Hudson Fellowship Day 4

Composition study/equisse

India ink and white guache on toned paper

approx 8 x 10 inches

I worked with pen and ink today for the first time and loved it! A diluted ink wash creates controlled values much faster than graphite pencil. I started with a rough graphite-pencil block-in, and then refined the contour drawing with a dip-pen and ink. Then I diluted the ink with water (on a plastic palette) and used a brush to lay in the washes, building up the layers slowly to reach the values I wanted.

Study/etude of boulders and falls

India ink and white guache on toned paper

approx 6 x 10 inches

Every couple of days we all meet as a group and show our sketches on a long table. The work as whole is stunning... absolutely everyone here can draw incredibly well and it's both inspiring and daunting to see the row of studies. The instructors Edward Minoff and Travis Schlaht give anyone who asks a detailed critique about how to focus our drawings to be useful studies for a painting we'll do later at our studios. Jacob Collins apparently arrives tomorrow...

To see a nice quick overview of the work from previous years go to this page of past Fellows and mouse over each name to see an example of their work.

As for painting... yes, I am itching to begin painting in color! But on the other hand, doing these drawings has only emphasized how complicated nature can be, and I know I'll be grateful for having done all the line drawings and value studies when I start grappling with color.

Hudson Fellowship Day 3

Lower Kaaterskill Falls "equisse" sketch

approx 9 x 12 inches

graphite pencil and white charcoal pencil on paper

I spent another day at Kaaterskill Falls. I like the boulders, the trees with exposed roots, and also the small waterfalls, so I found a composition with all three. In the above sketch I was just trying a compositional block-in. I tried to limit myself to 3 simple values, to help me break down the scene.

Water study, approx 9 x 12 inches

Earlier in the day I did the above sketch, trying to understand how a waterfall behaves.

Thumbnail/croquise
approx 4 x 5 inches

This was my first thumbnail sketch. It's tiny but the scene is complicated. I wanted to do a quick sketch and then move on to do about 4 or 5... but I ended up spending an hour and a half on just this one.

Hudson Fellowship Day II

View of Katerskill Falls with fellow sketchers at the bottom

Boulder with small waterfalls

graphite and white charcoal on toned paper

approx 9 x 12 inches

Tree roots with glimpse of waterfall

graphite and white charcoal on toned paper

approx 9 x 12 inches

I worked most the day lower down the trail, well below the falls. The river has boulders and fallen trees making miniature waterfalls all along it.

After 7 hours of drawing and light hiking I was very done for the day.... but had to wait for my more intrepid fellows to wrap it up before I could get a ride home. My fellow landscapers are a hearty bunch. Luckily a short rainfall came along and sent enough packing for me to catch a ride. (And luckily I was well prepared for rain after yesterdays' deluge.)

I definitely want to go back to the falls another day and work there again. But next time I'm taking my own transportation!

PS: The Grand Central Academy has it's own blog and they are updating the blog with posts about the Landscape Fellowship as well, lots of cool photos of our locations:

http://grandcentralacademy.blogspot.com/

Hudson Fellowship Day 1 - sketches

Drawing in the the Catskills

You are forgiven if you can't tell what the above sketch is meant to represent.... it has elements of a boulder and moss, but I got lost in the details and everything just became this amorphous organic mass. Anyway, before I could pull it back together thunder began to roll and I and my 25 fellow Fellows began a rain-soaked dash down a slippery mountainside.

The afternoon was salvaged when the sun came out and I was able to spend a couple hours sketching on the banks of a flat, wide creek with miniature waterfalls stretching across it.

So to catch up anyone who doesn't know what I am doing: I'm participating in a 1-month landscape workshop with the Hudson River Fellowship which began yesterday in upstate NY. The Fellowship is following the study of landscape using pre-Impressionist techniques, the same method we use for studying the figure: Breaking down the elements of form, value, color and composition into individual steps before attempting a painting that incorporates all of them.

So we are beginning with studies and thumbnails, and we are using the terminology that the European-trained American landscape painters used in the 19th century:

croquise: thumbnail composition, as little as 5 fast lines
etude: study of a detailed element, contour only or value drawing

equisse: compositional study, fleshed-out thumbnail
grisaille: monochromatic "wipe-out" painting done with burnt umber
pochard: a color study done outdoors - not concerned with drawing, just color notations

With all these elements the goal is to bring them home to the indoor studio and assemble a complete landscape painting.

More about the 19th Century American painters of the Hudson River School

HRF website recommended books

Excerpt of Asher B Durand's Letter on Landscape Painting
(I've heard these exist somewhere in audio format but I can't find them, if anyone knows where they can be found please let me know, it would be great to listen to while painting!)

Plein Air in Utah

I just spent 5 days in Utah visiting my good friend and fellow painter Janell for a plein air painting trip in her hometown of Park City. The weather was unusually rainy/cloudy/windy for Utah in in June, but we managed to paint between raindrops.

Utah is just incredibly gorgeous and I spent most the 5 days with my mouth agape while admiring the dramatic displays of alternating mist and sunlight rolling off the mountains.

It was very, very cold. I actually had a single HAILSTONE land in my pochade box. Do I get some sort of plein air badge for that?

This pretty little streak of sunlight disappeared as soon as it was too late to change my painting, and only made intermittent appearances for the duration of the session. I spent the time between episodes of sunshine practicing painting the purple sage.

My amazing dad knit me these fingerless painting mittens from the softest green wool. From this angle you can't see, but they even have an intricate cable braid down he back of the hand. Far too nice to use for painting, but he insisted it's ok if I get paint on them.

It was all good practice to get ready for my upcoming month of outdoor painting in upstate NY.

Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park

On the Bank of Stow Lake
9 x 12 inches, oil on canvas board
Session I, work in progress

My paints finally arrived successfully from France!! I don't know what that crazy "pick up your package at the post office in France" message was on La Poste's web site, all I know is the box arrived today!

I was so excited to have my paints and brushes back that I immediately strapped my paint kit onto my to my bike with bungee cords and rode over to Golden Gate Park a few blocks from my house.

In the middle of the GG Park is a circular lake with an island in the middle called Stow Lake, and I knew I'd find something beautiful to paint there. I just loved this spot with the trees hanging over a quiet patch of water.

I decided to spend a whole session on just the values, and save color for another day. It was a good approach for me because just working with dark and light feels simply like drawing with charcoal, which is a lot more comfortable. I'm hoping I can keep the organization of the composition and the feel of the filtered sunlight once I start using color.

Anyway, thanks everyone who wrote sympathy and encouragement for my temporarily lost paints, I was really upset to think they were missing and your emails really cheered me up!

Belgrave Ave Plein Air SOLD

oil on panel 5 x 7 inches

Today my friend Janell and I set up for side-by-side plein air painting. We painted in the neighborhood up the hill from my house, called Ashbury Heights. This yellow house sits on a sharp corner, where one fork of the street goes downhill and one goes uphill. My favorite part of the composition is the shadow the streetlamp cast on the pavement.

The weather here was amazing today, almost 80 degrees and clear skies, which is very unusual for us this time of year. Unfortunately, the 10-day weather.com report for Paris predicts clouds, showers and high-50's there for the foreseeable future. So my plein air painting opportunities may be limited!

Rolling Hills of Marin County SOLD

5 x 7 inches SOLD
oil on panel

5 x 7 inches SOLD
oil on panel

I took a lovely daytrip up to Marin County (just north of San Francisco) for a drawing/painting date with my friend Kat. Kat took me to China Camp State Park where a short walk up a dirt path opened up to views of gorgeous rolling hills and eucalyptus trees.

I had a great day - it's rare that I make two paintings I am happy with in one day.

I have been having so much fun investigating all the "greens" of nature. I am discovering there is not much true green at all. Everything is fundamentally a cool blue or a warm brown, and only tinged slightly green. A little green goes a long way. I think every beginning landscape painter knows that horrible feeling when you try to emulate all the lovely grass and trees with vibrant greens and yellows right from the tube and YUCK, it just doesn't look right.

I've been using mainly cobalt blue, cad light green, mars red (which is a lovely rich red brown) and raw sienna (which acts like a brown-ey yellow ochre, I like it better than ochre). And a lot of titanium white.

These seem to act like perfect mixing primaries, especially for outdoors. The Mars red is red enough act as a compliment to the greens (so if a puddle of paint is too green, I mix in a tiny dab of Mars red to cancel the color and make it more neutral). The burnt sienna acts like a dark yellow and helps warm up my greens if I need to paint some sunlight areas (cad green with some burnt sienna with a ton of white). The cobalt blue and the sienna make a lovely dark shadow, and if I then add white I can get a nice subtle neutral gray, warm or cool depending on the ratio of blue to brown.

These are my main colors, but I also mix in a little magenta and ultramarine blue for the coolest and darkest violet shadows.

Fog City

5 x 7 inches
oil on panel

Today San Francisco was in signature form : Bright white fog alternating with deep blue sky, with a brisk wind to push it as fast as possible over our pastel-painted city. This is my attempt to capture it.

I am also working on a more ambitious landscape in the mornings of slanted shadows on a tree-lined path. It's taking me several sessions to capture it all but I'll post it soon.

Workshops and teachers are valuable, but really nothing beats painting and drawing every single day. I have learned so much in the last couple weeks of painting every day. I dream every night about brush strokes and the feel of a brush dragging paint. There really is nothing like paint.

Easter at Buena Vista Park

5 x 7 inches
oil on panel

I had a wonderful Easter morning painting these trees on the hilltop park of Buena Vista. There's a narrow sidewalk wrapping around the curved border of the park with a view of the city beyond and trees reaching out from the park overhead. If you look closely you can see the faint view of St Ignatius in the background.

I realized today painting for me comes down to just two things: Paint what I love to see, and look closely. Love and Look, essentially. When I am distracted by all the voices of my teachers in my head, when I am trying (and failing) to emulate painters I admire, when I am trying to paint like someone else instead of like myself, the painting fails (and I have no fun). But when I relax and just enjoy what I am looking at, the painting flows easily.

I have painted outdoors most days of the last two weeks. I wake up in the morning thinking about paint before I open my eyes. And when I do open my eyes, the first thing I do is look at the window to see the quality of the light. And then I jump out of bed and rush through my morning routine to get outside as soon as possible, while the shadows are still long and interesting.

View of St Ignatius SOLD

5 x 7 inches
oil on panel

After the first part of the day spent painting at Corona Heights Park (see previous post), I went to another location to paint the late afternoon slanting through the streets of my neighborhood and lighting up St Ignatius in the distance.

5 x 7 inches

oil on panel

The second painting was an experiment in making a more abstract image, just trying to get the colors and values and feeling of the view.

My husband took another picture of me painting. It was 65 degrees F at noon today and most people were in summer clothes, but when I stand still in the shade as the sun sets and the wind picks up I have to dress like I am in much colder part of the world. I'm seriously considering buying fingerless gloves.

Corona Heights Park

5 x 7 inches

oil on panel

These are the rocks at the peak of Corona Heights Park. I used flat brushes to paint this which I think helped established the planes of he rock.

It was a beautiful day but the wind picked up in the afternoon. I used a new shade umbrella that attaches to my easel for the first time, and I thought I might get blown off the hill! My husband was with me and took this photo of me painting. The view of San Francisco from the hill is amazing. Maybe next time I'll try and paint it.

Carl Street Vistas

Crepes on Cole SOLD

oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

Train Tunnel Color Study
oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

Sunset on Carl St
oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

Today I did all these studies while set up on one stretch of sidewalk. Just as I was done and packed up the sun started to set and I unpacked everything for one final sketch.

I'm so excited about my new plein air / open air pant box! I posted a picture below (you can see part of the train tunnel just to the right). It's perfect: there are compartments for my paints, my palette, my brush cleaner and even wet paintings. As you can see I hang my brushes off the side in my own adaptation. I love my "pochade" box so much, I just ordered a second tiny one, the little "Thumb Box" to bring to Paris with me. (I leave for Paris in less than a month!). I bought my wonderful "pochade" boxes at www.pochade.com.

Buena Vista Park

Buena Vista Park Tree Study
oil on panel
5 x 7 inches

It was a gorgeous spring day in San Francisco, but standing still in the shade, on top of a hilltop park in the wind, I got pretty frozen after a couple hours. When I finally packed up my fingers were almost too numb to manipulate the latches on my easel. But it was worth it, I think this is the best landscape I've ever done.

Prettiest Laundry in San Francisco SOLD

Laundry at Cole and Grattan Streets II
oil on panel
9 x 12 inches

Laundry at Cole and Grattan Streets I
oil on panel
9 x 12 inches

I adore this coin-op laundry. It's in a fabulous old Edwardian building, and the interior is painted an amazing turquoise that just sings. It's most incredible at dusk, when the sky is still a light indigo and the artificial lights inside make the windows glow aqua. I hope someday I am fast enough to capture this corner as the sun goes down.

As for daylight painting: I spent four mornings this week painting this corner - two mornings per painting. Enough time to meet and say hi to every dog, child, and art-friendly person in the neighborhood. Have I mentioned I love my neighborhood?

These are two very different paintings. The bottom one I did first, but after a while realized I saw a much more dramatic and interesting image in my head. So I started over and did the second painting (the top one) which I think is much more successful in terms of composition and color. I'd still like to try even stronger values, lights and dark... luckily with painting, there's always a "next time."

Everyone loves to see a painter on the street. People have good taste, too. When I feel confident that my painting is going well, lots of people confirm it with enthusiasm. But when a painting is in a "bad stage", no one says anything at all, at most a polite smile. Painting in public is humiliating and gratifying all at once.

Saint Ignatius Church studies

Study of St Ignatius as seen from Buena Vista Park I
oil on panel
9 x 12 inches

I love this church, it's called St Ignatius and it sits on the northern slope above Golden Gate Park's panhandle. In the afternoon and evening the western sun lights up the church in dramatic golden contrast to the blue hills of the Presidio and the Marin Headlands behind.

Yesterday afternoon I decided to try a value study of the church in paint, so the above painting uses only brown, blue, and white. For this view I climbed up the forested hill of Buena Vista Park a few blocks above my house and found a spot on a trail where I had a good view of the church.

Study of St Ignatius as seen from Buena Vista Park II
SOLD
charcoal on paper
about 12 x 16 inches

After struggling with the paint yesterday I resorted to charcoal today. Charcoal feels comfortable and familiar compared to messy, gooey paint.

A nice USF couple on mountain bikes stopped to say hi and took my picture. I gave them my card and they were nice enough to email me the photo! See how bundled up I am in coat and scarf... and this was the WARM day!

Plein Air at Carl and Cole

Crepes on Cole SOLD
9 x 12
oil on panel

Carl and Cole Train Tunnel
9 x 12
oil on panel

These were fun because I painted them almost right outside my house. I did them both yesterday: the train tunnel in the morning and the creperie corner in the afternoon.

For both these paintings I was set up near the train tracks and I had to pause every time the little municipal train went by and blocked my view. It wasn't a problem earlier in the day but as I finished up rush hour was starting and a train was going by one way or the other every few minutes! I didn't mind though because I love the train.

Train Tunnel Drawing

Train Tunnel at Carl and Cole, San Francisco
12 x 16 inches
vine charcoal on paper

Inspired by my plein air painting session with Mary yesterday, I decided to step out my front door today and try an outdoor sketch. This is a view of the entrance to a train tunnel in my neighborhood. I always admire the afternoon light bouncing in it and have been wanting to paint it for a while. I'm hoping to do a color painting, too. The tunnel interior is painted butter yellow and I just love how the curved shadow creeps around the inner surface. It gets a gorgeous reflected glow within the shadow.

I think one of my biggest problems with painting outdoors is that I am very shy to draw or paint where people can watch me. I hate anyone seeing my work before I feel it is in a good state. I've decided I have to get over this. So even though I live in a very pedestrian-heavy neighborhood I decided to brave the stares and set up right on the sidewalk. It was easier than I thought it would be.

I got a really nice compliment while working: A woman stopped and chatted with me, she said she was an artist too. She said she noticed that even though from far back the drawing is very hazy, that in fact close up there is a lot of structure. Structure!! I've been working explicitly on structure for months so I was thrilled she chose this word. I thanked her profusely but I don't think she realized how much it meant to me.

Plein Air

View Through the Trees
9 x 12 inches
oil on panel

My friend Mary and I did a day of plein air painting together. My husband was confused as to why artists paint together, especially once I described that were set up far apart and barely spoke to each other all day except to share a couple snacks. But I explained to him that it's like meeting up with a workout partner: Someone to help you have the discipline to get out there, but it's not necessarily a social event. In any case, we had fun together, if only in the mostly non-verbal, co-solitary way two artists can have fun together. Hmmm.... "co-solitary", I just made that up and I think it's a good word!

Anyway, this first painting of mine (above) is very unfinished and I would have liked to work on it longer but after a couple hours all the shadows shifted around and absolutely everything had changed. I don't have much experience painting outside, and how anyone makes a fully developed landscape is a complete mystery to me.

Golf Course Grove
9 x 12 inches
oil on panel

Here I've made basically a value painting, color has nothing to do with it. It's just a range of pale yellow through dark green. I think I need to do some landscape painting copies to find out how people get color into their landscapes. Also, I have to figure out how to handle the foreground, this painting is dying for a foreground.

I'd also like to note that California trees are just weird. I grew up on the East Coast, and even though I've lived in SF for 8 years, I never get used to the Dr Seuss vegetation. These are pine trees, and yet the tops are flat. Where I come conifers look like proper Christmas trees!

Marin Headlands
9 x 12 (detail)
Oil on convas paper (bleh)

I only worked on this for less than an hour, and the overall painting is weak but I decided to post this portion because I had so much fun painting the rolling hills and eroded cliffs of the Headlands across the Bay. The hazy fog-filtered light on the distant hills allowed only a small range of color and value, so I had to mix very subtle color steps to describe the forms. It was a good exercise because it made me realize I often rely to much on dramatic value changes and I need to remember you can can really describe a lot of form with only very subtle shifts.