Anatomy of a Sketch

I belong to an art group which meets every Thursday and often it is as valuable and as necessary as air. Yesterday was no exception. But this post is different in that it is the outgrowth of my answer to a fellow artist, one I respect immensely, who asked me how did I come up with the finished sketch.

Because I am working in encaustic I can't work with those materials in the group, so I bring a sketchbook and egg tempera paints. Sometimes I just mess with colors, and other times, like yesterday I started drawing with pencil.

First I drew the two yellow triangles and studied them. The parallel lines of the long sides invited thought. So I extended them. Then I drew the vertical and horizontal lines away from the leftmost point of the left triangle. At that point I wanted a frame, so I drew the enclosing square. That enclosure created most all of the negative space (the red ochre and Prussian blue). I then drew the arc at the bottom of the right triangle and knew I was done with the drawing.

I painted the two triangles first, left in yellow ochre, the right in Indian yellow. Then I drew what I knew would be the central focus of the image--the Vermilion diagonal. Next came the red ochre, and after that, the Prussian blue. Then I filled in the green rectangle (Indian yellow with Prussian blue).  I knew the small almost triangle near the arc would be black, but the arc gave me pause. I eventually chose a blue green from a different mixture of Indian yellow and Prussian blue.

Only in considering the arc did any "thinking" go on. Each shape became its color without thought. I can't explain how this happens. But when I set it on a window sill to step back from it, I knew it worked. And, I can't explain how I know that either. And at this point, I don't know if the color of the arc will change when I move it to encaustic.

Encaustic Exploration and One Invention

I received money at Christmas which enabled me to begin working in encaustic. I've been at it furiously for about six or seven weeks now.
I'm in it for the color. Encaustic is the "what you see is what you get" medium. The color of the melted wax in the tin is the color it will be when applied and the color it will ALWAYS be. For me, whose entire reason for painting is to work with colors, this is the Holy Grail of color. I make most of my own colors by adding pigment powders to the encaustic medium. I also make the encaustic medium. (I started out with store-bought medium and then after reading, decided I wanted to make my own--both clear and with yellow beeswax.)

And the natural yellow of the beeswax I have come to consider not only as wax for the medium, but as a color in itself. So far in my explorations, my primary palette consists of Yellow Ochre, Vermilion, and Prussian Blue.

Very quickly I discovered that I had to deal with a working space that is too small. Today I gained about 2 square  feet on my work table with this simple rack. Not only that, my colors are right in front of me whenever I look up. More about those tins later.

Sorry about the image quality but I had to shoot against the light. 

Now about all  those glass topped tins. I was delighted to find them and ordered about twenty of them. Most of them were the small size you see here (2-1/2" dia.). Unfortunately the larger ones don't come with glass covers.  Those are the ones you see at the right on the shelf below the rack. And they are just fine for mediums and beeswax. They can be ordered from Specialty Bottle in Seattle, WA. In addition to these, they have lots of other containers. But, the glass topped ones let me see my colors all the time and I am so lucky to have found them.

The rack is just a flat board with narrow strips of wood across and a board (about 5" wide) glued edgewise onto the back about 2" up from the bottom. This gives the main board enough of an angle to keep the tins on the rack. If you made that board on the back a little wider the rack would be free-standing. But since I needed table space, I made mine to hang on the wall.

If you are curious, you can see some of my recent work at the top of this page:

http://www.clairdunn.com/painting.htm

Painting Progress

I've quickly learned that when working in oil you need to have more than one painting to work on.

As all Vermonters know, they make jokes about us sitting around "watching paint dry". Well, I've not been sitting around. I've been reading and watching videos. Two of those videos were so inspiring that I decided to break out another panel and go to my image library.

Before I get to the nitty-gritty, I want to name the two most inspiring videos I may have ever seen: The first--The Art of Oil Painting with Charles Evans was by a British painter and teacher, well-respected and often seen on British television. They are lucky. The second is by Alywn Crashaw--Oils for the Beginner, Part I. I watch it at least once a day. Good teachers are priceless, and alas, all too rare.

After absorbing these two videos I went through my color shots, taken while I was out hunting for black and white subjects. I stumbled on one, taken of what used to be our pond across the road in early autumn. It was simple and clean and I figured it would be a good place for me to start.

And so I began--nervous and excited almost to the point of combustion. Here is the result. I have learned much--beginning at the beginning. This is not the way I want to paint landscape, but I need to learn how to mix, how to use the brush, how to do those two things to get what I want on the canvas. This time I wanted to get this image onto canvas. That's all.

Still Pond - Early Autumn, Fletcher, Vermont 8" x 10"

I learned much doing this. Especially about mixing oils on the palette. I also learned that one needs to leave well enough alone at a certain point. (I did purposely set out to make this brighter than the photo because the part I was most interested in painting was the sky and I wanted a greater contrast.)

And, to further inspire me, this morning on Vermont Art Zine there was a post with two oils by S. P. Jackson. They are wonderful! I wish I could get to Middlebury to see them in the flesh. If you can get there, please go in my stead. What he said is what I want to do:

"...The title of the show comes from the fact I am not attempting to record an exact representation of a particular landscape. It is the lingering impression, the fleeting memory, that I want to capture and hold onto as our lives speed by in time and space.”

Swanton Under Rain

My second sketch is not as good as my first but it did lead me to discover something. So that makes it worthwhile.

It was raining and we were waiting for a pizza to be ready, driving around until I said "stop". And I did this sketch (admittedly while being very hungry). Fortunately the pizza was much much better than the sketch.

After we got the pizza in the car, I remembered that I wanted a photograph of the view I had sketched, so we drove back. Turns out we didn't stop in exactly the same place, but close.

The next day I looked at the sketch and the image and something about the two shapes of the pavement in the foreground triggered something and I immediately started drawing on a canvas board. A couple of days later I had this:

Swanton Under Rain - 8" x 10" oil on canvas board

What I learned is that sketches aren't blueprints. They serve a purpose beyond the visual. I think the simplicity allows imagination a free range. If they've done their job, the transmutation happens quickly in the brain. Something snaps into focus that is not the sketch, but is of the sketch. The act of sketching makes us focus for just long enough that the brain absorbs its own vision of what we see and mulls it over, "painting" it with other images, other feelings, other pieces of ourselves until it becomes what it is we (in particular) really see.

For me in this case, I can make some guesses as to what got thrown into this sketch: maps, aerial views, my love of shapes and colors, interest in roof lines, my fascination with the weather, among other things which even I can't now consciously remember.

A tentative step in the right direction

Backyard I, 4" x 6", watercolor on paper

Something about working on the squares and looking at Dove again just pushed me to do this. This is the second attempt--too much was not right with the first. This is better, but after doing this I realized I was not happy with the brush I was using. So I spent some time trying out brushes. There will be another version, but for now I needed to get something up that pushes me in the right direction. Which this does.

I don't yet know how to get full intensity watercolor on the paper without it being mottled; that's why I think it's a brush problem. When I get rid of the mottling, I think I'll be happy.

The palette for this was Cobalt Turquoise, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, and Cadmium Lemon. There is a tiny bit of Prussian Blue in the deep shadows.

Merging of Blogs

In the interest of "getting it together" I have merged three of my other blogs into this one. If you were one of the few followers of

Vermont Directions (my Art of Action blog)

Vermilion Hue (my painting blog)

Clair Dunn PHOTOGRAPHY (my, duh, photography blog)

Their contents have all been moved to White River (you are here!). I am posting this because I don't know if Google transfers the followers along with the posts. My artist's web site however remains the same at:

clairdunn.com

Button Maker's "Painting"

Sold

Expressive Realism

Working with watercolor offers opportunities for acceptance or rejection with almost every brush stroke. The fluidity of this medium, which seems to have a mind of its own, fascinates me. It seems to want to create atmospherics on its own. And, I accept this willingly.

Gathering Storm - 4" x 6" - Watercolor on paper.

To Purchase

Fletcher to Enosburg and Back

Last weekend I made a round-trip to Enosburg Falls on each of two days. Since I was not driving, I was free to soak in the passing scenes. I was struck by the incredible splendor of the roadsides in bloom. The greenery of the road edges was diapered with tiny bits of white, yellow, and lavender, showing off against the backdrop of the greens of corn or hay. The variegated clouds in the sky made the colors seem even brighter.

Splendors in the Grass - 4" x 6" - Acrylic on paper.

To Purchase

Sap Green

This was done about two weeks ago, the day after I received a tube of Old Holland Sap Green. It was a new color and I dove into it, along with my standard Prussian Blue and Hooker's Green.

Blue Storm - 4" x 6" - Acrylic on paper.

To Purchase

NEWS! First Painting Sold for $3

. . . the biggest $3 I've ever received in my life.

Which now results in a long post with no pictures:

In yesterday's mail was a notice that said a small
exhibition where I was going to show my paintings
for the first time (end of July) was canceled
because there was not enough interest from other
artists in participating. That had been a major
iron in the fire for me and now it was gone. I sunk
myself into the couch and, thoroughly depressed,
ended up in a hour-long nap.

A few hours after this, I went in to St. Albans
to tend the STAART gallery from 4-6 because
my friend Ellen had a gig in Greensboro so she
couldn't finish her whole gallery stint.

It was pouring down rain there and I was settling in
for a quiet two hours of mucking about with watercolor
when a whole herd of folks walked in -- 4 adults in the
25-35 something range with a baby, and two older adults.

They meandered and then the older couple (from Boston)
stopped at the counter where my stuff was spread out,
indicating some kind of interest. So I flipped open
the cigar box with all my watercolors in it and asked
the guy if he painted. He said a little, but nodded
toward his wife, who was looking at my colors and saying
"yes" about an interest in colors.

I remembered that I had a cheap little photo album where
I keep the things that are going to be for sale as
one-of-a-kind postcards. I whipped it out of my pocket
while talking about making things that people would buy
and flipped the pages. She said she wanted to see, so
I flipped through it more slowly.

Several times they murmured approval with a couple of,
"interesting, let me see" and the like, while I'm babbling
on about colors, etc.

Then she said, "Can I buy that one? And will you sign it?"

This caught me completely off guard as I had only that
morning been making labels for them; I was planning on
taking pictures of them this week as I'll be selling them
in the park next Saturday.

I pointed to the two prominent colors in it as I babbled on about
them--Vermilion and Hooker's green. She asked what the
background wash was: Prussian Blue.

I was jumping up and down and telling her how incredibly exciting
this was for me because it was the first painting I'd sold.
I said I needed to know her name. She seemed a bit hesitant,
but wrote out her name in a URL on my scratch paper.

So, I sold it to her for $3 and told her I didn't have
a picture of it. She said she'd send me a jpg if I sent
her my email address.

I then told her that I'd come at painting from an obsession with
color and pushed Ball's Bright Earth across the counter to her,
while saying that I was now into my second reading of it.
She flipped through it and wrote the info in her notebook.

As they left, she said, "Keep on."

I immediately jumped on the internet and when her resume
came up I nearly fell off the stool.

Out of deference to her, I am not including the link without
her permission. I'm at the bottom, she's at the top and I
understand what might be a reluctance for the link.

So, I'm over the moon (a Jaune Brillant #1 one, to be sure) on this.

And, ever so deliciously, I'm savoring the glow from my
three Boston dollars! And, even more deliciously, the
source of those dollars.

My Essence of Tree

The house I live in was built in the very late thirties after the orginal one burned. And that fire gutted a pear apple tree at the south end of the house. The blackness of the burn has slowly been disappearing over the years, but you can see how the injured tree healed itself into two trunks in the left image. On the right is the other side of the trunk.

And I apologize for image of the full tree below, but the tree is closed in by dense growth on the side away from my studio, and the studio is too close to get a distance shot.)
When I wanted a tree that was mine I laid out some dots of color in a tight line and took them up with a brush and drew a trunk. When I looked at it, I realized where it had come from. I am finding out that if you are driven to do something without reason, the source may well be inside you, so ingrained, that its existence is separate from conscious thought.

I Think I Know What I'm Doing . . .

Sketch - Rocks and Grass

The sketch above is just that, a sketch of practicing rocks with watercolors. I work on such things regularly, almost on a daily basis. And sometimes I make a forward leap as in this one when I was working on washes:

THE LIGHTED HILLS

And then there are ones like this:

EVERYTHING UNDER THE SUN

These come along as they do. And what "these" are, I have begun to figure out. They are all to do with the natural world: the earth, sun, moon, and stars as it were. And the moods/ideas behind them are all quite dark. Yet, they come out in bright colors. For me, it seems to be a process of working out a language with nouns and verbs but the adjectives are always colors. If there's an underlying theme, I guess I'd have to say "global warming" as trite as that phrase has become, or maybe "atmospherics", as there seems to be some meteorology in most of them.

I'm still doing this as well, but right now, the color business is such an over-riding passion, that the photography has subsided to second place--not by choice but by demand--my involuntary demand. Though yesterday I got this shot. So, things in my black and white world are still churning, and I do keep thinking about getting around to some other Vermont towns for additions to my "Urban Rural" portfolio which is showing signs of healthy growth. Wish there were six of me.

 

 

 

Assigning Blame

I began my "official" visual life as a graphic designer. Graphic designers, in the days of triangles, drafting tables, wax, and Letraset were obnoxiously neat. I've never belonged to a work space like this one.

Those people whom I know personally and who are responsible for this state of affairs are, in chronological order, as follows:

Susan Abbott
Meta Strick
David E. Kearns
Karen Day-Vath

One person, not personally known to me, is Philip Ball, author of Bright Earth.

Together, these individuals are responsible for what is turning out to be a major upheaval in my life. I alternately curse them and thank them.

SUNRISE FOR A BUG

Your very best red . . .

Two things combined this morning: a reported conversation between Gauguin and Sérusier, and the painting posted by Susan Abbott on March 7.

The conversation ran like this:

Gauguin: How to you see the colour of that tree?
Sérusier: Yellow.
Gauguin: Well, use your very best yellow. How do you see the colour of the earth?
Sérusier: Red.
Gauguin: Then use your very best red.

This bit was on p. 193 of Ball's Bright Earth, still my nightly read.

There's a lot to chew on in these few lines: about color, and about how to make art.

What Can A Painting Do?

I was startled yesterday in Montpelier to hear Dana Wigdor ask this question in three-way conversation with myself and Susan Abbott after the webinar. We were of course talking about our art impacting Vermonters, or the future of Vermont.

As I drove north in the gathering dark, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I probably can't answer it to her satisfaction, but I sure can for myself, and maybe even in the context of the Art of Action project.

I sat in tears in the Turner Room of the National Gallery in London many years ago. And, years after that I stood transfixed and stunned in the Ontario Gallery of Art the first time I saw the work of Canada's Group of Seven.

In those moments something coursed through all the interstices of my brain, likely much as our blood flashes warmth to our whole body from a single swallow of hot coffee by way of the suddenly heated blood coursing through our arteries.

Maybe this is what we need to do. Go after that grail of "touching blood". Make them hurt, dance, weep, howl, feel heat in the blood, but above all think.

Vermont Artists and a Coincidence

I've just spent the morning checking out a number of Vermont artists and what I saw was indeed "something to write home about."

Art of Action Finalists will take you to the AOA project coordinator's blog where he offers links to those artists who have a web presence. Take your time with these sites. (Skip mine.)

If you, like so many non-Vermonters, are one of those who has experienced Vermont as a state of mind rather than an actual place, you will get your grounding here.

What I've seen this morning makes me jealous of painters. Makes me love them unreservedly. And at this moment it also creates one of those "coincidences" that often occur to us, and which we usually shrug off.

Last night, early evening actually, I went outdoors to have my last cigarette of the day and noticed a faint, small reddish glow in the distance, rather near my neighbor's house. I determined that it wasn't emanating from their house, and began to get a bit alarmed as the glow was on a hill, and reddish -- in the countryside this usually means fire. As I kept watching, it began to get brighter and less red. And, in the time it took for one small, self-rolled cigarette, the moon rose, fully engulfed in wisps of clouds and pieces of night. I wept because I could not paint.