Last Kick at It

After months of anticipation, and after a March heat wave, we got the biggest snow fall of the year.  No, not Toronto, but the Hockley valley got it wet and thick.  So we tried it for the last effort of the year.

Snow on My Side

By the time we started to paint we were left with large isolated snow patches.  What to do?  I have found over the years that my success percentage is much higher if I have a good idea of what I am going to do before I begin to paint.  This is called having a concept.  It means that you have developed at least a mental image of what your painting will look like before you begin.  Athletes call it visualization.  They visualize steps in the process that lead to an outcome.  For me the highest level of this visual exercise is my thumbnail sketch.  I design the image, leave things out, rearrange, add, check shapes for interest and value, and I even "paint" the little pencil sketch by laying in the shapes with my pencil as if the pencil were a brush.  Works great.  You know where you are going before you start.

Today we had to decide what to do with the snow.  Here is one interpretation.

April Snow, Hockley, 11x14 oil on Board

Dealing with disjointed patches of snow requires the vision and strong editing.  Its about the snow.  Here is another interpretation.

Bootlegger, 11x14 Oil on Linen on Board

Yup, no snow.  Here it is about the stream and the logs.

Keep Those Brushes

For me it is important to keep the application of paint varied and interesting.  So far, I have never thrown out a brush.  Pack rat you say.  Maybe.  My original drawing brush is a #1 bright hogs bristle.  It looks like a stump.  But, it makes an interesting mark and the other end of the brush scrapes very well.  My primary paint application is done with hogs bristle flats from #4 to #16.  Second is perhaps a palette knife that I scrape with and make other interesting shapes and blobs, including sharp edges.  Then there are the filberts, the eggberts (bristle) and a few mongoose brushes that are very interesting as the hair breaks or falls out.

Almost New and Not Much Left

These are mongoose brushes.  The newer one is a larger size than the worn one once was.  The bristles on these are very soft.  They can be used for a number of things such as precision drawing.  The worn one though is very valuable.  When it gets to this stage it needs maintenance if it is to be useful for any period of time.  The glue down in the ferrule is the weakness of these brushes.  So, top it up when the bristles get sparse.

Cabinet Makers Glue

This stuff works well and resists the solvents and paint compounds.  Then this little hair brush becomes a tool of torture that has endless uses.

Tortured Little Hair Brush

Here the brush was shoved bristles first into a pile of loosely mixed paint.  The hairs splay and hold a huge gob of paint.  Great application effects!  Ya, ya, you are not supposed to treat brushes this way.  Means to an end.  I also use my thumb, the other end of a brush, dry brush, medium filled brush.......  Its called "painting".

Detail from "Honfleur Sailer"

If you look at this small element you will see transparent, translucent, and opaque passages, passages done dry brush, bits done with the little tortured hair brush and the palette knife.  Even a thumb print or two.

Some Days

The family and baby have cleared out.  So quiet this morning.  I had a peaceful breakfast and decided to paint.  The oils were petrified on my easel.  So I scraped them off, cleaned the palette and squeezed out new paint.  Like a Spring morning, clean and crisp.  I pulled out last week's plein air start.  I checked the values, the concept, the tilt.

Colborne Lodge, 16 x 20 Oil on Canvas

I was working to finish this off after a week away from it in High Park.  Getting the sun light better now.  Time for coffee I said.

"You've got orange paint on your sweater sleeve!!!"  Crap!  No, its also on my pants.  Oh no!  Where else is it.  Not to be a good painting day.  Its on the couch, the rocker, and the floor.  A large gob, slightly dry, but rich and gooey.

Time for maintenance.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.  We are painting the cherry blossoms in High Park.  It'll be worth the drive into the smoke for that.  Tonight I'll check to see how Vincent chose to deal with the orchards.

USG Strategy

It is quietly sneaking in.  Still in the MUD season, just to confuse.

Delicate Ugly Slime Green - In Sun

She is delicate.  She goes with the MUD.  She will outlast the MUD and she will evolve for the next 6 months.  So get ready.

Crop Her Out - In Sun

I have used this strategy to get around her.  But she will soon take over in another form, so better to take her head-on and get ready for the long season of green.

I use the same palette for all types of painting - landscape, portrait, still life etc.  However, I do have a guest spot on my palette to accommodate pigments to try out or to yield variety on occasion.  My palette features viridian green as its only tube green.  It is extremely versatile and naturally it is expensive.  Not a powerful pigment it mixes very well.  For greens I use Cad lemon yellow, cad yellow light, cad yellow deep, yellow ochre, transparent red oxide, cad orange, cad red, alizarin, and mineral violet with viridian in many combinations.  My blue to mix greens is primarily Ultramarine but could also be Cobalt.  Of course I also have white to lighten and cool.  These many combinations produce about any green under the sun.  But when I just have to experiment.....

Some Guests

I have been known to use more than one of these at a time but usually I choose just one.  they come from my two drawers of paint - one warm, one cool, that are labelled "seldom used".  You can tell I love to wander through art stores.  These are from front row bottom left,

Indian Yellow, Transparent Earth Yellow, Emerald Green, Azo Yellow Green

Top row from the left,

Permanent Green Light, Sap Green,  Cinnebar Green, Yellow Citron, Chrome Oxide Green, Pthalo Green Yellow Shade

Remember the answer to "how do you get THAT colour?"   MIX  MIX  MIX!

Have fun.  Clean up when you are through.

By the way, you might have noticed that I use every colour on my palette to mix my large variety of greens.  That is why I introduce a guest pigment infrequently.

Mud without the Mud

With this heat wave the mud season will pass quickly.  But when you paint out in it every day you need some approaches.  Although it is all around you you can ignore it by cropping it out.  An extreme would be to paint a sky scape.  Here I am doing the scene in another season and in fairly bright sun light so I don't want it to be a mud scene.

Mud and Flood, 11x14 Oil on Canvas

The scene is on Scotsdale Farm.  For the next one I travelled to Toronto to paint in High Park with John Presseault and friends.  With the close proximity to Lake Ontario the season is about 2 weeks behind us here in the escarpment.  None the less, mud.  So, leave out the buildings etc. and... lie a bit, subordinate a bit, exaggerate a bit....

Nobby in High Park, 10x12 Oil on Board

A few finishing strokes to soften edges and add some texture and a bit more light will about do it.

Out there today I can see that the mud is beginning to lose ground.  Get prepared for the USG.

Lila Lewis Irving

I first saw a Lila painting in the '90s called "I Thought I'd Paint The Electric Bill".  An oil portrait.  From that I figured she must be an interesting lady.  She is.  I painted under her direction at the Haliburton School of Fine Art.  Abstract.  What a week!  Energy, intuition, and scads of paint.

Lila has her first retrospective "Appassionata" at the Art Gallery of Mississauga.  It runs through April 29 2012.  See it if you can.  It covers her most recent work with a smattering of the wood cuts, oil portraits, seascapes, and prints.  Quite the journey.  "I can never ever, ever, ever, ever master this one."

"Good starts are easy, good finishings are hard."  Lila

Calligraphy 280

"The subject does not pre exist.  It emerges out of the interaction between the artist and the medium."  Robert Motherwell

Canvas

"Everything should have one controlling gesture."  Robert Henri

Song of the Moon II

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."  Albert Einstein

Thumbs

After the walk and talk I chatted with Lila.  She was quick to remind me that "you don't just start painting the abstract.  You have to know shape, value, colour, edges, and texture.  I have many years of that background and it remains a kernel in the back of my mind when I paint without thinking."

Guess What?

It is only mid March but the season of all colour has passed into that preseason of mud.  So now we get to practice painting mud on purpose.  But how to make it interesting?

Credit River Runoff - Mud this morning

At least this has four different corners and some diagonals.  Balance?  Maybe another spot offers better composition and interest.

Black Silver Creek

High eye line, man made structure, bridge is a stopper across the mid ground, pretty drab.  Look back the other way.  Camera isn't too far off in this one.

Flowing North

Lazy S, different corners, a bit of colour.  Try looking back again.

Looking South

Into the sun, check the corners, warm or cool light (intermittent), lots of perspective.  Low eye line, some colour ( much more than shown in the photo).

The choice.  Should be something that stirs your innards.  Then how to deal with it?  Move things, leave 'em out, add to 'em, wait for the sun, no, maybe a profile looking into the sun....

Try not to sink too far into the mud.

Seems like the Black/Silver Creek doesn't have near so much runoff mud.  Credit is brindle brown.  We have to get this practice in quickly 'cause old USL is right around the corner.  I'm lucky, my palette doesn't change as the seasons come and go.  One less consideration.