Distractions of the REALLY Good Kind

This week has found my studio empty and rather neglected but occasionally that isn't a bad thing.  My mother-in-law turned 80 years old yesterday and to celebrate that huge milestone, I have taken the time to plan a surprise birthday party in her honor.  All my six children came to be with Grandma and with them came their wives and those precious grandchildren that they have blessed me with. Family and friends gathering together to share a meal and laugh is a good thing.  Actually it is a REALLY good thing!

We have heard over and over that our families must take priority over work and since I'm trying to become a serious artist, family responsibilities must come first.  It also doesn't hurt to step back for a short time when you are having a pivotal learning crisis in your creative world.  That is where I find myself as an artist because I was told that my all important light source in several of my paintings is confusing.  Obviously, I am not fully understanding how light and shadows interact and that is due to years of not truly observing my surroundings with the artist eye.  Your brain processes all of your surrounding but often we just take in information and never really consider what it is that we are looking at.  Only until we present conflicting images do we stop and think about the fact that something just doesn't look right.  So a little study of light and shadow is exactly what I need to do right now so that my paintings become more realistic and I'm not confusing my friend and instructor, Lily Adamczyk anymore with my "Your light coming from all direction" compositions.

Since no one is awake in the house yet, I have a lovely cup of hot tea and free access to the computer I decided to do some research on the subject.  I found a helpful blog titled "Making Great Paintings-Understanding the Light and Shadow Families."  Well making GREAT paintings sound really good to me so I started reading the article.  I found myself thinking how familiar some of these suggestions were and to my surprise I noticed that the website so appropriately called "Artist Mentors Online" is the creation of Kevin Macpherson. (AMO)  Well can you believe, that I am currently reading a book called "Putting More Light and Color in Your Oil Paintings" by none other than Kevin Macpherson.  I love to see artists that spend their precious time helping new artist like myself learn the secrets of the trade. I have only begun to scratch the surface of the treasure chest of knowledge that this website contains but I am loving his book right now.

So if you are like me and you find yourself needing to spend some in depth study on a specific trouble spot in your artistic journey, I would greatly suggest two things....1.  It's time to put on your walking shoes and go observe first hand the relationship that light and shadow have with each other.  This might require you coming to the same spot several times in that day so that you can see how the shadow changes in relationship to the sun.  2.  Find someone that already knows the stuff you need to learn and become an informational processing sponge.

Holding my Newest Grandson, Jonas

There is a BUG Stuck in My Paint

I have been reading a book by Kevin Macpherson called "Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color".  Mr. Macpherson is an accomplished En Plein Air painter.  (That is French for "In the Open Air")  This is an excellent book and I'm learning a lot about color, light and shadows from it's pages.

From someone who is a "Studio" artist, painting outside has a unique set of challenges as I experienced yesterday.  This style of painting is definitely something I want to learn and so I was very excited when my friend Lily asked me to accompany her along with few other artists with the Nevada Plein Air Group to Hemmenway Harbor at Lake Mead to spend a few hours painting in the fresh air.

I actually did learn a number of things and am anxious to improve my "En Plein Air" techniques.  The real truth is that yesterday I was basically pretending to paint and Lily is the real McCoy!  While she didn't finish her little 10 x 20 piece, she got a good portion of her painting completed and I was dually impressed. I spent a great deal of the time watching her ability to paint quickly so she could  catch the essence of the moment, not worrying about exact detail but rather reflection, light, color and shadows all come together so that she could catch the emotion rather than the exact image.

So different from painting on my beautiful new easel with all my supplies surrounding me and listening to either Willy Nelson or my new piano praise CD.  This will definitely take practice on my part but I'm anxious for the challenge of bugs stuck in wet paint, working in big floppy straw hats, dirt in my teeth and the sun in my eyes.

Paint Better- TAKE OFF YOUR ROSE COLORED GLASSES

I've started reading a book called "Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color" by Kevin Macpherson and so far it is an informative read. His book starts out with several pages about the equipment of a well prepared painter and even explains how to clean your brushes.  Very practical advice for any want to be en plein air painter.

 Mr. Macpherson refers to colors as "NOTES" which I found very interesting.  Chapter one is titled "Seeing Color Accurately"  He states that "You must train your eye to see and simplify."  A color note is the combination of the Hue (name of the color), + Value (degree of grayness) + Chroma (intensity or lack of) =COLOR NOTE.  On page 19, the author tells us that "Our preconceived thoughts limit our sensitivity to seeing."

I have often realized this with my own painting because preconceived mental images of simple things like rock, grass, trees and clouds all impact my paintings and cause struggles in my attempts to paint more convincing landscapes.  It is like I spent most of my life "not really seeing" the nature around me.  My natural tendency is to paint my landscapes too uniform and rigid.  I have often mentioned my struggle with painting something as simple as rocks looking like smooth river rocks and my bushes being soldiers at attention.

I was chatting about some of these points with my husband over our morning ritual of McDonald's coffee and he made the comment about looking at the colors out of focus.  I was pretty shocked at his intuition when I flipped the page to page 21 titled, "A Colorful World out of Focus".  Mr. Mcpaherson actually suggests taking off your glasses so that you are focused on the COLOR rather than the image.  He even talks about and gives examples of entire paintings he did without the aid of his glasses.  What a concept!