Some Botanical Studies

The first is an intimate study of I think a sprig of a willow oak(?) and other things in a garden. This was from several years ago when I first started doing plein air work in oils. I was using a prototype sketch box, couldn't find a good medium for my purposes, was in the early days of experimenting with my supports, and was totally at a loss for how to get the effects I wanted in a short period of time. This was on foamboard sealed with acrylic gesso. I had issues with bleeding and therefore tried something else for my next sketch. Keep at things with faith and you will eventually succeed, with the help of God.

The next are some works done a few years later on paperboard sealed with glue.  The glue allows the underlying color of the paper to show through, though it always warped it badly (you can de-warp small papers like these usually with an equivalent coat of glue on the other side, and also with some time under weight if all else fails), and was too absorbent to be pleasant to work upon. 

This one was done on glue sealed bristol paper.  If I recall, this is a rare example of me using pure oil and pigment paint, though I believe I added an oil and wax medium selectively to a few colors that session.  It's too hard to get a brushstroke that doesn't fray at the edges without resin, and also the impasto is a little too sharp, and detailing wet-into-wet is hindered with pure oil and pigment paint.  Hence I believe there were resin mediums in use by the Hudson River School artists (plus we have textual evidence they were as well). 

The last is also on glue-sealed paper.  I was using my first formulation of the Ridner medium, which contained too little wax as I misread the proportions (I think it might have been a little short on resin, too), but it was still very usable.  I wanted to see how close I could come to painting every leaf.  I failed miserably, but it doesn’t look so bad without nature in front of me to compare it to.  It is satisfying for its brushwork, anyway.  There’s a long history of artists applying leaves as raised brushstrokes – the Hudson River School didn’t start that practice.  

Willow and Reeds

Willow and Reeds

Oil on paper mounted on panel, 9 x 12, Summer 2015.

Oh, I remember this one.  Every artist has a number of plein air horror stories, and this is one of them.  I was happy when I found a bench to work on angled towards a picturesque view.  I got my palette set, strapped my sketch box to my lap, did my drawing, and began working.  About fifteen minutes in, one of those green flies (the type the size of a house fly) started biting me on my ankles.  So I shook it off and continue.  Then I felt a few more bites and saw more flies.  The minor annoyance started to become very unpleasant.  I shook them off, and did my best to swat them, with my box on my lap making it difficult, but there were too many to stop all of them.  At that point the bites started becoming more painful, like an acute, but lasting stab, not unlike the feeling of having a needle driven into the flesh.  While the sketch was half done, the relentless biting became unbearable, so I unstrapped my box to see if I could kill the flies while unencumbered.  Upon looking down, I saw a small swarm of flies, and several streams of blood running down my ankles -- I did not know they could do that!  When you have shed blood for your art, it is time stop for the day.  I promptly packed up and ran back to the car with the plague following me.  The rest of the work was completed in the studio, and I think it came out good nonetheless.  I got a good contrast of brushstrokes and textures, along with a satisfying chiaroscuro.  And most importantly, it's naturalistic.

Someday I’ll put up a post of my boxes and explain the merits of that technology.  I’ll also tell you about HRS sketch boxes, and I think I have discovered things, by the grace of God, that shall surprise you.  

A Little More Sorrow and Reproductions

I managed to get a good scan of my picture Sorrow.  After I shared that one on Instagram, I got the idea for this post.  Below left is from the scanner and it approximates how the picture looks indoors in artificial light.  Below right is the image I posted before taken outdoors with a camera that approximates how it looks outdoors in natural light.  And you do observe a change in the artwork throughout the day indoors inasmuch as the changing light outside affects the light inside.  Both reproductions are accurate depending on the lighting.

Indoors the colors are darker and deeper.  Note the cherry red of the clouds.   But you lose some of the subtleties of detail and color, as well as the luminous glow of the glazes.  (Because this is a scanner image, you can also make out a few more blemishes like underdrawing showing through and a few specks of dust -- and these are things common to art history.  It is often you see underdrawings remaining visible in museum paintings (Pre-Raphaelite works are notorious for this), and dust pops up in a masterwork every now and then (I could swear I saw dust in Church's Twilight Short Arbiter 'Twixt Day and Night in person at the Newark Museum)).

The outdoor image captures the glow of the glazes making everything brighter, with subtle details of chiaroscuro and gradations being rendered more visible.  Note how the blueness of the darks in the clouds is brought out.  But the brightness shifts the color, which makes more of the color under the glazes more visible, which is not necessarily bad.  (And you have to contend with glare and perspective issues in camera reproductions, though you often get a better understanding of the brushwork).So now you are thinking I'm just bad at reproducing my artwork.  I have a reason for showing you this!  Artworks produced with traditional techniques vary in appearance in different lighting throughout the day, and when viewed from different vantage points.  This is why you can look up the same museum masterwork on image sharing websites and find a thousand different reproductions of the same work.  You can look at the same artwork professionally photographed in different art history books, and unless both books used the same photograph you will see two different reproductions.  

Artworks painted with layers and glazes and other traditional techniques indeed change in appearance with the circumstances of viewing.  They are not static.  And I'm not the only artist to realize this.  Some people do not trouble themselves with anything beyond composition in art -- nothing matters to them but the image itself, and thus they are happy to sacrifice technique and other subtleties of art-making for the sake of getting a good image that can easily be reproduced.  Hence they switch from oils to easier media to wield, or they give up on making physical art and go digital.  Other people just avoid traditional glazing and do everything direct with overbearing mixes containing lots of opaque white, which makes things photograph better.  And all that's fine for those artists who are into that, and they are not any the lesser for it.  Such methods are certainly more expedient for the purposes of illustration.  

But I'm not that type of artist.  I want my paintings to have more charm and depth than just basic image.  I make an effort to give my paintings better qualities than your typical inspirational poster wall decoration.  My art's higher than that.  I endeavor to produce an artwork that cannot be taken-in entirely with a single glance.  Rather I seek to produce art that shall invite examination for years to come.  And I daresay this what the masters sought before me.  Of course, circumstances don't always permit us to live up to our standards all the time.  But I think I've lived up to mine this time, at least.

Seven Presidents

Seven Presidents

Oil on paper mounted on panel, 9 x 12, Summer 2015.

This was a hazy late afternoon.  I had a limited amount of time and only spent about an hour.  Comparing it to the actual ocean, I thought it was horrible while painting it.  After the waters calmed at sunset and it no longer looked like my sketch, then I felt better about it.  An artist just can’t compete with the works of the Great Artist.  Although taking a step back usually helps. 

I think the brushwork is artistic.  To me, the best sort of realism is one where it is united to technique.  I’ve got some palette knife work in, as well as some sgraffito with a stylus.  And I did wind up using a limited palette, though I did not set out to do so.  I think there’s only about five colors in this one.  It was painted with the Ridner medium.  

I think this is the last ocean picture I have to post for a while.  

The Price of Experimentation

The Price of Experimentation

This is one of the works I did when I was experimenting on finding a good priming for sketches.  I was just playing around with techniques for painting water, and with the Ridner medium, and I think I was looking at Church's Niagara while doing this.  I learned a lot, but there was a latent issue with the priming.  Apparently the oil I applied over the sealing coat was absorbed unevenly, and now has yellowed in an uneven blotchiness that is apparent in the light part of the sky.  If I recall, that sealer was some species of acrylic white, probably one with a lot of chalk in it.  Most artists would never use such a paint for a sealer anyway, so don’t be afraid of the more customary acrylic gessoes – this does not happen with them.  

Morning

Morning

Oil on canvas panel, 8 x 10, December 2015.

I had a little extra paint from a long session on another painting, so I spontaneously made this with the leftovers.  I was planning on defining things a little more with another coat, but I think the brushiness helps soften things to create a dreamlike quality befitting the subject.  As always, I aim for textured calligraphy with my brushwork. 

Ocean

Ocean

Oil on paper mounted on panel, 9 x 12, 2015.

I’ve been studying the sea for years and I think I’m finally having some success in depicting it.  I never like just doing direct painting.  I like the old aesthetic of the HRS and Ruskin that transparent water should be painted with transparent paint (although I think both parties ended up compromising that standard by settling instead for the depiction of reflections as the suggestion of transparency).  In my works I like to unite realism to some technique fitting for the depiction of the object in question.  Well, this one’s a secret technique I’m not willing to share, but I will tell you this is all alla prima (except the brown band was added later), and I believe Church had a similar technique for painting moving water.  It gave me all the transparency and brushwork I wanted. 

This painting was the first I did with the priming I settled upon for oil sketches: acrylic molding paste.  Before this I tried a number of other primings for making paper suitable to receive oil.  I discerned from a number of clues that HRS sketches were primed with lead white oil paint (the big question every student of the HRS is asking is if they or the colormen sealed their paper first – they probably did if the oil didn’t rot the paper – and what they used for that nobody seems to know).  Today lead white is too expensive and you need to seal the paper first, and I wanted something that could be done in one coat.  The qualities of an oil priming I needed were an unabsorbent (or mostly unabsorbent) surface, smoothness (lots of effects in Church’s sketches can be explained by the smoothness of the ground), and receptivity to pencil drawing.  So I tried animal glue primings, which did work a little in smoothness and pencil receptivity, but were too absorbent and badly warped the paper even if it was a thick paperboard.  An oil paint priming over that worked well, but that was too much work and the paper was still warped.  Various formulations of acrylic gesso were tried, and they also sealed the paper with a smooth surface receptive to pencil, but were always too absorbent unless they received an additional oil paint coat.  A priming of one of those cheap, low-quality craft (“plaid”) acrylics you get at Walmart was so absorbent that a thick coat of pure oil was literally sucked into it before my eyes so no oil could be seen or felt on the surface five minutes after application!  Then I was pretty happy with a mix of acrylic gloss and matte mediums.  The matte I found too absorbent on its own (it was usable with an oil-out but not without one), and the gloss could not be drawn on at all and overlying oil paint had delamination issues.  Mixed together, you had something good for smoothness and lack of absorbency, though pencil drawing was difficult.  When I tried the molding paste, it turned out to be perfect for my purposes.  It is mostly unabsorbent as it is made with marble dust instead of chalk like acrylic gesso or matte medium.  It easily takes drawing, is smooth, unabsorbent enough, is flexible, and easy to apply with one thick coat being sufficient.  I think it’s a perfect, easy substitute for an oil priming on paper.

So why do I even use the paper?  It’s lightweight and easier to store (easier to bring more along at an outing) than a canvas panel.  The biggest advantage is the smoothness you don’t get otherwise.  With that said, canvas panels also work, though they’re usually too absorbent and rough textured to make me happy. 

So, for anyone looking for a good, HRS-style, oil sketching ground, know that they historically used an oil paint priming, and today’s acrylic molding pastes (acrylic binder + marble dust) are a good substitute.