The Oil Painting Blog : sketching

Is the Devil in the Detail?

Will Kemp — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 04:41:00 GMT

How to let go of small brush addiction so your paintings can move on to become more gestural

If you lost all of your brushes, which one would you miss the most?

For me, it's a 12 year old Filbert bristle brush that has lost its shape, has unruly hairs, and is caked in paint. In other words, it's perfect.


Transitioning from a large to small brush in an oil painting can be problematic if you do it too fast, without establishing your big shapes first.

But often, for beginners, their prize possession is a number 000, the smallest, thinnest detail brush.

I can appreciate that there is something so pleasing about a detail brush, it can be hard not to resist. It's a bit like adding whipped cream to your coffee, you know you shouldn't do it but it tastes so damn good!

Getting over 'small brush addiction' can instantly give your oil painting art a boost and help you develop your skills as a painter.

The obsession hits hardest when you're making the switch from drawing or sketching to mastering oil painting techniques. The familiarity of a small, sharp point is comforting, yet unbeknown to you, ultimately damaging to your painting skills.

You start to work in a 'piecemeal' approach. This is where you focus on one small section at a time rather than bringing the painting together as a whole.

But what if you dream of producing work with energy, gestural marks and movement, yet everything you produce looks flat, lacking that certain style you know is in you?

The solution

Take a few words of advice from a master of gestural marks, John Singer Sargent, who is credited with saying,

'Start with a broom & end with a needle'

So find the biggest brush you have, often a 2 inch decorators brush is good, work on a larger scale, 60 x 60 cm is a good starting point, and go for it!
Try to paint as much as you can before changing your brush down a size.

"But, don't I need a small brush for the details?"

No, you need a deft touch.

When studying at the Angel Academy of Art, Florence, Master John Angel would repeatably say, 'The Devil is the detail' to emphasis the importance of establishing your big forms first, rather than diving into the details too early on.

If you establish the general feel of the painting using a big brush first, not only will you work faster with more expression, but your dexterity with the brush will improve.
When you do finally succumb to the charms of your small detail brush the marks will sing, in comparison to the broad, gestural strokes surrounding them.

--Will

Will Kemp is an award-winning professional artist from the U.K. He teaches classical painting techniques with a modern approach, so you can discover how to paint & draw in the quickest time possible. Will creates weekly videos at Will Kemp Art School about painting, drawing & creativity.

How to Let Flashes of Inspiration Come

johnandann@theartistsroad — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 03:41:00 GMT

Swimming in the ocean of life, so to speak, it sometimes feels as though we must use every bit of energy to keep our heads above the waves. Over many years we have developed some techniques that help us to shed the heavy seaweed and barnacles of the daily thoughts that occupy our minds, and step onto the shore where our creative minds can play.

Peace on the River by John Hulsey, oil painting.

I imagine that to most people, artists are able to simply tap into their creativity as one would turn on a tap for water--always available at a moment's notice. Anyone in the creative field knows that artistry must be cultivated, practiced, and exercised regularly if it is to thrive and prosper, much like an athlete must slowly build up ability in order to reach the Olympics. Art needs space and time to grow, and so, many of us have created spaces, little corners in the house or full-fledged studios where we can shut out the traffic of life and give voice to our inner worlds. We have found that these physical spaces, whether large or small, are absolutely essential to the practice of art-making.

Inspiration can come from simply diving into our work--whether pencil sketch drawing, writing or shaping clay. Many times, it is this intensely occupied conscious mind that allows the creative insights of the subconscious to bubble up to the surface. When that happens, it is often described as a "flash" of inspiration, but in reality is the natural result of creating the proper environment, both physically and mentally, for our creative minds to do their job.

So how does one make the mind quit worrying about bills or family and turn to peaceful, creative thoughts, just like that? Much like the practice of meditation, it takes a disciplined regular schedule and lots of practice. There are so many distractions and details of living to attend to that the mind can get overwhelmed by the clamoring thoughts that can easily drown out the quiet messages from deep within. We must develop a positive mental attitude towards ourselves and our work, and shut out those nagging thoughts of inadequacy or public indifference, maintaining at the same time, the ability to see our work clearly and objectively in order to grow as artists. As in all good things, balance seems to be the key.

Please join us on The Artist's Road for more interesting articles, interviews and step-by-step painting demonstrations.

--John and Ann

Abandon and Control: Robert Liberace's Contradiction in Oil Painting?

judith St. Ledger - Roty — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:57:00 GMT

Oil painting demonstration by Robert Liberace.

To listen to Robert Liberace talk during one of his demonstrations, sometimes, fleetingly, it sounds to me like there is an occasional contradiction. The most recent example I can point to is when he talked during his most recent demo about drawing and painting with both "abandon and control." Well, how do I do that? But when I watch him paint, I begin to understand at least how he does that. (I'm a long way from figuring out how to effectively do it myself!)

This oil painting was done in class at the Art League in Alexandria, Virginia (developed further since my last blog), and is a good example of that abandon and control, as is his demonstration in his DVD, The Figure Sketch in Oil.

His first marks with oil on canvas amount to a thin, very fluid line. From my perspective, his gesture is fluid, loose, and yet powerful. From there he adds shadow. Even with the addition of the first pass of shadows, the painted sketch still seems to me to be really fluid, full of motion. Rob seemed to be shaping the form, taking care to pay attention to the width of the light, the width of the shadow, and still, critically, maintaining that initial dynamic gesture even with his straight lines.

In my own paintings, at this point I find that I have to really focus to maintain the oil painting techniques that give me that gesture—the one that made me want to paint that pose in the first place. Rob says that you may want to start over if you find yourself at that point and repeatedly stresses the importance of maintaining the strength of the gesture throughout.

As the shadow shapes take form, the concept of both abandon and control make more sense for me. In the demo, Rob carefully, but quickly, shaped the shadows, both form and cast shadows. Both the bones and muscles began to appear, especially the scapula and vertebral column. The control was initially represented by the care he put into laying in the shadows. (Jon deMartin, an instructor of mine at Studio Incamminati reminds readers in a recent Drawing magazine article that it is critical to keep a clear distinction between light and shadow, and that halftones are part of the light, not part of the shadow.)

When adding color, Rob added the "most obvious color with the largest presence," applying it sometimes with hatching strokes and sometimes blocks of color. He used the half tones to note the plane changes, and turn the individual forms.

He did all that maintaining his initial gesture. Truly using both abandon and control!

--Judith

Building a Career for the Long Term

Patricia Watwood — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:26:00 GMT


	My painting, Fate, was given an honor award at the 2011 Portrait Society of America International Competition.

For the Portrait Society of America Conference in Atlanta this year, I was invited to participate in a panel on Professionalism, Leadership, and Service. I was asked to speak to “Building a Career for the Long Term.” Now, anyone who saw my tax returns for 2010 would NOT have put me on a short list for advice on professional success, but I guess there are different kinds of success.

For artists, commercial and financial success is only one goal. So, don’t ask me for financial advice, but I am happy to share my thoughts on what have been some guiding principles for an oil painter’s long-term career goals.

My 500 paintings: I’ve been thinking about the 500 paintings I’ll be lucky to make in my life, and focusing on how each oil painting will be part of a body of work that expresses my point of view and values. In other words, I have long been thinking “long term” in terms of my chosen subject matter, and how it will reach an audience today, and I hope, in 50 years. So, to develop your career long term, think long term, and envision the work you are doing this year, next year, and in 10 years. We can’t know exactly where we will end up, but think about how what you are doing at this moment will be part of a lifetime of work.

Recognizing what connects it all together: Art careers and recognition are based in part on the audience ability to understand who you are as an artist, and what are the consistent qualities in your work over all. Galleries and collectors will look at your entire body of work in assessing who you are, and what the quality of your work is. You may approach a variety of subjects and even have a range of style in terms of sketching to finish or different oil painting techniques, but there is always an overarching voice, a common quality to your work that will pervade all of what you make which expresses your fundamental nature and values. Strive to understand what this is in your own work, and find ways to make that unique quality shine to it’s best advantage.

No mind readers here: Who knows what the art world will look like in 10-20 years? What will be trendy? Will galleries still be in business and interested in figuration? Will the Internet play a larger and larger part? No one knows. So, my advice is don’t worry about it. What is going to keep you committed to the difficult work of making art when the wind is blowing in the other direction? My advice to you and myself has always been don’t chase the next big thing. You’ve got to dig deep and find the source of inspiration that will sustain you and your work.

--Patricia

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

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: 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: 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.

Oil Painting: Sarah Lamb: Painting the World as a Feast

American Artist — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:55:00 GMT

Traditionally trained artist Sarah Lamb uses her passion for the kitchen to bring a new vitality to the art of the still life.

Mousse au Chocolat
2005, oil on linen, 20 x 32.
All artwork
this article private collection
unless otherwise indicated.

by John A. Parks

"I love to cook," admits artist Sarah Lamb as she surveys her sumptuous painting Mousse au Chocolat, in which the ingredients for the famous dish are arranged atop a wooden table. A copper double boiler oozes melted chocolate from its top while a block of butter sits glistening in a saucer. Over to one side a pair of perfectly formed eggs huddle together, and in the center a wooden ladle is positioned so that its chocolate-coated end sits forward over the edge of the table as though to tempt us to take a little taste. The picture is completed by a stack of raw chocolate pieces atop their wrapping paper in the foreground and a bowl of eggs dropping into the shadows in the background. This is indeed a cook’s most pleasant moment, when everything is gathered together in an orderly way and work can begin on the delightful business of creating something absolutely delicious.

Almost as scrumptious as a mouthful of chocolate mousse is the paint that the artist uses to depict these raw materials. Brushing with a generous yet sensitive touch, Lamb uses the pigment to suggest the weight and texture of butter, copper, and chocolate, as well as the fragile, brittle curves of the eggs and the wrinkled wrapping paper of the chocolate. “I enjoy getting the paint to look and feel like the object I’m painting,” says the artist, although she observes that paint far more readily takes on the quality of some objects than others. Even so, Lamb’s ability to summon up the textures and densities of objects through lively manipulation of the paint has an enormous range. In Le Petit Dejeuner she suggests the brittle crust of a French loaf, with its fragile dusting of flour, against the soft and broken interior of the bread—not to mention the subtleties of the glass jar with its sticky contents. In Savons de Provence she conjures the waxy iridescence of blocks of soap, and in Prosciutto she miraculously achieves the dense weight of a prosciutto ham, juxtaposed with the sharp darkness of a metal blade and the gnarled texture of antler handles.

Le Petit Dejeuner
2005, oil on linen, 17 x 24.

Lamb has chosen to take on the very traditional format of still-life painting in which objects are laid out on a tabletop for our observation. In general she conforms to a convention of a single light source and a relatively dark background, so that the objects are clearly silhouetted and rendered with considerable drama. The danger of such an enterprise is that it can easily appear overly conservative, formulaic, and derivative. To take on this well-known task immediately subjects the artist to comparisons with the great still-life painters of the past, from Chardin to Manet. Lamb’s paintings succeed in avoiding the pitfalls because of their obvious delight in observation and their luscious yet lively handling of the paint. She maintains a sensitivity and immediacy of response throughout a work that keep everything alive, and we remain convinced of her passionate interest in the objects she is painting. Furthermore, within her chosen constraints, Lamb deftly plays all the games that still-life painters delight in. She enjoys thrusting the occasional object out toward the viewer, playfully violating the space between viewer and picture plane. She also toys with narrative possibilities, as in Mussels and Le Petit Dejeuner, where it appears that someone has already starting eating the food depicted. Lamb also delights in the compositional games that such painting allows. “I spend a lot of time arranging and rearranging things,” she says. “I’ve learned over the years that it is often more important to take things out than to put things in. I’m realizing that I can usually achieve more by not overloading the painting.” In Prosciutto, for instance, she originally intended to include several more items to balance the composition—then she realized that the meat and cutlery were enough. The absence of other props confers a thoughtful dignity on the subject and an almost masculine weight to the painting. In general, Lamb’s compositions favor a sense of clarity and evenness, with a careful balance of silhouettes and a gentle rhythm of placement. However, in several paintings, such as Hubbard Squash and 1930s Classic Yacht Model, the artist has opted instead for an almost stark centrality, leaving her single subject in unchallenged mastery directly in the middle of the picture.

Savons de Provence
2005, oil on linen, 21 x 36.

Lamb executes all her paintings on quadruple-primed linen. She tones her canvas a midgray, then she begins painting in a raw umber thinned with a little turpentine, sketching the composition. “It becomes a full monochrome painting,” she says. “I not only establish the drawing but also wash in the shadows.” As soon as this is finished, Lamb starts to work in color. “I don’t wait for the underpainting to dry,” she says, “although the umbers dry so quickly that it’s really not very wet as a rule.” The artist uses a variety of sable and synthetic sable brushes to lay on the paint. “I’ve never really worked with bristle brushes,” she says. “I don’t know why but they just don’t seem to suit my touch.” Somehow, even with soft brushes, Lamb manages to build rich passages of lush impasto. She generally works quickly. “I usually finish a painting in two to three days,” she reports, a fact that is somewhat surprising given the richness and fullness of the images she produces. But no doubt it is this very swiftness that gives the paintings their lively warmth and ensures that there is never a sense that they are overworked.

Prosciutto
2005, oil on linen, 19 x 33.

The success of Lamb’s painting hinges not only on her powerfully and clearly conceived compositions but also on her sure and sometimes uncanny judgment of color. She understands perfectly how to turn a form, as in the butter dish in Le Petit Dejeuner, where she carefully follows the cool grays of the shadows, the sudden orange warmth in the transition into the lights, and the cool highlights. Alternating color temperature is a key way of creating light on form. But Lamb matches this formal control with a sharp eye for the quality of local color. Consider how she combines a substantial variety of grays, oranges, and browns to achieve the copper pan in Mussels and gets the exact feel of the reds of the strawberry jam in Le Petit Dejeuner. In Savons de Provence, the ambers and greens of the glowing blocks of soap are highly realistic. The ability to deploy pigment like this is, in part, a result of the artist’s strong attachment to her subject matter. About Savons de Provence, the artist says, “I’ve collected soaps for years, so many that I almost don’t know what to do with them. I spent a long time arranging them for this painting.” The composition she arrived at is complex and almost architectural, tending to symmetry in its balance and its even spatial intervals. As in many of Lamb’s paintings, an almost geometrical organization acts as a framework in which to display her powerful, sensual response to the subject matter.

Mussels
2005, oil on linen, 23 x 34.

In one painting, 1930s Classic Yacht Model, the artist used somewhat more artifice to secure her subject matter. “I saw some wonderful antique model yachts for sale,” she recalls, “but they were far too expensive. Then I found a contemporary model that was much more affordable. I bought it and then ‘antiqued’ it—I stained the sails with tea and discolored the paintwork.” This picture, one of the largest the artist has created, shows the model yacht in outright profile sitting exactly in the middle of the painting on an old wooden chest. The very air around it seems to breathe with dust and age.

The most surprising painting in her recent exhibition at Spanierman Gallery, in New York City, was Hubbard Squash. In this piece, an enormous, curiously milky white squash sits boldly in the center of the canvas, announcing itself to the world in a most uncompromising fashion. “It’s my favorite painting in this exhibition. I’ve still got her in the studio,” says Lamb affectionately of the squash, “only now she’s just beginning to turn orange.” In this painting the centrality of the form, married with the symmetrical placement of the cutting board thrusting its corner out toward the viewer, puts us in an almost confrontational relationship with the squash. It is certainly a magnificent creature, with its heavy folds and gnarled stalk, and it seems to have every right to be allowed a whole painting to itself.

1930s Classic Yacht Model
2005, oil on linen, 48 x 48.

Although Lamb focuses on still-life paintings, she is also an accomplished plein air painter. “I simply love painting,” she says, “and I enjoy painting outside. I finally bought a big umbrella, which makes a huge difference because I can shade the canvas from the sun. I don’t use a French easel—I have a spindly landscape easel, and I attach the palette to it so that it is sloping up toward me.” Lamb usually paints her landscapes on gessoed panels that are toned with an earth-red ground. In Snake River—Late Afternoon she demonstrates what is possible in an hour or two of painting as she evokes a whole world of depth and scope with well-judged variations of greens and blues.

Meanwhile, in Milnes Pub, Edinburgh, Scotland the artist shows herself capable of rendering an interior with great skill. “This was painted while traveling with my husband,” she says. “The owners of the pub kindly let us set up in a corner, and we kept ordering drinks to ‘pay’ for our spot. Everyone seemed to enjoy what we were up to.” The painting shows Lamb’s sure feel for color, which allows her to render to perfection the yellowing walls and soft orange lights of a very typical pub interior with all its simple, much-used furniture and dark paneling. The restraint and evenness of the painting suggest that the artist left most of her drinks untouched.

Hubbard Squash
2005, oil on linen, 22 x 26. Collection the artist.

Whether she is painting landscapes or still lifes, Lamb brings to her work a robustly sensual grasp of the world, a vision that relishes the straightforward glories of food, a vase of fresh flowers, or a day out in the fresh air. The task may be traditional but the artist’s keenness of eye and joyful brush make the whole enterprise feel freshly alive, as she reminds us what the really wonderful things in life are.


Snake River— Late Afternoon 2005, oil on panel, 10 x 7½.	Milnes Pub, Edinburgh, Scotland 2005, oil on panel, 12¾ x 8¾.

About the Artist
Sarah Lamb was born in Petersburg, Virginia, and grew up in Georgia. She received a B.F.A. from Brenau Women’s College, in Gainesville, Georgia, and furthered her studies in Les Cerqueux, France, at L’Ecole Albert Defois, under Ted Seth Jacobs. In 1996 she moved to New York City to study with Jacob Collins at his Water Street Atelier, in Brooklyn. She also attended various courses at the Art Students League of New York, in Manhattan. The artist credits Collins, and his passion for teaching a traditional approach to painting, for much of her success. Lamb has mounted many solo and group exhibitions around the country, including a recent exhibition at Spanierman Gallery, in New York City. She will exhibit her paintings this fall at the John Pence Gallery, in San Francisco. The artist lives with her husband in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

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.

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Oil Painting: Leonid Gervits’ Process

American Artist — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 04:00:00 GMT

In the July/August issue of American Artist, we explored how portrait artist Leonid Gervits takes a stand for the legitimacy of the fine draftsmanship and multilayered technique 400 years after Velázquez. Here, we offer an excerpt from the feature.

To read the feature article on this artist, check out the July/August 2007 issue of American Artist.

by Molly Siple

1. Gervits begins by painting a 4"-x-6" oil sketch with a soft brush, taking about 20 minutes to decide on the composition, place the outline of the figure and the primary large shadows, and determine the soft and hard edges. He starts by painting the dominant local color of each large shape, which may later be lightened or darkened, or warmed or cooled. Gervits’ first concern is fitting the model, the hair, and the rest of the composition comfortably onto the canvas, because such placement can tell the viewer a lot about the personality of the sitter. A faulty composition in the beginning can cause design problems later on.

Artist Vassily Zvontzov
1978, oil, 31 x 28. Collection the artist.

2. Next, to paint the actual portrait, Gervits follows the time-honored procedure of multilayered, indirect painting, which consists of toning the primed canvas with a color appropriate to the color scheme—such as raw umber—to create a mid-to-light-toned ground, or imprimatura.

3. He then draws the figure in charcoal, sketching roughly to place the composition on the surface.

4. After fixing the charcoal with fixative or hair spray, he continues drawing the figure—but now in a dark color with a brush—to create a one-color tonal rendition of the model over the charcoal drawing. As he tells students, switching from charcoal to a brush should feel like a natural transition, with accurate drawing continuing to be the focus.

5. This step is followed by a two-color underpainting in full tonal scale. He sometimes also suggests temperature by adding an additional color to show warm or cool areas in preparation for the final glazing.

6. Finally comes glazing with transparent paints to add warmth, and scumbling with opaque pigment to add cool notes. Gervits advises students to keep glazes thin, to apply darker tones over lighter, and to apply several thin coats rather than one heavy glaze.

To read the feature article on this artist, check out the July/August 2007 issue of American Artist.

Oil Painting: John Beerman: Light, Restraint, and Clarity

American Artist — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:00:00 GMT

This Hudson River Valley artist uses a limited palette to create landscapes drenched in an evocative and transporting light.

by John A. Parks

Hook Mountain, Nyack, New York
2006, oil on linen, 36 x 60.
Private collection.
All images this article courtesy
Tibor de Nagy Gallery,
New York, New York.

John Beerman has discovered the realms of magic and delight available to the artist who dares to say less, creating strangely evocative and thoughtful pictures bathed in a rich and tranquil light. "I'd like to think my paintings take viewers somewhere new and transcendent," the artist says of his work. "I'd like them to feel that they are seeing the world in an entirely new way." Beerman achieves this vision through simplifying the painting process and by yielding to the influence of the artists who have painted before him in his native Hudson River Valley. "My strongest influence has been the American Luminist School,"? the artist admits. "I discovered these artists while I was a student, and I was very much drawn to the sense of quietness and contemplation in their work."

Beerman arrives at the luminosity and almost religious quietude in his landscapes through a process in which he carefully and systematically limits his palette while artfully editing out almost all descriptive detail. This two-pronged strategy is evident in his painting Hook Mountain, Nyack, New York, in which a vast, limpid expanse of the Hudson River is shown in the glow of a spectacularly luminous sunset. The promontory of Hook Mountain, Nyack, New York is reduced to a stark and simplified triplet of hummocks while a spit of darkly forested land creeps in at the left side. On the horizon sits the low eastern bank of the river shown as nothing more than a violet-and-orange strip. The only other feature in the painting is a patch of reeds suggested on the lower right. It is extraordinary that the ravishing color of this work is achieved with just three colors and white. "I make all my paintings based on color triads,"? says Beerman. "In this case I used phthalo blue, transparent orange, and alizarin crimson along with titanium white. There is also a magenta underpainting beneath it all."

The artist's studio,
showing the sketches,
notes, and value studies
that go into preparing
a finished work.

Beerman finds that by restricting his color he achieves a much more powerful sense of identity and atmosphere in each painting. And although he has discovered a number of combinations of pigments that work well for him he is always experimenting with new groupings. "I look at a scene and sense which colors will get the most from it,"? he says. "However, I'?m always willing to change my approach, even in the middle of a painting. Often I find that I can't get quite dark enough with the colors I've been working with, so I'll add an umber to go a little darker. In the end the important thing is the picture—what it does or says."?

As for his underpaintings, Beerman has experimented with many different combinations. "I first learned about transparent magenta while printmaking with my mother-in-law, Sylvia Roth, who is a wonderfully gifted master printmaker and painter," says the artist. "She showed me how magenta can give a warm glow to a piece, and she showed me various ways of building on top of it. Sometimes I work on a painting so long I end up covering the underpainting altogether. I suppose you could say at that point the underpainting was a waste of time, but I've come to realize that a perfectly executed technical painting isn't what I'm interested in. You always want to push yourself into new areas if you can, and so every painting becomes a journey to somewhere new and undiscovered. Theories and techniques can only take you so far—you have to know when to leave them behind and when to keep going without them."

Field Near Camp Towanda, II
2006, oil on linen, 30 x 40.
Collection the artist.

Beerman begins his paintings with a half-hour on-site study, quickly sketching the scene he has in mind and reducing it to a few simple shapes. The sketch for Hook Mountain, Nyack, New York, for instance, was achieved while sitting out on the Hudson River in a boat, rushing to capture the light as the sun sank below the horizon. Already evident at this stage was the immense simplification in which the artist revels; he has cut away all extraneous matter to reveal the bones of his scene. The artist also makes notes on the sketch, sometimes using numbers to denote tonal values. Back in the studio Beerman uses these studies to do small color sketches, trying out a variety of color triads to arrive at an appropriate color world for his image. At this stage he will also refine his composition and come up with a size and proportion that work. "I used to use more photographic references," admits the artist, "although I was never really interested in a highly finished kind of realism. These days, even though I take a photograph of the subject matter, I tend not to look at it very much. I find that it is too distracting and too likely to tempt me to include elements that I don't need in the painting."?

Hudson River View Looking East
2004, oil on linen, 12 x 18.
Private collection.

After this preliminary preparation, usually Beerman begins the final painting with a magenta-wash underpainting. Next, he builds the surface with broad brushstrokes, gradually massing his forms. He uses a variety of bristle brushes from various manufacturers. "I don't really like flats,"? he says, "and lately I've been buying filberts that aren't too fat."? Beerman holds his brush at the back end, working the paint onto the canvas with a delicate lick. As for paint, the artist has recently made some additions to his array of traditional oils. "Lately I've been working with Winsor & Newton water-soluble oils,"? he says. "I've found that with some of the very brilliant colors the water-soluble paints are a little brighter and sharper when they dry than true oil paint."? Beerman finds that he can augment the limited number of water-soluble oil colors available with traditional oils by adding water-soluble oil medium to the paint. "If you use about 50 percent medium to 50 percent oil paint you can then use your old-fashioned oil paint as a water-soluble paint,"? he says. The artist does have one or two problems with this new medium however, saying that sometimes the values change as the color dries, undoing some of the subtlety of the color in a painting.

Lake 7 a.m.
2004, oil and acrylic
on linen, 28 x 40.
Private collection.

Beerman will work on a painting over many weeks, building it with small brushstrokes executed in fairly thin paint until the picture attains a sense of extraordinary luminosity. "I'd like to get just a little more sense of the brushing in the work," says Beerman, "but since I do so much work on the surface, I tend to lose some of that directness." Indeed the artist works his surfaces with an almost obsessive delicacy. The sky in Hook Mountain, Nyack, New York, for instance, is composed of many thousands of touches with the brush, created as the artist moved back and forth across the canvas. This quiet and even compilation of statements, building to the evocation of a subtle light, lends the picture an elegiac quality, a wistfulness that the artist brings to the scene. Only in the extreme foreground, where the water ripples toward the viewer, has Beerman left a few fresh brushstrokes to sit on their own.

In some of Beerman's pictures, the stripped-down nature of his landscape has been taken to extremes. In Hudson River View Looking East, we are presented with river, land, and sky as little more than a group of horizontal strips. Bereft of detail and incident to hang onto, the eye seeks out tiny nuances of drawing, little moves and notches on the horizon line, and the curious stacking of the clouds above. Freed of the conventions of the picturesque we are left to gaze on the stark reality of the scene, bathed in a pink light bestowed by sunset behind us. In some recent paintings, however, Beerman has abandoned this ultrasimplification of landscape in favor of scenes that contain more incident and evidence of human appearance. In Field Near Camp Towanda II, for instance, a stretch of barbed-wire fence separates us from the sweep of golden landscape as it stretches away toward the last glow of a sunset. And in Late Winter Afternoon, Nyack we look across a group of rooftops to the eastern banks of the Hudson River. "Actually this was a painting I did from the skylight of my studio,"? explains the artist. "I just kept the canvas there and did a little on it now and then when the light was right."

Late Winter Afternoon, Nyack
2006, oil on linen, 18 x 26.
Private collection.

Only rarely do human figures appear in Beerman's work. In Lake 7 a.m., a lone boatman rows a small skiff across a wide expanse of water. Trees hover in the background still swathed in a dawn mist while the sky lightens to a golden yellow. The rower leans back over his shoulder as though he has spotted something out of our view. The painting of the figure is quite solid and real, while the landscape, dissolving in light and mist, feels more suggestive, the stuff of dreams. It seems clear that the figure is a simple stand-in for ourselves, an improbable traveler in the poetic realms of nature and beauty.

About the Artist
John Beerman grew up in North Carolina and studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence. In particular he credits his teacher Gerald Immonen with giving him a love of color and a fascination for its workings. Beerman worked briefly as an assistant to Jasper Johns, Cletus Johnson, and Alfonso Ossorio. He launched his career as a painter in the mid-1980s and has mounted numerous exhibitions around the United States. Beerman's work is in many public collections, including the Walker Art Center, in Minneapolis; the Neuberger Museum of Art, in Purchase, New York; and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City. The artist lives with his wife, Susie, their two children, and his mother-in-law, printmaker Sylvia Roth, in the birthplace of Joseph Cornell, in Nyack, New York. He teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design, and his work is represented by Tibor de Nagy Gallery, in New York City. Future projects include a mural cycle of Hudson River views for Xavier's H20, a new restaurant on the waterfront in Yonkers, New York.

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Oil Painting: Josh Elliott: Tapestries in Oil

American Artist — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 11:00:00 GMT

Oil painter Josh Elliott strives to paint tones and designs, not just picturesque scenes.

by Bob Bahr

Evening Shadows, Swan Valley
2006, oil, 12 x 16.
All artwork this article private
collection unless otherwise indicated.

Josh Elliott is 33 years old, but in the best tradition of good artists—or anyone whose job requires continual growth—he remains an avid student of his craft. Many of his plein air outings involve experiments with design, color, or invention. Elliott already has enormous facility—one friend of his, an established artist who sells paintings for tens of thousands of dollars, saw a recent Elliott piece and jokingly muttered, “Somebody needs to break his hands.” Elliott is done with simply capturing picturesque scenes—“I’m not driven by subject matter anymore,” the painter states. Now he hopes his pieces have the allure of a rug. Yes, a rug.

“All the colors come together so well in a beautiful Persian rug,” says Elliott. “I want to paint a painting that’s like one of those rugs, or like a tapestry. I’ve been more carefully designing my compositions for colors and values, going not for a focal point but rather for an overall feeling. These paintings are very thought out and planned.” He’s using his brain as much as, or more than, many painters, but one senses that Elliott is suspicious of the highbrow. “I don’t see art as an elevated thing,” he says. “It should not exclude. When people around here say they feel they don’t understand a piece, really what they’re saying is they don’t like it. I respect that—you like what you like.” He considers his process a “blue-collar approach,” and although the oil painter’s depictions of the mountain meadows, river canyons, and working farms of his native Montana are decidedly no-nonsense, they are also thoughtful and pretty. Like a tapestry or an artful rug.

January Morning
2005, oil, 12 x 24.

Lately, Elliott has been concentrating on tone. His earlier work contained some high-contrast passages, but the artist is currently enjoying creating works with a limited value range and a harmony in temperature and color group. For instance, one painting he executed last spring featured rusty brown hills and yellow light. The trees were spring-green, but Elliott painted them golden so they harmonized with the earth tones on the canvas. (He did use cool blues in the trees’ shadows.) “Sometimes it’s a study of how brown I can make a scene—or how blue—and still make it read,” says the artist. “I think of some of these new paintings as tone poems.” Such paintings are inherently moody, and Elliott likes that—even as he carefully avoids dictating a specific mood. “Yesterday I painted the last light of the day—the trees looked pink, and the mountain’s shadow was coming over them. It created a feeling of nostalgia...or impending doom...or still, quiet, peacefulness. It depends on the viewer’s feelings about the scene, not just mine.”

Teton River
2006, oil, 14 x 18.

This exploration is indicative of Elliott’s willingness to pursue change—be it in subject matter, composition, or the colors on his palette. His paintings of landscapes suggest great veracity, but the artist has no problem rearranging elements to create stronger compositions. He cites the work of Victor Higgins, Rockwell Kent, and the Group of Seven—the Canadian landscape painters Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley—as inspirational in this regard. “They were all artists who really owned their images,” says Elliott. “They were not slaves to nature. It takes some courage to move things around, and it also takes awhile to know how to make it work.” Thus, trees can be moved and turned orange in his paintings if the artist thinks it will improve a piece.

Martinsdale Morning
2006, oil, 20 x 20.

For years, Elliott worked with a basic palette consisting of titanium white, French ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, cadmium red, cadmium yellow light, virdian, and one surprising hue—cobalt violet. “My dad [painter Steve Elliott] had some on his palette, and I started using it instead of cadmium red,” he says. “Cobalt violet is a little subtler; it warms things up, but not too much.” He recently expanded his palette significantly, adding quinacridone rose, Indian red, cadmium orange, permanent green, turquoise, chromium oxide, raw umber, and yellow ochre because he wanted richer colors. “At first it looked like somebody dumped a bag of Skittles on my canvas,” says Elliott, “then I reined it in and really started having fun.”

He’s not loyal to any particular brand of paint or brush, but he favors big brushes in general—sizes 6 through 12—and uses a coarse hog’s-bristle brush for his first thin wash, which he lays in as a road map for the painting. After sketching the composition in, using thinned oil paint as if it were watercolor, he switches to a smoother synthetic brush for thicker paint application. “Sometimes I let the wash show through, and sometimes I cover it all up with opaque paint,” explains Elliott. He may start with middle values, but the artist estimates that 70 percent of the time he begins by laying in his darkest darks. He then moves on to the middle values and, finally, the highlights. The artist likes to start with the area of the composition that excites him the most, and he finishes each section as he goes. “I usually block in with intense colors—I can always mute them,” he says. “I try to maintain big shapes from the beginning because those are what will allow the painting to read from 50 feet away. Because I finish as I go, I try to keep my brushstrokes as suggestive as possible all the way through.” This approach is readily apparent in Elliott’s depictions of scree fields, logs, and, especially, water.

Big Hole Haystacks
2006, oil, 9 x 12.

“I like to paint weather,
like the coming snowstorm
in this one,” says Elliott.
“It adds drama to a not-so-
dramatic scene.”

A few years ago, Elliott was perhaps on the verge of becoming known as a masterful painter of water, particularly streams flowing over multicolored rocks. So he stopped painting it. “I didn’t want to get stuck in a subject matter,” he explains. “It just didn’t excite me anymore; I felt like it was time for me to move on. I still paint it, but only when it makes sense. There are artists who focus on series, but that’s just not me.” Water still turns up in a lot of his paintings because it’s often a crucial compositional element. But the lasting effect of Elliott’s stint painting rocks underwater is most easily seen in his ability to capture a scene’s rhythm and harmonic colors, unified by a reflected sky and suggested with fresh, dappled brushstrokes. “Maybe that’s where my idea of a painting looking like a tapestry came from,” he muses. As the number of streambeds in his paintings dwindles, man-made structures—particularly farmhouses and their outbuildings—show up more frequently. Elliott considers them interesting design elements, but they also allow him to celebrate farmers and cattlemen through his work. “These people are hard workers,” he emphasizes. “They don’t get enough recognition. In our state, at least, they are the grease that allows the wheel to turn. I don’t work as hard as they do, but I relate to these guys. Plus, it’s interesting to think about how people get by on this planet. These buildings help tell the story.” He’s also open to a wildcard—letting someone else pick the subject matter. “Sometimes when I’m with one of my painting buddies, someone will pick a spot where I don’t initially see anything I’m interested in,” he says. “But I stay there, and I find something. I’m not really afraid to paint anything right now. I used to be afraid of failure, but sometimes painting something that you think might result in a failed painting can turn out really well. You learn a lot, and the result can be great. Someday I want to make a McDonald’s beautiful—I just have to paint it in the right light.”

Big Hole River
2006, oil, 24 x 30.

Appropriately, Elliott not only references Edgar Payne’s classic treatise Composition of Outdoor Painting (De Ru’s Fine Arts, Bellflower, California) but he also quotes the passage that in a sense advocates throwing out all the rules but still creating a successful painting. “I like organizing the rocks in a scene into a pattern, one that allows me to move the viewer’s eye around in the painting,” he says. “If you make the pattern as random as the rocks really are distributed in the landscape,
it’s going to be a random painting. Payne talks about purely random paintings—I think that would be interesting to try.”


Ulm Ranch 2006, oil, 15 x 30. Collection Montana Historical Society, Helena, Montana. “This was mostly about painting white on white,” comments Elliott. “The white barn looks yellow with the sunlight hitting it, and the snow was reflecting the sky. The artist’s job is to point out what nonartists don’t always see—like a yellowish barn and bluish snow.”	Ol’ Red 2006, oil, 30 x 40. “When I painted the study for Ol’ Red the rancher came out to warn me about his aggressive sheep,” recalls Elliott. “Then he asked if I would paint his barn with a new roof on it. I told him that I was painting it because of the roof. That barn had a much more interesting character than the other two in the scene, which were newer.”	Glacier Lakes, Beartooths 2006, oil, 18 x 24. “This painting is an example of how you don’t have to paint everything to get a sense of place,” comments Elliott. “You can tell these are high mountain lakes without seeing the actual mountain peaks. If you can capture the essence of a scene with less, then go with less.”

About the Artist
Josh Elliott studied at several universities, but says his greatest influence is his father, wildlife painter Steve Elliott. He lives with his wife, Allison, and their three children in Helena, Montana, where he has a home studio. Elliott has won awards throughout the West and Southwest, and he is represented by Chaparral Fine Art, in Bozeman, Montana; Medicine Man Gallery, in Tucson, Arizona; Simpson Gallagher Gallery, in Cody, Wyoming; and Ponderosa Art Gallery, in Hamilton, Montana.

Bob Bahr is the managing editor of American Artist.

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