Snow Day!

I have loved snow since I was a child, nose pressed to the glass, anxiously watching the flakes as they flutter to the silent ground, desperately hoping against hope that school would be canceled. It's a conditioned reflex. I know this from my graduate school psychology classes. Like Pavlov's dogs we sit and when we hear the bell, we salivate, but this time its not a bell, its a white piece of fluff imbued with our childhood hope, that this was a day when all our usual responsibilities would be canceled and we could spend our time sledding, sipping hot cocoa and doing nothing that resembled work in the slightest.

Many people think that art is not work. But, alas, there are many aspects of my craft that resembles the work-a-day world of the rest of you. We also have repetitive tasks, clean up duties which may takes hours, planning days (which are actually fun but often frustrating), schedules to meet, personal goals to worry about and worrying about how we will meet the next bill. And snow. We too have snow. When I paint snow, I am like a method actor who assumes the persona of the character he portrays. I am again transported back to a much younger me, the one who worried less and played more. So this is when I play. This is when I point a brush, meditate and place a pure white dot against the dark stain of a wooden barn door, open to the weather and awaiting the farmer's attention.

I am getting all sentimental about the snow, but I do love painting it, but I find I rarely plan a picture around it being a snow scene. It seems like such a sentimental subject to paint. It's not like I'm working on velvet or anything, but the long blue shadows, the two birds low on the sky to the right of the picture, and the smoke coming out of the chimney easily descends into the realm of cliché. Edward Hopper, in his paintings of lighthouses, walked right through that and came out the other side, fresh and unscathed. Connection is key. You must walk a fine line between just “painting what's there” and tapping into inner feelings that may indeed be nostalgic and wishful, but then you return to the present and just look at your topic.

I can do snow scenes “like nobody's business”, but I tend to do them in batches. I also use them as a fix it trick for work that I am stuck on. That painting that I am scratching my head over, looking sadly at muddy spots, poor design placement, smudgy rather than expressive skies, failed textures and ambiguous markings needs some strong Rx in the mix. Snow is the perfect fix. Out comes the jar of gesso (my favorite snow medium) and in comes the raw northern air from Canada, gale force winds sometimes, single flakes artfully placed on others. It obscures and covers the various boo-boos that plague a work, until that work is again filled with the hope of my childhood, pristine beauty, sparkles of ice and steep hillsides of snow. Then I am happy.

The Artist's Studio

I was recently in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to see the exhibit on William Merritt Chase and was struck by a picture of his studio that had a dead swan hanging on the wall. Artist's studios are depicted repeatedly in art and I am wondering what a dead swan says about artists, their work environs, and how the world sees us. I am downloading and studying the pictures I have located online looking for common elements. The first thing that stands out is the mess. Wow! Talk about hoarders, as a profession, we've got that trait nailed. Some of it is an occupational hazard, the accumulation of props so our sitters will have something to fiddle with whilst idling away the hours on a sitting platform. We also collect furniture, dead animals, live animals (woof!), rugs (Vermeer), fans, millinery, antlers (K Kuerner), canoes (N C Wyeth), ladders (gets us up to the tippy top of a painting) and umbrellas (to shade out the pesky sun when its glaring meanly at us). There are great piles of papers and pots and pots of worn out paintbrushes, more than you could ever renovate. Poor Alexander Calder, who's main claim to fame with the general public are his mobiles, was totally hopeless. I am surprised that more artists' studios do not burn to the ground. Norman Rockwell's actually did once, but he was one of the neater ones. Go figure.

It is shocking, for some, the lack of organization. You would think that designing a painting, is essentially an act of organizing and ordering things. You would think that this translates into the physical environs, but no, it does not. We seem to need those items in plain sight, works in progress on the table top, not filed away, out of sight and out of mind, in some drawer. We are visual and need those things nearby, at hand, fermenting in our imaginations.

Getting My Pink On, Part II or Vicky's Basic Primer On Reds

So, as Valentine's Day is coming up next month, I am plumbing the depths of the color pink, or red, or scarlet, or vermillion. In this blog post I will attempt to address the technical issues of how they interact and work with different colors and the differences between the various red-pink-brown hues. The following is your basic list, some of which you may be familiar with, some you may want to add to your repertoire and others you can just delete and not even notice.

Allizerin Crimson

Rose Madder Genuine

Cadmium Red, medium, light, etc.

Permanent Rose

Quinacridone Rose, Red, Magenta-esques

Scarlet

Vermillion

English Red

Venetian Red

Indian Red

Terra Rosa

Red Ochre

There is a range in the chemical make up of these hues and as I am not a chemist, I will not go there. There is likely much information elsewhere on the internet if you are interested. As an artist, what you need to pay attention to is the temperature of the red and if you are a watercolorist you need to be aware of the staining properties also.

This first picture is of the watercolors. Pay particular attention to look of Rose Madder Genuine and Permanent Rose. They are in the middle of the color gamut between the orange and blue tones. To get a fire engine red you will need to do some mixing.

This chart is of the Oil Paints. Many of the same hues are here.

Alizarin Crimson got a bad rap years ago because it was deemed “non permanent”, so be sure to look for a permanence rating on the tube when you buy it. Modern formulations are much more permanent than the older ones. This color used to be the mainstay of every artist's palette, especially in portraiture. It is rich, dark, and treads the edges of magentas while still retaining its red identity. I got out of the habit of using it during the years in which its permanence was suspect and have been slow to reintroduce it to my palette.

Rose Madder Genuine. This color is used exclusively in watercolor. It is non-staining, so you can re-wet and remove it if you make a boo-boo you want to “erase”. It is used with Aureolin (a lemon yellow) which is also non-staining and Cobalt Blue, non-staining, to create a range of useful greys, browns, oranges, etc. The other non-staining color in this palette is Viridian. For a watercolorist these hues are a must. They are also transparent which retains its luminosity and gives watercolor some of its sparkle.

When mixing rose madder genuine with aureolin and cobalt blue the ability to create that intermediate grey successfully is a clue that the red being used is a middle hue in the gamut between warm and cool shades of red. If it were more purpley or orangey it would be much more difficult to do a true neutral grey.

Cadmium Reds. This category should include the vermillions and scarlets, but I would have to check the chemical content to be sure. The only cadmium red I use is cadmium red light which varies tremendously from manufacturer to manufacturer. Some of the cadmium's are very orangey. I use quantities of it in portraiture with yellow ochre to mix a reasonable flesh tone for Caucasian skin tones. I don't typically mix it with green, saving the red-brown hues for those jobs. The darker shades of cadmium red, the med and dark, do not play well with other colors, so you shouldn't substitute a dark cadmium for an alizarin crimson, hence the popularity of alizarin crimson. They tend to produce muddy or off shades and are cooler in tone. The cadmium red light that I use does not have this problem, but then I typically only use it in portraiture. The medium and dark shades may have some broader uses in landscape painting, but I don't tend to use them there, either.

In watercolor, it is opaque as well as staining. It is bright, but due to the opacity, it can make color flat or chalky rather than luminous.

Permanent Rose. This hue is used in bother watercolor and oil. In watercolor it is transparent, but staining, so beware. You cannot “erase” or lift it from the paper as it will sink right into the very depths of the paper very quickly and stain the fibers there. Like chocolate (or red wine, or spagetti sauce). In oils it is a valuable and I used it frequently in an impressionist workshop for the underpainting in a sky. I think it sits a little to the cool side, but many say it is dead center. You be the judge. At any rate it is cooler than rose madder genuine, but somewhat “chemically” and looks a little unnatural. This is a color I should use more often as it mixes so well with other colors. We all get into set habits, our “go to” mixtures, and challenging those mixtures is a great way to freshen up your work and challenge yourself to go further. Having a “dead center” hue is invaluable in color mixing in any media – again the yellow, blue, red mixing to grey allows you to move easily from cool to warm to brown to blue without having to mix two different hues together and risk making an unpleasant mud (different from a pleasant brown). When mixed with Thalo Green it makes a dark cool grey-green which is nice for shadowy foliage in floral painting or landscape subjects. It is a cooler mix than just adding one of the red-browns which would make a much warmer dark forresty green.

Quinacridone Rose, Coral, Red, and other. I use the Coral in portraiture, but it does claim another spot on your palette so it is a little expendable. When mixed with yellow ochre, the flesh tones are a little fresher than those mixed with cadmium red light. This red, when mixed with other colors, does not create quite as muddy a hue as cadmium red medium/darks.

The Red-Browns. This category includes English Red, Venetian Red, Indian Red, Terra Rosa and others. Some are cooler or warmer and some portraitists use them in tandem for the light or shadow side of the face. I find this a little irksome/unwieldy, as I tend to use other hues for flesh tones, but they are useful and a good thing to keep in your color vocabulary. I understand that John Singer Sargeant used something called Red Ochre (Old Holland has a version) and I must have ordered about a thousand tubes of the stuff when I was doing portraits. I never use it. In landscape painting the English and Venetian Red are great for chimneys and accents that sit on top of other hues, but I tend to use burnt sienna (or my favorite substitute of Lazur-Oxide-Rot, transparent red oxide by Mussini Schminke) more frequently. I use this substitute most of the time as it is brighter or fresher in some way, or maybe the formulation just has more oil in it. Who knows. It mixes well with greens. It is not available in watercolor, so I use burnt sienna when in an H2O mood.

You likely have other favorite reds or additions to this list. I'd love to hear from you.

The first step in exploring the reds is to do that thing that they always tell you to do – make a color chart by mixing every hue with every other hue. More on Vicky's easy method of color charting in another post!

Getting My Pink On or Love Is In The Air

In my quest to actually make a living at painting, I have become more mindful of the passing seasons and perceived customer desires. To this end I identified an upcoming holiday as a topic of interest; Valentines Day. So I should paint everything pink, right? Maybe. It's not as easy as it looks.

First I tried adding pink to a watercolor as I worked. Which produced a somewhat subtle effect. The painting is unfinished in this photo, but still, you can see the pink will have a low impact.

 Then I tried painting the pink first.

Then I tried a combination of before, during, and after. (Another unfinished painting - needs some final details and punching up). 

Being slavishly commercial and superficial is not easy. Maybe I'm not cut out to be anything other than “deep and meaningful”.

Then I tried a “love” topic that fit with the current landscape outside my window, a mailbox with snow. It does frequently snow during February, and it allowed me to use my favorite fix it technique which is just add snow on top of everything (not so easy for summerscapes, but works for everything else). I didn't even try to add pink, but the topic was a zinger. A letterbox? Hello, a valentine card maybe? I will likely do several versions and work this up, maybe even Photoshop it a bit. (I think one is actually finished, just needs a signature.)

Now, I am back to the content issue, the fly in the ointment, or in my case, paint. How many times can I paint a mailbox and still mean it? Hopper painted a lighthouse and got away with it, because he aimed at it straight and true, no seagulls, no smarmy fisherman in rain gear, no attempt to make the blue sky a little prettier. Given that my quest here is to sell pictures, adding those seagulls, one at 1:00 and another at 2:00 is part of the game. Or is it? I'm not very good at selling my soul, though I can put soul in everything I do. Can I have it both ways? That little bit of meaning tends to sneak it's way in the door, regardless of what I paint, or my intent. It transcends and connects on a deep very deep level, beneath those seagulls and I want to believe it will also sell paintings.

See Part II of Getting My Pink On (coming soon!) for more detail on technical side of the hue of pink/red and its uses.

The Virtue of Green

When I was an art student one of my professors insisted that we should use a limited palette of colors; a strategy that many people advocate today. The concept is that you learn the basics of color mixing with a reduced palette because it is less confusing and you learn the particular way those colors react and mix with each other in depth. From there you are then allowed to branch out and explore a wider range of hues.

These teachers were especially fond of warning us away from the usage of thalo green in favor of viridian. They intoned, in hushed voices, that thalo green was much too strong and intense for us mere beginners, no, we were to use viridian only. As a child riding a bike may need training wheels, so we were to learn about the wonders of green through the softer and more gentle hue of viridian instead.

Thalo green, which now comes in a red shade and a blue shade, has a lively and intense quality to it. Some would say that it has a “chemically” or unnatural look to it. It may need some toning down, so adding an earth hue to it or a red may be necessary.  It certainly gets the job done, with gusto. I think that is what I like about it, its ability to work so well. If you work in watercolor rather than oils, it is a staining color, so it doesn’t “erase” or pick up when dampened as well as viridian or some other mix of colors would. “Fixing” something that has gone wrong is more difficult. In oils, this is not an issue.

Viridian, on the other hand, is softer, more mellow. There is not the need to tone it down so much. It has a somewhat “dusty” look to it, as if it was made for aerial perspective. You must still add earth tones and mix it, as with all hues, but not as aggressively. The finished painting may have a more “cohesive” look to it, with very little effort. In watercolor, the pigment itself tends to get “grainy” when re-wet from the palette, so if you keep a palette ready with colors set out, you may find you need to discard and use fresh paint with each session. Annoying.

What does this mean for the painter? You have another tool to use and you may want to think more about your subject, the lighting, the time of day, and the effect you are going for to determine which is a better fit.

Beginning Again

Thich Nhat Hanh has quite a bit written on this topic, beginning again. If memory serves me, he uses it in reference to relationships, to forgiving others, setting aside the past, and beginning again. It's about being open, loving, available. We need some of this as we approach our art work also. We need to take the time to set aside our failures, burning them if we need to, and start again, to rediscover our path, to recover what it was about art that brought us to it in the first place.

Today I am looking out my window at the grey sky, some intermittent streaks of snow, and the brown/gray/olive drab/ocher vegetation that stretches across the swamp outside my window. I love brown, wet landscapes, fuzzy indistinct masses, things that are half seen and obscured by distance and a lattice of branches. I don't know why. My task today is to find out why, by sketching in oil this thing that I love, to do a simple sketch, not a grandiose operatic scale mural, just a small sketch of honest reaction to what is there. I'm thinking that tomorrow, I will begin again and do another. I will remember how to work the paint, how to mix the colors, how to set up the gear. It is, in many ways, a dry run for working outside in the “great out of doors”, this set up. In the process, I found a 140ml tube of titanium white I had forgotten I had and realized my French easel did not have paintbrushes in it. It took me 40 minutes to figure out how the palette extension attached. But here I am, beginning again, trying to remember why I am an artist, what it was that fascinated me, captured me, about paint, and to forgive myself for my failings, for not being everything I want to be, for betraying the very thing I love by not spending yet more time at it for little or no reward and forgiving the world for not knowing that I am here and giving me my due.

Unfinished Boats on a Dock
What a hot mess! This is based on a previous painting of a more moderate size - 16" x 20" (or smaller, I don't remember) and I re-created it bigger. Much bigger. I don't know if I regret it yet, or not. Obviously it's not done, yet though you can see that there are some areas more complete than others. I wanted to add a gender element into the picture, so there is a "pink" boat snuggled up next to the other boat. It's kind of an obvious ploy, but it may be that if you lock in on the realism, you may initially miss the color coding in the choices. We accept realism, we absorb what is presented in an innocent way, sans the second guessing of design elements. It is what it is.