En Plein Air

Believe it or not, the weather held out today!   It was kind of gray, but it didn't rain, so I got outside today to do block studies.  I'm amazed the weather held.  Of course, being as we live on the equator, it was hot as all get out, but I actually got outside, so I was happy.  I was working on some of the methods that Lois Griffel laid out in her book, Painting the Impressionist Landscape.

She is a big advocate of the block studies, but honestly, I had a really hard time doing it the way that she instructed.  Her main technique involved scumbling colors over one another.  Scumbling is layering one layer over another so that the first layer still shows through and the two layers will optically mix for the viewer.  For example, if you put down a first layer of red, then scumble yellow over it, your eye will see orange, without losing any of the intensity of the two colors.  I just didn't really like her technique, and most of her work seems like it is overworked and oversaturated.  In other words, it was just too bright for me.  Ha, imagine that.  Too much color, who would have ever thought.

(This was my first block study)

So, on my second go round, I went back to the method I was using before, and I felt like I was capturing the color and atmosphere much better.  Part of my issue was as much that I have to learn to mix the colors in the first place before I can figure out how to mix them optically.

This afternoon I figured I should take the color studies back to the basics, so I spent the afternoon doing color wheels and mute charts.  Not the most exciting thing ever, but totally important.  It is like memorizing your multiplication tables, or memorizing scales before even practicing them.

In any case, 9.5 hours down! Two more paintings done, as well.

Breakthrough

The past couple of days I haven't felt like I got as many paintings done - I've been shooting for 3 per day. I'm still averaging right around an hour to do one. The largest part of my whole process is just sketching in the shapes. That alone probably takes 20-25 minutes. I've been experimenting with the sketch in process and then how to proceed with colors from there. All of the tutorials and such talk about putting in your darkest dark first, then your lightest light. I'm not quite there yet, as I am still working on getting the relationships correct within each object. I more or less have value down, but it is taking me a lot longer to develop the correct color and temperature relationships between the planes.

But finally, with this last piece (I think I am on 10 or 12) I finally feel like I am starting to get it. The shadows seem to be working correctly, my saturation seems to be pretty good - overall, I'm pretty happy with how I ended today.

6 More hours down

Mind Contortions in Color Theory

Well lovely, I just lost a post. Love it. Color theory is giving me a headache. I submitted a couple of my color block studies to be critiqued, and I realized I did them completely wrong. There was a whole section of knowledge that I *sort of* knew, but didn't have perfected. Now that I've gone back and found that information and spent the better part of 4 hours reading and processing it, I spent the afternoon working on fixing it and really getting a grasp on it. It is going to continue to take a while, but I think I am on my way at least. Here are two blocks I did in overcast conditions. The light was really coming from the side, not the top because it came through a window and it was indirect, overcast conditions.

Weekend = Fail, Monday = Success

Oh yes, I did not do the 6.25 hours of work, nor did I work out yesterday. Fail. Thank you staying out until 4am. I totally succumbed to peer pressure and wound up in a Saturday night time warp. Whoops. Then I couldn't sleep, so I wound up just having a headache from only getting 3 hours of sleep, but not being able to sleep. I will say - I did spend about 2.5 hours working on compositional (Notan) studies. So it wasn't a complete waste, just not the super productive day I had hoped for.

Today, however, went much better. Got up at 6am, kicked my own butt working out, and was in the studio by 9am. I kept running into an energy wall, but that is as much because I got up and worked out at 6am as anything else. It takes me a couple of weeks to get used to that schedule.

Anywho, it has just been an ugly gray day. No rain, just gray and cloudy. This made for some great overcast studies for my block studies. After lunch I started a bright sunlight study, but then the sun hid behind the clouds, over and over and over again. While I waited for the sun, I began to make small canvas carriers so that I can go outside and paint en plein aire soon. The sun FINALLY came back out again, but man! This weather is such torture. Hope you enjoy today's work!

Total Hours Today = 5.5