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ATTENTION OIL PAINTERS!

Bring Home the Romance of Plein Air Painting!

These ten gorgeous landscape projects are designed to be practiced indoors. Once you feel comfortable with the fundamentals (simplifying shapes, mastering tonal values, understanding light, etc.) you can venture outside to create your own oil landscapes in a loose, Impressionistic style.

All the learning takes place in the context of step-by-step projects, and each of these projects instills basic principles of plein air painting create impact, capture an impression, depict water, create the effect of sunlight, portray evening light, achieve color harmony, establish a focal point, suggest texture and more.

Each project comes with a complete list of materials and colors, essential color mixes, and a clear, step-by-step plan for you to follow. Introductory text tells you about the design, color and value ideas behind each painting. Hints, words of wisdom and plenty of encouragement make this project book a real confidence-builder! 96 pages. color illus. paperback.

Summer of 2005 has witnessed the arrival of my new book on plein air paintings!!

Though created for the beginner, it has universal art principles and extras for the intermediate and advanced painter. It has 10 paintings with 6 steps of creation, and dialogue on how and what I did with each painting.
The color palette, universal principles, and other valuable information in the creation of these 10 images.

LEARNING POINTS FOR PLEIN AIR PAINTING
Taken from 10 Projects you can Paint...

FIRST

Know that all “laws” or “rules” dealing with art are not absolutes! They are merely warnings! A master draftsman can take any law or rule and break it, and have a totally successful, powerful creation! The rules and laws are merely to warn you that you are entering a critical area, should you break them. Your painting could be in a crisis. The oriental has 2 characters for the word “crisis”: “Dangerous” and “Opportunity”. SO, once you understand the basics of art, and have mastered them, then you can explore and go beyond the typical! You have a tremendous opportunity for greatness!!

DESIGN / COMPOSITION FOR PLEIN AIR PAINTING
Although all elements that go into creating a successful painting are important, the foundation of any painting is the design and/ or composition. Starting with the finish, before getting a good layout, is like wanting to hang curtains in a house that has not been built yet! •
The first choice of design on any panel, is the actual size you have chosen! Sizes have a proportion from the height to the width. Some are more square, while others are more rectangular. What proportion you choose has a large affect on the final statement. Also which way you place the panel: vertical or horizontal.
• Next, always keep the Golden Section as your primary layout. Basically it is the principle of dividing your space into 1/ 3 top to bottom, and 1/ 3 right to left. This defines where you will place element (Visually, you will have 2 vertical lines and 2 horizontal lines, equal distance from the sides). You will use this principle also where you will cut a line on any particular form, where to place the highest peak of a mountain along the mountain visual line, for just about every decision.
• The most important element or center of interest should be near one of these intersecting lines.
• The center of interest or main flow of movement should revolve around these four points.
• Space should be broken up into unequal portions: 65% - 25% - 15%, or 75% -15% -10%. This can deal with the major area shapes, the major land mass, the areas of value (light, medium or dark) or where you put the most detail.
• All things within a composition, is the playing of opposites: large vs small, detail vs no detail, warm vs cool, dark vs light, gray vs bright, intense vs subtle, soft vs hard, many vs few, thick paint vs thin paint, etc.

THICK AND THIN PAINT
A painting that is 100% thick paint really is nothing more than a thick paint painting. However, this doesn’t mean it cannot be done. For my personal choices, I like to play the contrast of thin to thick
• The secret is to play thick paint against thin paint, have one dominate, the other subordinate.
• If you are primarily a brush painter, then save areas painted with palette knife to specific areas, such as the foreground weeds, or a very light area, or perhaps a wall or tree. By doing this, you will create greater interest.

HARD AND SOFT EDGES
To penetrate the surface of your panel, and create the affect of space and distance, playing hard edges against soft edges is vital. Also, if you do not want someone to spend a lot of time in any particular area, then soften the edges and values in any particular area.
• Elements in the distance should have softer edges than those in the foreground, unless the area in the distance is of major importance in your creation, then you can actually reverse this idea.
• Softening edges between elements gives the eye an easy passage from one shape to another. Hard lines makes your eye have to jump to get into different areas. Have too many jumps, and the viewer gets tired, and moves to the next painting!!! NOT a good idea!

PIGMENT VS TRANSPARENT LIGHT
In case you haven’t noticed, oil paint is basically opaque. And painting en plein air, we are working with real light, which is translucent! SO, how is it that we can capture this with opaque paint? Although we go out to “capture the truth” in the world about us, we have to “lie through our teeth” in order to do this! You have to capture the relationship of what is happening. Matching color to color and value to value will give you what most artists capture. But if you want to capture what you see in my work, then you have to understand the relationships that make something appear to be what it is!
• When working in the sky, be sure to use mostly transparent pigments: the thelos, rose, Indian Yellows, etc. Using the earth tones: umber, sienna, cadmium and even too much white will create an opacity that will not reflect the feeling of translucency that the sky suggests.
• Using a pigment as pure as you can from the tube, but keeping it thin, so the white of your panel shows through will create a transparent color, is a good way to deal with dark colors.
• Be careful using white, there is a real fine line between being just right and being chalky.
• To create lightness in the sky, have objects near by, touching the edge, for comparison, that are darker, denser, and less intense.

PAINT PALETTE
Like a piano, always place your pigments in the same location. It is difficult enough figuring out what to do, without searching for where you put your paint! There are dozens of different ways of laying out your paints. There is not one better than the other. Merely what works best for you! Your paint and your brushes should be merely an extension of your arm, without a second thought to them once you start painting.
• My layout of pigments (I did not use the names, merely the value of the color): white, light yellow, dark yellow, earth yellow, earth red, light red, dark red, (when doing sunsets or flowers: rose and thelo reds), light green, dark green, light blue, dark blue, black.>BR> • Keeping your palette organized is of utmost importance.
• If your painting is looking muddy, look at your palette. It probably is also! Using your glass scraper, clean your palette often as you are working. SAVE this paint, put into a pile, and when you have a lot of color, then using your palette knife, mix thoroughly, for a nice gray.
• If your piles of pigment are too contaminated to pull clean color, then using your palette knife pull those that are similar: the reds, the yellows, the blues, into separate piles and mix them thoroughly, and lay them back in a second row in front of the pure colors.
• Some of your best color in your paintings will be created out of these wonderful mixes!

COLOR

To have great color, you need to know when NOT to use color! The best way to overcome fear of color is to make a study of what all your pigments do to the others. Merely mix each color with each of the others on your palette. Then mix it’s compliment into it. Then mix white into each. Then mix a black and white mixture the same as the value you are adding it to, and after two or three test boards like this, you will start to have fun with color.
• All colors have a temperature. If you think of fire, the reds, yellow oranges, these are the warm colors. And if you think of ice, the blues, greens and violets, these are the cool colors. However, within each, there are warm cools and cool warms! That is, a red that leans toward a blue, is a cool red, your alizarin. A fire engine red is a warm red because it has more yellow in it. The same goes for the other colors. A yellow that has more red, is warmer than a yellow with more green. A blue with more red is warmer than a blue that leans toward green.
• Beautiful color sets on grays, commonly known as mud, and it sets on less intense color, commonly known as chalky colors. Mud is only mud, when you have it every where. The same goes for chalky colors.
• White added to colors can be excellent, unless you use too much. There is a very small shift in having beautiful color or washed out or pasty color.
• If you want something to look really light and intense, then surround it with darker, grayer colors

SHADOWS

Shadows are a good way to help hold your painting together, if you allow the shadows to dominate your composition. If you approach it this way, then allow your shadows to be maybe 70% of the painted surface.
Or you can allow your light to dominate, and your shadows to help hold different units within the composition together.
• Remember that if your environment is cool, then your shadows may appear warmer, and vice versa. HOWEVER, within either of these choices, always look for the warm areas inside the cool shadows, and the cool colors inside the warm shadows. If you do not, you will create a “plastic” environment!
• Most of the time, the shadows will be reflecting the sky color, or a cooler color.
• The stronger the contrast between the shadow and the sunlight area, the stronger your light source will appear, or the brighter the day will appear.
• The entire area of the shadow does not have to be as dark as the edge that touches the sun light area. If you remember this, then those shadow areas will not get dense and heavy with dark colors.
• Try to keep your shadows transparent in perhaps 70% of the area, to keep your painting from feeling “dense” and over worked.

ATMOSPHERE
Basically, atmosphere is created by many layers of air coming between you and the object you are viewing. The further away, the more layers of air. The further away an object gets, the more it becomes the color and value of the area at the greatest distance. You cannot merely say things get “bluer”, since in a sunset situation, things will get warmer, becoming more like the warmth in the sunset colors that surround the distant object!
• The air or sky drops down to the earth, actually right to your very feet! So if someone viewed you from 5 miles away, you would become bluer (if in the standard light of day). If you were seen at sunset, then you would become warmer, like the environment you are viewed in!!
• Distant mountains late in the day, that are picking up the late sun, and casting shadows, will have basically two colors: warm, from the sun direction, and blue from the shadow side, BUT really close in value! And the sky that surrounds them, would thus look the same value but green. Green? Yes, green, because the atmosphere that far back has a lot of yellow sun rays between you and it, and besides, since the mountain appears the bluest thing back there, the sky thus appears green! BUT not just any green ... it has to be a clear, clean cool green. Like thelo green!
• The old adage that blues recede and reds advance only applies in a normal sunlit day. That is, when the environment that your objects set in, are surrounded with the cool light from a sky that comes to your very feet. However, when the sky warms up at sunset, then the light everywhere is now warm, and thus to make something recede, you need warmer tones.

PASSION and JOY
More important than all the knowledge, and all the proper application of paint, is passion!

Never let anyone, nor anything rob you of your passion, your own personal voice! When you study with anyone, know that your quest should be to gather information that best energizes you, that best reflects what it is that you want to say with your art expression.

No teacher should ever make you feel small or not important due to your own personal quest! When you study, you should climb your own ladder, not that of any instructor! Each of us has something very special to offer the world, that maybe in time, might just help heal the hurt that causes so much of the world’s pain.

Always be true to yourself! Always find the joy and excitement and the adventure in your expression.

Remember that the only thing worst than copying another person’s style or statement, is to copy yourself! When you find a formula for anything in your art, is the day your art will begin to die! How can one be creative, if one already knows the answer?

Keep the adventure in your discovery! Keep the joy, the beauty.

Some people want to make statements about the ugliness in the world ... and they spend their energy capturing the ugly, the tasteless, the sham ... that is fine. But if you want to make the world better, it is my feeling, this can only be done through beauty. For you to help others see the great world they already have around them! To help others see the beauty on an over cast day! To see the greatness, in the most mundane of elements! That is my passion! That is my reason to paint, and that is my reason to share all the things that I have gleaned from this wonderful thing we call Life!

SHAPES AND AREAS OF SPACE
• The basis of all good paintings, is a good composition. Start with breaking your format into 1/ 3rds, top to bottom and side to side (light lines between points, so it looks like a tic-tac -toe image). This will keep you from placing things in the middle, which is very difficult to pull off compositionally.

• Allow one dominate character to rule the entire painting. That is, is it a sky painting? Then give the sky the dominate shape. If it is the scale of a majestic tree, then let it dominate even the mountains that are in the distance. Is it the drama of a cloud darkening a section in the view, then capture that, and keep that value for only that area

• As with music, the spaces between are what make any painting what it appears to be! With music, it is the spaces between that makes the music, not merely the notes. So learn to see and draw the “negative spaces” to establish your forms and spaces.

• During the entire process of painting, continue adjusting your shapes, to bring them closer to the music you feel in what you are viewing.

• Always be willing to scrape paint off, if it is going the wrong direction for what you are creating. If it is too dark and heavy, or if it is too high key (light), or if a shape gets out of control, etc.

• Be willing to paint through another form, with color that will appear behind that form. Don’t paint “with in the lines”. Then, go back and repaint what you just painted over, and reestablish the edge between objects.

VALUES

• Be sure to have three major value areas in your painting. Be sure that they are of different proportions, say 15, 30 and 55% of the area.
• All 2 dimensional art or photographs ever created exist between values 1 through 10. And look at the tremendous variety of images that have been created. Just as music is not created merely by the notes, but the spaces between the notes...and the instruments used.

• Although there may be a lot of colors in any one painting, you need to keep the values very similar in the three larger value areas. That is to say, the lights that appear in the high key area, belong to that area, and not the other two value areas. The dark in the low key area should not be major values in the other two ...low and middle key. The goal is to keep the integrity intact for each value area.

• Values go from #1 black, to #10 white. I go in this direction, because in real life, the lightest value can actuall blind you at maybe a #1000!!!

• In any one painting, you do not have to have the full range of values 1 thru 10. A successful painting can also be perhaps 1, 3, 5 or 2, 5, 8, etc. And any one of these value areas can be very small in comparison to the others, and still create excitement in your work.

COLOR

• The left brain is very strong on telling you what it knows. But it really knows very little. Basics, that’s what it knows. Not nuances! SO, if you ask your left brain: what color of green am I seeing? Is it a blue green? a red green? a yellow green? Then when you decide that, ask deeper: What color blue: red blue, or green blue? what color red: fire engine red, or rose red? what color yellow: lemon or earth yellow?

• Know that nothing you really do is wrong, but sometimes there are better answers to your problem. In taking the steps to find the right answer, sometimes allowing the colors that were the stepping stones to the final choice, to remain on your format, and they may help sparkle the finish.

• The best way to see what a color is, is NOT to look at it! • Instead, look at an adjacent object, near it, but concentrated on that color area that you are interested in, then you will actually see the color better!

• Ask your left brain logical questions, and it will give you the answers! •And then go one step deeper: What color red are you seeing, a fire engine red (napthol red) or a rose red (thelo red rose)? Do this will all color choices.

VALUES & COLORS
Values & colors are like musical notes. There is not a bad note on a piano! Then why do we hear “sour note”? Sour notes happen when one note sets next to another note, where it does not belong. A good example of this is when you go to the symphony...when the orchestra is warming up, there are hundreds of sour notes.

Does this mean the musicians are off key? No. It just means that one musician’s notes are landing next to another musician’s note, and we are hearing this off key sound. That is why they need a conductor!

And that is what the artist is...the conductor, who chooses the right value and the right color, the right temperature, and the right purity of color...the right shape, the right placement...in order to create an affect, of penetrating the surface of a two dimension, to give the illusion of three dimensions...in trying to capture the truth about what we are seeing.

Wow! I finally got THE BOOK, and it looks good...I recognized most of the paintings from the workshop, and I still think #8 (trees on the riverbank) is a great and exciting treatment of something that could be very ordinary if not handled well. I think the step-by-step method is an interesting approach. You should be proud of your book, and we'll all look for it on the Amazon best seller list.
San Francisco Artist, Robert Gonsowski

I have read many art books before but yours is such a wonderful, easy to follow, informative book about painting en plein air. It is a very positive, delightful and inspiring book. I have noticed that each project differs from the previous one. You have such a fresh and creative approach when painting en plein air.
Las Vegas artist, Esther White


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