How To Paint The Landscape...

Feels so good to get out of the studio and paint the landscape. It has been a while as I have been so busy doing faces, faces, and more faces, not to mention a few figures and still life.

This is a quick sketch of the Malibu Wine Country, a view from my home. And another I did today with Jeremy Lipking and friends. What a joy to watch him paint.

Landscape painting teaches one so much. My mentor Mr. Everett Raymond Kinstler, N.A., http://www.everettraymondkinstler.com says the portrait artist must get out and paint the landscape and the landscape artist must get inside and paint the portrait. Painting the figure outside is fantastic too. Think of Swedish master Anders Zorn. I am lucky enough to be visiting his home and studio this July assisting Lipking and his painting group.   I will also be visiting the east coast of America on the way back from Sweden to landscape paint there around a wonderful reservoir that is always a real challenge for me.

Painting  the landscape teaches you how to paint air and atmosphere, how things recede,  all of which you can then put in the backgrounds of your figurative work. I know this to be true. I was resistant at first to the delights of bugs, gnats, crummy weather, unwanted audience and upturned paint boxes,  but thanks to dear Mr. Kinstler's prodding, encouragement and critque, I now love painting the great outdoors. Look also to the wonderful landscape work of Dawn Whitelaw, http://www.dawnwhitelaw.com, a longtime protegee of Mr. K's,  and master in her own right, to see how it should be done. I own a Whitelaw sketch and I often look at it to remind myself of  'the way'. 

Most of all landscape sketches on site teach you about mixing soft greyed neutral color. Some say, Ovanes Beverian http://www.ovanesberberian.com and Hongnian Zhang, http://www.zhanghongnian.com that you have to learn how to paint grey well first before you can understand painting. I think this applies to the landscape especially.

Not so easy matching all those greyed greens, blues and browns of different color temperatures.  I find a pre-mix of purple-violet on my palette sure helps me.  Kinstler advised me to do this as has Lipking.

I try to keep the shapes simple, edit what I see, so to speak. The masters do this so well.

Jeremy Lipking, http://www.lipking.com, is a great inspiration to look at too. I love seeing his landscape sketches, mostly 6"x8", in his studio that are the prep. for his finished studio pieces or sometimes just for study purposes. I would buy both the sketch and finish if I could. But the point being that his sketches are just as good as his finish and he keeps the shapes really clean and strong. His greyed color is magnificent and masterful.

 I also try to think warm AND cool for each passage I am painting, alternating both. A limited palette helps me too. Hate to say, I like black on my palette too. Ssshhh...Sargent did too. He is famous for saying he couldn't paint without it.

So how to paint the landscape?  Most of all, just get out there and do it. You will be glad you did. 

Pack sunscreen, bug spray, water and a sandwich plus a bag for trash. Plus supplies. Derrr....

Visit Guerilla Pochade http://www.judsonsart.com for some of the coolest SWAG around. I have spent a fortune there.

The rest is obvious.

JOIN ME TO PAINT AT THIS SPOT! Read below.

Ravishing Radish!

Two things come to mind tonight. How much I love painting still life,  in between the rigors of portraiture, and how much I learn from teaching, albeit a bit of a love/hate relationship on some days if I am being very honest.

 Teaching just one day a week around long school semesters,  as I do,  is a commitment if you are trying to do it to your very best. It is not like a workshop where you get in and out before the dust has settled and no-one really has had time to process much before the teaching check is cashed and the teacher has left amid a glitter glow.

In semester teaching, as I have done for almost three years now, people get to KNOW you and hear your repeated teaching agenda over a 10 week span and 'process" in their individual way  if they are making progress. A lot of time to think.  They also get to show up on days when they have private dramas (putrifying skunks caught in the attic/loved ones rushed to ER/savings lost...all true) and I have private dramas of my own ( much loved family home suddenly on the market, abrupt studio move, and  putrifying menopausal face). I think there is a lot to be said for weekend workshop teaching.

 Bit like "IN and OUT BURGER". Good but fast. NO commitment.

SO as a semester teacher I take that commitment on. I prepare for my class in a steadfast way that I don't think many students understand.  Calls ahead to models for set ups, hunts in thrift shops to find interesting/lively set-ups. Color harmonies to think about. Thought-out 'mini' lectures, with art book examples from my personal library, to give. 

This goes on  week after week while planning your professional painting life around it including all sorts of other commitments, travel, sittings, shippings etc.. IT WOULD BE SO EASY TO GET LAZY. And that is where the love/hate comes in.

Having just read a great book on master painter Sergei Bongart (Sergei Bongart By Mary Balcomb) www.sergeibongart.com who painted and taught his whole career, as much concerned with teaching as painting it seems, producing a generation of  highly esteemed artists to this day in his school of thinking, I know this is the level required from a teacher if you are going to do it well for your students.  Not that I am close to Sergei of course.

Those in his school include Sharon Burkett Kaiser, http://www.sburkettkaiser.com/, Ovanes Berberian, www.ovanesberberian.com/ and Dan McCaw to name a few.

I certainly had my share of teachers in the past who just showed up and couldn't care less. I didn't know the difference.  Then I found a teacher, my mentor, Everett Raymond Kinstler, N.A., who not only showed me how it should be done painting-wise, a journey which will take me my life time, but gave me the confidence to teach through his masterful instruction which I will be eternally grateful for as all my students know.

There are very discouraging moments teaching if I am honest which is where the hate bit comes in.

Students are like kids in candy stores. Looking for the next perfect "bon-bon"  art confectionary from the teaching jar to give them the magic sweet pill of how art is done. 

One student of mine went to another class recently without saying goodbye after well over two years with me. I know students always move on, that IS the journey of it. I did it in the past too, with 'class' I hope,  until I found my school of 'art thinking' and knew I was home.  Didn't need that wretched candy jar anymore.

But all those times spent personally teaching this afore-mentioned person, caring that it was a great lesson for said person, personal emails/critiques etc. on non-paid time...and then not so much as a handshake goodbye. STING. 

I lost faith in teaching at that moment. And felt CROSS.

Why bother so much as a teacher? DETACH, I say to myself. CARE LESS. Afterall this is NOT paying the mortgage.

But then you get a nice email out of the blue tonight, which is where the  LOVE comes in.  from a former student who had to work SO hard to pay the $$ to study with me at an art school or two, between jobs, who is moving away from LA, and took the time to say she will never forget what I had taught her.  Wow...that is why I teach. It made my day.

So... let's get to these radishes. NO big concept in mind.  NO big aim to deliver a masterpiece. NO need to please a client. Just the delight of painting a few radishes after seeing how my students handled them.  All of them well. But a bit too much of a reflected light here, too shiny there: these are heavy dense little beasts. Ok...dish the lesson out...now YOU paint them smart ass teacher!

I chose a cool color harmony of red and green, determined to make the leaves look abstract but good. Just like in portraiture, the hands/neck can let an artist down, so too in still life with the leaves. You will be judged by both your hands/neck and your leaves. Take time to study them all.  Hmm..note to self. 

Just like hands, Mr. Kinstler once said there is a whole workshop to be had around necks and to look to Sargent for that. So true. I was lucky enough on the evening of him saying that, to be standing in front of a Sargent or two at The Met. And it was a profound timely lesson. Sargent's necks were incredible. He knew what to leave out. Learn anatomy so you KNOW what to leave out. No bullet holes between the clavicle, I say. We do see a few of those! And I have done one or two myself.

We all know we don't need a radish workshop.

My new class semester starts Wednesday July 8th at LAAFA, combined portrait/still life. For all those of you taking a summer break....shame on you! But paint some radishes or a neck.

I go to France on a painting grant after the next semester ends so will be absent from teaching for while.  I will chew on a baguette and brie while I am missed. Hold the radish.

LICORICE ALLSORTS and M&M's

AS a teeny tiny tot growing up in England we had a candy called LICORICE ALLSORTS, see top picture, and then think M&M's for the tasty American translation.  High- key colored delectable edibles.

I devoured these  treats with gusto as only a kid can and I still hunt them down at ex-pat British foodie stories All that neon-glo color! It EXCITES ME.  Grrrrrr...

But, truth be told, these color candies all tasted exactly the same. Pink interchanged with orange or blue. Basically color overkill with no subtlety of flavor which brings me to my painting journey, especially when I paint from life.

I was thinking about color overkill today. Why exactly did I liked the study I did in my teaching class at LAAFA this morning and why I don't like an awful lot of studies from thenot so recent past?

IN my adult art life one of the biggest problems I have faced (and there have been MANY), is having this urge to paint high key "raw" color.  Give me a hot sugar pink or ice blue and I wanna slap it down. Pure unadulterated art bliss. Just like those childhood candies. 

I see these beautiful tonal painters, Jeremy Lipking, la-di-da, but when that fuchsia pink is in front of me, well, padlock me down. I just don't want to grey it down at all.  Embarrassing in a Lipking workshop...I was there! Paint fuchsia on my art tombstone...may she R.I.P....Rest in Pink, the hotter the better. Quote me on that.

Look to Ovanes Berberian for an artist who I think does high-key color just right! (www.totalartsgallery.com). Not easy.

So I was somewhat pleased today when the model turned up in a Licorice Allsorts colored head wrap. Most of  the delightful Marina,  from my angle, was in light shadow. But in that light shadow, I still saw that sugar plum pink, candy apple green, and Dunkin' Donut blue. Don't you just marvel at blue icing? 

I held back deliberately. Kept it muted. I was so proud of myself.

 I prepare for my class, a combined still life and portrait from the model event.  I take in props, whatever it takes to make the class inspired to paint. This can take quite some prep. time which I don't think students always realize. 

At 7 a.m. today I was  mixing a rainbow of colors on my palette around the color wheel, mixed from only three primaries, (see palette picture), cad. yellow, magenta, cyan blue. Yes, the old printers' color wheel. Still-life was daffodils today. Now that it sheer 'yellow' magnificence and one has to be prepared.

I have a feeling of wonder when I see what just three high key colors can mix. It amazes me EVERY time. All these people who want the perfect answer to color...the perfect tube of paint to buy from the art store to get you straight in to art history?...

Try just experimenting mixing from any three versions of the primaries (red, yellow and blue) and see what can happen. See what you can learn about color from doing it repeatedly over a LONG period of time. See what you can learn about color from changing those three primaries, say, going toward yellow ochre, alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue? Or vermillion, yellow ochre and black (Zorn palette).

Cut back to the candy chase...today I dipped into that Licorice Allsorts-esque  color wheel on my palette sparingly during my one hour of painting around teaching. It was there when I needed it which I surely did. But I kept it subdued.

Restraint, and an understanding of raw color,  used in just small tiny tot bites....ahhh...Now hand over the Licorice Allsorts. Prompto.

I'll get very gray otherwise.