Getting Ready

Yesterday I delivered all my paintings to the gallery. Whew~ There's so much to do to get ready for a show beyond the painting. Starting with making sure all the pieces are titled, signed, and varnished - I'm not using Dammar for these. Just Liquin to even out the sheen.

Then I needed to make sure I had photographed them all. I usually take photos as I finish the paintings so I can share them on my blog, but if I have time before the deadline, I often end up doing additional work on the paintings so more often than not I have to reshoot. I don't have a professional set up so it's a big job. and tricky too.

The photos get uploaded into my computer, and each pic is worked on in Photoshop so that the colors are as close as possible to the original. I don't enhance the image, and neither should you. Nothing beyond trying to get an accurate representation of the work. You're just cheating yourself if you start making your digital images better than the original - that's just uncool and it'll come back and bite you in the butt at some point.

Database. The photos need to be tagged with title, size, price, and organized into folders (or however you do it) so I know which gallery it's going to, sold status, etc. I just use iPhoto for this. It's probably not the best tool but I haven't found anything better. Spreadsheets and software like Bento didn't do it for me.

After the photos are color corrected and information entered, I make an index of the paintings to be printed out and given to the gallery. Without it, we would be going over each painting at the gallery, manually recording title, size, medium and price. Needless to say, having this information beforehand is very convenient. I do this every time I deliver or ship paintings to a gallery and not just for big shows. ...or I should. Half the time I forget to do this and have to do it later - if I didn't forget the previous step of recording all the info into the database, it's easy enough but sometimes I forget that too, and I'm on the phone going, "...and what's the size of the red one with the tree in the middle?" Slowly though, I'm getting wit da program.

I use Pages, a design software by Apple, to do this - any word processing software will do the job but I like the fact that it and iPhoto are integrated seamlessly, so I can import images directly from the database.

Then there's framing. This time, I had them all made by a framer which cost me $$ but boy do they look fabulous. A great frame won't make a bad painting look good, (it has the opposite effect) but it can really give a good painting its due presence. A huge difference. And it goes without saying that an inappropriate frame can kill a perfectly good painting. I believe it is well worth the money and time to find the right framing.

I had my framer build them all, but I still had to fit them and wire them. I chose to do that part myself to save a few bucks. Doing that for 25 paintings can take a while.

Anonymous, 16 x 20, oil on linen

Years ago when I was doing big architectural paintings, I made all the floater frames from scratch, which took forever. I'm glad I'm not doing that anymore...

Packing up a whole bunch of framed paintings can be a pain in the neck, too. If I'm using Omega frames, it's fairly easy because they each come in a nice convenient box. These don't have boxes, but my framer gave me cardboard corners for them, and I can stack up the same sized paintings and secure them together with the stretch wrap thingy (the best thing since sliced bread!). Still, I have several different sizes and formats so I had to improvise with cardboard sliders, boxes, bubble wrap and foam wrap. I was surprised I could fit them all in my 4Runner. I thought may be I'd have to rent a cargo van, which I've done in the past. I don't like driving a big cargo van.

And then the paintings are delivered. At least San Francisco is within driving distance. It's a lot easier than crating big paintings to ship across country!

I think the show is going to be a really good one. I'm relieved that the hard part is over and now I only need to show up!!

There's actually more to preparing for a show. I didn't talk about marketing. I may get to that topic in another post. Suffice to say, it's no easy task.

The painting (titled Anonymous, but I call it Where's Waldo?) above is in the show, and I don't think I've shown it on the blog before. The Sebastiani Theatre is in the Sonoma Town Square, and a nice little theater it is, too. This is an example of a painting with multiple points of interest, but carefully orchestrated so that the focus is clear.

Manipulating value contrasts, and the strong diagonal line makes the figure in the white shirt the star, while all the other figures are subordinated either through lesser value contrasts, edge work, gesture (gazes looking down or away from the viewer) , or obscured by shadow. The overall effect is that of a crowded sidewalk (there are fifteen figures in all) but we the viewer know which figure is the main character in this story. The greens and blues in the signage have been desaturated considerably so as not to compete with the figure, too.


Ok, this post got a little long winded. If you've read this far, thanks!

The Luxembourg Gardens

The Quiet Side, 20 x 20 inches, oil on linen

Another Paris painting. The Luxembourg Gardens have been painted by many, many artists. Sargent's twilight painting comes to mind.

This view is not the celebrated "pond side", where children push sailboats with sticks. I've painted a few of those in the past unsuccessfully. This is the back side, where there are relatively few visitors. I just happened to enter the grounds from the backside because I didn't know where I was, and saw the diagonal cast shadows on the building and thought, "hey! there's a painting!" And here it is.

Done!

Ascending, 40 x 30 inches, oil on linen

Done with Notre Dame! And done with all the paintings for the City show! Almost done with framing! Whew, what a lot of work.

I have a total of twenty five paintings. I think I did 30+, and rejected several. My original goal was to do 45 and select 25 from them, so I didn't quite do that many but I'm satisfied. In the last seven years or so I've only done a few city paintings so this was like a whole new thing for me, (even though prior to that I painted cityscapes exclusively) and it took some learning and relearning to get up to speed. Along the way much evoloved as new and old ideas tried to assert themselves and I had a pretty tough time maintaining consistency. The earlier ones were more tonal and traditional looking, and the middle bunch saw some higher keyed, natural light depictions, followed by some soft brush /sharp edge stuff, and then finally they started to meld together.

It's fascinating to retrace my footsteps and see the evolution. I can't wait to see the paintings installed and properly lit at the gallery!

Waterways

A Summer Remembered, 12 x 24 inches, oil on linen

This is the last of the four paintings I am exhibiting in the group show, Waterways at Knowlton Gallery in Lodi, Ca. The theme is the Sacramento Delta, and I 'm showing alongside some kick-ass Northern California painters. I'm delivering the four paintings to the gallery this afternoon, and I hope there'll be some works already there from the other artists that I can drool over. (No, not drool on)

The artists' reception is a week from today, on October 1st, from 6 - 8:30pm. Come on by and see some beautiful interpretations of the region by some of the region's best painters~ And drink wine with me :-)

Crash and Burn

Before I get into tonight's topic, I'd like to announce the winning title for the Coed Lodge painting. Jesus Estevez's Red Light beat out Jimmy C's Vacancy by just one vote, and so is declared the winner! Thank you Jesus, and thank you everyone who gave me ideas for the title and everyone who voted! There were some excellent suggestions. I can only use one title, but will keep in mind the others for future paintings.


Now, let's talk about this painting. I have been busily painting for my upcoming shows, and surprisingly, haven't had any disasters in the last month or so. I must have let down guard because this one snuck up on me. It's a 20 x 16 painting of the famous Paris coffee shop, Cafe de Flore where years ago, I discovered the guilty pleasures of a real Parisienne hot chocolate. If you haven't had hot chocolate the way the French do it, you are missing out. Remember a few years ago Starbucks tried it with their Chantico ? Well, that pales in comparison to the rich, sinful experience of the chocolate you get in Paris.


But enough about that. I worked on this painting for about two days, I think, and something was bothering me about it, and I kept fixing this and fixing that but I couldn't seem to make it work. At last, I took a step back and diagnosed the problem, and had to admit that it was poorly designed. No amount of redrawing the various elements or slathering on more paint will fix a bad design.


The basic problem is that it has too many interesting things competing for attention, leaving me with no clear focal point and no clear hierarchy of importance. There is the bicycle, the pedestrian, the waiter, the guy sitting to the left of the waiter, the two umbrellas, an equally bright awning... You see, it suffers from Too Much Of A Good Thing Syndrome.

It also lacks sufficiently large passive area, and the stuff above the awning does nothing for the image. It was simply in my reference photo, and I had a 16 x 20 canvas to fill. A Bad reason to include anything.


So I decided to see if I can drastically alter the composition by subordinating many of the loud elements by significantly lowering their values and obscuring them itno shadow in some cases.

First, I darkened the far umbrella. I don't need two loud umbrellas. One would make the point.

Then I threw the foreground into shadow. The bicycle is an interesting silhouette, but I don't need to define the entire bicycle for the viewer to know that it's a bicycle. I can simplify it a lot by silhouetting only a part of it, and making a big simple dark shape with the rest.

Now, I am only experimenting with big value changes. At this point, I just want to see how the design is altered by manipulating major values. I'm not concerned about color or edges. All I'm doing is mixing a transparent glaze and crudely slapping it over certain areas.

And next, I lowered value of the pedestrian guy. He could have been the star of the painting, but he was too close to the edge so I decided to make him into supporting cast.

I also glazed the awning and everything above it.

It looked better, but It didn't change the fact that all that stuff at the top had nothing to do with my story, so I did what any sensible illustrator would do.

I cropped it. Still kind of hodge podge, but I'm starting to see potential. If I REALLY liked it, and if the surface weren't already so built up, I would then work back into it with appropriate colors using the new value structure. But I don't REALLY like it, so this will never see the light of day beyond this blog. This was a good exercise on a failed painting, though, so I'm not lamenting my loss or anything.

It comes back to the same old lesson. Ya gotta do your thumbnails and plan your composition carefully before you start painting. I know, I know, sometimes you're so eager to get painting you skip the prep part, thinking this pretty nice photo is a good enough sketch. Maybe so, but whenever I get too lazy to properly prepare a composition, I always crash and burn.

Take A Break. And Work.

Secret Spot, 12 x 24 inches, oil on linen

Concurrently with my solo show at Thomas Reynolds Gallery, I'm participating in a group show at Knowlton Gallery in Lodi. This show is entitled Waterways, and features landscapes from the Sacramento Delta region. I'll have four pieces for this show. You may have seen one of them, Delta Dusk in American Artist Magazine this month, or the American Art Collector Magazine, which ran my painting as a spread and even has me quoting something semi intelligible.

It's going to be an awesome show~ I mean just look at this line up; Kim Lordier, Ray Roberts, Kathleen Dunphy, Dennis Ziemienski, Deladier Almeida, Gil Dellinger, Clark Mitchell, Randall Sexton, Ann McMillan, Lucinda Kasser, Ning Hou, Charles Waldman, Chella, and... Me.

A Formidable bunch to be showing with. Kinda intimidating, no?

Anyway, I'm really looking forward what the others will come up with. Mine are, as you might expect, a series of moody tonalist pieces which are somewhat influenced by Levitan and Twachtman. This stuff is right up my alley, though, so I had a good time painting them.

Quiet Waters, 12 x 16 inches, oil on linen

You may remember this piece from an earlier post on atmospheric perspective. I've since added the tall grasses on the right side to break up the horizontal strips a little bit.

If you'd like to see these paintings in person, come to the opening on October 1! The reception is scheduled from 6 to 8:30pm. Hope to see you there~

Color Mixing

So we take a short break from the relentless hammering and I'll talk just a little bit about my palette and color mixing, since I promised Holly I would.

This is my palette. It's a 16 x 20 glass surface, and I have 11 tube colors on it. It's an expanded primaries palette - basically, it has a warm, a cool, and a low chroma color for each of the three primaries. (Except the yellows, of which I have four. But I'll explain that in a minute)

Clockwise from bottom left; Ultramarine, Prussian, Ivory Black, Titanium White, Cad Lemon, Cad Yellow Deep, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Permanent Red, Alizarin, and Transparent Oxide Red.

Starting with the blues. It's arguable which is warmer or cooler ; Ultramarine or Prussian. I just think of them as reddish blue and greenish blue. The black is my low-chroma blue. I don't think of it as black, and that's key.

My yellows; If I'm painting en plein air, I typically carry only Cad Lemon, and mix a warm yellow by adding a little bit of Transparent Oxide Red to it. But for this painting, I'm using some tube yellows to speed things up. Cad Lemon is my cool yellow, Cad Yellow Deep is my warm, Yellow ochre is my low chroma, and Raw Sienna is my warm low value. The sienna is easily mixed but again, it's just a time saver.

My reds; Permanent Red is my warm, Alizarin is my cool, and Transparent Oxide Red is my low chroma. I haven't touched Alizarin at all for this painting, but I like to have it out so I can compare.

Now talking about how to mix colors could take up volumes and I'm not prepared to do that, but I'd like to share with you a couple of strategies which will help you if you are having trouble with color harmonies. We'll have to get into theories at some other time.

First, mix closely related colors next to each other. For example, light and shadow colors of a shared surface. Color is contextual so if you mix the light side and the shadow side away from each other, you can't really compare the two. You may easily end up with two isolated colors without any relationship to tie them together. Here, 1 and 2 are closely related, and 3and 4 are closely related. Now, separating light and shadow values clearly is absolutely essential to getting a consistent feel of light and shadow in a painting, BUT! they need to be related, so I like to mixing both colors from the same puddle. Or one from the other. This way you are guaranteed a common denominator. Just make sure the values are sufficiently apart, and be mindful of temperatures; warm light / cool shadows, etc.

Along similar lines of thinking, mixing each new color or color variation from something you've already mixed is a good way to maintain harmony. As you can see by following the arrows, every time I needed a new color, I started with something else.

Here's another path. These are examples of colors that are pretty similar, but they need not be limited to close colors. In fact, you can mixing the color of the wall (pale yellow) by starting with the blue of the sky and pushing it toward pale yellow. That's pretty much how I get the colors I get on my paintings.

OK, the break is over. Back to work! I'm working on the upper portion of the painting today; mainly, layering more thick paint on it and pushing it around. The roof is getting pretty thick.

It's like frosting!

See the subtle value changes as the form turns?

Some reflected light under the roof - just hints. Not rendered.

And this is where we are now. I am going to set it aside for a day or two and let it dry completely before doing more work on it. I need some mental distance! I just hope that I remembered to mix Liquin in every color... or I'll have to hang this painting wet and unfinished!

Wait! I'm Not Done!

Are you getting as burnt out on seeing this painting as I am? It's been pretty intense for me working on this day after day, and going much faster than I normally would. If I let my guard down, the strokes get sloppy and I have to spend more time fixing them. I can only go eight or nine hours a day at most at this pace. Not like art school days~

But now we are finally getting down to the fun part, where I can play with some thicker strokes and orchestrate the entire painting, rather than tediously drawing and redrawing the architecture. I go back and forth between light and shadow, trying to get an interesting interaction between two adjoining shapes. Each and every edge is revisited and scrutinized, and I look for opportunities to break rules without sacrificing believability.

And I'm getting more into the details too. Here I'm adding back the figures at the bottom. They'll be in lurking in the shadows so they're just bit players, but they help to give us a sense of the sheer scale of this thing. The figures also give this painting a little bit of a traditional feel. A lot of the paint treatment I have in this painting is more modern but it's not quite rock 'n roll.

First, I draw in the rough silhouettes with a dark color. I'm not looking for specific poses, but I do want to make sure they don't have gestures which might suggest a specific narrative. I want them to be just "there", and look like they belong there, but not demand any attention.

Added some color on top. Simple shapes defining parts with different colors/values.

Didn't like it. Scrape. You can see I did some shaping from the outside, too.

Felt I had offered too much information. Simplify, simplify. Considering the roles that these figures play in my painting, does adding different colors to their clothing enhance the overall visual experience? Are they even necessary? I think, in this case, the simpler the better.

And let them be in the painting. Not merely on canvas. How to do that? integrate the edges.

Here's a close up of one of the towers. What I want to show you is that although many parts of this view are in the sunlight, they're not all the same value. In the tower itself, the value becomes lighter as we go up higher. and saturation happens at a lower value.

The two flying buttresses in the shadow are of different values also. The closer one is darker. The farther one is lighter due to atmospheric perspective, but also affected by the color of the roof. Now here's an advanced concept; Notice the shadow side of the far buttress is facing toward us and is not receiving any reflected light from the roof. But I let it be affected by the roof color (a lot, in fact. Almost the same color!) because the shapes are adjacent to one another. It's not based on "rules of realism" but it works toward creating unity and a more believable atmospheric effect.

And this is what it looks like now. What's next? More orchestration.

Notre Dame WIP - Day 5

Moving Forward! I didn't get a chance to post last night because I had too much wine. I mean I was exhausted from working on this painting.

It's getting much harder to tell from the photos the incremental changes I've made. Even I can't tell what I did in some of these shots, so I have to edit down to fewer photos to show.

The first thing I did here, is to knock back the values in the lower part of the painting. One major concern of pulling off a complex architectural painting like this is that, whereas all the intricate shapes create fascinating patterns of light and shadow, it also causes the composition to become all broken up into little fragments, lacking unity. Also, because there's interesting mini-compositions everywhere, it's easy to get seduced into emphasizing every little beautiful thing in this magnificent architecture. As with anything, the consequence of emphasize everything, is that nothing stands out.

What we need is a hierarchy of importance. And rather than going about it by popping certain areas, I like to quiet down the supporting areas instead. So I did a bit of quick glazing the bottom parts of the cathedral with a mix of liquin, black, and brown. Just transparently brushing it over the already-dry areas to knock some lights back into the shadow.

I'm only working the middle to lower half of the painting because the top half is still wet and I can't glaze over wet paint.

You can see the glazing brushstrokes here. There's all kinds of ways to apply glazing. Some times it's it's done with smooth or invisible brushstrokes, other times the entire painting is completely covered with generous amounts of the glaze and wiped off with a rag. I am merely brushing it on thinly with a big soft brush. Most of the glazed areas will be repainted with opaque pigments anyway, so I don't really care about smooth glazes.

Glazing in the shadows of the middle area. My brush touched some of the wet paint and it got a little mushy. This is what happens when I have to do a big painting in ten days - I normally like to take a few months to do something like this, working on a little bit at a time and setting it aside for days or weeks while I do something else. But this time, I've got a show to do!

Working back into the glazed areas with opaque pigments. Essentially repainting with the newly re-defined values. Where I went too dark, I am now pulling back out again with lighter values.

...such as the sunlight hitting the glass windows. I need to make a decision whether to show the windows with the sun light defining the intricate detail, or push it back into the shadow for mood and simplicity. The only way to really see which I like better, I have to try both.

Here I've continued the weak sunlight down to the short wall at the bottom and the ground plane. I'm leaning toward pushing the windows into shadow, so I will go back to glazing them back into darkness once the surface is dry. At the same time, I'll glaze down the wall and the ground plane, so with that in mind, I painted them a little lighter than what I'll end up with.

The little dot is my vanishing point. See all the lines on the ground plane converge to that single point? If you were to pull a vertical line up from this point, you will notice that many of the major convergence points (not necessarily vanishing points) will fall on it. Like the upper flying buttresses, the seams on the roof all converge to points on that same line.

Checking to see how it looks in the frame. I often like to do this long before it's finished. The clean, finished trim provided by the frame helps to see whether I need to go tighter with the painting, or whether the looseness – which sometimes look too loose and unfinished without the frame – looks intentional and appropriate.

Next step; more glazing if the paint is dry. Something else if not.

Notre Dame WIP - Day 4

I hope I'm not boring you with this incremental progress report! Now that all the big stuff is drawn in, the progress from here on won't be so dramatic. It may even be difficult to tell what I did from shot to shot, so I'll be sharing more detail shots from this point.

I started this morning by straightening out some of my vertical lines which were, despite my best efforts, out of whack. Even though I use a perfectly accurate grid to begin with, inevitably my verticals starts leaning over. I couldn't see it when I was facing the canvas, but it's clear as bell on the small photo onscreen. I should have expected it because this ALWAYS happens.

Anyway, fixing it is just a matter of straightening the lines out, so it's not a big deal at this stage because I haven't finalized anything yet. Everything is painted thinly, so it's fairly easy.

You can see my pencil lines in this shot. The surface is not dry, so laying the T-square right on top of it does mess up what I already painted, but as I mentioned above, I haven't committed to anything so it's OK.

No frills or tricks. It is what it is. My brushwork is pretty raw.

I've had to move quite a few verticals. Took me all morning, but I think I've got it now.

I had to redraw this part because moving the verticals changed everything. That's one of the drawbacks of working without a tight initial drawing. On the other hand, I do end up with a much free-er look, if I manage to have some faith in my brush.

Here is a sequence in which I work out the ornamental railing. Jeremy, this kind of relates to what you were asking, although these aren't circles, I approach these the same way.
Here I've just painted the top and the bottom of the railing, with nothing in between.

I've sectioned off the space that the clover things are going to occupy. On either side of the triangle, there will be two full clovers flanked by half clovers. The sections I drew are where the clovers touch one another.

Like so. I'm just using a cool grey color, and a small brush. Oh and I'm mixing liquin into my colors. To all colors, actually, not just this specific area.

Then, using a dark color, I work the negative space to eliminate unwanted marks, and shape the clovers. I keep saying "clovers" because I don't know what they're called. But you know what I mean, right? Good.

Then on top of what I just painted, I paint the sunlit areas with a lighter, warmer color. And that's all there is to it. Fairly straightforward, no?

This is what it looks like now, at the end of Day 4. Toward the top of the painting, I've started laying on some thicker paint. More often than not, I scrape it off and repeat because I don't like the color I put down, or simply to get an edge on a shape.

The roof. Some of the lines are done with a knife's edge, the others are done with a brush. This is still not the final layer.

The reflected light on the buttress to the left was violet before, but as I warmed up the sunlight, the violet became a little too cute so I had to tame it down. Besides, even with brilliant blue skies affecting the shadow side, light bouncing off of a nearby object (in this case, the warm yellow light on the wall) can easily dominate the apparent hue of a shadow. Notice the shadow underneath the arch is much darker and isn't affected (much) by neither the blue sky nor the yellow sunlight.

The sunlit buttress. I had a bit of a difficulty deciding just what sort of pale yellow I wanted, so I scraped and repainted a few times. Still not happy with it.

The roof is gray. The cast shadows on the roof becomes very blue because it faces the sky. Because the roof doesn't have a strong local color, the blue light from the sky makes these cast shadows dramatically blue. If the sky were overcast, or the roof itself had a strong color, or if the surface did not face the sky, we would have very different colored shadows.

I'll keep some of the scrape marks, and paint over others. I like to see evidence of the process in paintings like these. It's like a visual record of a struggle. Like footsteps of a journey. Of course, whatever marks I leave visible on the canvas has to work for the painting as a whole. Otherwise, it just looks like a cheap gimmick. We don't want that.

Tomorrow I continue with thicker paint (and scraping and painting and scraping and painting) and hopefully resolve all the shadow colors and values. If I can remember, I'll do another mini-sequence of something.