Bill Cone

Summer Workshop Schedule

2012-01-22T18:36:00.000-08:00

I'll be teaching two workshops this summer. Both workshops are open to all levels and will focus on learning to see light and color through hands on work. The first one is a 3 day workshop in Colorado hosted by Terry Ludwig Pastels in Littleton, south of Denver. The dates for that workshop are June 8-10, and the price is $325. We will be exploring the range of views available in this beautiful part of the country from rivers to mountains. There will be a combination of lectures, demos, and one on one instruction. Will we be looking at atmospheric color and light? Yes! Water and boulders will most likely be involved, but we'll deal with the landscape as it comes upon us. I'll be handling the registration and payment for this one so please email me at moraga97@yahoo.com to sign up. I accept payment through check or paypal.

The other workshop is a return to the Sierra Nevada Field Campus on July 15-20 in the Sierra Buttes region on the west side of the Yuba pass. This will be the third season I have taught there, and we are still finding new views to paint among the many lakes and rivers in this area. To sign up and get more information go to the field campus website

Fun with the Figure

2012-01-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

After a long period of ignoring the opportunities and discipline of figure work, I've started attending a weekly long pose group on Tuesday evenings. The pose is 3 hours. I forget how much fun it is to work with others in a studio environment. In some ways it is much more contemplative than working outdoors. Music is playing, the lighting is stable, you can see how others are handling the pose, which can be inspiring and instructive. The figure presents a wonderful set of challenges to explore... edges, temperature, subtle value shifts, clothing patterns, hair... really a laundry list of things to observe and use as a 'recipe' of sorts in your own work. I'm also learning how much my drawing needed this. I am really out of practice on proportion, and end up re-working a fair amount to get various body parts to all fit together. When I'm painting a tree or shrub, you can move a lot of elements around to suit the composition, but it doesn't work that way with the figure, at least for me. I dive in, then I find around the end of the second pose, I'm doing a lot of repair work.

This is one week of a 2 week pose. It was actually a 3 week pose, but I started over the second week to make the figure larger by cropping in, so I could get a better chance to work on the head with my chunky pastels. This is where I miss the paint brushes, but I'm still having fun. Both pieces are on Canson paper around 18 x 24.

Christmas Day

2011-12-25T17:47:00.000-08:00

Its been a sunny and dry holiday season in this neck of the woods, though there was ice on the deck this morning. I feel like I'm hibernating... sleeping in late, eating some wonderful meals, and enjoying time with family. It is good to be home for a few days with everyone around. I had a few hours free today before heading over to my folks for dinner, so went through our back gate onto the hill behind our house. I came across the rear hindquarters of a deer, primarily bones and a bit of fur near the hooves. Coyotes? A lone turkey lurked furtively among the small oaks, keeping me in view as I wandered about. There was quite a bit of haze in the air today and I was attracted to the blown out light pouring over the crest of the trees on the hill, the polka dot sky holes, with minimal detail forming a back drop for the foreground foliage patterns. Highlights on branches, some backlighting, and the range of color and value between light and shadow were the basic ingredients to work with. The sun, though quite close to the trees, just slid to the right instead of dropping down behind them as I worked, so the foreground shrub and sapling stayed in relatively the same light for about 90 minutes. For the past few months I've been painting in and around a redwood forest not far from where I live, and have been working in the shade. My hands and feet get pretty cold after an hour or so. It was nice to get out and work in direct sunlight on one of the shortest days of the year.

Sierra Pack Trip

2011-09-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

This year marks our 7th annual painting packtrip into the Sierra back country. We were a group of ten this year, nine painters and one photographer:
Terry Miura
Daniel Aldana
Paul Kratter
Sharon Calahan
Ernesto Nemesio
Timon Sloane
Michele deBraganca
Jim Wodark
Bob Watters
Terry, Timon, and Sharon have already posted reports about the trip, so check out everyone's sites to see their work and impressions. We reprised our destination from last year to Chickenfoot Lake at the southern end of the Little Lakes Valley, a glacially carved groove about 4 miles long, surrounded by high ridges and peaks on 3 sides. The trailhead starts at 10,000 ft. and climbs another 500 over 3 miles to our campsite. As we have done in the past, mules carry the bulk of our gear, and we have a cook in camp to prepare our meals, so the focus of our labors is on painting, hiking, sleeping, and... eating! Next year, its oatmeal for me at breakfast, is all I can say about that. The pack station is Rock Creek, and our excellent cook was Gene.

We hiked in on a Monday morning, and were at the campsite probably around 10:30 a.m. As the mules hadn't yet arrived, we took a hike up to Gem Lakes to sight-see. I found a new shortcut to the lakes from last year, and was able to explore the lower lakes carefully, running into a family camped on one of them. We talked for awhile, then I moved on. I met up with some of the group and we decided on the spur of the moment to hike over a high ridge to the Treasure Lakes basin, probably a mile or so aways. We traversed granite benches, and scrambled up a few areas before coming out on top of the ridge. We explored the three lakes for awhile, then hiked down the outlet, which was a lot of boulder hopping and squeezing between rock walls and willow shrubs... not a fun descent. On the way down we observed an avalanche chute that had a mass of trees piled up at the bottom. Trees still standing further up the slope only had their tops broken off, as they must have been partially buried/protected by the snow.

When we got back to camp, it was fairly late, but I had still had enough energy before dinner to wander around near camp and find an alignment of a foreground boulder and a snow glazed peak to explore.

The next morning, I hiked up to the lower Gem lakes via my shortcut, and painted near the family that was camping. They periodically would come by to assess my progress, and we would chat a bit. Other artists were within sight and earshot as well.
I did one view of the shoreline near my feet, enjoying the color range of wet and dry surfaces, as well as the added colors in the reflection of water from sky and trees.

After taking a break and eating lunch, I painted a view across the lake of part of the rocky shoreline that had a pink and pale green color, with oddly irregular sediment 'ribbons' passing through it. This may be one of those things that end up perplexing a viewer too much. It was perplexing enough to paint, but there you have it.

Wednesday already! I slept in a bit, then hung around camp, rinsed off in the frigid waters of Chickenfoot, and took a solar shower afterwords. Then I painted this view of a rocky inlet from a spot very close to my tent. I took my time, concentrating on edges, and even used one of my umbrella extensions as a maul stick, as suggested by Pat Kellner, of Best Brella. I hiked up towards Gem in the late afternoon, and tried painting a ridge to the west that resembled a pipe organ, but it didn't separate very well from the foreground. Ah well.

Thursday. Here's a typical morning study, looking a fg and bg temperature and value relationships that are specific to that time of day. Also thinking about the spill of color around fg edges that seem to occur in certain situations. The boulder is a bit silly, being practically a cube, but I went with it.

Back to Gem Lakes for another slice of shoreline that caught my eye. On this trip I tried using another color of Canson called 'moonstone'. Lorenzo Chavez makes use of it, and I wanted to give it a shot on a high keyed image like this.

I hiked over to the upper lake, where this wall was slowly going into shadow in the late afternoon, giving me an interesting foreground in a separate value range than the delicate snow patterns on the peak behind it. This was the ridge we climbed over to get to the Treasure Lakes basin on the first day of our trip.

Friday. Clouds were coming over the southern peaks early in the day. I was hiking towards Gem again, and took a slight detour towards Morgan Pass, to examine a small drainage off the trail. It ran through one of those steep meadows that John Muir has described so well, the meadow and the water both disappearing into the talus below Mt. Morgan. I explored it for awhile, and then started climbing back towards the trail, where I came upon a set of Bristlecone Pines with the peaks behind it periodically going in and out shadow. Plenty to work on, so I settled in. After about an hour or so, the clouds had built up pretty solidly, and I heard the first rumble of thunder. As I was about a mile from camp, and had neglected to bring my rain jacket, I decided to get out of there. Hiking down the trail, groups of backpackers were pulled off to the side, gearing up, and covering their packs in garbage bags. Rain began to fall in big drops, but never really poured. By the time I got near camp, the sun was out... but only briefly. Gene, our intrepid cook was putting up a big tarp to give us a dry dining area. I stashed my gear in my tent and went to help him. As we worked it got cloudy, then hail came pouring down for a few minutes, followed by sun again. Classic high mountain weather. Most of us appeared in camp in the next half hour or so, except Ernesto, who had hiked up to Treasure Lakes to paint all day. Out came the wine and the chess board, and we took it easy for a few hours, watching the clouds pass over.

It remained sunny long enough at times that 3 of us were suckered into setting up our gear. Within minutes rain began to fall.
We put up our umbrellas, and I retreated under the tarp for further protection, though I was still getting raindrops on my work.

Saturday. Painted right near the trailhead parking lot after hiking out. This is Rock Creek tumbling downhill, with a willow shrub perched in the stream, holding on. It was another great trip, with good folks, tasty food, and beautiful scenery.

Sierra Buttes Workshop Report

2011-07-31T11:38:00.000-07:00

I just finished teaching a 5 day workshop in the Sierra Buttes at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus. Great location, and a wonderful group of folks to work with, roughly a quarter of them from last summer's workshop. Most of us got together on Sunday evening for some wine and cheese before dinner in the dining hall, then headed out to a nearby lake to paint at sunset. Class officially began the next morning after breakfast. I did my first demo in camp, then followed up with a lecture on aspects of natural light that I consider important, and we were off.

I should qualify what I consider to be a demo. I'm not very capable of standing in front of an easel delivering a stream of conscious monologue on my process, while simultaneously executing an image worth looking at. Most of the sounds I generally make when I work are grunts of dismay and muttered curses. Occasionally a useful comment of some sort may emerge from my mouth, but I freely admit that I'm not a textbook of rational processes when I'm going at it. I can be struggling just as much as anyone else! So it is best for me just to paint away, while anyone is welcome to watch, asking the occasional question, as well as do their own work, based on my compositional choices, or one of their own choosing. One group fairly consistently set up near me while I painted, while others found their own spots to work. In this way, I had a reasonable opportunity to paint something at a location, and still have time to make the rounds of everyone to offer advice on their work.

This was a lively, hardworking group, which really makes teaching rewarding and fun. At one student's suggestion we began holding evening crits on the deck of the dining hall of the day's efforts. Some of the teachers and students of the other two classes (spiders, and watershed analysis) would hang around for these. Jerry Davis, the watershed instructor, started describing the water images in analytical terms which was both instructive and entertaining. Anyone who thinks science and art are mutually exclusive hasn't been to a field campus. Jerry also was the one who suggested we check out Love's Falls, which turned out to be one of the best painting locations of the week.

As the headwaters of the north fork of the Yuba River run right through the camp, I gave a lecture and demo on water the first afternoon. Water turned out to be a consistent subject matter all week.

I had the pleasure of meeting Andie Thrams, an artist whose work beguiles me. A writer, sketcher, painter, maker of books, and teacher, she agreed to give a presentation of her work after dinner one night. Afterwards we sat outside and painted in the dusk. Not quite a nocturne.... duskturne?

This was from a meadow down the road from the camp that looked west towards the Buttes. As it was morning, the view was pretty flat in lighting terms, and also lacked the atmosphere that I was figuring on, as we were painting with the sun behind us.There was a visible shift of contrast and value between foreground and background, but it was pretty mild. Still some fun textures, edges, and colors to play with.

From the meadow, we drove to Love's Falls just a few miles away. There was a short walk down a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, from which the sound of the falls began to make itself evident. There was a bridge spanning the river right over the falls, which really are a series of steps continuing above and below the bridge, though the largest drop in view was directly below the bridge.
This was a view looking downstream. Though it is the kind of subject I go looking for, this one is full of issues that need to be resolved in terms of focal point, local contrast and some shape editing. That strange ufo-like boulder in the lower right, for example... Like a lot of my work outside, it can benefit from some studio contemplation and touch up. But here it is in the 'raw', so to speak.

Much later in the day, after a lot of climbing and descending to get around to everyone, I was able to try another piece. The falls are visible beyond the trees, as is some cursory indication of the arched bridge above them. It was a challenge to see the colors in so much white water. The foreground shadowed rocks were a helpful comparative context in that regard.

We spent one morning painting towards the sun in the Sierra Valley (there's your blue atmosphere..), followed by a composition lecture in camp, then headed out to paint and swim at Salmon Lake in the afternoon. I was pretty run down after the waterfall outing the day before. Did I like any of my work that day? Nope!

On this day, the plan was to try Lower Sardine Lake in the morning, and then go back to the falls. However, once at the parking lot of the lake, we collectively decided to hike to the upper lake. It turned out to be a good choice as the water was amazingly still and clear, so both reflection and depth were visible in almost a textbook example in the absence of wind and waves. Half the class stayed there all day.

My first choice, going after the color gradient provided by changing water depth. This image was entirely reflecting sky, so my shadows in the water were blue in character. The foreground boulders took more time than I figured on, and I had to edit them to improve the composition, though it is still not a great strength in this image. It is simply less static than it would have been had I not done anything.

Much later in the afternoon after making the rounds, and a very refreshing swim. This is another 'raw' image that needs some work to bring it in better balance with background color harmony and contrast.... primarily toning down some hues and values to give them a better sense of atmospheric depth. The wind had kicked up quite a bit by then.

Our final show and tell/ crit on Friday. Everyone pinned up what they wanted to for the week, and talked about it. It is really fun to see the world through different eyes, what people choose, how they solve problems (or don't, me included!) Art is a lifelong evolution, and progress is gained through work, as well as the trial and error along the way.

That afternoon, a small group of us headed back to the waterfall to paint. This was fairly late in the day, when the entire scene was in shadow. What was bedeviling was the foreground rocks on the right as they seemed to be the same value and temperature of the adjacent water. My solution was to render more current and reflections on the left, as well as make sure the dark on the edge of the rock was sharp.

Thanks so much to the staff at the camp, and all the wonderful people who signed up for the workshop. It was a really rewarding week in so many ways.

Idyllwild Workshop

2011-07-14T23:01:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, I taught a 3 day workshop, hosted by the Idyllwild Arts Academy, which is in the mountains west of Palm Springs. I had a great group of folks to work with, and we had decent weather as well. We met up Friday morning in a meadow on the campus, where I promptly stepped on a red anthill while talking to one of the participants. I can say from experience now that red ants are the "gift that keeps on giving."

My first demo piece from the meadow, mainly trying to get a sense of looking towards the sun, with a hint of atmosphere, backlighting color saturation, and some minor indication of detail in the shadows.

In order to get a bit more atmospheric depth and color we met up at another meadow in town the next morning that afforded a view of Lily Rock, a prominent local icon.

Tom and Rich in the meadow on Sunday morning. That's Julia, lurking under the umbrella on the right.

Phyllis and Jacquie find views in opposing directions.

Leanne and Jerry.

A quick study of backlit trees and some textured foliage. I would move pretty quickly on these, then pull the plug and start doing walkarounds.

Rose and Judy.

There were boulders all over the campus, completely surrounding the studio we were in, so I did a demo of one that caught my eye. This piece I managed to spend a bit more time on.

We also painted one afternoon at Lake Fulmore to get a chance to observe water, but I did no demo that day, just walk arounds.
We finished up on Sunday afternoon with a group show and tell/critique, then went our separate ways.
It was a busy 3 days, but a lot of fun and hard work. My thanks to everyone who took the class.

Explorations and Demos in the Forest

2011-06-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

I've been teaching some classes the last few weeks at work. The last one was a 5 day workshop for lighting td's where we painted outside at different locations around the East Bay. Great fun and an energetic group. When the weather got warm enough during the week, we painted several times down in Canyon, a small, almost invisible, community in a small redwood and bay laurel forest on Pinehurst Rd.

In most locations I would scout a bit, maybe discuss possible views, then set up and paint until someone asked for help, or my 'guilt-meter' kicked in, and I would start doing walk arounds. In some classes I have taught, a group of students have watched me paint, but in this one, they were all more interested in tackling the painting issues themselves. Either way is good, but I do like to try and solve something for myself, as well as whomever is interested. A few times I was inspired by the views others had picked and tried to hammer something out to get a sense of how to express it.

It is more evident that light is in motion in the forest than in a wide open, brightly lit environment, as the sun is coming into a shadowed realm in shafts and dapples that glide across the ground, rocks, tree trunks, and foliage, with no guarantee that another spot of light will conveniently take its place.

This was painted at the turnout to the Post Office in Canyon.
I liked the juxtaposition of the solid redwood trunk on the left with the explosive, dancing light on the sapling branches and foliage to the right. The background is composed of a shaded, fern covered hillside, and then a moss covered concrete retaining wall below, bordering a road and creek.

This is a more incoherent, rapid expression of a backlit mass of foliage against a steep, shadowed slope of ferns. Amazing light
and color, crazy to paint, but it was fun to try. I don't expect these kinds of efforts to make much sense after the fact, I just want to explore what is going on. The light was really moving.

A clump of redwoods with a lot of backlit spots and regions to explore. This part of the forest was carpeted in dried foliage from the tree. Still exploring how the edges of bright light behave against a shadowed space. Is it a bounce effect? Diffusion? Is it a rich, reduction of color of the key light?
Something's going on! Research continues....

We were painting on the banks of a very shallow creek, and I had been advising a student to paint a few of the rocks in the bottom of the creek that were easily seen in the reflections of the tree trunks, as that would make the water appear transparent. She joked that she would "..rather wash dishes than paint the rocks in the bottom of the creek!" This comment, along with another student's question about deciphering complexity in such a spot, prompted me to paint a quick study of the creek, and call folks over to watch. I was fired up, and was able to babble about laying down a middle value for a shadow, putting a few lights on top, then punching in the dark values for a depiction of the stream bank. The shaft of light hitting the water had slid off to the right in a matter of minutes, but I put it back where I first saw it, referencing the value and color by looking at where it currently was. The pebbles on the bottom of the creek were more of an afterthought after laying in the reflection shapes and colors. This was a quickie, but I was motivated to paint, and it made a huge difference. The level of energy one has at any given time really has an impact on the work. The right comments from students can really get you going!

2 From Pt. Reyes

2011-06-05T20:40:00.000-07:00

2 weekends ago, I made a trip out to Pt. Reyes with Ernesto Nemesio and Sharon Calahan. The wind was a major factor the entire day. We hiked out to the lighthouse, as well as Chimney Rock, where we all went off trail to get out of the wind a bit, and paint a cliff. Next we drove to Drake's Beach and the wind came right with us, so we ended up huddled near a cliff, painting some rather suspect looking water at the back end of the beach. We drove around quite a bit studying other locales, finally ending up in Bear Valley by the visitor's center as the light was turning golden. Thankfully there was less wind in the valley, and I worked on a simple composition of silhouettes and grasses in the warm light. It was a good day.

Wildflowers, creeks, & the usual suspects

2011-04-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

I've been able to take advantage of some of the better weather, as it has been landing on the weekends. 2 weeks ago I went up to Table Mountain to paint with Ernesto Nemesio and Sharon Calahan. It is an eroding mesa of lava above the town of Oroville. There were a lot of wildflowers strewn across the gently sloping plateau. Poppies seemed to prefer the southern slopes and hovered near rocks. Lupine stuck to the northern slopes, and a yellow flower that was quite small but made huge swaths of color, surrounded lava outcroppings and ran like rivers across some areas. We painted from mid morning until sundown.
Here's 3 pieces:

Mid-morning, looking south. I wandered around a long time before picking this. Its one thing to go look at wildflowers, another to figure how to compose an image with them. By looking up a small slope I could get an oblique angle to the ground to condense the colors more. Most of my wandering about was trying to find other elements that would line up with a good view of the flowers. I found some tree shapes I liked that added depth and scale, and the foreground rocky patch held some interest.

Late afternoon poppies nestling near a small bluff. I painted a couple of rocky views like this.

End of the day. More rivers of color, everything getting hit by warm light.

It was a long day, and a 3 hour drive back to the bay area, but worth it. Nice to be out painting again.

This last weekend Ernesto and I drove down to Pinnacles to try our luck with the wildflowers again. Different terrain and we mainly observed clumps of poppies in a rocky floodplain on the east side. Near the end of the day we drove up to one of the trailheads, and hiked up about a mile or so and painted a few quick views before sunset.

Chalone Creek runs across a rocky plain with clumps of poppies scattered about. I spent a long time on this, and really struggled to get the main masses corrected and refined enough to make sense, and it is still not as 'relaxed' as I would wish. I think the water is too broken up, for one thing. It was much more of a drawing and composition problem than I figured on. Needs work!

After taking a break in the shade, I tried painting what looked like a clump of rosemary growing in the middle of the extremely shallow creek. I was attracted to some of the twig arcs, the trapped shadows, the colors of the water reflecting the sky, and the rich ochre of the creek bottom. Perhaps not enough to hang a painting on, but sometimes I'll just see if I can make sense of the 'triggers' that compel me.

At the end of the day, after hiking up the trail a ways, and realizing we were losing all our light, we finally had to pick something and get to work. These last two were quickies, which was a relief after banging on the creek painting for several hours.

All the foreground light was gone, but the next range of hills remained in light for awhile. This was about a half hour's work or less. Fun to paint with no expectations after 'warming up' all day.

Lastly, here's a few 'usual suspects' painted on the route to work, a eucalyptus trunk in front of a thicket of foliage that had some interesting color on the far side of a shadowed space, and a view of the steep slopes on the east side of the Caldecott tunnel at the end of the day.

Warming Up

2011-04-04T15:51:00.001-07:00

The days are getting longer, and we've had some warm and dry stretches in the past few weeks. I'm finally coming out of my hibernating shell to work again outdoors. Here's a few recent studies done on a weekend, or on the way to work in the morning.
These types of subjects are a familiar set of patterns and problems to resolve, but can be as humbling as a first bike ride after laying off for many months, when one is a bit slow and rusty.

It's a challenge to try and break these kinds of views down, as I don't know how to simplify enough yet, and get beguiled into painting the details... that clover and weed combo, that oak leaf and branch thang, ooh, the dappled light, etc...
Consequently, its somewhat overworked, and/or too busy, but I got enough things right to give me ideas about how to tackle this type of subject more effectively next time...

"Broccoli" in the a.m. The hills in shadow at this time of the year can be a minty green, as the sky color mixes with the grass. There is more than a hint of lavender in some of the shrubs, and the eucalyptus always feel 'red' to me in comparison.

Painted from a bank parking lot in downtown Orinda that has a very nice view of the east side of the Berkeley hills. Great views can be found in unexpected places.
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Workshop Update:

In other news, both my summer workshops are filled, and there is a waiting list, so my thanks to everyone who signed up! I'm looking forward to teaching them.

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Art Auction for Japan

In response to the earthquake and tsunami that has devastated parts of Japan, a Pixar colleague and friend, Dice Tsutsumi, has already helped put together an art auction, and is setting up a second one at the end of April that Pixar artists can contribute to. Please read his blog for more details, as well as the opportunity to contribute to some worthy non-profit charities to help.

Upcoming Summer Pastel Workshops

2011-02-07T14:22:00.000-08:00

Morning demo at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus, 2010. Photo by Ann Malmlund.

I'll be giving two pastel workshops this summer, both during the month of July, one in Northern California at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus where I taught last summer, and one down at the Idyllwild Arts Center, also in a mountain environment. The dates
and duration of both workshops can be found on their respective websites listed below. I really enjoyed doing this last summer, and look forward to seeing some familiar folks up in the mountains, as well as meeting some new ones. I've been teaching a class about light and color at Pixar for about ten years, and that is the genesis of the workshop, combined with what I've learned from painting outdoors for over 14 years.

The region around the Sierra Nevada Field Campus is like a mini-Sierra buffet of beautiful scenery. There are numerous small lakes in glacially carved granite basins that are very accessible by car, or an easy hike. Accommodations are available at the campus. The campus itself is composed of large tents on platforms spread along a sloping river drainage, with a large dining hall/classroom building. Hot showers and bathrooms are provided. It is rustic but quite comfortable. The class sizes are limited to 12, to allow for plenty of one-on-one instruction.

Sierra Nevada Field Campus

Regarding the Idyllwild campus, I've yet to visit it, but I was invited to teach there several months ago and researched it a fair amount before committing. The arts program has been running for 60 years, Ansel Adams has taught there, and some very talented contemporary artists, such as Ray Roberts and Peggy Kroll, among many others, will be teaching summer classes. The campus is located in a town at 5,200' elevation in the San Jacinto Mountains near Palm Springs. I'm going to head down there in a few months to scout some painting spots. Here's a link to some virtual tours of the campus environs. Rest assured, there will be plenty to paint!

Idyllwild Summer Workshops

There's plenty of useful information on both websites, but feel free to email me if you have any other questions. My contact info is listed on my profile page.

Group show opening in San Francisco

2011-01-31T08:15:00.000-08:00

The group exhibit of 4 Pixar artists that I've been a part of at the Holton Frame Studio is traveling across the bay and will be opening at the Northpoint Gallery in San Francisco this Wednesday night. As the show has sold well, we've all had to contribute a few more pieces for the new venue. Here's a work that I painted last fall off the side of Redwood Rd., looking into a tangled mass of bay laurel, eucalyptus, blackberry vines, as well as the trickling headwaters of Redwood Creek.

Watershed
8.25 x 12.25
Pastel on Canson Paper

It is interesting to have contemporary work by living artists who paint landscapes hanging in a room surrounded by 19th century work of the same subject. We are from different centuries and spheres of influence, yet certain aspects of nature and light are constants in both. I'm tempted to say the 'epic vision' has been replaced with a more personal viewpoint, but that is not entirely true. One aspect one can observe from local landscapes of the past is the immense amount of growth and development around the bay, well exemplified by a painting by Thomas Ross of Fort Point and the Marin Headlands, painted in the 1870's, some 60 years before the Golden Gate Bridge was completed. It is comforting to see that the Headlands remain entirely recognizable 130 years later.

For a more intimate viewpoint from the past, there's one beautiful example by Jules Tavernier shown below:

The opening reception is from 5-7 this Wednesday evening, and I believe all the 'living' artists, Sharon Calahan, Ernesto Nemesio, Dice Tsutsumiand myself will be there. Perhaps the rest will be there in spirit! Hope to see some familiar faces.

Group Show Opening Dec. 4th in Emeryville

2010-11-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

Posted below are some recent pieces for an upcoming show at the Holton Studio, that opens this Saturday, Dec. 4th in Emeryville
I'll have a total of 6 pieces in the show. You can browse the gallery website here to see all the artist's work.
The reception is from 4-6 pm on Saturday, and I'll be there, so come on by.

I have been fortunate to work and paint with the other artists in this show, Sharon Calahan, Ernesto Nemesio, and Dice Tsutsumi.
Several of us have been together on trips into the back country of the Sierra wilderness over the last 5 years. We've also periodically met up before and after work in the east bay hills to paint, though there is no consistent schedule, as we're all busy with our day jobs on different projects. I can't speak for everyone else's personal motivations, but I will say that self-directed study in the arts has certainly benefited me, both personally and professionally. Its a lifelong pursuit, and unlike athletic pursuits, one can paint until you drop dead. In that regard, my heroes are Pam Glover and Rembrandt.

Inlet Wall
11 x 13
Pastel on Canson Paper

Limantour Sunset
10 x 14
Pastel on Canson Paper

Summer Aspens
11 x 14
Pastel on Canson Paper

Evolution of a Studio Piece

2010-10-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

I've been asked periodically to show a progressive series of images on how I work. It is a lot more convenient to document one's work in the studio than it is outside, as the working pace is not constrained by the changing light. There are natural stopping points indoors... a phone call, a meal, a bathroom break, or just to step back and judge the progress, assess the overall balance, decide what's left to do, etc.

I am doing some new work for a group show of Pixar artists at the Holton Studio in early December. As gallery owners and framers deserve to be kept in the loop when the clock is ticking down towards a show, I initially shot this to apprise Tim Holton of what was coming his way (and to assure him that I was actually working on something). Anyways, I took the opportunity to document the progress of this work, as much for my own curiosity as to to satisfy anyone else's interest.
The images below were taken over a week's time, some the same afternoon or evening. This is from a pastel study I did on my last Sierra trip in August to the Little Lakes Valley on the East side of the Sierra. Some notes on my process are given below each image. I should mention that I enjoy studying the game of chess, and a great part of that pleasure stems from reading over the annotated games of players, where they record their strategic ideas, plans, hopes and fears throughout the process of a game. There is a similar process in the creation of a painting, in my mind.

Here's the starting point. I'm working large (for me). This is a 17 x 21 sheet of Canson Twilight taped onto a piece of foam core. I have my field study and a reference photo off to the right. Working in the living room on a Saturday. I'm just laying in all the big shapes. A painting is a 2 dimensional pattern of value and color relationships, regardless of the subject, so my initial marks are just to cover all those areas with a basic foundation color and value. Basic proportions are judged relative to each other. Trying to avoid jumping into any one area, and just keep moving, but you can see I want to play around in the trees against the background on the right. There's some rich color and interesting edges up there.

Clearly started on the right, and headed left. Keep in mind pattern relationships are not necessarily object based, they are simply the major visible differences in the image... masses of things, shadow shapes, etc. These shapes and relationships form the underlying structure and composition of the final image.

Continuing the journey to the left side of the image, but starting to work back into already established zones with the color I'm aiming for, pushing values and temperatures around, and refining edges. This is where a field study is invaluable, as opposed to only having a photograph. One's own color impressions and perceptions are often significantly different than what a camera is necessarily capable of recording. I usually reference my field study for the range of color, value, and my subjective impression of the experience, while the photo provides a more accurate reference for detail and placement of edges and forms.
It was fun to knock in the boulders on the lower left like a bunch dinosaur teeth. Most marks are kept pretty chunky, but I am starting to gradate color in the sky and the background peak that runs off to the right, as it moves towards the light. The upper left needs a cloud, and two layers of overlapping forms before I can justify more work in the foreground. Overall, I've probably put 90 minutes into the work, broken up into a few sessions over one afternoon and evening.

Sunday Session: It's raining out, I've got a Flemish pot roast burbling away in the other room, and the music is turned up. Olfactory and auditory sensations are good! Time to immerse. The upper left has been laid in...cloud, bg peak, and midground blue cliff all have some level of detail in the appropriate value and color range to keep it subordinate to the main contrasting zones of the image. I may make subtle adjustments and refinements to these areas, but they are pretty much done.

Monday Evening: I've got a cold, and am sneezing and dripping. You can see some evidence of that condition right at the horizon of the sky and the curving ridge above center. I've added warm light to the cloud and pushed the atmospheric light temperature on the upper right side of the image, behind the trees, and in front of the snow patch. The entire tree line has been indicated across the top of the cliff. At this point I've got the whole image up and running, and am now looking to balance and refine certain areas. At a glance, it can almost feel done, and the challenge from this point on is not to overwork it, but find a way of gracefully exiting the process after further resolving certain areas. The cliff is full of creases, crevices, and a range of differing temperatures on its faceted surface. Danger! The boulder field on the left needs to progress further, the cool talus slope below the cliff in shadow can use some more definition, as can the trees on the upper right. I again refer to my field study to see what I thought was important information when I was there, as the photo reference shows 'everything' in excruciating detail, and a far blander color scheme to boot. The lower right quadrant of the image has a level of loose handling, and luminous color relationships that I'm happy with, so I use that as a guide towards resolving the rest of the image.

About an hour later I've reached this point, and am feeling good enough to send a picture of it to the gallery. There's still more to go, but it is a careful dance of leaving out detail you know is there, but may not necessarily improve the image, or throw it out of balance. I've touched the meadow, the talus, the trees and the cliff, moving and adding color, levels of detail, and form description. Still need to remove the sneeze spots...

The High Country
16 x 20
Pastel on Canson Paper

My real job kept me busy the rest of the week, so I wrapped this up the following Saturday morning, working the lower left boulder field, the more distant cliff slope behind it, and readjusting color temperatures and contrast on the central cliff. I think I missed a bit of the earlier more luminous trees up top, but I at least managed to quit at this point.

Talk tonight at the Studio Gallery....Go Giants!

2010-10-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

I'm slated to give a talk tonight at 7 pm at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco during a heck of a pennant series. I expect I'll be hearing the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd from the corner bar down the street from the gallery, and hopefully there will be a few others in the gallery besides me to hear it as well. ;-)

I recall my first solo show at the gallery last year opened right around, if not on, the income tax filing deadline. We were a bit concerned over the prospect of having an exhibit in a month where folks may have just written 2 big checks to the government, but things worked out fine. May tonight have such a rosy outcome.

For those that won't be attending my talk because they want to watch a penultimate game, (and you know who you are) all is forgiven! But If you happen to be in the corner bar watching the game, feel free to run down the street to the gallery during the commercials, for brief tidbits of art wisdom between innings.

Hey, some of my best artist friends are major Giants fans.. A love of sports and art are not mutually exclusive, he opined, deftly sequeing into his closing remarks. For those that want to read a hilarious article on the potentially vast gulf between die hard sports fans and sensitive 'arty' types, I point you to George Plimpton's Marianne Moore in Yankee Stadium in his wonderful book George Plimpton on Sports.
Go Giants!

Upcoming Art Show(s)

2010-10-09T08:51:00.000-07:00

I have 2 shows coming up, and one of them is just around the corner. I'll be exhibiting at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco, from Oct. 13th-Nov. 7th. The reception will be this Saturday, the 16th, from 2- 6. There are 41 paintings focussed in three areas, the Sierra, the Grand Canyon, and local views and foliage studies. I've done 4 studio pieces for this show, and the rest were all done on location. An online catalog of the entire show is available here. Selecting 'view slideshow' allows you to see all the images without having to click on each one. Meanwhile, here's a few of the pieces that are in the Studio Gallery show with notes.

Black Butte Aspens I

Black Butte Aspens II
I spend a week in Oregon every year at a family reunion/vacation at Black Butte Ranch. It is one of the places I first started using pastels outdoors in the mid-90's. There is an enormous meadow in the middle of the property with a bicycle path running across it, bordered on the south side by small aspen groves. I have been whizzing by them on my bike for over 15 years, but this year I stopped, and spent 3 quiet afternoons working in this dappled space with flickering circular aspen leaves and pale trunks exhibiting beautiful colors. I'll probably be sitting here next summer as well.

Emerald Afternoon
This is a studio piece from a packtrip to Pear Lake in Sequoia National Park in 2009. I had already stopped at one lake to paint, and walked off the trail to look at this one, but wanted to keep moving. This small lake had several great rock falls, cliffs and beautiful green depths of water.

Granite Shoreline
This was from a non-mule, weekend packtrip out of Tuolomne Meadows to the Ten Lakes Basin. I brought with me a very small
set of pastels, and did several studies while I was there. This one was a good candidate for a studio piece, due to the level of complexity in the smaller forms. You can see the field study for it in this post.

Grand Illumination
I have ten pieces in the show from a Grand Canyon trip I made in 2008. I hope to return there and paint some more.
It really is an overwhelming experience for an artist to be immersed in a world of such complexity, scale, and the strength of reflected light and color into shadows. Combine that with 100+ degree heat, 48° river temperature, thundering rapids, and all your senses are fully loaded. I could only paint when the rafts were pulled over, and we were on the water from about 8 am to 5, so we motored past an extraordinary number of views I desperately wished I could paint. This image is a typical example of me gawking at a massive display of reflected light into a shadow as it casually drifted by one morning never to be seen again. That's where the studio comes in.

In Deep

Even in the confines of the canyon, one could periodically see a fair distance, and when the light got low enough, quite a bit of atmosphere was visible. The river would make a turn, and suddenly you were looking down a long corridor towards the light with large shadowed portals on either side. You were always in motion on the water, so the scale was dynamic in nature, as a slow parallax effect told you how 'big' the world really was.

I'll also be participating in a group show of Pixar artists that opens in early December at the Holton Studio in Emeryville. Tim Holton handcrafts beautiful hardwood frames, and also maintains a gallery space. The other artists are Ernesto Nemesio, Dice Tsutsumi, and Sharon Calahan. I am excited to see what everyone is doing, as we've all been busy at work on different projects, and I haven't been out painting with any of them in quite awhile. I'll post more details on this show when I finish the pieces, and the opening date is firmed up.

I hope to see some of you at the reception this next Saturday, the 16th at the Studio Gallery.

Recent work from a Sierra Packtrip

2010-08-31T21:05:00.000-07:00

A group of painters and photographers spent a productive week up in the Little Lakes Valley at Chickenfoot Lake the last week of August. Paul Kratter, Terry Miura, Carolyn Hesse-Low, and Michele De Braganca were the painters, while Bob Watters and John Fernbacher comprised the photographers. This trip marks the 6th year a group of us has packed into a wilderness area to paint. Following our traditional modus operandi, we hired a pack station to take the bulk of our gear in on mules, as well as supply a cook (Kate, along with her trusty dog, Cody) for the trip. The goal was to focus on painting and not be responsible for the food, or running the camp. We were blessed with decent weather for the most part, though some high winds at night, and during the day, had a way of cutting short our sleep, and sapping the motivation to paint at times. Overall it was a great trip, with some wonderful scenery to work with, as well as a good group of fellow artists to commiserate with in the mornings and evenings over some tasty meals. Here are some images below with notes.

Bear Creek Spire
~9x12"
Pastel on Canson Paper
This was the first piece I did on the afternoon after our hike in. We were camped near a meadow, which is visible in the bottom of the image, surrounded by high peaks on 3 sides. This view shows a slice of the horizon looking towards the south, across the meadow where the inlet came in.

Morning Light
~6x9"
Pastel on Canson Paper
I never sleep well the first night out on these trips. This one was no different. It is sometimes a relief to get out of the tent at dawn, and do something... drink coffee, complain about not sleeping, and get to work! This was a view looking towards Morgan Pass, where the morning sun was cutting through. The eastward facing slopes of the valley reflected warm light into the shadows quite powerfully, adding a lot of subtle temperature variation.

Mt. Morgan Talus
9x12"
Pastel on Canson Paper
I had spotted this small cliff surrounded by talus across the lake the day before and thought it would make an interesting subject. The pale local color of the rock in shadow allowed for a range of warm and cool relationships from the warm bounce of the rocks in light, the color of the lake, and the cool sky illuminating different planes of the rocks.

Upper Gem Lake
9x12"
Pastel on Canson Paper
Gem Lake was tucked into a steep bowl surrounded on 2 sides by talus and cliffs. There were several large distinctive snow patches on the north facing cliff walls. This was painted in late afternoon on the second day of the trip.

Backlit
~6x8"
Pastel on Canson Paper
There was a low ridge of cracked and faceted granite across a dry inlet from our campsite. Behind this small ridgeline lay an arm of the lake, and beyond that an absolute wall of talus forming the West slope of Mt. Morgan. I am attracted to the colors of granite in shadow because it beautifully portrays the range of colors coming from secondary sources... in this case the sky, and the warm reflected light off the mountain walls catching the morning light across the valley. The backlit trees added to the range of color, and the background, shadowed, rocky slopes were the last part of the equation.... one I couldn't quite figure out! You can see me 'testing' different marks and values in there, trying to indicate some boulders in the distance. At a glance, I perceived a blue field of color, but a second look always revealed some detail back there. I did four studies of this area trying to decode rocks, trees, and that distant shadow. This one is a candidate for a studio piece.

Gem Lake Shoreline
~9x9"
Pastel on Canson Paper
After struggling with backlighting and shadows, I hiked up to Gem Lake again and found Terry Miura finishing up a nice portrait of Mt. Morgan with some erratic boulders in the foreground. We were getting a lot of clouds blowing over, so the light was changing quite a bit. I found some shade to work in nearby and spotted this distinctive rock formation across the lake. While I waited for the light to move to one side and give a better light and shadow pattern, I painted a study of some trees huddled against a small cliff. No go on that one. Was this one worth the wait? The light that day was rather pale, as the cloud cover tended to dull the blue character of the shadows, but I still was attracted to the graphic pattern of the rock. You pick, you commit, and you pay the consequences! There's always another day.

Fringe
~9x9"
Pastel on Canson Paper
This kind of subject matter has been intriguing me more and more this last year, so it was on my radar while I was wandering about up there. I am interested in using foliage patterns as graphic elements of an image, and am happy to combine that with other qualities of form and light that attract me, such as water and rocks. There were several small drainages that ran out of the upper lakes down through boulder choked meadows, with small willow shrubs lining the banks. Even in these narrow creeks, brook trout could be seen racing about for cover as one approached. There was just enough depth in the water to see the range of color moving towards green.

Another variable that may have helped me with this image was the weather. The clouds were building up all morning to the south, the light was coming and going, and it looked like rain was going to finally come. In fact, a few drops did come down at one point. Consequently, I worked much faster on this piece, and had no time to noodle, as I am prone to do at times.

Wet and Dry
~9x9"
Pastel on Canson Paper

I always enjoy painting rocks and water, as I love the richness of color as a rock is immersed in water. I confess to noodling on this one, but I felt it needed that sort of attention to snap into focus. There was also periodic, strong gusts of wind hitting me, so at times I had to stop working, and just hold onto my easel and umbrella.

The High Country
~9x12"
Pastel on Canson Paper

This was my view to the south while I was painting the water and rock image. The end of the Little Lakes Valley just goes up and up. I was interested in the cliff area in the middle, as well as the tree leaning up into the distant peak silhouette on the right. I first intended to do two separate studies, but then realized they were all connected, so decided to paint a fairly wide angle of view, which I don't do very often. It was late afternoon, and the gusts of wind were a constant assault on one's gear and senses. I was tired, and really wanted to get out of there and back to camp, so I worked as fast as I could, just indicating shapes and values. Its a fairly 'soft' image, but manages to get down what interested me.

Inlet Wall
~5x5"
Pastel on Canson Paper
This is another crack at the rock formations across the dry inlet in the morning. A lot of interesting shapes to play with.

Another late summer painting trip comes to an end. When we hiked out, clouds were building up again, and by the time we reached the trailhead, snow was blowing down out of the sky in direct sunshine. Meanwhile, I have an upcoming show in October at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco, and will be cranking away the next few weeks. Plenty of work that has been posted on my blog this past year will be in the show, along with some new studio pieces, as well as a few 'surprises'. Stay tuned!

Recent Demos

2010-07-17T07:08:00.001-07:00

I was able to take a group of lighting TD's from work outside to paint last week, and we were graced with pretty good weather.
We painted from ridgelines, went to a small lake, and spent a few afternoons in a small Redwood forest. Here are some of the demos I did during the week.

Ways of Working (gear talk)

2010-06-26T16:36:00.001-07:00

As I'll be teaching a workshop in the Sierra Buttes in a few weeks, I wanted to do a post talking about my setup, present and past, to take any mystery out of it, as well as help inform those that are contemplating the purchase of an umbrella, a pastel box, backpack, etc. The photos above shows the way I'm currently working. I'm using an allinone easel, mounted on an old Manfrotto tripod. I can adjust it to comfortably work sitting or standing. This is a 10 x 14 pochade box, which has a hinged foam core panel to mount your paper on. There is storage behind the easel, which is held by velcro. I made a simple storage pad out of glassine, canson, and cardboard, to hold blank paper, as well as finished art, which fits in that space. I can also use the pad to mount paper on for a vertical composition, as shown in the top image. As far as umbrellas go, I've used a variety of them over the years, losing several every year to unexpected gusts of wind. I am currently using the bestbrella, which has worked well for me for the last 7 months. One improvement over other umbrellas is that it is silver on the outside, and opaque black on the inside, reflecting heat, and eliminating diffuse glare. A white umbrella can over illuminate your work under certain circumstances. The mount is extremely sturdy and adjustable.

Everything fits into the backpack below, plus a bag for the tripod, and the umbrella mount. If I want to, I can secure the tripod bag to the backpack to keep my hands free. To choose a backpack, I simply went to a sporting goods store with all my art supplies, and started trying to fit everything into the packs they had on display. The folding camp stool is from there as well. Other items I carry are a camera, usually looped through my belt, water, sketchbook, and and wipes for my hands. It's ok to have extra room for snacks, extra clothes (windbreaker, hat).

Here's a typical setup by the side of the road. No umbrella needed, as it was an overcast day.

The above image shows the way I worked for about 10 years. Same stool, backpack, and tripod as I currently use, but a large, wooden pastel box from Dakota Art Supplies. Also shown is one of the many umbrellas that took a beating over the years.
Below is me finishing one last piece before hiking out on the last day of a packtrip in the Sierra. Note the white umbrella. The dark one's provide a more balanced shade than the white umbrellas, imho.

Here's an 'ultralite plein air' setup: One small box of pastels, many of them cut in half to accommodate more colors, a tracing pad cut down for storage, with a same size sheet of foam core to clip paper to. The whole thing fits in a zip-lock bag. Just sit on the ground and start painting. I took this setup backpacking last year, and had a similar setup for a raft trip down the Grand Canyon a few years ago.

The truth is the gear is of less important than the experience. At the same time, you want equipment that will be comfortable, reliable, and easy to use. Being able to stand, or sit, as well as control your shade, are very useful 'tools' for working outdoors.
You have more options about where to paint that way. Lastly, consider the weight of everything. An 'ideal' setup is the one you're willing to carry with you for a couple of miles.

Sonoma Plein Air

2010-05-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

I spent last week painting up in Sonoma County for the Sonoma Plein Air event, which I have been fortunate to attend for the past 8 years. It is a wonderful event for the artists, and hopefully for the residents and patrons who so generously put up the artists in their homes and guesthouses, while we roam about the valley and paint. The weather was less than ideal for the 5 days we were allotted to paint, with rain, drizzle, wind, overcast skies, being predominant. Thursday was the lone exception to that. You should also take a look at the blogs of Terry Miura and Robin Purcell for their perspectives on the week. You might also check out the work of Paul Kratter on his website and you'll be able to see some of his work for the week. Here's a few of the pieces I did with some notes.

The sun often rose into a diffuse cloud cover, which softened and attenuated the light considerably in brightness. I abandoned another painting to start this one, when I realized I wasn't going to get the lighting I was expecting.

Scenes of this sort are common to the lower end of the valley, as the land is sectioned into vineyards and small dairies, bordered by roads and windbreaks of Eucalyptus trees. The weather during this week was rather dynamic, so whatever lighting situation one might begin a piece with was unlikely to be there midway through it. A lot of my work was done in the rain, or a combination of direct light and overcast, which lent my work a patchy quality, as well as a rather grey nature, as is represented in this image. The most interesting thing about this piece for me was the visit of a very large king snake, which came slithering towards me, flicking it's tongue, and eventually disappearing under the mat of dead grass a yard from my feet into a hole, perhaps in search of a meal.

This was painted up at Sugarloaf State Park, a few miles north of Glen Ellen. I have visited it the last few years when I come up to paint, as it is often sunny when the valley a thousand feet below is shrouded in morning fog. Adobe Creek runs through the park, carving a small channel, and exposing a range of boulders and smaller rocks. There are other types of views as well, but I have a fondness for boulders, water, and foliage patterns, which this view had in abundance.

I had spied a small waterfall when driving up to the park, and went back in the afternoon to paint it.

Also painted at Sugarloaf Park, trying to leverage my success of the previous day. Instead, the light was gray, and I went looking for qualities that compelled me to paint. This is a fragment of a landscape... really only a few square feet in area, but I liked the contrast in the shadows below the beautiful hues of the mossy root, the gradient of greens on the grass, as it curved upwards from the gully to face the sky, as well as the tones on the rock. Even the dead oak leaves started to interest me with the way they broadcast their orientation to the sky through a compressed range of value and temperature shifts. In such a small portion of nature, all sorts of subtle (and not so subtle) cues were operating about light and form, the only exception being atmosphere. But why would it be any other way? The 'rules' apply regardless of scale... there's the lesson!

Off to Sonoma and more regional shrubbery

2010-05-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

I'll be headed later today to Sonoma county for the annual Sonoma Plein Air festival, and will be exhibiting a week's worth of work in the county next Saturday, May 22, in Sonoma Plaza, along with many other fellow artists such as Terry Miura, Paul Kratter, Randy Sexton, Carol Hesse-Low, and Tim Horn. Below are a few pieces from the last month or so from over my back fence, and one from the shadowed recesses of Pinehurst Rd., which is awash in forget-me-nots for a brief period of time. Hope to see some of you in the plaza next Saturday. Hope we get some good weather, or mist and local color will be prevalent.

The Temptations of Complexity

2010-04-21T08:23:00.001-07:00

In looking for subjects to paint on the hills and ravines around my neck of the woods, the combined textures and forms of various plants are intriguing to my eye, but also a challenge, as certain shapes and sizes are hard to execute with the blunt instrument of the pastel stick, and the variety of foliage textures can be daunting. In facing a 'persian rug' of patterns, I look for a breakup of the major shapes of the image plane to have a design that I can hang everything on regardless of the subject. I'm finding that value patterns, whether strictly defined by the effect of light and shadow, or mass of a form, or some combination, are what I'm relying on for this underlying structural support. There's a lot of drawing problems I'm encountering in these pieces, so much more work is needed on my part to really decode and even accurately get the proportions of certain forms down.
Tree trunks are analogous to the human figure in gesture, pose, subtlety, etc. I'm struggling with the simplest statements of this. Ferns are amazingly elegant, and I can only hint at that right now... 'there's a fern here'.. There's an endless variety of ideas to explore out in the big colorful 'mess' of nature. Spring is here...everyone get out and paint!

The green goes on

2010-03-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

In a few months the world I'm painting will be shades of gold and violet along with the green.
I worked today on the hill behind my house for several hours and did three pieces, two of which were
off the cuff challenges: a random clump of grass, and a tree shadow coming off of a trunk on a steep hill.
They were worthwhile exercises, but didn't bear fruit. I have a lot more to learn about painting grass... and tree trunks.
The other image in this post is from last week, looking into a shadowed space on the hill with the cherry blossoms
poking up.

Beyond the back fence

2010-02-28T18:50:00.000-08:00

Still studying the complexities of trees, shrubs and grasses on the hill behind our house. It is an interesting challenge to try and imply what's going on. I have been looking at some of Richard Schmid's work, and I think it has infected me a bit. He often paints very complex trees in front of equally complex architecture, and does it beautifully. He sets the bar pretty high for his edge control, as well as a mixture of very tight, and very loose handling of paint in the same image. At this point, I'm just trying to paint a tree in front of itself. Research continues.

Spring is coming

2010-02-15T19:45:00.000-08:00

Though it is only February, yesterday was warm, sunny, and dry, so I took a long hike on the Rocky Ridge Trail out of Rancho Laguna Park in Moraga. This is a path that runs through East Bay watershed, and has easements through several parcels of grazing land up to Rocky Ridge, which is a few thousand feet in elevation. I only walked in about 2.5 miles, but had plenty of climbing and descending, as I was curious about the views towards the ridge. The light was pretty flat in mid afternoon, looking in that direction, so I started hiking back and became intrigued by a view to the southwest, looking downslope and towards the sun, which backlit all the grasses, turning them insanely green, as well as illuminating the atmosphere tremendously.

I've also been painting closer to home, as in my own backyard, or wandering on the hill behind my house. There is a large buckeye tree that appears to be dead every year, and then miraculously blooms in spring. Uncanny. I am intrigued by that patterning of the branches as well as the different tangles of foliage one encounters at close range amongst the oaks, blackberry vines, dormant fennel stalks, and lurking (and abundant) poison oak. Here's a few studies looking at some of those subjects.

Summer Pastel Workshop in the Sierra Buttes

2010-01-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

I'm going to be giving a 4 day pastel workshop at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus mid-summer, from July 26-30. Class size is limited to 12. The field campus is run by San Francisco State, and is located in the Sierra Buttes, along the north fork of the Yuba River. I took an astronomy class up there about 4 years ago, and have wanted to teach a workshop there ever since. There are numerous small lakes in glacially carved granite basins that are very accessible by car, or an easy hike. The region is like a mini-Sierra buffet of beautiful scenery. Accommodations are available at the campus. The campus itself is composed of large tents on platforms spread along a sloping river drainage, with a large dining hall/classroom building. Hot showers and bathrooms are provided. It is rustic but quite comfortable. The cost of the workshop itself is $400, the accommodations are extra, and vary according to the options you can choose, involving a meal plan, as well as whether you bring your own tent, or decide to stay elsewhere, but dine on campus, etc.

There will be some lectures, daily plein air work and demos, as well as one-on-one time. This is an opportunity for some immersion in the challenges and rewards of painting on site, capturing light at different times of the day. Painting in the Sierra is a wonderful sensory experience... the character of light at higher altitudes , the glacial basins of granite, the range of color of in the creeks and lakes. I am always inspired by working in the mountains and I hope you'll come away with impressions of your own that will endure.

Here's the link to the website for the classes offered this summer. Just click on the courses link to find a class description.
All signups have to be done through the website, so they can keep track of the number, but I'll be happy to answer any questions you have.

Sierra Nevada Field Campus

Pt. Reyes

2009-11-02T11:41:00.000-08:00

The California Art Club hosted a gathering of artists at Pt. Reyes last weekend. A large group stayed at the hostel near Limantour Beach. The weather was warm and clear, with some great semi-foggy morning light to work in. All images are pastel on Canson paper. More notes to come.

Recent Demos and Studies

2009-10-16T21:38:00.001-07:00

I recently finished teaching 2 more pastel classes at work. I teach an 8 session course to about 20 students at a time, so for a month I had 40 students total to incite, badger, and cajole into experiencing the challenges and rewards of studying natural light. I enjoy it very much and, as a teacher, I learn new things each time, about light and teaching. The first 2 class sessions were held indoors with some lectures, exercises and demos. After that we headed outside, where natural light and circumstances prevail. The outdoor sessions were generally held in the Berkeley Hills above Emeryville and Oakland, with the goal of painting the same locales in the morning hours and the late afternoon, to observe the dynamic shifts of color, value, and light. Part of my regimen in the class was to set up at a given locale and start a piece, so students could watch me work, or elect to start their own if they desired. I always had a few folks peering over my shoulder while doing these pieces, but it wasn't a full on demo where I would verbally announce all my thoughts and strategies to a large group. That sort of display I have yet to master. These were more relaxed studies with a few onlookers, who may or may not be asking questions. Less stressful... more nutritious!

The classes were a pleasure to teach. People from work are pretty motivated to learn, and a class that gets one out of the office and up into the hills to paint is a fairly healthy way to spend time. While we were fogged out of spots on more than one occasion, we generally had good results with the weather, and witnessed some spectacular shifts in light between dawn, sunrise, all the way up to sunset and dusk.

A caveat with all these pieces is that they were all painted as studies or demos within the context of a class, and I often stopped working on them somewhat prematurely to spend the remainder of my time making the rounds with students, discussing and assisting them in their work. In that regard, I probably managed to avoid overworking anything, though some are rather abbreviated and 'pedantic' in my opinion. Further comments below.

Probably the most 'pedantic' of the bunch. By that I mean that I was very conscious about the relative values and the attention to atmospheric light, topics I'd been pointing out in lectures and one on one discussions. Subtleties? Like the briefly indicated 'deeper' shadows on the hillside in the midground? Yes, some cursory indications were made...then time to make house calls!

I did some quicker small studies to try and represent very ephemeral, intense atmospheric light and extremely warm, direct light slamming into the hill next to me right before sunset. The light is visibly changing by the minute at times like this.

Done on a different afternoon than the first piece. There was an enormous glare on the bay from the late afternoon sun. That is the Berkeley Marina angling in on the right. These top 4 pieces were all painted from a turnout on Grizzly Peak Blvd.

The three images above were all painted at Lake Anza, the top one in the evening, and the next two were done in the morning,
right before and after the sun came blasting into the lake basin. These are clear examples of the shifting range of color that is going on around us continuously.

Mulholland Ridge in Orinda is a good bailout point when the fog comes too far into the bay, as it lies a few miles east of the Berkeley Hills. The images above are both afternoon/evening demos done on different days. The grove of trees in the top of the first image is the same grove that is in the bottom of the second.
The color of dead grasses in shadow is always one of those interesting challenges, as it presents a warm local color that is being hit by the cooler ambient light of the sky. So, is it warm, or is it cool? A great paradox to bedevil students with! The answer is that it is cooler than the lit portion, and likely warmer than something that has an inherently cooler local color that may be enveloped in the same shadow! In addition, the shifting folds and planes of the hill play a role in how cool or warm they are relative to each other, as some parts 'see' the sky more than others.
The light on these 2 days was markedly different as there was quite a lot of high altitude clouds and haze the afternoon the second piece was painted, which lent a rather pasty, pale aspect to the atmosphere. Even though the sunlight was quite warm, colors were not as vibrant overall. In looking at the bottom image, I can also note in hindsight that some of my distant 'warm' shadows are too warm, and jump forward as a result. This student still has plenty to learn!

Sequoia National Park

2009-09-11T15:46:00.000-07:00

Late last month, I was fortunate enough to be part of a group of artists, writers, naturalists, former park rangers, and educators who were invited to spend a few days camping near the Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park as guests of the Sequoia National Park Foundation. A group of us would head out and paint every day, meeting up periodically with the others, some who had extensive experience in the Park. We were taken to some wonderful spots to paint, fed well, and had stimulating discussions (fueled with poetry and wine) at all hours of the day. It was quite a wonderful experience to be a part of, and I hope I can do it again. The mix of individuals and viewpoints made for lively interaction. This is the kind of retreat, with no fixed agenda, that stimulates creative potential of all sorts. It was a very positive and thoughtful experience for me.

This year also marks the 5th year of an annual painting packtrip that I have put together with the help of my artist friend, Paul Kratter. Paul, and another packtrip stalwart, photographer Bob Watters, were also invited to the above mentioned event, so we planned our back country adventure to dovetail with the one in the front country. For this part of the trip, we invited 4 other artists, Suzanne D'Arcy, Carol Tarzier, Sharon Calahan, and Ann McMillan, to come along. We hired a cook and mules from the Horse Corral Pack Station, run by Charlie and Judy Mills, to haul a field kitchen and most of our gear, up to Pear Lake out of the Wolverton trailhead for 5 days of painting in glacially carved granite at 9500'. It was quite a nice spot to work, and the company was good. I've posted below a range of studies from both trips in a general chronological order with a few notes appended.

We were camped at a boy scout camp about a quarter mile below the trailhead into the back country. This was painted in the parking lot of an old ski area that has been closed and overgrown. It was a nice spot to walk to in the morning and get in a study or two before walking back for breakfast.

I looked at a lot of Sequoias, but this is the only one I painted. They had a marvelous bark color, bordering on orange in direct sunlight. The light on this day eventually became completely overcast, and I became more interested in the 'tree holes' of sky poking through.

Painted in a rather deep, granite lined creek bottom, looking at a reflection of trees up the slope that were well illuminated by morning light.

After breakfast that same day, we hiked up this granite lined drainage full of small pools, boulders and streams of shallow water pouring down, one after the other. This boulder at the bottom of one of the descending ramps of granite caught my eye.

I stayed there most of the day and kept doing studies. This is fairly late afternoon. While the color is not so interesting, the collision of forms, made an interesting composition to my eye.

This is painted looking South towards Morro Rock in early morning light, one of the icons of the park.

One of the studies of Alta Peak I did the first afternoon at Pear Lake. The whole basin was almost entirely formed of solid, streaked and fractured, glacially polished granite, along with erratics and many boulders that had tumbled down the steep walls surrounding the lake. Alta Peak sat at the far end of the lake from where we were camped.

You could pick out a section of the steep walls surrounding the lake, and find interesting compositions. This area had some 'survivors'... trees that have toughed it out in a harsh place.

We had one day with a white sky that just flattened all the light. I hiked around and became intrigued by the patterns of solid rock running down to the lake. Even in flat light they were interesting.... to me anyway! Perhaps I was desperate. I did several studies of this type. They may yet bear fruit.

A midday painting. Below the lake, there was a lengthy sloping drainage covered with fractured slabs of granite, some vegetation, trees, and periodic boulders.

Late afternoon, looking northwest down the drainage to the opposite slope of the valley.

This view stayed fairly stable for a long period of time in the morning, as the light would slowly creep over the far rim of the drainage on the east side, while the foreground was bathed in warm light. The main surface of the drainage was patterned with cracks and fissures. I painted a few of these views.

Studio Work and 2 Upcoming Shows

2009-07-31T11:20:00.001-07:00

Erratic-Ten Lakes Basin
16 x 14
Pastel on Canson Paper

Here is a studio piece from a study I did on a backpack trip a few weekends ago in Yosemite. Still trying to find the balance between gesture, immediacy, the way the material behaves, and the drive towards more resolution of the image, exploring more subtle issues, (edges, the final frontier) which the studio environment provides. When to stop? I even made some changes to the image since I shot this version, though they might not be noticeable to most.

I have a few shows coming up and am headed overseas for a week, so needed to get all my work finished and framed. This one is destined for the Studio Gallery's upcoming landscape show, 'Terrain', opening in San Francisco on the 12th of August. The study for this as well as one of the lake that I previously posted will also be in that show. Maybe one more piece... not sure yet.

I am also going to be in the Napa Valley Art Festival in a few weeks, which takes place on Saturday, August 15th. I'll have about 8 paintings for sale in that event, including Granite in Shadow, which I'm honored to announce was given the Jurors' Choice award. Should be a fun day, and I hope to see some familiar faces there.

Studies from the Ten Lakes Basin

2009-07-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

I did my first 'real' backpacking trip this weekend with some coworkers and had a great time. We hiked over 6 miles out of Tuolomne Meadows, climbing over a 9,500 pass to get to a basin filled with small lakes near the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Tuolomne. Not so much time to paint on a trip like this but I did get one afternoon and morning in. I had made a very portable pastel setup, which is visible in the photo, by cutting a lot of sticks in half in order to have the colors I needed. I stored my paper (and my finished pieces) in a cut down pad of tracing paper with about half the paper in the pad removed. I clip the Canson paper to a piece of foam core cut to the same size as the pad. Very similar to my large setup but it weighs a lot less. Worked fine. These are pretty quick and loose studies, about 7 x 9", which I may use to do some larger studio pieces. One interesting aspect of a 'study' is that you don't try and render, but more or less notate and hammer down values, shapes, and colors that collectively represent something. More or less what painting is all about anyways, but rather brutal... less finesse. Studio work gives one time to noodle and contemplate a bit. Not always the best thing either!

Recent Work

2009-06-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Granite in Shadow
14 x 16"
Pastel on Canson Paper

I've been busy for the last 6 weeks teaching some pastel classes at work, so have not been very productive. I do sometimes setup to paint when I'm out with the class, but most often move around offering advice, and "meddling' on their work. Its really quite fun and rewarding, but I have only some fairly rough studies to show for it.

This is a studio piece, based on studies and reference from last summer's trip to Lake Ediza. Granite is so light in value that it is like a litmus paper for ambient and reflected colors when it is in shadow.

4 days of Painting in Sonoma

2009-05-10T22:11:00.001-07:00

I spent last week painting for the Sonoma Plein Air event, a non profit organization that raises money to fund art education in the public schools in Sonoma County. I have been a part of this event every year since its inception.
I arrived late on Monday, so just scouted locations in the afternoon drizzle that might offer shelter and a view of some sort. Tuesday and Wednesday were both wet, though it cleared on Wednesday afternoon. By then I was keyed into the possibilities of tree moss in gloom, and had to recalibrate my sensibilities to the 'glare' of direct sunlight casting shadows. Shocking. Here are the paintings, all pastel on Canson paper. I did 14 pieces, didn't bother to frame 2 of them (woof!). Sold 1 at the auction dinner, then 4 on the day of the show. I was beat by the end of the week, but had a great time. Sonoma Plein Air is well thought out, and superbly run by great people.

Windbreak
Painted in an off an on drizzle from the back seat of my car with the window rolled down.

Wet on Watmaugh
This is later that day with weather moving in. I was outside the car under the back hatch, with an umbrella up for further protection. However the cars roaring by a few feet away periodically swirled a mist onto my paper, some of which is stlll visible. Finally the entire background disappeared behind a grey wall. Time to go taste wine.

Maison Du Fox
While I was painting this, some vineyard workers came by and told me that a fox would come every year with her kids and live inside this tree trunk for a few months.

Mossy Tree
This tree was about 50 feet away from the preceding one. I found these green mossy trunks to be very luminous during the grey light early in the week.

After the Weather
I was driving down the hill from the mossy trees, and saw another painter working away at a turnoff which afforded
a great view down the valley. It was SusieHyer (no space in name intentional) a painter from Colorado. We chatted a bit then
I went to work as I spied some sunlight sliding across the hill in the midground, while the mountain behind it was in shadow.
Nice to have company out there from time to time.

Atwood Rocks
Julie Atwood was very generous in allowing painters to roam her property in search of material. She's got vineyards, old trucks, barns, livestock, but I liked the small boulders sitting under the oaks in the weeds...

Patten St. Spring
This is a small bridge over a creek in a neighborhood. I painted this about 5 years ago, and have checked it every year I come up to paint. A trio of female ducks came waddling by me, continuing right into my painting, and disappeared around the corner.

Carriger Closeup
There are magnificent specimens of Eucalyptus trees all over the Sonoma Valley. Some are bleached grey, others subtly striped with warm and cool bands. Their peeling bark lodges in the crooks of the branches and hangs down like dreadlocks. You got form shadows on the trunk, warm and cool planar color relationships in the shadows, little spots of background color peeking through the dreadlocks... what's not to paint?

West Sonoma
I thought this one would be easy, but instead had to struggle to get it working, hence it's non-rendered, iconic nature. I had to keep simplifying and flattening my shapes, and then try again. I think I was mainly attracted by the overall shape, plus the color of the shadowed grass, which is about what I ended up with.

E. Bonness a.m.
I may do a larger studio version of this. It is really more of a sketch. I'm not used to painting
that many discrete elements in an image, and reminded me of how clumsy my tools are for certain kinds of shapes.

Sierra Show Wrap Up

2009-05-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

The last day of the show (one wall)

The last day of the show (other wall)
Red dot indicates a piece is sold.

I had a wonderful experience doing this show. I didn't know what to expect. The whole process has been a great education for me. From evolving a studio methodology for my own art, to trying different framing ideas and styles, to putting together a catalog, the responsibility and challenge of of doing a one person show is a good kick in the pants.

Being able to choose from 4 years of work helped me select and edit what went into the show. I used some pieces as studies, that I might have otherwise framed and exhibited, to do more resolved and larger studio pieces. My goal was to have a forum for my work that could be seen as a whole, and allowed the viewer to see the differences in light and color throughout the day. Jennifer Farris and Rab Terry of the Studio Gallery respected my goal, and changed their common practice of allowing customers to take a piece home the day it was purchased, instead keeping the body of work intact for the entire run of the show, for which I am pleased and grateful. I've always been a bit frustrated by the Plein Air format of putting up all your work in a show, and watching it get decimated in a few hours by buyers, so people that come by later may miss the thread, or range of ideas, one was pursuing and hoping to express. I am not suggesting that the sum is greater than the parts as much as a body of work can have an aesthetic and emotional resonance and range when viewed together that the separate pieces can't.

Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to do this, helped me put it together, and who came to the show, purchased my work, and/or offered words of support. This has been a long time in the making, but very rewarding in so many ways. The artists that went up into the mountains were a great catalyst... a mobile community of like-minded souls, that enriched the whole experience. The camaraderie and the opportunity to see the world through other artist's eyes made it that much more stimulating and fun. Patty, my wife, was my partner in selecting and framing all the work, as well as being my on call aesthetic advisor when I was stuck on some visual conundrum. Jennifer Farris and Rab Terry, the owners and operators of the Studio Gallery gave me the opportunity last fall to do this, and have been wonderful to work with. My advice to others is to go find your own mountain and climb it. You can do it!

Looking into Shadows and other Image Triggers

2009-03-26T15:31:00.000-07:00

Iceberg Outlet
10 x 10.5"
Pastel on Canson Paper

Shadowed Face
14 x 10"
Pastel on Canson Paper

My upcoming show at the Studio Gallery is drawing near, and things are falling into place. My frames and glass are at hand, a catalog of my work is at the printers, and I'm finishing up the last paintings. The catalog will be available for sale on my blog, as well as at the gallery, and I'll post more information about that soon.

I find I keep returning to a few concepts that compel me to paint. One of them is the notion of seeing inside a shadow. When a shadow contains more than one value, it becomes transparent in my mind, not just a flat shape. This aspect, as well as the relationship of shaded colors to the illuminated parts of an image seems to be expressing some deep mystery of perception for me. A shadowed part of an image is a volume where one sees qualities that the illuminated parts of an image don't, or cannot, reveal: the color(s) of the ambient, or fill light, the bounce of local colors onto other surfaces — these qualities made apparent by the protective cloak of the shadow can often be imperceptible in direct illumination, yet they may be operating in those areas as well. Looking into a shadow is like peeking under the hood at the subtle, underlying components contributing to the overall color and illumination of an image. There's much much more that fascinates me on this topic that I've not articulated.

I'm also fascinated by water for a range of reasons, but I'll just mention an elemental one. I remember all the times as a kid, running around on beaches on the California coast, collecting shells and rocks, and putting them in a bucket. They were wet and shiny, and had brilliant hues. The next day, however, when I looked in the bucket, all my 'treasures' were pale and dusted with white. I had to fill the bucket with water to make the rocks look as good as they did at the beach! I no longer take the rocks home, and art supplies have replaced the bucket, but sometimes I still feel as excited and intrigued as I once did on the beach when I find scenes of water and rocks to paint.

Recent Work

2009-03-02T20:51:00.000-08:00

Ediza Shore
10.5 x 10"
Pastel on Canson Paper

Here's one of the pieces I've been working on for the Studio Gallery show in April. I've flown over Lake Ediza in the winter and it is covered in ice. Funny to think of it in late summer, glowing luminous green in the morning. This was the view below my tent, where I would paint in the early part of the day.

Upcoming Show in San Francisco

2009-02-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

I will be having an exhibit at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco, in mid-April. There will be more details forthcoming. The Studio Gallery was where the Early Birds show was held last year, but they have moved to a new location, about a block away, and have a larger space. As a result, I'm spending my weekends in the studio creating more work to fill the walls. There will be about 30 pieces in the show, a selection of pastels from the Sierras, done on location over the last 4 years, as well as some recent studio pieces based on field studies. Some Grand Canyon pieces will round out the show as well, as the subject matter is pretty much the same: light, water, and rocks!

Masses of split, chiseled, cracked, and crumbling walls of rock, and the way light bounces around
on their surfaces, have fascinated me ever since my first painting trip into the Sierras in 2005. The image below is a studio version of a pastel I did in 2006 up at Garnet Lake. I recall being terribly frustrated by the piece when I was done, as the subtleties of the lit and shaded surfaces, as well as the collection of forms was a lot to get down before the shadows altogether disappeared. Sometimes the pieces that bedevil you so much in the field are worth a second look. This weekend I borrowed back the painting, found some reference images, and went at it again.

Pond Wall
Pastel on Canson Paper
14 x 19.5

4 from the studio

2008-10-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

In my job as a designer for animated films, I am always in the studio, but for my own personal work, I gravitated towards the plein air approach, partially as a means of escape from the studio. In the 12 years or so that I've been working outdoors in pastel, these are the first studio pieces I have attempted for my personal work. Recently I found myself with some time to focus on my own art, so over about a 2 week period, I took some of my Sierra pastels and worked them up into larger pieces. Large is relative, as these pieces are 14 x 16". Too large for me to take out in the field with my current setup, but perhaps still considered small by many artists. Scale aside, what I found valuable about this process was the ability to contemplate, correct, and explore 'happy accidents', following many of the valuable paths and processes that enrich our experience and work as artists. When working outdoors, there are all sorts of constraints and conditions operating that are part and parcel of that experience. The dynamics of light and color are constantly and relentlessly shifting, the weather may be bearing down unpleasantly, and there's a practical limit to the size one can work in. These issues are not present in the studio.
What's missing there, of course, is the contemplative, focussed, witness of nature, through one's own eyes, the sense memory of place, light, and color, as well as the physical result of that, laid down in some form by the artist. Each process has it's own unique benefits, and combining them is a natural evolution, I am realizing. The fact that it has taken me 12 years to figure this one out, doesn't really bother me at all. It just gives me something to look forward to on rainy days.

I was partially inspired by an interesting essay written by Jean Stern in the spring 2008 California Art Club newsletter, provocatively entitled, "Plein Air Painting: Where Did We Go Wrong? I felt Jean was challenging artists like myself, who only paint outdoors, and have ignored the studio as a resource for the further development of what is found in nature. He seemed to be implying that we were just eating the cookie dough, instead of baking cookies!
Also, Sharon Calahan, a coworker, and talented fellow artist, recently exhibited some large oils at a Napa Valley show, based on her plein air work, that impressed me.
The father of all this for me, has to be Clyde Aspevig, whose catalog 'Field Studies' was responsible for getting me up into the Sierras to paint in the first place. That catalog is hard to come by, but fortunately, most of the paintings in it are also reproduced in a wonderful book on Aspevig's work, entitled 'Elemental Solitude', which can be ordered from his own website.

Painting in the Sierras

2008-09-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

This year marks the 4th year of an annual Sierra backpacking/painting trip that I have put together with the help of artist and friend Paul Kratter. The basic goal is to be high in the mountains with the freedom to focus on painting, in the company of other artists. Towards that end we hire a pack station that provides mules to haul our gear up, and a cook to keep us well fed. It is not by any means 'roughing it.' One just has to be fit enough to hike about 8 miles at altitude to get to the spot, willing to sleep in a tent, put up with the occasional bear, and deal with the possibility of daily thundershowers. This year we had clear skies and a few bear visits, but Penny, our excellent cook, has a dog, "Nowena", who did a great job of driving them out of our camp.

Our destination this year was Lake Ediza, on the East side of the Sierras in the Ansel Adams wilderness. We hiked in from the Agnew Meadows trailhead, at a packstation run by Reds Meadow. 9 painters and one photographer made the trip this year: Sharon Calahan, Kevin Courter , Tim Horn, Greg LaRock, Paul Kratter, Kim Lordier, Clark Mitchell , Terry Miura, and Bob Watters were the folks.

For other reports on the trip, check out the 'Studio Notes' on Terry's website, and Sharon's blog.

Our camp was on the North side of the lake, on a slight bluff, so we had good views across the water into the granite slopes and boulders, as well as the towering Minaret peaks to the Southwest. I painted a few studies almost every morning, using my tent as shade from the rising sun.

The color range of the light throughout the day provoked a discussion amongst us about the cool nature of the midday light. From about 10-4, the brightest light on surfaces appeared a light shade of blue, lemon yellow, or even a light green to my eyes. Only in the mornings and late afternoon did the light have a characteristic warmth with accompanying blue shadows. Was it the intense blue of the sky coloring the same surfaces as the sun? Was it an increase in the blue end of the spectrum towards ultraviolet that high altitude exposes one too? I am curious to know the cause.

A few days into our trip, a group of us hiked up another 500 ft. to Iceberg Lake, which sits at the end of a long, narrow meadow at the foot of the Minarets. In 2005, Paul and Bob hiked to this lake and observed small icebergs floating in the water, broken off from a large snow patch across the lake. This year, the snow had retreated, and the lake was berg free. The feature that struck me most was the extraordinary range of turquoise and blue in the water, along with it's great clarity. I spent 2 days up there painting.

Iceberg 1
Pastel on Canson Paper
I was geeking out on the color of the water at the outlet of the lake, about to commit to painting there when Paul convinced me to walk a bit further, where a large boulder sat, surrounded by the same range of colors. I immediately set up and went to work. Within minutes, a hiker walked past us, marched out to the rock and climbed upon it. After awhile she started doing yoga-like poses and stretches in full view of us painters, perhaps hoping we would include her in our work. No dice!

The cool nature of the midday light is evident in this painting. The color range and transparency of the water was a big hook for me. It was fun to decode the relationships of form and color in the depths. There were numerous views of water with interesting rock forms at this location. I hope to do a few studio pieces based on the pictures and studies I did.

Iceberg 2
Pastel on Canson Paper
This is a late afternoon view across the right side of the lake. The slopes were very steep, littered with boulders and carpeted with vegetation ranging from a bright green to an orange/ochre color. The verticality of the trees really showed how steep the angle of the slopes were. The light is clearly warming up again.

Iceberg 3
Pastel on Canson Paper
Another water view with a rock 'foil', painted the next day, during the 'blue' hours. Ironically, I spent most of my time painting, and re-painting, the rocks and vegetation, which were giving me the fits. It was a relief to finally get into the water and submerged rocks, and not be so confined by specific, contrasting forms.

Iceberg 4
Pastel on Canson Paper
Late afternoon across the lake with a pronounced atmosphere and glare towards the sun.

The Blue Egg
Pastel on Canson Paper
This is a small, white boulder nestled under a massive, dark-toned boulder, which reminded me of a large goose egg my daughter, Julia, once found on a shady creek bottom many years ago. I had seen this view on the first hike up to Iceberg, and started talking about it to my companions, and finally made it back to paint it on the 5th day of the trip.

Above Ediza
Pastel on Canson Paper
This is a typical mix of fractured granite forms and grasses one could find in almost any hike out of camp. Painted in the late afternoon, looking into a shadowed wall over a mile beyond the foreground. The light values of the granite allowed brilliant colors to reflect and fill into the shadows

Ediza Shore
Pastel on Canson Paper
My last piece before the hike out. Kim Lordier and I had been puzzling over how best to indicate the numerous rock cracks and fissures one found everywhere, and this painting gave me some clues.

On our last evening in camp, we held an exhibit, placing our work, weighted down by rocks, all across a curving granite bluff. Then we walked all around, discussing each other's work. It was surprising and delightful to see the diverse choices, as well as similar views painted by different artists. Get thee to the mountains and paint! It's inspiring and a load of fun.

Sketches from Oregon and other news

2008-08-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

8.5 x 10
Pastel on Canson Paper

5 x 6
Pastel on Canson Paper

5.5 x 14
Pastel on Canson Paper

7.5 x 12.75
Pastel on Canson Paper

4.5 x 7.5
Pastel on Canson Paper

Every summer for over a decade I attend a family reunion in central Oregon, North of Sisters. I have to credit that location with
starting me into working with pastels, as it is one of the first places I explored working outdoors with this messy, crumbly medium, while I was working on "A Bug's Life". But such gatherings are also about family, and my efforts there began to diminish in favor of being less isolated. This year, I was able to paint with my daughter, which was as good as an excuse as any to sit by a pond, or a high mountain lake, with good company at hand. We had a few days of thunderstorms, which ignited over 400 fires throughout the state. The air quality went from high desert clarity to a bad day in L. A. overnight. These were fairly quick and small pieces from two afternoons of work. Nothing serious, but always fun to immerse onesself into the problems at hand.

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A talented colleague of mine, Sharon Calahan, has been ensconsed in the NE corner of Oregon for the last month or so, painting almost every day. She started a blog, so you can see what she's up to. There's some real gems on there. Check it out!

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In a week, I'll be headed into the Sierras for my fourth year of backpacking and painting with 10 other likeminded souls. With mules hauling your gear in and out, and a terrific cook, it is not a journey of deprivation, but one of relative comfort in a region of extraordinary beauty. We'll be painting in the Ansel Adams wilderness for 6 days. Here's 2 pieces from the same region on our first trip there in 2005.

The Totoro Forest Project

2008-07-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

Communion
7 5/8 x 16"
Pastel on Canson paper

This was done for the Totoro Forest Project, a worthwhile fundraising effort via an auction of original art and the sale of a book, in conjunction with an exhibit at the Cartoon Art Museum.

The challenge put to the participating artists was to respond to the question: What is your Totoro? A constraint was that the original characters in the film could not be depicted. Almost 200 artists contributed work for this show, and the variety and styles of work is really fun to see. Check out the link above to take a look.

Painting in The Grand Canyon

2008-06-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

I recently spent 7 days rafting down the Colorado River with family, through all of Marble, and a good chunk of the Grand Canyon. We put in at Lee's Ferry (mile 0), about 17 miles below the Glen Canyon Dam, and took out at Whitmore Wash (mile 188). We ran rapids, got soaked and bruised, hiked up slot canyons to waterfalls, slept under the stars, and ate like kings. As one of our guides put it, you're on river time. That meant coffee at 5:15 am, breakfast at 5:45, and on the river by 7. We'd have a stop for lunch, maybe another stop for a hike up a tributary or side canyon, and then pull in to a beach in the late afternoon for the night, waiting for the shadows to come across the water.

It was easily in the 95-100+ degree range every day, Hot winds would blow up the canyon, drying you out in minutes. The water of the Colorado is around 47 degrees, so you don't really want to swim in it, though getting soaked repeatedly is more than welcome. The tributaries, such as the Little Colorado, Havasu, and the many waterfalls we hiked to, were much warmer. If I had done no painting at all, it would still rank as one of the best journeys/vacations of my life. To share so much beauty and crazy adventure with family was a real treat. But this is more or less a blog about painting, so here is my deft segue into shoptalk.

As the summer solstice ocurred during our trip, we had light from 4:30 am until after 9 pm. I put together a slightly smaller kit of supplies, mainly cutting down my paper size, and drawing surface, which was a piece of foam core with
canson taped to one side. I would clip my paper to this when I worked. I stored my paper and finished paintings in a pad of tracing paper, cut down to the same size as my drawing board. I've been having good results with Terry Ludwig Pastels, both at Pixar, and working outside, so I ordered a set of 'Southwest Canyon' colors, which contains 60 rectangular sticks. I probably used every color in it by the end of the trip. I did miss a range of some greens and less saturated violets, but overall, the colors provided worked well for more than 90% of what I was looking at. For a commercial set that is an excellent score. To allay fears of soaking all my supplies and paintings during the trip, I purchased my own dry bag from REI that would fit all my art supplies and paintings. This worked out great, as I could just clip it onto the central lashings on the raft, and not worry about it through the rapids, then easily grab it if we went off on a hike, or at the end of the day.

One thing I would do differently would be to purchase a waterproof camera. I found myself in the ongoing dilemna of seeing something we would be drifting by, scrambling to get my camera out of my dry bag, taking the shot, then packing it up before the next rapid. I got so tired of this routine, that I moved to the ziplock baggie-in-my-shirt method, which worked fine until I forgot to put the camera in the bag through one of the rapids. Well, at least the memory card and battery survived. 2 other cameras on the boat met a similar fate, so I didn't feel too dumb. If you're going on a river trip, I highly recommend a waterproof camera for all the point and shoot stuff you encounter on the water.

I painted in camp in the evenings, once in the morning, and on a few of the hikes, where there was enough time to work, getting 1-3 pieces done every day. The range of local color and the intensity of reflected light into shadows was sort of a 15 on a 10 point scale. I simply wasn't prepared for the scope of it, and was constantly gawking and pointing out 'extreme' examples of this to my raftmates. Of course, I've been doing this for years, so I was tolerated.

Upstream from Redwall Cavern
Pastel on Canson paper

Nankoweap
Pastel on Canson paper
~10 x 10.5"

It really was that saturated in the shadows. Scary...

Little Colorado
Pastel on Canson Paper

The confluence of the Little Colorado and the Colorado rivers marks the official beginning of the Grand Canyon, and the end of Marble Canyon. What is extraordinary and unique about the Little Colorado is its color. When the floodwaters end, the river's water supply is maintained by a travertine spring which deposits a white blanket of calcium carbonate on the bottom, turning the whole river into the color of a radiant turquoise swimming pool. Google "Little Colorado river" and see for yourself.

I found some of my work to be indecipherable, or confusing, in absence of the context where it was painted, as illustrated in the 3 pieces above. It wasn't until the second or third day, that I started consciously working smaller, and simplifying shapes. As the canyon grew deeper, stepping back and up, more atmosphere came into play, which was a welcome ally. I found myself looking towards the sun to get the break into the distance, as many of the views had no sky in them, just wall after wall of rock, and triangular talus slope.

I came to appreciate some of the abstract qualities of what I was looking at, and felt that if I could anchor an image with something recognizable, like a cast shadow, or water, that it might just hold up outisde of the context in which it was created.

Above the Inner Gorge
Pastel on Canson Paper

Done at camp, the same evening as the shadows on the water posted above. A few miles below this point the river moves into the inner gorge, a narrow slot of Vishnu Schist, some of the oldest exposed rock on the planet, at over 2 billion years of age. Hard, glistening black, melted, twisted like taffy, and shot through with pink quartz 'snakes' of Zoroaster granite.The river moves fast, and there are a lot of rapids. No place to stop, no time to paint!

Above Blacktail
Pastel on Canson Paper

Looking downstream from camp. Sometimes we all sat in folding chairs
in the shallows of the river, cooling our feet, and drinking beer.

Deer Creek
Pastel on Canson Paper
~10 x 10.5"

This was a grotto of pink sandstone slabs into which a waterfall was pouring it's contents just to the left of this image. I felt the water below, and the cast shadows on the wall could tie this one together. I jumped into this pool and swam for awhile to cool down before picking a spot to paint, wedged into an essential sliver of shade between two dozing raftmates on a rock ledge. It was warm in the shade, and got downright sweltering when a blast of heated air blew in from the canyon. Interestingly, the waterfall generated its own substantial cool wind, so if one stood against the pink rock on the right side of this image, it became uncomfortably cold after about 30 seconds. Akin to wearing a t-shirt on a foggy, windy, San Francisco
afternoon.

Havasu Creek
Pastel on Canson Paper

We spent several hours here, tying off in swift current, and hiking narrow sandstone ledges up into this canyon paradise of
many pools and small waterfalls. I followed my usual pattern of swimming and jumping off of boulders to cool down, then finding a piece of shade to work in, while others hiked, rested, or swam. One could paint in this one canyon alone for a week. The color range in the water was fascinating to witness.

Bar Ten View
Pastel on Canson Paper

This was above the takeout point at Whitmore wash. We were choppered out in groups of 6, and spent several hours at the Bar Ten Ranch on the North side of the river waiting for a plane to take us to Las Vegas. That is a runway in the middle ground of the image, and the South side of the canyon is visible in the distance. It's 3 more days of floating to get to Lake Mead. I would have been happy to keep going.

Anyone interested in an Artist's raft trip down the Grand Canyon, email me. Even a 3 day float from where we took out to Lake Mead would be a great immersion into this extraordinary chasm of light and color. This is all theory right now, just looking at possibilities.

Heading into the Canyon..

2008-06-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

Mountain Palace
Pastel on Canson Paper
10.5 x 10"

I'm embarking tomorrow on a multiple family raft trip down the Colorado river for a week. We're in powered rafts, and will cover 188 miles of the river. Obviously we'll be on the water a lot. My goal is to try to do a morning and evening piece onshore each day. Since we're near the solstice, there should be plenty of light to paint on both ends of the day. I've made a downsized version of my pastel setup that will fit in a waterproof bag. I'll post the results when I get back. This piece was painted in 2006 on a stretch of the Missouri River, that runs through a small canyon before spilling out onto the great plains about 40 miles West of Great Falls, Montana. Mountain Palace is the name of a peninsula of cliffs that the river wraps around. While my brother-in-law fished in a drift boat all day. I took his truck and trailer and would drive down river, find a place to paint, and go to work. After an hour or so, he would come drifting into view. I'd pack up and drive further downstream and start another piece. This was the last one of the day, done right near the takeout point.

Upcoming Napa Show

2008-04-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to get out on the weekends and paint for the Napa Valley Art Festival that is happening at Copia on May 31st. The show runs from 10-4, and I'll be there, along with a few fellow Pixarians, Ernesto Nemesio, and Sharon Calahan, as well as a lot of the Sonoma Plein Air Regulars, including Paul Kratter, Randy Sexton, Kevin Courter, and Kim Lordier, to name a few. It should be fun, and there will be plenty of great art to browse. Here's some of my recent pieces that I'll be exhibiting in the show.

Late Spring
10.5 x 10" Pastel on Canson paper

Off Season
8 x 13" Pastel on Canson paper

Bystanders
10 x 10.5" Pastel on Canson paper

Dry Creek Crossing
8 x 12.75" Pastel on Canson paper

Diablo Afternoon
10.5 x 10" Pastel on Canson paper

March Morning
10 x 14" Pastel on Canson paper

Cabo Quickies

2008-04-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

I spent a few days in Cabo San Lucas with family over spring break. I didn't bring my pastels, as I was intending to sit under an umbrella on the beach and read. However, just in case of boredom setting in, I took some watercolors with me and a small
(5.5 x 8.5") sketchbook. These were all done sitting on the beach, and turning in different directions, sometimes with a margarita nearby. I'll not blame the beverage for the results, though. While I enjoyed painting as a focused diversion, the realities of lack of brush control, and color mixing, set in. It was a struggle, but I still had fun. Here's a few pages, and pieces from that trip. It is humbling to realize how hard it is to control watercolors.

I'll be in a group show up in Napa at the end of May, and I'll be posting some pastels I've done for that show soon.

Justin Wright 1981-2008

2008-03-20T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Loss of an Artist and Colleague

Yesterday, I came to work to discover that one of the young artists on our story crew had collapsed in his cubicle and died the night before. Justin Wright was 27, and a happy, energetic, and talented guy. I can't say he was my friend as I barely knew him on a personal level. We had talked about music a bit, shared some cd's, had some amiable debates about the aesthetics of video games (about which he clearly had strong opinions). I watched him give a story pitch a few weeks ago, and was really entertained by his timing, drawing prowess, and ability to stage shots and blend humor and action... He was a talented young artist who was just digging into his work.

Justin was only 7 years older than my own son, and it put me in the position of the parent contemplating that loss, as well as that of the co-worker, whom you may or may not have gotten to know so well. The interview he gave to his former college alumni assoc.:

http://alumni.puc.edu/index.php?id=20,231,0,0,1,0

I think explains not only the reason for Justin's short time on Earth, but why he was happy to be alive. Anyone, any age, can learn from this. Life is short for all of us. Tragically short for some. Fortunately, Justin lived long enough to realize his desire to work as a story artist at a studio he admired. Some of his dreams came true.

My heart goes out to his family and friends, as well as his colleagues here at work who will miss his spirit and contribution to their lives.

Justin's blog:
http://justincwright.blogspot.com/

A Place Where The Clouds Move Slower

2008-03-15T16:45:00.001-07:00

Afternoon Clouds
~10" x 13"
Pastel on Canson Paper

Nor do they go away. Just like today. I've been trying to get out and paint, and the weather is making it tougher on the weekends. Over many summers, I 've spent a few days in a remote corner of British Columbia, ostensibly on a fly-fishing trip, yet I generally end up painting. (I would not call myself a fisherman) The weather up there can be quite varied every year, and I've grown accustomed to continuous drifts of clouds, and the periodic rainstorms that come with the territory. What I have observed up there is that the clouds seem to move slower, or perhaps it is just my imagination. Regardless, clouds figure into the equation, unless I'm painting portraits of fish that have been caught by my in-laws, nephews, and my son.

From that locale, I've learned to paint from a boat, correcting my view periodically with the oars. I have even painted in a boat while another was fishing, Such was the case with the image below. My brother-in-law Bob was dry fly fishing in the shallows as I worked away. To each his own, and it is nice to have company from time to time. There's a common ground between painting and fishing, which I shall restrain myself from elaborating on.

Happy Saturday.

Eagle Point
~8" x 13"
Pastel on Canson Paper

Andrew's Fish
~9" x 16"
Pastel on Canson Paper

The paradox of light and shadow

2008-03-07T20:11:00.001-08:00

Silo Boulder
Pastel on Canson Paper
10 x 10.5"

Here's two pieces I painted for the Sonoma Plein Air show last September. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I often go looking for long, atmospheric views with a few elements in the mid, or foreground, but I periodically find something far more intimate along the way that stops me in my tracks. Rocks, for their patterns and local colors, as well as how they receive light, can do that, as well as looking into shadows, or painting from within a shadow. The human eye and mind grasps a wide range of color within a wide range of value... far better than a camera can without some manipulation. Part of the pleasure in painting lies in exploring that range. There's something profound and unusual about how we perceive objects in light and shadow. For one, an object that is seen under both conditions tells you more about its form and local color than if it was only subject to one condition. In addition, there is a paradox, that has to do with how we recognize that an object, or image, is 'one' thing when a shadow can effectively divide it into 'two' things. The act of painting makes this division evident. The perceived continuity of form and color transiting light and shadow is a cognitive miracle that many take for granted, whether we are looking at something real, or a painting. A persistent challenge in painting is to propagate that illusion, when the physical process of the medium implies the opposite! And lastly, seeing into shadows has a way of enhancing depth in an image. The eye is not stopped by a shadow, unless it is black. Instead, the eye crosses a threshold of sorts to look inside that dimmer volume, illuminated by ambient sources and colors. The same gain in depth applies when looking from a shadowed space into light, an effect that has been used for centuries. The behavior of color, subjected to light and shadow, is really an extraordinary event, I promise you!

Blue Friday
Pastel on Canson Paper
10 x 14"

Blue Friday depicts simple atmospheric relationships that interest me. Part of my fascination goes back to the notion of local color undergoing change due to a condition. In this case, the condition is atmosphere. Why do we think the leaves of a tree are green, when, in our world, they often turn blue when they are far away? The local color of any object functions like a filter to the dynamic conditions around it. As its appearance is not static, its 'absolute' hue and value is a mystery of sorts, as it is always subject to the conditions of varying illumination and distance from our eyes. If it is not the same from one moment to the next, how do you paint the dang thing? Luckily, when painting, the intellectual vapors are not so heavy as they are in this post. The simple answer for me is merely to relate and compare the colors and values of elements in the scene with each other. Those are evident, even if they are changing (and they are). Instead of pondering the elusive and ever-changing dynamic that is nature, I just look at shapes and make judgement calls like "lighter than... darker than.... warmer than... cooler than." The bottom line is you can skip all the intellectual mumbo jumbo and just paint! Just don't go assuming that leaves are green...

I had been intently studying mailboxes, and eucalyptus trunks lining one side of the road I was on, when the clouds drifting across the sky behind me started calling, along with the blue mountains, and a nice arrangement of trees and houses to sort out. On the film 'Cars', I was very inspired by Maynard Dixon's work, and freely adapted his playful cloud shapes he used so effectively. That afternoon's sky was a natural expression of those same qualities that Dixon drew from. I spent most of my time fussing with the tree and building proportions, as well as getting their edges to pop against the distant mountains. By the time I got to the clouds, they had exited stage right. Fortunately, I had done a thumbnail, sticking them where they seemed to do the most good.

wild turkeys abundant

2008-03-03T20:54:00.000-08:00

Across the Valley
Pastel on Canson paper
10 x 10.5"

This was painted on a driveway in Glen Ellen a few years back for one of the weeklong plein air events. I had been painting for a few days, and driving back to the house, I kept noticing that the view on the opposite side of the valley made a striking light and shadow pattern in what appeared to be a steep canyon. I checked the time that I could see this arrangement and made plans to be ready to paint it on one of my remaining days as a guest on that property. A few days later, I got back early enough, and hiked up the drive to the spot and set to work. The zig zag shadow pattern was already prominent, and the foreground soon went into shadow, which I desired. The color range of the hillside kept getting warmer and warmer, completely departing from a sense of green, into a range of yellow and ruddy hues. The blue shadow in the canyon was a jagged slash. The whole image was more like a graphic travel poster in its simplicity. I settled in, working on the sunlit regions, as they were going to be swallowed up inevitably by the shadow that would be crawling up the mountain.

This post is titled 'wild turkeys abundant' for a good reason. They were. I had wandered about the property a few times before painting this, and had found more turkey feathers than I cared to pick up. After about 10 of them, the next 50 one can see within a few yards become less intriguing. But I had only found feathers, not turkeys. However, as I set to work on this piece, the turkeys, whose castoff clothes littered the grounds, appeared at the head of the driveway, up the hill to my left. Once they spotted me, they gathered in a flock a few hundred feet away and held a noisy debate. Their course of action determined, they slowly advanced down the drive towards me, the whole time scolding, and cooing away, before angling off the road behind me up into the oak forest, . They moved in halting, jerking steps, and were inclined to march single file, thereby creating a lengthy procession of bickering plumage in my peripheral vision. After awhile, I could hear their wings flapping behind me as they, one by one, flew into their roosting tree, and settled down for the evening. I was greatly entertained by this 'fowl drama' unfolding around me as I worked. Sit still in a forest, and you never know what critters will come around, minding their own business, to find you standing in their way. The last area of the painting I worked on was the foreground shadowed trees. Once I focussed on them, I could see temperature and value shifts in their canopies that I hadn't noticed before, as I tried to separate the mass of trees with those variables. It was that jagged slash across the valley that made me want to paint, but it is the turkeys marching off to bed that I will always remember this image by.

Early Birds show at Studio Gallery

2008-02-15T12:23:00.000-08:00

Second Growth
7.75 x 12.5"
Pastel on Canson paper

I will be participating in an upcoming show at the Studio Gallery in San Francisco. The show opens on Feb. 20th, and runs to Mar. 9th. Who are the Early Birds, you ask? It is a loose association of painters who get together in the mornings to paint before work. Some of us have been painting together since the late 90's. Though the group is not very large, I've not yet managed to meet all the members, even though I may have been painting on the same hilltop as they were! Proof that art is a solitary occupation, even within a group, or some such blather. Here is a link to the Early Birds blog , which is what inspired me to start my own:
http://www.earlybirdpainters.blogspot.com/

Here's a link to the Studio Gallery:
http://www.studiogallerysf.com/

and a link to the show itself:
http://www.studiogallerysf.com/wst_page18.html

Many thanks to Dice Tutsumi and Mike Dutton for organizing this, and inviting everyone to participate.

Painting the opposite of what one went looking for

2008-02-10T20:27:00.001-08:00

Lomita Boulder
Pastel on Canson paper
7 1/2 x 12 5/8"

Embankment
Pastel on Canson paper
10 x 14"

In both of these cases, I was driving around trying to find a long, atmospheric view, and out of desperation, decided to paint
what happened to be nearby that caught my eye. In the case of the boulder painting, I had just been informed I could not paint on some vineyard land, and had driven down the hill, and out of the gate. Once off the property, I pulled over, and hiked up a hill to see what I could salvage from the lower vantage point. The boulder and cast shadows caught my eye, and I went right to work.

The embankment painting was a similar story of driving around the East Bay hills, and not finding anything inspiring me.
Once again, I had pulled over, and was surveying a blown out view to the East, when I noticed the shrubbery and moss next to my car had the complexity of a persian rug. The tree made an interesting interruption of the pattern.

Paintings of this nature remind me to be open about what is worth painting, and not be too stuck on a specific plan of what to expect when one goes outside.

A Story Goes With It..

2008-02-02T16:34:00.000-08:00

Below Grace
Pastel on Canson Paper
10 x 14"

Complacency and comfort when painting are usually not your best friends, as urgency, fear, and other adrenaline-pumping internal mechanisms can help sharpen one's senses and force decisions. On the other hand, periodically one encounters circumstances that allow an extended period of work, without excessive shifting of color and value. One can work in an un-rushed, contemplative manner that is productive and fruitful. This image is a result of one of those (for me, infrequent) opportunities.

This was painted in Sept., 2003, on the West side of Sonoma, on Felder Creek, which runs along the North side of the Grace Vineyard. I had been painting further up the road on some private land when, on the way out, I parked here and started exploring the small creek that was mostly obscured from the road by berry vines and poison oak . It was midday, and I had already done a painting that morning, so had little sense of urgency. The qualities that made me pick this were the division of the scene into 2 worlds: the 'vast' region above the creek, and the intimate, timeless environment below. Old, exposed tree roots, slow moving water, saturated into warm red-browns, accented by yellow and orange leaves drifting lazily, or lying at the bottom of the creek. It was a fairly complex problem in terms of form and edges, and the moving dapples across the entire scene added further interest. Fun!

I dropped my pack, set up my chair, made a quick thumbnail in my sketchbook, and set to work. I noticed the lower part of the tree bore the character of an elephant, the texture of the bark like wrinkled skin, and the broken, or sawed off, roots like old tusks.There was a trunk in there too...no pun intended.
As it was harvest time in the vineyard above the opposite embankment, the voices of workers conversing in Spanish drifted across my field, along with the whine of a small truck rattling to and fro, the periodic emptying of crates of grapes, thumping and tumbling into a bin, though I could see not see a soul, nor could they see me, hidden in the shadows of the creek.

After quite awhile, I heard leaves crackling behind me, and turned to see an older woman standing some 50 feet away. She was startled to come upon me, and apologized for her interruption, as she regularly walked her dog along the serpentine banks, encountering no one. We chatted a bit, as her dog wandered about, sniffing at my pastels. She had lived on a ranch across the road for many decades. Steelhead used to swim right up the creek from the bay, she recalled, though none had been seen in recent years.

My painting progressed incrementally as the light slowly slid over my right shoulder into the West. I struggled to see color in the dapples, as my eyes were so used to the shadows that the bright splotches were more white than any color I could 'name'. Value trumped color perception. The roots were challenging in several ways. It was hard to get the dark recesses to feel dark enough....one of the curses of the pastel medium. On some root structures, I resorted to drawing a dark line to define them against the background. What had given me the courage to "put lines in nature" so to speak, was an oil by Degas I'd seen years earlier, where he'd gotten away with such a thing right down the back of a figure. Take a look at "Portrait of Hortense Valpincon as a Child". I'm sure he's done it numerous times, but that is the piece where it really struck me how much license an artist has to provoke illusions. When used sparingly, it goes relatively unnoticed, and pushes contrast where it's needed.

I had been reading 'Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting', a book, written in the 20's, that contains a lot of useful wisdom and observations about painting natural phenomena. In the voice of another century, Carlson offers up some insightful comments about edges of contrasting forms. Simply put, he states that as contrasting value masses approach each other, they each change value slightly towards the other, with the greater mass prevailing to some extent. He gives some real world examples involving tapering church steeples, and the values of the sky as seen through holes in the foliage of trees. Visually, this effect can be quite subtle, even undetectable to my eyes, and is representative of the diffusion of light, or the shadowing of atmosphere. It is a quiet but powerful effect. As I had reached a point in the image where I was landscaping my own painting, indicating leaves and twigs, I started to think about his advice on edges. I studied the left side of the trunk against the brighter background of the embankment turning upwards, the vineyard, and sky, but I could not discern any darkening of those lighter zones. However, it seemed the tree could possibly be lighter in value near those areas. Was it due to Carlson's ideas, or the many other circumstances that were operating? The tree was a cylinder of sorts, and it was turning towards the brighter area, away from the shadowed region of the creek. The lichen splotched bark looked bluer in that region, as perhaps the color of the sky was filtering in. I began to delicately lighten and cool that region, when suddenly, the edge of the tree seemingly disappeared. There was no edge, just a soft transition of values as the eye slid from the tree into the illuminated space beyond it. I stopped working and stared at my painting. What had happened? I'd just had some kind of a visual epiphany that had come and gone in a moment. Later on, I raved about the experience to my artist roommate for the week, Paul Kratter. He listened to me patiently, studied my pastel in silence, then turned towards me with one of those, "What the Hell are you talking about?" looks. I guess you had to have been there to have seen what it was like before. My only advice to other painters is, read what Carlson has to say about edges, try it yourself, and see what happens. You may be the only witness to the effect, but it is worth it. Quiet, but powerful.

2 Seasonal Paintings

2008-01-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

Like seasonal cooking, painting over the course of a year allows one to experience firsthand some of the changes
that may be unique to the region one lives in. Here's 2 pieces done in the winter over the past few years that show different aspects of light. This is just scratching the surface.

Winter Drizzle
~7.5 x 12.5" Pastel on Canson Paper

Fog, mist, and rain, are some of the qualities of weather and light that come this time of the year. I don't always seek out "miserable" conditions to paint in, as I'm happy to stay in and cook on a cold, dreary day. But sometimes the circumstances are in favor of working outside. In this case, I was sitting inside a horse arena off of Bear Creek Road, while my daughter was riding, and I had some time on my hands. As I often accompanied her out there on the weekends while she groomed and rode her horse, I would bring my pastels along, as the surrounding hills had some promising views. I've probably painted there over 10 times, and I've only kept 2 of the pieces, my daughter providing an automatic time constraint... "Can we PLEASE GO now, Dad?" etc. So, I aborted a few of the pieces midway, or just had unsatisfactory results. The horse has been sold, and I keep this one, as a reminder of that period with my daughter, as well as being able to paint in the rain, and stay dry. Hint:
Find a horse arena with good views!
A soft, misting rain was coming down like a curtain over the hills. The range of color in the green and the violet of certain weeds or shrubs interested me.... this sort of luminous, minty green, and a grey violet. I had to paint that. The foreground horse paraphenalia provided a contrast to the muted bg. I probably overstayed my daughter's time limit on this one.

January Afternoon
~10 x 15"
Pastel on Canson Paper

Here is a kind of light that is common in the East Bay hills this time of the year. Often, on sunny days in the winter, there will be a lot of moisture in the air, which will start attenuating values, even within a hundred feet. This effect becomes more pronounced when looking towards the sun, as in this case. This was painted on a ridgeline about a mile from my house, looking down the hill. I was so interested in the blown out light, I don't think I chose the strongest composition here. The 2 tree 'scoops' are awfully similar in scale and angle. The shadowed folds of the hills were showing a strong bounce color from their counterparts, while the upward facing folds turned blue as the sky colored them. It was a warm afternoon, and some kids were flying remote controlled gliders that were whirring about, periodically passing over my head.

Fog from Elsewhere, and When

2008-01-17T20:18:00.000-08:00

Pastel on Canson paper, ~9 x 16"

This was painted at Sibley Volcanic Preserve, off of Skyline Blvd. in the East Bay Hills about 6 years ago. I periodically paint in this area on the way to work in the morning, as the hills are between my house and my workplace. This region is often right on the cusp of the fog, and so it is hit or miss whether you will find sunshine or a cool, grey mist to paint in. In this case, I hiked out to a spot through fog, but by heading East, I managed to get within a few hundred yards of the edge of the fog that was blanketing the entire Bay. I could see the warm sunlight coming in, as it was slowly burning its way through the mist. The valley below, (which is now being turned into a housing development, btw), was receiving warm light, yet I had to look through quite a bit of mist to see it. In addition, there was more low-lying fog in the region beyond. I call these temporal circumstances 'transition zones', when you are between sunlight and fog. It makes for an interesting mix of atmospherics and warm and grey hues to explore. It doesn't last long in one state, but it is always fun to find yourself in such unique lighting. Worth looking for.

Pastel-wise, I was piling on the pigment, adjusting colors, as the density of the fog shifted, and at the same time, trying to organize the trees and shrubs with actual edges, before everything changed even more. Parts of the image would no longer accept pigment, and there's definitely some bad broccoli in there. That's when it's time to pack up and get to work.

Foggy Morning... Same locale

2008-01-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

Pastel on Canson paper, ~10 x 10.5"

This was painted within a day of the previous image. Same story, different result. I drove up to the park to get out of the fog, but it was up there too. I was with 4 other painters. 2 of us stuck around, and went to work. I walked around on this hillside for awhile, looking at the sillhouettes on the ridge, but then started paying more attention to the subtle color shifts of the vegetation, and the way they helped describe the form of the hill itself. Once you start this kind of image, sunshine is not welcome, as it would radically alter the palette and value range. The fog did lift a bit while I was working, but the light stayed fairly steady.

Sugar Loaf Morning

2008-01-04T15:37:00.000-08:00

Pastel on Canson paper, 10 x 10.5"

I've been inspired by some great artists that I work with to start this blog. Here's a pastel from last September up in Sonoma.
I paint up there every year for the annual SPA plein air show. Here's a link to the event.

http://www.sonomapleinair.com/

The artists are guests in people's homes in the county, and paint all week, exhibiting one piece on Friday night for an auction dinner, and then the remainder of their work in the plaza for one day. It is a great event in many respects. All my hosts have been wonderful, generous, and interesting people, I get to spend time around some excellent painters, and painting every day for 5 consecutive days is a great workout.

If it was foggy in the morning, I would drive up to Sugar Loaf State Park to get some sunshine to paint in. Sometimes it was still foggy, but on this morning it was quite sunny. The painting is really an impression of the brightness of the morning light, with just simple shapes. The image is a bit noisy, as I shot it with my digital camera on a lo-res setting.