErGWUBYorCzLxbVJ8oqnZVJiixVdx-ZtoEUpfrXU7Fjo-gzkWy6I626P2zMW6QIr5LyNRDVKDxFWBixAU2BP2dloB3ljn3/s1600/dots.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCfr-gp22MlAD0xaPXPhLG4at6woDNGYrtsEmFBR2yBoKBDOErGWUBYorCzLxbVJ8oqnZVJiixVdx-ZtoEUpfrXU7Fjo-gzkWy6I626P2zMW6QIr5LyNRDVKDxFWBixAU2BP2dloB3ljn3/s400/dots.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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It is essential to use a different set of values to represent your lights and shadows. Imagine a deck of cards, with just two suits, dark cards and light cards. Now deal them into two piles on the table before you, dark cards in one pile and light cards the other. Sorting the lights from the darks in a painting is similar. There are two piles, light and dark. No card fits in either one, each card is either one of the light cards or one of the dark cards. Every time your brush hits that canvas you need to know, is this note in the dark or is it in the light?<br />
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<span style="font-size: medium;">Durham, North Carolina</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">I am teaching a workshop in Durham, on
November 1-3, <a href="http://ncpaintingworkshop.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Here is the link to that.</a> </span></div>
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I have a medium sized class, so there is room for a few more. Smaller groups are more like going on a painting trip together. There is time for lots of individual attention. I looks like there will be good fall color there too. This will be the last workshop for a while for the faint hearted, your next opportunity will be the dreaded SNOWCAMP.Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-18245048647393918752013-10-12T18:38:00.000-04:002015-12-08T11:11:37.581-05:00Like driving an aircraft carrier<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Have you ever driven an aircraft carrier? Me neither. But, I'll bet, out of my blog readership, somebody actually has. For the sake of metaphor here, lets assume our ship is about the weight of an anvil that size.<br />
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If you want to make the aircraft carrier go, you step on the accelerator, and then in about an hour or so, the thing starts to move. Once you get it going though, it will ride along mightily over "old ocean's gray and melancholy waste" till you reach your destination. It takes a long time for that much mass to slow down, so if you want to stop in about an hour, you better hit the brakes now. <br />
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My job is lot like that. After I make the paintings, I put on a different hat. I am the owner of a micro business. A McDonalds is small business, I have more in common with a tradesman of the olden days, like a furniture maker. I am a cottage industry, a microbusiness. I make a small amount of expensive objects in a simple workshop, alone, I sell them to a small group of clients who enjoy and can afford fine art. I work with dealers, clients, and a little promotion to sell the art and get it out into the world at a faster clip than the world is removing money from my pocket. If at the end of this month for instance, I have enough money to pay my bills and maybe buy a sofa, it is not because of what I did this month. The decisions and work that made that happen, were mostly made several months ago. If I am not in the black the mistakes (or more likely misjudgements) were usually made months ago. If I go through a period where I am not hitting it and the pictures are not as good as they should be, several months from now that is going to show up on my ledger.<br />
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I am probably slower at production than lots of other artists, I discard at least half the paintings I start outside. I work on those I keep, sometimes only a few hours, or sometimes for weeks before they are ready to go out the door. Back in the early eighties when I was selling paintings for eighty five to one hundred and twenty five dollars, I tried to make one a day. I made and sold stacks of paintings, most of them very small. I had a tiny little art gallery in Rockport and didn't show many other places (there weren't many other places to show, in those days). I had more inventory then, but still sometimes I would be in a crises when that ran low. As I have developed more expertise and a small following I have been able to raise my prices. I don't have a lot of inventory, I destroy my old paintings that
haven't sold, unless I really believe in them, or I see an obvious flaw
that I can rework before sending them out again into the marketplace. I
deal in newly made paintings, or at least paintings made over the last
year or two. I don't make carloads of art anymore. I make fewer, and
far better considered paintings.<br />
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If you are asking serious money for your art, a lot is going to be expected of you. There are many fine and tempting things that the limited number of art collectors in my price bracket might prefer to my latest daub.The paintings need to be as good as I can make them, my life actually depends on that. If I don't sell paintings I will eat snowballs this winter.They need to look like they are well worth buying at that price point. <br />
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Many single paintings can be finished and out the door quickly enough, and a request from a show for a single piece is sometimes easy to manage. But more commonly I need to deliver paintings in groups of six or so, because that is about the number a gallery needs to make a presentation. Less than that and a gallery is probably not stocked well enough to sell my art. Often that group of paintings need to be of a special sort or area, like South Carolina, or Maine. I have to travel to that area, make lots of paintings then return home and finish them, discarding the weaker or stymied efforts as I go. That's not something I can do quickly, it takes planning and lead time. And after all of that, it might be months before the paintings are sold, maybe a year or two sometimes. Unfortunately some will not sell, and the knackers must come to the farm. To add complexity to my inventory management, the Maine pictures cannot be sent to South Carolina if they remain unsold. Thankfully, if I am patient, there are few of those.<br />
Often a gallery is seasonal and I might be stocking them in anticipation of a coming busy time a few months out.<br />
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So months out, I have to plan what I am going to make and where it is going to go. It is only sometimes possible to capitalize on a sudden opportunity. Most of the big deals and events are on the chart and planned for months in advance. I have to choose carefully which galleries I stock, because I can't do that many. I can't be in all the shows that I would like, particularly not shows for which I must hold a painting long time prior. If I get invited to be in a show, the gallery will usually want an image a month or even several months before the show opens. I try to give them the best painting I can.Then I have to hold that picture until the show, not let one of my galleries have it. After the show,which might run a month, or several,whether the painting is sold or not, I am now about three months into the project. If it is sold the gallery will wait a month to pay me. That pushes the cycle on that piece out to four months.<br />
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What this means is that in my art business, this month is mostly determined by what I was doing about three months ago, and I am today working toward sales that I hope will happen several months in the future. Although there are the pleasant surprises when a gallery calls and a sale has been made suddenly or a client e-mails me ready to buy a painting, most of the time it is like driving an aircraft carrier. If I want to be making money several months from now the efforts have to begin now.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Canton, Mississippi </span></div>
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Gee, I hope you all know I am doing a workshop in Mississippi real soon, October 18th 19th and 20th, if you want to come and paint the beautiful street scenes of historic Canton with me <a href="http://patwalker-workshops.com/Workshops2009.html" target="_blank">go here to sign up! </a><br />
I have taught this one before and it is a splendid place to paint. Canton is not too far from Jackson, which has a major airport. Below is a demo I did last time I was there. In the evenings I will lecture from my laptop over dinner, I am rolling out new and improved versions of my evening presentations.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEJHafajMxSGSvdK0G4RBbNRCQykX8ttVQobPVDrXOfsMMfDING1CT_VgSHhxNcJh9azBtsT8OhnTWtY4ESup_GGijdiPQjNAnAXwQp4IkSjHmOAL5qok8SqTYWJZQ4FhCmh8AFK-qYBUr/s1600/559542_4208469802278_114224326_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEJHafajMxSGSvdK0G4RBbNRCQykX8ttVQobPVDrXOfsMMfDING1CT_VgSHhxNcJh9azBtsT8OhnTWtY4ESup_GGijdiPQjNAnAXwQp4IkSjHmOAL5qok8SqTYWJZQ4FhCmh8AFK-qYBUr/s400/559542_4208469802278_114224326_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Durham, North Carolina</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">I am teaching a workshop in Durham, on
November 1-3, <a href="http://ncpaintingworkshop.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Here is the link to that.</a></span> </div>
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I like being in the South, Its a lot different than New England, ( I have become such a New Englander) but I have been in the South many times and I always enjoy the southern culture, food, architecture and history. Late fall should be a lovely time to paint in North Carolina.</div>
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<a href="http://ncpaintingworkshop.blogspot.com/" target="_blank"> </a>
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-69786915398616224972013-10-02T23:06:00.000-04:002015-12-11T22:33:21.082-05:00My little studio and a line of tape on the floor.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXRFEA5pO5UrIg_KzwzAx36uk1_k3gWZyBkxHOYbILW8kwrNCxP7brSGAm7LVnc35ytz5Ba6uZtyDOzfs2kGJs4JlZmKXJdLLHAGanSu99c6SbHkdnDQ8p7D5AZM0t7DEFFn8gQ59ASjk/s1600/studio-edited.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvXRFEA5pO5UrIg_KzwzAx36uk1_k3gWZyBkxHOYbILW8kwrNCxP7brSGAm7LVnc35ytz5Ba6uZtyDOzfs2kGJs4JlZmKXJdLLHAGanSu99c6SbHkdnDQ8p7D5AZM0t7DEFFn8gQ59ASjk/s400/studio-edited.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
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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. <br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCi4sqPbqwKepmCozgdKIqXk0zk_pdkS-tmbzHigPVyo4zWTc14VJkpPIejcYecH3E7ggZb_SpHOInioXTGQoJNzGeRaSLYWA_oJH7tD7lNFmryMJkEig8_ILSw-L93uelHB7eLJWfKQWr/s1600/Essex-September-046-taberet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCi4sqPbqwKepmCozgdKIqXk0zk_pdkS-tmbzHigPVyo4zWTc14VJkpPIejcYecH3E7ggZb_SpHOInioXTGQoJNzGeRaSLYWA_oJH7tD7lNFmryMJkEig8_ILSw-L93uelHB7eLJWfKQWr/s400/Essex-September-046-taberet.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> I paint from two different points in my studio. </span></b></div>
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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.<br />
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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.<br />
<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-13851361300547088092013-08-22T09:38:00.000-04:002013-08-23T08:14:28.612-04:00Mediums and historic wisdom from rock and roll<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJ-NNKK10B5RHYc3fRRrFYGY0YK5k_ZUJFbVNUvx7WpopRrLkLquOm6GvcsJ2_zPzO3ps4UDl1Ax5Af_diB_NL4qeGyZ2PBn3lhJS1lHGjpIlgsiBsXsjdbQWFIyl2I9GQGtHI_mUYb9V/s1600/20061053autumnWhtMtMed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDJ-NNKK10B5RHYc3fRRrFYGY0YK5k_ZUJFbVNUvx7WpopRrLkLquOm6GvcsJ2_zPzO3ps4UDl1Ax5Af_diB_NL4qeGyZ2PBn3lhJS1lHGjpIlgsiBsXsjdbQWFIyl2I9GQGtHI_mUYb9V/s400/20061053autumnWhtMtMed.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Black Moumtain Stapleton Kearns 24 by30, 2006?</td></tr>
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I threw a few fall images of my own into this post. <br />
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Here is an ask Stape question, I received recently. I suppose I am repeating myself , but many readers have not read the archives and for them this is a magazine rather than a book. The blog is searchable via the little box up in the left had corner of the page. But with over a thousand posts the archives are so vast that even I don't really know where things are back there. It was intended to be an exposition of everything I had learned in my time in the painting world, or my corner of it, New England traditional painting. <br />
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Arthur D Shroudpak, of Minot, North Dakota asks; </div>
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So what should I use for a medium when I’m painting outdoors ?</div>
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Is there a preferred brand of paint ? </div>
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Stape ........</div>
I think you will want to use one of two mediums, either an alkyd like Liquin, or a varnish, turpentine and oil mixture often called VTO. <br />
<br />
The ideal medium is probably no medium. Many of the painters of old
New England had only a small cap of oil on their palette. To make many kinds
of paint strokes though, it is nice to have the paint thinner, slipperier and
more mobile.That is usually why a painter uses a medium. Varnish and oil mediums were pretty much standard practice for
many years and artists often use them today for that reason.
Their long and common use justifies confidence in their permanence. When I was a kid we all mixed our Grumbacher paint. or Permanent Pigments with Taubes Copal medium, which is an oil medium although made with the now scarce copal varnish. If you buy a bottle of copal medium today the small print on it's label will tell you that it contains not copal but alkyd.<br />
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VTO medium is 1 part damar varnish, 1 part linseed or stand oil,
and 4 or more parts turpentine ( not mineral spirits!). It has a little more glow than an alkyd medium and but it is slower drying. .It is easy to make yourself and Utrecht or Jerrys Artrarama can sell you big bottles of the damar varnish and stand oil very inexpensively. Get a plastic funnel and a big glass jar with a screw top like mayonnaise
comes in and make a years worth of medium in about five minutes. This is a good medium for cheap Yankees too. Buy it retail in those little bottles and it will be more expensive than The Glenlivet.<br />
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Or you might choose an alkyd medium, these are very common and promote quick drying and
reduce "sinking in" problems. Liquin is one brand name and Galkyd is
another.Alkyd is an oil, often soybean, that has been modified with acid and alcohol. It dries insoluble, at least in artists thinners, resilient and a little rubbery.It makes a very tough paint film BUT it looks slightly different and I think not quite as "rich" as a traditional medium. Alkyds usually add a satin finish that has less glow than a VTO mixture.Some formulations are shinier than others but none have that deep luster of an oil medium.<br />
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Recently I have been using the VTO rather than my usual alkyd medium. I am trying to use a lot less medium too.<br />
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There is no preferred brand of paint.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">IT'S NOT IN THE PAINT! </span></b></div>
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I use a lot of RGH (link in my sidebar) but I buy many of colors in quarts and tube them myself. All of the professional brands are fine, such as Winsor Newton, Rembrandt, etc. Every paint maker also produces a lower priced "student" brand. Those are absolutely unacceptable. If you want to know which colors I use , that's behind us about a thousand posts somewhere. Search "materials for a workshop".<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoVHPLRGPXFHpxeNCzcgB6YjdhITIR7Y2abaX42hTgqAj1qqHNw9MsG72mX_X0THfS3VAoZOSRCaapwoeLT0vVJnWFoM7qO2KJXhsvFGnpvSTs62DAf9CS8QZj5r2fujo7itRCXCpQzSE4/s1600/Owls+head+light.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoVHPLRGPXFHpxeNCzcgB6YjdhITIR7Y2abaX42hTgqAj1qqHNw9MsG72mX_X0THfS3VAoZOSRCaapwoeLT0vVJnWFoM7qO2KJXhsvFGnpvSTs62DAf9CS8QZj5r2fujo7itRCXCpQzSE4/s400/Owls+head+light.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Owls Head Light, Stapleton Kearns, 30 by 40 about 10 years ago.</td></tr>
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I have a friend who is a rock and roll guitar hero, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd5Zs4toT20" target="_blank">Kim Simmonds</a>, founder of the band <a href="http://www.savoybrown.com/" target="_blank">Savoy Brown</a>. I enjoy talking to him, our "jobs" have a surprising amount in common, and the discipline of daily practice and creation are very similar for each of us. Kim paints too, I don't think I actually know anyone who doesn't. Kim has a lot of stories, he started his band in London in the sixties. I want to share with you something he told me recently that I think has a lesson in it for painters.<br />
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Kim was at the home of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lee_Hooker" target="_blank">John Lee Hooker </a>.many years ago. Evidently John Lee Hooker's California home was a crossroads for musicians and lots of them visited and played together there. Someone asked Mr. Hooker "what do you think of so-and-so? ", another hotshot guitarist? And John Lee Hooker answered; <br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;"> "I LOVE him! LOVE him! I'm a big fan of his, and he's a big fan of mine!" </span></b><br />
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This was a standard response for him evidently. It is positive,witty and self promoting all at once. I am adapting this reply for my own use. I am frequently asked what "I think of another painter". I try to always give a positive and nurturing reply . When I was young I used to blurt out exactly what I felt that artists shortcomings were, it's easy, everybody has em! It made me look small, and it served an insult to a stranger who might someday repay the favor. It usually disappointed my listener and it might have taken the bread from the mouth of a brother artist.<br />
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When you are out in the field with your painting buddies, say whatever you like. But in a professional setting, I think it is better to promote any artist who is mentioned to you. People will judge you on your work and form their own opinion of you. Dismissing another artists work won't make your listener like you and usually does the opposite. I believe this to be professional behavior. Knocking another artist (well except for Alex Katz, who is sure to survive it ) should be avoided<br />
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When you are dealing with the public, that is a business setting and not
a personal one. By "with the public" means when you are painting out in
the field and someone approaches you, or when you are doing a demo or at
an art gallery or event. A plein air paintout would qualify.<b>You are there to get paid</b>,
not to feed your self esteem, educate the public or take the other guy
down a notch. People want to like an artist they do business with, and
if they feel you are jealous or negative they might not. I have a hard
enough time getting people to like me anyway, being abrasive and all. <br />
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What goes around comes round seems a hackneyed phrase but it is
appropriate here. In the long run, you will receive about the treatment
from your brother artists that you dish out yourself. Sometimes people
will hear that you had a good word for them or promoted them heartily, they never forget that.<br />
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When next you are asked what you think of another artist, if you know their work at all, I suggest you answer: <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">WHAT A GREAT PAINTER! I LOVE HIS (OR HER) WORK. I'M A BIG FAN OF HIS AND HE'S A BIG FAN OF MINE! </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stapleton Kearns 218 by 24 2010</td></tr>
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<b>Chromium thingy?</b><br />
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<img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisT1u9NA8Bbr-I397K6fg67avZVnbhUhtrvbEZWLWFGJ1VsEks6TtMebiaN-j2V5fqoPLlOkfi0fQevtKMmyp4weoGW9TvVNSWDKUSqyFagDIvvWGn4QBeqgkFce1y-L6W1dalURDK2EFH/s400/edited-hanger.jpg" width="308" /><br />
Here is another picture of last weeks chromium colored device . Someone guessed it as a paper towel holder. But it is a 2.50 cent toilet paper holder from Walwart that is supposed to hook onto the tank and beari an extra roll. That's a little to nakedly utilitarian for my bath, but it is a handy and cheap way to hang paper towels within easy reach of your easel.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">Leaf Season workshop</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>September 23-24-25</b></span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">The Fall workshop filled weeks ago now and I have received a bunch of e-mail from people who would like to have come. So I am scheduling another fall session. .. I have scheduled this workshop midweek rather than across a weekend to secure room availability.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Inns are busiest in the leaf season in New England</span> . </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Peak fall is a beautiful time of year here.</span> Notice those mountains behind the inn in the picture below. I can't wait, it's going to be so cool!</span></div>
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This is the Sunset Hill House in Franconia, New Hampshire. I have been
teaching workshops there for years and it is the ideal
location. Because I have taught so many workshops there the inn keepers
have learned what painters at a workshop need and they are now
practiced at hosting my workshops and making sure we have what we need
to operate without any distractions or responsibilities other than
painting.There is a broad rear porch that overlooks the mountains so we
can still paint outside no matter what the weather does. The lower level
of the inn is ours to store our paints and canvas so we don't have to
haul it all to our rooms and it makes a good place to teach too. The
view of the mountains is spectacular and in the fall it will be even
better. The inn takes good care of us. We have our own private dining
room too. They handle our meals and even bring us lunch so we can work
all day uninterrupted. The inn is one of those big old historic affairs
from the 19th century and is homey and informal. Most of the rooms have
gas fireplaces, and it is cool in the evenings up in the mountains in
the fall, so that is nice after a day outside. It is necessary to stay
in the inn to take the workshop.<br />
<br />
I love teaching workshops. Everyone is always excited
to be there and hang out with the other artists. It is like a three day
party. We go from breakfast until bedtime. This is a total immersion
program and I run the class about 12 hours a day. I do an evening
lecture while we wait for dinner to be served.</div>
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. We
don't need to leave the grounds of the inn to find great subject
matter so their is no problem with hauling easels around or caravanning
cars to daily locations. We just walk out the back door and the whole
Presidential range is spread out before us.<br />
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The schedule includes;<br />
<ul>
<li>a demo every morning, on the first day I explain the palette and the various pigments.</li>
<li>In the afternoon the students paint and I run from easel to easel
doing individual instruction and try to diagnose each students
particular barriers to better painting.</li>
<li> after the demo each day I run a series of exercises teaching root
skills like creating vibrating color and the parts of the light (that
is what you need to know to establish light in a painting) I will also
teach how to most effectively "hit" the color of nature outside.</li>
<li>I do a presentation before dinner with images from my laptop. One is
a history of White Mountain art so you can see what the greats of
American painting did with the same landscape we will be painting during
the day. In the 19th century all of the great Hudson River painters
made a
point of being there too, just a few miles up the road from the inn.
The other lecture is unpacking out the design ideas in the works of
great landscape painters, particularly Edward Seago and Aldro Hibbard,
two favorite painters of mine.</li>
<li> I will work you like a borrowed mule.</li>
</ul>
<br />
The cost of the
workshop is 300 dollars<a href="http://www.blogger.com/%3Cform%20action=%22https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr%22%20method=%22post%22%20target=%22_top%22%3E%20%3Cinput%20type=%22hidden%22%20name=%22cmd%22%20value=%22_s-xclick%22%3E%20%3Cinput%20type=%22hidden%22%20name=%22hosted_button_id%22%20value=%22KKXXQXDVH2LMA%22%3E%20%3Cinput%20type=%22image%22%20src=%22https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_paynow_SM.gif%22%20border=%220%22%20name=%22submit%22%20alt=%22PayPal%20-%20The%20safer,%20easier%20way%20to%20pay%20online!%22%3E%20%3Cimg%20alt=%22%22%20border=%220%22%20src=%22https://www.paypalobjects.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif%22%20width=%221%22%20height=%221%22%3E%20%3C/form%3E" target="_blank">.</a><b> <a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/08/workshop-september-23-24-25-2013-i.html" target="_blank">Sign up here</a>. </b>I charge a 150 deposit up
front when you register. In return for that I will hold your place in
the class. I wont give away your place to anyone else, so I don't return deposits.</div>
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Lodging reservations must
be made with the inn who will provide a discounted room package deal to
my students, it is absolutely required that you stay at the inn to take
this workshop. Well, actually, if you must stay off "campus" call them
and they will arrange a day rate for you which will cover your meals
etc.<a href="http://www.sunsethillhouse.com/" target="_blank"> Here is the Sunset Hill House web site</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisT1u9NA8Bbr-I397K6fg67avZVnbhUhtrvbEZWLWFGJ1VsEks6TtMebiaN-j2V5fqoPLlOkfi0fQevtKMmyp4weoGW9TvVNSWDKUSqyFagDIvvWGn4QBeqgkFce1y-L6W1dalURDK2EFH/s1600/edited-hanger.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2N6UGyDqWSyXko6HMZg1mH8-00q7njRkocrYYvWBflQnSC8ovFxI-kszfwcNTRwzx1EY2e_W3wtMx6EvooRuXd2ELYgzu5JY7yl3EAEckYjmf2ySmvxSWXOQxyZ9bSM0N3j0r7Gogc6CT/s1600/edited.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-64273567092398152882013-08-03T08:59:00.000-04:002015-12-08T11:12:18.143-05:00A truncated sub-palette and a chromium mystery device <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivroYfsQnTrfr-e1wUXrsm7S5bd750C798H2Rzt5DihRe9uJOz42p4XGHrakozIMYllYOmz9il1Y3ekurOkiswBaEsCZYCay4o6mGbiqEZXZfXGhTolIa3yOunuUg3DhK8nxGz7suUOcsP/s1600/minnesotaetc+007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivroYfsQnTrfr-e1wUXrsm7S5bd750C798H2Rzt5DihRe9uJOz42p4XGHrakozIMYllYOmz9il1Y3ekurOkiswBaEsCZYCay4o6mGbiqEZXZfXGhTolIa3yOunuUg3DhK8nxGz7suUOcsP/s1600/minnesotaetc+007.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzAceWQ-SVCm4ArmIBjbPC0nIr3YR1ewvrqAnVnXrs27wSASaXW-uiczx9Wbvq6o2wfnoaO5WfuAlCt02hkBPyr9uUqyaOO3fsy0cm6uVPqUIUCe9joId0Vr7Qi3o7f3sAYszM6mWogFwo/s1600/Hudson-river.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzAceWQ-SVCm4ArmIBjbPC0nIr3YR1ewvrqAnVnXrs27wSASaXW-uiczx9Wbvq6o2wfnoaO5WfuAlCt02hkBPyr9uUqyaOO3fsy0cm6uVPqUIUCe9joId0Vr7Qi3o7f3sAYszM6mWogFwo/s400/Hudson-river.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A demo painting done in front of a class on the Hudson River near Newburg, New York 16" by 20"<br />
(disclaimer, only the sky was done with three colors)</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRlcIMc9yEOjd_W0A7oeGldA8UTG81DrdI-8imjqXjkNqprD6oEDk21xUBTYLYT9OWyG80HfmllBqTBruVQ3ctwDshD1UA3Yd86YHjICNfX3AxjKWJjO1rckk7ziNLHusAM4vzCTCipfl1/s1600/minnesotaetc+013.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdD28pT85cZycV7eMd83-UreO5Ohl3M-4v49b3yN_OfXZ9chOojTxA-aAw9RPI_sNTjV2UIRuI8lnY9A_q5uGYjWIPeFMGHjrCSeBn6reV7vMpWpRAmdVCf4MPq66NaX4-8Cnwwt6_Fhle/s1600/at-the-lake2-074B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="318" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdD28pT85cZycV7eMd83-UreO5Ohl3M-4v49b3yN_OfXZ9chOojTxA-aAw9RPI_sNTjV2UIRuI8lnY9A_q5uGYjWIPeFMGHjrCSeBn6reV7vMpWpRAmdVCf4MPq66NaX4-8Cnwwt6_Fhle/s400/at-the-lake2-074B.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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Above is a shot of my palette. I have mentioned in previous posts how although I have earth colors and a warm and a cool or each hue, I sometimes work in only three colors. Some landscape painters work in a red, yellow, blue, whiiich is a restricted (or chromatic) palette. They have no ochers, siennas, black or umber. I don't paint entire pictures this way very often, but you can, and it gives a lot of color harmony to a painting.It is possible to mix lots of different color notes from a palette like this.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"> However you trade the ability to strongly characterize nuances of the color before you, for color harmony. </span></div>
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There are some advantages though. </div>
<ul>
<li> It is easy to make a "note" again for a second time, and rapidly, because there are only three possible ingredients in each mixture.That can save a lot of mixing time.</li>
<li>One of the "keys' to design is simplification. Simplifying your color means imposing a system or order on your color choices that will effect how the painting looks. There are lots of different ways to artistically choose your colors and many far more sophisticated than this one. But a chromatic palette is sort of "set and forget", you use the palette, you get the "look".</li>
<li>It is relatively easy to learn your way around the combination of three pigments (plus white). I spent a year on a three color palette perhaps twenty years ago and I learned a lot about color doing it. </li>
<li>I like to use a chromatic, three color palette for things that are high key, like snow, skies and surf. Varying amounts of all three colors in each note can gives a great deal of subtly.I will use the trhee color palette for a PART of my painting,.</li>
<li>If you are traveling real light, there are only a few tubes to put in your pack, not a dozen.</li>
</ul>
The most common three color palette today seems to be cadmium yellow, alizirin and ultramarine. My own three color palette is cadmium yellow light (not lemon), cobalt blue (clearer and bluer than ultramarine) and quinacridone red ( permanent rose, or permanent alizirn) Genuine rose madder is very pretty and gives a lovely restrained tonality to mixtures but it is quite expensive. I don't set my palette with only the three pigments in practice, but I do remember that<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">embedded within my full palette is a smaller chromatic one. </span><br />
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Below, I have mixed each pigment with white and made three piles of paint all about the same rather high key value. I would use these if I were painting a sky or snow perhaps.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7XQf1ak086jsP2v-nr0rG3u_AK6bjU4TDcNT_RmbRwpaL5pgHIwddiRhqCpOMTPjdYSQbQwVFDVOIOYku6SmousTCu5TSOW2n7_NSvdAZ49rQGoOkG1qmNavuk_KRKKSJyQR0DbuuSuRq/s1600/minnesotaetc+012.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7XQf1ak086jsP2v-nr0rG3u_AK6bjU4TDcNT_RmbRwpaL5pgHIwddiRhqCpOMTPjdYSQbQwVFDVOIOYku6SmousTCu5TSOW2n7_NSvdAZ49rQGoOkG1qmNavuk_KRKKSJyQR0DbuuSuRq/s400/minnesotaetc+012.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Above, from mixing pool between my three pigments, or three pigments plus white I can pull variations of all the possible colors.</b><br />
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Below I have a lower key version of the same thing. I am still using some white but I am making darker, or lower key notes. Each of these notes derived from the original hues is composed of only two colors, like red and yellow or yellow and blue. These are the secondary colors, (at least those we can make on our restricted palette). I am making these samples with a palette knife, by the way.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGu6awgqOm80KOVIa6nu4P1BuVM9GISICjqzz2miTaDVHsZWJLnaTVdtmR7_JWZgxKw2V1DTRhVR6neixM8ji_HaoDZMtTfyvHDmWy_UIViqmuzMjwt4ODZ0OHLt-o4Z65-FblthkCLESX/s1600/mix.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGu6awgqOm80KOVIa6nu4P1BuVM9GISICjqzz2miTaDVHsZWJLnaTVdtmR7_JWZgxKw2V1DTRhVR6neixM8ji_HaoDZMtTfyvHDmWy_UIViqmuzMjwt4ODZ0OHLt-o4Z65-FblthkCLESX/s400/mix.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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It is when the results of the notes we have made in the last photo are combined that we begin making that vast array of more complex colors that are frequently encountered in the landscape. Most of the colors outside come from this range, slightly to very stepped down colors with the occasional splash of something very colored (or high in chroma or saturation).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4D7wl3Vx6B-jYWp4xKJBK611Nh0PCVNeYzbVcMuF2qxAUSoWp6qdd2RP7vct7YpC8rWofRuWRAahxjk7zv3BYnaUQy_hDw0jyw7rioMG78uVkgp9o6kbvb5XmdEB_UxiGBiWMXuUQM_A/s1600/mix2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD4D7wl3Vx6B-jYWp4xKJBK611Nh0PCVNeYzbVcMuF2qxAUSoWp6qdd2RP7vct7YpC8rWofRuWRAahxjk7zv3BYnaUQy_hDw0jyw7rioMG78uVkgp9o6kbvb5XmdEB_UxiGBiWMXuUQM_A/s400/mix2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Olives, ochers, siennas and various russets, oranges and golds are created with these tertiary mixtures. They contain some amount of each of the three original pigments. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlSXW0OZzMuPOM1Zn8bH6l9Ey7R9lysN0ZCrpCj2FaouqZpCuFVocvgE6XmO5sLBaNsG2-COm2nonhhrd1o3OR2J_kfm8Oi4hp-jZC78SLtjwVfbat1gJoFaGYcFJZ84-wHkP2uynLCGZW/s1600/sky2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlSXW0OZzMuPOM1Zn8bH6l9Ey7R9lysN0ZCrpCj2FaouqZpCuFVocvgE6XmO5sLBaNsG2-COm2nonhhrd1o3OR2J_kfm8Oi4hp-jZC78SLtjwVfbat1gJoFaGYcFJZ84-wHkP2uynLCGZW/s400/sky2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Above is a sample of sky painted with the palette above. Except for a few touches of the white and ultramarine mixture in the undersides of the clouds it was painted with the three premixed colors<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOiFoSR_eUAEQCVlKlK9d-EgtJfO3SfqGKADt04y5-q1piKf4bsFqjVVy1dm1M0ZKv1JJ5KPLCHGLW-pkAlTm2OykfnCCpnz6UPvfPPdQllb9u1J8i_6aXdwElZP0MQZAiaXjnLOwK8wl/s1600/at-the-lake2-076B.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="271" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOiFoSR_eUAEQCVlKlK9d-EgtJfO3SfqGKADt04y5-q1piKf4bsFqjVVy1dm1M0ZKv1JJ5KPLCHGLW-pkAlTm2OykfnCCpnz6UPvfPPdQllb9u1J8i_6aXdwElZP0MQZAiaXjnLOwK8wl/s400/at-the-lake2-076B.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2dKjQlsJ5blM1y6nBs5jgouLMQvz4HbMA8CVRp2mP2xTfzPrq7rJcssKlgXXNOI3h7qa5EcYWQsD7SPOyxWdFsbEuxH4cTE-g-QW1x0VfHrQ36B23y_M-ZHK2e8q9zDKaS-qdanH1-cd6/s1600/minnesotaetc+006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>I can save premixed pigments easily and cheaply by wrapping them in cling wrap. They will last for months that way. If I am making a picture where I need a constant supply of a premixed note, I will make a pile of it and wrap all except for a small amount left on my palette. Notice a second pile of blue made with ultramarine on the left there. I sometimes add that to get the darks on the bottoms of clouds and the darkening of the sky as it nears the zenith. Ultramarine is heavier and redder than the cobalt, but I also mixed it to be a little lower value than the others..</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisT1u9NA8Bbr-I397K6fg67avZVnbhUhtrvbEZWLWFGJ1VsEks6TtMebiaN-j2V5fqoPLlOkfi0fQevtKMmyp4weoGW9TvVNSWDKUSqyFagDIvvWGn4QBeqgkFce1y-L6W1dalURDK2EFH/s1600/edited-hanger.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisT1u9NA8Bbr-I397K6fg67avZVnbhUhtrvbEZWLWFGJ1VsEks6TtMebiaN-j2V5fqoPLlOkfi0fQevtKMmyp4weoGW9TvVNSWDKUSqyFagDIvvWGn4QBeqgkFce1y-L6W1dalURDK2EFH/s400/edited-hanger.jpg" width="308" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Whats this?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">FALL WORKSHOP </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">I have two remaining spots in my fall workshop October 26 through the 28th. That is a Saturday through Monday.</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOBTv5LJFRTj25gOWrqN6QZ8igbObFdHfafVxGZ-MTmNS3p0pjBomvIgvkWYafhAL2ALSZ3BLgJYY0fgbQLhh_jPjD1dqN2V7j_NyDoTBdiTTuA94TTGp6TAIWOn8TTct5pGZITLcNQibU/s1600/sunsetInn.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOBTv5LJFRTj25gOWrqN6QZ8igbObFdHfafVxGZ-MTmNS3p0pjBomvIgvkWYafhAL2ALSZ3BLgJYY0fgbQLhh_jPjD1dqN2V7j_NyDoTBdiTTuA94TTGp6TAIWOn8TTct5pGZITLcNQibU/s400/sunsetInn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br />
This is the Sunset Hill House in Franconia, New Hampshire. I have been
teaching workshops there for years and it is the ideal
location. Because I have taught so many workshops there the inn keepers
have learned what painters at a workshop need and they are now
practiced at hosting my workshops and making sure we have what we need
to operate without any distractions or responsibilities other than
painting.There is a broad rear porch that overlooks the mountains so we
can still paint outside no matter what the weather does. The lower level
of the inn is ours to store our paints and canvas so we don't have to
haul it all to our rooms and it makes a good place to teach too. The
view of the mountains is spectacular and in the fall it will be even
better. The inn takes good care of us. We have our own private dining
room too. They handle our meals and even bring us lunch so we can work
all day uninterrupted. The inn is one of those big old historic affairs
from the 19th century and is homey and informal. Most of the rooms have
gas fireplaces, and it is cool in the evenings up in the mountains in
the fall, so that is nice after a day outside. It is necessary to stay
in the inn to take the workshop.<br />
<br />
I love teaching workshops. Everyone is always excited
to be there and hang out with the other artists. It is like a three day
party. We go from breakfast until bedtime. This is a total immersion
program and I run the class about 12 hours a day. I do an evening
lecture while we wait for dinner to be served.</div>
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. We
don't need to leave the grounds of the inn to find great subject
matter so their is no problem with hauling easels around or caravanning
cars to daily locations. We just walk out the back door and the whole
Presidential range is spread out before us.<br />
<br />
The schedule includes;<br />
<ul>
<li>a demo every morning, on the first day I explain the palette and the various pigments.</li>
<li>In the afternoon the students paint and I run from easel to easel
doing individual instruction and try to diagnose each students
particular barriers to better painting.</li>
<li> after the demo each day I run a series of exercises teaching root
skills like creating vibrating color and the parts of the light (that
is what you need to know to establish light in a painting) I will also
teach how to most effectively "hit" the color of nature outside.</li>
<li>I do a presentation before dinner with images from my laptop. One is
a history of White Mountain art so you can see what the greats of
American painting did with the same landscape we will be painting during
the day. In the 19th century all of the great Hudson River painters
made a
point of being there too, just a few miles up the road from the inn.
The other lecture is unpacking out the design ideas in the works of
great landscape painters, particularly Edward Seago and Aldro Hibbard,
two favorite painters of mine.</li>
<li> I will work you like a borrowed mule.</li>
</ul>
<br />
The cost of the
workshop is 300 dollars.<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/07/sunset-hill-workshop-2013.html" target="_blank"> Click here to sign up.</a> I charge a 150 deposit up
front when you register. In return for that I will hold your place in
the class. I wont give away your place to anyone else, so I don't return deposits.</div>
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Lodging reservations must
be made with the inn who will provide a discounted room package deal to
my students, it is absolutely required that you stay at the inn to take
this workshop. Well, actually, if you must stay off "campus" call them
and they will arrange a day rate for you which will cover your meals
etc.<a href="http://www.sunsethillhouse.com/" target="_blank"> Here is the Sunset Hill House web site</a></div>
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-65132817977610987032013-07-02T11:53:00.002-04:002015-12-08T11:12:33.751-05:00A demonstration from 1968 by Emile Gruppe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Gloucester is America's oldest seaport, over it's long history
it has lost 10,000 men at sea. It has a long art heritage too. The harbor there is a beautiful and inspiring place to paint. Most of the artists came to paint the fishing boats and wharves.
Many famed artists have lived or worked in Gloucester seasonally. Fitz hugh Lane
1804 – 1865 ( who recently changed his name to Fitz Henry Lane) lived
there, John Sloan, Frederick Mulhaupt, and Edgar Allen Poe, and Marsden
Hartley summered there. There are paintings of Gloucester by almost everyone who matters in American art history, Childe Hassam, Willard Metcalf worked there, other painters who have been attracted to Gloucester include, Winslow Homer, Frank Duveneck, Cecelia Beaux, Edward Hopper, Robert Henri and Maurice Prendergast, William Launt Palmer, and John Twachtman. </div>
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Emile Gruppe 1896–1978 was a Gloucester painter who remains a hero to New England painters and has had an enormous influence on the plein air painters of today. His unbelievably rapid execution and sure sense of design made him an enormously successful and productive painter. Born in Rochester, New York he was the son of a painter-art dealer who immigrated from the Netherlands at the start of World War I. Gruppe's father was a painter his brother was a sculptor. Rockport and Gloucester are both on an island at the tip of Cape Ann, Gloucester the larger of the two towns is where Rockporters go to buy anything more than a souvenir T shirt. Gloucester is the seaport featured in the Perfect Storm. The old wharves and fishing boats, now virtually all gone, were usually the subjects of Gruppe's art. Gruppe had a gallery which is still operated by his talented son Robert, who carries on the families' style of painting. The gallery was, and is on a spit of rock jutting into Gloucester harbor called Rocky Neck.</div>
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Just next to Rocky Neck on Gloucester Harbor is the North Shore Art Association, founded in 1922. Gruppe routinely did artists demonstrations there. I always wished that I could have seen one, but I didn't get to Cape Ann until about five years after Gruppe's death so I never had the opportunity. </div>
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A week or so ago I was painting on a street in Watch Hill, Rhode Island and was approached by a man who excitedly shook my hand and told me how he had enjoyed reading my blog. Introducing himself as Al Kohnle, he mentioned that his father had been a friend of Emile and that he himself actually went out painting with Gruppe once. Then he told me about seeing Gruppe do one of the legendary demos at the North Shore, and that he had photographs he had taken at a Gruppe demo in 1968. When he voluntered to e-mail me copies of them I asked if I could share them on the blog. He graciously said that was fine. So far as I know these have never been reproduced anywhere and have only been seen by a few people. I am thankful to him for their use and am excited to show you what this legendary painter looked like in operation.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLJR2BEkppWcfCMRnzNiXAEj9Z5YQs4fAGm4FzXGlZ1dc7QqYoh0Tl2u2wnKHzAWnHVLjmEs70FywLTTNlp1YFkdMdjX9i5BYHAL9GlfB6eqFVqu-Zd-7AM-lPtiEuoivqzQXfWjZd7FaW/s800/Gruppe1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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Here is Gruppe with his blank canvas, to his left is a sketch that he brought with him and taped up on the wall as a reference. He has no photographs strewn about. His reference is reproduced below as well as I could pull it out of the photo using Photoshop. I believe it was done in charcoal.<br />
Note the rhythmic quality in the somewhat blurry reproduction of the sketch. Gruppes paintings are full of looping S curves and sinuous lines. If you squint at this and look at it through your eyelashes you will see the big simplified shapes that are the armature upon which he built the painting.With such strong artistic geometry running under the image, the amount of detail he needed to add was minimal.This was a two hour demo by the way.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogc8QeNY28EjgpVGr0S-Ln0e_LAWYt-5uz69reVECvXasiw3x44kcq4tlyvwoj9542XfUwk8LXHboIIiCVmyrrVcGhQJJLqX4AcUPsAt8bc6daXY768cMoEbC8lnogow3rC2AnW5yl6J7/s443/Gruppe17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgogc8QeNY28EjgpVGr0S-Ln0e_LAWYt-5uz69reVECvXasiw3x44kcq4tlyvwoj9542XfUwk8LXHboIIiCVmyrrVcGhQJJLqX4AcUPsAt8bc6daXY768cMoEbC8lnogow3rC2AnW5yl6J7/s400/Gruppe17.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Thanks again to Al Kohnle for providing these for us to see.</div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">FALL WORKSHOP </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am again doing a Fall workshop October 26 through the 28th. That is a Saturday through Monday.</span></span></div>
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This is the Sunset Hill House in Franconia, New Hampshire. I have been
teaching workshops there for years and it is the ideal
location. Because I have taught so many workshops there the inn keepers
have learned what painters at a workshop need and they are now
practiced at hosting my workshops and making sure we have what we need
to operate without any distractions or responsibilities other than
painting.There is a broad rear porch that overlooks the mountains so we
can still paint outside no matter what the weather does. The lower level
of the inn is ours to store our paints and canvas so we don't have to
haul it all to our rooms and it makes a good place to teach too. The
view of the mountains is spectacular and in the fall it will be even
better. The inn takes good care of us. We have our own private dining
room too. They handle our meals and even bring us lunch so we can work
all day uninterrupted. The inn is one of those big old historic affairs
from the 19th century and is homey and informal. Most of the rooms have
gas fireplaces, and it is cool in the evenings up in the mountains in
the fall, so that is nice after a day outside. It is necessary to stay
in the inn to take the workshop.<br />
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I love teaching workshops. Everyone is always excited
to be there and hang out with the other artists. It is like a three day
party. We go from breakfast until bedtime. This is a total immersion
program and I run the class about 12 hours a day. I do an evening
lecture while we wait for dinner to be served.</div>
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. We
don't need to leave the grounds of the inn to find great subject
matter so their is no problem with hauling easels around or caravanning
cars to daily locations. We just walk out the back door and the whole
Presidential range is spread out before us.<br />
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The schedule includes;<br />
<ul>
<li>a demo every morning, on the first day I explain the palette and the various pigments.</li>
<li>In the afternoon the students paint and I run from easel to easel
doing individual instruction and try to diagnose each students
particular barriers to better painting.</li>
<li> after the demo each day I run a series of exercises teaching root
skills like creating vibrating color and the parts of the light (that
is what you need to know to establish light in a painting) I will also teach how to most effectively "hit" the color of nature outside.</li>
<li>I do a presentation before dinner with images from my laptop. One is
a history of White Mountain art so you can see what the greats of
American painting did with the same landscape we will be painting during
the day. In the 19th century all of the great Hudson River painters made a
point of being there too, just a few miles up the road from the inn. The other lecture is unpacking out the design ideas in the works of
great landscape painters, particularly Edward Seago and Aldro Hibbard,
two favorite painters of mine.</li>
<li> I will work you like a borrowed mule.</li>
</ul>
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The cost of the
workshop is 300 dollars.<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/07/sunset-hill-workshop-2013.html" target="_blank"> Click here to sign up.</a> I charge a 150 deposit up
front when you register. In return for that I will hold your place in
the class. I wont give away your place to anyone else, so I don't return deposits.</div>
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Lodging reservations must
be made with the inn who will provide a discounted room package deal to
my students, it is absolutely required that you stay at the inn to take
this workshop. Well, actually, if you must stay off "campus" call them
and they will arrange a day rate for you which will cover your meals
etc.<a href="http://www.sunsethillhouse.com/" target="_blank"> Here is the Sunset Hill House web site</a></div>
<br />Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-6412859790475286962013-05-19T23:34:00.001-04:002013-05-20T10:17:00.418-04:00Variety of shapes in a John Carlson painting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Bt0osjxBfrfkW9Ti2NuCYxCSHPRJSQC9qnv2cFCeWea6ZVQgtVHIL9aFohN-kVcRhomAGBGaQB1SLvvZE9FqRHsKIFQRZo88pulhKBskyp3Qwct8daun880gVIOKIkUjuYqyZuY_tr3V/s1600/winterforest.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDxfJVEDHfFcUUqgHjfY_3hRDe9Bhyw4wXjbE8M3X7M59Q7jHUNf24nfw2MZduP8B1kH2HcRAWM0d1ljrCN-iEcOUIjF6uTSRO8Jc3KpYMD-YrciAoL9lFbWzTzRDZjxLHUWV4rr97ioGk/s1600/Carlson.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDxfJVEDHfFcUUqgHjfY_3hRDe9Bhyw4wXjbE8M3X7M59Q7jHUNf24nfw2MZduP8B1kH2HcRAWM0d1ljrCN-iEcOUIjF6uTSRO8Jc3KpYMD-YrciAoL9lFbWzTzRDZjxLHUWV4rr97ioGk/s400/Carlson.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Well, here I am again. Thanks for reading my blog. I have been writing less frequently recently. Mostly now, I do it to remind people it is all still here. I have written over a thousand posts and said most of what I wanted to say. Still I can add a little , and elaborate upon or refine some things I have taught. I have been doing this for years now, funny how the time does slip away. There is a whole art education to be found in this blog, please search back and study the myriad posts here. If you start at the beginning and read forward, the blog is cumulative and progresses from basic to advanced, well, it wanders a bit too. Maybe you will find the woman giving birth to rabbits or the suggestions for neck tattoos. The wrenching, <a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/search/label/Encyclopedia%20of%20dumb%20design%20ideas" target="_blank">action packed tale of Dirk Van Asserts</a> is a gripping page turner, ripped whining from the pages of real life and is sure to please the whimpering feckless naif, the mincing poseurs with their quivering soft abdomens, and the crudely failed, and casually avaricious alike.<br />
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One of the important keys to designing successful landscapes is variety of shape. That is, every shape should be unique and different from its neighbor. Making repeated shapes gives a static and unnaturally symmetrical look in a landscape. Making ordinary, unconsidered shapes makes average paintings. Dynamic shapes make exciting paintings!<br />
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People have a tendency to make repetitive shapes. It takes a deliberate effort not to. I was with a student the other day who had used repeated circular forms, all about the size of a silver dollar arrayed across his canvas. As soon as I pointed them out to him he blanched, and saw them immediately. If you don't have someone to point out the repetitive "pet" shapes in your paintings, a mirror will help you find them. But checking to see that your shapes are interesting and varied will do a lot to improve your paintings. You have to be "on" this always, watching for relapses into ordinary default and uninspired shape-making.<br />
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I make a point of "policing" my shapes. That is. I stop and carefully examine what I have done, looking for areas the same size, and repeated intervals. Intervals are the spaces in between things, sometimes they are called negative shapes.<br />
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The painting above, by John Carlson is a great example of beautifully designed negative shapes. Look at the spaces between the trees, do you see how each one is different from the rest? <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZHio_Pqzti7ZTjoENeR_6yvszmtik-bJVMSB2d4pAcyVppi6EhlR3sPo73BQ3f6P_TozJHv_r72T8ueQDDJCHbQpeXxAH5ah5RoIGWoIZj35q_haFWRrSuaMA3lfwTKI-yw6tgpDNiKQQ/s1600/Carlson2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZHio_Pqzti7ZTjoENeR_6yvszmtik-bJVMSB2d4pAcyVppi6EhlR3sPo73BQ3f6P_TozJHv_r72T8ueQDDJCHbQpeXxAH5ah5RoIGWoIZj35q_haFWRrSuaMA3lfwTKI-yw6tgpDNiKQQ/s400/Carlson2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I have outlined the spaces in Photoshop and upped the contrast to make to them show. Each space occupies a different sized area. Look at how different they are, each one is of an obviously different volume, some are flat bottomed against the snow and some end in points at their bottoms. Notice that the pointy bottomed Ones end at different levels in the painting, they don't all uniformly run to the base of the trees I have marked these Delta and Lambda on the figure below. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaXXHn4L6DTiUycM9UdgjjHC6EfIob9iiQJcSZPlJrVm3lZkpnwMjE7UOe4KccNbxHc44ntne9FVR0XtMvULFqXofMkmaT15Jvi1Cp7NbNChjviNcZvyK1YuTKfcT3e1q6vYDubaXuDkPz/s1600/Carlson4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaXXHn4L6DTiUycM9UdgjjHC6EfIob9iiQJcSZPlJrVm3lZkpnwMjE7UOe4KccNbxHc44ntne9FVR0XtMvULFqXofMkmaT15Jvi1Cp7NbNChjviNcZvyK1YuTKfcT3e1q6vYDubaXuDkPz/s400/Carlson4.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The rhythmic springy curves are arrayed in pairs, each side of the "box" formed by the negative space relates to the line across from it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4nQc9w6sRl7AQPetcwBOhGeFnilajPCVGv2Y2nE814kEdOImD5t15xuum5fTkE0njy7ay5le9GG5kEzjgri55V3oJm7ViO5llrTFkcFqbt9sf6g6spZCKd8xqodDl9sRzdoGoY3aCUeO2/s1600/Carlson3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4nQc9w6sRl7AQPetcwBOhGeFnilajPCVGv2Y2nE814kEdOImD5t15xuum5fTkE0njy7ay5le9GG5kEzjgri55V3oJm7ViO5llrTFkcFqbt9sf6g6spZCKd8xqodDl9sRzdoGoY3aCUeO2/s400/Carlson3.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Here is the center section of the painting with some letters and arrows. Look at the two lines marked B, see how they relate to one another. The two lines have a dialogue. They are not observed separately, but work together like the sides of an arch. The same happens with the two lines marked A.<br />
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This painting, I think, was done in the studio. But if it had been observed, the artist didn't observe one side of the "negative box" and then the other as separate entities He used the two of them to bracket the shape in between.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ3luwSrzU1Od2p5l6BFtjG27IL_XFLq3aEbSNUKd6gINmJHvWkDhjOubpoNCwGwbbjmvNkU-KvVWO1X8MR1aClis9DH-4RBx4saHnXcV6rWjrGZldUUTu4-TZYyCeZOdR-9iIhl9aPm39/s1600/Carlson5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ3luwSrzU1Od2p5l6BFtjG27IL_XFLq3aEbSNUKd6gINmJHvWkDhjOubpoNCwGwbbjmvNkU-KvVWO1X8MR1aClis9DH-4RBx4saHnXcV6rWjrGZldUUTu4-TZYyCeZOdR-9iIhl9aPm39/s400/Carlson5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Look at the top of the picture, there are five spaces or apertures between the trees. Each distance or interval is markedly different from the next, no two distances are the same. This is the sort of thing that is designed into a painting rather than observed. The artist has "bent" nature to get more expressive and unique shapes. This gives a more exciting look and holds the viewers attention a little longer. It takes more time for the viewer to process all of these unusual and varied shapes than it would repeated and similar shapes. The longer you hold that viewer the better., Your painting may hang in a gallery with a hundred other pictures. You want to transfix that viewer as long as possible, and charm them, if you can, before they move on to that next artwork.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijzV35r6kq-I_JX8GGI81hrHZ575MmSOMgidUJyRxMWyWqCREJ0_SI_O-aY7kF1fBRNiruHpbPdvd7ggP3YXEu9Ykh1BNPVRkpLBgLF7N5HWdiBZ6AKzvclXirGHB5VFVRA0KFx-2g_niJ/s1600/Carlson6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijzV35r6kq-I_JX8GGI81hrHZ575MmSOMgidUJyRxMWyWqCREJ0_SI_O-aY7kF1fBRNiruHpbPdvd7ggP3YXEu9Ykh1BNPVRkpLBgLF7N5HWdiBZ6AKzvclXirGHB5VFVRA0KFx-2g_niJ/s400/Carlson6.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Looking at the positive shapes for a minute, look at how the trees are deliberately grouped. Their are three units of trees here, Number 1 which consists of two trees, number 2, a single tree, and number 3 of three or four trees. Each of these groups has a different number of trees in it and a different "weight" and volume. That's three big shapes and each of those is markedly different from the others. This is great variety of shape.<br />
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I like to show Carlson's work because he so clearly designed his shapes but below is an Inness, doing the same thing. See the intervals and the variety in those three trees on the right? they are all about the same width, but they are each a unique height and carry branches that distinguish them and make each of them individual. This makes the Carlsons seem a little heavy handed and obvious in their design, so subtle is Inness. Notice how the right hand pair of trees rhythmically complement each other. The same swaying curve appears in both, albeit at different heights.There is a correspondence between the two sets of lines there.The lower half of the middle tree relates to the tree to it's right, the upper half relates to the upper half of the tree to it's left. This is visual poetry.<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">WORKSHOPS</span></div>
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I am teaching a three day workshop in Cranford, New Jersey in a couple of weeks. The workshop is now about half full and I have space if you want to come. This is part of a plein air event called "Paint the Town". As usual I will be running long, sometimes twelve hour days, we will meet for breakfast, work all day till the light fails, and then go out to dinner. At dinner I lecture on design from my computer screen, wave my arms and draw diagrams and incomprehensible glyphs on napkins.<br />
I get a lot into a three day workshop, as much as I can, I push real hard.<br />
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I can save you years of screwing around and promise you will leave with new ideas that will help you improve your painting. All levels of ability are welcome. I particularly enjoy helping those students who are trying to get across that line from strong amateur to professional.<br />
<a href="http://jcas.org/" target="_blank">Here is the link for that.</a>Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-36645719370936302202013-04-04T23:42:00.000-04:002013-04-05T09:47:28.540-04:00A visit to the frame makers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBkQ3uoumpSWZS_3zAdfr3fDL35yE4E8tMeOd7m5v3K9NNwg1Z39xx2kQ8ugWhUaN_DMM4SLjOhQDIaqHlptm9N4l4VMTSeSohW-VAfV9FDM2ZzXOn2APO4hZ7xBs1KXaYQ-A30rj13gff/s1600/PSartetc-142.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBkQ3uoumpSWZS_3zAdfr3fDL35yE4E8tMeOd7m5v3K9NNwg1Z39xx2kQ8ugWhUaN_DMM4SLjOhQDIaqHlptm9N4l4VMTSeSohW-VAfV9FDM2ZzXOn2APO4hZ7xBs1KXaYQ-A30rj13gff/s400/PSartetc-142.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I went down to Rhode Island last week and picked up a frame from PS Art. They make most of my frames. As I have written before, I use handmade closed cornered frames on my work, except if they are going to an art association or a gallery with a record of damaging my frames. Those folks get the Chi-Com units. I have worked with PS Art for years and they have been a valuable ally in my business.</div>
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These are museum quality, handmade, closed corner frames. Some of you may not know exactly what that means, so tonight I will show you. I brought my celluloid phone and took some pictures so I could explain the process of making a fine frame.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58K4LDanMUBAONy0fjoTBqN3tLyOiobvUEAPfcryoG245yI79cgLesM_dDPkoXdBB81RotTqxkBaBOEkZXockHvh-UM7eWDXsUcjUdRPgCto-7pI0gzCMtzTdRf4n32mmWDO6v0BcFBiv/s1600/PSartetc-143.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisrZ-YmAHYdvAhyKscXAOzl61LupExUbXb4I0vRevvlcqm_kBx87VgdOgEzLDl7XpsrC4hfdEpxc1iH4hAEm4X3QK6wuBxE_EU6aRPp3lXVr5kXTetvqfOXr0knZxa-7dUqoC_h7upnf9T/s1600/PSartetc-144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisrZ-YmAHYdvAhyKscXAOzl61LupExUbXb4I0vRevvlcqm_kBx87VgdOgEzLDl7XpsrC4hfdEpxc1iH4hAEm4X3QK6wuBxE_EU6aRPp3lXVr5kXTetvqfOXr0knZxa-7dUqoC_h7upnf9T/s400/PSartetc-144.jpg" width="322" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Henry Karakula, owner, PS Art frames, Central Falls, Rhode Island</td></tr>
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You have all probably gone into a frame shop and bought a frame. What you got was an <b>open cornered</b> frame. After you dropped off the painting to be framed the shop pulled out a length of prefinished moulding, that is, it was already leafed and finished. They took it over to their miter saw and chopped it to the right length, Then they glued and nailed it together to fit your picture. They might have even picked up a phone and ordered what is called a "chop" from a moulding supply house. That supplier cut the moulding to the lengths required and mailed it to the frame shop where it was then assembled to fit your picture. That frame has a visible cut at each corner where the stick of moulding was cut to make your frame. Therefore it is an open cornered frame. While that is fine for diplomas, and photos of your deceased pets, it is not good enough when you play above a certain level in the art world. When you reach a higher price level or show in a high end gallery they may expect you to use <b>closed corner</b> frames. A closed corner frame is assembled and joined before it is covered in gold or metal and finished. There is no visible joint at each corner.These are artisan built frames made to order in a workshop. They are a much higher level of quality than the prefinished moulding frames found in a regular frame shop or big box store. They also cost a lot more. Here is how they are made.<br />
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Here are lengths of molding in raw wood, they come from a specialty shop that has an enormous machine that mills them. Usually it is basswood. They come in lots of different profiles in "sticks" from 8 to 12 feet long. Some frames are assembled using two or three mouldings to build up a wider or more complex profile (shape).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dPbar-rcBsV74auIvZYLO0oE7HBGO1E9Pu9TfwTuHfl8Us4Iy0RIJMyGjDyBA91tWUv-WR-FAZnFuIYnASUbDrCOcQwbim_FsUxflqRAGaibH2A-5L-gEiNpC6GUr-VKSs2vRYNah7-y/s1600/PSartetc-146.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dPbar-rcBsV74auIvZYLO0oE7HBGO1E9Pu9TfwTuHfl8Us4Iy0RIJMyGjDyBA91tWUv-WR-FAZnFuIYnASUbDrCOcQwbim_FsUxflqRAGaibH2A-5L-gEiNpC6GUr-VKSs2vRYNah7-y/s400/PSartetc-146.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Here's the heart of a frame shop, the miter saw. This beast cuts both sides of a 45 degree angle at the same time. This is a 30,000 dollar saw, if you want one for your basement workshop. Accuracy is real important and this sort of saw cuts to very close tolerances. Slight inaccuracies in the angle of the cuts add up as each corner the frame is assembled. By the time you are ready to join that last corner unless each chop is nearly perfect the corners won't meet up properly. If you pull the frame together anyway it will be skewed. That is, it will rock when set flat on a table top, and look twisted hanging on a wall. It may also come apart down the road in your collectors house, who will then return it. He might want a new frame. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmz0LZuwItmkXZGQfyrBcFXqv8eJVoYBw1FZiP6r-KFMtBIcu4jfvuen8WPaZgCa-j2SxUs-qhKLExRhzyZwK-5u2B0tNfQaFP_vManL9fGytDCMz0hySpVEGC1WQGy2xBO40eaqBISvuS/s1600/PSartetc-148.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmz0LZuwItmkXZGQfyrBcFXqv8eJVoYBw1FZiP6r-KFMtBIcu4jfvuen8WPaZgCa-j2SxUs-qhKLExRhzyZwK-5u2B0tNfQaFP_vManL9fGytDCMz0hySpVEGC1WQGy2xBO40eaqBISvuS/s400/PSartetc-148.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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After the frame is assembled, screwed and glued together, it goes to the carvers bench. Above are carving tools, called gouges, that thin one is called a veiner. A skilled craftsman using a gouge makes it look easy, but it requires a lot of skill and practice. Many of of the carvers in New England are Polish immigrants.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2iGVP0xSX2Kb2bYwQECUnDKPNoPA9AbXrtr7sBDsNuQl7-aF3s5wDOyc-AzQeQXXcXPR0AB43q_BZLgvhrU0rzBlFKoX9oT2Fl1pHlKAQm4xatlTpU5T799jVJfj9QUtT7dB5y2eTARzK/s1600/PSartetc-149.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2iGVP0xSX2Kb2bYwQECUnDKPNoPA9AbXrtr7sBDsNuQl7-aF3s5wDOyc-AzQeQXXcXPR0AB43q_BZLgvhrU0rzBlFKoX9oT2Fl1pHlKAQm4xatlTpU5T799jVJfj9QUtT7dB5y2eTARzK/s400/PSartetc-149.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Here is a partially carved corner with the drawn outline of the design on the wood.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl6wzdjhcIbbF5fpeALxyiFfXIHZoDTf279rjYPF4wGytyB57CpLEEunKJdUbhte0tUm-wuRTf_MuSgXDvKT1cxbC83DGaM0lhJ53hVYLe9oRzfN_kV5LJZsYuyS4Thx69UOJllU1A65Lo/s1600/4gallery3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl6wzdjhcIbbF5fpeALxyiFfXIHZoDTf279rjYPF4wGytyB57CpLEEunKJdUbhte0tUm-wuRTf_MuSgXDvKT1cxbC83DGaM0lhJ53hVYLe9oRzfN_kV5LJZsYuyS4Thx69UOJllU1A65Lo/s400/4gallery3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Heres a fine One, a nice wide frame is important</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Above is an example of an arts and crafts style carving. The arts and crafts design period that happened in the late nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth century was a golden era for artisan made frames and many styles of moulding and carvings popular today date from that era.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYuKFdHjYajuNMLKcbBYckMaCAPb8rFhBCFD-P2ntMp9aszIw3IPSKPCRL0s22Pd_F3Tiv6xEr60MBLjxdbFYZ9cWI5jucHq8wwpHm2g1PW4xip7FDLBFfrdY6QD4Ho263Nz4BaoNI6QNN/s1600/PSartetc-150.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYuKFdHjYajuNMLKcbBYckMaCAPb8rFhBCFD-P2ntMp9aszIw3IPSKPCRL0s22Pd_F3Tiv6xEr60MBLjxdbFYZ9cWI5jucHq8wwpHm2g1PW4xip7FDLBFfrdY6QD4Ho263Nz4BaoNI6QNN/s400/PSartetc-150.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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After carving, the frames are sprayed with bole, a red clay that serves as a primer upon which the gold will be laid.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-XhOk0XQocAi_oa5xABks7bn6ve3E_H_sc79Pj25PR2AYDzvKpk17VKX9I1AvKjLUD5WhocTmNB8aLIixWuEtkW63GZHZgF4lEwDijbFTof8KOwUap2dSIaTle5lLMHZ-RGPPXNeoF3O/s1600/PSartetc-138.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjA-XhOk0XQocAi_oa5xABks7bn6ve3E_H_sc79Pj25PR2AYDzvKpk17VKX9I1AvKjLUD5WhocTmNB8aLIixWuEtkW63GZHZgF4lEwDijbFTof8KOwUap2dSIaTle5lLMHZ-RGPPXNeoF3O/s400/PSartetc-138.jpg" width="367" /></a></div>
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The frames are sanded next, this step can be laborious, although less so if the frame is accurately cut and joined. You can see there is plenty of hand labor involved in this. Little of it is done by computerized robots.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZlbcr5geRpz-heRJVtDevWwXs3wUtjJ0DITug6NtHa263J4ut0Ar_L8JagEA2rqdfCYWkPqw2CMDahkPFqFn9zzO9FCtBIcIpuwt0EAQ5s6G91RNYUfFmjr22coxp0CROY3Fl6-mTHwpY/s1600/PSartetc-139.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZlbcr5geRpz-heRJVtDevWwXs3wUtjJ0DITug6NtHa263J4ut0Ar_L8JagEA2rqdfCYWkPqw2CMDahkPFqFn9zzO9FCtBIcIpuwt0EAQ5s6G91RNYUfFmjr22coxp0CROY3Fl6-mTHwpY/s400/PSartetc-139.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Another skilled craftsman, the gilder, wets the bole activating the glue included in it and gently drops the microns thin and very fragile gold sheets called leaves onto the bole. This is done with a tool called a guilders tip, a sort of comb like flat brush made of soft hair. The gold is pounded so thin that a breath will tear it to uselessness. It cannot be picked up with your hand without disintegrating. Some frames are laid with imitation gold, sometimes called Shlagmetal, which is bronze. It is thicker and easier to lay but tarnishes eventually and doesn't have the gleam of the real thing.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoh1VWHpInMWifPsD9Ood_hEggDWnMNTCCdDD1jWA05l6J3M_EtGqXVkj86YltCL-wwFnYR4AKFCjStHMZ6L4s0nTYBeNU9lCXSpuLQCm8dlQKoUqUwwdopKi2X0VktxWKxNu5a28veC8C/s1600/PSartetc-137.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoh1VWHpInMWifPsD9Ood_hEggDWnMNTCCdDD1jWA05l6J3M_EtGqXVkj86YltCL-wwFnYR4AKFCjStHMZ6L4s0nTYBeNU9lCXSpuLQCm8dlQKoUqUwwdopKi2X0VktxWKxNu5a28veC8C/s400/PSartetc-137.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Here is a finished frame that will be toned. Toning is applying a thin coat of paint or dust or any of about a zillion concoctions onto the surface of the frame to antique it. Sometimes areas, usually the high points, are rubbed back to the red bole beneath to soften up the look of the finish. Often frames are waxed after toning. Every shop has secret methods of toning frames and it is one of the things that separate a merely good frame from an excellent one.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58K4LDanMUBAONy0fjoTBqN3tLyOiobvUEAPfcryoG245yI79cgLesM_dDPkoXdBB81RotTqxkBaBOEkZXockHvh-UM7eWDXsUcjUdRPgCto-7pI0gzCMtzTdRf4n32mmWDO6v0BcFBiv/s1600/PSartetc-143.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj58K4LDanMUBAONy0fjoTBqN3tLyOiobvUEAPfcryoG245yI79cgLesM_dDPkoXdBB81RotTqxkBaBOEkZXockHvh-UM7eWDXsUcjUdRPgCto-7pI0gzCMtzTdRf4n32mmWDO6v0BcFBiv/s400/PSartetc-143.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Here is a pile of corner samples in different profiles and tones. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPc1vr9st-p9EAw1FgTMRrSWJSRj4E0WA_qmSZ9dWgGiCy8cxgdN0Zieuv7_6hjfq6lY0LWDkPeTHEooQprpTfUM7fKBTmeEJYkmUpXWDyhGCx5slp0rk9D-GvjPjO60ED-Vur8htGIY0E/s1600/PSartetc-141.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPc1vr9st-p9EAw1FgTMRrSWJSRj4E0WA_qmSZ9dWgGiCy8cxgdN0Zieuv7_6hjfq6lY0LWDkPeTHEooQprpTfUM7fKBTmeEJYkmUpXWDyhGCx5slp0rk9D-GvjPjO60ED-Vur8htGIY0E/s400/PSartetc-141.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The frame on the left is a copy of one that is on a Tarbell in the Boston Museum. It is about 30 by 40.<br />
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When I
opened my first gallery in Rockport in 1983 I made and leafed some of my
own frames, in those days there were very few framers making closed
corner museum quality frames. Today almost every part of the country has
someone making fine gilded frames. Along with traditional painting,
frame making is enjoying a renaissance.<br />
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PS Art frames <a href="http://psartframes.com/index.htm" target="_blank">http://psartframes.com/index.htm</a>Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-81277261836719397732013-03-18T22:17:00.003-04:002015-12-08T11:14:00.696-05:00 Negotiating commissions for paintings<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkcOJd_2K5GjZ-tOOvNUTWxoIdj0kIjc6qSHkHCZ-JAMiGi5VhnA0bMeVg9vs6X4HCLBjmzV2Ejwpw4IT1l-VF3TnJ_1UU5ZUPKFjXoOicb7MOSVY5Tg6wJssDDPfWzVJvjOngT1JAYeg4/s1600/24.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="331" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkcOJd_2K5GjZ-tOOvNUTWxoIdj0kIjc6qSHkHCZ-JAMiGi5VhnA0bMeVg9vs6X4HCLBjmzV2Ejwpw4IT1l-VF3TnJ_1UU5ZUPKFjXoOicb7MOSVY5Tg6wJssDDPfWzVJvjOngT1JAYeg4/s400/24.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This post was prompted by someone mentioning to me that their neighbor
had a big, fancy house and maybe I should paint a picture of it because the <span style="font-size: small;">owner<span style="font-size: small;"> might</span></span> buy it. That is not something I would do. I paint what I want, that is, unless someone is willing to <b>pay me well to paint</b> what they want. Even then, I have to be at least half way interested in making the picture. I am too lazy to work for money alone, I need a thrill. <br />
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Occasionally I am asked to undertake a commission to paint
a picture for a client though. Portrait painters do this a lot, landscape
painters less often. Still, over the years I have done many. When I opened my first gallery in Rockport in 1983 I decided that I would
take any job that came through the door, I figured I would learn from
that. I did some crazy things, like repainting part of a circus wagon and
replacing a missing head in a spurious Corot. The client loved my work! He said it looked just like Elvis. I had to do a dog portrait or two in that era too. The canid is always dead in those deals, and appears only in one out of focus photograph. It was always a copy the photo job, lots of dreary work and short pay.These days I only am willing to do landscapes and there are a lot of people out there who will paint your house or last year's pup a whole lot cheaper.<br />
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Sometimes however a commission comes along for something that falls within the bounds of my specialty.When it does, what I tell the potential client is exactly this<span style="font-size: small;">;</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">I DON'T CHARGE MORE TO DO COMMISSIONS, BUT I GET HALF UP FRONT, AND HALF UPON YOUR SATISFIED ACCEPTANCE. THAT HALF IS NONREFUNDABLE.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> You si<span style="font-size: small;">mply MUST get half up front! <span style="font-size: small;">Don't</span> undertake any job <span style="font-size: small;">without it. If they are in for half, they</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>wil<span style="font-size: small;">l </span>still want the picture when you have made it. Not getting the down<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>payment will result<span style="font-size: small;"> in y</span>our getting stuck working for free. Maybe not the first time or the second, but sooner or later you will get stuck. <span style="font-size: small;">This is particularly important if you are making something that only that client would want. You will have a hard time<span style="font-size: small;"> selling a picture of <span style="font-size: small;">their<span style="font-size: small;"></span></span> late <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">poodle-muskrat mix</span> sitting <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">obediently</span> </span> on <span style="font-size: small;">g</span>randmas </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>neon </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">orange<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>afghan</span> to anyone <span style="font-size: small;">else.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">N</span>ever accept the entire fee upfront. I want to be rewarded when I finish the job, if I am already paid for it, I have a hard time keeping it ahead of other projects. If I kno<span style="font-size: small;">w that when I deliver the piece I get paid, that serves as a carrot on the stick for me.<span style="font-size: small;"> Also, be <span style="font-size: small;">absolutely</span> sure they understand that the down<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>payment is nonrefundable, you are hired to make the art and you will make it. T<span style="font-size: small;">h</span>ats what the down payment hires you to do.The second payment is your reward for making sure they are happy with the finished piece.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> <br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">I give them a rough idea of how long it will take me to do it<span style="font-size: small;">, usually in <span style="font-size: small;">months. I don't accept tight deadlines. Sometimes a painting can suddenly become a lot more work than I anticipate<span style="font-size: small;">d. I</span>llustrators are skilled in turning out art on short schedules, I am not.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I always provi<span style="font-size: small;">de a frame<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">That picture is going to have my name on it out there in the <span style="font-size: small;">w</span>orld.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>A handmade c<span style="font-size: small;">losed cornered frame</span> makes my work look best. <span style="font-size: small;">M</span>y client might <span style="font-size: small;">go to the local framer <span style="font-size: small;">and</span> get a<span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">frame that looks like the box Velveeta comes in. <span style="font-size: small;">Generally the client is familiar with my work and <span style="font-size: small;">expects</span> the high quality frames I use anyway.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I often arrange to deliver the finished work in person. Frequently the client want<span style="font-size: small;">s some little thing change<span style="font-size: small;">d. I <span style="font-size: small;">have my paint kit in the trunk of my car and I fix whatever it is then and there. The client then has personalized the painting and feels like it is now "theirs"<span style="font-size: small;">. I delivered a painting of Po<span style="font-size: small;">lp</span>is harbor to a client once on Nantucket, they wanted the<span style="font-size: small;"> painting because their catboat was in it. The <span style="font-size: small;">buyer</span> looked at the new painting with <span style="font-size: small;">elegant </span>concern a<span style="font-size: small;">nd <span style="font-size: small;">explained that</span> I had <span style="font-size: small;">failed </span>to include the boom crutch. That<span style="font-size: small;">'</span>s a <span style="font-size: small;">Y s<span style="font-size: small;">haped</span></span> piece of board that <span style="font-size: small;">secures</span> the boom when the boat is <span style="font-size: small;">moored</span>. I <span style="font-size: small;">installed</span> that boom cru<span style="font-size: small;">tch<span style="font-size: small;"> in a<span style="font-size: small;">bout thirty s<span style="font-size: small;">e</span>con<span style="font-size: small;">ds and the buyer was delighted. <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span>I hate boats, they sink.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> One of the dangers of commission<span style="font-size: small;">s</span> and something that portrait painters face routinely, is <span style="font-size: small;">when the painting become<span style="font-size: small;">s</span> a joint <span style="font-size: small;">effort between the artist and a second party who knows NOTHING about <span style="font-size: small;">art</span>.<span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">S</span>ometimes they will want something <span style="font-size: small;">done <span style="font-size: small;">in</span></span> the painting that you know will weaken it<span style="font-size: small;">.</span> <span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">S</span>o far</span> I have been able to <span style="font-size: small;">dissuade</span> <span style="font-size: small;">my</span> clients from what I know are bad decisions, and they have trusted my judgement<span style="font-size: small;">. But I have had a few scary moments and I have been lucky that my employers (for that is what they are) have respected my <span style="font-size: small;">experience</span> enough to defer to my opinion. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">A</span>s I said above<span style="font-size: small;">, I went through a period whe<span style="font-size: small;">n</span> I <span style="font-size: small;">accepted</span> every commission that came my way, and that was a great learning experience<span style="font-size: small;">.<span style="font-size: small;"> Later I decided that it was imperative to be choosier. There were jobs that were worth more than the client was willing to pay<span style="font-size: small;">,</span> for instance. There were jobs that were <span style="font-size: small;">distasteful</span> <span style="font-size: small;">or</span> <span style="font-size: small;">vulgar</span>. I was once hired to paint a picture of a young boy p<span style="font-size: small;">ulling a sled through a woods full of new fallen snow.<span style="font-size: small;"> The</span> man </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span>wouldn't <span style="font-size: small;">accept</span> the picture until I made the boys butt larger and more appealing. I made it the size of a pair of grapefruit, the child sported a fixture like <span style="font-size: small;">Jennifer Lopez</span> when I was done with him. <span style="font-size: small;">B</span>ut I decided that was enough of that kind of work.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">An offer<span style="font-size: small;"> of a commission is just that, a proffered deal. You are under no compulsion to enter into the arrangement, you need to compare it to the profit and enjoyment you might have from doing something else with your <span style="font-size: small;">time. Some offered commissions will be profitable for you, and some will not. Guys who build or repair houses learn that<span style="font-size: small;">, so should you.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> Picking and choosing which commissions to do can make or brea<span style="font-size: small;">k</span> you. There are plenty of people who have little respect <span style="font-size: small;">for art, or are well meaning but have little idea of the time it takes to make a<span style="font-size: small;"> painting </span>and <span style="font-size: small;">they </span>will expect you to work for short money. You deserve to be<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>as well paid as a carpenter.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">You <span style="font-size: small;">should r</span>eject those commissions, <span style="font-size: small;">and wait for better offers to come along.There<span style="font-size: small;">'</span>s an old saying " I bargained with the world for a penny, and that's all it would pay!" I did a lot of that, way too much. <span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">You should place a high value on what you do and you are in a position to insist others to do so as well.<span style="font-size: small;"> If it takes a long time to paint a picture and <span style="font-size: small;">then</span> you sell it for short money, you have lost money<span style="font-size: small;">,</span> not made it. <span style="font-size: small;">That was a hard lesson for me<span style="font-size: small;">.<span style="font-size: small;"> <span style="font-size: small;">It took me years to figure that out. </span>Never <span style="font-size: small;">compromise</span> your quality for money, particularly short money. You will spend the money quickly, but that painting will bear your signature for generation<span style="font-size: small;">s, and it WILL show up on e-bay so<span style="font-size: small;">meday, count on it.</span></span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">A PAINTING HAS NOTHING TO RECOMMEND IT OTHER THAN IT BE WELL MADE. IT WON'T SHINE YOUR SHOES OR REINFLATE YOUR TIRES. ITS<span style="font-size: large;">'</span> ONLY VALUE LIES IN IT'S QUALITY. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">I have worked <span style="font-size: small;">weeks</span> to make a 300 dollar painting<span style="font-size: small;">,
but not in a long time. I was once approached by woman who had just
been married, this was in about 1984<span style="font-size: small;">.</span> <span style="font-size: small;">S</span>he had a picture of <span style="font-size: small;">herself</span>
an<span style="font-size: small;">d </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">her new<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>husband <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">that had been</span> </span>shot <span style="font-size: small;">in the later hours of</span> <span style="font-size: small;">their </span>wedding reception. She hadn't hired a <span style="font-size: small;">photographer</span> and wanted me to make a wedding <span style="font-size: small;">picture from the photo. The offer was 300 bucks. I did a lot of 300 dollar deals in those days. In the picture the porcine lout was <span style="font-size: small;">grinning foolishly and had consumed a drink or two. I <span style="font-size: small;">never saw the actual <span style="font-size: small;">groom himself.</span><span style="font-size: small;"> I explained to her that all I could do was reproduce the photo<span style="font-size: small;"> in paint<span style="font-size: small;"> as I had nothing <span style="font-size: small;">else to go on.<span style="font-size: small;"> I labored on that portrait for weeks, WEEKS<span style="font-size: small;">! It was only a 16 by 20. I changed the background to a lovely rose window so it would look lo<span style="font-size: small;">o</span>k a church. I straightened his tie and removed the crimson from his scelera<span style="font-size: small;"> and the dark five 0'clock shadow from his australopithicine jaw.</span> When she came to pick up the painting I had worked so hard to make, she <span style="font-size: small;">practically</span> threw the money at me and stomped out of my studio. She expected somehow that I would paint the <span style="font-size: small;">charming R</span>omeo she knew, rather than the sodden tongueswallower in the photo. <span style="font-size: small;">Maybe she was unhappy with the way she looked in the photo, I know I was. The moral of this story is, if you must work from a photo, be sure it is a good one. You<span style="font-size: small;">r client has no idea of the limitations <span style="font-size: small;">which </span>the bad photo places on you, and expects you to paint what they think of the subject, not what the reference they have given you show<span style="font-size: small;">s</span>. Regardless of what they pay<span style="font-size: small;">,</span> people always expect a wonderful work of art. They will never say "oh well, I only paid 300 dollars for it"</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">My advice is, don<span style="font-size: small;">'</span>t work for money. </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">T</span>he world has more ordinary paintings than it needs,</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> w</span>ork to make beautiful <span style="font-size: small;">and excellent</span> art<span style="font-size: small;">. The money will follow. <span style="font-size: small;">If you <span style="font-size: small;">absolutely</span> ha<span style="font-size: small;">ve to make money to survive by your art<span style="font-size: small;">, m</span>ake 8 by10's, on spec. But make them wonderful and sincere, sell them cheaply if you must<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">.</span> <span style="font-size: small;">S</span>ell them on the web <span style="font-size: small;">for what the market will bear.</span> <span style="font-size: small;">You will be running a long term plan that will lead to <span style="font-size: small;">excellence and pride in what you do. Look at your work as building an artist<span style="font-size: small;">.<span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span> Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-54779079265964209622013-02-26T22:36:00.000-05:002013-02-27T08:54:17.991-05:00James Gurney show!<br />
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Here are James Gurney and I at the opening of his show in Manchester, New Hampshire. The strong down lighting of the gallery made us both look like we had no hair, so I have corrected the image to preserve ( and enhance) my own self respect, and having done so, I couldn't leave James looking any less hirsute.<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">Dinotopia: The Fantastical Art of James Gurney</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;"> New Hampshire Institute of Art</span></b> from
Wednesday, Feb. 20 through Wednesday, Mar. 13, 2013.
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77 Amherst St. in Manchester, New Hampshire.<br />
Monday - Wednesday, Friday 9 am - 5 pm Thursday 9 am - 7 pm, Saturday 12 pm - 4 pm <br />
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The Norman Rockwell Museum is sponsoring a show of the jaw dropping illustrations for his Dinotopia books and it's a great One.<span style="color: blue;"><u><b> </b></u></span>Those of you who read this blog know that I care mostly about what a painting actually looks like. I have little interest in fantasy art, and I hate dinosaurs, (what with all of that biting and other unpleasantness). But I love James's work for its beauty and worksmanship. I am an awestruck admirer of his drawing ability. James can draw as well as anyone alive, I think. He is able to put
together pictorial compositions that are as ambitious and well
realized as the salon painters of the 19th century. Only a few folks
walking around today can do that.<br />
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The pictures I am posting by James are actually in the Manchester show. They are the best known and some of the largest tours de force of his long career. James grew up in California, and after a brief stint doing background art for Hollywood, moved out into the illustration world. His book "Color and Light" has been the best selling painting book in America for 120 weeks now. <a href="http://jamesgurney.com/site/213/color-and-light-a-guide-for-the-realist-painter" target="_blank">Get your signed copy here. </a><br />
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I was introduced to James Gurney by Tom Kinkaid in the late eighties at a party in Connecticut. I had met Kinkaid at Art Expo in New York when he was just beginning his career. We got to talking about 19th century painting, which at that time was "secret" knowledge, there were virtually no books on the subject then, and no internet. Finding we had similar interests, we arranged to meet at the Metropolitan Museum the next morning. At lunch, Kinkaid leaned across the table at me and told me he was going to make a MILLION dollars! He laid out the plan and I remember thinking, well, he probably will. He invited me to join him at a party up in Connecticut. The party was all young New York illustrators. The illustration market was rapidly collapsing around them, as magazines and book publishers began to use only photography. These young illustrators had all been doing book covers for bodice-ripper novels and magazine work. That world was ending and they were all scrambling to reinvent themselves. I was the only fine arts guy there, having been included by happenstance.<br />
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Several people did presentations of their art. I was in New York to retrieve a painting from the biannual exhibition at the National Academy of design and I had my exhibition piece with me (below).<br />
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I showed some slides of my outdoor paintings. James remarked that I was a plein air painter. I knew the expression from books, but had never heard anyone actually use it. In those days we just painted "outside".<br />
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James had one of the very first of his illustrations for Dinotopia with him that night. I don't think the particular illustration he showed us had yet been tethered to the Dinotopia idea which had yet to emerge. Over the intervening years we chatted a few times on the phone. When I began this blog I was inspired by James long running blog <a href="http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Gurney Journey.</a> Over the last few years we have chatted more than a few times about art technique, comparing notes and philosophies. James did me the enormous honor of making me the only living artist quoted in his book, Color and Light. But we had never actually stood face to face in about 24 years. I approached him at the opening and we posed briefly in front of his magnificent picture before he was swept away for a photography line up. I heard him lecture later that night.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAe_r-JgPzpxNbRaTX9pkw6kXRAXmBPiskNPFFGL5bh-reoXIXYSHnZ65FwFSn-bvEIAdd0IMGNZVQXCf0Gqezg759fo6rU3XLmYIdpaOZLlnzXsI1eaDkKP2-g0dsAeSRglbsd8BKK9JI/s1600/Gurney_WaterfallCityAftLight-large.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAe_r-JgPzpxNbRaTX9pkw6kXRAXmBPiskNPFFGL5bh-reoXIXYSHnZ65FwFSn-bvEIAdd0IMGNZVQXCf0Gqezg759fo6rU3XLmYIdpaOZLlnzXsI1eaDkKP2-g0dsAeSRglbsd8BKK9JI/s400/Gurney_WaterfallCityAftLight-large.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I never saw or heard from Kinkaid again. A funny thing happened next though. When I was spending the day with Kinkaid he asked me if I would introduce him to John Terelac, a friend of mine in Rockport, whose painting technique Kinkaid had emulated in his own art. I told Thom that Terelac was a very private guy and I couldn't do that. I could introduce him to lots of New England painters, but Terelac wasn't on that list. A few days later when I had returned home I was in my studio and the phone rang. It was John Terelac telling me " I have a friend of yours here!". I said "who?" and John told me "Thomas Kinkaid" in a perturbed voice. I told John that I <b>had not</b> been willing to introduce Kinkaid to him. John said "I thought so!" and hung up the phone. I don't know what happened next, but John was a former high school football star and had moonlighted as a bouncer early in his career. I suspect Thoms' exit was swift and ignoble.<br />
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-N136XHeq2ce5Eu0g8rPe7RvdBsH1JuRPtBnw-ENEUJCZA2WHmadymrVqtkM_-VmqmzFXTQsUuomIz5QKR2B4RlZ2jXnIZe_w2JskJDE5mJXmj_l8rmtq8Sb16TXBFpae_CoPkpCKfDl/s1600/NEWS-Dinosaur-Parade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-N136XHeq2ce5Eu0g8rPe7RvdBsH1JuRPtBnw-ENEUJCZA2WHmadymrVqtkM_-VmqmzFXTQsUuomIz5QKR2B4RlZ2jXnIZe_w2JskJDE5mJXmj_l8rmtq8Sb16TXBFpae_CoPkpCKfDl/s400/NEWS-Dinosaur-Parade.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">It has been repeatedly pointed out to me that my punctuation is dreadful. I am sorry, sometimes I can get an editor to help me, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">othertimes</span> they are disgusted by me. I dropped out of high school and missed too many English classes. Please forgive my punctuation<span style="font-size: xx-small;">, someda<span style="font-size: xx-small;">y</span> I will figure that out too!</span></span><br />
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I have several workshops in the offing. For instance there is;</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: medium;">SNOWCAMP MINNESOTA!</span></b></div>
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This workshop will take place March 9 through the 11th near between St.
Paul and Stillwater. When last I taught in Minnesota several in my class
asked if I would do a Minnesota snowcamp, so here it is. I have made it
as late in the year as is possible to get a little milder weather and I
hope there is still snow. I think there will be, but if there isn't, I
will still hold the workshop but I will call it Stickcamp. </div>
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This will be a transplanted version of the yearly Snowcamp I do in New
Hampshires' White Mountains. I will teach the methods of painting snow
including color vibration and the planar structure in snow and the
landscape itself. I intend to emphasize the idea of form in the
landscape rather than a purely visual approach. I will show how to
express the convex outward bulging forms that express the structural
"bones" of the landscape. I think this gets ignored by some plein air
painters today and taught less than it ought be. I will also show you
how I build the color structure of the snow using color laid over color
to assemble the structure of the snow.</div>
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There is no need to stay an any particular lodging to attend the
workshop and it will be an easy commute out from Minneapolis or St.
Paul. The price of the three day workshop will be three hundred dollars.
As per usual with my workshops I run a twelve to thirteen hour day and
try to cram as much into the three days we have as possible. I make
workshops as intense as I possibly can. We will meet for breakfast and
then move to the painting site and work until dusk. Then we will meet
for dinner and I haul out my computer and lecture on design and other
aspects of landscape painting while we await our meal. If you live in,
or can visit the area I hope you will come. To sign up,<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/11/snowcamp-minnesota.html"> click here!</a></div>
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I will also be teaching in Lafayette, Louisiana from March 22nd to the
24th . You can contact Maria Randolph to sign up or get more
information.</div>
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<a href="mailto:mtrandol@gmail.com" target="_blank"> mtrandol@gmail.com</a> cell phone <a href="tel:%28337%29%20257-0678" target="_blank" value="+13372570678">(337) 257-0678</a>,</div>
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Here is the information copied from their website;</div>
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<h2>
Stapleton Kearns Plein Air <span style="color: white;">Workshop – Mar 22-24</span></h2>
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</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">Makes
no difference what kind of painting media you prefer. If you have ever
been interested in plein air (in the open air) painting, please don’t
miss this unique opportunity to take a plein air workshop in style with
all the amenities of home—and dinner—and most importantly, with a
fantastic internationally renowned artist and teacher. Sign up today!</span></h2>
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</span>
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white;">LAFAYETTE ART ASSOCIATION PRESENTS</span></h2>
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</span>
<br />
<h1 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><i>PLEIN AIR WORKSHOP</i></span></span></h1>
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</span>
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<span style="color: white;">With Renowned Landscape Artist</span></h2>
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</span>
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white;"><i> STAPLETON KEARNS</i></span></h1>
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<h2 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white;">MARCH 22-24, 2013</span></h2>
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</span>
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<h4>
<span style="color: white;">This Lafayette Art Association
sponsored ‘outdoors’ plein air workshop will feature the talented
teaching professional from New Hampshire, Stapleton Kearns. </span></h4>
<span style="color: white;">
</span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: white;">Stapleton is a professional landscape
painter who will fill your workshop experience with valuable techniques,
ideas, and methods based on a classical impressionist approach.</span></h4>
<span style="color: white;">
</span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: white;"> This excellent workshop is <span style="text-decoration: underline;">open to all media areas, not just oil painting</span>,
because primary plein air painting rules concerning colors, value,
lighting, etc., are essentially the same. This is not only an oil
painter’s plein air workshop, although that is Stapleton’s chosen media,
and all media painters are welcome to learn and enjoy! </span></h4>
<span style="color: white;">
</span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: white;">The 3-day workshop will be conducted
on privately-owned land in Cankton, LA which is approximately a 20
minute drive from downtown Lafayette. There is a cabin on the property
with bathroom and kitchen facilities.</span></h4>
<span style="color: white;">
</span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: white;"><i><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">So
don’t tarry and let this opportunity slip away, There are only a few
seats still open so call now and register to get your name on this
select list!</span></span></i></span></h4>
<span style="color: white;">
</span>
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: white;">
</span><span style="color: blue;"><b><i><a href="http://lafayetteart.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Stapleton-Kearns-Flier.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Click for more info… Contact the Lafayette Art Association, L</span></span><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: white;">afayette, LA at </span>337-269-0363</span></span></a> </i></b></span></h3>
Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-49524243816277751562013-02-18T16:33:00.001-05:002013-02-27T00:28:44.189-05:00Some thoughts on Isaac Levitan<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6KrWXqmUlMJ8eupk9TvxrSwKyO7F8FzxOenIM2_2i0c3jztsoj8Q1t9NAYs2iM4uo1ktaZYHybag1_BiRlDMFTE0NTJEhTj7tt6qGaxj7mJhh-QZgkl1k78O4q4GV6OpPaEGmy_K7KpVS/s400/Levitan-2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6KrWXqmUlMJ8eupk9TvxrSwKyO7F8FzxOenIM2_2i0c3jztsoj8Q1t9NAYs2iM4uo1ktaZYHybag1_BiRlDMFTE0NTJEhTj7tt6qGaxj7mJhh-QZgkl1k78O4q4GV6OpPaEGmy_K7KpVS/s1600/Levitan-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> </a>A reader sent me some pictures by Isaac Levitan (1860 1900) and asked me if I would comment on them. Levitan was a Russian painter who specialized in the landscape. Over the last decade or so there has been a growing appreciation of the Russian painters in America. Prior to that, the only one I knew much about was Ivan Shiskin, who I only knew from obscure books printed in Russian.</div>
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The painting above "A day in June" was made in 1895. Despite this academic background this picture shows, at least to me, the influence of the impressionists. I don't know if this was painted outside, but it has that look. Like many of the "academic" painters of that era he learned from the discoveries of Monet and the French impressionists. Much has been made of the rejection of the impressionist artists by the academic painters of the era, but that is only part of the story. Some of the academics rejected forever the impressionist ideas, but many did not, and within a generation almost all of the academics had added impressionist working methods to both their work and their teaching. Many became hybrids of the two schools of thought. There was too much good and useful there to be ignored. The French impressionists complained " they shoot us, but then they go through our pockets"</div>
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When first I examined the painting above I was perplexed by its' design. I didn't seem to have much organization and the strong lines leading diagonally into the picture seemed to lead the eye to .....nothing in particular. I knew the thing worked but I couldn't see quite how. Here was my initial idea of its' design.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhfAAr8GBYdYkpiQvWyM2mBF2qBMh6wBbygL5E3zVCr3EHOvr4q_322SO1c2P2T71-DeDkDCc2mimqis3J0m6cwUHnhmSgZz7TB5Zdpjcc7EIBPFtTsjCalW5fmbVfkSQoLy1GFCWkGkv/s1600/Levitan7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrhfAAr8GBYdYkpiQvWyM2mBF2qBMh6wBbygL5E3zVCr3EHOvr4q_322SO1c2P2T71-DeDkDCc2mimqis3J0m6cwUHnhmSgZz7TB5Zdpjcc7EIBPFtTsjCalW5fmbVfkSQoLy1GFCWkGkv/s400/Levitan7.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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But, as I studied it longer I began to suspect how the thing worked. It was a vortex, a circular design. Below is an indication of that. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqBEzKF1pHcZoBTBE-IzlwwPGdNHJHmTzfBCcakZF-_sbbyl-9db7hkv16fUubmBwiuZlOpE0hphbdCRoYuY01H-ItqrXbzc_VwKXM9dLBJLRBeMK2yv4z2gfApnEPL08y1nImUs3tkoJ/s1600/levitan9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFqBEzKF1pHcZoBTBE-IzlwwPGdNHJHmTzfBCcakZF-_sbbyl-9db7hkv16fUubmBwiuZlOpE0hphbdCRoYuY01H-ItqrXbzc_VwKXM9dLBJLRBeMK2yv4z2gfApnEPL08y1nImUs3tkoJ/s400/levitan9.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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A Vortex design creates a circular trail about the canvas for the viewer to follow. Levitan has concealed the device particularly well. He has also used that odd straight cloud in the center of the sky that conceals his means. At first glance it seemed so isolated and quirky, but it is a segment of the vortex, as is the sky incursion into the line of trees to the right and the trunks of the birches. The iridescent and beautiful flowers sprinkled across the fore ground puzzled me for a while too. But as I examined them I found they too had directional signals buried in them. Below is a diagram </div>
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showing that. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0TGdlbpcUZOzZg0YzqqcKzVF-DT2j2d2SIkvBLXYinO55KFmCyFA_2xyYEzgVHB2Utkf6giiZZ-EduG-54bAdBHRBmH_DouagGjj12B3RD1xwvQdIcxlWKrzuraTsO9PJMnwouZHmoQ_g/s1600/Levitan10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0TGdlbpcUZOzZg0YzqqcKzVF-DT2j2d2SIkvBLXYinO55KFmCyFA_2xyYEzgVHB2Utkf6giiZZ-EduG-54bAdBHRBmH_DouagGjj12B3RD1xwvQdIcxlWKrzuraTsO9PJMnwouZHmoQ_g/s400/Levitan10.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Levitan concealed his design carefully, so that initially the painting appears to have the unedited naturalism that nature presents to the plein air painter. But a careful arrangement is concealed beneath the "random" look of the painting.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvhTDKfMPKEI4qc7Wgt65W1nf2F0NoQXjyfDayvNP1p6PyH4gnIM2-gtgsYNp3VmQgpOrekN2Uo9qjMK0X1rAfSzFQJi9VRF5bcZetcCsfDlokajVNqs2vYToNofLyN4wtcv7xHFCVQcT/s1600/Levitan-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvhTDKfMPKEI4qc7Wgt65W1nf2F0NoQXjyfDayvNP1p6PyH4gnIM2-gtgsYNp3VmQgpOrekN2Uo9qjMK0X1rAfSzFQJi9VRF5bcZetcCsfDlokajVNqs2vYToNofLyN4wtcv7xHFCVQcT/s400/Levitan-1.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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This
painting "At the Lake" is very different form the one above. It looked at first glance
like a luminist painting done in naturalistic color to me. Like the
luminist painters, for instance Fitz H. Lane or Sanford Gifford, it has
stillness and contemplative quiet. Below is a luminist painting by Sanford Gifford.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZutEdLCTuM3B4rXRa1MNXDwlFJnQNnvOXISp2cYGrGoDBPO0sSF1LTG5rcflZX9K-QmNZJHOBmkskeg4G218iF6ffYCNt3Jj4N2qcDs0ne83_BUZmQKk_aetJbVYK3oSwta71QTY1hXZf/s1600/Sanford+Gifford.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZutEdLCTuM3B4rXRa1MNXDwlFJnQNnvOXISp2cYGrGoDBPO0sSF1LTG5rcflZX9K-QmNZJHOBmkskeg4G218iF6ffYCNt3Jj4N2qcDs0ne83_BUZmQKk_aetJbVYK3oSwta71QTY1hXZf/s400/Sanford+Gifford.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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Below I have drawn some explanatory hot pink lines on the Levitan</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIU4tITMkHyVCixlNdJHGqzDUiUcZ3phlER7ic0YyGU-J6BCdBSBZLvtjr_Wqxe_S_6l6gNOxzOibEq-lJU5g8CDOTXCpv8_gnRibKkum8dRrF41iUUxaJ2pqvDxBqRPR5hIKlqJmCiKJz/s1600/levitan11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIU4tITMkHyVCixlNdJHGqzDUiUcZ3phlER7ic0YyGU-J6BCdBSBZLvtjr_Wqxe_S_6l6gNOxzOibEq-lJU5g8CDOTXCpv8_gnRibKkum8dRrF41iUUxaJ2pqvDxBqRPR5hIKlqJmCiKJz/s400/levitan11.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The "leads" in the painting carry the viewer about the painting in a "Z" but unlike a luminist painting, the leading lines are more rhythmic then in a painting of the generation before. See how many of the lines are in arches? Those sectioned lines swoop in waves through the foreground and out into the distance in repeating parabolic curves. The boats in the foreground show the use of repeating arched lines. Note also the downward arch of the distant pines and hill leading down to the waterline. The nets at the foreground left are also scalloped across their bottom in decorative rhythm. Like in the painting above, Levitan gives the initial impression of the the random and truthful appearance of nature, but conceals beneath that veneer an artful geometric skeleton.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivTu6Ypyi5o0rpNivzIV-_IseNGSLYy7sqMyk_VHRbNjsQs-zDqllCFRnvWobuEThbuL3dGdPSh5LMHy62FeiTgvloDrVjNstI0TDK58K6WOHGVMJpjsrZ2Kr6UCyh2Eze8FVWZU_G98AK/s1600/levitan12.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivTu6Ypyi5o0rpNivzIV-_IseNGSLYy7sqMyk_VHRbNjsQs-zDqllCFRnvWobuEThbuL3dGdPSh5LMHy62FeiTgvloDrVjNstI0TDK58K6WOHGVMJpjsrZ2Kr6UCyh2Eze8FVWZU_G98AK/s400/levitan12.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Levitans' allocation of space is not unusual but I will point it out. Artists try to allocate their lights and darks in paintings into an artistic, but unequal balance. Levitan has given 2/3 of the space to his lights and 1/3 to the darks. The same area covered by both would have made a static design. He has then accented those darks with some small lights. The darks and the lights are arrayed into two large and clearly unequal portions rather than scattered all over the canvas.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvhTDKfMPKEI4qc7Wgt65W1nf2F0NoQXjyfDayvNP1p6PyH4gnIM2-gtgsYNp3VmQgpOrekN2Uo9qjMK0X1rAfSzFQJi9VRF5bcZetcCsfDlokajVNqs2vYToNofLyN4wtcv7xHFCVQcT/s1600/Levitan-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrvhTDKfMPKEI4qc7Wgt65W1nf2F0NoQXjyfDayvNP1p6PyH4gnIM2-gtgsYNp3VmQgpOrekN2Uo9qjMK0X1rAfSzFQJi9VRF5bcZetcCsfDlokajVNqs2vYToNofLyN4wtcv7xHFCVQcT/s400/Levitan-1.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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Here is our painting again, unaltered. I wanted to point out something about the color. Note Levitans depiction of the light. Rather than getting his light effect from radically different values, although his lights are a slightly higher value, he does it through color temperature shifts. His shadows are cool and his lights are warm. I suspect he did this to avoid chopping up his landmass with too many differing values and preventing it from being read as a single large shape. That and it looks cool. The whole painting is keyed higher ( painted in a lighter value scheme) than a typical academic landscape of the preceding era, also an adaptation of impressionist methods by Levitan.<br />
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He holds back his darks for accents within his shadows, like in the overturned boat in the foreground. That gives a luminosity and the appearance of soft luminescence to his shadow areas. Those dark accents decrease in size as they fall away from the foreground and into the distance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZE4wVaFEI6cNWYJUT_KRRZigC_oQqTZujW5FK9WkyxhBVRWxjUiS8PUGrqkYt6vjF8kk20AvXw6mc97_WXGRwAHXIiiQcu9XCW4jDjRowDvYpSb7F6SJvc2H9uOIIdGPxUtF6Gy3W5Wci/s1600/Levitan-13.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZE4wVaFEI6cNWYJUT_KRRZigC_oQqTZujW5FK9WkyxhBVRWxjUiS8PUGrqkYt6vjF8kk20AvXw6mc97_WXGRwAHXIiiQcu9XCW4jDjRowDvYpSb7F6SJvc2H9uOIIdGPxUtF6Gy3W5Wci/s400/Levitan-13.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I remarked above how at first glance the painting looked like a luminist painting. But here is a closeup showing another crucial difference. This painting has handling. Luminist painters concealed the hand of the artist. Their paintings had an enameled look devoid of brushwork. This painting however, has brushstrokes and impressionist variety of separately stated color notes within the forms. That is particularly observable in the roofs of the 19th century trailer park and the blue (how impressionist is that?) shadows in the distant trees. There are no transparent brown shadows in this picture as one would expect to find in the work of an academic landscapist of a generation before.The handling in the water is impressionist as well, with its "wiggly" brushstrokes instead of transparent downward dragged brushstrokes that would have been in a more academic type of painting.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZE4wVaFEI6cNWYJUT_KRRZigC_oQqTZujW5FK9WkyxhBVRWxjUiS8PUGrqkYt6vjF8kk20AvXw6mc97_WXGRwAHXIiiQcu9XCW4jDjRowDvYpSb7F6SJvc2H9uOIIdGPxUtF6Gy3W5Wci/s1600/Levitan-13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZE4wVaFEI6cNWYJUT_KRRZigC_oQqTZujW5FK9WkyxhBVRWxjUiS8PUGrqkYt6vjF8kk20AvXw6mc97_WXGRwAHXIiiQcu9XCW4jDjRowDvYpSb7F6SJvc2H9uOIIdGPxUtF6Gy3W5Wci/s400/Levitan-13.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Here for comparison is our Levitan (painted in 1893) and then below, is a little section of a Thomas Moran from 1864. I am comparing an American painter with a Russian, and I have no idea whether Levitan knew anything about Moran, he might well have not, although Moran was shown in international exhibitions. I show them for contrast in intent and handling and not because the two are historically related, they are not.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTTx0Aki98pWKycUeLwWx9vP6vsDrJ7Xlf8NosYheX7FRhlnWiag1LHsAsda_ZRoyqWkvFyzzSrBUVRyN17mHJwdLY8EyZAg1o54OKAiMIhKsJsz2r0s5xgRsNIEH22vi0LfHS5w56o652/s1600/Moran2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTTx0Aki98pWKycUeLwWx9vP6vsDrJ7Xlf8NosYheX7FRhlnWiag1LHsAsda_ZRoyqWkvFyzzSrBUVRyN17mHJwdLY8EyZAg1o54OKAiMIhKsJsz2r0s5xgRsNIEH22vi0LfHS5w56o652/s400/Moran2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Moran contains a zillion tiny carefully painted details, the Levitan is broadly seen and painted. There is a sophistication in the Levitan treatment that the Moran is without. Levitan has suppressed the detail and given a simpler and more artistic treatment to his subject. The Moran ( I do love Moran....but) is full of bristling detail that makes the picture a conglomerate of separately observed parts. The Levitan presents itself as a one single unified picture. The Moran seems a little primitive next to it, a little naive. It was this fault in the work of the Hudson river school painters, who were essentially landscaping pre-Raphaelites to fall quickly from favor after a generations time of glory. Oddly, Moran survived this crash, but most did not. With the rise of the Barbizon school, the tonalist movement, and later impressionism, the careful Hudson river school rendering fell sharply out of favor.</div>
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The myriad thousands of carefully observed, insistent and hectoring details made their paintings fascinating when you stick your nose in them, but less artistic when viewed in toto. For all of the effort made by the earlier generation of painters to capture every jot and tittle of nature, the Levitan is far more natural and convincing. This attention to endless detail tended to make the earlier 19th century artists into view painters, delineators of particular, grand, and relentlessly specific views. The broader way of seeing that came later made sentiment and the mood in painting more their subject. Levitan and his generation often needed only a simple field and some trees as in "A day in June" to make a picture. For them it was more about emotion and evocation than about presenting a careful and awe inspiring transcription of some scenic view.</div>
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I have several workshops in the offing. For instance there is;</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">SNOWCAMP MINNESOTA!</span></b></div>
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This workshop will take place March 9 through the 11th near between St. Paul and Stillwater. When last I taught in Minnesota several in my class asked if I would do a Minnesota snowcamp, so here it is. I have made it as late in the year as is possible to get a little milder weather and I hope there is still snow. I think there will be, but if there isn't, I will still hold the workshop but I will call it Stickcamp. </div>
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This will be a transplanted version of the yearly Snowcamp I do in New Hampshires' White Mountains. I will teach the methods of painting snow including color vibration and the planar structure in snow and the landscape itself. I intend to emphasize the idea of form in the landscape rather than a purely visual approach. I will show how to express the convex outward bulging forms that express the structural "bones" of the landscape. I think this gets ignored by some plein air painters today and taught less than it ought be. I will also show you how I build the color structure of the snow using color laid over color to assemble the structure of the snow.</div>
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There is no need to stay an any particular lodging to attend the workshop and it will be an easy commute out from Minneapolis or St. Paul. The price of the three day workshop will be three hundred dollars. As per usual with my workshops I run a twelve to thirteen hour day and try to cram as much into the three days we have as possible. I make workshops as intense as I possibly can. We will meet for breakfast and then move to the painting site and work until dusk. Then we will meet for dinner and I haul out my computer and lecture on design and other aspects of landscape painting while we await our meal. If you live in, or can visit the area I hope you will come. To sign up,<a href="http://stapletonkearns.blogspot.com/2003/11/snowcamp-minnesota.html"> click here!</a></div>
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I will also be teaching in Lafayette, Louisiana from March 22nd to the 24th . You can contact Maria Randolph to sign up or get more information.</div>
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<a href="mailto:mtrandol@gmail.com" target="_blank"> mtrandol@gmail.com</a> cell phone <a href="tel:%28337%29%20257-0678" target="_blank" value="+13372570678">(337) 257-0678</a>,</div>
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Here is the information copied from their website;</div>
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Don’t Tarry! Sign Up Now for Stapleton Kearns Plein Air Workshop – Mar 22-24</h2>
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<span style="color: navy;">Makes
no difference what kind of painting media you prefer. If you have ever
been interested in plein air (in the open air) painting, please don’t
miss this unique opportunity to take a plein air workshop in style with
all the amenities of home—and dinner—and most importantly, with a
fantastic internationally renowned artist and teacher. Sign up today!</span></h2>
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<span style="color: maroon;">LAFAYETTE ART ASSOCIATION PRESENTS</span></h2>
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<span style="color: maroon; text-decoration: underline;"><i>PLEIN AIR WORKSHOP</i></span></h1>
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<span style="color: maroon;">With Renowned Landscape Artist</span></h2>
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<i><span style="color: maroon;"> STAPLETON KEARNS</span></i></h1>
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<span style="color: maroon;">MARCH 22-24, 2013</span></h2>
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<span style="color: navy;">This Lafayette Art Association
sponsored ‘outdoors’ plein air workshop will feature the talented
teaching professional from New Hampshire, Stapleton Kearns. </span></h4>
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<span style="color: navy;">Stapleton is a professional landscape
painter who will fill your workshop experience with valuable techniques,
ideas, and methods based on a classical impressionist approach.</span></h4>
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<span style="color: navy;"> This excellent workshop is <span style="text-decoration: underline;">open to all media areas, not just oil painting</span>,
because primary plein air painting rules concerning colors, value,
lighting, etc., are essentially the same. This is not only an oil
painter’s plein air workshop, although that is Stapleton’s chosen media,
and all media painters are welcome to learn and enjoy! </span></h4>
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<span style="color: navy;">The 3-day workshop will be conducted
on privately-owned land in Cankton, LA which is approximately a 20
minute drive from downtown Lafayette. There is a cabin on the property
with bathroom and kitchen facilities.</span></h4>
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<i><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: maroon; text-decoration: underline;">So
don’t tarry and let this opportunity slip away, There are only a few
seats still open so call now and register to get your name on this
select list!</span></span></i></h4>
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<span style="color: blue;"><b><i><a href="http://lafayetteart.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Stapleton-Kearns-Flier.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">Click for more info… Contact the Lafayette Art Association, L</span><span style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;">afayette, LA at 337-269-0363</span></span></a> </i></b></span></h3>
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Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5682081471599286551.post-60569970701885517682013-02-03T12:44:00.002-05:002013-02-04T07:20:42.165-05:00Controlling M-Faces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsi2ZxUFRxHUp82xYN2P2Tox9bxdlI4bo1Lk9BshujHu7nKOijRh1BcG9LKv0kxmDK_4ztl4u0h3cSIeDfPwB7mGW_JJ7j8g1d8jdQdaHq-w4y8FCrcU_nJqFUvyxktaUYG4GsSA2-42pZ/s1600/sargentOK.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsi2ZxUFRxHUp82xYN2P2Tox9bxdlI4bo1Lk9BshujHu7nKOijRh1BcG9LKv0kxmDK_4ztl4u0h3cSIeDfPwB7mGW_JJ7j8g1d8jdQdaHq-w4y8FCrcU_nJqFUvyxktaUYG4GsSA2-42pZ/s400/sargentOK.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
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Above is a Sargent watercolor of Venice. I have written before about unity of effect and subordination of detail to the larger masses in which they are contained. In this post I want to show what happens if you don't control your emphasis. To do this I have messed up a few fine paintings using Photoshop.<br />
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Where you put your emphasis is desperately important in picturemaking. You might have intended to say <span style="font-size: small;">"<b>building </b></span>with some windows<b>"</b>, but instead said "building <b><span style="font-size: large;">with some windows</span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">"</span></span> by not subordinating the windows to the facade of the structure. Below is the same Sargent with the windows and details in the building exaggerated.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4HMeK60kgy8_fV8kI2u1PNPPnavgLpJq9y3KdQ_WWh0-8LhJmUAB8Nq4XrAZUwHv1rHDLaIA4SMz2nMWANiSFcxwxE29zUd6Wk-JquT3_XhO5tltfr_3HM9T_7Oa9uuqMl8GNlpTN3IjS/s1600/sargentweak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4HMeK60kgy8_fV8kI2u1PNPPnavgLpJq9y3KdQ_WWh0-8LhJmUAB8Nq4XrAZUwHv1rHDLaIA4SMz2nMWANiSFcxwxE29zUd6Wk-JquT3_XhO5tltfr_3HM9T_7Oa9uuqMl8GNlpTN3IjS/s400/sargentweak.jpg" width="400" /> </a></div>
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The building is no longer subordinated to the Gondolas in the foreground. It fights with them now for our attention . The picture no longer clearly tells you where to look, it is beginning to have two subjects rather than one, the boats. In the upper version the gondolas are dominant, in the lower they no longer are. This is a matter of emphasis. Just as in a stage play there is a star or lead role and there are supporting actors, if one of the supporting actors gets self important and begins blocking or outshining the lead he has to be chided, if not eviscerated by the director.</div>
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You as a picture maker are the director and it is important to keep the actors on your stage in check, lest they steal the show from your lead and distract the audience from the story that you want to tell. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">IF EVERYTHING IN A PAINTING IS OF EQUAL IMPORTANCE, THEN NOTHING IS IMPORTANT! </span></b></div>
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When making a design it is usually a mistake to give everything an equal emphasis, although it might be good in a blueprint or a schematic drawing. Part of a design is deciding what is important and what is not, what is the dominant, and what needs to be subordinated to that. Often this is about keeping your masses "big". That is, not chopping up every shape into an assemblage of the smaller shapes within it. </div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCv046LqvUc45ICuGjWbcxHJHYqiayB4AJYAjGgGtrQj319LoULfVeCCH-jc3s1naX1-gjy7F1RIxhWBekaoqVgfRmmm1ni1T6eFGp-q-d5q0izrziblcQbBtcTQRGHA4_ZQ-fKRw3aBiF/s1600/seago0k.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCv046LqvUc45ICuGjWbcxHJHYqiayB4AJYAjGgGtrQj319LoULfVeCCH-jc3s1naX1-gjy7F1RIxhWBekaoqVgfRmmm1ni1T6eFGp-q-d5q0izrziblcQbBtcTQRGHA4_ZQ-fKRw3aBiF/s400/seago0k.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 85%;">© The Estate of Edward <span class="il">Seago</span>, courtesy of Portland Gallery </span><a href="http://www.portlandgallery.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 85%;">www.portlandgallery.com</span></a></td></tr>
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Above is an Edward Seago, I know I post a lot of his paintings but he is a great hero to me. Below is the painting again, after my tender ministrations. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglZBSojVTZbcFm-PdCKUB_wOpBPrEbO6PxfSe7McsThDBtyzbFG0FqNHK-HMiY-DUtW2IjmGGMFZI0CX2uKD8xgo_muV_AfSLz7mGTAxKKqFwDNMZaFtgLmhZor66n9cji0yK9PwgpUeA8/s1600/seagotweak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglZBSojVTZbcFm-PdCKUB_wOpBPrEbO6PxfSe7McsThDBtyzbFG0FqNHK-HMiY-DUtW2IjmGGMFZI0CX2uKD8xgo_muV_AfSLz7mGTAxKKqFwDNMZaFtgLmhZor66n9cji0yK9PwgpUeA8/s400/seagotweak.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I have overemphasized the detail in the buildings behind the pointy feet children. It throws the whole thing out of whack. Seago subordinated the windows and doors beautifully to the larger and more important shape of the building itself. I have reversed the polarity, now the details are more assertive than the larger form upon which they ride, and the unity of the painting has been destroyed. The building, formerly a supporting actor, has taken over the stage like a girl in the chorus line naked with a traffic cone on her head.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge-J1qavPI_QVLL5SjHru-t8xvjdsqbZYF12ZGzqwK8PBTlJbkQc_M7VvjuCYjBvuufI92RtUnt544BgLWhZDkB0RNNpaunNL5W4-2djAGFEyN2jKvISZJ6gXjwkeRYM2Msx_l_kjmWo0a/s400/boatOK.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 85%;">© The Estate of Edward <span class="il">Seago</span>, courtesy of Portland Gallery </span><a href="http://www.portlandgallery.com/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 85%;">www.portlandgallery.com</span></a></td></tr>
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Here is another Seago, and below is my damaged version. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Jyzg8qk5dti9YD51W7a0JWRqkxYSYjifFI5LjWM_NLS0EzT6pgKsRo6z0qtL6t9U7fR3YrIm7Ipv0eEBad9QrnfyKSBI4WllZo1kuTOu8fTf7IXGG7noUcMpMli9ZnTcjOTEWXokddsj/s1600/boattweak.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3Jyzg8qk5dti9YD51W7a0JWRqkxYSYjifFI5LjWM_NLS0EzT6pgKsRo6z0qtL6t9U7fR3YrIm7Ipv0eEBad9QrnfyKSBI4WllZo1kuTOu8fTf7IXGG7noUcMpMli9ZnTcjOTEWXokddsj/s400/boattweak.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I have exaggerated the windows in the ocher colored building on the left, and lightened the contrast in the group of boats at center. Now instead of quietly occupying that side of the painting, the building is too assertive. It is stealing the show from the boats which were the artist's intended focus in the painting. Now the boats lead you through the painting to the building.</div>
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Every element you put into a painting has to be appraised for it's importance. Ask yourself "is this object important or should it be subordinated to the whole, so what <b>is</b> important can shine?" Sometimes during a critique an artist will hold their hand up to block from their view a part of the painting. When they do that it is usually because some element has been overstated and is interfering with either the balance or the unity of the painting. You only get one subject per picture, if you try to have two the picture will fail. It has a problem I call "one for each eye" There must be</div>
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one dominant subject and the other forms must be subordinated to that.</div>
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How you set your emphasis is a matter of your personal choice, and when you make choices you are making art. There are cameras that are made to be left strapped to trees in the forest to shoot pictures of passing wildlife. When the unwitting animal steps into the machines vision, it takes a picture. The machine is not an artist. It makes an image, but no decisions as to what that image will look like. Transcription is only accounting. Noise is not music. Like form, or arrangement of shapes, emphasis is a design decision and a human imposition of selective order onto nature. Nature in itself is not art, art is the product of a human decision about how to portray nature. This explains entirely why so little truly great art is currently being produced by the deceased.</div>
Stapleton Kearnshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00226409516935208164noreply@blogger.com10