Portrait Sketching

A few years ago a portion of my practice was portraits, commissioned (sometimes) or casual (often). As time went by I painted life portraits of perhaps twenty or thirty sitters. In addition some of my easel time went to sketching human faces as a way to study physiognomy and understand facial relationships. Some of those portrait sketches were from photos, some from life. 

"Andy," oil on panel, 8x6

Most portrait sketches are discarded, painted over, or thrown out. But a few seemed worth saving. Here are a couple. The first is from a well-known photo of the individual. "Andy" is done on a very small gessoed board which had something else painted on it in the beginning. Warhol's pale angularity, false fright wig, and acerbic personality interested me. The palette was simply whatever oil paint I had on the palette that seemed to work together. The slashing brushwork and thicker paint application were done as a study.

"Hockney," oil on panel, 8x6

 

 

 

 

 This second painting, a portrait sketch of the enormously famous British painter David Hockney, was also done very quickly simply to study the shape of his face and features. This was also a gessoed panel, but blank white until I spread a warm red-ochre intonaco with a big brush. Using a large filbert I sketched features, cap, and tie, contrasting warms with cools.

"John," oil on panel, 14x11

This sketch of John Lennon, also from a photo that I saw online, was pretty spontaneous. The photo was from his post-Beatles time, complete with circular granny glasses. This was painted with a severely limited palette of white, black and raw umber, ochre and red. The panel had been used for another work and you can see it vaguely behind the head. The orange-red color in the glasses is underlying paint peeping through.

Cutting loose and trying new things is an important way of moving forward.

Practice

One of the constants of art-making is practice. Practicing allows me to sharpen skills, train my eyes, and even try out new mediums of expression or methods of work. These drawings are practice examples from a few years ago. These were done to study the structures of various kinds of trees in various settings. And they were also done to study a kind of drawing known as metalpoint. Metalpoint drawings are made with a metal rod--in this case silver, but gold and others are used. The surface is slightly abrasive so that the metal is rubbed off and adheres to the support. 

When we begin drawing most of what we draw looks odd because we tend to draw things as we think they look rather than how they're actually put together. Trees are a perfect example. Tree structure, colors, foliage, and so on are quite different among the various kinds. Compare the structure of an oak versus a pine tree. So these were done to fix tree structures and appearances in my mind and to practice using silverpoint. Each of these is 6x4 on gessoed hardboard.

"Blue Spruce, Snow"

"Winter Companions"

"Bristlecone Pine"

"Silver Spring"

Spruce

"Blue Spruce," wc & ink

A watercolor and ink painting of a big blue spruce. The oddly blue, oddly grey color of this species of spruce tree is difficult to capture. This one conforms to my usual practice of a graphite lay-in, then full watercolor, followed by accentuation of certain parts with waterproof ink.

This particular sketch is about 3.5 x 6.5, done in one of my sketchbooks. 

Sam

Today is Independence Day in the United States, commemorating the signing of our Declaration of Independence from England nearly 250 years ago. 

"Sam," after JCL, oil on canvas, 20x16

Here's a painting of Uncle Sam, our unofficial symbol. This particular painting is a copy of a work by J.C. Leyendecker, whose work is in its own way symbolic of America a century ago. Leyendecker was an exceptional illustrator and painter whose work continues to resonate for many. I did this as a way to learn Leyendecker's techniques and ideas. Uncle Sam's expression seems an apt comment. 

Happy Fourth of July.

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Demo Garden

A little-known asset in downtown Des Moines is the Better Homes and Gardens Demonstration Garden. It's a working garden of the publishing company, used for various purposes including photos, events, and so on. As a working garden it's generally closed to the public except Fridays 12-2pm from May through September. It's a beautiful spot for lunch, sketching, garden browsing and simply for chilling out.
 

I go to the garden as often as possible during the summer months for all of the reasons I mentioned above. Today started rainy and dark, but by midday the sky cleared, so I spent an hour there. The sketch below of a sunny corner was the result. 

"In the Garden," wc and ink on paper, about 3.5x6

 

Blue Domes

I'm not certain why we love Santorini, the Greek island, but most people do. It's a hot, dry crescent of land, a rim of an ancient volcanic caldera. The other rim is nearly gone and the ocean flooded into what is now a big bay. There is little water, hot sun, steep cliffs, and high prices. But tourists and vacationers still flock to Santorini. It may be the model for Atlantis. 

"Santorini Rooftops," oil on panel, 8x8, private collection

This particular lanscape is based on my reference photos, taken during a visit there.
 

Sherman Hill

Sketching buildings and other structures can be daunting. When I do that kind of sketch I look first for the big shapes--volume shapes, not simple shapes. That is, I look for cubes, spheres (or spherical shapes), and so on. If you start that way you can make the sketch more solid looking. Next I spend a great deal of time making sure of the perspective I'm using. Most times it's two point perspective, but sometimes different. I don't use a straight edge, just "eyeball" it. 

Here's an ink and watercolor sketch of an apartment building in an old and funky neighborhood just northwest of downtown. Many of the houses are Victorian, but there is a smattering of 1930s low-rise brick apartments and houses. I chose this one for it's rather ornate facade. There was only enough time to do the left side but that provides enough information to complete the work if need be.

"Up on Sherman Hill," ink and wc, about 6x9

Glass

Glass is a fascinating subject to paint. Beginning painters are sometimes baffled by a glass subject and forget to address whatever is seen through it. Water can provide the same puzzlement. But unlike water, glass is at least solid and still. Glass is transparent but it's also often tinted slightly green by iron compounds, especially when seen tangentially. 

These two small studies of a studio magnifying glass (both are 6x8, oil on panel) show the green tint of the lens glass, especially the second one. Both of these date over a decade ago and are part of a body of sketches done as studio warmups. Small size, limited subject and limited time meant the opportunity to do many studies over a set period of months. The green color is slightly more blue in real life.

Bonobo

Our human species has several cousins--most know chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. But few seems to know about bonobos. They've been called "dwarf chimpanzees" but aren't actually chimps. They're a separate species. Unlike chimps, they're matriarchal in social organization and generally peaceable. They prefer to make love, not war. But they're endangered because of habitat loss and being hunted.

"Bonobo," digital drawing

I drew this as part of a series of endangered species some years back and exhibited in an online show.

Another Saturday

One of the greatest things about the regular Saturday sketch group is that it provides a regular and somewhat structured opportunity to use different media--mostly watercolor and ink. A side benefit is the visual journal the resultant works have provided over the years. You can go back from year to year and even day to day to see what the world looked like then. You can see refinements and changes in painting methods. And you can simply look at the images as a way to document the world. 

"Greenwood Park," wc and ink

This week's Saturday sketch is a corner of Greenwood Park, a lush urban park behind the Art Center. The park connects to the south with the Raccoon River valley and thence to Waterworks Park. It's a semi-landscaped park that gradually gives in to wild ungroomed woods. There is an outdoor pavilion that's used for plays and concerts, too. I sat on a bench near the pavilion and sketched the path leading into the seating area. Out of view on the right is the stage and chairs. 

This work began with a graphite sketch, then watercolors. I emphasized shapes and added contrasts with waterproof ink, then went back to accentuate shapes, colors, and values using more paint

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Skullduggery

Although still life has always been an interest of mine, the output of nature mort from here has been small over the last few years. But when the weather changes this fall and the cold months return I plan on doing more still life. So last weekend I spent some time rummaging through older work for inspirations. 

One of my favorite inclusions in still life is the human skull. It's an incredibly intricate set of bones. The skull is a group of bones, some fused together, some less so, not a single unit. There a innumerable nooks and crannies, openings, depressions, points of interconnection and more. It's one of an anatomist's ultimate challenges. In art, the skull has figured as subject matter almost forever. The most interesting is the use of the skull as a memento mori (remember: you will die) or vanitas ("vanity of vanities, all is vanity") to remind viewers of universal mortality. 

"Risk Factors," oil on panel, 20x16

"Risk Factors" is a vanitas work of mine from over a decade ago. The title is derived from the medical term, a kind of laundry list of behaviors and circumstances that increase a person's chances of developing a particular condition. In this painting, we see a salt shaker, butter in a dish, a pack of cigarettes, a donut, and the skull with reversed ballcap. Prominent risk factors for heart attack include high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, smoking, and diabetes, obviously implied here. The reversed ball cap is a comment on being unconciously silly.

"Vanitas Study," oil on canvas, 20x16

A companion to Risk Factors is the study (above) I did that included only the skull and cap. In this one two are perched on the same stand but it's covered with blue cloth. This one was simply a way to work hard at observing the skull and its intricacies.

New Landscape

This one, "Boulder" is the newest studio landscape I've released. It's partly imagined, partly reference-based. The subjects of moving water, reflected lights, hard vs. soft (stones/water) attracted my interest, but quite a lot of the result aren't in the reference photo. 

"Boulder," oil on panel, 14x11

Thunderstorm

"Stormy Savannah," oil on panel, 11x14

Studio landscapes have been occupying a lot of my painting time this spring. Even though outdoor work beckons, I've been trying to finish a few indoor works. This one, "Stormy Savannah" was based on photo references, sketches, and other oil paintings. It was an attempt to show how thunderstorms march across the prairie here in the upper Midwest.
 

A Saturday Sketch

Like most, I love spring. The weather is warming, the light grows warmer too, and flowers are bursting with color. It's a great season for plein air work, regardless of one's medium. Many Saturdays I join the sketchers group for a few hours of outdoor drawing and painting. Our group is predominantly watercolorists but several are pastel painters and at least one sketches in colored pencils. 

Around Des Moines there are abundant locales for sketching. In winter and early spring we've spent profitable times in Waterworks Park and across the road at Gray's Lake. The Botanical Center on the bank of the river is another favorite. But this week we went to another park, the big greenspace that surrounds West Des Moines' public buildings, in particular the Library. There's a small, graceful lake and sculptures here and there, but at the end is a beautiful footbridge. I sat on a bench at the end of the bridge and sketched. 

"Footbridge at the Library," wc and ink on paper, 6x8

The Yellow Umbrella

"The Yellow Umbrella," oil on panel, 9x12, private collection

Although much of my work lately is rural landscapes, I retain a strong interest in cities. Cities are where we live, mostly. Cities are living, growing organisms, fed by us, the inhabitants. 

In "The Yellow Umbrella," the setting is the financial district in New York. The yellow umbrella of the title is a common sight in Manhattan, part of a yellow and blue color scheme of a well-known hot dog company. I painted the majority of this in a monochromatic palette but chose to emphasize the umbrella and a few soda cans as if a bar of sunlight has found its way onto the cart.
 

Texture

Putting texture into a drawing or painting can be a difficult task. When drawing, especially, texture is most commonly added by altering one's marks. That is, smooth line or rough line, continuous line versus interrupted lines, and so on. 

"Mailboxes," ink on paper, 11x14

"Malboxes" is a pen and ink rendering of a line of rural mail boxes along an overgrown rail fence. In this drawing the challenge was to represent each material--wood, metal, foliage, etc--realistically. That meant employing line and shape, mostly. The darkest areas were inked with a brush but the majority of this drawing was done with a dip pen. 

Notice that the lines follow the contours of the mailboxes. The posts and fences called for a different approach to emphasize the cylindrical nature of the posts and flatness of the planks.
 

Japanese Maple

I had a chance to visit the Better Homes and Gardens demonstration gardens in downtown Des Moines today. The gardens are a part of the former Meredith campus (now Dotdash Meredith) where the magazines shoot garden features and so on. The gardens, being commercial working space, only admits visitors a couple of hours weekly, on Fridays. The various parts of the demonstrations include microclimates of sun and shade, areas displaying garden designs and even small vegetable areas. 

"Japanese Maple," watercolor and ink on paper

Today the Japanese maples at the northern end of the gardens were spectacular. At midday the sun catches the tops of the impossibly-red foliage so that it seems to glow with an inner fire. I sat on a bench in the sun and sketched one of the maples. It's probably thirty years old, with gracefully branching limbs and twigs below and that bright red umbrella above. 

There is simply no way that dull pigments can reproduce the exhilarating, almost neon color of these trees. The best I could do was indicate it.

Side Street

There is a section of the city known as Sherman Hill because a brother of the famous Civil War general lived there in the late 19th century. The area is dotted with Victorian mansions and apartment buildings. Here and there on well-traveled thoroughfares you find small businesses that have seen better days. This is a former drugstore that has been everything from a New Age shop to a trendy bistro. 

"Sherman Hill Scene," ink and wc

This painting from last Saturday started as a fairly careful graphite drawing. I inked it, then added watercolor.

Scary Rooster

Sorting old ink drawings today I ran across this pen an ink drawing of a truly scary rooster. When I was a boy in Oklahoma we had one of these birds who would chase me all around the chicken yard. That eye!

"Rojo," pen and ink wash on paper

Practice

One of the disciplines many artists follow is simply working every day. Daily work means daily practice of whatever art the person pursues. A musician either plays a gig daily or simply runs through various parts of his repertoire. A writer sits in her desk chair and writes; a drummer drums; and so on. 

In my own art practice, I use various strategies to hone my work. For one thing, daily digital drawings and paintings are an ongoing constant. But there's a risk of growing stale if you do the same things over and over, so I also do watercolors (my Saturday group), graphite and ink drawings, and sometimes other media like metalpoint. Variety makes a difference. 

Here's a recent graphite study with chalk highlights. As is often the case, this is a head and face, snagged from an online reference. It's about 8x6 on toned paper.

Hoff, "Head of a Man," graphite and chalk on paper

 

Rainy Day

Across the boulevard from Gray's Lake is Waterworks Park and a beautiful arboretum of spring flowering trees. Last Saturday the sketch group went there to draw, but the weather wasn't very cooperative. Just as I drove over there the rains came and continued for the entire time. You can't really do watercolor in the rain, of course, so this particular 8x10 was started and finished in the car. 

"Rainy Afternoon in the Arboretum," wc/ink on paper, 8x10

The watercolors used here seem bright but in comparison to the intense color of the trees they're quite dull. There are avenues of flowers above brilliant green grass. I was hampered in this particular work by a near lack of water, and no way to replenish. That means the paint was applied pretty thick, for watercolor.

Water and Stones

Water is becoming one of my favorite subjects. Especially interesting to me is moving water in all of its forms, from ocean tides to ripples in a puddle. Clarity or murkiness is another feature of water that I find fascinating. And so on.

I've painted water on the spot, outdoors, and recreated it from reference photos. Obviously, painting moving water en plein air is tougher, at least for me. An important lesson from an old teacher is "don't try to paint glass [or water]. Instead paint what it does to the things behind it." That is, clear or transparent material like glass or water distorts and alters the image of whatever it covers. In "Streambed" (painted outdoors) I tried very hard to be aware of soft, blurry edges and reflections in the water. The stones dotting the stream made great, solid counterpoint to the moving water.

Hoff, "Streambed," oil on panel, 6x6

Unlike "Streambed," there have been quite a few works in my past that showed the actual bottom of a stream. "Mountain Stream" is a relatively large studio work, created from imagination and several photo references. In this one my interest was showing convincingly how a stream of water could be reflective, transparent, and refractive. The stony bottom of the stream was a great challenge.

Hoff, "Mountain Stream." oil on canvas, 18x24

Finally, in "Bottom," was the challenge of showing varying color, value, and transparency of moving water. This work is from a personal photo of a crystalline stream in far southwest Virginia. 

"Bottom," oil on panel, 12x16

More Spring

One of my favorite oldies is this view of New York from an ascending subway stair. "Spring, NYC" is in a private collection here in Iowa. 

"Spring, NYC," oil on panel, 9x12

Sudden Spring

Here along Druid Hill Creek the surest way to know that spring has indeed arrived is when the honeysuckle undergrowth bursts into leaf. First the bushes take on a faint green glow, then a kind of shadowy green along sprays of branches that cascade over the river bank. But in only a day or two the honeysuckle simply erupts into clouds and billows of green below the still-bare cottonwoods and willows. 

"Honeysuckle on Druid Hill Creek," wc/ink on paper, 8x10

Distant trees do show warmer colors and casts of yellow, where buds are barely open. In another week or two the foliage will be considerably more dense.

Winter's End

"On the Raccoon," wc/ink on paper, 8x10

When the season begins to change, you can tell, even if the ground is frozen and the trees are bare. There's a subtle green rising in the world. Here in my watercolor sketch there's the tiniest hints of spring. The river has thawed but the woods are barren.

 

Shiny Coat

One of the things I find most difficult to draw or paint is shiny fabric, so it's important for me to study various kinds of cloth. Here's a digital figure study of a woman wearing a quilted coat tied around her waist. Since the coat and figural proportions were my main interests, I left the lower legs relatively unfinished.

"Quilted Coat," digital drawing

Cataloging

One of the more onerous tasks in the studio is keeping track of my work. Sometimes it seems to me that I need an assistant to keep up with the mundane tasks of scanning works for digital records, sorting and organizing the actual works, and preserving or destroying those that need it. As works pile up you have to keep track. 

Today while scanning and organizing watercolor works I ran across a few sketches that seemed worth sharing. Here's one. 

"February, Gray's Lake" wc/ink on paper, 8x10

"February, Gray's Lake" is a sketch I did with the Saturday group a couple of months back. It was one of those sunny winter days when you can sit in a sheltered, sunny spot to work and feel reasonably comfortable. The lake was the color of old pewter and the far shore and treeline looked monotonous at first. But as I sat and studied, you could see countless variations and shades in the seemingly boring trees, and the sandy near shore made an interesting ochre-red contrast. Overall, this kind of sketch looks different after it's had time to mature. As I recall, I didn't like this one much at the time I did it but today it looks good.

Saturday

Spring has felt slow and chilly, but at last we had warm weather and sunny skies last Saturday, when the sketch group went out. As we always do, the group came to a consensus regarding location then set off. This week we went to the Botanical Center, on the east bank of the Des Moines River. Some of us went to the Robert Ray gardens nearby and some stayed outside; a few went into the dome and then checked out the big outside gardens. 

Alas, there wasn't much in flower, though narcissi were clumped here and there. I went to the farthest bench from the dome and spent an hour or two sketching it. I laid in the big shapes with pencil, then watercolor. As the painting progressed I added darks with ink.

"Des Moines Botanical Center, April 2023," ink and wc, 8x10

 

Step by Step

Not long ago I posted an unusual painting of snowy mountains around Donner Lake. It was unusual for the subject matter but also because I did it on an unusual paper support as a test. Because the result of the test was interesting, I put it online but didn't mention anything about the painting process. 

   Here is the layout of that painting, showing my underdrawing in a warm tone.. I drew the distant mountain masses and then the evergreens in the foreground, leaving the middle for the surface of the lake. Sometimes I tone my entire surface, but here I wanted bright snow. If you look on the left, though, you can see a very light yellow tone laid onto sun-reflecting surfaces. I painted the distant sky first, then the main mountain colors. 

After a number of steps you can see how the distant sky and mountains were muted and warmed as were the sun-facing slopes of the mountains. The media board support I used is fairly rigid, much more so than light paper, but also quite absorbent. That meant using oil paint more like a water-based medium and it dried quite matte. Here I've toned the downslope evergreens a redder color, where the sun struck them. 

And here is the final painting.

Oil Painters of America

As a member of Oil Painters of America (OPA), you can submit to the Online Showcase, a members' event hosted on the OPA website. There are three Showcases every year--Spring, Summer, Fall--I've entered a number of times. The last, OPA Online Showcase Fall 2022, featured nine of my paintings. (Follow the link and scroll about halfway down.) One of them was "Down by the River,"a studio work from last November. 

"Down by the River," oil on panel, 12x16

This one is a particular favorite because the view is of a wetland trail along the Middle Raccoon River. In late summer, drifts of wildflowers light the meadows--the mauve Joe Pye weed among them. The place is almost enchanted.

Pandemic "Paint Out"

Back during the darkest days of the covid pandemic, one of the art organizations offered members an opportunity to participate in a virtual "paint out." This was during the time when many were working from home, most large gatherings were cancelled, and everyone was masking and keeping their distance. Clearly, get-togethers like plein air events and conventions were not happening, people were isolated and fearful, and probably nobody much was making art. 

The virtual event required online registration, after which you received links to reference photos. The participants each chose a reference, painted a small landscape from it, and submitted, again online. 

"Inlet," oil on panel, 8x10

This small painting is a view of wetlands in the southwest United States. While it was fun to do and was a bit of salve for the wounds of the pandemic, a virtual paint out is no substitute for being out there.

Depth

One of the most enviable skills in landscape is showing depth. That is, when a painter finds a way to show the viewers a vast landscape, it's generally awe-inspiring.  As an example the great Russian, Isaac Levitan (1860-1900) was a master at capturing depth. In "Vladimirka Highway" he shows us a vista similar to those we commonly see out here in the midwest--rolling prairieland with a human figure dwarfed by the sky and the land.

Isaac Levitan, "Vladimirka Highway," oil, 1892

My newest studio landscape, "Savanna," was driven in part to attempt just such a distant vista. Here in Iowa we have many areas of flat countryside, much of it created by mile-high glaciers in the last ice ages. "Savanna" was inspired by those, in particular by oak savanna in the Whiterock Conservancy. Here the distant tall grasses and oaks help show depth.

"Savanna," oil on canvas, 24x30

Experimentation and Art

Seems to me that one of the great things about making paintings or drawings or whatever is the chance to try out new ideas, materials, thoughts, viewpoints and so on. Without a sense of experimentation one doubts that one two and three-point perspective drawing wouldn't have developed. Nor would realistic figure paintings, nor Impressionism, nor Cubism, nor any number of -isms we've seen in the last century or so. 

For me, experimentation can be a way to try new paint colors, or new supports (canvas, etc), a new way of working or a way to break out of a rut. Only a few days ago I posted a painting of Donner Lake but although I mentioned it was done on a kind of paper I didn't say that it was actually an experiment with that kind of material (Strathmore Heavyweight Mixed Media paper). Most oil paintings are done on wood or fabric and few have been on paper, so I was interested in using it. Turns out this material is so absorbent that the oil from the paint sinks right in, which means more layers. Not long before I posted about the Donner Lake painting I posted about imagination and art. Making an imaginary landscape was an experiment then, too. 

"Jug," casein, 8x6 on panel, private collection

"Jug," a very small still life study from a few years ago is a good example of experimentation in my art practice. Casein is a very old painting medium that uses milk solids and is rarely employed these days. I did this as an experiment with a new kind of paint, but with no other motive. The bottle is about half full of blonde shellac and is sitting on my round glass palette as light spills in from the window. The work turned out well enough to be offered at the Salmagundi Club's Thumbbox Show that year, where it was sold. Although I don't do a lot of work using casein, it was a useful exercise.

Experimenting is the life blood of progress, seems to me.

 

Longing for Green

Every day something new promises that spring is on the way. Just today I saw that daffodils have pushed an inch or two of their green spears above the otherwise barren soil. 

As has happened more than once, I discovered this watercolor in an old collection of files. It's fun to see works you've lost track of or forgotten. This is a panorama of a farm in southwestern Virginia, from a few years ago.

Here Comes the Sun

Every year, as March brings new warmth and sunshine, the old song from the 60's runs through my mind. The thing is, winters here are cold and dark but that's no problem, really. We're used to the conditions of the nether season. The problem is how long it lasts. Friends in other parts of the country are already seeing daffodils but here the ground is frozen and the sky is grey. Nevertheless, the inevitable turn of the seasons is in progress. 

Here's a tiny watercolor from five years back, celebrating the springtime. 

"Spring, the Bridge," wc and ink

Donner Lake

The high Sierra Nevada in California and western Nevada have been in the news these past few days. This year, for example, more than 52 feet of snow has been reported at the University of California, Berkeley lab at the top of Donner Pass. The reported totals are now said to be more then 250% of yearly average snow accumulations, and more snow is coming. 

Not quite a month ago, we transited Donner Pass and passed through Truckee, a few miles east of Donner Lake. As it happens one of my many snapshots caught the mountains and Donner Lake, but clearly with much less snow than has fallen in the past ten or twelve days. Here's an 11x14 oil on media board, "Above Donner Lake," showing the area before the big blizzard.

Imagination and Creation

There is a point for many artists when the hours and days they've spent studying repay the effort. By studying I mean the kind of visual engagement a painter or sculptor makes with the physical world. Artists build a visual library of everything from angular geologic forms in landscape to nuances of human bodies through considered seeing--in enough detail to allow them to invent believable shapes of people, buildings, streets, and so on without references. That is, many artists can invent a figure or a room or a landscape, even if only for a study drawing. Some still use models, once they've established a useful composition A century ago, during the golden years of illustration, someone like Albert Dorne could and did produce beautifully rendered illustrations for countless magazines and ads, many without use of models or photos.

For me, it's an interesting practice to attempt a painting from my imagination. Last week, having finished a large landscape and casting about for something new to paint, I picked up an old 11x14 panel with a failed portrait painted on it and without much thought began a landscape based on my memory of the painting just completed. That is, a memory copy of my most recent work. 

"Stormy Savanna," oil on panel, 11x14

The resultant work is necessarily considerably simplified in comparison to it's much larger predecessor. And because the failed portrait was in darker values (it never progressed to higher ones) the entire overpainted landscape is necessarily darker. The stormy dark blue sky was the remedy for the warm darks of the portrait, and the darkest greens likewise. The work proceeded in layers, each taking a couple of hours on several successive days. The trick was to imply a brighter light source slanting into the scene from the top left, yet keep the grasses and trees in mid- to darker values. 

Making images from memory is a worthwhile way to flex my visual muscles, seems to me.

Saturday Sketches

As the weather warms and the light shifts it has been possible to head outdoors with the Saturday group several times since the beginning of the year. Last Saturday we met as usual and went to Waterworks Park. I spent a bit more than an hour sketching from the open door of my car. The sun was warm but the breeze was sharp and uncomfortable. Happily, the sun emerged and lighted the scene. 

"The Bank of the Raccoon," wc and ink on paper

The first sketch I did was of the northern bank of the Raccoon River where it bends and almost touches the road. This time of year what color there is hasn't much punch. Instead the landscape is nuances of greys and ochres. This particular painting is about 8x10 but because the colors are muted and very close in values it took less time than usual. I pulled out a small pocket sketchbook and did a second much smaller study of a dead white tree a bit farther downstream. The bark had fallen away and the white of the heartwood stood out starkly against the darks of the woods.

"Dead Tree Study," wc and ink on paper

 

New Blue

Until a couple of years ago, a relatively new pigment known as YInMn blue, that was discovered only in 2009 or so, was an expensive curiosity. It was discovered as a byproduct of research into compounds for application in electronics. Comprising yttrium, indium and manganese, the resulting material is an intense and color-fast blue, very nearly like cobalt blue. Because of expense in production only a limited supply of the pigment is available although it has been mulled in oil and acrylic vehicles. Some companies have produced limited editions but many of those are currently out of stock.

Because of an interest in pigments I purchased a small tube of acrylic YInMn blue a year or two ago. As expected, it resembles cobalt blue both in mass color and when mixed. The difference between the two is quite small and suggests to me that this newer blue will always remain a curiosity.