Skyline

March has been a difficult month this year because of the widening pandemic. In many parts of this country people are under "lock down" orders--only allowed out to walk the dog, get groceries, see the doctor, or other essentials. It's not so strict here, and many who are furloughed from work want to get outdoors, shake off the doldrums. I've managed that by working in my gardens, though outdoor painting has been one of the things keeping me occupied.

Hoff, "March Skyline, " oil on panel, 11x14

This is another outdoor work--well, begun outdoors--that started earlier this month but had to be postponed owing to inclement or different weather. It was painted on the spot, only a few steps from the spot where I painted the most recent posting of outdoor work. The thing about painting outdoors is how it forces me to stay accurate in drawing and in color. I actually finished this in the studio in two more two hour sessions because the grass has changed color, the light is different now, and the undergrowth is now showing a hint of green. Too much to finish outdoors.

Despite the emergency, outdoor work will increase weekly as the season warms. 

Outside Again

The season is advancing and we all itch to be outside, regardless. In spite of the current voluntary "social distancing" artists are fortunate if their art is a solitary one--painting doesn't require company. So even though much of the machinery of life has ground nearly to a halt, I managed to get outdoors to paint a few more times earlier this month. The first effort was posted a while back. This one is a view of the Iowa capitol building from the shore of Grey's Lake, not far from the studio. Although you can't see it in the painting, the Raccoon River is just beyond the trees, between the lake and the opposite side, where a new town center shopping district is about to be built over an old industrial site. This view will change soon.

The painting is 9x12 on linen adhered to a lightweight aluminum panel. My panel carrier holds two of this size, so I keep two and put one one the easel. The day I worked on this one the sky and grass were considerably less bright, but the aims here was hope and cheer. The day was cold and clouds hung in the north sky, but the sun was on my back and with no wind it was a pleasant few hours. 

We'll see what the warmer days bring, but so long as we're not legally confined it shouldn't be hard to slip outside and paint.

Everyone stay safe.

Casein 2020

A contest sponsored by Richeson, Casein 2020, is on my mind these days. It's an online competition sponsored by Jack Richeson & Co. Paint via their Richeson School of Art, intended to encourage interest in the medium. There is a $50 fee when you enter--well, when you submit an "intent to enter" form online--but in return you receive a casein kit consisting of about eight or nine tubes of casein paint, a couple of brushes and a couple of decent paper supports. Sounds like a win-win to me. My own kit came just last week. My plan is to make a series of casein paintings to enter whenever entries begin.

Because of the contest, I began reviewing casein works from the last few years and decided to post a few less recent ones.

Hoff, "Spinnaker," casein on bristol, 2016

This is the very first painting I ever did using casein paint. It was actually "milk paint," from Sinopia Pigments. This is on a large piece (22x15) of illustration board, a sufficiently rigid support, and was actually just an experiment. The reference was the cover of a magazine about sailing that was lying about. The paint and its handling impressed me and it wasn't long until I starting doing more of this sort of painting.

There are a number of enjoyable properties of casein, including its handling, but also its opacity. Considering how quickly casein dries, you can paint several layers in a single sitting. The quick drying is a liability too, if you're the kind of painter who likes to mix and mush your colors together; it's dry entirely too fast for that. In my hands at least, casein paintings go better when I manage to make a stroke and leave it alone. Of course that means accurate color mixing before putting down the paint, not afterward.

Hoff, "Fall Visitor," casein on illustration board, 2016

Instead of continuing with the Sinopia milk paint, I soon ordered some Shiva caseins in tubes. The Sinopia milk paint has a thin consistency and is more suited to decorative work. Happily, casein is very permanent once dry and can be used on woodwork, wood projects, even murals.

My second painting with casein (right) was my first using the Shiva line of tubed casein emulsion paint. "Fall Visitor" was painted in November at the height of fall color in our woods across Druid Hill Creek. It is about the same size as the sailboat painting above. One of the great things about casein paint is that it dries to a consistent matte finish that is great when photographed. Another issue with casein (as with gouache and to an extent watercolor) is the shifting of color values when it dries.

Hoff, "Racing," casein on panel, 2017

Casein allows for "chunkier" brushwork, too. In another sailing painting (left) the thicker casein blues and greys were layered over a warmer underpainting in a more pastose way. The support is a hardboard panel, which allows thicker paint application.

Hoff, "Studio Bottles," casein on panel, 2017

One good way for me to work on various painting issues has been to do quick daily studies. I did that using oil paint perhaps a decade or more ago, and a few years later did some small daily sketches using casein as I worked to learn how to use the medium. The sorts of things that interested me in those years were how quickly the paint would dry, how opaque it would be, what the color shift (expected) would be, how to keep the paint useful for long periods, and so on. Those daily studies, which were mostly still life, were small, usually 6x8 or even smaller. In Studio Bottles (right) my interest was in opacity and over painting, and in how quickly each layer dried. It was useful to find that brighter colors still stand out when painted over a darker layer.

Those studies were useful, but now my hope is to spend some time outdoors with casein as well as oil paint over the coming warm months of the year. Applying casein to landscape plein air work should be exciting. I've already used casein a couple of times (see the link below) and am eager to get going.

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The Creek in Casein

Virtual Tours

Leonardo daVinci, "Ginevra de'Benci," oil on panel, 1478 (National Gallery, Washington)

During the pandemic, we're more isolated individually than our species has been for eons. We're stuck indoors or in small groups. In some parts of the country the weather is still keeping many of us indoors. We're cooped up. And even if we weren't many museums and other possible diversions during these times are also padlocked.

Edward Hopper, "New York Movie," oil on canvas, 1939 (MoMA, New York City)

What can a museum rat like me do in these times? Luckily there are vast online resources. If you're interested in art, you can review the collection of many of the best and biggest in the world by searching the Internet. A few museums have only limited parts of the collection online but many include everything. Some offer virtual tours of the museum, allowing you to wander through parts of the collection as if you're actually visiting.

And as a salute to happier times ahead, here's a sidwalk gathering at a microbrewery in Iowa.

Hoff, "Outside the Brewpub," oil on panel, 2018

Chicago Art Institute Collection
The Getty
Metropolitan Museum 360 Project (New York)
Musee d'Orsay Virtual Tour 
National Gallery of Art (Washington)
Rijksmuseum Virtual Tour
Uffizi Gallery Florence
VanGogh Museum 
Virtual Vatican

Emotion in Art

Artists all have different aims. One painter wants to make beautiful, realistic images of fruit in bowls while another paints real yet repellent views of grimy city life. Another artist tries to show feelings in visual metaphor while another is utterly direct and hyper-real. Some artists want their makings to cause the viewer to experience a certain feeling, others to reproduce a feeling of their own. The aims behind art are legion, and they change from time to time for practically any artist. Nonetheless, communicating an emotion or feeling is probably foremost for many.

Edward Hopper, "Night Shadows," etching, 1921

Although he often discounted the contribution of emotion to his work, Edward Hopper seemed to show us the isolation and loneliness in the heart of urban life. Many know his paintings but his earlier etchings are as emotionally evocative. In "Night Shadows," from 1921, he gives the viewer a disquieting angle on a lonely figure, buildings looming overhead. It is the lighting and composition of this image that give us the willies. The strong diagonal shadow makes us uneasy and on guard. The same kind of lone and vulnerable figure would emerge in the alienated film noir heroes of a couple of decades later.

Robert Genn, "First Light on Moose Lake," acrylic, ca 1995

Color is another way emotion is evoked in visual arts, more commonly in film and animation. Certain colors are said to evoke or imitate emotions--red for rage, yellow for envy, green or blue for calm, for example. And if we look at visual art these color rules do seem to hold. Landscapes that contain rolling green country and a blue lake can provide a sense of relaxation and inner peace. In "First Light on Moose Lake," Robert Genn shows us a party setting out at sunrise onto a glassy lake, probably in a wilderness. The serenity of the scene is enhanced by the deep greens and blues playing against the yellows of the coming day.

Hoff, "Risk Factors," oil 2014

Symbols have always been used in art as a way into the viewers' emotions. In the days of the Dutch masters, still life paintings quite commonly contained abundant symbols. As an example, vanitas was a kind of still life intended to remind the viewer of the verse in Ecclesiates, "vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas," or in English "vanity of vanities, all is vanity," and no matter what we all return to dust. These vanitas paintings provoked a kind of dread among some at least, and contained symbols of death and evanescence--bubbles, smoke, skulls, and so on. In "Risk Factors," a contemporary vanitas, the skull takes center stage as a symbol of mortality, surrounded by things that can increase one's chances premature death--cigarettes, fats, salt, etc.

Frida Kahlo, "The Broken Column," oil, 1944

Personal experience can provide an emotional core to a visual work that can't be obtained otherwise. An artist can incorporate nearly any emotional experience, though we remember the negative ones more clearly, I suspect. In her symbolist work, "The Broken Column," Frida Kahlo, the great Mexican painter, shows us her own experience of serious physical injury and infirmity. She suffered a dreadful impaling injury when still a young woman that left her with a lifetime of pain, surgery and incapacitation through which she persevered and made her art. In this painting her spinal column is shattered and poorly reconstructed, her body strapped together as indeed it was quite often held together with plaster casts. Her pain and the bleakness of it are clear in the expression on her face. The landscape is broken and split and also evokes the enormous trauma that was her life.

Ilya Repin, "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, 1551," oil, 1885

Telling a story has been a sure-fire way to introduce emotion. Story, or narrative, is still one of the foremost reasons to take a photo or draw or paint an image. Narrative in art can be implied or explicit. In religious art, as an example, the narrative may be a shared one, well known to the adherents of a particular faith, and provide the viewer with reinforcement of beliefs or perhaps reassurance in times of strife. In his masterwork, "Ivan the Terrible and His Son" Ilya Repin depicts the moment after the Tsar has delivered a killing blow to the head of his son and heir to the throne. The Tsar shown realizing that he has ended his son's life, the life of his dynasty, and maybe even the life of his nation. It is controversial history even today in Russia. The figure of the dying Tsarevich is surrounded by dark reds, the colors of drying blood, and black, the color of oblivion, adding to the horror. Repin knew how to use color, composition, and shared narrative to strike several emotional blows. All Russians know this painting.

When looking at art, then, it is helpful to me to consider more than the image. The composition, choices of color, lighting, symbols, and detection of narrative are all important ways to understand the painting, and the painter's intentions.

Spring Memories

Although temperatures are warming, and March is the beginning of springtime, it is snowing here on Druid Hill Creek today. The snow began before sunup and has continued through the afternoon, keeping us indoors. The warmth of the season is far enough along that although substantial snowfall seems to be happening, it melts as it settles. But the skies are pewter grey and the landscape a warmer darker grey-brown. The creek flows dark. One longs for spring flowers and yellow foliage, so I went searching in old sketchbooks.

"Spring, the bridge," watercolor and ink, 4x5

In late March two years ago I sketched a bridge and newly leafy trees in a park. Compared with today the scene looks warm and lazy, not wet and drippy.

"Ancient Lilac," watercolor and ink, 5x10

The following month found us in Washington visiting family where I sat under an umbrella in a misty rain and sketched an ancient lilac whose thick twisted braches were covered in moss. The branches were as thick as my arm in some places and seemed to reach into the sky for moisture.

"Druid Hill Creek, Spring," watercolor and ink 5x9

The greening of undergrowth along the creek is the real signal that true spring has arrived. Last year it was early April--about a month from now--before the honeysuckle began to show any green at all, then suddenly, within a day or two the whole of the bushes along the banks simply burst into yellow-green leaves.

There will be warm days and dry days and time to paint more of the landscape. But for today, memories of springtime will have to do.

First of the Season

Although the warming season is early again this year, the advantage is that I've had an opportunity to work outdoors. My first outing was late last month when the weather was considerably more raw with light wind and tempertures in the low 40s. But about a week ago, with bright sunshine and higher temperatures I ventured out to Waterworks Park, not far from my studio. The Raccoon River flows through the park (and is the water supply for Des Moines), offering loop after loop of meandering banks for recreation and for painting.

I stopped and set up on a small turnout right on the bank, giving me an unobstructed view downstream toward one of the river's wanderings. At this time of year the trees show no hint of foliage and the banks are yellow-brown. Nonetheless, there is muted color galore in the woods that line the channel. With no wind and the sun at my back it was a pleasant two hours trying to capture the lazy flow of the water. My relatively new Open Box M continues to be a real pleasure to use. (Thank you Garin Baker.)

The painting went smoothly, and the sound of the water was soothing for the two hours or so I spent there. So here is the first plein air oil painting of the season. "Early March on the Raccoon" is 9x12 on a lightweight panel.

Copying Masters

Peter Paul Rubens, "Battle of Anghiari, after daVinci," 1603

From the time humans have made artworks they've copied others. Apprentices in ateliers of the past always copied work of their masters or masters of previous eras. Rubens copied da Vinci, Degas copied Holbein, and van Gogh copied Millet, and so it goes into our own time. Some worry about copyright and all that when copying artwork. Some think they could even be accused of forgery. But copying for practice or to improve skills or dissect the technique (among other purposes) is an excellent way to study.

Copying others is not a legal problem at all provided that 1) you label it as a copy or clearly state that it is a work "after so and so," rather than your own original work (that's fraud) or 2)you don't claim it is an original, by the other artist (forgery).

Hoff, "Fold Study, Seated Figure, after daVinci" charcoal 2016

My own copying over the years has been worthwhile, and I've used any number of previous artists for role models, from daVinci to Lucian Freud. Seeking to learn I began by copying Velasquez, and Goya (two favorites) before branching out to other "old masters" like Durer and then into other representational work. I've made copies of drawings and paintings both.

Part of the goal in copying, for me anyway, has been to learn how the artist made the image--what movements, what materials, how applied, and so on. On the other hand, sometimes it's the materials themselves that prompt a copy--I often copy graphite and charcoal drawings in metalpoint these days, striving to understand the light touch required.

Hoff, "Hand Study after daVinci," digital 2019

Emulating the master's work aids enormously in understanding. Of course, sometimes real world work can be emulated digitally, when the main interest is composition, or construction of the image, or the like--that is, materials are of less interest. Pressure-sensitive computer tablets are most useful in that context. In copying the drawing of  a hand (left) by daVinci, I wanted to see how to be as feather-light as possible with the digital stylus, which provides a wide range of line weight and darkness depending on how much one presses. The idea was in part learning the limitations of the equipment and in part trying to teach my hands.

Hoff, "Jane Morris, after Rosetti," silverpoint on paper 2020

Metalpoint is a good way to do a similar kind of line work when copying. While many of my metalpoints are originals, I've also copied a few drawings from masters of the past. For example, the study of a female head to the right is a copy of a drawing by the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti of Jane Morris, the woman who served as his muse and model. Ms. Morris modeled for Rossetti and in turn became famous in her own right. She was the model for Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion," the famous drama by George Bernard Shaw, for example. Her Roman nose, thick mane of red-auburn hair and air of royal detachment have continued her fame. The original is darker than this copy.

For me, copying provides a lot of positives--simple practice, investigation of materials, study of master artists' methods, the (presumptive) thought processes involved, and so on. I don't sell copies, though sometimes a piece inspired by a master but not a strict copy is fair game for sale, with proper attribution.

Favorite Artists 11 - Franz Hals

Favorite artists of mine come from all eras of art, but the Golden Age of Dutch art is probably my favorite, given the mastery of the men and women who made the works. The genre painters were wonderful, and so were the painters who pursued more sophisticated kinds of work. One of those was

"The Gypsy Girl," 1629

Franz Hals (1582-1666). Encountering the works of Hals, my initial reaction was different than if was for Rembrandt--I liked Hals from the first. Hals is a painter more devoted to bright, natural light than Rembrandt, so that his works aren't so dark and brown. Furthermore, Hals painted pictures that you connect with. You feel you know these people, or someone like them. While Hals' work doesn't show the insight into personality and psychology of Rembrandt, he gave us images that have lasted over the centuries.

Franz Hals was born in Antwerp but his parents fled to Haarlem when he was only two. He lived there the rest of his life, even after becoming an enormously successful portrait painter. For that is what Hals was throughout his career, a painter of people. He began selling paintings in 1610 or 1611, and became almost immediately successful, so much so that sitters had to come to Haarlem to be painted; he refused to travel. Eventually he went out of fashion and even became relatively obscure until the middle of the 19th century. He died destitute but had been voted a small pension. Once rediscovered, Hals' work has influenced many painters in the succeeding decades.

"Portrait of a Man," 1660

For me there are several aspects of Hals' work that are most attractive. First and foremost is his masterful brushwork, which seems casual and almost effortless, as if tossed off without a single thought. In reality, though, it is hard work to make a thing look so easy, and it is clear that he worked hard to master his craft.

An example of great brushwork is in "Portrait of a Man" from 1660, now in the Frick Museum in New York. A close examination of the brushwork describing the fabrics show bold strokes of paint, thickly and confidently applied. It is as if Hals is showing the world just how completely he has mastered the craft of painting. This painting was doubtless made as a commissioned work, but somehow over the years the name of the sitter has been lost. Nonetheless, it's clear he was well to do, perhaps even quite wealthy, which was Hals' clientele.

My favorite of all Hals' works are his tronies. A tronie was a painting--a portrait--during the Dutch Golden Age that was intended as a representation of a sort of person--drinkers, tavern denizens, celebrants, and the like. One the most well-known by Hals is "The Gypsy Girl," (above), although whether he gave her that name is unknown. She is presumably a tavern woman, happy and seemingly carefree, possibly with drink, so that she displays ample cleavage, a very immodest thing at the time. She grins coquettishly, her cheeks glow, and her sidelong look is irresistibly sexy. It is one of my favorite paintings.

"Verdonck," 1628

Hals painted quite a few portraits and tronies that carry more than a hint of humor. One of his more amusing portraits is titled "Verdonck," a portrait of a well-known and reputedly very argumentative member of a local religion in Haarlem (right). Known as a difficult person to get along with, he is shown brandishing the jawbone of an ass. It seems doubtful that Hals did this one as a commission, so it almost qualifies as a tronie.

"Peeckelhaerigh," 1629

 Another favorite of mine by Hals is "Peeckehaeringh," a tronie of a drunk in a tavern, showing us his empty tankard. The title is an old Dutch term for pickled herring, or in other words, a drunken man. This seems to be an image of a comic actor but could as easily be a tavern layabout. The painting is famous too for having belonged to another prominent Dutch master, Jan Steen, and appeared in the background of some of Steen's own works. Like other works, the masterful brushwork, innate humor, and excellent draftsmanship are all on view and have made this one of Hals' most famous paintings.

In sum, Franz Hals painted solely portraits, whereas other contemporaries of his did those, genre scenes, landscape and other kinds of works. Hals used much lighter scenes than some others--notably Rembrandt--and a brighter palette. And his mood throughout much of his work was upbeat, besides. But for me it will always be instructive to study how Hals trained himself to make such suave, confident, and descriptive brush strokes. I intend to study him even more.




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Favorite Artists
Favorite Artists 2--Chardin
Favorite Artists 3--Grant Wood
Favorite Artists 4--Diego Velazquez
Favorite Artists 5--Andrew Wyeth
Favorite Artists 6--Wayne Thiebaud 
Favorite Artists 7 - Edward Hopper
Favorite Artists 8- Nicolai Fechin
Favorite Artists 9- Rembrandt 
Favorite Artists 10-Hokusai