Trees

 



My affliction*

I've been trying to get out and paint outside as often as I can. So far that has been four times this year. Here's what I've come back with so far (minus the one that fell in the dirt which wasn't good anyway):

*While painting the mountain scene at the top, one hiker passed by and seeing us painting said, "Now that's an affliction that I don't understand." "But at least you understand that it's an affliction" I said.

Painting People and Places in Provo with Perkins

Here are a few samples of the many color studies I did last week at the Bill Perkins workshop that I advertised in the previous post. It was my second time taking the color theory workshop, and although I don't know if it's showing up in my work yet, I think I'm starting to grasp some of the concepts that Bill talked about. These were all 40 minute studies of various color and lighting situations.



This one was the last one I did at the color workshop and we got to spend 80 minutes on it, which by that time seemed like an eternity. Ok, not really-it just seemed like 80 minutes. I still had to paint really fast. I took a picture after every 20 minutes during the model breaks so you can kind of see the progression.



The second half of the week was the plein air workshop. We spent a lot of time watching Bill paint, looking for good painting locations, looking for good eating locations(this was the most successful part for me) and in between all that I painted these studies. I don't feel like these turned out particularly well, but I was trying some things that I don't usually do, like paint rainbow umbrellas. Bill gave me some good things to think about, so hopefully my next few paintings will start to show some improvement.


All in all it was a great week of painting with some of my favorite artist friends, filled with a lot of "a-ha" moments, as in "A-ha! so that's what Sargent and Sorolla were doing" and "A-ha! So that's why my paintings look nothing like Sargent and Sorolla." I now have lots to think about.

Color Workshop with Bill Perkins

Last week I was able to go to a painting workshop with Bill Perkins. Bill is a very experienced artist who has done a lot of things. Check out his two websites here and here. He described this workshop as "color boot camp" designed to teach us as much about color and light as possible in just three days. He had us do many quick (30-45 min) paintings from the model under different lighting situations. I really enjoyed the colored lights, but the flat light situations were particularly challenging. It was a lot like doing plein air paintings, but of people rather than landscapes. He kept telling us not to worry about our drawing since there was no time for that, and so some of those sketches look pretty bad, but I thought I'd post them all up here anyway because I wanted to show the whole experience.

A lot of what we talked about was familiar, like starting with just values and talking about tonal contrast before moving on to saturation and hue contrasts, which is the way I teach digital painting. But there were some new ideas too, which really shouldn't have been new to me but somehow I managed to come this far without understanding them. Overall it was a great experience and I am excited to try out some of those new ideas in a painting when I can spend longer than 3o minutes on it.

And if you are interested in seeing what some other people did at the workshop Greg Newbold has blogged about it, and I thought Simini did a really nice job of capturing those colors.

A few more landscape sketches

I kind of lost momentum with the iPad sketching, and went back to the real paints. Here are the three that I thought turned out the best from the last few months. I have had the pleasure of teaching some classes in the BYU illustration program this fall, and one of those classes was a landscape class where we went out plein air painting as a means of studying light and atmospheric perspective and then applied those principles to illustrations. I did the top image in that class. It must have been a nice spot because a lot of the students got a good sketch there too. Kind of surprising since it's Utah Lake...not known as a very picturesque spot. I have realized that I really like yellow and blue together. Almost as much as yellow-green and purple.

My Back Yard

I wanted to get out and do some plein air paintings of the fall colors but that didn't happen. My only plein air painting trip this fall was to my back yard where I painted the sage brush behind my house. I think I'll paint the same scene in the snow pretty soon. Maybe looking through the window. It's REALLY cold out there.

Aspen Trees

Morning on the Shore of Tibble Fork Reservoir

Zion Painting Trip

Last weekend I was able to go on a painting/sketching/reference gathering trip with some BYU illustration and animation students and faculty to Zion National Park. They are doing a student project on environment design and will be using the sketches and reference they gathered for their designs. Since that's kind of what I do for a living I got to come along. It was a blast.

These are the paintings I did while I was down there.

And a couple more for good measure.

More little paintings

Here are some plein air sketches from this spring and summer.

Really Cool Colorful Costume

You can't have a model like this and just do a charcoal drawing. A dress like that calls for paint.

She is from West Africa and is a really good cook.

My two latest plein air attempts

This one was painted up the street from my house. 6x8

This one is somewhere in Laguna Beach. 8x10

Cast Painting

This is a cast painting that I worked on last year at Kamille Corry's studio. I feel like I learned a lot about oil painting and how to finish a painting over a long period of time. Most of my oil paintings have just been studies done in one sitting.

I also gained an appreciation of ancient Greek sculptors. It was pretty tedious painting just this guy's head. I can't imagine how long it would have taken them to sculpt the whole thing.

Yellow Leaves

Probably the last plein air of the season, unless I decide to go paint in the snow.

Recent Oil Sketch

This is my son in his favorite spot in front of the TV. That day he wasn't feeling well so he actually stayed still enough for me to paint him. It also helped that he fell asleep halfway through the movie.

Latest Plein Air

Considering the ruthless onslaught of insects that my freind Steve and I had to endure while we were painting, I think we both did all right. Hard to go wrong with Aspen trees. I think I got all the bugs picked out of the paint.

Another plein air sketch

painted up in the hills above Salt Lake City

Last Week's Plein Air

Latest Plein Air Attempts