Perspective - Observation

If you've taken any basic visual art course, you've been exposed to perspective. Vanishing points, two-point perspective -- terms you most likely have heard and concepts you most likely have used along with all the other terms and concepts.

Perspective is just illusion, a product of how the lens of our eye projects light onto the "picture plane" of the retina and of how our brain interprets the resulting pattern. Railroad tracks don't really converge six miles away to a single point, do they? No, of course not, but we have to have some kind of rule or tool so we can make order in our drawing and painting and create a convincing work of art.

The rules of this "grand illusion" were first invented by goldsmith Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and later codified in a treatise by humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1404 - 1472). (For more on the history of perspective, see http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/projects/perspective/theory.htm.) Artists have been using these rules ever since. If you want to get real technical you can study perspective and learn to produce technical drawings which is not a bad thing since many people make their living doing just that. But, you don’t always have to be so technical when you paint. Like almost everything else, getting your paintings to look real comes down to observation. Paint what you see. Look for shapes and paint them. Put the puzzle pieces together.

Callaway painter, Durinda Cheek reminded me the other day when we were talking about having confidence in brushwork that it’s the same thing with color. Paint what you see. “Mix your color to match what you see,” said Durinda. She explained further, “A fellow painter put it simply, "Is it too dark, too light, too bright, too dull?" In other words, don't just put paint on the surface if it isn't right. One thing you can do is load your brush and hold it up to compare it to your subject. Some artists even put a small stroke on the canvas, compare it, and if it isn't right, wipe it off! “ Good advice Durinda.



Sunlit
Watercolor
22 x 30
$1200.00 + shipping/ handling
White rag mat with gold carved wood frame

You can see more of Durinda's work at www.durinda.com

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Featured Callaway Painter, Barbara Davis

Some of you may not have met Barbara Davis who lives in Montgomery, Alabama and comes to paint at Callaway every chance she gets, so I thought I share some of her wonderful work with the group.

Meet Callaway Painter Barbara Davis:


Barbara's passion is painting en plein air - in the open air, from life. She says, "I love to paint our Southern landscape and landmarks in the area. Born and raised in Montgomery, I have painted since I was 14 years old and majored in art at Auburn University in Montgomery."






Hope you enjoyed looking at Barbara's work as much as I did, and I hope to run into Barbara again painting at Callaway. Barbara, you'll have to let us know what you've been doing lately.


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Confidence with painting

One thing I think we all have struggled with from time to time is having brush confidence. In Craig Nelson’s book 60 minutes to better painting he talks about developing the feel of the brush in your hand as well as developing the touch to canvas or paper. What we have to do is get ourselves on first name basis with our brushes and the support we are working from. For those that use pastel, it would be how the sticks are held in the hand and the different papers that can be used.

Quoting from Nelson: “Confidence in anything comes from repetition, and repetition leads to comfort and the mastery necessary to excel. Painting more quickly will lead to truly using the brush as a painting tool, not just an instrument for filling in between the lines.”

Here is what I find happens to me. I have confidence more in the studio than I do when I am working outside. I’m not sure why this is but a couple of things come to mind that I continue to work out.

1. Getting overwhelmed by the shear volume of things to paint outside. An example would be me in the middle of the Overlook Garden when all the azaleas are in bloom. Solution: Use my camera viewfinder to narrow my focus.
2. Moving shadows. Solution: Do a quick thumbnail of the shadow patterns and take a photograph to back up the thumbnail. Tape the thumbnail sketch to my easel and use it like a road map while I continue to paint the scene.
3. Getting too much paint on my canvas too quickly. Solution: Use some acrylic paint in the beginning to get the canvas covered and make the composition solid. Then if I want to finish up the painting with my oil paints I can do that and can rest assured that I’m painting over dry paint.
4. Rushing to get finished. When I paint outside I realize that I only have 2 to 2.5 hours to get the painting finished with the same lighting unless I want to come back to the same spot under the same conditions and paint some more. I think I need to reconsider why I am painting outside and remember that I don’t have to paint a finished work of art ready to sell. I can work outside to accomplish studies that I can then take back to the studio where I am more comfortable and have time to make other decisions, create larger works and certainly have a more polished work. There is nothing wrong with doing studies and using them this way. In the end, the people I sell my work to really don’t care if they can be called plein air works or not. They just want the scene captured so they can enjoy it over and over just like I do.

What are some of your confidence blockers? What confidence builders have you found? One confidence builder for sure is just painting and painting and painting like Nelson said. I still haven’t done the exercise we talked about using the minute timer. Maybe it’s because it reminded me of how rushed I always feel when painting outside. Maybe that's one of the reasons painting outside is such a great teacher when it comes to learning to paint.

Today’s photograph is an old one from 2004 taken at the Discovery Center after painting all day. See anyone you recognize?

Left to right: Chris Hagebak, Barbara Robinson, Phyllis Franklin, Jo Adang, Bea Dallas, Cyn Kuffle, Durinda Cheek, Sandra Babb and kneeling, Bambi Setzer.

Studio Exercise

As the summer heat still keeps most of us in doors painting in our studios, back porch, and living rooms I thought it might be a good time to do some speed exercises. Here’s one we all can try. I’d love to see some of you post your results. Let me know if you do this and need help posting, I’ll be glad to help you post it either on the blog or just on the yahoo discussion group. I plan to do this with some tomatoes from my 4 plant garden. After that, I’ll make me a tomato sandwich with Duke’s mayonnaise. I couldn’t use anything but Duke’s mayonnaise because my grandmother would turn over in her grave.

Exercise: Paint with a kitchen timer.

Choose a piece of fruit and set the timer for one hour on a 5x7 canvas. When the timer goes off, put your brush down.

Then set your timer for 30 minutes and do another on a new 5x7 canvas.

Then set your timer for 15 minutes and do another on a new 5x7 canvas.

Then set your timer for 5 minutes and do another on a new 5x7 canvas.

Finally, try a one minute painting.

Doing this exercise will teach you what is essential to get and what can be left out and still have a good painting. It may stop you from focusing on the end product and start seeing the process as everything. It will keep you from noodling, which is my favorite term for working a painting to death. It will also teach you to use economy of strokes and to think before you paint making sure you really need that stroke. It will teach you that if you put a stroke down with the right color and value, you won’t have to keep going back over it. Going back over your strokes time and time again usually doesn’t help the painting. It just shows that you were unclear with the first stroke and made a poor choice. That in itself is not a bad thing, it’s just that by making clearer good choices from the beginning our paintings can be fresher and more alive expressing what we really saw and excited us to begin with.

Today I thought I share a photo of Callaway painter Virginia Bugg in the garden painting.

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P.S. I understand that Yahoo is making changes to their data base and many of the email addresses that we have set up in our profiles may or may not work in the future. Last night I posted this same message and my post did not go thru. In trying to see why, I logged on to Yahoo and then signed on with my Yahoo I.D. and took a look at my profile. There in my profile I found that the last five messages sent to my hotmail address, which is my main address I use for all the Yahoo groups I belong to had bounced. When a mail bounces, it goes into cyber land never to be found again. I'm assuming that because my last five messages (to me) bounced my account was suspended! For this reason, the message I left on the blog yesterday did not make it to the Callaway painters Yahoo group to be posted and set out. :( When I found my address was on the bounce list and my email had been suspened, I also noticed that there was a link to have it restored. I clicked that link and made my request to have my email restored and received a confirmation back saying it had been. This morning I am sending out a duplicate of yesterday's post trusting it will reach you. You might want to check your Yahoo account and see if your email ID is on the bounce list. I understand that Yahoo will be doing purges of their data base for weeks to come, so checking your Yahoo account often might be a good thing if you want to continue to send and recieve messages associated with your Yahoo

ID.

Jan Heberger

My heart has been heavy today thinking about an email I received telling me of the death of another member of Callaway Painters Jan Heberger.

Jan passed away Monday for what was thought to be an aneurysm. Carolyn Molder and Jan Heberger have been coming to paint the azaleas at Callaway for the last several years and I've really enjoyed seeing and painting with them. Both are from North Carolina and we met thru another yahoo discussion group about pastels. I was shocked that Jan died. She was not ill. It's never easy to give up someone you love and Jan was certainly loved.

I've shared this photography before, but thought you might like to see it again. Here is a picture of us this past spring. Jan has on red.

From left to right, Phyllis Franklin, Durinda Cheek, Sandra Babb, Jan Heberger, Carolyn Molder.



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Barbara Scruggs

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Friends, I have just learned of the passing of one of our most precious members, Barbara Scuggs. Some of you may remember her painting at the Discovery Center the first year we painted as a group at Callaway. Each year Barbara tried to make each event and if she could not come, gave us all her support especially to get the word to everyone in the surrounding Grantville and Fayetteville areas. She is being missed so much for her beautiful caring spirit and most certainly for her organizational and painting skills.

I searched in vain for a photograph of Barbara painting in at Callaway and I know I have one. Hopefully it will come to the top of the pile and I'll be able to post it for all of you to see and remember her. Until then, please visit this spot on the internet, http://www.scavagroup.com/ which has a tribute to Barbara. The painting above was placed at her funeral which I feel pleased Barbara very much.

We loved you Barbara.

Carolyn Molder Wins Award

Callaway painter, Carolyn Molder has won the Art Spectrum Award at the Alabama Pastel Society Member show for her 9x8 pastel painting “Fishing”. This was Carolyn's first win with pastel which she is very exicited about. The show judge was Terry Ludwig who makes custom pastels which he sells on his web site
http://www.terryludwig.com.

View more of Carolyn's work by going to http://carolynmolder.com/.

.:.

Congratulations Carolyn!








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