120 Bad plein Air Paintings - Page 10

winecountry · #**137** 10-06-2010, 04:10 PM

these are not plein air, but thought that I'd post as it is how I've come to do the seascapes. Not sure you could just go out and paint what you see and get far...without a lot of work and time. So these are exercises from E John Robinsons book The Seascape Painters Problem Book.

mostly this is the same wave with different variations, mine are not as vaired as his as I kept using the same blue, and he changes, nevertheless, they were extremely useful when I got out there so I actually saw what he explained in the exercises. I really like painting the sea, more than mts trees and land stuff, maybe that will be my type of landscape, I seem to have more passion for it than the land...but who knows it may be just a phase

oil on smooth linen, oil primed

LarrySeiler · #**138** 10-06-2010, 05:40 PM

seeing how other artists resolve issues is often very important in unlocking what otherwise might remain mysteries...

I equate it to the metaphor of a boy not returning to a bus on time, at 4pm at Six Flags Great America...everyone else back. After half hour deciding a couple adults got to go back in looking for him.

Some have a negative opinion about preconceived ideas stifling creativity...or suggest that because someone told you to look for it, you're seeing it not because its really there but because you are so swayed to think its there.

I say that's a bunch of milarky...

If you know the boy is 6' 4" tall..blond shoulder length hair with a knit cap on the head, wearing a Wisconsin Bucky Badger sweatshirt..then you know what NOT to look for which helps skim over the sea of 10,000 other teens and individuals.

Knowing to look for cool colors in shadows and reasons why has you then looking for it.

Water is a challenge of color, values, depth...sediment, clarity, refraction, direct light, indirect light, reflected light...affected by wind, movement, current...on and on.

I've been around water most my life and perhaps 90% of my paintings have some form of it depicted. Time in the Navy...time growing up with a father that was a state licensed fishing guide...time waterfowling, stream fishing...on and on and on...

You develop a love...a sense of intimacy, and can get lost in it.

Squinting the eyes...it is enjoyable to piece together the mystery and understand its essence...what not to paint, what put down accomplishes much.

Good exercises Colleen...will be interesting to watch and see what you've gained from them and execute on location...

winecountry · #**139** 10-06-2010, 11:28 PM

agreed.....and if a really good artist like Robinson has spent an entire lifetime unlocking the secrets of the sea, and has figured out how to explain it clearly and given me a path to master it, who am I to say no thanks

I'll just figure out the whole thing alone thank you. There is plenty to discover that he hasn't talked about, I think the results below is an answer to your last statement

#95 Scotty's Beach at sunset 9x12 oil on oil primed linen.

rkcim · #**140** 10-06-2010, 11:54 PM

Robinsons book is the first oil paintings I did. I really like his style and thanks for plugging him. I'll get his book again from the library. Does he have some new stuff? I like your four studies at first I was gauking it seemed like your really made a leap but then I found out they were from the book, but still really great. Nice attempt on the last plein air.

I love the ocean and I wish I was around were you are. Around here its flat but I have to search for interesting things either that or embelish it or push colors maybe.

I seen some really cool lit up fishing piers during the evening light. Heres a photo. This is at 61st in Galveston. This pier actually was wiped out due to Hurricane Ike. This is the first time I seen it after it had been rebuilt. This spot is the first spot I learned to surf. Cool. As always the camera just doesn't do this scene justice.

~Kirby

winecountry · #**141** 10-07-2010, 12:27 AM

I hear they raised Galveston up 6 feet, when I was growing up it was always getting hit by them and flooding...

I have to admit I live in Paradise, within 30 min I have mountains, lakes, rivers, beach, crashing surf, rocky rugged coastlines, sand dunes, deep redwood forests, plains, winey hills and birds galore

winecountry · #**142** 10-08-2010, 01:49 AM

#96, still working on the sea,

Took todays trip to work on the foam burst thing, here is the painting and also a b&w photo of the rocks. This time I got some shadow on it, something I missed on the first two. Also a view from the bluff looking down my first one from there.

6x8 oil on canvas board

Michaelmcg · #**143** 10-08-2010, 05:20 AM

Those seascapes are really getting good, Colleen! E John Robinson was a great painter and perhaps an even better teacher. His books are certainly very informative and easy to understand. It is essential to have an understanding of how breaking waves behave when doing plein air marine work, the simple reason being that the wave which catches your eye in the first place will never repeat itself exactly again!

Regarding some previous discussion on the use of pre-mixed neutral grays or "soup" (a la Edgar Payne) with the intention of in some way "harmonising" the painting, it will certainly do that, but it will probably end up looking very different to the actual light conditions or "light key". If you develop the skill to capture the actual colours you see (within the limitations of paint), your painting will be harmonious because the "light key" will be accurately portrayed. This is central to the teaching of Henry Hensche and, as far as I can recall, Schmid says something similar in Alla Prima, even though the latter is much more of a tonalist than Hensche and his followers.

Michael

rkcim · #**144** 10-08-2010, 11:43 AM

Looking great Colleen. Heres a couple I liked from his book that I did. Keep it up. I'd love to see you get better at these.

~Kirby

winecountry · #**145** 10-08-2010, 01:04 PM

Thank you Michael, so far I am mixing up 2 piles of color to work from, the sky and dark....I do this to hurry along as I only have about 45 mins of the light I want and it makes the adjustments of value much easier. So it's not "soup" but say I have the yellow part of the sunset. I take the sky color and add some yellow tones, or need dark wave base, I take the dark and usually make it greener( the color of the water where I am)

the other thing I'm finding is to keep the darks thin and the sky I paint on and wipe off so it's a stain, but wet enough to work in and add to.

Kirby, I think you need more practice, I can barely recognize those exercises, the sky looks good but the water looks heavy enough to knock over an elephant....and where is the transparency at the thin part of the wave?

In case anyone else wants to try this, here is the exercise from The Seascape Painters Problem Book. BTW most of this book is black and white, only a few color pages in the center, I still found it valuable and cheap! only $4

JamieWG · #**146** 10-08-2010, 07:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by winecountry

on the pastel thread someone gave me a link to one of the greats of all seascape artists, Fredrick Waugh,(1850-1940) but look at this....he must have been a closet Tonalist....Oh just LOVE this painting and fits in with where I hope to go, more simple more essence lower light work, when I get better at this

yes I know it's not a seacape

Now just imagine if somebody had posted this painting here asking for C&C. I can hear it now....Moon too close to the center, pair of trees would be better with an odd number, painting is unbalanced...........

(I like it too!)

Jamie

rkcim · #**147** 10-08-2010, 10:39 PM

Jamie
I think it creates interest. Your eye does move around. I agree with what you said though, funny, lol.

Colleen
It might have came from another of his books. The one I had did have a lot of black and white photos but these were in there somewhere.

Your right. This by the way was my first attempts at oil painting and John is the one that pushed me over to painting in oils. Hows that for inspiration. I love the ocean also, lol. I picked up that book in the library and said "thats it I got to get me some oil paint", lol.

I'd love to get my hands on some of his books at the local Half Price book store. I found a Charles Reid book there for $5 can you believe someone would sale it.

~Kirby

winecountry · #**148** 10-09-2010, 12:03 AM

Good work for your first ones Kirby....learning oils will take some time, and lots of paintings, but is well worth the trials and tribulations...and have a richness and luminosity that acrylics lack to my eye anyway, only in person the difference can be seen not in the web.

Here is a great link to get the lowest prices, even lower than amazon...
allbookstores.com, just put in E John Robinson as the author.....

Jamie, this thought crosses my mind a lot, to sneak in some master's work and see what the WC forum says about correcting it

Rules and guidelines are so good when starting out, but years down the road, they can become rote paintings that the artist churns out, and real orginiality gets lost along the way, it's a fine line to tread.

It was nice and sunny today until I went to the ocean, and it was socked in pea soup Fog, could hardly see the rocks....I love the fog, and could just paint it over and over, I have in no way gotten the subtle colors I saw today. not to mention I cant get the photo close to what I actually painted, even with tweaks in PS.

#97 Fog at Scotty's Beach 1 hour

winecountry · #**149** 10-10-2010, 11:13 PM

Couldn't go to the coast today, but had to have my pa fix, so I tried a new time...moonrise, this is the pasture just outside my cottage.

how I did it...premixed some darks in the studio light, took it out side and in the light spilling out of a window painted very quickly, took it back in and adjusted colors. then back out for the sky and moon.

I think I could do this better in pastel if I picked out ahead of time the sticks and laid them in a certain order, because really can't see much but can see some values outside..., still this has what I saw and a certain charm I think, tho it's just trees and pasture...

#98 moonrise, 6x8" about 5 min.

winecountry · #**150** 10-11-2010, 01:39 PM

my special library books on George Innes arrived.

Here is a figure unique in Landscape, so I don't expect to find a lot to use, but his viewpoint being so metaphysical might be a way to seek deeper levels of response to the landscape I am trying to connect to in my work.

He was not a plein air painter of the type to do the sketches, then on site paintings then to the studio to work them up. He would according to his son, spend many hours at one place for many days, sometimes sketching, sometimes just looking. Then in the studio work from memory, sometimes never looking at a sketch for years, then maybe using it for another painting.
Or sometimes use a friends sketch to work up. His point being he was not trying to copy nature, but to evoke the emotions of time and place, and removing himself from the objective facts let his perceptions be more true, and for him perceptions, mental and optical were the meat of the matter.

He also had some very mathematical ways of composing, and numbers had a spiritual significance for him. I find it fascinating to look at his works with this knowledge, as you can see how he constructed painting after painting.

For instance, he often split the canvas about 1/3 sky 2/3rds land and the first third land was pretty empty , with trees to be placed only in the 2nd thrid. This makes a sense of scale completely different than if trees are placed in the first third, where he said if they were put they could not be painted whole but only in part as the viewer would actually not see a whole tree at that point. Of course this is only a rough explanation as its more to it than that. But notice that we here often have full foregrounds and and full trees there and that does make our picture space more shallow and experience different, with few resting places.

See how we can "walk" into his paintings, as the space in front of us is empty of obstacles. Then our view is nearly stopped by the trees, and we only after go to the horizon. His work is designed to break us from a habitual way of taking in the picture. And many critics of the time complained mightily. He like many artists of his time was very attuned to and interested in the new ideas coming from science about how the eye worked and how perception came about.

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