Sausal Creek Abstraction

I returned this Saturday determined to redo Sausal Creek in a different manner, with oils and a 20 x 20" canvas. I wasn't, however, planning to do an abstraction, it just came out like this. I begin all paintings with the spatula, and this one did not want me to pick up a brush. I meant to continue working on it, but after about an hour it was clear nothing else needed to be done. I didn't feel good either, so I left. When I came home I looked at it and did not feel revisions were necessary.

Working Small

In the end there is something to be said for small, intimate paintings. This one (11 x 14") was done by the morning light of a window, while teaching Basic Oil Painting at the Richmond Art Center.

Sinking In The Sand

The first half of this 18 x 24" oil was done on location in Alameda, CA. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and the waterfront had many visitors. It took me a long time to find a spot. I was interested in the pampas grass mounds I saw right after getting off the parking lot, but they were so big they covered the entire view. The upper part of the beach was flat so there was no vantage point from which to view them. I gave up and dragged my cart to the sand, where my chair sank. The tide came in pretty quickly, so I only labored for 90 minutes. I finished it at home a week later, from memory.

21st Century Still Life

...at least in subject matter! This oil I started and finished at home, to make myself feel better after having a bad week. The canvas is slightly larger than the previous one, 16 x 12."

Painting Difficult Surfaces

That was the name of the demo that I gave for the oil painting class. I was saying that if you take the trouble to understand what you are painting (I mean structurally), then this can help you achieve likenesses. So I tackled this trumpet, which I bought from a middle school boy in Antioch, and the flower vase, which was a bit dirty. The canvas was a bit big (22 x 28") for a demo but for me, the bigger the canvas, the easier it becomes to paint. Small spaces force you to have too much control and this is harder, movement-wise.

Studio Painting From Nature Part I

I wanted to paint a big landscape, but the size prevented me from lugging it to the locations I normally scout for plein air. So I decided to gather as much information as possible so I could paint it at my studio. This is a series documenting the progress of a relatively big landscape painting.

Photographic References
I don't have a projector, but I took protographs with a small digital camera that I then printed not as an aid to understand color, but as an aid in the drawing of the landscape objects. I taped the photos together to form a panoramic view. I used this view to draw with a brush on the canvas.

On my second visit I took a much better camera that redered color more accurately, but even these photographs would not convey what my eyes remembered. Again I used them only as place and textural references.

Watercolor
This time-honored way to register the color nuances of a landscape was my first attempt. Since it is spring, I knew there would be lots of foliage with small variations in hue and texture. I went to Wildcat Creek at about ten am, and used a 9 x 12 watercolor pad and black ink to scketch the color, structure and location of the trees and plants.

I returned home very satisfied with myself, only to discover the small size of the pad left out lots of details that would be necessary in a 30 x 40 canvas. So I started painting, but only those elements I felt sure about.

Value Studies
I didn't do any during my first visit, and soon realized they would have helped me to pin down the differences between each of the objects I was painting. The watercolor only told me where the areas of biggest contrast were, but was very vague about the mid-tones. And this did not facilitate the work of traslating landscape elements onto the canvas.

Color Indication
On my second visit to Wildcat Creek, I decided that more than a bigger watercolor, what I needed was a "color indication map." This time, having started to paint on the big canvas, I was more acutely aware of what I needed, and next to a simple drawing of each object, I wrote a short "recipe" for the color. These recipes clarified the subtle differences seen by human eyes and would enable me to go back to my studio and mix them with some degree of accuracy. Interestingly, I could only come up with these recipes because I had been painting on the previous day and had these colors fresh in my mind.

More More More

We've been going to the part of El Sobrante north of San Pablo Dam Rd. This is before the rains ruined our Mondays! These are small oils I did in about two hours, without my puppy Kafka.

Two Sessions, Two Paintings

These oils on canvas are the product of three hour sessions with a wonderful model from Berkeley. The square one is 20 x 20" and the rectangular one is 16 x 20." I was joking about the difficulties inherent in doing the pattern on her jacket when the previous coat of paint has not dried. For this, I avoid hog brushes and use something much softer, like sable. I have many nylon brushes but they are stiffer than natural hair and tend to scrape the paint even when dragged sideways.

The truth is I have been trying out some Escoda Kolinski oil brushes. They are fantastic, very responsive, they retain their shape well, they last long... and so do the Escoda hog oil brushes. In addition, the handles are more ergonomic. I will have to make that special trip to Barcelona, as the company resides there since 1933.

Two Models

Two professional models who posed for a total of six hours. They chose their pose. These are oils on canvas, approximately 18 x 24." I bought this new chair and I'm asking everyone to sit on it, perhaps because I am tired of the old chair.

I confess I love the heater next to one of the models. That is, I love the painting of the heater. It was a lot of fun to do, toward the end. I have removed a lot of paintings from the wall and have stored them. Only small landscapes remain.

The Pond at Point Pinole

This was oil on a birch panel. It is an effort to paint the light and the colors in a landscape as I perceive them. In the process I use what some people call "fluorescent colors."

Interactive Entry

These are not all acrylics, there is one oil among them. Can you tell? They are all the same size, 11 x 14 inches. Two were done in the summer, and three in the fall. One of them took an excruciatingly long time to complete, it was a very difficult painting. Write what you think in your comments. I'll publish answers next week.

Undocumented Series

She was the last model to pose who could have made it into the exhibit, and the only canvas I had left measured about 20 x 24." She was also the most forthcoming of all the people I have painted, in that she felt completely free to comment on my style and approach to her portrait (for example, she thought my colors were too bright). I explained to her that I had grown up in the caribbean, where colors are bright, and that this had probably affected my color perception. I also said I didn't think anything looked alive enough if done in a muted palette. So now you have an idea of our conversation. A completely self-possessed young person, she asked many, many questions about my training, interests and background.

Rites of Spring

We have continued going out to paint on Mondays. This is despite the poison oak, class-cutting teenagers, and exceedingly friendly dogs (one, named Coltrane, gave me a bear hug). Our group now has three steady people and might continue growing. We tend to meet at trailheads or parking lots, and not stray too far into the park. We actually climb up sometimes steep hills looking for views or just some cool air. It's fun, even if we sometimes have to pass our equipment to each other while we negotiate narrow, slippery cow paths.

These have all been completed on location, with minor corrections done later in the studio. There are two oils and two watercolors. Can you tell which is which? I find that my oil painting influences my watercolor painting, and that my watercolors influence my oils. Watercolor definitely helps me do very defined, quick but finished work when I feel like it, (see the purple field of vetch behind my standing colleague). Oil is fantastic for its luminosity, and you certainly don't feel like anything is "set in stone."

With these paintings, I feel like I am taking advantage of all the green I can get before the summer heat turns everything gold. Green in our Bay Area just doesn't seem to last as long. As Emily Carr so eloquently put it, "As the woods are the same, the trees standing in their places, the rocks and the earth... they are always different too, as lights and shadows and seasons and moods pass through them."

My Website Has Been Updated

I've added paintings and watercolors I've done in the last couple of years, since I've been making the rounds trying to find a venue for a solo show and curators need to see my recent work. This oil was done last summer, but I had a hard time photographing it because of its unusual size (24 x 48"). It is our driveway in San Pablo, with my beloved Toyota Tacoma.

20 Minute Oil Figure Studies

Let's say you are painting without first making a few thumbnails (to plan your composition) and without making a preliminary drawing in black and white (to understand the values). Let's say you gave nominal thought to your palette. You probably grabbed the colors you always use. To complicate matters, your time is very limited, about as much time as a professional model can hold the pose (20 minutes) without needing a break. If you put all of these conditions together, you've got yourself a study.

Artists engage in this practice for various reasons. Since materials have always been expensive, the most commom use has been to "try out" how various combinations of the above elements will work out together in a larger painting. A study can be used because its faster, looser style can capture the subject's character or the atmosphere of a place. You can use it to train yourself to catch the essential elements of what you're painting during the first few minutes.

This last purpose is why I put myself through the pain of sketching with oil in this brief period. It can be frustrating, because the medium was not created for this purpose. Try layering oil paint that has not dried. Try wiping off mistakes you've made in a strong color. Try finishing in 20 min. using a format larger than 11 x 14. Impossible! But so many decisions are made during the first 20 minutes of a painting, that it is worthwhile to learn to make them efficiently and successfully.

Immigrant Portraits

I have been painting Latino immigrants for a few months now. Sometimes they bring each other, or I hire them from the neighborhood. They pick their clothes and the pose. I pay them by the hour. At the end of the day I take a photograph print it, sign it, and give it to them. They sign a release and take a copy home. Once they leave, I might finish the background, but I don't tend to work on their image much more. Each painting takes 1-2 sittings, and a total of 5-10 hrs.

I do it in part because they are underrepresented in formal portraiture. I have always done portraits of people of color in oil. But until I saw the portraits of African Americans that Beverly McIver was showing at a show in Sacramento, I did not understand what exactly was it that I was looking for. I wanted to give the sitters exactly the same choices someone with more means might have had had they commissioned a portrait from me, but I also wanted to have more emotional involvement in those portraits. I also wanted to give them the experience of sitting for a portrait in which they would not be treated as the exotic other.

This oil is the latest of seven I have completed so far, measuring 24 x 36". The 12 x 16" charcoal drawing was done as part of a figure drawing session, and not as a study for the painting.

Painting Altars

I intended this painting as an homage to my uncle, who passed away recently. A middle school teacher, my dad's brother was a beloved figure of my childhood. I was the eldest grandchild, and benefitted early from our conversations. He had the ability to listen to children as if their opinion mattered, and made his contributions in ways that could be understandable to a child. All of his life he wanted to play the guitar, and took up intermittent studies whenever time allowed. I never saw him get upset at anyone, in fact, he has a very positive disposition that made others seek his company. That's how I remember him.

This is one of the windowsills in my studio, and the seven objects are placed on top of the only bookcase. The unopened bottle of rose we bought at Domaine Chandon, in Napa. I took the grapefruits and pomegranate from our fruit basket, and the candle was given to me by a colleague when I worked at Sacramento State University. The black curtains were sewn by my mom because sometimes the blue window light interferes with paintings I have started indoors. I finished it two weeks ago.

Winter Still Lives

Last year I started a tradition of painting a few still lives indoors, between December and March. Our winter is very rainy, and here on the hills between El Sobrante and El Cerrito, it gets foggy too. All of which makes working outdoors unpredictable. So I turn the focus inward and work from my imagination, from dreams, or from something I can place indoors.

I seldom have the patience to find a decent composition, a skill I need to work on. But something I've realized is that it takes me an average of two hours to paint each object in a still life. This oil is 24 x 36," a manageable size. Still lives beyond these dimentions pose other challenges and as a result take more time.

Instead of cotton duck, the support is engineered birch. I am enjoying painting on this surface, but had to switch to sable brushes so that I would not end scraping 30% of the paint surface with each stroke of the hog bristles.

Safer Oil Painting

Turpentine is banned from most collective painting spaces and classes, even with good ventilation. Turns out that they cause headaches, exacerbate respiratory issues in most people, and if rubbed onto your skin while cleaning brushes, you can end up with contact dermatitis. We don't even know what long-term exposure to it may cause.

Oil paints, while fume-free, should be treated as hazardous chemicals. No one wants to absorb cadmium, titanium or lead through their skin while cleaning brushes, or breathe its dust (if making your own pigments).

All of this has led me to adopt safer ways to paint with oil. I have an exhaust fan in my studio, but I seldom use anymore because I clean my brushes with linseed oil (surprisingly, it takes about the same time it takes with turps). An added advantage has been the cutdown on ferrule corrosion. I save the used linseed oil in cans and dispose of it as hazardous waste. I wear latex gloves throughout the entire process, until I wash the oil off the brushes with soap.

If I want diluted pigment, I use stand oil. In fact, I've been experimenting with a very oily and color saturated first layer. Subsequent layers are less fat and influenced by the fast-drying stand oil on that underpainting. I can usually paint over this first layer the following day. Here is a painting I did over two days in this manner. As with most of my models, this was all the time I had, about six hours.

David Rourke has excellent advice and many more ideas on safer oil painting techniques.