The Oil Painting Blog : landscape painting

A Simple Productivity Tip from Da Vinci

Will Kemp — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 18:43:00 GMT

Ever wondered where Da Vinci found the time to create all his masterpieces? Alongside his fine art painting he managed to dabble as a scientist, geologist, architect, mathematician, engineer, and anatomist with a bit of aeronautical design thrown in for good measure!

So how can we adopt a little bit of Da Vinci in our own practice? One of the most simple ways is to use a colored ground for our painting art. Or, as Da Vinci favored, an imprimatura.


Self-portrait by Leonardo Da Vinci, red chalk drawing, 1510-1515.

An imprimatura is an initial stain of color painted onto a white ground. It is usually created using an earth color such as burnt umber or raw sienna. When painted onto your canvas it provides you with a transparent toned ground to work onto. (For more oil painting terms and definitions, here's my free online Glossary for Oil Painting Terms--An Essential Guide for Beginners.)

Why does it speed up your process as a painting artist? The toned ground acts as your mid tone. You then just have to work on the lights and darks. This means you can quickly establish a feel and mood for the painting with very little effort.

The name Imprimatura comes from the Italian for 'first paint layer' and often, the initial stain is left visible in areas of the finished painting.

You can use this painting technique to prepare a selection of different colored surfaces that can be perfect for quick oil painting sketches and poster studies.

Maybe a burnt sienna imprimatura for an autumnal scene, or a terre-verte for a landscape painting?

By knocking down the white glare of the pre-primed canvas, you can quickly get your ideas down and speed up your painting time in the process.

To get started with an imprimatura try using a raw umber from your painting palette. It is a neutral, semi-transparent tone that is ideal to apply to your surface. It creates a unified layer of neutral tone that dries quickly.

How to Apply an Imprimatura

1 - Place a few small dots of raw umber evenly around the canvas.

2 - Then dip your painting brush into a small amount of turpentine.

3 - Now evenly scrub the turpentine with a coarse bristle painting brush over the small drops of paint into the surface of the canvas until all the white has been eliminated.
You are looking for a translucent, even thin layer of paint, like a stain.

Toning as such creates a clean, strong foundation for subsequent paint layers.

You can now block in your drawing with the raw umber, which is thinned to a fluid, flexible consistency with turpentine and a touch of linseed oil.

If you'd like to learn more oil painting terms I've just published a Glossary of Oil terms for beginners.

--Will

Words of a Winner

Austin R. Williams — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 05:06:00 GMT

The winners of our Self-Portrait Cover Competition are featured in the September issue of American Artist, and they share advice about how to paint the figure and how to maintain a successful painting practice. When we asked David Tanner, the winner of the competition, to give his advice, he offered more than we had room to print. So I thought I'd share it here--hopefully it's useful for those of you working on how to paint the figure realistically, as this artist does. Here, then, are David Tanner's recommendations:


Self-Portrait by David Tanner 2009, oil painting, 16 x 12. Winner of American Artist's Self-Portrait Cover Competition.

If you are interested in representational painting, make sure you find a school or take classes taught by artists who can "walk the walk." Even the most general of painting classes should be taught by a painter capable of doing a basic still life demonstration painting from life.

Paint what you love, of course, but also challenge yourself to paint subjects that hold less interest. I had no idea how much I would love plein air landscape painting until I tried it for the first time, and I'm positive it has improved my reaction time to light and color in other genres.

Draw from life constantly--both alone and with fellow artists. Take advantage of local open figure drawing sessions, where you can join other artists and chip in for a model fee to practice with a live model outside of your classes.

Go to museums and galleries, and linger over the paintings that resonate with you. In particular, look to see how the artists have simplified their subjects down to the masses of color-values.

Study magazines like American Artist, and pay close attention to the advice presented in the articles. In my early days as a painter, I created my first successful flesh-color combinations after reading an interview in American Artist with a well-known portrait painter.

Painting from life is the only way to successfully sensitize your eye to color, value, and form. Avoid frequent painting from photographs until you have extensive experience painting all subjects from life.

Squint and compare when observing your subject and your painting to see value relationships. Let your eyes blur and go out of focus when observing colors on your subject. The blurring will simplify the color to a mass and may make your color mixing choices easier.

Stand far back from your canvas after every few brushstrokes to monitor the success of the effect you are achieving compared to the subject.

For more information about the artist, visit Tanner's website. You can learn more about the artist's painting--and see all the finalists of our Self-Portrait Competition--in the September issue of American Artist.

--Austin

Video Lesson on Using Photos for Studio Landscape Paintings

Mitchell Albala — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 04:19:00 GMT


Upper Ridge at Dusk, 2011, oil on panel, 18 x 18.		Mt. Shuksan in Sunlight, 2010, oil on panel, 12 x 12.

At my April 2011 exhibition at Lisa Harris Gallery, I gave an hour-long presentation on my "In Sunlight" series. This was a special opportunity for artists and laypersons to get a "studio perspective" on my creative process for landscape paintings executed in the studio. One of the key lessons is the proper use of photographic reference. Paintings should never look like the photograph, but only be used as a launching point. I alter the original reference, severely cropping and inventing color combinations. I also discussed how I synthesize compositions into a few simplified shapes, handle paint texture to augment spatial illusion, and work with color strategies.

The painting series experiments with alternative ways to capture the illusion of natural light. In many paintings (discussed in Video 2), I almost completely abandon traditional value relationships in favor of saturated colors, modulated primarily with subtle hue and temperature differences. You can read more about the development of this series in three posts at my blog, Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting, and see the whole series of paintings at my portfolio site.

Video 1 covers the paintings Snow Rivers in Half Light and Pinnacle Peak, Last Light.

Video 2 covers the quartet of brilliant "yellow" paintings for which the series is named.

Video 3 covers the paintings Upper Ridge in Snow, Upper Ridge at Dusk, and White Space.

Video 4 covers the paintings December Peak and Ascent, followed by a Q&A session.

--Mitchell

Mitchell Albala is the author of Landscape Painting: Essential Concepts and Techniques for Plein Air and Studio Practice (Watson-Guptill, 2009). Find him on Facebook and YouTube.

Finding Meaning in the Details of My Painting

Patricia Watwood — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 03:26:00 GMT


Some of the inspiration for the landscape in my painting, Leaves of Grass, came from found images of industrial areas along the New York waterfront.

Sometimes in making a small study for a larger oil painting, an artist will sketch in certain areas very loosely. It's almost as if she says to herself, "and there's some other stuff that fills in this area of the composition, but I'll think about that later." With the set of small paintings I was doing recently, I wanted to push myself to answer those questions earlier, and allow myself more time to critically consider the elements I include, before committing to the time and scale of a large work.

The still life and landscape details in an allegorical painting are the passages that tell most of the details in the narrative story. In what time period is the piece set? Where? What kind of person is this figure? I am interested in creating images that tell viewers they are looking at a world we share and live in. It is important to me that we have images of the human body that show a contemporary experience of the figure in art, as opposed to a sensibility that refers to a time past.

I mentioned in a recent post that Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," was the inspiration for my painting of the same name. So, I wanted this painting to feel like the figure has flopped down on a grassy bank, but not in Whitman's time--in the modern world. I chose the still life objects around her--paperback books, an aluminum water bottle, and an iPod--to show that she is contemporary to our time.


	I often take simple snapshots of landscape elements for my paintings. I don't paint directly from the photo. I use the details to support my imagination.



	Creating plein air studies is also a rewarding way to get a basic knowledge of natural forms that you can draw on for later studio paintings.

The bright colors of these objects also anchor them in modern life. All our stuff is so colorful! What a feast for a painter! To compose the still life painting elements for this work, I gathered objects mostly from my home life, though I'll sometimes shop or borrow for something specific. For example, I knew that I wanted the fabric my figure is laying on to be blue, because it would complement her skin tone, work with the overall design, and to create a relaxed setting. So, I headed to the fabric store to find something that suited the picture.

The landscape is where I departed into the world of imagination. I designed the landscape based on the composition needed for the image. The dark of the trees behind her creates a good contrast for the paleness of the model's skin, and also makes the space feel more private and secluded for a bit of nude sunbathing. The open meadow slopes down to the waterfront of Brooklyn, and shows both nature and industry peaceably cohabitating. Whitman is big on embracing the Holy in the World as it is, not prettified or cleansed of human messes. The waterfront I ended up depicting is not a specific viewpoint, but an amalgamation of elements from the New York waterfront and park landscapes. I combined observation from nature, landscape paintings by other artists, and a few photos from the internet, for my references. I usually print out a set of reference photos and then invent the landscape from my head based on all this material.

For more detail on the landscape, I'll often do outdoor studies, search for found images on the internet, and simply take my own photos for precise details of say, an oak tree branch or a container crane. In general, I paint from life as much as possible, but I am happy to be able to draw on photo reference for background details such as this. I have done many plein air studies, and so have a basic knowledge of natural forms and atmospheric effects to invent from as well. Combined, they express my vision.

--Patricia

For more painting instruction from Patricia, check out her latest DVD, Figure Painting: Realistic Skin Tone.

Oil Painting: The Dutch Italianates at the Muscarelle Museum of Art

American Artist — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 10:00:00 GMT

The Muscarelle Museum of Art, in Williamsburg, Virginia, will be the initial site for the national tour of the major exhibition of Old Master paintings.

The Dutch Italianates: Seventeenth-Century Masterpieces From Dulwich Picture Gallery
Through March 29, 2009
Muscarelle Museum of Art
The College of William & Mary
Williamsburg, Virginia
(757) 221-2700

The Muscarelle Museum of Art, in Williamsburg, Virginia, will be the initial site for the national tour of the major exhibition of Old Master paintings. “The Dutch Italianates: Seventeenth-Century Masterpieces From Dulwich Picture Gallery” presents a variety of views of 17th-century Italian landscapes as seen through the eyes of Dutch artists, many of whom played a crucial role in the birth of a new genre of landscape painting in their home country. The exhibition features a group of 40 paintings by such artists as Aelbert Cuyp, Nicolaes Berchem, Karel Dujardin, and Adam Pynacker.


Traveling Peasants by Nicolaes Berchem.	Bridge on an Italian Landscape by Adam Pynacker.

Oil Painting: Open Spaces

American Artist — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:02:00 GMT

Francis Di Fronzo stopped working with paint brushes to create his own technique of “tapping the landscape into existence.”

All Paths to War
Lead Back to You (Part I)
2002, oil on panel, 48 x 48.
Private collection.

by Lynne Moss Perricelli

California artist Francis Di Fronzo is a dedicated realist painter, but not in the traditional sense. He doesn’t use brushes—at least not ones from the art-supply store. Instead, he invents all the painting implements depending on the needs of the piece, relying for the most part on a “comb” consisting of 60 or 70 individual hairs adhered to a thin, flat piece of wood. With the comb in hand, he can run it through the paint on his palette, and then tap it repeatedly in layers to build up thousands of individual blades of grass. The landscapes that result are open, barren, and mysterious.

The artist devised this approach about 10 years ago, when he found himself tired and frustrated by the process of painting. “The way I was painting made me sick of being an artist,” he recalls. “All the talk about the medium, the brushwork, the buttery paint—all I cared about was the picture I was painting.” After completing his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia, he had been working with the figure, and although he still wanted to work realistically, he knew he had to change his subject and approach it in a radical way. So he put away his brushes and made the landscape his subject.

“I always perceived landscape painting as being tied to notions of romance, nostalgia, and, in particular, beauty,” he writes in a statement on his website. “I never understood any of these notions. To me, the landscape was barren, imposing, and completely indifferent to anything human.” At the same time, the universality of the landscape appealed to Di Fronzo. He began to consider how the subject could serve as a stage for “everything we understand the world to be.”

A Better Future (Part II)
2006–2007, oil on panel, 24 x 72.
Collection Post & Schell, P.C.,
Washington, DC.

The artist’s landscapes originate almost entirely in his imagination. When he lived in Philadelphia, his urban surroundings offered little in the way of nature, but since moving to California, he often walks through the nearby farmlands and absorbs the scenes. Rather than taking photos or making sketches, he gathers internal references that he calls upon later in his studio when making a quick study of a potential composition. “The key is that I paint landscapes that have a certain feel,” he describes. “They may reflect how I feel about my life at the moment and they express it in some way—at least to me.”

Often he makes dozens of studies—consisting of just three or four lines on a small piece of paper—before deciding on a composition. He then prepares a Masonite panel with gesso and tones it with an earth color. He has no brand preference for his oil paints. After establishing some basic marks to establish the framework of the composition, he drags the comb through the paint on his palette and begins the process of “tapping the landscape into existence,” as he puts it. “Each hair has a little bit of paint on it,” the artist explains. “With each tap, 10 to 70 hair marks are on the panel. It’s like a stamp. I do this over the entire panel. After it dries, I do another layer, creating five to 10 layers of tone and color to convey depth.” To make a path, he might sand a certain area to remove the paint. “The technique is like pointillism,” he adds. “The colors mix in the eye. I layer the colors and the mind does the mixing.”
For the skies, Di Fronzo uses typical flat or filbert brushes, but these are the only conventional brushes he employs. “Recently I bought a 79-cent brush from the local art-supply shop and modified it by allowing the paint to dry on the brush,” he describes. “The brush was as hard as a rock, but I was able to loosen the clump of bristles into smaller clumps of bristles, and I used this ruined brush to paint the leaves of a tree.” Emphasizing that he just likes to make pictures, he adds that he creates whatever tools or techniques will suit the subject.

A Better Future (Part IV)
2007, oil on panel, 24 x 72.
Private collection.

A large part of Di Fronzo’s aversion to traditional painting may have to do with his natural inclination toward drawing. In the beginning of his career, most of his shows were of drawings, “but the galleries didn’t make any money,” he says. “There’s not much profit in drawings.” Although he turned to painting to accommodate his galleries and advance his career, he never lost his love for pencil and paper. “I love the feeling of crosshatching,” the artist says. “The result and the experience are relaxing and meditative.” Not surprisingly, then, the layering of tiny lines with the comb holds strong appeal. Not only can he draw with the paint but he can also engage in the same state of mind he experiences in drawing. “I seem to get into a trance,” he describes. “That internal voice shuts off. I see the subject and what I’m painting. My mind drifts into the world I’m working on. The images are invented places, and in taking my mind off of the technique I can focus on the picture floating in my head.”

As the painting develops, Di Fronzo responds to the imagery. The process, in fact, reminds him of when he experimented with Abstract Expressionism in college and he focused on reacting to the marks on the panel. “I start with an idea, but I have to change it,” he says. “The piece is always in motion.” About half the time, Di Fronzo begins a new painting with a blank panel, with no specific idea in mind, but many of the paintings fail, he adds. “I peel off the gesso, and the whole thing goes in the garbage. If the work starts going in the wrong direction, I just walk away from it. There’s no point in forcing it.”

Crows
1998, oil on panel, 48 x 96.
Private collection.

Staying focused and motivated can be challenging with such a labor-intensive process, but Di Fronzo says he is able to keep going because he is realizing an image from his mind onto the panel, and that is satisfying in itself. “The image is in my head, and it has to come out in some way,” he says. “It can be difficult to tap away for hours on end, but I play music and take breaks. I enjoy seeing the painting evolve.”
Besides offering a departure from the figure, the landscape as a painting subject allows Di Fronzo to explore his emotional responses to certain scenes, such as the treeless vistas of Death Valley National Park, in California. “I love to go out in that broad, open landscape,” he describes. “It’s peaceful but in a scary kind of way. It’s nature at its most raw. It’s not green—it’s the bones of the earth. I like to see the landscape at its most basic—undressed.

“There’s a hollow quality about it, and I feel like that is something inside me,” he continues. “It expresses what life is like. There are a lot of people and noise, but we are alone.” He adds that viewers often look at a landscape and remark on its beauty without considering the savage side of nature. “If you spend any time out there you see things that are far from beautiful,” Di Fronzo says. “There’s no mercy. The idea of the romance, and the Garden of Eden, is so false to me. What I try to express is the unsteady feeling of the landscape. It’s not so beautiful but rather kind of hard.”

Dream (Part V)
2007–2008, oil on panel, 20 x 46.
Private collection.

The artist reinforces this concept with his highly suggestive titles. With phrases such as “Don’t Leave Me Now” and “I Look to You and I See Nothing,” the artist implies an absence. “It represents what it is to be a person these days,” he explains. “There can be little actual contact.” Di Fronzo writes in his spare time, and he intends the titles to extend the meaning of the painting, to take the viewer into the picture, and into the artist’s space. “A viewer might lean in, read the title, say it aloud—‘I Thought You’d Be Here Too’—and it brings them in,” he explains. “The title should have as much importance as the image itself.”

As much as a meditative process conjures up the imagery, Di Fronzo hopes viewers embark on their own interior journeys when viewing his paintings. “They are meant to be stared at for long periods of time,” he says. “I tell people to put a chair in front of a painting and after a while the blades of grass begin to move, the horizon wavers.” In fact, this movement within the piece is a positive sign of the success of the picture, according to Di Fronzo, who notes that painting in itself is about visual tricks. His primary objective, however, is to translate an internal image onto the panel. “I try to reconstruct the dream,” he describes, “to bring it back. In the process I don’t end up with what I thought I wanted because there’s really no direct translation. But the process also adds something.”

About the Artist
Francis Di Fronzo, of San Francisco, earned his M.F.A. in painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia. He won a Pew Fellowship in 2004, and was also the recipient of a Stobart Foundation Fellowship in 1998, among other awards. He is represented in Philadelphia by Rosenfeld Gallery, which will host a solo show of his exhibition of his work from January 9 through February 1, 2009, and Somerville-Manning Gallery, in Greenville, Delaware. For more information or to contact the artist, visit www.francisdifronzo.com.

Lynne Moss Perricelli is a freelance writer and editor based in New York City.

Oil Painting: Susan Lichtman: The Powerful Use of Light in Oil Interiors

American Artist — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:17:00 GMT

This Massachusetts painter uses a closely controlled palette and open painting approach to create highly evocative visions of interiors and figures.

by John A. Parks

Family at Sundown
2005, oil on linen,
48 x 72. All artwork this
article collection the artist
unless otherwise indicated.

Susan Lichtman loves the light of a strong late-afternoon sun raking through the interior of a family house, fracturing views of figures and furniture, and sparking a sense of surprise and revelation. In Family at Sundown for instance, a woman is lost in the shadows of a kitchen while a child emerges from a doorway with a hula hoop, her body split in half by a shaft of sunshine. In the foreground another child clutches a ball and a man peers at a piece of paper, perhaps a letter. Both figures have their heads shrouded in shadow. The powerful action of the light shifts our attention away from the physiognomy of the figures and onto the overall space and the indeterminate drama that seems to be taking place. It also imbues the image with a strong sense of a particular moment in time.

“I’m a terrible storyteller,” says Lichtman. “In literature I’m interested in those moments between events—the descriptions of settings and the way characters look at each other. I love those moments in film as well. Some of my paintings merely depict a particular moment in a family’s day, when everyone is doing something different in very close proximity to one another. In other pictures I have used well-known narratives or characters to guide the choices in my compositions. I recently became interested in painting different kinds of mother characters. For example, I worked with the character of Anna Karenina, a glamorous but alienated mother. Right now I’m working on drawings about house-hunters. Maybe all the news about the real-estate market has inspired this idea.” The artist’s narrative strategy, like her rendering approach, is one of hints and suggestions, rather than fully realized stories and perfectly turned forms. “I used to love Mallarmé’s quote that said you should suggest and not name, because that’s where the poetry lies,” she recalls. On the other hand, the artist does not let her paintings become too general. “I’m trying to get mystery and specificity at the same time,” she adds, “even though they seem to be quite opposite things.” The challenge of balancing the opposing forces of mystery and revelation can be seen in Woman With Overcoat Leaving, in which carefully delineated figures in the foreground share a space with more ethereal figures that inhabit the shadowy depths in the back of the painting. Even in the foreground, however, Lichtman doesn’t care to fully render form, relying instead on the power of outline and the suggestive function of thoughtfully placed flat areas of color.

Woman With Overcoat, Leaving
2006, oil on linen,
30 x 32.

For all the dramatic light in her work, Lichtman’s paintings are unified by a carefully controlled palette. “To me, close-valued color is magical,” says the artist. “It’s a way for the paint to imply the fiction of light and air. A palette of close values also gives the picture a kind of envelope into which everything is placed.” In order to achieve this end, the artist uses a very limited set of colors. “For many years I used a palette of earth red, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and white,” she says. “The darkest color I could mix was red and cobalt blue, so everything remained in a fairly narrow range, tonally. And because the cobalt easily gets overwhelmed by the red, the paintings tended to have a reddish tinge.” In the last few years Lichtman has added black and chromium or permanent green to her palette, increasing the range of the darks and giving a much cooler feeling to the pictures. The artist also considers the overall decorative property of a picture achieved with a limited palette. “I think my idea of beauty in painting has to do with the tension between the depiction of deep space and the properties of shape and surface,” she says. “I see that tension in interior paintings of artists I love best, from Roman wall painting to De Hooch, Vuillard, Bonnard, and Gwen John. Sunlight or lamplight juxtaposed with shadows add to the complexity of shapes. I am interested in how light can divert attention away from figures and slow down the reading of the imagery.”

Figures Beneath
a Tulip
2006, gouache on panel, 7 x 5.

Lichtman begins a picture by painting directly, with no underpainting. Generally the setting is the house in which she and her family have lived for the last 15 years. The artist does not paint from life, however, preferring to work up the picture in the studio she keeps on the property. “I can always go and check something if I need to,” she says. “But painting from memory somehow allows for a more resolved image.” The figures that the artist incorporates into her paintings are based on sketches or images she has culled from magazines and fashion photography. Often figures become hybrids as she melds images of fashion models with those of family members. The artist also uses her own photographs of light bouncing around interiors for reference.

Rather than plan out her compositions, Lichtman allows them to evolve through a kind of discovery process. “I started working in a new and kind of crazy way a few years ago,” she explains. “I work from the specific to the general. On a large canvas I might start by painting something very small—a vase of flowers for example. Next, I will add something to it—the arm of a figure behind it, perhaps. I keep adding to the first parts bit by bit, so that the painting grows organically from that first seed. Some of the parts are painted from life, and some from memory or photos.” Eventually, when the artist has covered most of the canvas, she finds that she has to start moving things around, adding or subtracting. “I wouldn’t recommend this method for everyone,” the artist admits, “but for me it helps me to knit together every part of the picture. And I like the fact that I have no idea what the final composition will look like when I start.” The artist also reports that this way of painting fits with her busy life of teaching and looking after her family, which makes long stretches of uninterrupted studio time a rarity. The approach is further aided by her adherence to a limited palette, ensuring that when she returns to a painting she is readily able to keep the color consistent throughout the work.

Yellow Purse
2006, oil on linen, 42 x 48.
Private collection.

Lichtman applies her paint broadly and directly, using bristle brushes to apply bold color to her surfaces. “I paint on linen,” she says. “I used to use a very good paint, which I then mixed with marble dust and wax in order to make a dry, matte, and almost cementlike paint. Recently I have discovered Maroger medium available at StudioProducts.com. It’s a gel that is made from mixing together several ingredients, and it radically transforms the consistency of the oil paint. Some people call it the “secret of the Old Masters”; other people say it is risky to use. I’ve been using it for five years and I am a total fan—I would hate to give it up. The new artificial Maroger mediums are not the same.” The artist acknowledges that varnish and oil mixtures such as Maroger carry with them a risk of cracking and darkening, but like many other painters Lichtman is willing to take that risk in exchange for the superior control and handling that the mixture offers. The artist is also a believer in the virtues of lead white paint in spite of its toxicity.

As well as her large paintings on linen, Lichtman has produced many small works on panels using casein and gouache. On a smaller scale the artist’s touch and brushwork is much more evident. In Family Dog, for instance, the broken brushwork gives an all-over, almost carpetlike feel to the image, breaking up figures and props in an intriguingly deep space. “I used to use the casein in tubes,” says the artist, “but then I had a mural project at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center, in Waltham, Massachusetts, and I ordered theatrical casein. I’ve been using that for some of the small pieces.” Changing to a small scale also brings about changes in compositional possibilities. In several pictures, such as Figures Beneath Tulip and Light Tulip, the artist experimented with a very large close-up element in the foreground and figures diminished by perspective in the distance. “It’s something that I would never do in a big painting,” she says. “I just don’t think it would work on a much larger scale.”

Light Tulip
2006, gouache on panel, 7 x 5.

Lichtman’s journey as an artist began in high school when she drew from the model and studied perspective. “Although art was my consuming interest I wanted to go to a liberal-arts university where I could study literature and art history and science,” she says. “I come from a family of scientists, and I loved Constable’s idea that landscape painting could be considered a branch of the natural sciences.” Lichtman studied at Brown University, in Providence, and then attended the Yale University School of Art, in New Haven, Connecticut, where she worked with William Bailey, Bernard Chaet, Gretna Campbell, and Andrew Forge. “Bailey’s figure-painting class was wonderful for me,” she says. “Although he gave a lot of particular information—and for me, it was remedial training since I did not go to art school—he never taught us to paint in a particular way. He simply encouraged the making of pictures as a form of expression.”

Lichtman talks about the future of her work with considerable ambition. “I’d like the paintings to be more formally succinct,” she says, “while also conveying human figures that are more psychologically and visually believable.” A longtime teacher at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, the artist reflects on the advice that she gives to young people considering a career in art. “I advise them to pursue their passions, even if it means worrying their parents and giving up a more lucrative and stable career option,” she says. “I assure them they will have a wonderful life if they love their work. A life spent in the studio is full of wonder and revelation.”

Night Mother
2006, casein and gouache
on panel, 9 x 12.
Private collection.

About the Artist
Susan Lichtman studied at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Yale University School of Art, in New Haven, Connecticut. For the last 25 years she has taught at Brandeis University, in Waltham, Massachusetts, where she supervises undergraduate students. She shows her work at the Lenore Gray Gallery, in Providence. She recently participated in “Rooms and Voices,” an exhibition at the Gross McCleaf Gallery, in Philadelphia, devoted to the theme of interiors. Lichtman makes her home with her husband and two teenage children in Rehoboth, Massachusetts.

John A. Parks is an artist who is represented by Allan Stone Gallery, in New York City. He is also a teacher at the School of Visual Arts, in New York City, and is a frequent contributor to American Artist, Drawing, Watercolor, and Workshop magazines.

Morgan Samuel Price's "Last of the Roses"

American Artist — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:59:00 GMT

Watch a landscape painting audio slideshow demonstration of Morgan Samuel Price's Last of the Roses (2:08). Price was one of the artists featured in the spring 2008 issue of Workshop magazine.

Oil painting garden scene

Posted to Artist Daily by Karyn on October 08, 2009

Click to Play | View Details

Oil Painting: Tree's Place Gallery Exhibition: Six Premier Landscape Artists

American Artist — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 10:45:00 GMT

Six top artists combined observation, investigation, and invention to respond to the encompassing reality of the landscape. They will be exhibiting their sketches and studio paintings together for the first time this summer.

by M. Stephen Doherty

The difference between looking at a photograph and a great painting is similar to the difference between seeing a plate of food and eating it. One tells us what we are looking at while the other provides a fulfilling experience. Among landscape painters, there are many who accurately describe the appearance of nature, and some who go beyond that to provide a complete response. The six contemporary artists exhibiting together in August at Tree’s Place Gallery, in Orleans, Massachusetts, all have that extraordinary ability.


Vinalhaven Sunset by Jacob Collins, 2008, oil, 36 x 70. Courtesy Hirschl & Adler Modern, New York, New York.	Detail of Yellow Birch, Kaaterskill Falls, New York by Jacob Collins, 2007, graphite on toned paper, 13½ x 10½. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

Three of the exhibiting artists, Jacob Collins, Travis Schlaht, and Nicholas Hiltner, have extensive academic training in drawing and painting the figure, and they apply those skills to the challenge of understanding and interpreting the landscape. The other artists, Joseph McGurl, Donald Demers, and William R. Davis, grew up sailing in the waters of New England and learned to draw and paint what they were obliged to understand about the forces of nature. Despite the differences in their backgrounds, all six artists approach landscape painting as a process of combining knowledge and observation to form a complete interpretation of the emotional, factual, and personal experience.

Collins, Schlaht, and Hiltner have painted together for a number of years and spent several summers creating pleir air landscapes. However, it wasn’t until the summer of 2007 that they began working together to establish a new direction in landscape painting when they led a group of 30 artists (along with artist Edward Minoff) in the Catskill Mountains district of New York State. During the three-week workshop, the participants applied the same level of understanding and investigation to landscape painting that they were already using to create their figure paintings. The program began with an emphasis on scientific research and careful drawing of the elements of the landscape—clouds, plants, rocks, and land formations—and continued with plein air color studies based on observation. The students and teachers then returned to their home studios to use this collective knowledge and resource material to create imaginative, accurate, and comprehensive views of nature.

The goal of this Hudson River School for Landscape (www.hudsonriverlandscape.com) was to establish “a new movement of American art, modeling itself after the artistic, social, and spiritual values of the Hudson River School painters,” says Collins in reference to the 19th-century artists who established the first indigenous art movement in America. “The Hudson River School painters saw the beauty of nature as a deeply important part of our world, and they believed their job was to faithfully represent that beauty. In their tradition, the beauty of the land was a revelation. This deep reverence for the land and idealism is sometimes missing in the contemporary art world. Those painters also laid the groundwork for what became the American Conservation Movement. My hope is that reuniting the kind of idealism that these artists brought to their art with the reverence for the land that they helped introduce to American culture will make a small contribution to solving current problems.”


View Toward Stonehorse Ledge From the Saco River by William R. Davis, 2007, oil, 8 x 12. Collection the artist.	Washington Valley Creek by William R. Davis, 2007, oil on paper, 8 x 10. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

In a question-and-answer exchange Collins provided for the Plein Air section of the American Artist website, he mentioned being influenced by the writings and artwork of 19th-century American artists. “Last year I read Asher B. Durand’s Letters on Landscape Painting, and I was struck by the advice he gave to aspiring landscape artists to draw the individual pieces of the landscape for as long as it takes to understand them before putting it all together,” Collins wrote. “He recommended perhaps even years of drawing branches of trees and rocks, outcroppings, and clusters of trees with a sharp pencil, seeing them as the alphabet of the landscape. I was impressed with his analogy that trying to paint a landscape without learning this alphabet was like trying to write a novel without learning the letters and words of language.”

Schlaht and Hiltner also mention being influenced by Hudson River School painters, such as Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, and Asher B. Durand, as well as other important landscape artists whose work has been presented in recent museum exhibitions. “We’re fortunate to have ready access to galleries and museums in the Northeast,” Schlaht says. “For example, the Brooklyn Museum recently mounted two shows simultaneously that offered an interesting comparison between American and European artists. There was a major exhibition of Durand’s work on one floor and a display of French Barbizon and Impressionist painters on a lower floor. It was fascinating to compare the connections between on-site observational work and studio pictures. I’m not a huge fan of the Impressionists, but I learned a great deal from seeing the way they responded directly to nature; and then I walked upstairs to study how Durand composed studio paintings from his sketches and color studies.”


Detail Study of a Rock by Travis Schlaht, 2007, oil on linen, 5 x 5. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.	Drawing of Trees by Travis Schlaht, 2007, graphite, 9 x 7. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

Hiltner mentions that he also followed the example of Hudson River School painters by making annotated drawings in a notebook while participating in the summer workshop. “There happened to be several exhibitions of drawings in area museums, and I was impressed with the fact that 19th-century artists filled their sketchbooks with drawings and written commentary,” he explains. “They would draw trees, rocks, valleys, and streams and then write notes about the weather patterns, color relationships, and tree identifications, and that would inform their studio paintings. I followed their example and made a lot of small sketches during the workshop, and now I’m reading some books on woodland plants, species of trees, and cloud formation. All of that is helping me formulate plans for studio paintings that are filled with scientific details and, at the same time, are formulated out of the total sensory experience of being in the landscape. The hope is that the studio paintings will say more about what I felt, saw, and studied.”

Collins recently exhibited a 50"-x-120" panoramic landscape painting and over fifty preparatory drawings, plein air sketches, color studies, and paintings for that picture in a solo exhibition, entitled "Rediscovering the American Landscape: The Eastholm Project," at Hirschl & Adler Modern in New York City. In writing about the experience of using outdoor studies to create a large studio painting, he indicated that he loved “the connection between painting outside—scrupulously observing the details and nuances of nature—and painting in the studio, remembering, inventing, and conceptualizing the landscape. Each time I paint outside, I’m desperately trying to record all that I can, to organize the infinite complexity of nature, but sometimes it is hard to know what to look for and pay attention to. Once I’m back in the studio, I find myself asking a million questions—such as whether the horizon could conceivably be pink at this time of day or the surface of the water could ever be lighter than the sky in a certain context—and wishing that I had noticed more when I was outside. At these moments, I vow that I will pay more attention when I’m outdoors, and when I go outside, I end up working with a renewed intensity because I have so many questions in my mind.”


Rock Study by Nicholas Hiltner, 2007, oil on linen, 8 x 10. Collection the artist.	Rock in Stream by Nicholas Hiltner, 2007, graphite and gouache on paper, 6 x 9. Collection the artist.

The Tree’s Place exhibition will include many new drawings, oil sketches, and studio paintings that Collins, Schlaht, and Hiltner created since the 2007 workshop. “Although I’ve done a lot of landscape paintings in the past, these will be some of the first completed paintings created since I began pursuing this broadly informed approach to the landscape,” Schlaht mentions. All three of the artists (who will once again be joined by Edward Minoff) will be conducting a second workshop this summer through the Hudson River School for Landscape from July 17 through August 22, 2008, and they are developing a series of workshops that will be offered in the future.

Having grown up with a passionate interest in the sea and all forms of boating, McGurl, Demers, and Davis have had a personal connection to nature that goes back to their childhood experiences. “When I was an art student, my work consisted of landscapes, figures, and still lifes,” McGurl recalls. “Unconsciously, my work moved toward landscape as I delved deeper into what gave the most emotional feedback. My struggle then became one of getting beyond the rendering so the paintings were more real in every sense. At this stage, I can pretty much paint what I want and it comes out looking realistic, but I want it to actually be real. I want to paint a tree that exists in three dimensions and also will die in the winter and bloom again in the spring. I want my water to have depth and transparency and movement. I want the sun to be warm and so bright you have to squint, and the sky to extend through the universe. I want the viewer to become part of the painting so that he or she feels totally immersed in the realm I am trying to convey.”


Field Study for Autumn Point by Donald Demers, 2007, oil on linen, 6 x 8. Private collection.	Autumn Point by Donald Demers, 2007, oil on linen, 20 x 30. Private collection. This painting was exhibited at the American Masters show at the Salmagundi Art Club, in New York City, in May 2008.

McGurl goes on to say he understood from an early age that in order to paint an encompassing landscape he had to understand it as well as he did the information that helped him navigate a sailboat. He had to understand the forces that impact the shape and movement of the clouds, waves, branches, and grasses, as well as the physics of light that allows people to understand the texture, shape, density, transparency, and distance of what they see. “Without thoroughly knowing what I am painting, I can’t reach that higher level,” he explains. “Sketching from nature gives me a better familiarity with the elements of nature, not just the plants and animals but all the other parts that make up the world. That allows me to use them in the studio, not so much in a botanical, meteorological, or topographical sense but in terms of how these elements react to light, space, and color. Observation also gives me organic patterns on which to base the forms.

“I lean toward painting what I see, but I still want to understand why the world looks the way it does,” McGurl adds. “Why does the pine grove grow on a particular side of a mountain? Why is one cloud darker than the others? What’s causing the light to take on an amber glow? By understanding this, I can give more truth to my art and better master the scene developing on the canvas.”

Demers also makes sketches that inform his studio paintings. “I make graphite, watercolor, and oil sketches outdoors, often leaving them unfinished so I am not tempted to repeat myself in the studio,” he explains. “Once I have identified a subject worth developing into a larger painting, I close my eyes and think about what the observed scene really meant to me. That understanding becomes my guiding principle as I try to clarify the image on canvas.”


Into the Sun by Joseph McGurl, 2008, oil, 30 x 40. Courtesy Hammer Galleries, New York, New York.	Thumbnail—Composition Study by Joseph McGurl, 2007, graphite, 8 x 10. Courtesy Tree’s Place, Orleans, Massachusetts.

Both Demers and Davis are closely associated with the field of marine art, or paintings that present accurate representations of both historic and contemporary sailing vessels. These artists, like most realist painters, are often negatively criticized for placing an emphasis on the literal content of their pictures. “Every painter balances the physical and emotional aspects of making pictures,” Demers points out. “Whether someone is painting a figure, a bowl of fruit, or a yacht, he or she is connecting to the viewer’s understanding and appreciation of the subject while trying to also express a personal response to it. The challenge is to have the subject be very specific while also offering a personal interpretation or expression. A masterful painting can be a portrait of a specific person, flower, or plot of land that still conveys strong emotions and an informed understanding. The point of this exhibition is to clarify that landscape paintings based on observation, study, and imagination can be both specific and profound.”

About the Artists

Jacob Collins earned a B.A. degree from Columbia College, in New York City, and studied art at the New York Academy of Art, in New York City; Ecole Albert Defois, in Lex Cerqueux, France; and the Art Students League of New York, in Manhattan. He is the founder of The Water Street Atelier, and he a founder and the director of The Grand Central Academy of Art, both in New York City. Collins has had over twenty solo shows and numerous group exhibitions at prominent galleries in North America and Europe. His work is included in several American institutions, including Harvard's Fogg Museum and Amherst's Mead Art Museum as well as a multitude of important private collections. Collins is currently represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern, in New York City; the John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; and Meredith Long & Co., in Houston. For more information, visit his website at www.jacobcollinspaintings.com.

William R. Davis grew up in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, and in 1987 he was the first artist to mount a solo exhibition at the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut. Since then his landscape and marine paintings have been included in exhibitions organized by the J. Russell Jinishian Gallery, in Fairfield, Connecticut; the Cape Cod Museum of Art, in Dennis, Massachusetts; The Copley Society of Art, in Boston; the American Society of Marine Artists; The Guild of Boston Artists; John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; Hammer Galleries, in New York City; Tree’s Place, in Orleans, Massachusetts, and others. For more information, visit his website at www.williamrdavis.net.

Donald Demers studied at the School of the Worchester Art Museum and Massachusetts College of Art and Design, in Boston, before launching a career as an illustrator and fine artist. He is a fellow of the American Society of Marine Artists and a signature member of the Plein-Air Painters of America, and his paintings have been included in exhibitions organized by the Haggin Museum, in Stockton, California; the Maritime Gallery at Mystic Seaport, in Mystic, Connecticut; John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; and Tree’s Place, in Orleans, Massachusetts, among others. For more information, visit his website at www.donalddemers.com.

Nicholas Hiltner studied at The Cleveland Institute of Art and later with Jacob Collins at The Water Street Atelier. He has exhibited his artwork at John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco, and Meredith Long & Company, in Houston, and teaches at The Grand Central Academy of Art, in New York City. For more information on Hiltner, visit his website at www.nhiltner.com.

Joseph McGurl grew up working with his father, James McGurl, who was a muralist and scenic designer, and he studied with Ralph Rosenthal at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and privately with Robert Cormier. He subsequently graduated from Massachusetts College of Art, in Boston, and worked for a few years as a yacht captain. He is represented by Hammer Galleries, in New York City; Robert Wilson Galleries, on Nantucket, Massachusetts; John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco; and Tree’s Place, in Orleans, Massachusetts. For more information, visit his website at www.josephmcgurl.com.

Travis Schlaht earned a B.A. degree from the University of the Pacific, in Stockton, California, and later joined The Water Street Atelier, where he studied with Jacob Collins. He has exhibited his artwork in New York, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and Houston, and he currently teaches at The Water Street Atelier and The Grand Central Academy of Art, both in New York City. For more information on Schlaht, visit his website at www.classicist.org/grandcentralacademy/schlaht.html.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief and publisher of American Artist.

Oil Painting: Jimmy Sanders: The Structure Needed in Painting and in Life

American Artist — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:05:00 GMT

For almost 20 years, Jimmy Sanders has set specific goals for his art education, the types of paintings he creates, and the projects he undertakes. “Goals are dreams with deadlines,” he says. “They are important to realist painters who have to develop skills and focus on a style that is reflective of their personalities.”

by M. Stephen Doherty

Self-Portrait, Age 40
2004, oil, 38¼ x 33¼.
All artwork this article
courtesy Hirschl & Adler Galleries,
New York, New York.

Jimmy Sanders is something of a romantic artist, who sacrificed material possessions to remain steadfastly dedicated to the integrity of painting, and eventually gained recognition from astute collectors and critics. He worked for seven years to afford an art education, lived below the poverty level in a small apartment in Florence while he studied, and then developed a portfolio of painting, finally gaining the support of dealers and collectors.

But Sanders is not an aimless bohemian without social graces or a sense of responsibility. He is a well-grounded man who learned early in life that he would never achieve his dreams if he didn’t focus all his resources on those objectives. “Growing up in a small town in Tennessee with a single mother and three siblings, I knew I wouldn’t accomplish much as a person or an artist if I didn’t dedicate myself to those goals,” he reveals. “Painting saved my life because it gave me purpose, and I feel blessed that people are now recognizing and appreciating my work.”

The dream of becoming an artist formed in Sanders’ heart and mind when he was just out of school and read an article in the December 1988 issue of American Artist on Daniel Graves and the Studio Cecil-Graves, in Florence, Italy. Students enrolled in the private atelier followed a classical educational program of drawing and painting from plaster casts, as well as from live models. “I couldn’t afford to enroll in the school at the time, so I spent seven years working in an art-supply store in Memphis until I saved $20,000, enough money to live and study in Florence for two years,” Sanders explains.

Toward Borgo San Frediano
2005, oil, 27½ x 19?.

After studying at The Florence Academy of Art, the atelier Graves founded after parting with Charles Cecil, Jimmy Sanders and his brother, artist Kevin Sanders, shared a small apartment/studio on Borgo San Frediano in the Oltrarno district of Florence for 10 years and struggled to create paintings they could sell back in the United States. Jimmy began to exhibit his figure and still life paintings with the Grenning Gallery, on Long Island, and then Hirschl & Adler Galleries, in New York City. Kevin studied briefly at The Florence Academy of Art and then established himself as a landscape painter.

Starting in 1992, Jimmy Sanders began writing down what he wanted to accomplish over the next year, as well as the following five and 10 years. “I read the self-help book Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins (Simon & Schuster, New York, New York) that recommended writing down one’s goals and the steps necessary to achieve them, and then taking actions and making changes to one’s approach until the goals are achieved,” he explains. “That helped me clarify what I wanted to accomplish and the actions I needed to take in order to reach those objectives. It also made me realize that I would have to make tough choices in order to remain on track. I still make lists and keep them in notebooks, posted on the refrigerator, and thumbtacked to walls in my studio. They remind me of what I need to do each day. And as I achieve those goals, I feel good enough about myself to believe I can reach more, even those that once seemed beyond my capabilities. Those successes also help me forgo short-term gratifications and remain focused on long-term ambitions.”

Tuscan Still Life
1998, oil, 30 x 34.
Collection J.D. and
Mary Susan Clinton.

The lists of long-term objectives included items such as securing a studio with large north-facing windows, learning to handle color in a manner similar to such painters as Johannes van Eyck (ca. 1395–1441), having greater financial security, and establishing a style of painting reflective of his environment and his values. “I saw some of Richard Maury’s paintings in 1990 at the Wichita Art Museum, in Kansas, and I admired the honesty and integrity of those pictures,” Sanders remembers. “That helped me clarify the direction of my own painting. Maury painted the rooms of his home, the members of his family, and his self-portrait, and also hired models. Every picture was an honest assessment of his life and the time in which he lived. I wanted to eventually meet Mr. Maury and understand more about the ways those remarkable paintings connected to him as a person. When I finally got the nerve to introduce myself to him in Florence, he didn’t want to talk about painting technique and that was fine with me. I finally enjoyed seeing his studio, meeting him and his wife, Anne, and witnessing his creative ability.”

One of the most ambitious objectives written on Sanders’ lists was to create a perspective box similar to one he saw at The National Gallery, in London. Later in this article he offers a complete description of how he finally realized that goal in 2007.

Portrait of Donald Sutphin and His Studio
2002, oil, 48 x 36.

Painting in a Classical Mode

Sanders’ paintings are always done from life, with the artist first making a series of drawings and transferring those to the wooden panels he prepares. The panels are usually plywood with a thin veneer of poplar that the artist seals with rabbit-skin glue, covers with linen, and then coats with several layers of true gesso (a combination of calcium carbonate, zinc white, and rabbit-skin glue).

Preparatory drawings are made with hard sticks of charcoal or graphite and then transferred by one of two methods. Sanders either puts charcoal on the back of the drawing paper, lays it on the panel, and traces the lines; or he spreads a thin layer of raw umber oil color on newsprint paper and uses that as an oiled transfer paper so he can trace the lines of the drawing to the gessoed panel.

“I start with thumbnail sketches and studies of various elements, and then I put everything together in a drawing the size of the painting panel,” Sanders explains. “I prefer using the sight-size method of positioning my easel in such a way that the image in the drawing or painting is exactly the same size as the subject when both are viewed from a measured distance. However, sometimes it’s not possible to get that far back from the easel, as was the case with the 4'-x-3' painting Portrait of Donald Sutphin and His Studio. I spent eight months painting that at close range in Donald’s studio.”

Autumn
2004, oil, 12? x 10.

Once a drawing is transferred, Sanders begins applying thin washes of the local color over the entire pane. “Some artists tone the surface of their panels with an imprimatura, but I like the way the bright white surface causes the transparent colors to glow,” the artist says. “The painting looks flat and general at first, but as I build layers of color and focus on subtle relationships, the image will hopefully come alive. I want a bold, overall feeling at first, and then I can glaze thin colors with meticulous brushwork.

“As I continue working, I use various combinations of oil color, beeswax, sun-thickened linseed oil, turpentine, and Canada balsam in a traditional fat-over-lean procedure,” Sanders adds. “The key is to establish color sensitivity because I believe the subtle differences between colors contribute a deep sense of meditation. Toward the end of the painting process I apply retouch varnish or a thinned version of final glazing medium to even out the surface of the painting.”

Sanders usually works on two paintings at a time, taking advantage of the light illuminating a subject for three or four hours during one part of the day, and a similar amount of time later in the day. When the light in his studio isn’t consistent enough for continuing to paint a specific subject, he works on drawings or outdoor landscape paintings.

Portrait of Julia
2005, oil, 16? x 12½.

The Perspective Box

As was explained earlier, Sanders became fascinated with artists’ efforts to create deceptively believable three-dimensional images in frescoes, oil paintings, and boxes by carefully drawing perspective lines, making sure every person and object adhered to the correct scale based on his or her distance in space, and having viewers look from a single vantage point. These anamorphic images have fascinated artists from the early Renaissance to the present because they allow painters to explore various ways of creating the illusion of three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces.

This curiosity was a natural extension of Sanders’ education in realistic drawing and painting because it connected to his training in understanding and carefully recording observations. He set a goal of creating his own perspective box and, after researching the subject in London and Florence, made a full-scale model using poster board. Finally, in March of 2004 he began making drawings for a wooden box with painted panels on the three sides, top, and bottom that, when viewed through either of two holes on the sides, would give viewers the sensation of looking into a room in which everything was three-dimensional. Some of the furniture would even seem to be resting in the middle of the room.

Pears and Grapes
2005, oil, 9¾ x 11.

Just as the 17th-century Dutch artists had painted the interiors of churches, their homes, and their studios, Sanders decided to use his apartment studio as the model for the room inside the box, but he expanded it beyond its actual limits so the space would project farther. “To make it more interesting, I added views looking down the hallway, into the studio from the vacant apartment next door, and from a third vantage point that really didn’t exist,” he explains. “I knew that as long as the logic of the perspective and the lighting were accurate and I painted everything from life, viewers wouldn’t know the composite scene didn’t really exist. It seemed like an extension of the idea that I was creating something that was at once undeniable and impossible.”

Sanders recognized that the perspective drawings for his box could conceivably be devised scientifically or with a computer program, but he wanted to use a simple two-point perspective system and make observational judgments. “The goal was as much to teach myself about painted illusions as it was to have viewers question the nature of realistic perceptions,” the artist says. A carpenter made the six panels with tongue-and-groove and rabbit joints so Sanders could assemble and disassemble the box as he painted, and then check the accuracy of the perspective. A family of craftspeople made the outside panels of the 2'-x-2'-x-3' box from cherry veneer wood using traditional Florentine furniture.“I worked from empirical knowledge based on observation, and I made careful measurements and projection,” Sanders notes. “I wanted to focus as much on the subtle manipulation of colors and values as on the linear structure of the design. The painting process by which I developed the panels was quite straightforward. As with other interior scenes, I worked from a detailed drawing and added or subtracted elements as the painting of each panel developed. I also made adjustments to maintain a consistency in the light and depth of field.

“I couldn’t work on the box exclusively during the first few months because I wanted to complete a commission in Florida while painting pictures to sell through the gallery, but after meeting those obligations I went into the studio each morning filled with excitement about the project,” Sanders adds. “I completed the perspective box in 2007.”

Looking Ahead

Sanders was fortunate to receive a grant from collectors who were impressed with his perspective box and his easel paintings. They provide the means for further explorations through the Melinda and Paul Sullivan Foundation for the Decorative Arts. “I was thrilled and humbled to receive their support, and I reviewed my list of goals and wrote new objectives that might be realized with those resources,” the artist explains. “Chief among those is the longstanding ambition of having a proper studio with abundant north light. I would never have been able to afford that in Florence, so I moved back to Tennessee, where I’m now in the process of determining whether I have to build a new studio or renovate an existing structure. Several people have advised me against taking on a big construction project because that would consume the time I could spend painting, but I know myself well enough that I won’t be satisfied just making do with an existing space. I’ve done that for too many years and want to finally realize my dream of having a proper north-light studio.”

About the Artist

Jimmy Sanders studied at Dyersburg State Community College, University of Memphis, and Memphis College of Art, all in Tennessee, as well as at The Florence Academy of Art. His paintings have been included in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions, and he is represented by Hirschl & Adler Galleries, in New York City. He currently maintains a studio in Brownsville, Tennessee.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief and publisher of American Artist.

Oil Painting: Steve Armes: Creating Imaginative Studio Paintings

American Artist — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 09:00:00 GMT

For me, the goal of landscape painting is to paint stirring images that engage and inspire viewers, and this is more likely to happen when I use information from a variety of sources.

by Steve Armes

Sketch for Sierra Blanca
2005, oil, 8 x 10.
All artwork this article
collection the artist.

Artists usually create landscape paintings in one of four ways: They paint entirely on location; they rely on memory or imagination; they work from photos; or they use a combination of these sources. Hopefully, each of those approaches also incorporates the artist’s accumulated knowledge and experience about pigments, surfaces, procedures, and the wisdom passed down from generations of others who have recorded nature.

The focus of this article will not be on techniques artists can use to develop plein air sketches as finished works of art but rather as documents that aid in the creation of studio paintings. My recommendations may be at odds with what you have been taught or what you have read, and that’s neither surprising nor problematic. All of us base our approaches to art on the personal objectives that motivate us. Like every other artist and teacher, I do what helps me create the kind of pictures I admire.

I am fortunate to have been trained by Maynard Dixon Stewart, whose father, LeConte Stewart, was a tireless landscape painter. M. D. Stewart also studied with Frank Vincent Dumond, the legendary artist and teacher at the Art Students League of New York, in Manhattan. During my studies with Stewart, I learned to paint plein air sketches that provided enough information to complete larger, more finished paintings in the studio.

Sierra Blanca
2005, oil, 30 x 36.

Because of this training, I still use sketches as references for paintings and avoid the temptation of developing them into complete works of art. They might become beautiful paintings, but I try to keep in mind the overarching need to gather information during the three hours I record the changing effects of light and atmosphere with broad notes of color.

I was able to paint a satisfactory sketch long before I could paint a successful finished landscape. But after much effort, I arrived at some methods that now allow me to use my sketch to complete a larger, definitive painting. What I have learned falls under five broad topics: understanding the difference between a sketch and a painting; matching colors to the sketch; using photographs judiciously; invention; and knowing how to sacrifice.

Path Along the Lake
2004, oil, 18 x 24.

The Difference Between a Sketch and a Painting

My primary concern when creating a painting from a sketch is to improve the overall design. This is best done in the calm environment of the studio because it requires reflection and trial and error. I was taught to evaluate various compositional schemes by making small monochrome studies, each time altering the arrangement of the large shapes. I do that by making several black-and-white gouache studies using five or six basic values and arranging the masses into the best design. This is the most important part of making a picture because the large, simple masses are what the viewer will see first.

A location sketch is very different from a studio painting in its purpose and execution. The sketch is a tool to help capture the subtle tonalities of nature, making it possible for the artist to create a larger painting in harmony with the visual truths of nature. It is done quickly and usually in one session, with the artist focusing on the broadest tones and laying them down in proper relation to one another. A painting is planned and executed in stages, and it may include underpainting and layering of color.

Sketch for
A Texas Landscape
2005, oil, 16 x 20.

When the sketch serves as the basis of a studio painting, the challenge is to keep the good qualities of the sketch (the breadth, simplicity, and immediacy) while carrying the painting to a larger scale and a greater degree of rendering. This can be difficult because the sketch involves mixing colors rapidly, with pigment often being hastily slurred. That wonderfully bold, gestured effect is difficult to recreate in the studio, and I prefer not to even attempt that feat. Rather, I analyze what I’m trying to capture on location, and I attempt to convey the same effect.

In order to compare the sketch to the painting, I clamp my sketch to a music stand turned upright, then move my canvas and easel back so that when I am standing in front of my sketch it appears the same size as the canvas. I make all observations and judgments from this position. This allows me to see my sketch and painting side by side, which allows for better comparison while also forcing me to view my painting from a distance.

A Texas Landscape
2005, oil, 36 x 48.

Matching Colors to the Sketch

I usually start a studio painting with a monochrome or limited-color underpainting and layer color during subsequent sessions. This requires planning to ensure that the color, once modified, will match the color in the sketch. In order to gauge the accuracy of color while painting, some artists hold up a loaded brush or palette knife next to the sketch. Because I have labored in the field to get accurate color nuances, I want to carry that over to my painting. That is why I prefer to varnish my sketch, dab mixtures of color directly on the protected surface, and then wipe off the dabs before they dry. If I do that quickly, I will have a better sense of whether or not I have matched the colors. I have learned that one color on top of another may appear different than when it is laid on the canvas. I use great care to match the colors I saw on-site, since that is usually the greatest aid the sketch affords. I will often recheck the color in later phases because it sometimes needs to be modified to match the sketch. However, there are occasions when it is better to change or modify the color in the larger painting. I find it easier to paint from my imagination once I have established accurate relationships between the tones.

In the Vineyards
2006, oil, 10 x 15½.

Using Photographs Judiciously

I regard photographs as necessary evils in developing studio pieces because I usually need the information contained in them to complete the paintings. They supply ideas not suggested by the sketch, which can be useful for enriching the details. However, I have learned to use them with caution, never copying them exactly. Instead I interpret the information and do not base my painting on the way colors and values appear in a photograph. I note edges, shapes, and other details that can aid my understanding of what I am trying to render, being careful to think of them only as suggestions. Additionally, the use of a telephoto lens can enhance details that can’t be seen by the eye while observing the scene. If I use one, I study the details in the distance, but render them in the vague and mysterious way that atmosphere transforms images. Too much reliance on photographs can result in paintings that lack breadth and are broken apart by tedious detail. I know this because I have made that mistake far too many times, and I’ve learned the hard way that my sketches are better guides to studio painting than any photograph.

A Tuscan Hillside
2003, oil, 20 x 30.

Invention

To progress as a landscape painter, it is necessary to expand on nature because—like many subjects that are transferred to canvas—it needs clarification, simplification, and improvement. Nineteenth-century painters added foreground details such as rocks, trees, streams, figures, and animals. Their skills enabled them to pull such accessories out of their imaginations. Few contemporary artists have those same skills, and most—myself included—rely on oil sketches, notations in sketchbooks, or photographs taken under conditions similar to those of a chosen subject. I may consult that kind of reference material in order to add a tree, a road, or figures; or I will make memory sketches to help me invent what is needed.

Howe Sound
2004, oil, 18 x 26.

The practice of sketching from memory is nearly forgotten today, but it was widely practiced in the 19th century. The most common method was for artists to study a simple scene or effect, analyze the color notes, and later sketch it in the studio. I find this to be very difficult but valuable, especially in that the process increases my confidence and allows me to transfer images from my imagination to a finished painting. I attempt at least one 30-minute oil memory sketch each week in a sketchbook designated for this purpose. I have found it best to begin with painting the sky and cloud effects.

Knowing How to Sacrifice

Horseshoe Bay
2003, oil, 24 x 36.

Landscapes require artists to sacrifice and select in order to create harmonious pictures. John Ruskin (1819–1900) pointed out the necessity of representing some facts while sacrificing others to the greater truth. Painters reach the end of their color gamut long before they can paint anything that approaches the brilliance of the sky. They are forced to choose the most important color notes, paint them simply and frankly, and add only such detail as will enhance—but not undermine—the large masses.

About the Artist

Steve Armes studied with Maynard Dixon Stewart and Herbert Perleman before launching a career as an illustrator and then transitioning into fine art. In 1996 he was unanimously voted an associate member of The American Society of Classical Realism Artists’ Guild, and in 2006 he was invited to join Stephen Gjertson and Kirk Richards in forming “Triad: Three American Painters,” a traveling exhibition that debuted at the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He maintains a studio in Dallas and teaches workshops throughout the United States and in Europe. For more information on Armes, visit his website at www.stevearmes.com.

Oil Painting: Steve Armes' Landscapes

American Artist — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 11:15:00 GMT

In the February 2008 issue of American Artist, Steve Armes discussed how his goal for landscape painting was to paint stirring images that engage and inspire viewers. In this online exclusive gallery, we present more of his oil landscapes.


Above Lake Como 2005, oil, 36 x 44. All artwork this gallery collection the artist.	Bardi Castle 2003, oil, 26 x 32.	Grapevine Marsh 2003, oil, 20 x 24.


Hill Country Spring 2005, oil, 18 x 24.	Sketch for Shimmering Water, Lake Grapevine 2004, oil, 8 x 10.	Shimmering Water, Lake Grapevine 2004, oil, 30 x 36.


Lac Lehman, French Side 2006, oil, 20 x 30.	Near Sienna 2004, oil, 32 x 48.	Paradise Valley 2004, oil, 36 x 42.

Sketch for Vernasca 2002, oil, 15½ x 10.	Vernasca 2003, oil, 46 x 30.	Plains of Lazio 2005, oil, 24 x 30.


View From Monterosso 2003, oil, 24 x 36.	White Rock Lake 2006, oil, 16 x 20.

Oil Painting: Frederic Edwin Church: A Great Landscape Painting Teacher

American Artist — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:00:00 GMT

There are few American painters who were as celebrated, successful, or influential as Frederic Edwin Church.

by M. Stephen Doherty

Twilight, a Sketch
by Frederic Edwin Church, 1858, oil,
8¼ x 12¼. Collection Olana
State Historic Site,
Hudson, New York.

There are few American painters who were as celebrated, successful, or influential as Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900). While many of his contemporaries died broke, discredited, or forgotten, Church managed to live a prosperous life until the end of an era that was shaped by his influence on artists, collectors, and museums. That influence continues today through frequent exhibitions, scholarly catalogues, and illustrated books. Even now there are major exhibitions that include his drawings and paintings as well as several books still in print that describe his painting techniques and the ways he managed his successful career.

Church’s influence isn’t based on his having been an innovative painter or an active teacher. Instead, it emanates from his powerfully executed paintings of both well-known sites and exotic locations; from his influence as a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City, and as a member of the National Academy, also in New York City; and from the efforts of collectors to make a vast number of his sketches available to art students.

Church’s method of developing large studio pictures was typical of most 19th-century artists. He made detailed graphite drawings and oil sketches on location and acquired photographs of those scenes to compose oil paintings in his New York studio. He even went so far as to paint over someone else’s photographic prints to compose his most popular painting of Niagara Falls. What helped Church stand out in the crowd of painters was his instinct for establishing arresting compositions, his preference for dramatic lighting and intriguing details, and his brilliant marketing strategies.

The Urn Tomb, Silk Tomb,
and Corinthian Tomb, Petra
by Frederic Edwin Church, 1861,
oil on paper mounted
onto canvas, 13 x 20?.
Collection Olana State Historic
Site, Hudson, New York.

Church’s Dependence on Drawings & Oil Sketches
Art historian Elaine Evans Dee offered a complete explanation of Church’s process in a catalogue titled Frederic E. Church: Under Changing Skies, which accompanied a 1992 exhibition of oil sketches and drawings from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design, Smithsonian Institution. “Frederic Church’s approach to his art was direct, intellectual, and practical,” wrote Dee. “He studied nature at first hand and prided himself on translating what he saw to paper and canvas. He selected for the pictures he painted in his studio those aspects of his drawings that best suited their composition, but only after he had educated himself thoroughly about the subject through every means at his command. Drawings formed the basis of Church’s art.

Books & Catalogues on Frederic Edwin Church

Frederic E. Church: Under Changing Skies, by Elaine Evans Dee (produced by Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia)

Frederic Edwin Church: In Search of the Promised Land, by Gerald L. Carr (University Press of New England, Durham, New Hampshire, and Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, New York)

The Painted Sketch: American Impressions From Nature 1830–1880, by Eleanor Jones Harvey (Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas)

American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States 1820–1880, by Andrew Wilton and T.J. Barringer (Tate Gallery Publishing, a division of Tate Enterprise, Milbank, London, England)

“His preferred medium for drawing was graphite (pencil) in various hardnesses,” Dee continued. “Pen and ink rarely appear and watercolor almost never. Graphite often occurs in conjunction with white gouache, particularly on dark papers. The white gouache was used to highlight or to define form and was especially suitable for clouds, water, and ice. The papers range in size from three and one-half inches by four and one-half inches to fourteen inches by twenty-two inches. Sometimes he joined two large sheets together in order to draw a kind of panorama. The papers are of a variety of types and colors; gray-green is the most common. Like those used by most of his artist contemporaries in America, they are machine-made wove.

Horseshoe Falls
by Frederic Edwin Church, 1856–1857,
oil on two pieces of paper,
joined together, mounted
onto canvas, 11½ x 35?.
Collection Olana State
Historic Site, Hudson,
New York.

“Church had seen his teacher Thomas Cole [1801–1848] making oil sketches on occasion, but, more than any other artist of the period, Church exploited the format to the fullest,” Dee asserted. “Church never transferred an oil sketch directly to a large canvas; he referred to several drawings and oil sketches and extracted from each of them the details that were combined in the final painting to make up the whole. The sketches were experiments, a process of learning about the subject.

“Church became remarkably adept at making quick studies, often in adverse circumstances of climate or bodily discomfort, but he also turned to the format of the oil sketch to work out the final composition of a large oil. By and large he did not expect to sell them.

“The oil sketches were done on cardboard, occasionally on canvas or paper, and most often on very thin cream-colored board,” Dee explained. “In the early oil sketches Church coated the board with a dark salmon red ground that helped to create the illusion of the solidity and density of the image. As he moved away from studies of specifics of nature to a broader concept of atmosphere and light, he changed the ground color to white.”

The Hudson Valley in
Winter From Olana
by Frederic Edwin Church,
1871–1872, oil on paper mounted
onto canvas, 20¼ x 13.
Collection Olana State Historic
Site, Hudson, New York.

Art historians, curators, and practicing artists have the benefit of knowing these details about Church’s technique because he wrote extensively about his inspirations and methodology, he saved a great many of his sketches and photographs, and his children donated or sold a massive collection of his material to the Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum of Design. The New York-based institution holds more than 3,000 drawings, photographs, and oil sketches by Church, most of which were purchased by sisters Sarah Cooper Hewitt, Eleanor Garnier Hewitt, and Amelia Hewitt to establish a teaching museum affiliated with The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a school founded by their grandfather, Peter Cooper.

Church: the Consummate Self-Promoter
Historian Gail S. Davidson wrote an informative essay for the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition catalogue in which she explained why Church was so much more successful in promoting his work than contemporaries who painted some of the same subjects. Davidson points specifically to the series of drawings, oil sketches, and studio pictures that ultimately led to the creation of one of Church’s most famous paintings, Niagara (Collection The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC).

“If Church ignored in his pictures the tourists and tourist traps that had invaded the cataract, he certainly was not oblivious to collectors and the fine-arts audience who would have understood his intentions in painting his monumental canvas,” Davidson wrote. “In fact, Church’s entrepreneurial savvy, like that of Winslow Homer and Thomas Moran, equaled the promotional skills of Niagara’s real-estate and hotel developers. In an unprecedented venture, the artist, before completing the Corcoran picture, placed the Olana preparatory sketch with other Niagara oil sketches on view in his studio in December 1856 to maximize the press coverage for his project and whet the appetite of potential buyers. Subsequently, instead of following the usual procedure of exhibiting a major work at the National Academy, he chose a more newsworthy route by selling the painting along with the publication rights directly to the New York dealers Williams, Stevens, and Williams.

Olana, Church’s home on the Hudson, in New York.

Sunset Across the Hudson Valley
by Frederic Edwin Church, 1870,
graphite and oil on thin,
cream-colored paperboard,
11? x 15¼. Collection
Cooper-Hewitt, National Museum
of Design, New York, New York.

“Skillfully marketing the picture between 1858 and 1859 in U.S. and British exhibitions, the gallery also commissioned a chromolithograph from London printmakers Risdon & Day to be sold along the tour,” Davidson explained. “Public response to the seven-foot-long, three-and-one-half-foot-high panorama of Horseshoe Falls was explosive. For the thousands of viewers and print purchasers in England and in U.S. cities from New York to New Orleans, Church’s Niagara supplanted Niagara itself as the symbol of America, and helped establish the artist’s reputation as the greatest living landscapist. At the last minute, the 1857 picture was included in the American display in the Paris 1867 Exposition Universelle, where its symbolism and virtuoso technique created a sensation.”

Other artists tried the same scheme of creating large paintings of dramatic scenes or historic events and then presented them both in touring exhibitions and chromolithographic prints, but none were as successful in grabbing the public’s attention and appreciation. Once Impressionism became the dominant painting style in America and Europe, great painters such as Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900) and Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902) lost their fortunes while Church preserved his wealth and his influence.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief of American Artist.

Oil Painting: Oil 70th Anniversary Competition Winners

American Artist — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 10:00:00 GMT

We present the semifinalists in the oil category.

by Karen Stanger Johnston

Hyacinth
(and the McCoy Pot)
by Ellen Buselli, 2006, oil on linen, 12 x 16. Private collection.

First Place: Ellen Buselli

Ellen Buselli’s favorite subject is the still life. Influenced by Dutch masters as well as Emil Carlsen, Fantin-Latour, Sargent, Chase, and Giorgio Morandi, this New York City artist says she emulates their sense of chiaroscuro and classical painting in her oils. She likes to paint flowers in season among other subject matter, using her own collection of antique vases, glass, and pottery acquired during travels to China, India, Europe, and parts of the United States. Buselli paints in a studio with northern exposure to get soft, moody light. “My procedure is traditional, and the painting develops by carefully observing how the light defines each object and the space around it, and then putting down the values and transitions of temperatures in color,” she says.

Buselli exhibits her work in galleries throughout the country and has received awards and recognition from The Artist’s Magazine, the National Academy of Design, Oil Painters of America (signature member), and American Women Artists (signature member). She has studied at the Art Students League of New York, in Manhattan; the Tyler School of Art’s program in Rome, Italy; and Cornell University, in Ithaca, New York, where she received her bachelor of fine arts degree.

For more information on Buselli, visit her website at www.ellenbuselli.com, or e-mail her at busellistudio@aol.com.

Second Place: Mel Greifinger

Coney Island
by Mel Greifinger, 2006, oil on gessoed Masonite, 24 x 18.

“Making pictures is all I ever wanted to do,” says New York artist Mel Greifinger, a freelance illustrator who has worked for publishers and advertising agencies for 30 years. “I paint now to see how good I can get, doing whatever strikes my fancy.” The idea for this painting came to Greifinger when a group of people of various ethnic backgrounds and ages caught his eye as he exited the New York Aquarium, in Coney Island, New York, and walked out to the benches facing the ocean. He took a photograph of the scene and painted it back in his studio.

Greifinger prefers to paint in oil on gessoed Masonite because he finds it safer and easier to handle than canvas. He also works in acrylic and usually makes an acrylic sketch of a subject before painting it in oil. “I try to work out all of the problems in the sketch before I start a larger oil painting,” the artist says.

In New York City, Greifinger attended the School of Visual Arts and the Art Students League of New York, where he studied with Robert Schultz. He received the Frank C. Wright Medal of Honor from The American Artists Professional League in 1999.

For more information on Greifinger, visit his website at www.melgreifinger.com, or e-mail him at melgreif1@msn.com.

Third Place: Katie Dobson Cundiff

Native Sun
by Katie Dobson Cundiff, 2007, oil, 18 x 24.

Floridian Katie Dobson Cundiff is primarily a landscape artist, painting almost exclusively en plein air. “The most difficult stage for me is facing a stark, white canvas,” Cundiff says. “Especially if there is a subject I am particularly drawn to. Putting down those first lines of paint can be the most challenging.” Once she gets started, however, she works quickly, becoming fully absorbed in the painting. “Although I usually have a clear picture in my head of how I want to paint a subject, there is a time when the painting seems to take me in, and all the elements are working together,” she says. “I feel almost as if I am on autopilot.” Cundiff says she is not afraid of using a lot of paint. She tends to paint larger en plein air than most artists, preferring a canvas that is at least 16" x 20". She usually does not work on an image after she brings it home, but the artist sometimes paints a larger studio piece from a smaller plein air painting.

Cundiff graduated with honors in 1971 from the Ringling College of Art and Design, in Sarasota, Florida. Her artwork has won awards in numerous plein air paint-outs throughout Florida, and it is in
private collections across the United States and in Spain and France. In 2004 Cundiff was the subject of
a solo exhibition at the South Florida Community College Museum of Florida Art and Culture, in Avon Park. She is an associate member of Oil Painters of America and American Women Artists, and is a
signature member of Plein Air Florida. She is represented by M Gallery of Fine Art, in Sarasota, Florida.

For more information on Cundiff, visit her website at www.dobsonart.com, her gallery’s website at mgalleryoffineart.com, or e-mail her at katie@katiedids.com.

More Semifinalists

Grace Mehan DeVito

Hydrangeas and Tea
by Grace Mehan DeVito, 2006, oil on linen, 16 x 20. Private collection.

If Connecticut artist Grace Mehan DeVito doesn’t have a still life subject in mind, she goes to a farmer’s market or flower shop for inspiration. Back in her studio, DeVito sometimes spends a long time setting up the still life, taking objects out or moving them around until she finds a composition she likes. “The challenge is to come up with a good overall design with a good value structure,” the artist says. Once she starts painting, she first masses in the big light and dark patterns and then blocks in the paint thinly at the right value and basic color. Later she adjusts the temperature and refines the details. She paints wet-into-wet, finishing as she goes so she can work the edges wet.

DeVito earned a bachelor of fine art from the School of Visual Arts, in Manhattan. It was there that she also studied at the Art Students League of New York and the Grand Central Academy of Art, and with Laurel Stern Boeck. In addition to still lifes of sumptuous foods and flowers, DeVito paints portraits. She is represented by Portraits South, Portraits North, and The Portrait Source as well as by Susan Powell Fine Art, in Madison, and Handwright Gallery in New Canaan, both in Connecticut. She exhibits her work regularly in Connecticut and New York.

For more information on DeVito, email her at gracedevito@sbcglobal.net.

Lynn Digby

Sharpie Chic
by Lynn Digby, 2007, oil, 20 x 16.

Ohio artist Lynn Digby usually begins a painting with a specific concept and modifies her process to convey that idea. “The excitement I get from painting is not in the act of painting itself, but to communicate something very specific that fires me,” Digby says.

In this painting she wanted to explore using a warm red underpainting for skin tones. First, she toned the whole canvas cadmium red. She then painted the mid tones around the eyes and balanced the color and value there before blocking in the larger shapes and refining them as needed. “I pay a lot of attention to edges, trying to soften any that are not needed for impact,” the artist says. “When certain passages got too wet, I let the painting dry for a few days before proceeding, but mostly I worked it wet-in-wet until it was finished.”

Digby earned a bachelor of arts in art education at Mount Union College, in Alliance, Ohio. In 2007 one of her oil paintings won best of show in the Canton Artists League Winter Show at the Canton Museum of Art, in Canton, Ohio.

For more information on Digby, visit her website at www.lynndigby.artspan.com, or e-mail her at lynndigby@sbcglobal.net.

Jack Montmeat

Diego
by Jack Montmeat, 2006, oil on linen, 28 x 22. Private collection.

Connecticut artist Jack Montmeat usually works from life, but because of the age of the sitter in this portrait painting he worked from reference photographs taken in a room with north light. After selecting the pose, he makes a full-size charcoal drawing on paper. “At this stage, I focus on drawing the subject as carefully as I can, cropping it later,” Montmeat says. Next, he transfers the drawing to a canvas he has toned with a gray or umber color. He then does a sepia-tone underpainting before beginning to paint the darkest, deepest colors and working into the half tones and lights. Montmeat says he likes to stretch his own linen, using rabbit skin glue to tighten it and applying a thin layer of lead white ground, which makes the painting proceed more quickly.

Since graduating from Columbus College of Art & Design in Columbus, Ohio, in 2002 with a bachelor of fine art degree, Montmeat has been painting portraits and working from live models at the Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme, Connecticut. His work has appeared in 12 group exhibitions, including those of the William Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut, in Storrs; Allied Artists of America, and The American Artists Professional League.

For more information on Montmeat, visit his website at www.jackmontmeat.com.

Richard Murdock

Three Magnolias by Richard Murdock, 2007, oil on leaded copper, 10 x 20. Courtesy Cavalier Galleries, Greenwich, Connecticut.

Connecticut artist Richard Murdock graduated from Pratt Institute in New York City only to discover that he wanted to pursue a more personal vision for his art. “I look for the uncommon in the everyday objects in my environment, whether it is the beauty of a blossom that has just passed its peak, a big, fat onion, or several eggshells from breakfast,” Murdock says. “Twice I’ve painted fruit that has started to rot, attempting to make repulsiveness beautiful.”

He usually starts with an abstract concept, such as time, beauty, death, or color, and explores one aspect in great detail. A painting might include various orange objects, for example, such as lilies, clementines, and hibiscus. Once he has chosen the subject, he does charcoal studies to work out values and color studies according to a color system developed by Graydon Parrish that allows him to mix any color with total accuracy. He then paints in oil on copper plates he makes himself, a method he says best suits his subjects.

Murdock is represented by Cavalier Galleries in Greenwich and Susan Powell Fine Art in Madison, both in Connecticut; Klaudia Marr Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables, Florida.

For more information on Murdock, visit the artist’s website at www.richardmurdock.com, or his galleries’ websites: www.cavaliergalleries.com, www.artnet.com/gallery/181897/susan-powell-fine-art.html, www.klaudiamarrgallery.com, and www.virginiamiller.com.

Edward J. Reed

John
by Edward J. Reed, 2007, oil on linen, 80 x 40.

“Few paintings, no matter how beautifully crafted, captivate me unless they contain a strong central idea,” says Virginia artist Edward J. Reed. “The core idea for this painting came from the subject’s personality. John, an 81-year-old World War II veteran, fell on hard times after the war, then worked as a merchant marine and an engineer before becoming an artist himself. Time has deprived John of many things, from physical mobility to loved ones who have passed away. For me, this painting is about dignity in the face of loss and isolation.”

When painting people Reed works from life whenever possible, developing the large shapes first. “Not sweating the details early lets me remain loose and expressive, which breathes life into my work,” he says. Unlike many classically trained portrait and figure artists, Reed avoids grisailles. “I plunge in with meaningful color from the first stroke,” he says.

After graduating from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1986 with a minor in art, Reed pursued a career in law until a disability forced him to give up that career in 2000. In 2001 he started taking classes at The Art League School in Alexandria, Virginia. He taught a few classes there in 2003 and was asked to join the faculty in 2004.

For more information on Reed, e-mail him at ted@edwardjreed.com.

Linda Tenukas

Morning Light
by Linda Tenukas, 2006, oil on wood panel, 18 x 24. Private collection.

The reference photograph for this painting was taken in 1980 when Connecticut artist Linda Tenukas was renting a room at a boarding house while attending a photography workshop in Maine. “The print sat in a drawer for more than 25 years,” says Tenukas. Fast forward to last year when a book about glazing oil paint over a grisaille inspired her to take out the print and use it as the basis for a painting. “I thought, why not start out with a black and white image where you have no idea of the original colors and see if you can realistically paint it—sort of like doing a full-color painting from a charcoal sketch,” the artist says. “Redrawing it would allow me to correct distortions and change anything I didn’t like, while using colors that were appropriate for the period.”

Tenukas says the skills she learned as a medical illustration major at Ohio State University, in Columbus, in the 1960s helped her two decades later when she decided to take up oil painting. Her work has been exhibited in nationally juried art shows and is in private and public collections throughout the United States and Canada.

For more information on Tenukas, e-mail her at linda@lindatenukas.com.

Robert P. Zerwekh

Vanitas 2005
by Robert P. Zerwekh, 2005, oil on gessoed panel, 16 x 12.

Kansas artist Robert P. Zerwekh has been creating highly realistic trompe l’oeil oil paintings since the early 1970s. Essentially self-taught, Zerwekh says he has been influenced by a variety of 19th- and 20th-century realist painters, particularly William Michael Harnett. “Beyond simply depicting subjects in a realistic way, I hope that my paintings have elements of abstraction, can be enjoyed at different levels of artistic sophistication, and occasionally have a touch of humor,” the artist says.

For Zerwekh, the most challenging part of the painting process is creating a finished work that completely matches his initial vision. Unlike most still life painters, he rarely works from a setup. His compositions come primarily from his imagination and most of the objects are pure invention.

Zerwekh’s paintings have appeared in approximately 50 juried and 30 invitational shows and have been the subject of numerous articles. They have received many awards and are in collections throughout the United States. Zerwekh is represented by Kinion Fine Art in Sedona, Arizona, and Roy’s Art Gallery and the Lawrence Arts Center Gallery Shop, both in Lawrence, Kansas. In his principal career, Zerwekh is a professor of engineering management at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence.

For more information on Zerwekg, visit his website at http://zerwekh.hypermart.net, or e-mail him at bobzerwekh@hotmail.com.

American Artist would like to thank the following sponsors for making our 70th Anniversary Competition a success:

Blick Art Materials
General Pencil
Hartford Fine Art & Framing
Jerry’s Artarama
Legion Paper
Metroshed
Savoir Faire
SourceTek
Utrecht

Oil Painting: SPONSORED CONTENT: Artist Behind the Brand: Robert Gamblin of Gamblin Artist’s Colors

American Artist — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 10:30:00 GMT

Robert Gamblin developed his art career and paint manufacturing business by learning how quality paints are made and how they can be used safely and effectively in the studio.

by M. Stephen Doherty

Evening Makena
2007, oil, 24 x 18.
Collection the artist.

The best art-materials companies are often headed by someone with a deep understanding and appreciation of artists. That is certainly the case with Gamblin Artist’s Colors, of Portland, Oregon, which was founded by Robert Gamblin, a painter who trained at the University of Oregon and the San Francisco Art Institute. Working with his wife and partner, Martha Bergman, Gamblin brought his personal vision to the firm, and even though he is no long involved in the day-to-day activities of the company, it continues to be guided by that vision. That concept, which is based in largely on Gamblin’s own needs as a painter, includes providing products that are superior in quality, reasonably priced, safe to work with, and effective in helping artists create permanent works of art. Moreover, Gamblin’s vision also includes an educational program that helps artists gain a better understanding of the often confusing, arcane, and variable nature of artists’ materials.

Artists responded enthusiastically to Gamblin’s vision when he launched his company in the early 1980s, in large part because he understood their expectations of how paints should perform, their need for a safe working environment, their receptiveness to innovative products, and their frustration that other companies were eliminating products because they didn’t appeal to a mass market. Retailers also appreciated Gamblin’s willingness to spend a significant amount of time traveling to art schools, ateliers, and studios to teach artists and make them aware of his products.

Champoeg Summer
2003, oil, 24 x 18.
Collection Michael Hoeye and Martha Banyas.

According to Gamblin, his vision was formulated just as much while he was working in his kitchen as it did when he was in his art studio. “For 13 years after I graduated from art school, I educated myself about how to make the quality paints, mediums, varnish, and grounds I wanted to use,” he explains. “The process was very similar to my becoming a good cook. It started with research into ingredients and recipes; developed through years of searching for the best materials and testing them; and ended up with me being able to offer healthy, satisfying, and personalized products that others could appreciate and consume.”

Dream in Tangerine 2005, oil, 72 x 48.
Collection Vic Petroff.

Among the special “dishes” Gambin prepared for artists was Gamvar, a water-clear varnish that is superior to the traditional varnishes artists used for centuries. “Rene de la Rie, a conservation scientist at the National Gallery in Washington, spent 10 years trying to come up with a varnish that was safer to use in the studio, didn’t yellow with age, and wouldn’t cause colors to lose their saturation,” Gamblin explains. “I worked with Rene and the staff of the National Gallery to develop Gamvar.”

Among the other products Gamblin developed are Gamsol, an odorless mineral spirits solvent; Galkyd, an alkyd medium available as a gel or a fluid liquid, that speeds up the drying time of oil colors; Artists Sketching Oils, a student grade of paint made with quality extenders; flake white replacement, a safe alternative to lead-white paint; and Radiant Colors, eight tinted colors that facilitate painting in the traditional manner of first applying bright colors and then modulating those by applying thin glazes when the initial layers of paint are dry.

In addition to sharing his knowledge with the students, teachers, and professional artists he visited, Gamblin and Berger produced an animated, three-dimensional program on color mixing titled Navigating Color Space; and they posted a great deal of information for artists on his company’s website (www.gamblincolors.com/colors1). Navigating Color Space is a DVD program the couple created to show painters how to access the universe of color he calls Color Space. “The animated sequences demonstrate how to define a color by its attributes: value, hue, and intensity (chroma),” he explains. “During the program, I demonstrate a few of the secrets of the Old Masters so you, too, will know how to mix green and red into blue. We spent $60,000 producing the DVD and it doesn’t directly sell any of our products, because our intention was strictly educational.”

One of the most useful sections of the Gamblin company website is a description of various color palettes of oils one might use to achieve specific effects. Lists of tube colors are offered to artists who want to work with a basic high-key selection of oils, the modern equivalents of paints used by the Impressionists, a limited number of transparent glaze colors, a basic landscape palette, a more specialized landscape palette, and recommendations for emulating the Old Masters.

Dovecoat au Crepuscule
2005, oil, 16 x 10.
Collection Forbes magazine.

When asked whether the two recommended landscape palettes matched the colors he uses, Gamblin said his personal selection varies depending on the location where he is working. “No matter where I am, I lay out at least 10 colors so I can use a warm and cool version of pigments that represent a balanced color wheel,” he explains. “There will always be transparent burnt orange, yellow ochre, and a chromatic black; but the rest will depend on the light and atmosphere in the landscape. If, for example, I’m in New Mexico, I’ll have cobalt green and a selection of reds appropriate for the desert.

“Artists often talk about using a limited palette, but the truth is they are all limited because no palette has room for the 100+ tube colors available.” Gamblin explains. “The real question is whether or not artists have selected colors that are balanced around the color wheel. Beyond that, they need to understand the characteristics of pigments in terms of their intensity and temperature.”

Not Green
2004, oil, 24 x 18.
Collection the artist.

Not surprisingly, one of the issues that concerns Gamblin in terms of his own painting activity is balancing the seemingly conflicting nature of artists’ colors. “I haven’t mounted a major exhibition of my paintings in some time because I’ve been trying to synthesize competing ideas about landscape painting,” he explains. “I’ve wanted to see how approaches to the classical and Impressionist approaches to landscape painting might be forced into the same funnel and result in Expressionism. I think I’ve worked it out privately, and I’m happily coming to the end of that discovery process and I will soon be ready to exhibit my pictures.”

For more information on Gamblin Artist’s Colors or on Robert Gamblin, visit the company’s website at www.gamblincolors.com.

M. Stephen Doherty is the editor-in-chief of American Artist.