Plein Air Painting in a Park

11" x 14" oil on panel

The second plein air session with my group of student painters was held in another park-- one with beautiful ponds-- George Bible Park in Bryan, Ohio.

August Paintings

I'm finally getting around to posting art I created in August and late July. It was a busy month- perhaps not so much as far as art creation goes- but in other aspects of my life. I started a new position at LE Smith working in the marketing dept., and I taught for two weeks at Lakeside, Ohio.

Here are some photos from the two weeks I spent teaching art at Lakeside, Ohio, Marblehead.

Painting a cottage

 Still Life Painting in Oils

 Working on his cottage painting- yes 12 year olds can paint

 Fancy Dog Paintings

 Portrait Drawing -- a full class

 Let's Draw Dogs!

 Let's Draw Cats!

Still Life with Pears and Blueberries

9" x 12" oil on canvas

It's still a bit too rainy and cold to paint outside here in Northwest Ohio, so I painted one of my standard go-to subjects: pears. Painting from life produces fresh paintings with lovely lost edges.

Pet Portrait

When your dog passes away and you want to get your wife a painting of him, but you realize you never really took any good pictures with a camera BUT you have a cell phone photo.

This is the worst case scenario, but it is workable, due to Google having hundreds of images of dogs that resemble yours just in case the image you have is missing a leg or the top of the dog's head etc.

Seriously, if you think you might want to commission a painting of your dog (or your wife, or your cat), at some future date, take a nicely lit photo of the subject outside in the shade.

This is a Labradoodle, I think. Maybe a Goldendoodle. He didn't really say. But I liked working life size.

16" x 20"

Oil on canvas

A Beginning Portrait Class at The Armory Arts & Events Center in Napoleon

I taught a brief workshop on portrait painting last Sunday at The Armory Arts & Events Center in Napoleon, Ohio. We started out sketching front and side views using Andrew Loomis' well-known techniques for creating a 'normal' face. Of course everyone varies form normal somewhat- that's what makes us all unique individuals.

After a bit of drawing practice we moved right into painting and I chose an American Indian as our subject. The photo reference was black and white, which simplified the values. Their skin tones are more even than Caucasians and (I think), easier to mix. Using a simple recipe of burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and titanium white, we were able to come up with a pretty wide variety of tones. Throwing in a bit of cadmium red easily warmed the mixtures where needed.

Portland, Maine

I took photos of lobster boats in Portland, Maine when I drove home from a painting trip this past summer. The colorful reflections, lobster boats, traps and shipping containers tell a story and I plan to do more pieces along the same lines. This is the first, a smaller 11" x 14" where I made the boat the center of interest.

12" x 12" Portland Harbor

Another Portrait

Jada 11" x 14"

oil on linen

Jada posed for our Saturday morning group. She is eighteen years old and moving to California this year to go to college. I think I've made her look a bit older than she actually is.
Jada won Miss Buckeye State, which is a huge honor. You have to be smart!

This painting was done 90% from life in one pose and I finished her dress and the background home using a photo reference.

Texture study

I bought this clay pitcher the other day for the express purpose of painting it. I love to paint gray objects, even more than I love to paint white ones. They reflect light in a beautiful muted way that is hard to describe and even harder to paint. The values are closer for one thing, so it's harder to get them right, making any attempt to paint a challenge. But I enjoy challenges now.

I added some complimentary food objects: a yellow lemon and a red-violet onion.

9" x 12" oil on canvas

RED ONION

Daniel - Scottsdale Artists School Model

One of the trios I love to make when I visit the Scottsdale area, in addition to the many and varied galleries of course, is to the Scottsdale Artists School open studio. They have one on Friday, Saturday and Monday evening. You need to arrive early to get a good spot, which is why my friend and I were lined up at the door waiting for the doors to open at 8:30 am on a Friday morning. We weren't the first ones there, but we did manage to procure spaces in the front row for the five hour session.

The model whose name was Daniel, arrived. He was a long-legged young man with melancholy eyes. He wore a nice suit and struck an interesting pose--and how lucky I was in my choice of easels because he was staring right at me. The props were sweet too: a trunk and a couple of suitcases, which made me think of a train station, and that's why I added "SORTIE", or 'exit' in French, to the wall when I was finished. They do a nice job with their model setups, which is why they were lined up at the door I suppose.

So the title is a bit ambiguous. Is he leaving someone or something, or is he just waiting for a train?

Sortie

12" x 16"

Hope with Red Hair

A portrait that I started at our weekly model group and finished at home. Thirteen year old Hope actually had pink hair but I did't feel like painting it that unnatural color. So I changed it to auburn. I asked her what color it really was before I left and she told me it was blonde. But I like the red I created and it's a natural foil for the olive shadow tones that always tend to show up in our room.

I worked on some watercolor paper that I gessoed and coated with a wash of black and yellow ochre a few years ago. I found it when I was cleaning up my studio and I thought it would be fun to try something different. I really liked the way the paint went on. It's very different from the new Arches oil paper, which is a bit flimsy. I did a portrait on that paper and it actually tore when I removed the tape from the board it was mounted on.

Hope 11" x 14" oil on paper

Plein Air in Arizona

There's a trick to painting the desert en plein air and I haven't totally figured it out yet. It involves condensing multiples subjects --like shrubs and cactus and rocks-- into solid shapes. Matt Smith does it extremely well, but this Ohio painter always runs into a few difficulties.

Still, this year's efforts were better than many of my others. My friend and I painted in a conservation area near the Sonoran Desert and the fresh dry air was welcome, especially when I knew that fiends and family back in Ohio were experiencing record quantities of rain.

I think I did a passable job on the saguaros. They are challenging. What I really love about this area are the misty purple mountains. Whenever possible I set up my easel so I am facing then so I can include them in my painting.

9" x 12" oil on linen

Sometimes Commissioned Pieces are Fun

I created this commission for T. Holmes-- who requested cows, a pasture, their Bar H gate and her husband's tractor, which creates an eclectic farm scene. I am so glad she didn't want chickens too.

Tuesday Painting Class

These painters are finally getting gutsy and loading up their brushes with paint- and that makes all the difference! This week we painted a landscape with a beautiful peach colored sky. It had a split complementary color scheme so it was a bit more complicated than anything we've done before, but everyone handled it pretty well. Keep in mind that this is class number six for many of them, but also there are a couple of first time painters here.

Final Painting Class

I taught a group of artists on Tuesday afternoons in October and November and the class ended with this painting of a swan. I am always amazed when I see the progress students make over such a short period of time. This session I had two people who had never painted before along with some of my 'regulars'. By the fourth class the new people had caught on to color mixing. We worked with a limited palette so there really weren't many choices.

This painting, on the surface, appears difficult, but the key is the shape of the swan, so I had them spend a half hour on the drawing to get the swan in the right place. The values are stark, and there isn't a huge variety of color so everyone finished in the two hour window.

I know some artists who have the painting completed when they arrive and do another demo in front of the class. I really hate painting the same thing twice though, so I figure out what I'm doing as I paint, and it's easier for me to explain WHY I'm doing it that way, because the experience is fresh.

Tuesday Painters

Sharon, Art, Cora, me, Diana, Cherie, Clara and Scott-(missing Donna and Angie)

The Swan (after I touched it up at home)

Teenager in a Volleyball Uniform

I can't remember this model's name but she came to our group through  a modeling agency and she did an excellent job with her pose. We don't have many people pose looking downward and her face was tilted slightly as well, making it especially challenging for both her and the artists who were drawing and painting her.

This was my effort. I will try a side view next time, where the light is not likely to change if she moves slightly.

16' x 16" pastel on Canson gray paper

Charlie

I started this portrait from life at the Hyter Group, a portrait group that meets in Toledo on Saturday mornings at Common Space 2. Our model was Charlie, a Vietnamese immigrant who was into body-building in his younger days.

I had a pretty good base down and planned to continue it the following week. Unfortunately, I left it in my trunk at Oak Openings when I took my dog for a walk on one of the trails and something happened to it. At home, I removed it from my trunk and discovered tiny track marks all over the painting and also on a leather bag. Something, perhaps a chipmunk or a mouse, was able to squeeze into my trunk. Maybe it was attracted by the smell of the oils. I don't know.

I had to smear the entire painting into a series of tones while it was still wet to get the footprints out. So I decided to fix it and I used a cell phone picture I took of the model as my guide.

11" x 14" Charlie

Fishing Boats

I used a long horizontal format for this painting because I wanted to keep the focus on the boats. The original photo (by Margaret Wiles--and used with permission- THANK YOU MARGARET!!), was a 4" x 3" proportion. I cropped the top and the water in front and tried to give a different viewpoint. Perhaps one we would see if we were sitting on a boat in this harbor.

Fishing Boats

10" x 20"

More Fresh Produce!

The last vegetable stand I stopped at was a self-serve place. I had the crazy dog with me so he watched unhappily as I looked everything over and purchased peaches, tomatoes, an eggplant, some cucumbers and a yellow squash. Now that I've painted this stuff I will have to figure out what to make with it.

I have the All Recipes app on my phone and that's a blessing. Put in the ingredients/items you want to use and search for a dish that contains them. It doesn't get much easier. All my cookbooks have become a bit obsolete these past few years.

This is the second eggplant I have painted and I'm not sure if I've ever painted a yellow squash or cucumbers. Like anything else they are shapes forms that are defined by the light and shadow. The really cool thing about this setup was the bright red tomato reflecting off the old medicine bottle; almost looks like there is a fire in the bottle. The shiny texture of the eggplant was especially fun to paint too.

Harvest Time 11" x 14" oil on canvas

Lamont from our Portrait Group

11" x 14"

oil on canvas

Lamont posed at our portrait group last Saturday. Thankfully, whoever set up the model turned out a bank of lights in the front of the room, allowing the spotlight to do its job properly. Many times they forget to do this and the fluorescent light from the overhead creates cool and arbitrary shadows that reflect back into the model's skin.

Lamont has great eyes. They are very very deep set and he held his pose very well.

More Plein Air Work

The second day of the Waterville Arts Council Plein Air event was last Friday and my friend and I decided to head out in the country. First we painted a corn crib east of town and in the afternoon we headed west toward Whitehouse. There is a barn on Finzel Road that I have always loved and the restaurant across the road was empty so we set our easels up under the overhang for shade.

Waterville Corn Crib

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Barn on Finzel Road, June