The USE of studys in a live, on-sight Plein Air Application...

 

Temperance River Quick Studies

The sketching of notans, and composing or fleshing out a scene in a small sketchbook is not an uncommon practice among plein air painters, (those that set up on location and paint from life).  It has long been my practice, and in my workshop instruction...to encourage students to carry a small board with sections taped off (to simulate larger possible compositions) and do 10-15 minute oil comps, to push ideas, composition, color palette strategies, and light keys.


I used to prime MFD board to carry along, but since I've been prepping Thunderbolt cardstock (Kraft ph neutral 80# paper), I have found it more convenient both to paint, and then thereafter to store (either in a plastic bin, paintings separated by wax coated paper...or a small art portfolio).  There are just a couple examples...of practical application.


Setup on the Temperance River...along the west shores of Lake Superior, in Cook County...and painting in the Grand Marais Plein Air event...I was looking at the mouth, the light, visitors (often skipping stones once they got out there), and realized that morning, that the light was definitely going to change in a hurry, and change the whole sense of the drama in the small gorge.  I decided that a couple quick 4"x 6" taped off prepped cardstock paintings would be ideal...to decide if I would like the horizon of the distant water high with less sky, or low with more sky...and get the shadows down?


It proved to be a good plan...after choosing the second quick study, because as I believed it would...the light having moved into the gorge created an entirely different setting.  The subject remained worthy as a reference, but it no longer held true to the compelling drama that I wanted.
 

 

One of my favorite elements of this larger work (14"x 18" oil on linen) was the painting of the two figures.  It reads well, but each figure is roughly 5-6 brush strokes...

Following the opening of the AIS event, I had to drive 4 hours home as I was teaching a plein air workshop next morning, and that another 1-1/2 hours west of where I live.  Following the workshop that day, I and my wife drove back up to Door County for the duration of the opening AIS events.

My paint students proved to be fairly new at painting outdoors on location, so I demonstrated a simple palette, first a values driven black and white mix of a  dark, mid, light plus white...and then did the same with color choosing several dominant colors of the scene to set up my mixing palette with a dark, mid, light of each color.  If the work required more color transitions, I would leave the option over to include two halftones to each main value group.

 

About 4"x 6" each, and no more than ten minutes each

 

 

Couple Studies from Fish Creek and Epraim Door County, WIS

While up at the American Impressionist Society national exhibition event, and participating in the member paintout, I was on the hunt where to paint.  I ended up painting a 12"x 16" of a sailboat tied up in Ephraim, but scoped out a spot by the public beach looking across over at the town.  I thought it would be fun to do a small study, but make that distant land mass appear nearer.  Then, did another study of a sailboat tied up at Clark Park, in Fish Creek...but, decided to play with the daylight reference photo and try to pull it off as a dusk, or early nocturne piece.  Both are 6"x 8" oils...on paper...

 

As always, if you click on images, you will bring up a larger view of the painting.  Enjoy...

 

Had an opportunity at the Big Easel and Bistro of Wabeno, our arts consortium, to see this Mark 9 (1954-60s) Jaguar, and it had "paint me" in its setting all over it.  These are two small paper studies with oils for that reason...

6"x 8" oil  "Jaguar Mark 9 series #1"

 6"x 8" oil "Jaguar Mark 9 series #2

*note...as always, click on the images to see larger resolution image 

6"x 8" oil "Last Light Big Fork"


Its been awhile since I've posted my small oil studies on paper, yet I've been painting quite a bit.  Time to share some more.  As always, if you click on the images you will see a larger resolution image.

 

5"x 7" oil "Late Afternoon Trolling"

 6"x 8" oil "Willow Sunset"

 

6"x 8" oil "Camping With Jer"

 

6"x 9" oil "Fall On A Peshtigo River Road"

Couple studies of a local lake...both 6"x 8"

Have spent a lot of time on the water this summer. With 1200 lakes in our national forest, it is hard to not give in to such. A lot of fishing, a lot of looking for good paint subjects, a lot just letting the heart celebrate.

Just finished... 6"x 9" oil study of a scene view on Skagway Alaska's White Pass trainride

6"x 9" oil study Scenic View White Pass Trainride, Skagway, AK  AP



Perhaps one of the most life enrichening experiences was taking the White Pass train out of Skagway with my wife.  We were on a cruise thru the Inside Passage, our second cruise, and teaching plein air workshops. 

We had been given a heads up to take the last rear car, because then one could go out the car door and stand on a gated balcony and see as well as photograph the whole experience.  The trip for us was about 37-40 miles before having to return, and I stood for perhaps 80% of that.  Quite breathtaking...

Peeking Sunlight...oil on cardstock...

A study that took some personal sticktoitiveness and goading on, as we just got hit with another 18" of snow our third week into Spring...and was almost hard not to feel some weariness with the season...hahaa...but, I did finish.  Had to remind myself, it is "just a study..." so no need to labor and render beyond the necessary...

9"x 6" Peeking Sun  AP



After the painting is finished...I tape them to the side of one of my bookshelves.  When one side is done...the first few are dry, get pulled off and put into a bin with wax coated paper sheets to separate one painting from another, and stored.  Eventually I take those out and put them in black art portfolios, which make it convenient to take an armload of paintings in one binder form to share.

 

5"x 7"  Surf Study- Lake Superior  AP


Inspired by a lot of time on Lake Michigan fishing with my father, both of us serving in the US Navy (on what my dad called "the Big Pond!") and Lake Superior not too far north of our home in NE Wisconsin, just below Upper Michigan.  Love surf...time on the water, being around water.  Painting at a number of events.  I have done my share of plein air work up in Marquette, Michigan off Wetmore Landing, Presque Isle, and so forth...and over in Grand Marais, MN (about three hours north of Duluth).  This study is much like my normal painting efforts to simplify the complexity of water, reflections, transparency, rocks, bottom, light penetration.  Fun stuff...

6"x 9"  Cow Elk in Morning Conference  AP


 Some of my wildlife art past emerges every so often...and these are quick and simple studies.  Using the largest brush, a flat possible.  I am a brush wiper...meaning instead of a separate brush for color, values...I will get mileage from one, the largest I can paint...and exhaust what is possible with that one larger brush before moving to the next smaller brush.  It helps me focus on essential suggestive brushwork and constrain temptations to detail.

6" x 8"  Calling the Herd of Cows   AP


Hardly anything more majestic than hearing the series of calls made by a bull elk echoing thru a mountain valley.  To see the vast numbers in a herd cover ground in quick haste, is beautiful...

  

7"x 5" study of a Muley Buck head  AP

  

6"x 8" Pines of Ontario  AP

4"x 8" Study of Oregon Sundown Shading the Bottoms AP

 7"x 9"  Black Angus on Oregon Mountains  AP

*clicking on images brings up larger view...and "AP" are those works that remain in my or the "artist's possession" 

And again more cardstock studies...oil

Just about caught up sharing my latest cardstock oil studies.  Using Thunderbolt 80# acid neutral paper, a warm brown in tone.

There next few are from Grand Marais, Minnesota...

5"x 7" Harbor as Seen From Mainstreet   *spoken for


This is the mainstreet view, businesses and eatery/taverns to the right, and the view in the last (above) painting is off to the left near perpendicular...

5"x 7" Grand Marais Mainstreet- a Nocturne AP

 

  4"x 6"  Night's End Sunset  AP

  4-1/2"x 9"  Callin' It a Night  AP


 This ends my cardstock studies thus far of the Grand Marais area.  Hoping to hear I'll be back plein air painting this coming fall.  *now remember...clicking on the images will bring up a larger view.  Thank you...

More cardstock oil studies...what I like to refer to as my wetland series...

I have long had this love affair for the mundane here in northern Wisconsin.  Plein air events which gather artists from around the country is fun...but for new participants to that event and location, every scene appears as eye candy though local residents have likely well accustomed to shutting out the normal.

I like to imagine were a local...what things would I be sensitive to in my daily passing, things that have long become passive and the mundane. 

In northern Wisconsin where I live in a national forest, are 1200 lakes, rivers and streams and many many waterfalls.  Perhaps 80-90% of my paintings tend to have water in them in some form.  I grew up on water fishing Lake Michigan with my father, and then like my father served in the US Navy or what we liked calling, "the Big Pond!"

But...I have come to enjoy the design I sense within chaos of simple things like dead matted grasses of early Spring...bits of green emerging to promise warmer days.  I like the chaos of many vertical grasses and tag alder stems and branches.  It is fun to attack the negative space (space in-between and thru) which will define with much greater ease the suggestion of the complex without laboring to depict actually each thing.

          8"x 6"  Spring Overflow AP

So much around us in nature carries a natural asymmetry (informal visual balance) that may need a little fleshing out to see it.  But one task of artists is to take the complex and simplify it so others might see again for the very first time...

           5"x 7"  Three On Post  AP

 

        5"x 7"  Dialogue of Spaces  AP

     5"x 7"  Overcast Beautitudes  AP

        5"x 7"  Flooded ATV Trail  AP

          6"x 8"  Fores'lections  AP

6-1/2"x 9"  A Little Left Leaning  AP

Hope you enjoy these...they are much fun to paint.  Its funny when I set up and paint such on location (plein air), and I get someone in a pickup truck drive by giving me that "what the )!$_!# is he doing?"  After all, flooded roadsides, edges of wetlands are so common as to be put completely out of mind.


As always, if you click on the images, you will bring up a larger view to see.  Thanks

More oil studies on Thunderbolt cardstock...

 8"x 6" Emma...granddaughter AP

8"x 6" Addie...granddaughter AP

I enjoy painting portraits, have done many over the years.  I have always found it interesting and even amusing people thinking of the artist as one thing, say a wildlife artist...are then surprised and will say something like, "OOOoohhh, didn't know you could paint portraits TOO!!"

As an artist, well aware we operate with a visual language of shape, color, values, line, texture, space, form...I make it my point when painting to concern myself with the color of light, the shape I need to pay attention to an put down, and the proper values (light and dark) and then let the viewer recognize the what of what I am painting.  I have often been asked because of my experience painting water scenes, "how do you paint water?" and tongue in cheek, yet quite serious, I respond, "the same way I paint someone's nose"

Think about it...what is it we see that is not a shape, does not have color and value?  Armed with such simplistic philosophy, I paint without fear that because I am unfamiliar with a subject I ought not be able to paint it.  Because I AM FABULOUSLY EQUIPPED as an artist to see, and recognize the visual language of what I am seeing.


I have often painted myself over the years, which is a habit of many artists.  Sometimes more flattering, sometime not so much.  Without my beard now at 63yrs of age...I appear about ten years younger.  My hair is still relatively dark, though is streaked now with gray hair.  With a cap on...the white beard or gotee seen only advances my appearance of age.  I am prone to become bored with my appearance.  My hair grows uncharacteristically fast. I can have my hair short for the golf season (as I did coaching), and then not cutting it til the next golf Spring season...grow enough hair to put it up in a ponytail.  I am not stretching the truth by any at all.


The artist intensely studying...looks intense, sometimes appears angry, eyebrows furled, low...and in this quick cardstock study...I appear even tired and overall older.  But, such studies are about being truthful and putting down what you see.  I come off here I think...looking like a grumpy old man! hahaha...

10-1/2"x 8" self-portrait AP

6-1/2" x 9"  Ken  AP

I have a proven past...where labored many hour works endlessly rendered and detail turned out hyper realistic paintings, but starting to paint plein air in the mid 90s more or less began my change.  Nature is not mindful, doesn't care that you are painting...and the light is often very fickle here in northern Wisconsin...not like the long days of endless summer Alaska light, or hot days of Arizona and the Southwest.  We have a saying in Wisconsin that if you don't like the weather, wait around for fifteen minutes.


Thus, the power and efficiency of each brushstroke became critical...no paint a stroke...go back and fix.  I have put out videos and taught workshops on brushwork alone.  My creed when I determine it...which is most often, is how I view "alla prima" which means to "start and finish in one sitting"...is that a "brushstroke laid is a brushstroke stayed"...thus, getting mileage out of the intended brushstroke to suggest, with the precise color and value you intend.


With "studies"...I have no agenda to prove myself, only to gather and put down.  With "Ken"...I could have striven for a more perfect likeness...but such was not my goal.  It was to put down shapes, color and value squinting the eyes with immediacy and a sense of urgency.  Were I to opt...photo references as well as studies depicting color, light, the moment in a study could reproduce a larger in-studio more labored and rendered work.


As it turns out...as I have found, many have put it to me that my attempts to get things down urgently and efficiently in a study are an art in and of themselves.  I do enjoy them...

6"x 4-1/2"  Another Study of Addie  AP


This study of Addie...was self-assigned to use the largest brush to hold control and efficiency, a flat...and with a towel to wipe the brush quickly put down the color of light.  A fun effort...

6"x 4-1/2"  Kicking Bird  AP


This is another quick small study from Dances With Wolves, which is one of my favorite movies depicting the West...


Since I posted Kevin Costner earlier, I will add a closeup of this small work...and again aiming for a strick perfect likeness is not the point of such a study, but the color of light...and the shape those colors take to create form...

 6"x 4"  Study of Costner in DWWs  AP

7-1/2"x 6"  study of my father  AP

From this study, I did a larger studio painting on linen of my father to give to my mother at her 80th birthday.  My father passed away in 1991 from cancer, that was initiated by his presence as a sailor on board a ship with many others exposed to the atomic tests at the Bikini Atolls of the Marshall Islands.  It was quite an emotional effort...so you can appreciate how a study then translates to a larger studio effort, I will include that work now here...

My portraits extend to include dogs, such as my Sook' (short from her Finnish name Suklaa Kahvi- meaning, "Chocolate Coffee")...here are a number of studio studies that led to a more serious larger studio oil on a self-made linen panel...

very young pup, my first study  AP

 

7"x 5" Lil' Sook'  AP

This last study here was used to create a 6"x 6" work that was accepted in last year's Randy Higbee national exhibition.

6-1/2"x 9"  Sleeping Sookie  AP

This study then led to a much larger linen work that was entered as one of several works in the 2017 AIS (American Impressionist Society) exhibition.  Another work was chosen, and I may yet enter this in some other competition as I really like it...

18"x 24"  "A Hard Day's Play"  AP 

  

 10"x 8" Study of Sook' at One Year of Age AP



As always, clicking on an image will bring up larger view, thank you