Tag: Landscape

Categories
Art business Art supplies Bay Area Parks Building Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Kensington Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages

Amazing Art/Materials Resource Site + How to Store Paintings

Kensington Hilltop School, ink & watercolor
Kensington Hilltop School, ink & watercolor (a beautiful school above a wonderful park at the very tip-top of Kensington hills)

In my last post I asked for advice on sorting and storing completed oil paintings on panels. Along with the good suggestions from readers,  I found a fantastic website that provides the answers to these and many other questions about proper handling of artwork and art materials of all kinds.

The website is AMIEN.org (Art Materials Information and Education Network), “a resource for artists dedicated to providing the most comprehensive, up-to-date, accurate, and unbiased factual information about artists’ materials.”  They are part of the education department of the Intermuseum Conservation Association.

AMIEN’s forums are the place to find information to all our questions about proper use, handling, storage, shipping, application, etc. of art materials and finished art work or all kinds. Here is a portion of what they say (more here) about storing oil paintings on panels:

Store your paintings standing on edge, one next to the other, with a piece of acid-free paper loosely covering the face of each painting. You can tape the paper to the back of the panel and fold it over the front.

Ideally, you will put these paintings in a rack, elevated off the floor, in some location that is relatively dust-free and not subject to wild swings of temperature and relative humidity. Even more ideally, each painting ought to be separated from the others, but that would take a very large rack. Second best: You should not have more than about 5 paintings leaning against each other; separate the groups of paintings.

AMIEN’s forums cover topics like Watercolors, Pastel, Encaustics, Acrylic Paints, Supports, Grounds, Solvents and Thinners, Varnishes, Pigments, Color charts, Oil Paints and Mediums, Alkyds, Mural Paints and Techniques, Colored Pencils, Printmaking, Photography and Printed Digital Media, Matting, Framing and Labeling, Picture Protection, Crating, Shipping, Storage, Conservation, Hazards and much more.

About the sketch at top: Friday afternoons I have the pleasure of spending time with two lovely 11-year-old girls who still like to swing and play make-believe games on playground equipment. I discovered Kensington Hilltop School while hiking in the hills on the weekend and brought them there the next week. They played, I sketched, we had fun.

Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Virtual Paint-Out

Romanian Winter Hayride (Virtual Paintout)

Romanian Winter Hayride, oil painting on panel, 9x12"
Romanian Winter Hayride, oil painting on panel, 9×12″ (SOLD)

After rambling around Romania, seeing beautiful summery farmland, busy cities, and a shepherd walking his sheep down a village street, suddenly it was Christmas with nativity scenes in front yards and this wonderful snowy hayride (virtually, of course via Google Streetview for the Virtual Paintout).

Romanian Winter Hayride Reference Photo
Bicaz-Chei, Romania: Winter Hayride Reference Photo

Yesterday I’d tried painting a different Romania scene (below) but soon realized I was laboring joylessly on a hopeless painting, fighting paint the consistency of toothpaste. I gave up, scraped off the panel (glad I’ve gotten smarter about when to cut my losses), and returned to Google’s wonderful new MapCrunch.com where I found the above photo.

Continue reading “Romanian Winter Hayride (Virtual Paintout)”
Categories
Building Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Life in general Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Sketchbook Pages Sketchcrawl Stanford Urban Sketchers

International Sketchcrawl #30 at Stanford University

Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor
Rodin Sculpture Garden Trees, Stanford, ink & watercolor

It was fun to meet the South Bay members of our Urban Sketchers SF Bay Area group Suhita and John, and to meet some of the members of Sketchcrawl Silicon Valley at the Stanford sketchcrawl on Saturday. Cathy and I made the hour plus drive down there and met at noon. We started with lunch at the outdoor cafe with a view of the Rodin Sculpture Garden (sketched above at the end of the day after everyone left and it is my favorite because I love those funny, imperfectly groomed trees).

Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center
Sculpture of "Faith" in front of Cantor Center

My first sketch was the one above, of a statue called “Faith” in front of the Cantor Center for Visual Arts. Starting with “Faith” seemed good, since it helps to have a little faith that the sketching will go well.  By 1:00 there were about 10 of us and everyone went off to follow their muses with a plan to regroup around 3:00. I followed Cathy who knew her way around, since my muse, like me, has no sense of direction.

Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor
Stanford Memorial Arch, ink & watercolor

The sign on the building said “Memorial Arch and Court Erected by His Mother, 1898 in Memory of Leland Stanford Jr. Born to mortality May 14, 1868…” I ran out of room to record his year of death but he only lived until age 16 so his mother donated the land Stanford was built on to create a memorial for her son.

Chapel and courtyard
Chapel and courtyard

From a distance the front of the chapel appears to be glowing gold but when you get closer you can see it’s covered with a stunning mural made entirely in mosaic. Coming from an urban environment where things are crowded, noisy and grungy, Stanford was amazing. The Stanford campus is tremendously spread out (over 8,000 acres), with most buildings only one or two stories, but massive nonetheless. Everything is immaculately clean, with amazing gardens, gazillions of trees (well, officially 43,000), and quiet. At $51,000 a year for tuition, room and board I suppose one should expect a lovely environment!

Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Places Plein Air Sonoma

Viansa Vineyard: Final Touches on Final Plein Air 2010

Viansa Vineyard, 11/2010-1/2011, Oil painting, 9x12"
Foggy Morning at Viansa Vineyard, 11/2010-1/2011, Oil painting, 9x12"

My plein air group had our last meeting of the season in November at Viansa Winery in Sonoma. I’d made a good start on the painting plein air, but it needed work. Today I got tired of looking at the unfinished painting and completed it (above), using both brushes and palette knife.

I’d set up my easel at the edge of the parking lot and had a great view of the vineyard. But there were so many interesting things to see that I included all of them in my original painting below (except maybe the cars and the birds and bees—that’s some progress I suppose).

Viansa Vineyard, unfinished plein air
Viansa Vineyard, unfinished plein air

There are some passages in the painting I liked, especially the top fourth, but there were some problems too: the strong yellow diagonal line leading you out of the painting, the bright gold triangle top right, the green line of bushes beside the purple road, both of which weren’t needed even though they were there in real life.

Viansa photo reference
Viansa photo reference

This is the photo I took at the beginning of the painting session. The sun and fog and clouds kept changing but the overall impression I had of the day was sunny.

A previous Viansa painting can be seen here. It’s nice to see the progress I’ve made since then.

 

Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Tormey, CA: Plein air oil painting

 

Tormey View, Oil on board, 9x12"
Tormey View, Oil on board, 9x12"

 

It’s nice to remember those sunny summer and fall days when painting outdoors required sunscreen, not rain gear. Back in October I painted this view from the former refinery “company town” of Tormey. Now Tormey is just a couple blocks long on the edge of the Tosco Oil Refinery near Crockett. At the end of the main (only?) street  is a small paddock with horses and goats. It was a fun place to paint.

I did 75% of the painting onsite and finished it in the studio from this photo:

 

Reference photo for Tormey, CA
Reference photo for Tormey, CA

Now it’s another rainy Sunday here in the San Francisco Bay Area, but after a great walk in the hills between showers, I’m happy to be in the studio working on several paintings in progress.

 

Categories
Drawing Ink and watercolor wash Landscape Painting Places Quick Sketch Sacramento Sketchbook Pages Urban Sketchers Watercolor

Urban Sketcher Train Trip to Sacramento Part I

Emeryville Amtrak Station, ink & watercolor
Emeryville Amtrak Station, ink & watercolor

Bay Area Urban Sketchers took a little field trip by train to Sacramento to see some art, connect with another Urban Sketcher and have some good sketching fun. We arrived early to sketch the Emeryville Amtrak station (above) and then it was “All On Board!”

Once we got underway I experimented with doing VERY quick watercolor sketches of the scenery as we traveled, with about 30 seconds to capture each lovely view flying by:

Capitol Corridor Views #1
Capitol Corridor Views #1
Capitol Corridor Views #2
Capitol Corridor Views #2
Capitol Corridor Views #3
Capitol Corridor Views #3
Capitol Corridor Views #4
Capitol Corridor Views #4
Capitol Corridor #5
Capitol Corridor Views #5

Once we arrived the weather was perfect so we walked the 6 blocks to the Crocker Art Museum to see the Wayne Thiebaud “Homecoming” retrospective show (ends November 28). One of the great things about the show was seeing that at almost 90, Thiebaud is still painting and innovating. The work in his show range from the 1960s to 2010.

Crocker Art Museum New Building, ink & watercolor
Crocker Art Museum New Building, ink & watercolor

We explored both the Crocker’s permanent collection and the Thiebaud show. I was a bit perplexed by the way the shows were curated. Works seemed to be hung randomly, in no particular order that I could discern. I would have really liked to see Thiebaud’s paintings arranged by date to see the progression of his work.

In the permanent galleries I had the sense that they had tried to just hang everything they had, regardless of quality, condition or style. There was something both amateurish and charmingly small-town about the museum and even the demeanor of the guards who were refreshingly friendly, enthusiastic and proud of the work they protect. The Crocker has paintings by many of my favorites from the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1970s and I enjoyed seeing those “old friends” again.

Next post tomorrow will be Part II of the trip…meeting up with Pete Scully for a sketching visit to Old Town Sacramento.

Categories
Building Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Virtual Paint-Out

Rio de Janeiro: Virtual Paintout

Rio de Janeiro, oil on panel, 8x8"
Rio de Janeiro, oil on panel, 8x8"

This month’s Virtual Paint-Out location is Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Since I seldom travel I find it so much fun to do so virtually via Google Street View. I love being able to wander, exploring roads to see where they go without fear of getting lost (let alone dealing with airports or spending the money).

Here’s the way the scene looked on Google and then the way I cropped and the way I adjusted it in Photoshop.

Original Google Street View, Rio
Original Google Street View, Rio
Rio Photoshopped for painting
Rio Photoshopped for painting

As I do these each month I’ve noticed patterns in the way nicer houses and neighborhoods are near beaches or on top of hills and the poorer neighborhoods are indeed on the wrong side of the tracks.

I’ve also noticed a sense of freedom when painting these since I don’t have so much investment in the outcome. And maybe that’s what led to my liking most of my Virtual Paintout paintings more than the ones I’ve labored over.

Categories
Art theory Bay Area Parks Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Pointlessly Persistent? It’s Just What I Do

Hills Above Crockett, oil on board, 9x12"
Hills Above Crockett, oil on board, 9x12"

This oil landscape painting started as a poorly drawn, wrongly colored plein air painting which I’ve reworked many times until I am now finally ready to call it done. The painting started on a hot September day when I dragged my painting gear up a trail and set up my easel amidst dried cow pies and weeds near the Bull Valley Staging Area above the hills of Crockett. You can see my learning process below.

First, here is the washed-out reference photo I had to work from back in the studio. It’s really not even an interesting scene and doesn’t at all capture the way the hills were glowing a brilliant end of summer California gold.

Continue reading “Pointlessly Persistent? It’s Just What I Do”
Categories
Art theory Bay Area Parks Berkeley Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Places Plein Air

Grey Day at Lake Anza

Grey Day at Lake Anza, plein air (mostly) oil on Gessoboard, 10x8"
Grey Day at Lake Anza, plein air (mostly) oil on Gessoboard, 10x8"

Only two of us showed up to paint at Lake Anza in Tilden Park on an almost-drizzly, grey Monday morning last month. The air smelled fresh and clean and it was so quiet there; a wonderful change from the noise of the city just a few miles away.

I painted most of this onsite, with some corrections and clean up later in the studio from the photo below.

Lake Anza reference photo
Lake Anza reference photo

One of the corrections I made was to the little clumps of marsh grasses on the other side of the lake (barely visible in the revised painting). They had been my focal point but I realized when I got home and looked at the photo that I had made them three times bigger than they should have been.

Yesterday I was painting in Sonoma and saw the same problem when I got home: I painted some distant trees way bigger than they should be. It’s interesting to me how as I focus on one element of painting and begin to improve it (like composition, values, color, etc.), I discover another area needing work. Next time I’ll pay attention to measuring/comparing sizes of the things in the painting.

While I’m still miles of canvas away from mastering plein air painting, at least I am beginning to grasp the principles and see that while there are many important concepts to consider out there, the list isn’t endless (as it once seemed). Maybe eventually it will become more automatic like driving; I’ll  still have to pay attention and keep my eyes on the “road,” but I won’t be driving over curbs, crashing into things, or totaling my car/canvas.

Categories
Landscape Oil Painting Outdoors/Landscape Painting Photos Places Plein Air

Fairmead Park, Richmond, Suburban (?) Oil Painting

View from Fairmead Park, Oil on Gessobord, 9x12"
View from Fairmead Park, Oil on board, 9x12"

Sometimes painting in a pretty park with views leads to painting surrounding suburbia (or is it “urbia”?)  instead of the park.  The scene I wanted to paint (a picnic area between big eucalyptus trees) was occupied by teenage boys smoking pot and I decided to leave them alone. I didn’t think they’d appreciate me setting up my easel and staring at them, and they were there first.

Fairmead Park in Richmond is a little, hidden gem of a park. It is almost at the top of a hill with interesting views, the sounds of birds and squirrels, and the wonderful scent of eucalyptus. I got a good start to the painting while I was there and took some photos so I could finish it at home. I tried to focus on values, color and getting the paint down and leaving it alone and I really like the way it turned out.

Here is the photo I used, taken from the edge of the park which goes up the hill behind where I stood:

Fairmead Park photo reference
Fairmead Park photo reference

So is this Suburbia or Urbia — it’s on the edge of a very urban area in the town of San Pablo but it looks pretty suburban, doesn’t it?