Pre Hong Kong Plein Air

Here are a few paintings I did before moving to Hong Kong. These have been sitting on my hard drive for a while and I had forgotten that I had them. They are all oil on amber shellacked paper.

The first was done with Richard Hull's landscape painting group shortly before leaving Utah for Hong Kong.

This was done on the side of the road on the way back from viewing the annular eclipse, which...started in Hong Kong. I went down to southern Utah on a painting trip to view it.

 

This was part of that same trip. The location is called Grosvenor's Arch. It's a little out of the way, but worth the trip.

 

People in my plein air group like to make fun of me for painting the weeds (see the one at top for more weeds). There are at least a couple different approaches to going landscape painting on location outside. One is to paint and simplify the big scene. This is very valuable as a tool for developing a compositional, lighting and general atmospheric sense of the big landscape. It allows you to develop space and abstract your visual perception. If you haven't done it before, the beginning landscape painter is often overwhelmed by the wealth of detail available and quite literally indescribable. Another is to paint the smaller intimate details, like weeds or branches or other small and medium flora. This is, to paraphrase Durand, to familiarize yourself with the alphabet of the landscape. These are the bits and pieces that make up the larger more dynamic space. It's something that I've grown fond of after participating in two Hudson River Fellowships.

Hudson River Fellowship 2011 Part 6

The last post.

Just a couple of final pictures. These were some multi-session forest interiors completed during the third and fourth weeks of the Hudson River Fellowship. One at Platte Clove and the other at Elka Park.

Cliff at Platte Clove

Elka Park Interior

Hudson River Fellowship 2011 Part 5

Sunsets.

Most every evening, when there were clouds on the horizon, a group of us would get together on an empty lot at the top of a hill. We sarcastically refer to it as Mosquito Plateau.  After a good shower of bug repellent we set up to paint the sunset. Some would just do one sunset and others would paint several. I attempted to put myself into the latter category.

There are a couple of tricks to painting sunsets en plein air. The first is to premix your colors. I used mostly a set of very chromatic colors. Indian Yellow, Alizarin Crimson or Perelyne Red, Prussian Blue, and occasionally a green. Occasionally, I found it helpful to mix some Indian Yellow into my Cadmium Orange ahead of time too, it seems to intensify the color without changing it too much. The second trick is to not premix them too lightly. Part of painting the sunset is maintaining the chromatic intensity of the light reflecting back at you.  Which means the third trick is to paint at a somewhat lower key than you think is necessary. Because you are looking directly at the sun while you're painting, your eyes may think that you are painting more darkly and intensely than you really are. For me, the fourth is to work very small. I divided my paper up into 3-4 sections using tape well ahead of time and confine myself to working at that very small scale. I also liked to work on an untoned white surface, so that I could utilize some of the glazing possibilities that I have with a white surface. The fifth might be preparation. An early arrival, about 20 minutes ahead of the painting start time is helpful, as is premixing. I also liked to check the weather reports earlier in the day to see if there would be any clouds in the area.

These were ideas that I found useful. Others preferred to work on a single panel the whole time, work in a different color palette or a different size. James Gurney was also kind enough to feature my sunsets and my weary face on his blog when he visited the fellowship.

Here are a number of them that I did during the fellowship. A number of these are sequentially from the same night. I will be making these and others available on Etsy soon.

They are up on Etsy.com as of the 21st of November.

Sequence 1

 

Sequence 2

 

Sequence 3

 

The Moon.

Or if the sunset isn't very interesting, sometimes you can turn and paint the moon!

Hudson River Fellowship 2011 Part 4

These are some drawings I did at the Fellowship this last July. Most of these were done over a couple sessions. My intention was to explore the precise details and textures, so I could then have access to them while working in the studio.

 

 

Hudson River Fellowship 2011 Part 3

A few more plein air sketches from this year's Hudson River Fellowship. The first image is from Elka Park. The second is from the top of Hunter Mountain. The ski resort maintains their lift in the summer and they invited us to use their lift for free during the fellowship. A number of us went up the last day to paint. As it turns out the view is pretty incredible. The final image is below the bridge at Platte Clove. A pine tree has happy placed itself between a rock and a ... rock.

All three are painted on prepared paper with oils.

Hudson River Fellowship 2011 Part 2

Studies of stones done at the bridge in Elka Park.

Hudson River Fellowship 2011 Part 1

Here are some studies from this year's Hudson River Fellowship centered in Hunter, New York in the Catskills.  This year I primarily divided my time between Platte Clove and Elka Park.  I'll share a few pictures at a time over the next couple of weeks. My primary purpose this year was to find general textures, details and scenes that can have broad application in whatever compositions I decide to pursue

Here are some close up texture and plant studies, these were all done in a small area in Elka Park in single sessions. They are all done in oil on prepared Canson Canva paper.

Hudson River Fellowship 2011

I was accepted to this year's Hudson River Fellowship centered in Hunter, NY in the Catskills. The fellowship runs from the 5th of July until the 31st and is organized by Jacob Collins and other founders of the Grand Central Academy.  I participated once before in 2009, between my two years at the New York Academy of Art, and found it to be a fantastic complement to the experiences I had there.  I anticipate a similarly fantastic group of talented, dedicated, and hardworking artists that I had the fortune of working among in 2009.

This time around I have clearer idea of how I will spend my time and I hope to be able to share my experiences there with those of you that follow or subsequently happen upon this blog.

Here are a couple drawings I did back in 2009. They are currently on view at Medialia Gallery in NYC.

Quaking Aspen

Quaking aspens are fairly common in the Utah Wasatch Mountains and some of the groves are among the largest (by mass) and oldest living things on the earth.