August 11, another painting excursion

I did this painting yesterday. It's 11 x 14". Looking south down the valley at Chick le est with Chillimoss in the background. I'm going to wear this view out I've painted it so much. I guess part of the reason I paint early morning light is that it's so hot in the afternoon and I hide out in the studio to duck the heat. Sometimes I take a chair down to the creek and sit right in the water and paint.
I'm going to work on this a little more. I like what's going on here and there but think it should have a little work on the mid ground values. It won't be alla prima but whose looking? I like how the foreground values work. I'm trying to work with warmer earth tones in the foreground and not get stuck on greens. I'm looking forward to autumn and the wonderful colors that the Cottonwoods and aspen create.

I joined a local gallery. It's a cooperative by Ferry County artists in Republic, WA, called 'Gold Mountain Gallery". That's appropriate for my mountains! The jury is still out but I stand a good chance of getting in. With two boys in college I'm going to have to peddle a lot of paintings! Maybe try Ebay and connect it with this blog. That should be interesting.

life is an art

I "nailed" the light coming down 30 Mile Canyon. Light coming in the window woke me up at 5 a.m. At first I was grateful to see clouds as it has been up in the 90's. Clouds are a mixed blessing as they usually bring lightning and threaten forest fires in the dry days of August.
This little 9 x 12 painting took about 2 hours. I limited my pallet to titanium white, virmillion red, cadmium orange, cerulean blue in the sky and French Ultra-marine blue for the dark shadows mixed with alizarin crimson.
I've been painting Plein Air, alla prima,impasto, trying to choose my colors on the pallet and refraining from overworking and blending on the canvass. The paint gets rather thick, almost like clay. I'm having fun watching the effect of pure colors that stand by themselves on the canvas. I believe this makes the canvas more of an artifact and stands alone as an object not merely an image.

I remember being impressed by the brush work virtuosity of Rembrandt's protraits of the Apostles in the National Gallery last winter. I would walk through the Museum on my way up Capital hill to lobby congressional reps on energy and telecommunication issues. I took lots of notes that I have reviewed and remind me of painting dark to light, light over dark, and thick over thin. Rembrandt painted over an underpainting, letting it show through. It was interesting to see the detail in the dark values of the paintings. If I looked closely I could see the vague impression of a hand just a slight value above the darkest value, allmost invisible.

I am getting better at translating color and maintainingg value. I am working on brushwork and hope to develop a distinctive method of work illicited by my technique.

One of the benefits of color choices rendered deliberately is that the economy of movement physically saves my arm that suffers from artritis developed from driving horses for hours and hours. I have been painting as much as 12 hours a day on a studio painting of a herd of Paint horses I saw over on the Owhi range. It is far more challenging. I am inclined to be far more conservative and often refrain from correcting errors out of laziness and fear that the improvement will not work as well as the existing effort. Overworking is an issue. It helps to have other paintings to work on to refresh my mind and return to the effort with a fresh eye.

Paint everyday

I get up around 4:30 to capture the morning light as it lights up the valley and pushes the shadows down into the valley.

It was cold. 3 hours of painting and I was froze. I had to go to town, (Republic, WA) to get a cup of coffee and warm up. I gave up coffee sometime ago but had to have a cup of Joe.

The buildings in the background are those of the Campabasso family. This is the Campabasso and Stensgar homestead. Stensgars are the descendants of those that ran the Hudson Bay Company at Fort Colville.

In the 40's there was a hunting lodge here. Glen Whitelaw flew in dignitaries to the back country to hunt. Today the tribe doesn't allow non-tribal hunting although they allow fishing and sell their own permits a.k.a. "squaw permits to fish.

This picture is a little misleading as I have worked on it since and have added a team of horses hauling a load of loose hay down the road. It came off O.K and interjects the element of a story instead of just a landscape. The canvas is only 11 x 16 so the team of horses is only 1" biig. Might be the smallest team in the world!

Going huckleberry picking today up in the Kettle mountains with Aunt Dian. Should be good picking as there was lots of rain this summer although not much snow last winter.

Wednesday, 8/1/05

Today painting went OK. The setting is so important to success. A good setting paints itself.

I got up around 4:30 a.m. and beat the sunrise over Cache Creek pass. I wanted to capture the long valley that leads down to the Colville Indian Agency. I also hoped to find the herd of Paint horses that graze in this range as I have a studio painting of them planned. The stud horse of this bunch is a very loud brown and white paint. He has 8 or 9 mares and an assortment of the previous years foals from last year to about two years old.

This view looks out over the Columbia Basin to the Cascades that are faint blue silhouetes in the distants. You can see snow on them at times although this year there wasn't any.

This is the area of the Moses Band of the Colvilles and Chief Joeseph of the Nez Perce spent his last days here. He is buried in Nespellem. The Colvilles are basically a number of families, some that lived here and others that were located here.

The "Agency" is the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Tribal Government Headquarters. It is basically the reservation "capital" and heart of the Tribal Government.

I worked about 2 hours on a 9 x 12 painting. I forgot my paint thinner which was a good thing as I have been studying a DVD by Scott Burdick who layers thick impasto paint, wet into wet. It takes a lot of paint to cover even a little canvas. I find half my problem is just that I am so cheap I have difficulty squirting extra paint out of the tube to get the job done. The challenge is not to mix the paint on the canvas as that leads to muddy colors. It takes more drawing skill and value selection but lends itself well to softening edges and the effect of atmosphere in landscapes. One of the things I hope to achieve is better, more dynamic brushwork that results in a rich surface. I like paintings that are both highly skilled representational work with bold brushwork that allow colors to exist independently of the image yet combined, come together as a whole to be the image itself.

All that said, I have to paint, paint, paint.................

News from Sanpoil Studios, "The Artist on the Road"

News from "Sanpoil Studios"

Painting out of doors is more than just painting. Being in a wonderful place such as Glacier Park, Mt is what it is all about. Not only do I take a piece of the landscape with me but I am there in the moment.
Here I am at a turnout of "Going to the Sun Road" that is carved out of the cliff face of the Rockies. Many artists have sat in this very location, Charlie Russel, Joe Abresscia to name a couple. It isn't hard for even a hack like me to paint something that has a little merit when you set up your easle in a place like this.
My feet are hanging over a 1000' drop into the valley below. Many, many visitors stop to take in the view and look over my shoulder. It takes a little courage to perform like this but I like it. People watching kind of makes me ramp up the effort and do a good job. I could have sold every painting I did if only for a couple dollars. 2 million visitors make the pilgrimage which says that it's good subject matter.
There are many galleries in the area. Bigfork in particular is a growing artist community. I couldn't believe the growth in the area. It has been discovered by the rich and famous with rumor of movie stars and industrialists building 38,000 sg foot homes.
One of our friends Steve and Sandy Nogal have opened a fine restaurant, "McGarry's" that is doing fine in Whitefish, Mt. If you ever have a chance you've got to try Steve's apple pie. It's awesome, especially with a little vanilla ice cream on the side. His baby back ribs are great and a wine list that is as good as any you will find.