Value Board - Subtle Grays are not Mud

I love playing with color. On my palette I have a limited number of tube colors, but from these I can mix endless varieties of subtle grays. Some of these mixes can be classified as blue green, reddish purple, salmon, mauve etc. Others are harder to name. Because I mix my colors like this there is a harmony even among all these subtle grays.
Each of these subtle grays has a hue ( what color it is) and a value ( how light or dark it is). They also have chroma ( the intensity of the color).
As I paint, my palette fills with leftovers from my color mixes. To keep my mixing area clean I occasionally scrape leftover piles of similar color together and save them along the top of my palette. I'll use these grays to tint my new color mixes. (I'll write more on that and my palette in a separate post).
I have a little 6x8 board in my studio that I have been playing with. At the end of the day I'll take some bits from these piles of grays that are left and place them on my little value board. There is no real method to this madness, I am just playing. I want to practice matching different hues that are the same value and at the same time play with new color combos and see how they affect each other. I have been trying to place them in a kind of value scale from light to dark. It is not something super serious like mixing color charts. Sometimes I get them in the right spot, other times I really miss. It may look like a certain value to me when it is on my palette knife, but when I place it among the other colors on my board, it looks different than I thought it would. You see value is all relative. It all depends on the other colors that are surrounding. Sixty Minute Artist, Jerry Lebo, has great posts on relative value and learning to see values. If you are interested in learning more about this you should read what he has to say.
Some of these grays have a high chroma or are "purer" and others are "duller" or more neutral. when a high chroma color is placed amongst the "dull" ones it really pops. Like that orange one on the middle left or those lime greens along the top or that red on the top right. When seen in the black and white image they fall into place value wise. If I were to put a pure color straight from the tube imagine how it would look compared to all of these grays.
Along the bottom of this board I mixed a simple scale of ten values from black to white. My subtle grays are placed from light to dark in the opposite direction. There is no reason for that it is just how I did it. I have shown the same board in black and white so you can see the values without being distracted by the color. The ones I got in the wrong place really stand out huh?
I'll be writing more about my color mixing and limited palette soon.

A Painting from Today (updated)

I added a few more brushstrokes and here is the finished piece. I thought that it might be interesting if I left the image from yesterday for comparison.


"A Glance to the Left", 6" x 8" oil on board, 2008
Private Collection


"A Glance to the Left", 6" x 8" oil on board

I only had a little time to paint today, so I started a new 6x8. Here is how I left it.
There are a few things that I want to adjust tomorrow. Then I will sign it and re post the photo.

"La Capilla, Fading Light"

"La Capilla, Fading Light" , 14" x 18" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection

I started this painting in December, but got working on other things and never finished it up until now. I started with the idea that this would be mostly low (dark) values, but to get the light effect I wanted there had to be some higher (light) values thrown in here and there.
It was a difficult painting for me. I strayed from the original plan a bit, but sometimes you just have to be willing to go where the painting is taking you. The focus is on the church and the fading afternoon light, but the tree and cacti in the foreground are important to the setting too. I painted just enough detail so you would get the feeling of looking through them, but not get caught up in them. There are lots of horizontals and opposing verticals, and then the contrast of the organic vs. man made structure. It ended up being a complicated piece.

"Valley View"

"Valley View", 8" x 16" oil on linen, 2008
$930. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner

This is the second small painting in this series that I talked about in my last post " Into the Valley".
In this one I wanted a broader view of the valley and mountains beyond. To force myself to work quickly and deliberately, I gave myself a limited amount of time to complete the painting. Details were kept to a minimum. I worked for about two hours before it was time to go get Erin from school. That was my time limit.
In the afternoon, I returned to the studio with a fresh eye and pulled a few things together for about another half hour or so.



"Valley View" detail

"Into the Valley"

"Into the Valley", 11" x 14" oil on linen , 2008
$950. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner

I have worked two days on this painting and it is time to stop.
For now at least.
My plan is to do a few small paintings along these lines. I think that this will make a nice larger painting, but I want to work with a couple of different compositions first and then go from there. I consider this a sketch for a larger painting, but also a finished painting in itself.
I like the opposition of lines in this one. I tried to emphasize the different directions of the hills and lines in the fields. I left the sky out completely. I am thinking that I will do another that pans back a bit to show a little sky.
Often, I will do a series of a few small pieces that might lead up to a larger painting. One of my reasons that I like to work this way is to be able to try a few different things without having to cram all of my ideas into one painting. It REALLY frustrates me when I overwork a painting. Once you go too far, you can never really recapture the freshness that was lost. I know this from having done it so many times. Working on a few versions of a piece can sometimes free me from feeling that I need to get it ALL just right. I can show a little restraint knowing that I can try it a little differently on a separate canvas. Another way that I try to keep myself from overworking a painting is to try and stop when I "THINK" it is about 90% "FINISHED". I'll set the painting aside for a while and come back to it with fresh eyes. Usually I will find that what I "THOUGHT" was the remaining 10% is not really necessary.
Does that make sense?

"Light from Above" Plein Air

Untitled Plein Air, 11" x 14" oil on linen 2006

These are two paintings done on location at the same spot on different days. The top piece is more about the fields, trees and what is going on across the fields, so I pushed the sky way up to the top of the canvas. I like the way that this painting turned out, but I have kept it in the studio to use as reference. I have had a larger version or two of this scene on my mind for a while.

The painting below was the inspiration for "Light from Above", yesterday's post. The effect of the sunlight coming through the clouds did not last long. I thought that the sky in the plein air was less dramatic than I had remembered, so I reworked the idea in the studio from memory and using the sketch. In the 11" x 14" studio version I added some darker colors to the surrounding sky and ground to really make the light coming through the clouds pop the way it was on that afternoon. The fields of alfalfa were really amazing looking, so I worked that color a bit too to try and get it right. You can also see that I moved the trees around some to suit my needs. They are spaced more like they are in the top painting.


"Light from Above" plein air, 8" x 10", 2007

"Light from Above"

"Light from Above", 11" x 14" oil on linen, 2007
Private Collection

I did not get to paint much today, but this is a new painting that I just finished up. It is a studio piece based on an 8x10 plein air painting.
I don't often feature the sky in my landscapes, but the sky on this particular afternoon was extra special so I gave it center stage and two thirds of my composition.
I paint this view often, there is something about it that attracts me. There is a slightly elevated spot where I can look down onto the fields a bit as they spread out in front of me toward those trees. There is a brick maker's place over there and always some animals, but that was not the focus of this painting. I'll post some other paintings of this spot on another day.
I like this one a lot.
What do you think?

"Daily Crossing"

"Daily Crossing", 8" x 16" oil on linen
Private Collection

I like the simple design of this one and how the goats all link together. The shapes of just a few of them are enough to fill in the blanks and let you know about the others. I did not count legs, and I don't think that is important.

Happy New Year!

I have picked up the brush again after a bit of a break from painting. I am almost done with my projects around the house and we have been enjoying our holiday together relaxing and playing.
The New Year means it is time to get back to work though, and I have been itching to get back to painting. Here is the my first painting to post for 2008. It is not quite finished, but done enough to post here for you to see.
( It is finished now and I have changed this to the finished painting 1/15/08 ).


"Rastrojo", 14" x 18" oil on linen , 2008
Private Collection

Some of my favorite stuff to paint these days are local landscapes with people and animals. This man leads his loaded burro home with cornstalks that he will feed to his animals. This subject was just right for a loose painting with subtle color and lots of variety in the edges. I wanted to have fun with the paint and push and pull a few details out of a pattern of brushwork.

I wish you all a great year. I am not real big on New Year resolutions, but one goal I would like to aim for is to try a few things to push my comfort zone a bit with my art. We'll see what I come up with.

Merry Christmas- Masking Tape Nativity

We wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and Holiday Season. May 2008 be a great year for all. Let's pray for LOTS of changes and good things for ALL.
No matter where you live, what you look like or what you believe in.


I made this nativity scene a few years ago. It is made with a little bit of wire, newspaper and LOTS of masking tape. The tape is starting to get old and each year I need to fix them because they are falling apart. The material makes the life span of this project fairly short I am afraid.


Our daughter, Erin, was almost two at the time and REALLY got into helping me with this. She is a good taper. Maybe that is why she loves to tape and glue so much now. I think if Santa brought her some tape and glue sticks she would be happy.
Well, maybe.


I think my favorite is the Drummer Boy.


Drummer Boy with Shepperd, Lamb, Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus.


The Three Kings with their offerings.

"Onions and Squash Blossoms"

"Onions and Squash Blossoms", 10" x 8" oil on board, 2007
Private Collection

I am still working on finishing up some ongoing projects around our house, so I have not been able to paint as much as I would like lately.
This is a piece that I painted about two months ago. I am thinking of doing a larger version of it with just a slightly different composition. What attracted me to this scene were the colors and the fact that it is almost all in shadow. I really liked the green of all those onions that the woman is cleaning up. The orange color of the fresh squash blossoms is a good compliment to all that green. We were eating a lot of these delicious flowers in August and September and I guess I had them on my mind.

"Pay It Forward"

I have seen a few "Pay It Forward" posts on blogs lately.It is the season of giving and all, so I've agreed to continue this by following these rules:

"I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog."

When you leave your comment, please also do one of two things: leave your post address or e-mail it to me.

I, in turn, have posted my comment on Colin Page's Journal . He is a great painter living in Maine who has a real fresh style and a great color sense. I have been wanting to buy one of his pieces for a while. So when I saw his comment on another blog that I visit, I was glad to join in.
Actually, I was checking back to see if three people had taken Stacey Peterson up on her offer yet.
Hopefully I will be able to get a few more of Colin's paintings before too long.

This offer expires one year (365 days) from the post date, on Dec. 17, 2008. Sorry, can't keep this on here forever.

"Arms Full of Corn Stalks"

"Arms Full of Stalks", 8" x 10" oil on linen, 2007
$720. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner

This is a small painting from today. I have been using the first painting from my last post as reference for two other 8x10's
I wanted this one to be more about the man carrying the load of corn stalks, so I limited the amount of tree that is visible.
I have been working up a few different ideas to see which direction I would like to go with a larger painting. A lot of my color notes in this one are pulled from the 8x10 plein air of this tree.
I have been slow about posting lately because it is the time of year that I try and take a break from painting, shift gears a little, and catch up with a few projects that need doing around the house. I will try and get photos posted of the other paintings tomorrow.

"Hunter Gatherer of Light and Color" Part 2: The Light

When I am out painting on location one thing I try to capture is accurate color. It is really LIGHT that I am trying to catch, since an object's local color will look different as the light changes. It is the LIGHT that I want to use to convey my feelings about the particular scene that I decide to paint.
For part two of my "Hunter Gatherer" series of posts on plein air painting I am going to show two little plein airs that I worked on yesterday. I have been spending a lot of time in my studio or at the gallery and have not been able to get out and paint as much as I would like. I finally was able to make time to go painting yesterday morning. I decided to post these as is, before I did any re working or whatever is going to happen to them. I don't always come away with something to frame from my days painting on location. The experience of being out, looking, observing, absorbing is what I get out of it even if the only the only trophy I bring home is a wiped down canvas.


Work in Progress #1, 8" x 10"


Photo of scene #1

Let me say that I was not real happy with the way number one was coming out. I was a little rusty. That light was changing fast and I decided to stop working on this one and move on. I would rather stop at this point than try and "chase" the light and muddy everything up. The tree was going to be my focal point, but I totally blew it and did not get the tree blocked in correctly. I also was trying to add too many little bits and pieces of stuff and did not spend enough time working up a good composition.
What I did come away with were some nice colors and an image burned in my mind from having looked at this scene for about an hour studying it. When I look at the painting and the photo of the scene, I realize that I at least got my values accurate. The photo will help me get the drawing of the tree down. One thing that is hard to get from a photo are the subtle color shifts like in the hillside on the left side of the painting. The colors from my plein air sketch are more helpful to me than the colors in the photo.



Work in Progress #2, 8" x 10"

The second painting that I worked on is a little more finished. I took the time to block this one in a little better with a bigger brush before breaking down those big shapes into smaller brush strokes. Again, the color is kind of bleached by looking toward the strong Mexican sun, but it was the subtle shifts in value and accurate color that I was after. I really like painting this tree and how the mountains rise up behind it. The little trees in the foreground gave me a darker value to play off against the bigger tree. They are real important in helping with the sense of depth.
I am going to try and work with these today I will post later about what happens.


You might be able to gather from my posts that I really love being out in the Mexican countryside. There is usually action of some sort around. This is the time of year that the fields are being cleared. Corn stalks were being gathered yesterday where we were painting and it seemed like a constant flow of burros, horses and pick ups full of cornstalks.
Here are two photos of a friend, Marie, painting the same scene as #1, as loads of cornstalks go by. There really are burros under those first two loads.

Twenty Years Ago

Today is my birthday.
I was thinking about how my style has changed over the years, so I am going to post a painting that I did about 20 years ago.
I was fresh out of RISD and my work was pretty much all over the place.There were oils, collages, prints, found object sculptures, you name it. I had not really settled on my "style" yet, but this is pretty representative of how I was painting.
This is a large painting. At least 4 x 5 feet. I was not very good at keeping records back then so I am not sure.
I scanned the slide big so you can see into all of the detail if you click on the image. It's the best I could do with this old slide.
I am usually am pretty good about letting go of my art. But if I could buy back one painting that I have ever done it might be this one. I sold it CHEAP to get money to drive to Mexico 18 years ago, to someone who promptly re sold it for more money.

So it goes.

I hope that whoever owns it now is enjoying it.



"Untitled", approx. 48" x 60" oil on canvas, found objects
circa 1989, Private Collection

American Artist Workshop- Step by Step

My demo, from the article "Frank Gardner: Using a Premixed Palette" in American Artist Workshop magazine, is now on the American Artist web site.
Subscribers are now receiving their copies of the Winter Issue and I have already received some emails about the article. The Winter issue will be in the stores Dec. 11th.
You can click here to see the Step By Step. I am hoping that more of the article will be posted soon.


I will be posting more about my plein air workshops over the next few weeks.
There are no workshops scheduled right now, but as soon as I have dates set I will post them here.


"Patsy's Cart", 11" x 14" oil on linen, 2007
Private Collection

Plein Air Painting Hazards

I took a few days off from painting to do some work around our house. I should have a new painting to post later today or tomorrow. Until then, I thought that you might enjoy this.


You always hear about the hazards of painting, like toxic fumes and chemicals. Here is one more for your list.
Where you set up your gear can be hazardous to your health as well, or your stuff. This fellow thought that his animals were going to crush my gear. Luckily, I had set up just on the other side of that scrubby mesquite twig, or he might have been right.

"Woman and Doves"

Here is a painting that I did today. I took a few photos of the process so you can get an idea of how I worked this one up.
One of the choices an artist has when they begin a painting is to limit the value range that they will work in. This can greatly affect the mood of the finished piece.
My goal was to make this painting in a high value key. That means that the values are mostly light as opposed to darker. Tomorrow I hope to get a painting in a lower (darker) key that I will post here.



"Woman and Doves" Step 1

Another decision that I made before starting this one is that I wanted there to be lots of juicy and loose brushwork. So, I decided to work on this one upside down. That way I am thinking of shapes and colors and not "things". I have decided to show these first two stages upside down, just how I was seeing it when I was painting.

In step 1, I mixed up five or six shadow colors and laid those in rather quickly. I was not interested at all in details here, just getting my design blocked in with some nice variety of color. Notice that none of these colors are very dark in value. They actually look a little darker here than they really are because of all that white linen that they are being compared to. I love painting reflected light, and this scene had some nice light bouncing around on those buttresses.



"Woman and Doves" Step 2

In Step 2, I started to add the light family of colors. Again, I mixed up a handful of subtle color variations on my palette first so I could compare them to each other before committing them to the painting. Since I wanted this painting to have a loose look, these strokes needed to be put on and left alone.
Here is where I began to really work my edges leaving some hard and softening others. I am still working on the painting upside down. I did not start painting the color of the woman's clothes yet. I wanted to get most of my subtle colors down first so I could compare my color choices to the colors that are going to be around her in the finished painting.



"Woman and Doves" , 14" x 18" oil on linen, 2007
Private Collection


Here is the finished painting. I wanted the woman to be the center of interest, so that is where I put the brightest colors and some of the hard edges. I also added the doves here at the end so I could just lay them in loosely and not disturb them by trying to paint around them. I was careful where I placed them. I think that they add to the movement from left to right in the painting.



Detail "Woman and Doves"

I don't know why, but with blogger, it seems that the colors are always better when you click on the paintings and see the larger version. They are closer to the actual colors of the paintings.

"Hunter Gatherer of Light and Color" Part 1: Values

When I am out plein air painting I consider myself a "hunter gatherer". I am looking for bits of information, value relationships, light, color etc.. I "hunt" these things and I "gather" them.
In this post I will talk about gathering of values.

These images are from a painting trip to Maine that I took with some friends. I actually got a lot of painting done which is good, because I don't like to leave my family and travel thousands of miles to come home empty handed. It was my first time painting in Maine and it really took me out of my comfort zone of painting blue sky and things that, for the most part, don't move. Some days I got up to six paintings done. Other days did not yield as many, but I feel that even on the frustrating days I came away with something useful.

I will try not to ramble on here, I hope that these sketches speak for themselves, but I will try and give brief descriptions of why I am choosing these particular sketches to share with you.



"Misty Maine Sketch", 11" x 14" oil on linen, 2006

The weather was changing constantly it seemed. In this painting all I had time to get down were the basic value relationships of the main shapes. Then the sun came out and completely changed everything. By going for the important stuff first and not getting caught up in the details right off I got some solid relationships down and even though it is an "unfinished" painting I think that it stands on its own and is actually a nice piece. It gives a little insight into how I start a painting.
Since the light changed drastically, I set this one aside and started on another painting. To keep working on a painting when the light has changed so much would be a mistake.

Two of the most frustrating things about this trip turned out to be two of the best learning experiences of the trip. Here is what I mean.
#1 Boats move. Even when they are moored the turn and shift, especially on windy days.
#2 Maine lobster boats have a unique shape, their lines are not the same as other boats, and I needed to learn this.



Pencil Sketch #1

I don't do that many pencil sketches before I start a plein air painting. I am usually too caught up in the moment and want to get right to it. However, these boats were giving me trouble. Boats turning on their moorings and the changing light of partly cloudy days was getting me frustrated. At times I just had to take a step back and do some pencil sketches. I was trying to capture the lines of these boats in simple sketches of three or four values. On the left are three views of the same boat turning. On the right are also three views of one work skiff. I drew what I could and when the profile changed I moved on to the next sketch. These were just a few seconds each. I tried to get the basic shape down and added some values when I had time.



Pencil Sketch #2

Here are some more drawings done very quickly. In a few of them you can see how I adjusted my original lines. There was a man who rowed a boat out to the work skiff to turn on the water pump. In the drawing in the middle you can see the boat alongside the skiff. In the drawing on the right he is talking on his cell phone. These are just quick gestures, but valuable nuggets of information for future paintings.



Pencil Sketch #3

Here are some more examples of working quickly and hunting and gathering of values. It is not the details that were important to me but the relationship of a value compared to the values around it. Most of these have just been three or four values. The white of the paper being one, then a light gray, a medium and a dark. Look at the sketch at the top left. There is not a lot of "drawing" of the boat. It is really just a collection of shapes of different values. When these spots are put together in the right place it reads as the little boat against the dock.

I hope that some of you found this interesting. I'll talk about other things that I hunt and gather when I am out plein air painting in a future post.

American Artist Workshop Article

The Winter issue of American Artist Workshop magazine, on sale Dec. 11th, will feature an article by Molly Siple about a recent plein air workshop of mine here in Mexico. The article, titled "Frank Gardner: Using a Premixed Palette", will focus on a three day class that I taught in February of 2007.
I teach the benefits of using a limited palette of colors to keep color mixing simple. One of the methods that I use is to have the students start a small 6" x 8" painting by premixing on their palette 7 to 9 colors that will represent the main masses of light and shadow in the painting.
I will be posting more about the article as well as some additional workshop information on my blog soon.