More on Mentors

A couple of weeks ago I posted a small appreciation of a couple of friends and mentors from years back, so naturally that got me thinking about other teachers and friends who have made a difference in my work. There are so many it's been my privilege to study and work with, from Richard Tuttle, my first real teacher, who taught airbrush over sixty years ago, to Frank Covino, a fine painter who taught me classical oil techniques decades back, to many more. Art has meant continuous learning. I'm grateful to all of them for their knowledge, patience, and friendship. 

One of them is Garin Baker.

Garin Baker, "A Buck Twenty a Bushel," oil on canvas, 2013

Here's a link to a podcast by Eric Rhoads, interviewing Garin, a truly gifted painter and great friend. We first met over a decade ago when Garin hosted a workshop for Max Ginsburg at his studio in upstate New York. Max lives and works in New York City, so it was a country getaway for him. I had purchased his Retrospective, a stunning and beautiful overview of Max's half century as a painter. I was lucky to attend, get to know Max, and to meet Garin Baker and his wife Clara. We've kept in touch over the years, and since then Garin produced a half dozen or more thoughtful and effective murals in the US and Europe, won Grand Prize at Plein Air Easton, and become an instructor at the Art Students League. He is a great artist whose roots in classic traditions and practices underpins his insightful work. And he works incredibly fast.

Here's a recent video of Garin making a master copy of a famous portrait by Ilya Repin:

Garin's classes are online right now but the Art Students League is planning reopening soon.

November Stillness

One of the uses of outdoor painting is development of reference material for studio paintings. Using sketches done at Gray's Lake, a park not far from my home studio, I painted "November Stillness" during the past couple of weeks. The sketches are a uniform 9x12, or about half its size, so there is considerably more room in this piece to study the fall and filtering the autumn light through changing foliage. The grasses are yellow-gold along the shore of the unruffled lake. 

"November Morning," oil on canvas, 18x24

A hard wind had blown through leaving the air still, the trees mostly stripped of leaves, and the surface of the lake smooth as a mirror on the day that I sketched on the bank. The air was crisp and the sun warmed my face while I painted. It was the last day of a season of delightful painting.

Sea Study

Though disadvantaged by distance from the sea, the ceaseless ocean has always fascinated me. Personal experiences aside, through paintings of the masters, movies, photography, and more, images of the ocean in its various moods have been in my head for a long while. These last weeks, in addition to regular studio work and a new landscape series, I've done a few more marine studies. 

"Wave Study," oil on canvas

This particular oil study was done after a teaching series by E. John Robinson, but heavily altered for my own purposes. It was valuable for a number of reasons. For one thing, the palette is limited, yet the sense of distance, color, and variety is striking. The colors were ivory black, raw umber, burnt sienna, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, and white. The foreground, showing a tide pool with rocky bottom, is not in the original--it was added as a study. Mr. Robinson lived and worked on the Oregon coast, which I've not visited, but I think the work captures the sense of the region. 

Winter Blizzard

A few days back a winter storm came howling down from western Canada, bringing heavy snow and wind blasts up to 50 mph. That storm came a week or so after an enormous, ten inch snow, dropping another five or six inches. No way I was going outside, but I did manage a few sketches and watercolors from the warmth of the studio. 

"After the Big Snow," watercolor on paper, 10x8

This particular work was done with a new kind of watercolor paints called QoR, which carry more pigment that traditional watercolors, so the darks are deeper and the lights pop.

Another Pandemic Face

Over the past year I've posted sketches and drawings of people affected by the pandemic--anguished nurses, victims of the virus, and others. During these past (and alas, future) dark months it has been dreadful that so many refuse to even attempt to stop the spread of a disease that has now killed 400,000 in this country and over 2 million worldwide. It has been clear since the beginning that shielding the mouth and nose inhibits microdroplets carrying the infection from spreading. 

If you have been diligent in wearing a mask and maintaining appropriate social distance, thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you have not, out of a misguided belief that masks do not work (they do), or that they interfere with breathing (they do not), or out of from a misplaced belief that not doing so is an assertion of "personal freedom," shame on you! You are contributing to the death toll, whether you believe it or not. 

This digital self portrait is a tiny hint of how I actually feel. For the love of your fellow man, I implore you: Wear Your Masks!

Musings About Mentors

Rob Howard, Self portrait ca.1975

The other day while I was toning a canvas, a decades-old comment from one of my teachers came to mind. He was showing how he went about the task, leaving paint streaky as he drew his big brush across the canvas. Some people want a flawless, featureless tone, but "streaks were good enough for Rubens," he said, because the lighter streaks added brilliance and interest, even when painted over. Good advice that I've followed ever since. The teacher was Roberts Howard, who taught many, including me.

As the painting progressed, other voices from other times kept coming up. Words from mentors, teachers, and even famous masters come back as I work, so that once in a while I silently thank them. 

William Whitaker, "Primary Trio," oil on canvas

Bill Whitaker was another friend and mentor. He taught individually, in workshops, and at BYU. His work spanned everything from still life to Western art to exquisite portraiture. After several years of workshops and personal talks with Bill, I built a collection of his aphorisms, each worth more every time I recall it:

• "Go slowly." Spend the majority of your time looking, not painting. Study the subject twice as long as you use your brush. One of my worst habits is to neglect to study my subject fully, which leads to dithering brush strokes and muddy colors.
  
• "When in doubt, use a bigger brush." This particular piece of advice isn't original to Bill, but he  repeated it incessantly. John Sargent was supposed to have said "Start with a broom...and end with a needle," meaning use big brushes first and leave the small ones for last. Your brush strokes will be more active and vigorous.
  
• "Violate your edges," may be the most valuable of these because it comes to mind during virtually every painting I make, regardless of medium. Bill used to add, "You'll be glad you did." When done carefully, violating edges means softness in the painting. It's another bad habit to paint up but not into an edge in a painting, giving the work a completely different and less realistic look. 

There are many such moments for most artists, I suspect. And when they come, we give our mentors a silent, heartfelt nod of thanks.

Animation Infuencer

One of the great things about the Internet is the accessibility of information. Without the vast online resources available today it's pretty certain that a wide education about painting and painters would have been considerably more difficult, no to say impossible. These days it is a rare month when rummagng around online fails to turn up an artist I'd never heard of. That's the case with an astonishing German artist and cartoonist of the 19th-20th centuries whose influence is still being felt. 

Heinrich Kley, "Self Portrait"

Heinrich Kley (1863-1945) trained academically in Germany and for quite a few years made a living as a painter and illustrator there. In his spare time he filled sketchbooks with pen and ink drawings for his own and his wife's amusement. By 1908 he had painted murals for public spaces and completed many industrial scene for Krupp, the steelworks. But it was his cartoons,which began appearing in periodicals of the time, that are the foundation of his reputation. The cartoons, original, wry, sometimes grotesque, sometimes vaguely erotic, were a sensation. Before long two books containing hundreds of his sketches were published (still available now in a Dover edition). One of the innovative aspects of the sketches was anthropomorphized animals--crocodiles dancing, singing turtles, elephants ice skating like humans, and much more. Mr. Kley was literally able to draw nearly anything, and did.

Today many artists who draw in ink use technical pens or fountain pens, but in those days artists used a traditional pen with a flexible steel nib that had to be recharged with ink quite often. You did that by dipping the nib into an inkwell or bottle. The beauty of a flexible dip pen is the variability in line width and darkness that can be achieved, something not easily done with today's tech pens. Mr. Kley was such an accomplished draftsman with dip pens that he was very quickly hailed as a master.

Although Mr. Kley did well for a few years after his wide recognition, the World War and then the death of his wife reduced his output, and his fame faded in the 1930s, his work had a profound influence on none other than Walt Disney, who had come into possession of several of his sketchbooks and dozens of drawings. The now-classic Disney animated feature "Fantasia" in particular owes enormously to them.

Although Mr. Kley did well for a few years after his wide recognition, the World War and then the death of his wife reduced his output, and his fame faded in the 1930s, his work had a profound influence on none other than Walt Disney, who had come into possession of several of his sketchbooks and dozens of drawings. The now-classic Disney animated feature "Fantasia" in particular owes enormously to them (see clip below). Furthermore, I think his work was a likely influence on Dr. Seuss, who may have patterned at least one of his villains after a Kley drawing--"Herr Schoolmaster," above.

There are several books about Heinrich Kley that have become available in the past decade or two (easily gotten on Amazon) and are well worth the time. 

Quiet Flows the Stream

There has been snow on the ground here in Des Moines for perhaps ten days, and the temperatures have been mostly cold. For me, bare black trees, cold black creek water and deep grey skies are bearable because there are happy memories of summer painting and beautiful days. The quiet serenity along a river bank is soothing to the soul.

Here is a studio work from late 2020, casein on bristol. I did this from outdoor studies done on the spot and from photo references. Although much of my work time during the summer was outdoors, I also managed this one in the studio. Casein is a lovely paint to work with once you get used to it's really rapid drying. Casein is milk protein, so it's a water-soluble paint, but once it dries it's pretty much permanent. You can't really activate it again.  

"Rocky Racoon," casein on bristol, 2020

Seascapes

Although my studio is in the upper Midwest, the sea has been an artistic challenge to me, probably because of its mystery and unceasing motion, its wide moods and wider range of color. Unlike fortunate painters who've had the chance to study the sea, my horizon has been more limited. Still, marine painting attracts me, and it's pleasant to look at something beside snow this time of year.

Over the centuries, marine painting, or seascapes, have always been popular and remain so today. As is often the case when you go searching online, unknown facts and people pop up. As I was thinking about this blog post and searching, Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900) popped up. A Russian-Armenian painter, he was born Hovhannes Aivazian in Crimea and received a formal art education in St. Petersburg. In his day Mr. Aivazovsky was prolific, well-known and exhibited widely. By the time of his death he had produced thousands of works from portraits to landscape to many marine works. His work is highly romantic and more brightly colored than the realism of his day, and it eventually became unfashionable. Nevertheless his best works are still vigorous and engaging. 

Ivan Aivazovsky, "Rainbow," 1873

In "Rainbow," he shows us a ship foundered onshore during a violent storm. The crew has abandoned ship and is struggling to safety amid wind-whipped waves. The sun has broken through, making the sky into a rainbow (you can see it faintly at extreme left). The idea, composition, colors and narrative make this an admirable and utterly compelling work.

An American master of seascapes is Winslow Homer, a favorite of many and a particular favorite of my own. Mr. Homer was largely self-taught, although he did work for a lithographer for a short time in his youth. From that small start he made a career as an illustrator, then as a painter. His illustrations include beautifully executed pen and ink drawings during the Civil War.

Winslow Homer, "The Gulf Stream," 1899

It is interesting to compare Homer's masterpiece with "Rainbow." Each shows a vessel after a storm, the crew helpless before the heaving sea. Mr. Homer's paint handling is dense and thick, the ocean and waves mostly dark and forbidding. But unlike the escaping boats in Mr. Aivazovsky's work, this solitary fisherman seems trapped by a trough of deep and dangerous ocean, unseen by a very distant sail. Each painter, though, renders the water with consummate skill.

Hoff, "Passing the Light," oil on panel

My forays into marine painting have been few though the future probably holds more plein air work near the sea. Water is a formidable challenge. Above is one of my few seascapes, showing a sailboat on its way out of port. I did this one on a medium-grey support and played two differing blues against one another. The setting could be any place, but is actually an inland sea, Lake Michigan beyond the Chicago River. 

Hoff, "Wave study," oil on panel 2020

The last of these is a wave study done in oil on panel during early winter. This is a study of waves, done after a teaching study by another artist. There is a warm-toned failure of a painting under the study, some of which you can see here and there as dark passages. The palette here was an unusual one for me, including manganese blue, a color I had never tried. It was a challenge to model the wave and foam shapes and imply underlying earth and rock. 

Water in general and the ocean in particular are fascinating subjects. More to come.

Happier New Year

Winter may be settling onto the land but Father Time knows that the outlook is brighter ahead as the days grow longer. Warmest thanks for you who may read this. A happy, safe, and prosperous 2021.