Chasing The Summer Sun

I have begun doing a painting a day.

I did this painting this morning, Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011.

One reason I want to paint daily is because I know that I will not be able to paint as much as I am now when I go back to school in the fall--ironically for a degree in Fine Art!

(However, I am looking forward--after a summer break-- to going back to Lane Community College and learning more from the great painter and Instructor Adam Grosowski.)

I like painting the sunrise because no matter what happens during the rest of the day I know that I have done at least one painting.

I like the painting that I did this morning, which I call Pink Champagne Sunrise.

I don't always like what I do and occasionally scrape the paint off my painting surfaces. At times like this I wonder why I am crazy enough to try and be an artist. 

I like Pink Champagne Sunrise  because of its strong value contrasts, abstracted simplified forms, and it's impasto texture. I got the texture by applying the paint with a palette knife.

I started using the palette knife because I am trying to use bolder simplified forms and trying not to overwork my paintings. When I get down there, close to the painting surface, with a small brush, I tend to move the paint around and around and add too much detail: I get lost in the forest for the trees.

I am looking forward to doing many more paintings before school starts, but I know that I am also going to want to paint the fall with its varied colors: cadmium yellow, cadmium red medium,  alizarin crimson, moss green, ochres, and orange--as well as other colors.

Now, I need to get out there while I can and chase the summer sun!

Charcoal: The "Gateway Medium"

I have been doing a lot of painting outside. This is called painting in the open air or en plien-air. (En plein-air means "in the open air", in French.)
The French Impressionists such as Monet, Renoir, and Pissaro are the ones who brought painting in the open air into the forefront as a painting phenomenon.

Painting en plein-air is very new for me. Also my subject matter has changed from works of imagination and portraits to landscapes. My work is brighter now and in color and I am using oil paint and pastels.

The road to pastels has been interesting and exciting. I started down that road started when I switched, in drawing classes, from graphite to charcoal.
 Charcoal, for me, was a "gateway medium".

Doing landscapes in pastel began in my Intermediate Drawing class (at Lane Community College in Eugene Oregon) when we were asked to go outside and draw a landscape. I thought that I would try a sepia (reddish brick brown) and umber (dark coffee brown) colored charcoal. It just seemed more natural to use earth colors for a landscape than use black--which rarely occurs in nature.
The resulting drawing is below.

My first landscape

When I did this drawing I realized how much I enjoyed drawing nature from direct observation.

Then I watched a YouTube video in which David Hockney talked about how he was doing sunrise landscapes with a paint application on his iPhone. I loved the look of the sun and colors that he did and the next morning when I got up the sun was rising over the treetops. I didn't have an iPhone and I needed to hurry and grab something which would enable me to render the quickly rising sun; I grabbed a boxed set of Rembrandt pastels and drew the sunrise. Here is the drawing/painting:

A morning sunrise rendered with Rembrandt pastels.

This was my first full color landscape--I was hooked!

There was no way I could have mixed paint in my palette and then painted the racing, rising sun. I found out later that this same sense of urgency to capture light is what caused Monet to do his "impressions".
This sense of urgency that painters feel is called "chasing the light".




The pastel painting below was the first landscape I did where I intentionally took my pastels and went out to paint a landscape. It is of a stand of trees at a nearby golf course.

I thought I would try to paint a landscape with acrylic paint and the painting below is a painting of a tree in the Owen Rose Garden.

 I am still trying to fall in love with acrylic but we have an on-again-off-again relationship. This small acrylic painting on a wooden panel just sold and will soon be in a private collection. I will miss it because I like how it makes me smile when I look at it.


I recently spent four days in the woods at my parents house. I took my pastels and drew this sunrise as the sun came up over the mountain.

I also took to their place a big book of the complete works of Vincent van Gogh. I learned in college that a way to excel as a painter is to copy the Masters--Vincent copied the masters who went before him--so, I did a few pastel copies of van Gogh paintings. Here they are:

Copying the work of  beautiful and brilliant Vincent van Gogh was a real pleasure. He is one of my favorite artists. A good book about him--a biography--is called Lust For Life. It was written by Irving Stone.



I did the pastel painting of the pine trees after I had copied Vincent's paintings and I think that his style influenced me a little. I used brighter color than I do usually. By way of illustration, compare this pine tree painting to the sunrise at my parents house, which I painted before I did the Vincent's. Can you see how I brightened my color palette?

I want to end this entry with the latest pastel painting I did. I drew this one from my imagination but it is a landscape--

Hopefully, there will be many more works of art to show you--I am painting like a madman this summer!
I am excited about painting in the open air and about my discovery of pastel painting.

The Lost City: Print and Drawing

The Print. Intaglio: etching and aquatint.

   

The original drawing:Brush, reed pen, acrylic ink.

The Invisible City

We were given an assignment in my Intaglio Printmaking class to do a print, or prints, inspired by one of the cities in the book, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. The class is taught at Lane Community College by Susan Lowdermilk.

These are the studies I came up with, from which I will make aquatint and etching prints on copper plates.
I am almost done etching the one entitled Invisible City II.

I will post photos of the prints and process when I am done.

The prints will be for sale at a reasonable price.

Invisible City I

                                                                     Invisible City II

The Dead Painter's Society

The Dead Painter's Society is a group of Lane Community College students who meet in the Art Department's building 11, room 121. We meet every Friday at noon--until whenever. All are welcome, but you must come to paint. No experience necessary.

Here are some photos of our people, process, and paintings.







Brent painting a still life. His first effort at oil painting a still life.

Brent's Still Life. Oil on canvas. Incredible work for a first effort.



Katelin Williamson copying one of the Master's--Gustave Klimt.



Katelin Williamson after Klimt. Acrylic on canvas.

                                                                 Katelin's boots--photographed by Alisa "Alley" Akay.

                                                    Ben and some of his paintings. Acrylic on canvases.

                                                            Ben's painting. Acrylic on canvas.

                                          Ben painting a new one. Acrylic on canvas.

                                                    Ben and I talking over (critiquing) one of his works.

                                                   Some friends and I were drinking pints and we put a bunch of topics into a hat. Whatever we drew out, we decided, we would do an art work along that theme. We picked "death." Therefore, I painted this "Vanitas" composition. The skull represents death, the bottle represents life, and the rosemerry represents transition. Daniel Balter, Oil on canvas.

                                                           Brent and I are painting the same arranged still-life. I am teaching him a little bit about how to paint with oils. This is my--still yet unfinished--painting of the bull and bottle. Oil on canvas by Daniel Balter.



I am very grateful for the Dead Painter's Society and the energy in the room as we paint and talk and listen to music. I will always remember this time. Carpe Deum!




                                                        

Images from Ink and Burnt Wood.

Although the term has just started at Lane Community College, my Instructors have me busy creating images.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Here are some of the images I have created this Spring term.

 

 

Although Adam Grosowsky was supposed to be teaching us in our Intermediate Drawing class we have a stand-in Instructor while Adam is out. The stand-in is named Bob Divine.

Hopefully Adam will be back next term.

The Shadow Masters: Chiaroscuro

My Instructor, at Lane Community College, Adam Grosowski experienced a personal crisis and consequently wasn't around, this last term, as much as I would have liked.
It was unfortunate because when he was around I learned more, about painting, from him than I have any one else.

I am obviously not the only one who thinks Adam is "the bomb", for instance,
I registered for one of his classes, next term, and even though I registered early the class was full--he had to sign a waiver to squeeze me in.

One thing Adam kept doing is pointing us towards the Masters so that we could learn from them. He especially liked Wyeth, Hopper, and Degas.

Now that I am on Spring break and I am completely without an Instructor I feel like a sheep without a shepherd.
So, I have decided to do my own studies of the Masters. I looked past Hopper and Wyeth to Rembrandt Van Rijn and Caravaggio--Masters of the technique of chiaroscuro.

I work well with deadlines and assignments, so I set a few for myself. I gave myself the assignment to do a self-portrait in the chiaroscuro style of Rembrandt Van Rijn.
Here are the stages of the drawing as I worked on it:

The drawing was done with vine charcoal, white charcoal, and Conte crayon on 17" x 24" archival drawing paper.

Itsy-Bitsy Spider: Artist book, Pop-Up

This was an artist book I made and turned in today as my final project for Artist books: Pop-Up.

The class was a great learning experience and difficult, but rewarding. It was taught by Instructor Susan Lowdermilk. She is an amazing artist who is a print-maker and artist's book maker.

Also, she will be my Instructor next term and will be teaching Intaglio printmaking.
Furthermore, she promised to teach me mezzotint printmaking which makes me so happy I am spinning in circles in my chair as I write this.

For now, here is my artist book, called Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I didn't write it, just illustrated it.

The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.

Down came the rain and washed the spider out.

(The spider comes down the spout by pushing down on the tab in the previous panel.)

Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.

And the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the drain again.

I didn't get photos of the title, ending, and front and back covers, but I can upload them later.

Obsessive-Compulsive-Doodle-Craze

I did this doodles while sitting in my Speech 100 Basic Communication class.

 

 

I guess I should thank my Speech Instructor, Cordova, at Lane Community College, for providing the impetus for this doodles. Thanks.