Painting(s) in progress.

In November a couple weeks ago, I was going to go out with Himself, my Patrone, for a hike and a paint. Himself is the one that I married after my first master's degree, and a decade after my mother warned me to get a job that pays. 

However, it was too breezy.  Some plein air painters would say, "that's what happens with painting outside," but I'm still too new to the genre to pull it off.

So, I opened up an old ipad that I've repurposed into a reference photo repository to find something worth painting, (this is a pretty genius way to access reference photos, because you can pinch in to see details and isolate color)

and came up with this image from Crescent Moon State Park, near Sedona. 

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 I frequently begin my initial blocking in, and many of the later stages, without my glasses on.   I do this when painting out of door, as well. 

It helps me to focus on the big shapes, and to ignore that anxiety that arises when I'm missing out on details. Since my prescription is a -3.0, it works pretty well.  

I pulled out a ridiculously dark red toned hardboard panel that was in my closet. It was toned with nearly pure pigment of red oxide I don't know what I was thinking.  If anything could pull it off it might be this picture.

You can see the brilliant red behind what I put in when I started with the block-in.  I'll add to this post as I work on the picture. 

Okay, well, I forgot. I did some more work on it during the week. 

So, this is the part where I stop looking at the reference photo for the most part.

I have to say that I DO NOT like the titanium/zinc white that I bought. Although it's a Gamblin, which should be good enough, but I feel it gets gummy really fast and cuts down on the chroma. 

Then again, this sky may be really dark because of all that red behind it.   

Hmm.  I think the water needs more light to balance out that large expanse of sky. I'm going to add back in some sky into the water foreground.

 Here I've put in some more darks and started adding in some detail.  I hate the detail.  I think it looks like the water is full of algae.

I'll probably brush it back out.  

Then add it back in. 

Then brush it back out again. 

Etc.

You know how some people are fussy about some minor detail on their face that NOBODY notices but they? That's me, and my paintings.  

To be continued....(for this painting)

MEANWHILE. 

I often like to have two paintings going at once, and this photo on the internet caught my eye.

It's extremely small, which is perfect. It's already nice and blurry for me. I love the composition, though. It's a photo of an area of the Rio Grande near Alameda, looking north.  

Here's the initial blocking in:

I feel like the sky is too violet. and the reflected flora is too red. 

It's all just too much on the cool side of the spectrum. And of course, I need to start putting in some lights.  

and so the second pass

And then the third, and forth...so here we are.  Nearly done, I think.  

This is one of the bigger paintings I've done so far, 16x20. 

A little more blue, adding back in some darker greens for shadows that I had painted out earlier...

....aaaaaand done.  I think.  Maybe. I'm pretty sure.

...

a fairly bad self-portrait for 2021.

 

Badly planned, rapidly done. My first SP in oil.  

You'll notice that I ran out of space. Did I say badly planned? I didn't plan it at all.  Where'd my chin go? Where?

Rapidly done, on a 6x6 canvas board.

I may yet poke at it to get rid of the darks around my nose.

Outdoor painting @ Tres Pistoles Trail

 I joined a local group of plein air painters who goes to various locations around Albuquerque this past week.  

It gave me a chance to test out my LEDER EASEL. 

I bought this on Etsy, and it works pretty well, but you can save the maker the fees and buy it off his website. 

 Here's my set up at "Tres Pistoles" trailhead, or as the locals call it, "Three Gun".

 This is the scene I chose.  I love the path, I love paths and roads. I love the shadows. I love the Sandias in the background. 

 I set up my board, pre-toned with transparent red oxide, and blocked in the scene.  For the sky, I chose magnesium blue. It wasn't a good choice. It's too transparent on top of that red oxide. 

 After roughing it in, I took is back to my home to work on it. Here's the end of the first day.

Eventually, I felt like it was too "cool", including the sky, and decided I wanted to warm it up. I also felt it lacked some vibrancy, so I used some colors with higher chroma.  I also have noticed that for all its brilliance, morning highlights tend to be cooler than afternoon highlights.  At least, that's how it seems to me.  

Later, I put cerulean in the sky, and scumbled the brush around the sky again with unbleached titanium for the clouds.  

I think this is finished but I may add some more shadows back in on the trail. 

I decided to call it Tres Pistoles Uno, because I'm pretty sure there's going to be more than one Tres Pistoles painting. 

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DIY non-leaking portable brush cleaning jar from canning jars

 I like the silicoil brush-cleaning jars.  I do.  However, I'm not over the moon about them.

• They are not always leak-proof. When I travel, even if it's by car, I need more reassurance than that.
• The design is somewhat in efficient in that I can't remove the coil.
• I'm not 100% convince that the metal coil helps get the paint out from between the bristles as well as, say, a screen might.

And then last week, when I was making cold brew coffee with my favorite setup I got to thinking about what a great brush washer that would make, if only it wasn't a quart large.  The screen would allow me to scrub the brush bristles gently.  Also, I like to dip my palette scraper in there from time to time and there's no room to do that with the silicoil jar. I was also thinking about all the canning jars I have.  I even have silicone lids for a number of them. 

So, I purchased a very small cold-brew maker, one that fits into a pint or quart jar. 

I also purchased this small tea infuser, just for fun, to see if it would work in a 1/2 pint jar for travel.

I looked up information about how silicone might react with gamsol, and it turns out that it might just melt it.  So, I just used the lids that come with the jars. I have a million of these flat lids lying around.

Here's the result: 

The whole thing sits in a old stainless can bowl (sniff, I miss my kitties) to catch drops.

If I have any problems with it, I'll add to this post. So far, though, it's been over a month and it's working well.  

...

Tomatoes.

 I used to try to grow tomatoes. However, they require attention and care, something that falls by the wayside when you're trying to grow a business.

Luckily, I married a gardener. He took over the whole tomato growing enterprise this year and I was flush with them. I had tomatoes every day. It was heaven.

This is the last tomato from this year's crop.  It popped out late in the season and I picked it this morning and quartered it.  

I had some misgivings about painting tomatoes on an orange plate, but it turned out to be a fun exercise.  

Tiny daily painting.

 I admit to a tiny bit of hero worship to this guy. His tiny paintings of the mundane, ordinary things in life are a wonder to behold.  He had a daily habit of painting a small painting and his rendering are amazing. The daily painting movement is designed to do this, to increase skill in rendering and painting. There are other movements as well, such as daily drawing, etc. 

As a science-y type person, I have also wondered,

if I painted a little painting from start to finish every single day, would *I* get better?

I've had people comment things such as, "well as least you have your mother's talent." It's worth noting that actually, I received very little instruction from my mother. In fact, she discouraged me from a career in art, for practical reasons. 

Anders Ericcson says that it is deliberate practice that results in expertise, not innate ability. (You can read more about him here.)

And thus begins the experiment.  

So here is: day 1. I don't know if I'll be able to do this every day, but the challenge is to take some ordinary thing and paint it onto a 6x6 panel. I expect Mondays and Tuesdays are off the table, because I go to my office all day. Sundays I either play golf or go to a plein air meetup.  But the rest of the time is up for grabs.  

So, I grabbed a jar of chamomile tea, plunked it down on my tabouret, and began my journey. From start to finish, this took about 40 minutes. 

 

Of course, I can never leave something alone - it's one of my failings, the ability to walk away, so I poked at the painting for a while.

 I think I liked it better the way it was. Another lesson learned. 

...

In Which I Begin to Paint Outdoors

 Plein air painting has a lot in common with backpacking and painting. 

In the beginning, you pack way too much stuff.  After hauling it around and struggling you finally sit down on your kitchen floor, unpack your gear, and start tossing things aside, "I don't need this--at least not enough to mess with it or carry it any distance.

Still, I've been intrigued with developing this type of painting. I happen to live in one of the most visually and structurally interesting and pleasing areas in the US: New Mexico. Within a day's drive there is desert, mesas, rivers, forests, mountains.  I have a history of long-distance trail-running so being in the wilderness doesn't scare me. 

I signed up for a plein air workshop through the New Mexico Art League. We have gone to three different locations so far.

The first location was Placetas, New Mexico.

I didn't really feel like I had a good view of the Mtn, and I wasn't inspired by the dotted houses on the hillside near me.  However, I was inspired by weird and crazy tree nearby.  I painted it on a gesso masonite board toned with transparent yellow oxide.  

Not over the moon about the mountain in the background. But it is what it is.  

The second location was in Bernalillo, New Mexico.  And I want to take a moment here to introduce my pleinair set-up

My set-up is the oil package from PleinAir Pro. And yes, I KNOW, I KNOW, FRENCH POCHADE BOXES are the thing but I want to be able to paint without fiddling with a million wingnuts.

I use a SLIK tripod - it's pretty great, and I love having the built-in bubble level to steady the legs. Then I slip on a panel holder, which clicks into place, and then the palette. My palette is glass.  I'm just not organized enough yet to use anything else, because I forget to clean it and then need a razor knife.  

The outfit is complete with a sport-umbrella that clamps on. 

The whole thing goes into a large bag that functions as a backpack, and NO, it was not cheap. But totally worth it.   

One of the best tips I've gotten about landscape painting is to make my distant mountains with a mixture of cobalt - this gives them the luminosity they deserve. I generally start with a sky that's a mixture of cobalt and titanium white, which you can totally do in the southwest. In the east, I think you need more prussian blue. 

Then I block in the mountain as being a darker version of the sky. 

The finished painting:

The third location was up near the ski area on Sandia Mountain. I missed this class due to having a pinched nerve, so in the middle of the week, I packed up my gear, and drove up the mountain.

I wasn't over the moon about the location. I prefer big views. But I'm determined to find beauty and interest wherever I go. So here's the scene I picked.

My gear set up, ready for painting.

The beginning. ProTip: I take off my glasses and just paint blobs and shapes as experienced by my near-sighted eyes.  

Here's the painting I left the mountain with in my PanelPak: 

Current situation. Of course it's not done. I'll go back and forth and agonize over everything until I finally give up and put some vanish on it.

I'm rarely satisfied. I felt like the first pass was too dark and didn't accurately depict the brighteness of the morning, or the scraggliness of the trees. 

I do feel that my looser, impressionistic work is better than when I get down with the tiny brushes to fix up every detail. I also feel that plein air gives me more of a chance to exploit that ability, and the ability to be comfortable. I feel that impressionism is where I want to live, if I can just LEAVE THINGS ALONE and stop going into the weeds on every single detail. 

I also joined the New Mexico Plein Air Painters association or group or something that. I'm stoked! I can't wait to start painting more scenes outdoors.  

In which I have a studio without having a studio.

 It behooves me to mention that I no longer have a studio.  I have a house, in which I paint.

This past summer we spent a week in San Francisco in a friend's small apartment. When I got home I was thinking about space, and how one lives in their space.  My "studio" was a small extra bedroom that was darkly lit, and I was forever fiddling with the lights to get them bright enough in there.  Plus, it's also the room where I do Teletherapy, meaning I don't want all my easels and paints and related painting accoutrement in the background. 

So finally I decided, enough. I'm a grownup, with a house. I rarely entertain, so why am I hanging on to that living room? We don't even have a TV in there. 

I have a couple of Adeptus solid-wood flat pack carts, and one has a drop-leaf end. This is my tabouret. The other card holds drawing supplies and drawing pads.  They're both on wheels.  

So here is the result:

I presented it to my husband when he came home from drill, "TADAAAAA!" 

He was pleased. "I can sit in here and read while you paint." 

The light-filtering curtains keep the room bright while not overwhelming my spot.

I repurposed an old ipad. It is now my "reference photo". I love it because I can zoom in. However, I would love it more if I could annotate, draw some reference lines on it. 

Nearby is my favorite coffee place: my breakfast nook, which looks out over Himself's garden
and the Sandia Foothills.  

I have two HEPA air cleaners with charcoal pre-filters, and pot lid rack on them from Amazon. 
Newly painted painting rest in them, and this keeps the house from smelling like a oil factory.

Yes, it's an odd fixture in my living room. But it's not like I'm having any major parties in there. 
And if it's a living room, why not live in it?

Other news: I'm toying with "Fine Art America" Yes, it's a tiny bit mercenary. But if it pays for good quality paintbrushes....

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In Which I try To Be Artsy (Again)

 Throughout 2021 I've been trying to fit in that perfect work schedule and having time to paint.  I struggled with getting started again, and decided I needed to get more instruction.  I signed up for several art classes through the New Mexico Art League, including figure drawing, classical still life, and plein air.  

I also attempted to re-enroll at the local community college, which has a decent little art department. It was a pretty onerous experience, with 19-year-olds explaining ot me that I needed to talk to an academic coach to get re-enrolled, and me telling them (repeatedly) I have advanced degrees, please just let me take some art classes.  

Meanwhile: The Art League classes. 

Advanced landscape painting

I liked this class and felt at home here. I completed three paintings during the class. This first one I was not over the moon about. I feel like it's too Thomas Kinkade-ish. All that's missing is the glowing cabin.  

This one I'm happier with, but it was difficult. I experimented with a type of board I haven't used before, a Jack Richeson Premium Gesso Board.  It was pretty slick. I need more tooth.

I was happier with my third effort. 

Botanical Illustration

I loved this class.  It was loose drawings and watercolor. Watercolor is not exactly my medium, but I feel you need to step out of your comfort zone to stay in the habit of doing so, and I also feel that there are techniques in particular mediums that can be generalized to other areas.  

The teacher, Marjorie Leggitt, taught this by Zoom and had an interesting way of working with people individually in that manner I'd say she's done a fantastic job of mastering "art class by Zoom." I plan to take more of her classes.  

   

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Classical Still Life

This was an usual class for me. I consider myself more of a neo-impressionist. Is that neologism, or an actual thing? Anyway, I add dabs of color until something looks right.

For classical still life, I'm still in the process if finalizing these two paintings. In this class I learned about how to use mediums, which nobody had ever really gone over before in detail. I also learned how to smooth areas of color and transitions.

The teacher is Sarah, and she's amazing.  One of the best teachers I've had. Patient, attentive, and willing to answer any and all questions in detail. Her method is one that has been in use for hundreds of years and requires patience and attention. I love the simplicity, however. I feel that this class may help me find more simplicity in my subject and compositions. 

Of note, I have enjoyed learning how to set up a still life box.  I use a small grey cloth organization bin, and a rechargeable light that allows either warm or cold or combination light and a clamp.

 

This one is still in process, and will probably need more work on the bottle, but I'm happy that people no longer think that's a big lemon back there.  I may also add in some more light from the light source and clarify the shadow. I did another one which I can't quite locate, because I just rearranged a bunch of my equipment. I will add to this post when I find it. 

I enjoyed painting this and may do more of it this winter.  I have a number of small bottles from cocktails I drank this past summer and think they would make interesting subjects. 

Figure Drawing

This a class held over Zoom, and I felt myself fidgeting quite a bit during the demos. Most of the work we did on our own, with the teacher commenting and critiquing at the beginning of class while I fidgeted. I prefer Marjorie Leggitt's method of having people work while she "circulated" the class speaking to people individually. She also used a good document camera when she worked.  

I'll probably take this class in person, using live models, since we worked from other people's work instead of live models (another feature I didn't like).

I'll do a separate post on my plein air class.  It deserves its own post.