If You Don't Have A Lot of Time to Paint

Taking a little break from the Flamenco paintings. These are some of my recent head studies. Various sizes (7 x 5 to 16 x 12) and various surfaces (linen, paper, vellum).

When I have just a short amount of time, say, an hour or two to work, that's not enough time to really get into a painting. Often it takes that long to set up, get going, and get into the groove. And to have to stop before I'm fully immersed is irritating and frustrating, so it's not really worth it for me to work on anything substantial.

But I do want to paint, or draw, if only to keep my chops greased... so when I don't have a lot of time, I often just do head studies. Many of these are master copies or studies using master works, such as those of Sargent, Sorolla, Velazquez, Fechin, Cornwell, and others. Some are painted using drawings as references, and some are painted or drawn from life (if a model is available).

Painting fast studies like these takes a lot of focus but it is very rewarding to see something tangible in such a short time. I don't show these in galleries nor sell them (they're copies!); they're just for practice, but what I can learn from painting a Sargent head pays in spades when I do do my own work, and not just heads, either.

We all have busy lives and can't always spare a chunk of time to immerse ourselves fully in painting, but that doesn't mean we can't make good use of a fragmented hour here and there. I highly recommend getting into the habit of doing head studies from masterworks – It may take a while to get going, but you'll see great improvements in your skills if you keep it up. The key is to be able to get up and going quickly, whenever there's spare time. Having a "head study station" just for this purpose is enormously helpful.

Remember, half the battle (some say 90%) is just getting started!

The Figure Abstracted: Flamenco No.3

Rising Heat, 16 x 12 inches, oil on panel

This painting is available through Anne Irwin Fine Art

Here's the third painting in the flamenco series. The movement is tighter in this one, except for the bottom part of her dress which flares with a quick twist of her body. 

As you can see, I described her right upper leg as it receives light due to the fact that it is raised, the front plane facing the light source. The plane change from her abdomen to her right upper leg really makes this pose work, I think. It's one thing to create movement from side to side, which can be accomplished with two dimensional shape alone , but to add a third dimension of depth into the S-curve takes a little bit of careful value control. Especially since I don't want to over-render the form. 

The tighter drawing is found on the articulation of of gesture in her right hand, and her left forearm, on the outside edge. Everywhere else is pretty loose and gestural, in terms of anatomy. 

Some of the sharp edges in the dress itself are intentional, while others are accidental, byproducts of pushing paint around. I don't like relying on accidents but you can direct these random notes to an extent. The balance of control and accidents can be thrilling. 

I'm enjoying the process very much, partly because of this unexpected factor. I don't think I'd enjoy it half as much if I were doing these on a deadline, or to meet someone else's expectations. That I'm OK with the possibility of failure makes this series both exciting and liberating. 

The Figure Abstracted; Flamenco No.2

Firedance, 16 x 12 inches, oil on panel

This painting is available through Anne Irwin Fine Art

This is the second painting in the Flamenco series. This motif gives me everything I love about painting; gesture, motion, mood, emotion, atmosphere, abstraction, and the human figure. 

I've always wanted to paint flamenco dancers, but Sargent's El Jaleo is such an enormous presence in my mind (it's only my favorite painting of all time) that I've never been able to do it till now. You see,  I always thought that I would only do it if I can find my own expression in tackling the theme, and not a rehash of El Jaleo.

I believe I'm finding this expression. So far, I'm very happy with the results. Responding to the movement allows me to paint abstractly and expressively, rather than tediously rendering forms literally. Dance is motion, after all, so it makes sense for me to focus on motion as a central concept. 

I am taking more liberties with specific shapes, allowing myself to blur some edges and connecting adjacent shapes. I'm trying very hard to establish the context, and let that help define individual parts. That is to say, I want to paint this so any single area, if cropped, would be completely abstract and non representational - no rendering of specific, identifiable "thing", be it anatomical part or clothing - and only make sense when seen in context. That's really hard to do well, but you know that already.

But because it's difficult, it's compelling. Like a challenge that's always just a little bit more difficult than you can achieve.

Anyway, what gave me the most trouble with this painting is defining her raised leg under the fabric, while at the same time showing the movement of the fabric. And all without rendering. I did define the knee as a form – don't know if you can see it – and that seemed to help. The brush strokes across her raised thigh goes in the direction of the cross contour, helping to show foreshortening and a little form. To the right of the knee is another lit, albeit blurry spot, which would be where her foot is. That it resembles a foot was less important than having a bright spot there to continue the flow of the S-curve. During the process I painted and repainted this area many times until I got something that worked. 

This one, along with the painting in the previous post, and a few others, will be available from Anne Irwin Fine Art in Atlanta. Please contact them directly if you're interested in purchasing this painting.

Figure Abstracted Part III

Rising Heat, 16 x 12 inches, oil on panel

Available from Anne Irwin Fine Art

In talking about abstraction in a recent post, I said that colors, values, edges, etc. can be distorted but the drawing must be intact. I want to make clear that that's just a rule I gave myself, and not a general rule of abstraction - if there are such things. I don't think there are. Basically, in any way you deviate from the literal, you are introducing abstraction. Just how you do it defines your style, your identity. It would be different from how the next guy does it, and that's to be expected, as we're all unique individuals. 

Anyway, I had a question from a reader; just how much do I stick to drawing representationally? don't I ever exaggerate? and isn't that distortion?  

My answer would be, yes, I do exaggerate gesture if I thought it communicated my intent better. But not to the point where it looks disfigured. Keeping my drawings intact gives me the structure I need. A set of rules that guides me, if you will. I think breaking rules only means something if there are rules. Anarchy would be meaningless if there were no laws to begin with, right?

Anyway, I generally try to place all the body parts in the correct places, and proportions believable. And I like to have some sharply defined edges that show a closer attention to anatomy, juxtaposed against areas where it looks pretty expressive and sometimes chaotic. 

Here are a few tightly controlled parts which may look loosely executed, but are in fact carefully done.

The outer edge of the arm shows a curve of the muscle as it travels from the elbow down, then straightens out as the flexor muscles become visible. I usually treat this pronator-flexor combination as curve-straight. 

Also, the there is a value change in the lit area as we travel down, showing the mass as curved not only laterally, but vertically. 

I really pushed the red reflected light in the supinator / extensor side of the forearm as you can see. That's the light bouncing off the red dress. I'm careful to keep the values darker than the lit side of the arm, because it still has to read as the shadow side.

The pose clearly emphasizes the twist of the torso and the angle of the hip. I needed to show the position of the hip in relation to the rest of her torso, so I made sure that her leg, including the pelvic unit, overlapped the torso. You can see the iliac crest and the upper part of the thigh delineated from the form behind it. 

I didn't want to render out the anatomy tightly, but placing a few sharp edges in strategic locations accomplished what I needed to show.

One of the lines that makes a female body look like a female body is that of the lower abdomen, as it tucks in and then straightens out as it goes down to the pelvis. You can see what I mean if you'll look at the drawings in this post. When I'm drawing short poses, I actually draw this line even if it's not visible. (If I'm drawing the front of the figure, that is)  

Anyway, I wanted to make sure I defined this abdominal "tuck" in my painting, so I tried to do that with brushstrokes and very subtle value changes. Of course, she's wearing a dress so it couldn't be too obvious, but that line is important, as my aim was to accentuate the feminine form.

The painting is the first of a new series of flamenco dancers. I'll post more soon, with a similar analysis of the controlled drawing areas.

If you are interested adding this painting to your collection, please contact Anne Irwin Fine Art in Atlanta. 

Figure Abstracted Part II

This recent painting is a good example, I think, of just how little literal information is necessary to suggest visual reality. If you click on the image you can zoom in to see all that I painted. But more importantly, what I didn't.

Placing figures in a landscape or a cityscape is one of the things that prompted me to seek solutions through abstraction in the first place.  Almost everyone struggles, at least in the beginning, of having their figures look like cartoon cut outs, looking like they're stuck on the surface of the painting rather than existing in the environment. Sound familiar? Been there, done that. Hundreds of times.

Had I been a good student in art school and paid attention to my instructors, I might have avoided years of frustration and figured this out much quicker. Then again,  I always learn things the hard way.

But I digress. I just wanted to share a few of the key ideas that I think about when placing figures in an environment.

• Paint the gesture, not the figure. When I execute the brush strokes on the canvas, I'm not thinking leg. I'm thinking how this leg is moving, and I try to paint the movement. So what if one leg is bigger than the other? If it works in the context, it's right. If it doesn't, it's wrong. 

• Connect like-values. This is most easily accomplished in the dark shapes, but you can also do it in the light values too. When you link shapes, you have fewer shapes, which usually means simpler, more impactful image which, I think, is much better than a hundred little shapes fragmenting the picture like instruments in an orchestra all playing their parts but without considering the effect as a whole.

• Integrate edges. Connecting like-values and losing edges is just one way of integrating edges. Sharp and soft edges need to be integrated, too. If you paint the figures like paint-by-numbers, they will look like paint-by-numbers. Don't stay within the lines, but paint one shape into another, then come back from the other side and find the edge. If it doesn't work the first time, try, try again. Sometimes it takes many, many tries to get that one stroke you're looking for.

• It takes very little information to suggest a figure. If the identifiability of the thing that's being painted is what I'm looking for, why would I need to put more information into it, be it in the form of color, detail, or depiction of smaller shapes within the big shape? If I do have a good reason, OK, let's put more in. But first I paint the figure in just one value, then two, then more if I need them. Each time I decide to complicate the shape a little bit more, I step back and ask myself, why?

Maybe these ideas aren't about abstraction, but abstraction often results from them. There's a lesson in there, somewhere, isn't there?

*

The painting is available from Sekula's. Please contact the gallery if you're interested!

Figure Abstacted

Jane at Rest, 18 x 36 inches, oil on linen. Not for sale (yet)

Pushing abstraction. In the past few years I have learned a lot about abstraction from doing cityscapes, and now I am trying to push it further, using the figure as my vehicle. This is one of my latest, and I am very happy with it.

When I set out to do this painting, I wasn't really sure where I wanted to take it. I just wanted to try a different way to start a painting than I normally do, as a casual experiment. 

Usually, I start by drawing on the canvas with a brush, using a thin mix of transparent Oxide Red, Ultramarine, and Gamsol, followed by a simple value block in with the same mix. I then would start laying down opaque colors, thinly at first and thicker as I go.

With this painting I wanted to try laying down thick opaque paint from the get-go, and see if I couldn't get unexpected results by pushing paint around to find my drawing.

One reason I needed thick paint to start with, is the fact that I'm painting on top of an older landscape painting that I no longer cared for. The previously painted surface is very distracting and I can't very well see what I'm doing, much less judge subtle value and color shifts, so I went ahead and obliterated it as quickly as possible. 

It took a while to find my drawing, but eventually it started to resolve itself. Once I had the drawing; that is to say, it looked like a figure with convincing form and gesture, I started deconstructing it by pushing one shape into another, reestablishing the edge, and losing it again.

I tried to do this lose it – find it – lose it thing on every edge, repeatedly. Sometimes ending up with a lost edge, sometimes ending up with a found edge. 

My reference, as per my m.o., was a two minute gesture drawing.

This drawing is actually several years old. During one session, the model took this pose to rest during break, so I quickly sketched her, hoping to record enough information so that I may have her recreate the pose for me at a later date for a painting session. 

I never got around to doing that, but I had this drawing pinned up on my studio wall, and I decided to just use it as a reference - just make up as I go the information that's not in the drawing.

The colors are, obviously, invented. I'm not interested in literal color, nor is it relevant in this case, so that wasn't a problem.

There is a lot of surface manipulation going on which does not conform to a literal depiction of anything, except in few areas. In fact, I tried very hard to put down strokes that didn't describe form, even in the figure itself. If the color and value work for that particular spot, that should be enough. The shapes of the strokes can be independent of the thing that's being painted. 

In this way, I found ways to move away from the conventional rules of representation, and I tried to go a little further with each stroke. I think I can still go further, but I was already out of my comfort zone. If I pushed any further, I wouldn't be able to tell if it worked or not because I don't have enough of a visual vocabulary to judge it. 

But now I do, and the next one will go further still. I hope.

One thing I didn't want to distort or abstract was the drawing. Color can be distorted, so can value, and definitely edges. But the fundamental drawing must be solidly in the representational realm. That's the rule I gave myself, and I like the structural boundary that it gives me. I'm not, after all, trying to paint like Picasso or De Kooning. No interest in that.

Red Obi, 16 x 20 inches, oil on linen

available at the CAC 102nd Annual Gold Medal Exhibition

Here's another. This one I've posted before, but just to let you know that it has been shipped to L.A. to be included in the California Art Club's 102nd Annual Gold Medal Exhibition at the USC Fischer Museum of Art. 

If you are in L.A., don't miss this exhibit. there are some really awesome talents in this show, and if last year's Gold Medal show is any indication, it's going to showcase some really high level art.

The gala is June 1st, but the show will be up for three weeks.

Figure Drawing

I am in the middle of writing an article about figure drawing. I had no idea where to start, so I just began jotting down anything and everything that came to mind about figure drawing and very quickly, it became apparent that this is a subject matter far broader than can be covered in one article. Well, duh, right?

So I decided to narrow the scope down to just short-pose gesture drawing, which, after all, is my forte. But guess what. The scope is still too big! I had to narrow down still, so I thought I'd focus on the technical aspects of it - after all, that is what I get asked about most often. 

Which is just as well, because though I study the Old Masters' drawings, I can never keep the historical facts and names straight, much less articulate figure drawing in historical contexts. Talking about anatomy is not that interesting, either.  Yes, the knowledge of anatomy is essential, but to write about it is really boring. Besides, who wants to read about anatomy in an article? 

So it comes down to technique, and I have further narrowed the scope to economy of line. This is something I stress in my classes and workshops - when working with two to five minute poses, we can't afford to waste our time drawing unnecessary lines. There's just not enough time to render form, either. We have to get the maximum information on paper in very few strokes and make them look good.

How do we do that?

Well, that's the subject of my article. I'm not even close to finishing it, but at least I've narrowed it down to a manageable scope.

Hopefully, I can finish it soon and get it published. If not, you'll still see it here on this blog in some form or another.

If you are interested in drawing or painting the figure, especially the gestural approach, I want to let you know that I will be conducting a five-day intensive workshop in Atlanta, in mid September. The workshop will cover short pose gestures like what I've shown on this post, and how to build on that to quickly define light and shadow. Then we move onto toned paper with sanguine and conte, which transitions logically to limited palette painting. 

We'll cover all that in just five days, so it's very intensive. But I guarantee you'll get a lot out of it. 

For more information please go to the workshop page on my website.

Going Home, 24 x 48 inches, oil on panel  sold

I did several smaller paintings similar to this, exploring abstraction and compositional ideas, and this is the culmination of the series. At 24 x 48, it's a pretty good size, and it gave me a lot of trouble from start to finish. 

I don't know what possessed me to paint on a gessoed panel, but that's what I did. I struggled with the brushwork, but I think in the end I learned a lot about working on a hard surface. Mainly, that I don't like it. But I have to admit, it gave me a lot of abstract marks that I would never have gotten (on purpose, anyway) on linen, which is the surface that I use most often.

The process I use for large cityscapes with a lot of abstraction might be described as tight control -> chaos -> tight control. I started out by drawing all the elements (a lot more than you actually see in the final painting. All the cars in the distance were delineated, for example) in pencil using a grid, a pencil, and three reference photos. I don't have a wide angle lens on my DSLR, so I usually just stitch a few together for a wide angle composition like this.

Then as I usually do with any painting, I went in with dark transparent mix of ultramarine, transparent oxide red, and Gamsol and blocked in the big value patterns in two or three values, thinking at this stage about where I can lose edges and simplify.

I then proceeded to do a more complete grisaille by breaking up the big value patterns into smaller shapes and in-between values. Doing it this way (as opposed to going in with many values from the get-go) ensures that the big design is always maintained. It prevents fragmenting the design. (But only if you're doing it conscientiously).

So far, I'm still in control. Then I started going over the entire painting with opaque colors, making sure that every color is a variation of the main theme color, which in this case is an earthy yellow/orange. In a tonal painting like this, the actual local color is much less relevant than harmony.

Now comes the chaos part. I used all kinds of tools, from palette knives, to plastic scrapers, sandpaper, paper towel, brushes, and materials like Liquin and Gamsol, to slowly integrate the shapes. Pushing one shape into another, reestablishing the edge, and losing it again, sometimes working the same edge over and over.

I also did several layers of wet over dry, in the form of scumbling, glazing, staining, etc. The more I worked the surface, the more comfortable I felt about losing a critical edge, and I took more risks. At one point, the entire painting was covered in black glaze, which I then wiped/washed off.

I built up the surface this way, and when I felt I couldn't go any further, I started to tighten up again, in strategic areas, trying not to lose all the beautiful abstract marks.

When I thought I was finished, I just set it aside. After a few days it would dry, and I would see something I wanted to change. I'd work on it for a few minutes or hours, and set it aside. Then after a few more days, I'd see something else, and I repeat. This last part went on for a couple of months. Each time, I would make a small change, and let dry a few days.

Finally, I no longer saw anything and I was very happy with the painting. It was gritty, moody, simple and complex at the same time, and I was able to further my limits of abstraction from where I had been before I did this painting. That was the best part for me.

The painting left the studio soon after, and it wasn't surprising that it sold before long. To be honest, this was one I would like to have kept for myself. I kind of miss it!

Just How Popular is Plein Air Painting?

Here I am conducting a plein air demo during my workshop this past weekend.

I have noticed that in recent years, plein air painting has become very popular, and have indeed grown into an industry of sorts. But I did not realize just how popular, until this weekend when I showed up in Locke to do my workshop and was surprised to learn that two of the students who had signed up didn't quite fit the typical demographic.

Nonetheless, they were very attentive and I think they enjoyed the demo. They had to leave early because they forgot to bring their gear. Later I saw them hanging out in front of Al the Wops, the town bar looking like they owned the place. I think may be they did.

I was going to write about about my workshop at some length, but after three days I am exhausted.

Thanks Jim, for taking the photo!

One Spot Left!

I have a three-day workshop coming up next weekend (May 3 - 5), and one spot just opened up!

Let me tell you a little bit about this workshop. It's not one of your typical plein air workshops in that of the three days, we only spend the first day on location. The following two days are spent indoors working up a larger studio painting from the field sketches and photo references.

Our locations are historic Sacramento Delta towns of Locke and Walnut Grove. If you've ever visited these towns, you know they are very special. Locke is an old Chinese settlement founded in 1915(?) and it is literally a one block town. It stands today pretty much unchanged in the last hundred years. The wooden buildings are rickety and leaning over, the main street narrow, and in the middle of it is a historic dive bar called Al the Wops, a favorite destination for many who are in the know. The grilled peanut butter sandwich is a must with a cold beer.

But I digress. A mile down the river from Locke (these are river towns) is Walnut Grove, a slightly larger, but equally interesting town settled by Japanese and Chinese immigrants. The buildings here are old as well, though not as rickety as those in Locke. Though I can't articulate it very well verbally, these Delta towns are so full of character that a painter may have trouble deciding on which interesting view to paint.

Anyway, I'll be doing a demo on site, and we'll collect references in the forms of photographs, drawings, and plein air oil sketches. We'll talk about different functions of these mediums, and do our paintings with a slightly different purpose in mind rather than trying to finish a painting on site, in one shot.

The second and the third day will be spent in studio at the School of Light and Color in Fair Oaks, and I will be talking and demo-ing practical methods of creating a larger studio painting from the visual information collected on location.

Being in the studio affords us the time and the mental distance necessary to really think about composition, surface manipulation, and other nitty gritty stuff which, unless you're a very experienced painter, rarely happens when painting en plein air.

We'll work on developing the painting slowly, and I'll be sharing relevant (and some irrelevant) studio practices which you don't usually get to see in a plein air workshop or in a class situation. I know I don't really get to teach this stuff in my regular classes, so I'm looking forward to working with the students to dig deeper into the process of creating a good studio painting!

As I mentioned at the top, the workshop is fast coming up (next weekend!) and I only have one spot, so if you would like to join us in this painting workshop, don't wait! You can call Debbie at the School of Light and Color to sign up.


Historic Delta Towns: Plein Air Sketches to Studio Finishes
May 3 - 5, 2013
$395
To sign up, call Debbie (916) 966-7517


Oh by the way, my newly updated 80-page, full color, fully illustrated book, En Plein Air: Painting Wisdom I've Collected the Hard Way (So You Don't Have To) is included with the workshop.

Sorry, this book is NOT available for sale.


The image I'm posting is Hotel Del Rio, which is in Isleton, another one of the gritty Delta Towns along the Sacramento River. It looks like something straight out of a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler novel. With a name like Del Rio, you just know it's got some stories to tell.