Quixote Oak

Quixote Oak, 16 x 12 inches, oil on linen

Here's the painting I did last Saturday at Quixote, all cleaned up (removed bugs and adjusted a few edges) and framed.

I didn't mention it in the earlier post but one of the reasons I chose this view was because I knew there wouldn't be drastic changes in light and color during the time I worked on it. As you know, painting en plein air sometimes feels like a race against the Sun, trying to get everything down before the light changes.

I knew that I was only working on my painting a little bit at a time in between my rounds of everyone's easels, so I needed a view that didn't change much. An open shade provides such a view, and while the dappled light patterns changed, that wasn't a concern because that stuff is not copied literally anyway. Dappled light is one of those things you can design with much freedom, a perfect tool for creating interesting patterns, or moving the eye around, or describing the terrain, or any number of things.

The way I use color is somewhat restrained compared to many (ok, most) of my friends and colleagues. I like a lot of grays and muted tones, for the most part. Often I just have a small area of more saturated notes (the background green, in this case) but even that isn't fully saturated.

Because of my tendency to be more tonal, I don't have huge complementary color juxtapositions between light and shadow side of a common surface. But I do sneak in a little bit of it, especially if I'm painting outside.

For example, in this painting, the dappled light / shadow pattern on the ground is yellow / violet. Whereas some artists push these complementary colors, mine are very close to gray, thus close to each other. They are variations of the same gray. By doing it this way, I can keep the light and the shadow to feel like they are occurring on the same surface, and avoid them looking like two different objects.

If you keep your light and shadow colors closely related, like in this painting, or in a more monochromatic tonalist painting, you can introduce a lot of value jump between the light and shadow and still make them feel like they're the same surface. But if you have a lot of color contrast between light and shadow, you typically need to keep the values closer (and higher keyed) to make them look believable. Usually. Not always.

So the tip of the day, is; The more color contrast, the less value contrast. And vice versa. Or to put it another way; You can have a lot of color contrast or a lot of value contrast between your light and shadow, but not both.

Usually. Not Always.

MSU

Waiting Too Long, 16 x 16 inches, oil on linen

Goddammmit! I just typed up a long post and before I could save or post it, deleted it by accident! What a drag. Here we go again. but this'll be the short version. I haven't got it in me to type up a long thing again.

This painting was done yesterday, at a figure session. The model was sitting on the stand, in the classroom context, and I just made up the environment as I painted. This is what I call MSU; Making Stuff Up, and it's a really fun way to paint. Obviously, the classroom situation is limited in visual interest, so a typical figure painting in a open session type set up looks like a study, no more, no less. I get tired of doing that though, and I try to imagine the figure in an environment, so that I have some kind of believable context.

I'm not looking to do paintings that I can show and sell, but I do come away with something more interesting to look at. But more than that. The great joy in MSU comes from watching a story develop as you paint the picture. It's like reading a book and you want to turn the pages faster because you want to know what's going to happen. I am the creator of the story, but I have no idea what that story is. It can be very exciting~

As the story develops, so too, does the character of the figure in the picture. I start tweaking the expression, or the gesture, what she's wearing, and the general attitude of the figure starts to change, to mesh better with my story. It is a fascinating process. Essentially, every thing you make up is an exercise in painting from memory, and as Carlson and others point out, painting from memory should be a regular part of every artist's regimen. It really helps with your designing skills even when you are painting from observation.

Kinda Fechinesque, no? Probably because I saw that original Fechin drawing last weekend at Quixote winery, Fechin's been on my mind a lot lately. I'm not consciously trying to emulate his style, but I like the loose quality of this painting.

Detail shot of the background. This looks like a complete painting by itself, doesn't it? Sometimes when I crop an existing painting, I discover another composition which surprises me. These found compositions are often developed into finished paintings. They're like Easter eggs! A lot of the times, the found comps are better than the originals. And when I stumble onto a good one, it's like finding the Golden Egg!

Napa Workshop 2010 - Day 3

Day 3. We spent the day painting at Domaine Chandon. The grounds of this winery has some really neat features including a nice pond with boulders and willows surrounding it. Calla lilies and Irises dot the perimeter of the water, which gave me an idea to do a demo on painting water and reflections.

There really is no secret trick to painting reflections. If you just paint what you see, you end up with a good depiction of reflections. I did talk about what to watch out for, and painted this view to make my point. Many of the students tackled reflections in their paintings, and found that it required a subtler value control than expected. Distinguishing value from saturation proved to be a challenge to some, while remembering that sharp and soft edges have purpose gave trouble to others.

But this stuff is not limited to reflections, it's just that painting reflections forces you to pay closer attention to some of these things because if you don't, it doesn't quite work.

We got there around 8:30, and tourists were already arriving. Can you believe it? Wine tasting at 8:30 in the morning? Domaine Chandon houses a high-end restaurant, so perhaps these people were there for Sunday brunch. Fortunately, we were away from the tour path and it didn't really get crowded till much later, so we spent the pleasant morning painting around the pond.

After lunch, we moved over to the back side of the winery where shady oaks dot the hill and we had a nice view of Yountville and surrounding areas from the hilltop.

Better yet, Julia, our waitress from the restaurant showed up as promised, and we promptly set up a figure session. There was a big boulder under a gnarly tree and I thought of posing her in something reminiscent of a Deal Cornwell illustration, but of course she had to hold the pose for 25 minutes at a time so we did something easy.

Still, it was such a treat to actually have a model that those who decided to paint her (most of the students) really got into it. The last day of a three-day workshop tends to get a little low on energy typically, but with a beautiful model to paint, I think the creative juices kept flowing.

I was going around helping people so I didn't get to paint her myself, which was the only regrettable thing. I was so itching to paint! Julia had a really striking Italian(?) look to her, and the natural ease in her demeanor showed through even when she wasn't doing anything. I'll have to hire her at some point and do some paintings on my own time.

We pretty much took over the back parking lot. Some had to stand in the sun but it wasn't hot, thankfully.

Not everyone painted the model. Just down the hill, Donna, Mark, and Gail painted the hill side. This view had a neat little combination of a boulder in the foreground, dirt road, grassy hills, distant hills and mountains (atmosphere!) and a tree in the midground just begging to be the focal point. Mixing different greens was the main challenge here, but it was a good challenge.


All in all, it was a really great workshop. Location, people, and weather make the workshop, and I got all three this time. Lucky me! I hope everyone enjoyed themselves as much as I have and learned a thing or two in the three days we had together. I can't tell you how great the wine tasted after all was done.

I'm really looking forward to next year!! I hope you can join us. If you're interested in participating in next year's Napa workshop, or in any other future workshops, please make sure you're on my mailing list. (link in the sidebar) The spots fill up pretty quickly - this one filled up in three hours! By the time I put it up on my website, it's usually filled up.

What's next? I have a panel discussion with Kevin Courter and Alfred Harrison on Thursday, April 29th at Holton Studio, on the subject of California landscape painting tradition. Should be interesting!

Napa Workshop 2010 - Day 2

Day 2. Another gorgeous day! When I arrived back at Quixote, some artists were already there, painting. Actually a few of them were nearly finished with their first one. Gotta love that enthusiasm!!

I set up my easel as well. Because I painted a long view for my demo the previous day, I decided to do more of a close up thing on this day. A big oak tree provided a perfect subject matter and a shady spot to stand, too.

Once everybody picked his or her spot and started painting, I walked from easel to easel, helping students with whatever they were struggling with. I would make the rounds, stopping at my oak tree painting each time and working on it for 10 minutes at a time. So my painting was not a focused effort but I like it anyway. The dappled light and the chunky solidity of the trunks were what I was interested in, and I got both in my picture pretty well, so I was happy with my efforts.

Alan concentrating on his stroke.

Here's Don, doing his thing. It was great to have him join us and give us a show of an approach to painting which was different from mine. The students who sign up for my workshops do so to learn something of how I do it, obviously, but I never require people to do it my way. It's not about a particular technique or God forbid, a formula. The fundamentals and principles don't change with technique, and it is extremely helpful to see them applied in a different way. I don't know how many students picked up on that but I thought it was a huge bonus to be able to see that idea in action. Thanks Don!

And guess on whose wall Don's painting hangs now? Uh huh.

Donna and Gail, with their vineyard paintings.

Intense focus. No wonder painting is so draining.

View to the North. This is midday so the light's kinda flat, but early in the morning and later in the afternoon, this view looked fabulous.

Here's Harriet painting away.

We painted all day at Quixote, and at the end of the day some of us went up to the winery to relax and did some wine tasting. This place makes exceptional petite syrah wines, and since they don't distribute through retail channels, it was a special treat to be able to try some of their wines. They were so nice to let us paint on their grounds and even gave us discounts on their wines - I bought a couple of bottles of their grenache mourvedre, a Rhone style wine which I love.

The winery had a lot of art work and most of it was modern abstract stuff and really beautiful but I didn't recognize the artists' names. But there was one that stood out, which was an original Fechin pencil drawing. A beautifully executed tour de force of line and tone. What a treat!

After a group critique, we adjourned and I went to dinner with some of the students. We ended up at Uva, a fabulous Italian restaurant in Napa where we had our feast last year. Though the ownership had changed, it was still an excellent experience and we had a good ol' time (again!). We found out that Julia, our waitress was an artist also. We got to talking, and eventually invited her to come model for us the next day at Domaine Chandon. She happily agreed, but I didn't really think she'd show up. But ya never know.

We ended up at Don's house and studio up in the hills and he and Janey entertained us with hilarious behind the scenes stories. We would have stayed late into the night but we had more painting to do the next day, so we cut out at around 3 a.m. (OK, I'm lying. It wasn't that late) and called it a day.

Needless to say, I slept very well that night!

Napa Workshop 2010 - Day 1

I just got back from my three day plein air painting workshop in Napa! We were blessed with glorious weather the entire weekend, which was just a tremendous treat. Last year, we had all kinds of weather during the three days which made things a little more interesting, and a whole lot more challenging. This year we lucked out! Beautiful sunny weather, not too cold, not too hot. Ahhh Thank you Mother Nature!

So on Day 1, we arrived at Quixote Winery which is tucked away behind some hills on the Silverado Trail. A real gem of a location. Really funky and whimsical architecture surrounded by beautifully landscaped grounds, Lots of ancient oak trees, olive trees, ornamental grasses, lavenders, etc. There was even a cool little stream running through the property. All this is surrounded by the quintessential vineyardscape, which in turn is surrounded by green hills with lots of atmospheric distance. The winery is backdropped by rugged, sheer cliffs. The great diversity of this place made it an awesome place to hold a painting workshop. Thanks to my hosts, Alan and Leslie who know everybody in the valley!

So after saying our hellos, I gave out my new workshop hand-outs. This in itself was a big project, on which I spent two or three months putting together. And I must say, it is a really cool book and I was very excited to be able to give this out to my students. And I was even happier to see their reactions to the book. It was totally worth all the time and effort I put into it!

The handout originated years ago, when I first did my demo/lecture. The night before it suddenly dawned on me that I needed some kind of a handout to make my points stick, so I sat down, typed up a bunch of tips off the top of my head and stapled the 11 pages together and gave those out.

Since then, every time I conducted a workshop, I added more information to my material and edited, improving organization and correcting embarrassing typos and grammatical errors as I found them.

This year, I decided to make a big upgrade to my material mainly because it's grown so much and digital on-demand publishing technology has become so much better and much more affordable. Even though I had all the content, it was still a lot work putting it together but I'm glad I did it.

It is now a 66-page, full-color, fully illustrated book. I have a whole lot more to say so it will keep on growing. Every time I do a workshop, I imagine, I'll try and improve it a little more, add a little more information and more pictures too. At some point it will be more than a companion to my workshops and be a full-fledged book available for anyone to purchase.

That is to say, it is not yet at that point and I'm not going to make this available for purchase until it's ready. I've already had many many people asking to buy it and while I am very happy that the interest is out there, my intention is to keep this a part of my workshop for the foreseeable future. I want to nurture its development. I hate the idea of letting unfinished or sub-par paintings out of the studio, and I feel the same about this book. Not that I think it's sub par, but I consider it a work in progress and it's not done yet.

So I'm sorry, I can't sell it yet. But I promise at some point in the future, it will be available. If you MUST have it, come to one of my plein air workshops!

So the first day of my three-day workshop is usually a demo / lecture thing. I set up and talked (and talked) about materials, techniques, theories, processes, and anything else that came up. I started to paint the vineyard view, explaining everything I was doing in real time, and why. I think demos are important for students to see and learn the process and the thinking behind it. Actually seeing the painting being done is far more effective than just hearing about it. It is a visual language, after all.

But talking and painting at the same time is no easy task. Some artists are really good at it, others can't do it at all. I do it because I think it's the best way to teach, but it certainly is not easy for me. After about an hour and a half, it became apparent that my painting was really not working out. All the basic things were in, but it was a boring painting, to be blunt.

No artist has a perfect batting average, and it is a matter of fact that sometimes we don't succeed. That's true for beginners, as well as seasoned pros. Not to make excuses for my less than impressive demo, but being fully aware that I can't do a good painting every time, I felt no pressure to perform. Instead, I turned it into a "how to deal with a failed painting" demo. Basically, I used the painting to demonstrate different concepts. I'm comfortable making stuff up thanks to my years of illustrating magazines and book jackets, and so I painted a road that wasn't there, explaining how perspective worked on a varied terrain. I also explained how I invent and design with shadows which weren't actually there. This type of skill set really comes in handy when you get into trouble painting en plein air. Literally depicting a scene is a good skill but really, how often do we really do that? We are always pushing color or moving a bush or eliminating a telephone pole. If adding a road makes a better picture, I don't hesitate.


Anyway, the demo was fun despite my messing up, and students seemed to enjoy and appreciate the merits of deviating from the literal. There's always something to be learned, even from (especially from, in some cases) failed paintings.


After I came home, I chopped off the bottom half of the painting because it still didn't look good. the image you see above is the chopped version. I forgot to take a shot of the painting before I chopped it. If anyone who was at the workshop has photos of the first day, please send them to me!

Later that evening, we reconvened at a local restaurant and had a feast. We ate, drank and made merry. Good times! In the pic above; Don, me, and Bob, getting a head start on everyone else. Don Hatfield, if you don't know already, is a big time painter and a friend of mine. He lives in Napa so I called him up and invited him to come down and get hammered with us. He's not one to refuse such an invite, so he came down in a flash and joined us. Don's wife Janey and another artist friend, Silvio Silvestri, who just happened to be in the area came and joined us too.

I invited Don and Silvio to paint with us the following day, and being good sports, they said hell yeah and made our workshop more interesting. You never know what surprises you get at a Terry Miura workshop!


To be continued~

Fish Tales

A Good Spot, 16 x 12 inches, oil on linen

I'm submitting this painting for an upcoming group show, Fish Tales at Christopher Queen Gallery on the Russian River. The show opens May 2nd, and as you may have guessed, is themed around fish and fishing, with emphasis on freshwater sport fishing.

When asked whether I'd be interested in participating, I said yes, but I know nothing about fishing and I don't paint still lifes (of fish, or anything else for that matter). Suggestions were made that I can paint landscape paintings of fishing holes, which seemed to me like a good idea. Not that I can tell a good fishing spot from a bad one, but I guessed if there were people fishing at a spot, and they had caught some fish, it was probably a good spot.

This is one such spot, a stream near a hiking trail in the Yosemite Valley. I used a photo to do the painting, as I didn't get a chance to make a trip out there - but I did take the photo myself, which is one of my rules; no painting from other people's photos.

I live right near the American River, but I don't particularly find that easy to paint because the big river landscape lends itself to boring horizontal strip compositions most of the time (at least, near where I live). It takes plenty of ingenuity on the part of the artist to make something interesting out of it.

A stream like this, on the other hand, is chock full of possibilities. The angles are dynamic, lots of movement, juxtaposed with solid forms of boulders which gives the painting structure. I can move them around to tweak the composition if necessary, and because the elements (water, rock, trees) are easily identifiable, I don't have to over define anything. Great for abstraction exercises!

As I studied the photo, I noticed that there is very little value difference between white water in the shadow and in light. But there is significant temperature shift. In order for white to have any identifiable color, it needs to be brought down a little bit in value, and that's what I did. The cooler temperature in the white water in shadow is further supported by diffused, cool light illuminating the top planes of the rocks, which differentiate themselves from the rocks in the foreground, the light on which are warmer and harsher.

The green stuff in the background is kept soft and cool, for the most part. In comparison, the green stuff in the foreground has more warmth, and more definition.

If you've been following this blog for a while, or if you've been in my workshops, you know that I think "cools recede" is a dumb rule. I don't want to go into it in detail here, but suffice to say the rule doesn't apply in this painting. "But the stuff in front is warm and the stuff in back is cool!", you might say. Yes, but that's only because I set it up that way. The stuff in back recedes not because it's cool, but because drawing, overlapping forms, edge manipulation, diminishing sizes make them go back in space. Not because it's cooler. It is cooler, because it's in shadow. If the foreground were in shadow and the background were in light, the cool stuff would be in the foreground. Would the background still recede? Absolutely –as long as I don't screw up the drawing, overlapping forms, etc.

Anyway, a fun subject matter to paint, with lots of interesting potential for more paintings!

Holton Opening Reception

Sorry for the absence these past few weeks - I haven't been painting really, but have been kept busy with Stuff. Gotta take care of Stuff sometimes, else you just accumulate paintings and run out of money. And the grass (ok, weeds) keeps growing, paperwork keeps growing, the inbox keeps growing... you get the idea. This time of year is especially loathsome due to taxes and allergies (allergic to taxes) In the middle of it all, I got sick, and lost some time I didn't have in the first place.

But life goes on, and it's not all obstacles, you know. The opening reception for my two-person show with Kevin Courter happened on March 27th, and that was a fabulous good time! Lots of people showed up and the vibe was very good. The show looks great all hung together and presented in Tim Holton's Early California style frames. Frames do make a difference. A huge difference. The show will be up for a couple of months (till May 29), so if you get a chance, please go check it out.




Carole Gray-Weihman, Kim Lordier and Kevin.




That's me on the left, and Jim Crandall on the right.

Bill Cone and I contemplating skyholes and diffraction. Or something. We may have been talking about food. I don't know.

There were a lot of friends at the opening and I wish I could spend more time with everyone but alas, time was limited. A big thank you to everyone who came and made this opening a very special event! I wish, too I had more pictures but as is typical, I barely remember to take the ones I did. If anyone has photos from the show, please email them to me~

I did get a chance to meet and chat a little bit with Alfred Harrison of North Point Gallery. Besides being the owner of his gallery, Alfred is a noted art historian and author of many books and articles on Early California art. Alfred, Kevin, and I will be having a panel discussion on the topic of the tradition of California landscape painting later this month at the Holton Studio. (info to come) I hope you all can make it. Hopefully, I won't sound like an idiot next to Alfred and Kevin. I may be resigned to comic relief. Haha~

But seriously, I think it'll be a very interesting discussion. With plein air painting becoming as popular as it has in recent years, I think a look back at its California roots would be insightful and educational for anyone interested in landscape painting. I certainly am looking forward to learning some new things from this panel discussion!