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2017 Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival – Day 2

2017 Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival – Day 2

Tuesday morning, August 15, 2017

It’s another beautiful morning. After looking yet again at the list of potential private residences to paint at, I zoom in on a barn and farmhouse that’s no longer being lived in. I strolled the grounds and found quite a few subjects to paint. It’s such a striking barn and silo, I decide to make it the main subject. I set up on the corner of the property so I could take in as much of it as possible. Below is the sketch I made to start using a thin version and thick version of brown acrylic paint markers on my toned panel.

The next 3 hours were spent painting the beautiful old barn surrounded in multi-colored weeds and wildflowers. I scraped and repainted the silo a few times. Getting a cylindrical feel to it turned out to be difficult using just a knife to paint with. Here’s my finished painting on the easel.

I used the rest of the afternoon to grab some lunch and drive around Dexter to scout out future locales to paint the next day.

Tuesday evening, August 15, 2017

I didn’t have time for a second painting, because there was a reception in the early evening at Null Taphouse for the artists to meet one another. (Their Beam Me Up Scotty is delicious.) I already knew a few of the talented artists there already like Tamera Ovall, Janice Dumas, and Pam Siegfried from painting with the Michigan Plein Air Painters. Now I got to meet some artists in person that I only knew from Facebook like Priscilla OlsonCornelis vanSpronsen, and Jill Stefani Wagner.

At the end of the event, Jill invited me to join her and a few artists to paint a nocturne. This is something I’d never done before but was very eager to try. In fact, I bought a reading clip lamp from Barnes and Noble just for this purpose.

I quickly drove to my hotel to change and head back. The other artists had already started and I needed to catch up. In the middle park square was a statue of a Civil War soldier partially illuminated by a streetlamp. I didn’t have time to be too choosy and no one else was painting it, so I picked that. It was already pretty late when I started so I only painted it for about 90 minutes. By the time I finished it, only one artist was left, and he was already packing up. I knew I had to wake up extra early the next day for breakfast with the artists, so I stopped. In the dim light, it looked finished. When I brought it back to the hotel to sit in my drying rack, I was surprised that it looked better than I thought it would.

With that, my second day was over. It was great painting alongside other artists. Tamara Ovall invited me to join her and a few other artists to paint the next day. The camaraderie would be most welcome.

Next:

My most prolific day of the week.

2017 Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival – Day 1

2017 Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival – Day 1

What is the Dexter Paint Out?

The Dexter Arts, Culture & Heritage Committee held its 5th Annual Paint Dexter Plein Air Festival. Artists from all around the Midwest come to Dexter to paint plein air works within the borders of the Dexter School District. You register as either a Professional Artist (which entails getting juried in based on your past art experience, or as an Emerging Artist (which is not juried). Since I’ve never participated in a Paint Out before, I entered as an Emerging Artist. It was one of the most unforgettable weeks of my life. Let me tell you all about it.

Monday morning, August 14, 2017

This gnarled tree surrounded by magenta wildflowers became my first subject for the Dexter Plein Air Paint Out.

I got up extra early to get to the city of Dexter, Michigan. My car is packed with clothes for a week, my EasyL Pro and umbrella from Artwork Essentials, oil paints, panel boards, my trusty painting knives, and anything I can think that I’ll need to turn out as many plein air paintings in the time allotted. Friday morning, I have to turn in no more than 3 submissions, plus 2 reserve paintings, framed, wired, and ready to hang and sell.  I’m not allowed to start or paint any of them ahead of time. When I arrive around 7:45 am, I go to Monument Park where I meet Victoria Schon, the organizer of the event. She and her assistants stamp the backs of my panels with the name of the event and the date. I can get as many stamped as I like, but these are the only panels I can use to paint on to submit for the event. I probably got 13 stamped, knowing that would be more than enough. Now I’m free to paint through Thursday.

But where do I start? I don’t know the town at all. Happily, they gave all the artists a packet containing the rules of the event, as well as a list of private homes and businesses that welcome painters. I scoured through it and came across Haley Mechanical. When I showed up to confirm it was okay, they were thrilled to let me paint on their grounds. Behind their building was a field filled with beautiful wildflowers. I came across a gnarled tree in a meadow surrounded by magenta wildflowers and chose it for my first painting.

This is the moment I’ve waited for for weeks. I’ve been rather nervous the past couple weeks about this paint out. I know a few of the other artists who are also participating and they’re incredible talented. Time to set that aside. Looking at the subject, I draw my composition on my panel with an acrylic paint marker. Once I’m happy with my rough sketch, I mix some titanium white, cadmium yellow light, and a touch of ultramarine blue and scoop it up with a knife. Here goes. I start scraping the paint into the sky area of my first painting.

Soon, the right side of my brain takes over and I no longer think about where I am, what time it is, or what obligations I need to meet. I’m in painting mode. I want to fill the panel with blocked in color first. It becomes fun very quickly.

I spend a lot of the time with the sky. I wanted it to capture the hot summer morning, so I made it a pale hazy yellow gradating  lighter toward the horizon. Then, I started working on the blocked in areas, Increasing contrast, playing with color temperature, and working with the forms. I’m not worried about realism yet. I read somewhere that all plein air paintings are usually ugly until the last 10 minutes when the details are worked out. That sounds about right to me.

I forgot how long it took to finish. I’m guessing about 2 1/2 to 2 hours. Below is the finished piece. I was pretty happy with it. I liked that, even though I painted bright magenta wildflowers, I was still able to keep the trunk of the main tree the focal point.

Monday late afternoon, August 14, 2017

After grabbing a lunch downtown, I drove around the town of Dexter to scout out future locations. There’s lots of great places to paint, including a train depot, a couple nice churches, a cute downtown with a big clock, a creek surrounded by a boardwalk and marsh grasses and on and on. Outside the downtown area are lots of farms, barns, and beautiful houses. With all that beauty, I somehow decide to focus in on a cracking concrete wall with weeds, bushes, and trees growing all over it next to an old DTE building. Below, you can see the finished painting with my set up.

My plein air set up consists of an EasyL Pro poached box affixed to a tripod. Attached to it as an artists’ umbrella. It’s not keep the artist in the shade. It’s for the painting and the palette. You never want sun shining on your painting or your palette because it distorts the color. If the sun shines on it, an artist may compensate by darkening the colors. But later, when the artist hangs the work, the paint looks too dark because the lights inside aren’t as strong as sunlight. If I keep the painting in the shade when I work, the opposite happens. I may compensate for the darkness by brightening the colors slightly and that makes for a more pleasing final work.

Below is a closeup of the finished painting.

The sun was setting and my stomach was growling. Two paintings in one day and I don’t hate either one. I’m off to a great start! I celebrated with a swim in my hotel pool after a good meal. Then I studied the list of potential location in my hotel room and went to sleep.

Next:

A kind of painting I never attempted before!

 

Beginning Plein Air Knife Painting — Blocking in

I have the sketch on my panel done. This is how I actually start the oil painting itself. (About time, right?)

I like to cover the panel with a thin layer of paint pretty quickly. The reason I like it thin is because I create form by painting lighter colors on top of dar to indicate form, and I use thicker paint for those lighter colors.

Usually, I like to start with the sky, but there wasn’t any sky in the angle I chose to paint. I decided to start with the darkest areas. I made  a dark using a blend of burnt Sienna and cerulean blue. I pick some up on the underside of my knife and spread it onto the panel in an action akin to buttering a piece of toast. I try to paint a little over the lines, since I plan on covering up a lot of this layer anyway and this keeps from any unpainted panel to show.

Even though, it’s an early stage, the dark looks dull and flat to me. I should probably leave it, but I couldn’t resist to add some more blue to it. I added some cerulean blue to my dark mixture, but I don’t mix it thoroughly. I want the marbleized variation in my blend.

When I apply this mix of paint, I get some nice variation of color. When I apply it on top of the dull brown beneath it, I load up a nice amount and try to lay the bad flat against the surface and pull or push it. As long as I don’t angle the knife, I get nice paint coverage. I try my hardest not to paint over it again. If I make a mark and leave it alone, it looks a lot better than if I work it over. This is the hardest thing for me to do with knife painting. Once I apply paint, it’s so instinctive and tempting to go over a part that may not be covered by multiple spreads of the knife. That often ends up killing a nice spot of color variation.

When I look into my scene, I see the trunks in the back are darker and cooler. The ones in front are lighter and warmer. They’re reflecting more light. So I try to indicate that with different types of dark paint. Some are cooler bluish darks; others are warmish brown darks. I try to apply my paint in interesting directions. If they’re all done the same way, the textures would be as boring as if I used the same color all over the panel.

Well, look who just plopped down a mere couple yards from me. A couple beautiful morning doves, eating some birdseed left from when we fed our birds yesterday. They’re not in my sketch, but I can’t leave them out of my painting. Since they have no problem hanging around while I paint nearby, I gotta include them into my scene.

I don’t know how long they’ll hang around, so I paint them as quick as I can. I have to say, blending the exact warm gray of their feathers took a little time. I appreciated the birds’ patience on this.

I start adding some darks to the soil at the base of the tree, knowing that later I will be adding a circle on violet leaves all around it. I also started adding some brother greens to indicate the sunlit yard behind the trees.

Okay, my panel is pretty much blocked in all over. It looks rough, but I have a nice layer of paint all over that I can go on top of with thicker paint. In some ways, this is basically a basic color sketch. Now it’s time to add thicker paint on top to make it look more like the scene I want it to be.

And that’s what I’ll show you next blog entry.

Beginning Plein Air Knife Painting — Let’s start!

Now that we have our supplies we’ve discussed (an easel, canvas or panel, the paints, your knives, and everything else), let’s start a plein air painting. I’ll show you how I worked on an oil knife painting yesterday.

Choosing the scene

First, you have to decide where you’re going to paint. Maybe there’s a nice park or body of water you can travel to. Usually, I don’t mind driving a little bit to get to a more picturesque location. But in my case yesterday, time prevented me from going further than my own back yard.

Once I’m at my chosen locale, I get my supplies out and carry them with me. (This is why I don’t want to over pack. It gets difficult lugging all the supplies around if my backpack is too heavy.) I walk around my chosen area until a scene inspires me. For this painting, I chose a Hawthorne tree in my back yard. I love the multiple, undulating trunks with the thick foliage of leaves that shade the ground. Hanging on one of the limbs is one of my wife’s wind chimes that I want to include. The scene is backlit by bright sun, which help define the trunks in shadow. On the ground is a cement bird stage, although I’ll just interpret it as a simple rock.

Composing the scene

I use my viewfinder or even a cupped hand to help me crop a nice scene from the surroundings. I don’t rush this part. If the scene doesn’t inspire me, I’ll end up doing a painting that looks like I’m bored. I use your viewfinder, turning it so the rectangle opening is sideways. After looking at different possible compositions, I then turn it so the opening is vertical. I always give myself many options on what to paint. When I find a composition through the viewfinder that excites and inspires, I’m ready to start.

First, I unload my supplies into the ground. I set up my trip-pod and easel. The composition I chose is a vertical one, so the panel is inserted in a vertical format.. Being right-handed, I have the easel to the right of the scene I’m painting. I set the panel closer to the left edge, so it’s closer to the scene.

Since I don’t like to get paint on my hands, I put on a pair of my medical gloves. This will save me a lot of time later for clean up. Now I need together a sketch onto it. Usually, I like to do some thumbnail sketches first, but, again, time prevented me. (In a future blog, I’ll in detail why doing thumbnails is a great idea.)

Making my sketch

I need to get a drawing on my panel first. When it comes to composition, there’s many schools (rule of thirds, the Golden Mean, etc.). Since I need to work quickly on a plein air painting, I keep it simple. I draw a line in the center horizontally and vertically with my acrylic paint marker. These will be the areas I try to avoid putting and focal pints or major elements in. For instance, I always put my horizon line above or below the horizontal center line. I always put my focal point to the right or left of the vertical center line. This makes my composition much more interesting.

Using the acrylic paint marker, I draw the shapes simply and carefully onto my panel, looking through my viewfinder at the scene. This helps me keep the elements I’m drawing in the right proportions. When I’m happy with the shapes, I sometimes block in shadows to make sure I have a nice balance of lights and darks. Once I have the drawing done, I set up my pallet of colors. By the time, I have them arranged, the acrylic paint drawing will easily be dry enough to paint on top with my oil paints.

Setting up the paints

The photo above shows the palette I used for the painting. I typically have used Ultramarine Blue as my blue in most of my paintings in the past, but lately I’ve switched to Cerulean Blue, which helps me achieve brighter greens. As for the arrangement of the colors, it’s not one I’ve seen used by most artists, but it’s worked for me. I make sure to keep the same arrangement every time I paint outdoors, so I never have to hesitate picking up paint since I know where my colors sit at all times. I make sure to squeeze a decent amount of paint. Knife painting uses a lot more paint than brushes do and I don’t want to waste time bending down and squeezing more paint onto the palette.

What’s the rush?

I mentioned a few times about not having a lot of time, so let me elaborate on that. When I pick a scene a paint, a lot of the elements that interest me are the shapes of the shadows and the sunlight. The sun moves across the sky pretty quickly and 30 minutes later, I’ll find the shadows have changed dramatically. The first half hour of painting is crucial, and a lot of the painting afterward is based on memory. Plus, I find my mental energy drains after 3 hours of painting. I don’t want to apply paint if I’m losing enthusiasm for the painting. Lastly, there’s the fickleness of Mother Nature. When I started my painting yesterday, it was bright and sunny, but a couple hours later, it became very cloudy and started to drizzle a bit. I finished my painting before it started raining hard a couple hours later, but one can never truly predict weather throughout the day — at least not in Michigan!

It’s cliffhanger time!

I have the drawing on my panel. I have the paints set on my palette. I get a rag in my left hand and my painting knife in my right. But we’ll have to wait until the next blog entry to see me paint. Catch you then.

See some of my paintings in person at the Detroit Ukrainian Museum

I’ll be exhibiting a few of my knife paintings at the Ukrainian American Archives & Museum of Detroit on Saturday, May 13, 2017. They’re having a special preview tour of their new location on 9630 Joseph Campau in Hamtramck, Michigan. Donation at the door is $25, and includes a guided tour of the new facilities as well as refreshments. You can get more details at their website or on their Facebook page.

I’m thrilled and honored to be a part of the show that includes Ukrainian artists I greatly admire, including my high school art teacher, Luba Kytasta. She was a strong and supportive influence and I can’t wait to see her and her art that day.

This is my first show of 2017, but hopefully not my only one. If you can make it, please be sure to say hi.

Beginning Plein Air Knife Painting — The rest of the stuff you need

Let’s finish off talking about what basic things you need to start Plein Air Knife Painting that haven’t been touch on yet.

  1. A palette. This is just a surface to lay your paints out on. Sure, you could buy one of those nifty wooden or plexiglass boards with a hole in it for your thumb. I have a few of them, but stopped using them after some paint fell off it onto my floor, while I was walking back to view my painting farther away. Plus I got tired of having to clean my palette after every paint session. Now, I just use a piece of spare wood or MDF board and wrap it with aluminum foil. When I’m done painting, I just carefully peel the foil off, ball it up and dispose of it. The palette itself stays clean. If you want to try it, make sure the shiny side of the foil faces the wood. That way the paint is applied to the dull side and is easier to see.
  2. Rags and/or paper towel. The great thing about painting with a knife is that you don’t need solvents to clean the knife. But you do need something to keep wiping it clean. Never let paint dry on your knife! And if you want to keep your colors on your palette clean, wipe your knife often before picking up more paint. When your painting session is done, wipe down the easel lips that held your panel. Put the paper towels and rags on top of your used palette with the foil. When you remove the foil, the rags stay inside.
  3. Disposable medical gloves. You’ll be very happy you wore these while you paint. When you’re done painting and cleaning, peel them off and dispose with the foil and rags. Your hands will be mostly clean.
  4. Gojo Hand Soap. For any areas of your hands or skin that did get paint on them, buy this strong, waterless soap from your local auto supply store. Very handy especially if you paint in areas with no sink nearby.
  5. First Aid Kit. Thank you, Laurie Sharkus (Animal Sculptor Extraordinaire!) I told her how I cut myself painting on one of my painting knives and she gave a smart suggestion of including a simple first aid kit. This is one of those items that don’t occur to you until you’re out in the woods and really wish you had it.
  6. Pliars. To help open those tubes of paint when the screwcap is stuck. Also handy when the screws of your easel are too tight to loosen when you’re setting up or taking down your easel.
  7. A pencil. Here’s a great tip from artist Kim Rhoney on how to sign your painting. I like to make sure there’s a section of thick paint with mostly solid color in one of the lower corners of the painting. When I’m done, I use the sharp point of the pencil to emboss my signature into it.
  8. Small sketchbook and pen. To make thumbnails and value sketches of possible scenes to paint. Once I have a thumbnail I like, I redraw the thumbnail onto my panel.
  9. Acrylic paint marker. This is what I use to draw my sketch onto my panel.
  10. Viewfinder. Essential tool to help me compose my scene for my painting.
  11. Drinking water and snacks. This helped save one of my paint days last fall. I did a morning painting and then packed up for lunch. My car was a couple miles away. On my way back, I saw another scene I wanted to paint, but I was too hungry. I knew if I hiked all the way to the car and went to lunch, I wouldn’t be motivated to return and do the 2 mile hike back to this scene. Luckily, I had a couple granola bars and water packed. That was just enough to curb my appetite and stay at my location to do the second painting. That painting ended up being the best one I did that day.
  12. A backpack. To pack all this stuff in, of course.
  13. A hat or baseball cap. The brim will help keep the sun out of your eyes, and thus help you see your colors of the paint more clearly. Make sure it’s a hat you don’t mind getting paint on. That happens accidently at times. For that matter, make sure that anything you’re wearing is clothing you don’t mind if paints gets on.
  14. If you paint with acrylics, you may also want to have a clean plastic jug to bring water with you, as well as a spray bottle of water. With the spray bottle, you can spritz the paints on your palette every so often to keep them from drying while you use them. You’ll need a small container like a jar or a small bucket to have water to rinse your knives in to help keep them clean. Don’t leave the knives in the water. You don’t want the metal to rust, nor want you wood handles to warp.

These are pretty much the essentials I bring when I go plein air painting. Some of the items fit into my pochade box (the panels, knives, viewfinder, pencil for signing, palette) and the rest go into my backpack.

Now we’re ready to go plein air painting!