But Can She Act?

"Variations on a Diva" (24x30)

Why do I still assume because a model looks good, that she'll pose good as well? Actually, this girl did (does) so I've painted her again... But I do know some rather attractive people who couldn't make a facial expression or strike a convincing pose to save their life -- too bad, because you really need to be able to act a little bit to help the artist make a convincing picture... This girl is an excellent figure model, but when I asked her to give me a smoky night club singer, she went to town making up dozens of great poses without any direction -- it was fun just watching the wheels turn in her head as she kept trying new ideas...

Even though these poses are still, they're not static -- due to her imaginative acting skills, and loose edges in the brushwork. If I did anything right in this painting, it would have to be this one stroke on her infra-spinatus (don't quote me) muscle just left of the scapula shadow edge -- like Dean Cornwell said, when you pull off a happy accident like that, you should fall on your knees and thank God for it!

Anyway, I'm no DC, else I'd do it on command everywhere I wanted, but that little shape sure helps this piece. Working quickly through a multi-figure painting of this sort helps you stay fresh and not get bogged down in finessing the details (which would only drag the whole thing down into the manikin basement at Macy's).



After working out the composition, this one was all about edges and subtle value shifts in her skin temperature. I kept her eyes in a lighter value range to deflect too much attention to that area and keep a balance with the rest of her form...



The interest happens up close in the abstract edges of the strokes that break contours and create chaos amongst shapes that actually lend themselves to movement, keeping the original concept more fresh & alive. Of course I could never do that without a great looking model...who can act to boot.

Goodbye Summer

"Haystack Rock"

Like the fog bank rolling in on this beach, here comes Autumn... In fact, it has been building all summer , so I could have written that line back in July. Every once in awhile we get short changed on summertime weather, and this seemed to be one of those years, yet there were definite highlights and some 90 degree days too.

This was painted spur of the moment -- it was 11 AM when I decided I would chance a run to the coast (about an hour and a half away) and see if I couldn't get one more beach scape in for the season and get back in time for dinner -- which I did. I also managed to go with my family a week later and painted some more that I'll post next time.

The fog receded when I arrived, then rolled back in before I left so timing was good and worth the trip. If you haven't been to Cannon Beach, Haystack Rock is a spectacularly huge and well known formation and surprisingly not the only one shaped like it on our coast -- an hour and a half or so south is another haystack almost identical to this one in Pacific City, several stories high and even another one or two similar to Cannon beach's elsewhere on the Oregon coast I'm told.

Anyway, Fall is here and with it's long shadows, light & colour, more reasons to get out and paint before the rain starts... of course then comes figure paintin' time!

Happy Fall everybody!

The Lonely Oregon Coast

"Gleneden Morning"

Since growing up in California, I've always had a love of the beach -- specifically the southern California beach where you can actually play in the water without hypothermia or being crushed by a rogue tree log. The central Oregon coast however, is a special place with unique attributes all it's own. Somehow (and I'm sure the climate has mostly to do with it) things are slower up here; you can drive for miles along undeveloped coastline and still get a sense of what Lewis & Clark must have experienced when they first arrived. That, and the fact that I have some roots up here where my mother and her sisters grew up and once owned a beach shack together in Seaside, Oregon helps to create a fondness of it's solitude for me...

"Small Town Beach Road"

There is a 'loneliness' here, especially after school starts that I truly enjoy -- where the weather is still nice, but the vacationers are gone. In many of the coastal towns you can see remnants of the businesses of years gone by that catered to the summer beach goers; an old A-frame structure that once was a kite shop now empty and grown over with wild blackberry, or a one time family seafood restaurant turned auto parts store that still has it's old signage, cracked and peeling. Many older shacks and buildings still painted the pastel colours of the fifties & sixties; mint & pink, peach & aqua blue hold a nostalgic attraction... Perhaps it's middle age, but my own nostalgia really kicks in when I'm here, and coming to paint makes it all the more enjoyable.

For about 15 years before my mother passed away, she had a beach house north of Neskowin, a little bit hidden away where you had to drive through a forest to get there... the beauty of which was best appreciated in doses of seasonal extended weekend trips. Rain or shine, there was always something to do; beach comb for sand dollars or read a book, barbecue on the deck or watch the stormy surf by a warm fireplace...

In many areas with only service road access and fir tree forests all the way down to the shore, there are hidden spots yet to be discovered and I hope to get out here next month and tap that experience again. Like generations of families before us, I'll spend memory making time with my own family combing the beach for shells and agates, sandcastle building & flying kites and with permission, sneak off to discover another spot to paint and create new memories of this place I've come to love, the lonely Oregon coast...

My Studio Condemned...

Old Brick Firehouse (9x12)

Recently one evening while I was downtown hunting for a subject to paint, I came across this old firehouse -- there used to be several of these around Portland, all built 100+ years ago and long since converted into commercial properties. I actually used to work in this one -- shared a studio here with a couple of other artists until we outgrew it. A number of studios were located on the ground floor with an architects office occupying the entire second floor. The original barn doors were still on the front when I moved in -- they used to have a photograph of the horses that pulled the fire wagons hanging in the entrance when you walked in. This building now boarded up and slated for demolition, is in a neglected part of town near the train & bus stations.

When we were working there (often late into the night) there was always plenty of what we called "theater" going on behind the building. More than once my studio mates called 911 while witnessing addicts shooting up or the local gals servicing their clientele right outside our window... One night a bottle flew through the window, and you always had to wear shoes in the summertime when taking trash out to the dumpster as the side parking lot was usually littered with hypodermic needles every morning. Still it was a cool building to work in and I learned a lot from the other artists there -- hard to believe that was 20 years ago, but I'm glad I got to capture it now before it's gone. This painting is currently hanging in the Laguna Plein Air Painters "Best of Plein Air" show in Laguna Beach, CA.

Recent plein air work...

Finale (9x12) o/c

Prelude to Summer (8x10) o/c

Mt Hood Study (8x10) o/p

Multnomah Village Antique Shop (9x12) o/p

Avoiding Temptation...

Diva (16x12)

After a long figure painting session, we asked our tired model if she would strike a pose or two for photos (with the heels that she couldn't endure during the pose she held earlier when we painted...). The temptation of course with photo reference is that you have the luxury to return to your frozen subject over & over whenever you like, usually resulting in too much detail and an overworked piece in the end (if you ever get to the end!).
So, I tried to stay away from too much detail by using the edge of a #4 brush for the smallest areas -- the idea is to keep more freshness to the brush strokes & paint texture. Another trick many painters use is the 'time limit method'; set an equivalent amount of time on the clock that you would have under a live figure model condition and quit when the buzzer goes off.

Rehearsing Young Dancer (16x12)

This was done from a black & white photograph, so I stuck to a limited palette (it's very difficult to invent convincing colour) but the mood reads better like this anyway....again, avoiding extraneous details that are tempting with smaller sized brushes.

(detail)

Without small brush work, this painting has a fresher and more spontaneous feel than if I had noodled the details with tiny brushes. I'm not a great painter, but I have learned that a well placed heavily-loaded larger brush stroke will read as detailed as a multitude of smaller, finely finessed brush strokes...it may take a few tries, but the end result will have a fresher look to it.

Oswego Homestead (16x20)

Last but not least, this piece just received the Purchase Prize award at last nights"Chronicles Invitational Exhibit" at the Lake Oswego Festival of Arts. The Festival selects one painting annually into their permanent collection that chronicles the history of the town of Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Say "NO" to Flesh Tone!

Lindsey (8x6 0il)

Figure studies are done quickly -- just long enough to capture gesture, shape, colour. Something to consider when working quickly in an editing mode is the use of exaggeration of colour and contrast. Often in figure drawing studios, the lighting is less than optimal so improvisation is helpful if you know what to push...

(12x9 oil pastel)

Think in terms of temperature, not colour. The phrase "Skin tone" has a premeditated effect on your choice of colour so I try to not use it. "Flesh tone" is even worse (not to mention prejudice) -- it immediately conjures up pinks where greens, violets, and a variety of unnameable grays & browns are much more accurate. Skin (of any race) has a unique, absorbing surface and is always visually effected by it's surrounding light and background colour.

Sue (12x16 dry pastel)

In most cases (especially with lighter skin) the larger the form, the grayer it appears/ the smaller the form, the redder (or warmer). Blood runs closer to the surface on small forms; the nose is redder than the face, the face redder than the head, the head redder than the torso, etc. Exaggerating the temperature of forms helps define them while adding interest palette-wise. Extremities such as wrists & ankles, fingers & toes, ears & nose, knees & elbows have a warmer tint compared to broader parts such as thighs, torso/back, etc. By keeping the larger, broader areas of the body cooler and the smaller parts warmer, you will have a more convincing palette of colour in your studies as well as your finished works of the human figure.

On the EDGE...

Study for Betty Carter (16x8)

Edges -- there are several kind; Soft, Hard, Broken, Lost... Without a variety of edges, a two-dimensional painting will appear either out of focus or as flat as flat can be. Edges of course turn objects in space, and give the illusion of space itself as well as make the subject of a painting relate to it's background plane. Edges also create texture, energy and movement...

In this study sketch, all of the main edge categories are present -- mostly created without much thought by painting rapidly with little investment. One of the joys of painting this way is not worrying about the outcome -- it's a "study" not a final product, so there's plenty of bandwidth for mistakes along with happy accidents -- stuff you leave behind or carry over to the next version. Her cheek on the left side of the picture has a soft to lost edge -- this soft edge turns the curve of her face away from us. Conversely, the drop-shadow of her lower lip casts a hard edge on her chin. Those edges create form. Other edges present in her hair, dress and even the edges of random strokes in the background express energy & movement...

Banjo Player study (detail 16x12)

Broken edges are interrupted lines, either skipped along with repeating staccato-like strokes, scrubbed in with a coarse brush or achieved with a dry brush technique (thicker paint, dragged on lightly). Sometimes a wet-into-wet squiggle will suffice for a broken/soft edge as with the banjo player's shoulder -- this also creates energy within the composition.

Lost edges are just that -- they don't really exist where you know an edge really does. These edges are atmospheric tricks of the eye where the value of one shape runs into the area of another shape without any defining border. These edges are often found within shadow shapes because of the lack of defining light, but can also be used (or exaggerated) in the light areas as well to create moody effects or to help in unifying the subject with it's background. A lost edge gives a receding effect to a shape adding extra dimension to the picture plane, but of all the edges, this one should be used the least -- too many times or in too large an area it can read more gimmicky than believable. Back lit objects have a halo effect of soft and lost edges and are a good exercise to render along with hair or folds in clothing and when studying edges.