Jacarandas - My Slow Purple Death By Allergy

There were never any purple trees where I grew up.

April in San Miguel means the blooming of hundreds, maybe thousands of jacaranda trees. Town turns into a fantasy land of purple. To me, purple trees are like a Dr. Seuss world come to life. It is a beautiful surreal sight.


Thing is, the past few weeks have been an allergy hell for me. Moving to this dry semi desert area of Mexico 18 years ago meant leaving all of my nasty allergies behind. However, for the last few years I seem to be developing an allergy to the jacarandas.
I walk to my gallery almost every day. It is about two miles each way. I pass under many of these purple beauties and walk across purple carpets of their fallen flowers. It is such a sensory rush. I wish that it did not affect me so much. I really want to love them more.
I felt like I was dying there for a while. My head felt like it would pop. I could not breath. My eyes were red and itchy.
I'm sure that you will be happy to know that this week has been much better.
So, now, I can happily post these two views of town for you to enjoy.
Maybe you don't have jacarandas where you live.
Enjoy!

Work in Progress on a toned canvas

Back to my normal palette of colors for now.
I started two 24" x 30" canvases this weekend. For this painting I thought that a neutral gray toned canvas would work best.
I took all my leftover paint from the first start, added a little more red and yellow to get it warmer, thinned it a little, and toned this canvas.
Another great way to get this neutral toned canvas is to have a failed painting attempt and wipe it down.


The toned canvas was my mid tone. I started painting with my lightest lights, an off white on the warm side. I worked the negative space around the figures legs to get them positioned. The highlights on the hat and the scarves are enough to get the image to read. Then I sketched in a few lines and shapes of a darker tone. There you go, my main value pattern with a light, mid tone and dark.


I did not want to get into too much detail too soon. I am just putting down value notes and adjusting my drawing with paint as I go, working all over the canvas to avoid getting bogged down with the details. I pull the big shapes out first, trying to capture the gestures of the figures. This needs to be accurate before I can start to finish with details. I need to have the framework down so I can lay the details in with confidence in the right spot and leave them.


I continue to make slight value adjustments and begin adding more color. I make some adjustments to the gestures of the figures. I moved the arm up on the woman in the middle. I also moved the right shoulder of woman on the left just a bit to make her look like she is carrying a heavier load in that bag. I have not put the highlight back on there yet.
This is where I had to stop. I hope to wrap this one up before long and post the results.

Another Grab Bag Palette - "The Painting"

This painting was done with my second Grab Bag Palette. These colors were a bit harder than the first Grab Bag Palette that I picked last week. My colors this time were Raw sienna, Winsor Violet, Permanent Green Light, and Oxide of Chromium, plus White.


"Hard at Work", 8" x 10" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection


I have a larger painting of this scene in the works, with my normal palette, but I wanted to give this one a try with the limited palette colors that I picked.
This gentleman was plowing his piece of this field while his wife walked along dropping corn into the rows. I usually don't take photos of people up close like this without permission. I asked this couple if I could shoot some photos to use for paintings, and I paid them for the privilege.

Another Grab Bag Palette - "The Grab"

I decided to try another Grab Bag Palette. I liked the challenge of the last one, but was looking for something a little more difficult.
Be careful what you wish for, right?
My pick this time was Raw sienna, Winsor Violet, Permanent Green Light, Olive Green, and Oxide of Chromium.
I guess my thoughts on greens came back to haunt me, or maybe it is just that all those greens were so lame that I never finished the tubes and that is why my paint box is full of them.
Actually the box is getting kind of low. These were chosen from about twelve or fifteen colors. I'll have to throw a few more not so bad colors in there for the next one.
If you did not read about my other grab bag palette see here and here.



The Olive Green was totally dried out, so I was down to four.
No loss.
I would have liked to toss out the Oxide of Chromium though.

All of the colors this time are similar in value. The Raw Sienna is my only "warm" color, so it will have to do a lot. See how those orange colors of the pure sienna plus white pop against all of the other mixes? The purple becomes my blue. What you have to do with a limited palette, is learn how the colors look when mixed, and in relation to each other. The last time I had two primaries to work with. This time the Raw Sienna is as close as I get to having one.
Cool.

I made up another ten step value scale in black and white along the edge of a 6x8 panel. This is a good exrecise too. Don't make a bunch of them all at once. The trick is to get good at making them. I didn't get the scale perfect, but it is good enough for my color/value board. However, my darks got a little cramped because my #6, 7 and 8 grayscale values could have been a bit darker ( 10 being the black).
Here is the color/ value board, and the same board in grayscale.
Thanks for the tip Kathryn. I did not realize that "grayscale" would show my values differently than "black and white". I was closer on that last one than I thought.




I ran out of painting time today, so this is all I got done.
Tomorrow I should have time to attempt a painting with this "Grab".

Grab Bag Palette - "The Painting"

If you did not read my intro to the Grab Bag Palette, see here.
This one was fun. I was able to get much better color than I had feared when I picked my tubes. Purple Lake was out, so I had Magenta, Terre Verte, Cerulean Blue, Chrome Yellow and White.
Mixing lots of colors first, like I showed in my last post, was the way to go. That way I knew what I could do with what I had.
After making the value board, I scraped what was left into three piles of "mud" that were helpful to me in the painting.


My palette, with a lot of the colors that I will use in the painting, pre mixed. They are reflecting a lot of blue sky since I shot this photo in the shade.
That is some liquin in the bottom right corner of the palette.
The thing with an odd limited palette like this is that the mixes need to be seen RELATIVE to the other colors that you will be painting with. Perfect place for pre mixing some colors.

Below is the finished painting and a detail.



"Team Work", 6" x 8" oil on board, 2008
$500. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner



Detail of "Team Work"


We are going to a Camp Out / Birthday Party for one of my daughter's friends tonight and tomorrow.
Have a great weekend.
As always, thanks for stopping by.

Grab Bag Palette - "The Grab"

Today I painted with colors that were chosen blindly, at random, from a box of paints that I had not used in a long long time. The exercise is suggested by Kevin Macpherson in his book, "Landscape Painting Inside and Out". He suggests setting aside all of the colors that you normally work with, and pick three to five random colors from twenty or thirty tubes of what is left of your paints. I had about twenty in an old paint box. You then have to do a painting with JUST those colors, plus white, no cheating.

Kathryn Law has been doing some paintings like this on her blog here, here and, here. We were swapping comments the other day, and I decided that I would give it a try. I told her I felt like I was about to jump into a lake where I knew the water would be really cold.

The colors I chose were Purple Lake, Magenta, Terre Verte, Chrome Yellow, and Cerulean Blue. I limited myself to five grabs, but one was an un marked tube that contained French Ultramarine Blue, which is a color I use all the time, so it was out. I also chose two tubes of Terra Verte, so I dropped one of those as well.
Gotta give myself some kind of chance you know.
The Terra Verte must have been from the days when I was still looking for the perfect tube of green. I tried em all. They all stink. Throw out your greens and just mix them. Terre Verte is stupid. It has no tinting power at all and I had to put tons of it into my mixes to change anything. Cerulean Blue is not far behind in tinting strength and it is not my favorite blue. My Purple lake was from so long ago that it was very dried up. I could not mix with it. Another one down. There went my darkest dark. Magenta is almost the same color though, not quite as dark and a little redder. It was going to be my "red". Chrome yellow was the lucky draw of all of them. I would have been sunk without it. The white was a given, so there I had my Grab Bag Palette. I was not that excited.



The grab, with piles of gray "mud" that were left over after some practice mixing.

I decided to see what they could do, you know, take them out for a test drive. I just mixed as many colors as I could come up with until my palette was full. Then, for fun, I layed them on a 6x8 board like my "Value Board" that I talked about in this post.
I had a ten step black and white value scale that I made with my workshop painters. The values were arranged along the edge of the board . I tried to line up the colors that I mixed using the new colors, by value, next to what I judged to be the value of each mix. This is actually a valuable exercise on seeing value. I also found that I was able to get a lot of good colors. That water was warming up.



In photoshop, I switched it to black and white to see how I did. There are some that are obviously off, but some were right on.
You may want to open another window and view the two enlargements side by side to compare. I am not an expert in photoshop or I would have put them together for you.



I finished the painting.
I'm working on getting a post together so I can share it with you all.

"Fields and Yellow Flowers"

Here is one more painting using a pre mixed palette of colors.
This painting is from last Friday when I went painting with my friend Guy Corriero. I painted from a spot that was slightly elevated from where I shot this photo. That way I could get the receding fields read as larger shapes.


I focused on the stacks and middle trees and moved elements from the edges inwards for a better design on my 6x8 panel.


I sketched this design lightly with vine charcoal, then mixed.


A close up of the palette. The color of the yellow flowers is missing from this shot. That blue-gray pile near my cad. red and yellow was a missed attempt, but I later used it in other mixes.


With time to think about it, I changed my design a bit. Less foreground and moved it all to the right and a bit closer.


The finished piece. "Fields and Yellow Flowers", 6" x 8" oil on board, 2008
Private Collection


The scene again to compare to the finish.


Detail 1.


Detail 2.

I was happy with the result. There is a chance that I might paint a larger piece from this. I have a few ideas how I would change things just a bit, but I don't want to mess with this one and lose the freshness and spontaneity of the painting. I've learned that the hard way. I always think that I can just "fix" a few things, but almost every time I wish that I had left it alone.

"Trees Along the River" - pre mixed palette

Here is another pre mixed palette and painting that I did this week.
I really liked the scene for its feeling of tranquility. I pushed the painting past the initial block in stage so I could layer the color a bit.
Barb Pask asked me to include a reference photo with one of these posts, so I added one at the bottom. I moved the composition around just a little.

I don't have a set number of colors that I mix up, although for the class I ask everyone to mix at least between 7 and 11 different colors. Sometimes you can get away with less. In this one I have more.
I'll often pick a color and mix it, then push part of that pile a little toward some other colors, say bluer or greener etc...but keep them in the same value. Then paint those three or four colors into the same mass to add some variety. The better you get at looking and seeing color, the better you will get at making those subtle mixes.
One of the main things that this exercise does is get you looking, seeing and learning to mix. You learn to compare colors on your palette and push them a little one way or another or dull them down a bit.

In the morning I am going out painting with a friend. I will take some palette photos and try to come back with something worth showing and talking about.




"Trees Along the River", 6" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
$500. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner

pre mixing color - "The Sower"

"It is beautifully simple, painting - all we have to do is get the color notes in their proper relation." Charles Hawthorne

I am working on several posts based on the idea of pre mixing color on the palette before painting. There is so much to talk about here that I feel the best way to go about it is to do several posts. I don't want everyone to get bored, and I don't want to overload a blog post with too many ideas.
I'll try and not repeat myself too much. If you have not read my previous post on pre mixing color, it is here.

On this one I worked from a photo, mixing colors for about twenty minutes. I started by mixing my lightest shadow color, which is the woman's sweater in shadow. I compared the values of all of the other colors to that.
Then I blocked in the main masses of the painting for about thirty minutes without mixing any new colors.
After that, I began breaking those main masses up into smaller shapes for another ten or fifteen minutes. Mostly in the background trees. I realized that I was going beyond the purpose of this post so I stopped.
Photos below - (1) palette, (2) after 30 min., (3) after 10-15 min. more.




"The Sower", 10" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection

I find that key issues that many students in my classes face are seeing color and value, mixing accurate color, working too slowly to catch the rapidly changing light, and painting the details before the main masses are blocked in accurately. I wanted to find a way to focus on these issues.
It is all about getting the right color, making it the right shape, and putting it in the right spot.


I would like to add a few quotes from "Hawthorne on Painting". If you don't have this book, get it. It is only like six bucks. I have read it at least twenty times. Each time I pick up on something new, something that helps me with where I am at the moment.

"The mechanics of putting one spot of color next to another - the fundamental thing."

"Remember, no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true, get them true and you will be surprised how little else you will need."

"Do studies, not pictures. Know when you are licked - start another. Be alive, stop when your interest is lost....... It is so hard and long before a student comes to the realization that these few large simple spots in right relations are the most important things in the study of painting. They are the fundamentals of all painting."

"A mass either stays within the lights or it falls into the range of the darks, and by half squinting the eyes you can tell to which it belongs. Remember, the eye takes in all your big lights against all your big darks."

I'll stop there for now.

"Drying Bricks and Kiln"

I did this little plein air two weeks ago. It is not the prettiest scene in San Miguel, but I think that it has a lot of character. The raw bricks are laid out in the sun to dry before they are put in this kiln to be fired.


"Drying Bricks and Kiln", 6" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection


My setup, and the scene at the brick maker's.


All of these colors were pre mixed on my palette before I started the painting. I did not take a picture until I had cleaned off the palette to pack up.
There has been a lot of interest in pre mixing of colors. Thanks to everyone who has commented or emailed me about this.
I am working on a few posts, but they take a while to pull together. Stay tuned.

"Things don't always go smoothly" Or, "An attempt at a save"

Sometimes unexpected things happen when you are out painting. I had a string of curve balls thrown at me during the workshop. On the first day I broke my palette knife while mixing. Never had that happen before. It was my favorite knife that I had had for more than 25 years :(
I had another as back up in my paint box in case I lost one, but I never thought that I could BREAK one.
I also broke a brush handle while painting. I had never done that either.
On Wednesday I gave a jump start to someone with my car and when we went to go home mine would not start. I was able to find someone to jump us at least.
And so on.
The big bummer was when my open box m blew over while I had stepped away from a painting in progress to check on the students.

AND IT LANDED BUTTER SIDE DOWN! :(

I was disappointed about the painting, but hey, you just have to roll with the punches.
I realized a few days later that the pochade box had split. Fixed that with some wood glue.

I had a pretty good start in the fifteen minutes or so of painting that I did get in, so it was worth trying to save this one in the studio.

A few of you asked to see a picture of a pre mixed palette along with a painting. Thanks for the request, I love hearing what you want to see.
I was thinking more of my class than the blog last week so I don't have many shots of the pre mixed palette to show you. Here is one, and I have one other that I will work into another post.
I will go out painting next week and I'll be sure to get a few photos of the pre mixed palette for you.


I sketched the main lines and masses of my design on the linen board and then began mixing up the main colors.


This is the palette with most of the block in colors mixed.


What the painting looked like after I wiped the dirt off. I wiped the upper third while wet because there was just too much dirt to leave much of the paint. Then I rubbed the rest of the dirt off after the paint had dried. It is usually best to wait until the painting has dried before trying to get off any dirt that has blown onto a wet painting.


"Trees and Fields", 6" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection

This was finished in the studio yesterday. I would have preferred to finish it on site, but after if blew over, I could not continue painting on it. I had roughed in a horse that I decided to paint out. I'll have to save that idea for another painting. It was drawing too much attention, and I felt locked into that lower left corner. I was more interested with the fields and trees leading into the distance.

Viernes Santo- Good Friday

Since it is Good Friday, Viernes Santo here in Mexico, I wanted to share these two paintings that I did my first year living in Mexico. That was 1990.
Here is my confession. I do not know what size they are or the titles that I gave them. I am bad at keeping records of that sort, but I was even worse back then. Maybe it seemed presumptuous to me to think that it would matter. Maybe I was just lazy. They are probably about 24"x30" give or take a little. Oil on canvas. These are scanned from fairly bad snap shots.



On Viernes Santo there are Via Crucis (Way of the Cross or Stations of the Cross) all over Mexico. I was living in Atotonilco, and this was the first time that I ever saw anything quite like this. They reenact the Stations of the Cross with local folks playing the roles. Everyone turns out to watch. They end up with the crucifixion in front of the church.




I liked the fact that the guy in the foreground had his crown of thorns over a wool cap.

I have a few other paintings or the Via Crucis, but I am was so bad about photographing my art and keeping records, that I could not find images.


Here are a few more photos of the procession. These are from 1990 in Atotonilco.
The views from above were taken from the roof where I was living at the time. Then I went down into the crowd. There are a few others taken by a friend of mine, Phil, who was visiting at the time.














Thanks for looking!

More stuff from the workshop last week

"Jane and Elizabeth painting the three stacks and fields."


Everyone in the group was really into a good rhythm by Thursday. To make the most of our time, I began setting up with them to paint, instead of doing a demo while everyone watched and then painted. They still got to watch my process, and listen to me talk, but we got more done. Every fifteen or twenty minutes I would make the rounds and check out everyone's progress.
We painted in Atotonilco in the morning and had lunch there. By the afternoon it was getting pretty windy and hot, so we decided to move on to a greener spot. That is one benefit to working with a small group. We were very mobile.
We headed to a place that I really love to paint. I don't like to bring large painting groups there, but since there were just four of us it was just right.

We had a steady head wind here, but the view made up for it. You can see that we were all pretty close together, so I could paint and talk at the same time. I usually do that anyway, but this time I had someone to listen :)



"The four easels grouped close together."


All of the colors and values in a painting are relative to the other colors around them. One of the main things that I teach in my workshops, is the pre mixing of colors on the palette first, before any painting is done. Mixing colors like this has many advantages.
First I decide on my composition and lightly lay in a few lines of vine charcoal on my canvas. As I mix my colors, I have time to think about my design. If I could have made a better choice, there is still time to adjust when I begin to lay down the paint.
I usually pre mix five to seven shadow family colors and five to seven light family colors, or more, depending on the scene. I'll chose the darkest shadow color/value and the lightest light. Also the lightest shadow color. No light color should be darker than this. I'll mix colors to represent the main masses. Sometimes I will break those down into subtle color changes of the same value, or I may wait and do that later in the painting stage. I go back and forth between my mixed piles, adjusting and comparing. What does one color look like COMPARED to the others?
It is almost like having a little painting on the palette. I get to see how the colors that I chose relate to each other.
Once I have the majority of color choices mixed and adjusted for hue, value and chroma (or saturation) I can begin to paint rapidly. There is only a limited amount of time when painting the changing light, so with a lot of my mixing and left side of the brain stuff out of the way, I am free to dive in with the right side of my brain and just paint.
I will discuss pre mixing some more in upcoming posts.

I do not have just one method for how I start the painting part once I have my color piles. Sometimes I use a toned canvas. Other times I prefer the white color of the oil primed linen. Sometimes I block in big value masses first then break those up into smaller bits. Other times I'll paint the lines of a more complex scene with a mid value gray or even sienna type color and then go from there. Once in a while I'll start from my center of interest and work my way out. I think an artist should have many tricks in their bag to chose from. It is much more exciting to go with your emotions of the scene and vary how you approach the painting rather than just being a slave to a set formula.

Below is my painting from Thursday afternoon.



"Three Stacks, Afternoon", 6" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection


We went back to the same location on Friday morning. Three of us decided to paint the same scene again, this time with morning light from the left. I like painting in series like this, with different light effects, so I was glad that they were up for it. I zoomed in my composition a bit on the three stacks of corn stalks, and eliminated the sky and the plowed field in the foreground.

below is one of my paintings from Friday morning.



"Three Stacks, Morning", 6" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection


The farmers don't like you going out in their fields when they have crops in or have just plowed, so we chose a broad view. I think that it was easier to simplify and see the big masses and aerial perspective better from here anyway. We were elevated just a bit above the field. I have always loved how Van Gogh would chose a slightly elevated view of fields to catch the patterns like this.

I pushed everyone to keep working fast, and they were good sports about it. I had them work for about an hour and a half on the first piece Friday, and then we did a "sprint" of about 45 minutes, or less, for the last painting of the class.
After a late lunch, we put all of the paintings from the week up in my gallery and talked about them. A lot of the pieces had been quickly tucked away as we kept moving on to new paintings, so it was nice to be able to see them all together and share thoughts and ideas.


"Scott hard at work."