WHAT'S ON YOUR EASEL?

 by JoAnn Frekot

I polled our studio members, asking what they're working on and how it's going.   Here's a snapshot of what we're up to.

Vera J. Kent

Every summer I open up a few slots for pet portrait commissions.  This summer I asked for silly portraits specifically - I typically paint very proper chest-up portraits, but decided to have more fun with it this year.  

This fella will be wearing a fuzzy pink party crown when he's done.  Painting in gouache!

Tom Winterstein

I have been working on composing this painting for months.  It started with a photo I took while I was having coffee on the patio of the JS Bean Factory coffee house in St. Paul.  I was intrigued by the young woman studying.  But she was behind a chair and I couldn't see her legs.  The rest of the patio was a clutter of tables and chairs.  

So I have been rearranging the furniture on the patio, adding people to the background, and going back to the Bean Factory to take more photos and make sketches.  The young woman, the fence, and the table she's at are all from the photo.  Everything else in the drawing has been added or moved from its original location.  

I am fairly happy with what is happening on the left side of the image.  I am still trying to determine how to compose the right side of the image.  It will eventually be an oil painting.  

Katharine Gotham

This recent plein air sketch was really a battle!  I've been working on loosening up my plein air this summer with bigger brushes, more paint and simplified shapes, and this one nearly did me in.

I chased around the composition and light effect, and wiped down areas until it became more of a place in my mind than the location where I was standing.  You can see the three bugs embedded in the sky on the left and I have great sympathy for them -- I feel stuck in this one, too.  I'll be making some adjustments in the studio, but mostly it feels like practice for some better, future paintings.  

JoAnn Frekot

I am working on a painting from a photo I took recently while hiking at Rabbit Mountain Open Space near Lyon, Colorado.  To me, it's an intriguing scene due in large part to the "zigzag" of the fence in the foreground.  I thought it would be a challenging exercise in perspective.

Initial stage with fence masked out (with frisket)

After some rough sketching and a few tries at determining the three points of perspective (not my forte), I had a rough drawing.  I decided to mask out the fence to keep its edges sharp, and filled in the medium values, followed by the dark ones.

Middle stage, painting the fence

I then tackled the fence, trying to faithfully render its  shadows and lights, but also trying to keep it in concert with the rest of the painting.   

This was harder than I expected!

Close to finished?

 Finally, I decided to add stronger color to the other parts of the painting...more blue in the sky, more defined hills in the background, and more texture and distinctive boundary to the path.  I also tried to warm up some of the foliage near the tall tree.  I think the painting has more balance, but I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with it.

If nothing else, it gives me more "miles on the brush," meaning more tuition in the school of experience!

Tom McGregor

(NOTE:  This is an excerpt from Tom McGregor's Blog, dated 8/2/2018.  (https://www.mcgregorart.com/blog)).

Tom writes about the process of creating "High Water," a piece that will be part of an upcoming exhibit, "Endless Summer," featuring a number of OT Artists, at FOK Studios. Stay tuned for details!)

High Water, Oil on Stretched Linen, 24x48

Painting Process

People often think that the process of painting is somewhat linear.  If you watch the online fast motion videos, they definitely give you that impression.  In my experience, that is rarely the case.  This painting (left) is a perfect example.  The following is documentation of the discombobulated forward and sometimes backwards steps I took to achieve the above painting.  This post is dedicated to any painter who is wondering if it will ever get easier.  The quick answer is "yes and no."  Things you struggle with today will become easier as you practices, but then a whole new set of challenges will pop up out of nowhere.  All you can do is face these challenges head-on, face your demons fearlessly with determination, and a clear picture of what you want to achieve.  And DON'T give up.

July 15 - Plein Air Quick Study

A 10x20 inch one-and-a-half hour study painted on location

This has been an exceptionally wet year.  As a result, the rivers have been higher than normal all summer.  I went to Fort Snelling State Park in Saint Paul, Minnesota to capture the reflections of the trees in the flooded Mississippi River.  This was to be a study for a much larger painting.  In under two hours, I had a "good enough" quick sketch that was focused mostly on color.  I took a couple of reference photos and headed to the studio.

July 21 - In My Studio

First sketch on my ocher tinted 24x48 inch
canvas breaks the cardinal rule.

Normally, I tint my canvases with a thin wash of burnt sienna.  I also like to use raw umber.  I had neither in my studio on the day I started this painting.  So I decided to experiment.  I used a yellow ocher-cadmium yellow mix.  Burnt sienna, raw umber and ocher are all earth colors.  I was optimistic that the yellow ocher would be the perfect undertone for this painting, since it was so close to the color of the sunlit patches of water.  Wrong!  But more on that later. 

I set up the studio and one of the photos to use as a rough guide, and sketched out a loose interpretation on my 24 x 48 inch canvas.  Almost immediately, I saw that I had committed the cardinal sin of repeating three groups of trees in the center of the canvas, all basically the same size and shape.  If you study nature, you know that she never repeats herself.  So I got out my rag and wiped out the offending passages, and worked on creating a variety of trees where each tree had its own unique character.  This is harder than one might think.  You change one tree so it doesn't look like the tree to its right, and now it looks like the tree to its left.

Just Two Greens

Just two greens at this point

Unity before variety!" by first plein air painting instructor liked to remind us.  At this point, two greens suffice in defining shadow and light in the foliage.  The same greens are used in the water.  Already I'm starting to see depth.  I happily move on.   

Sky Blue and Mississippi Mud

Get that canvas covered

With the addition of two more colors, form is starting to take shape.  You might think the strokes are random, but they are not.  Every little ripple on the water acts like a fun house mirror.  The far side of the ripple might reflect sky, while the front might reflect foliage.  Where you place those reflections defines the form of the ripple.  In the distance, the ripples read as a average of sky and foliage.  Everything looks the way it does for a reason.  I'm satisfied with the day's work.  That will change.  

July 25  - Aargh!

The ocher had to go.  Get out the 4" brush.

It's better to admit you are wrong and start over, than to try to knuckle through with a bad start. 

Four days away from the painting and I have a fresh perspective...and new awareness -- the yellow wash has to go.  I tried something new, something different, but I don't like it.  Wherever I see the yellow wash, it's jarring to my eye.  I get out my four inch brush and repaint about ninety percent of the painting in order to completely obliterate the ocher.  I like to think of the first run-through as a practice run.  I've painted the reflections in the ripples before.  I can paint them again.  

Softening edges here and sharpening them elsewhere

Adding light where you want to draw the viewer's eye

Trying to keep it simple.  If only "simple" wasn't so hard. You have to be willing to paint out passages that you love if they don't work with the whole.  Small details draw the eye.  I had to constantly ask myself while working if this was a passage of the painting that I wanted to draw the attention of the viewer to.  If not, I'd say to myself, then stop mucking about with all that fussy detail.

I'm rarely looking at my reference materials at this point.  I am thinking about where the light is coming from, what is brightest (attention-grabbing) and what is softer and more subdued.  Constantly reminding myself that everything looks the way it does for a reason.

July 27 - Coming into the Home Stretch

The almost finished painting

I have never seen a totally convincing painting of foliage.  Before the impressionists. it was thought that you needed to paint every leaf.  The paintings inevitably looked stiff.  The impressionists thought that implying foliage with soft brushwork was more effective.  True to a degree, but a bit heuristic.  As I came into the home stretch, I realized that the success (or failure) of this painting impinged on whether I could make the foliage believable.  I'm pretty happy with the left side.  I'm going to rework a little clump on the right.

...I hope you enjoyed my tale of hard fought battles with this painting as much as I enjoyed fighting them.  That's right, despite the difficulties, I still love what I do; in fact, sometimes I think I love what I do BECAUSE of the difficulties.