How Blurry Can You Get?

Today I got the idea to see just how little detail I could get away with in a painting. This isn't a successful painting - I think that if there is very little representational definition, there has to be something else to carry the painting along. It has to be about brush strokes, or color or texture o or something. I do have to say though, that the actual painting looks better than the photo. Cameras with automatic focus have a very hard time figuring out what to do with flat surfaces to start with, and when it's a blurry flat surface maybe it only adds to their confusion. I actually did this painting yesterday, but made changes to it today. Yeah - made it even more indistinct. But I also changed two very important lines. The green triangle to the left wasn't there; it use to be just a downward-curved line, as was the small yellow patch above it. Together they made the painting look like it was a sagging hammock! Such small effects can make such an impact on whether or not a painting works.

My other painting task for today was to rework this painting from a couple of days ago. I started reworking it yesterday but after I finished painting for the day and had another look at the supposedly-finished version, I realized that those two white objects in the foreground fought with everything else in the painting, for at least two reasons. First of all, their placement drew the eye away from everything else in the painting, and the painting isn't about these objects, it's about the light behind the tree. Another reason they didn't work was that because of their scale in the painting, they couldn't be made to look like anything recognizable unless the brushwork was very different from the brushwork in the rest of the painting. Large objects in the painting - especially in a small painting (this one is 8x10 inches) - are more easily represented with loose brushwork. But this doesn't work for small objects. The rest of the painting doesn't depend on detail to carry itself along; it depends on color and texture. This works because the objects are so readily recognizable that they only have to be suggested. But the bus stop shelter and the edge of the bridge need to be more clearly defined if they are going to be recognizable at all. And there lies the problem: if they are clearly defined enough to show what they are, then they are in a completely different style than the rest of the painting. If I leave them undefined, or make them less defined, to match the rest of the painting, they look like intrusive blotches of color. So, they got the chop.

Two Paintings Today

A rainy day today, with mist and fog - bruine and brouillard, as they call it here, not to mention 'brume'. The 'br' words mean it's wet out there. In this painting I tried to capture the haziness of everything, with just the white blossoms on the nearby tree having any definition at all. The houses in the background, at the trees line, were barely visible, looking soft-edged and mysterious. I love days like this. For painting, anyway. Painting from indoors,. that is!

This is a tiny painting, 10cm x 10cm (4"x 4"). I started it after finishing the previous one, and I like it a lot more. These horizon-line paintings are my obsession, my love, because they are more about color and texture than about the subject.

Not My Usual Subject, and Not Quite FInished

Today I was out here earlier than usual and the sun was still behind the group of trees across the street from the terrace. I was taken by the brilliance of the sun, making some of the branches seem to disappear. That white glob in the center of the trees will have to be worked on after the paint dries a bit - right now any paint I try to put into it just quietly disappears. The small bus-stop shelter has to be more defined, as does the edge of the white bridge-wall on the left.

A New Day Every Day

Each morning, when I'm on my way to paint, I find myself wondering just how I will find something interesting enough to paint. It's the same view day after day, after all. And each day something catches my eye almost immediately. today it was those blossoming trees. There are more hints of white in the hedge, and a surprisingly orange tree behind them. It could be that this tree is an oak that still hasn't lost it leaves from last year, and the morning sun gives them a translucent backlit glow. The colors in this painting are actually quite different from those in the photo. Usually, I can manipulate the photo enough to make the colors look close to the actual painting, but with this one it just doesn't work. The colors are softer, cooler - much better looking! I took the photo in full sun, which is always chancy. If I get a chance, I'll replace it with a better one.

Long Shadows

Sunrise is late here in France, at least to someone who lived on the US east coast. There, we were near the eastern edge of the time zone where the sun rises about an hour earlier than at the western edge. Here, we're near the western edge of a very wide time zone. This morning, at about 8:30, the sun was just starting to peek over the treetops - hence the long shadows from these trees. I'm not complaining; I love having those long shadows to paint. And I don't have to get up very early to see them. Next week, dawn will come even later, since we'll then turn the clocks forward on Sunday. If I continue to get up a the same time (somewhat unlikely!) I can paint pre-dawn scenes.

This painting was done on a toned ground, a medium shade of muddy brown, because this was done with all the paint I scraped off the painting of two days ago. I do like working into a toned ground; it just seems to make everything come together cohesively. The colors I used in this painting were just ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow medium and a tiny bit of carmine. And white of course. I also like working with a very limited palette. If I put out too many colours, I don't know what to do with them!

Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you

And some other times, you sit down with the bear, drink coffee, swap gossip. This morning was one of those times. A lovely day, a painting that wasn't much of a struggle. Life is good! Those white bits at the right of the line of bushes are fruit trees just starting to blossom. These are just a few in a hedge, but all around here there are large orchards of the same sort of trees (apricots and plums) most with white flowers, some with pink. They're just starting now but in another week I think they will be spectacular.

Painting, V. 3.4

This painting was certainly not one that just 'flew off the brush'. By the time I finished it, or more truthfully, by the time I gave up, it started to feel like many software projects I've worked on - endless spec changes, rewrites, re-thinks. The painting started out as lush and thick, with lots of brushwork (That was Version 1.0) Then it started to get muddy and ugly. (V. 1.2 - 1.6). Then I went at it with a palette knife (V. 2.0) This looked good, lively and exciting. Then it started getting messier and messier (V. 2.1 - 2.4). So I scraped off everything but the sky and went back to a brush for Version 3.0 through 3.5. Than I just stopped. But it was an interesting morning and very much in line with an article I read this morning about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the language you grow up speaking can influence the way you think, how you perceive things. People from the pormupuraaw Aboriginal community in Australia don't organize objects positionally with ideas like right or left; they position everything by cardinal directions. The salt might be east of the pepper, the wheelbarrow south of the large stone, the bowl of potatoes north northwest of the peas. (href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-language-shapes-thought">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-language-shapes-thought) Well, I realized, as I was blundering along, that painting seems like that too. When I'm thinking of thin, hazy layers of paint I see things as soft and calm. When I pick up the palette knife, everything I look at seems livelier, edges seem to gain more importance, more weight. But, all in all, this was an interesting painting to work on, but not all that interesting to look at. Maybe I'll change my mind about it in a few days.

Sloshy Paint

This was a lot of fun to paint. I started out with thin layers of blurry paint and then somehow kept adding more and more. What fun!

A sunny morning

When I sat down to paint this morning, I was thinking 'What can I find to paint in this same scene?' And before I knew it I was painting and loving what I was doing. I'm finding it fascinating painting the same subject over and over, and one of the things I wanted to explore in doing this series is the ups and downs of getting to know a subject so closely. I figured there would be times when I would think there was nothing left to see, nothing new. But I think those times are the most important because you then start seeing things differently, more closely. I don't think this will show up in any obvious way in the painting itself, but I'm enjoying getting this close to the scene in front of me.

Irish Weather for St. Patrick's Day

A very Irish day - lovely mist on the fields of soft green. Although the weather improved as the day went by, I'm glad it was so soft and lovely this morning. This painting is on plain white canvas, no toned surface, but the greys and greens just leapt from the brush onto the canvas. I'm having a great time with oils. (For today anyway - you artists know how this goes!)

Irish Weather for St. Patrick's Day

Linen Canvas

Today I decided to use the small unbleached linen canvas I found when I was rooting around in my studio a couple of days ago. Wow! I love working on this color surface. It helps give unity to the applied colors, which I usually do by toning the canvas before painting. The think paint method seems called for here. I wanted to use the color and texture of the surface, and that would all be lost if I just smeared think paint all over it. I'm off now to see if I can find any other canvases like this one.

Thick and Thin

OK, here's the paintings from the day before yesterday. They were dry enough to put back onto the pochade box to have their photos taken. The first one is done with thin paint, soft edges - sometimes softened with my fingers. (The color is a bot cooler and softer than it appears here. When I took these photos, the clouds had rolled in so they're still not great.)

This next painting is of the same scene (what a surprise, eh?) but painted with thick paint, slathered on. I don't usually paint this way, but oils seem to lend themselves to this method. It does give a more lively feeling to the painting.

Getting the Feel of Things

Lots of fun painting this little guy. Yesterday, while puttering about in my not-usable-in-winter studio, I came across some 20x20m stretched canvases, and one already had gesso (Blogger spell checker does not recognize that word - it does recognize gestapo. Go figure.) Anyway, I had applied gesso to that canvas and it made a swirly, textured surface to paint into, something I love. I also decided to face a slightly different part of my view, and take in one of the trees in the field across the street. I'm starting to have fun with oils - it was fascinating coaxing the paint, and the seemingly unwilling brush, into making those fine lines for the tree branches. And then they were just a bit too hard edged so I very gently touched them with a delicate fan brush and got something close tot he effect I was after.

I have two more paintings to add, both done yesterday but I wasn't able to photo them. one of them is done with very thick paint and is impossible to move from its position on the floor until it has dried a bit. The other is thinner and, well, it just doesn't want its photo taken; I'm sure of it. Maybe later this afternoon they'll both come to their senses and pose properly for the camera. Today's painting was easier to photograph because I can hang stretched canvases on a convenient little nail in the terrace door. There's a bit of glare from the sunrise behind me, but at least it's a photo.

Rain, Wind, More Wind

No sunshine today. We woke to mist and drizzle and whistling wind. A very good day to have a lovely terrace for shelter while painting. I'm still feeling my way around in oils, sometimes using thicker paint, sometimes going back to thinner, even doing finger painting - because sometimes a brush just doesn't work. I painted this around 9 in the morning. It's now 8PM and the wind is just starting to quiet down. I have to admit that I find these windy and rainy days much more interesting to paint than sunny days.

Morning in Nojals

Back to painting today. There was a lovely sunrise, with just a bit of mist hanging over the fields. Great inspiration. Here's the first painting.

This painting pretty well mirrors the colors as I saw them. I was intrigued with the grey color of the houses, the color and the mist making everything look soft and mysterious.

This second painting is in a way an accident, a surprise. When I had finished the first painting, I started to use up the rest of the paint on my palette just to tone a canvas. Well, it was so much fun I had to turn it into another painting!

In both of these paintings, I'm working more like the way I work in acrylics, in thin layers of color, each merging into the layer beneath it. I do love the look of thick, lush oil paint but somehow my hand just keeps doing something else. And I prefer this more abstract approach to landscape. The actual details of a scene aren't usually whet makes it appealing to me. It's the interplay of color and shapes that fascinates me. I suppose I might as well go with it, huh?

Morning in Nojals

Back to painting today. There was a lovely sunrise, with just a bit of mist hanging over the fields. Great inspiration. Here's the first painting.

This painting pretty well mirrors the colors as I saw them. I was intrigued with the grey color of the houses, the color and the mist making everything look soft and mysterious.

This second painting is in a way an accident, a surprise. When I had finished the first painting, I started to use up the rest of the paint on my palette just to tone a canvas. Well, it was so much fun I had to turn it into another painting!

In both of these paintings, I'm working more like the way I work in acrylics, in thin layers of color, each merging into the layer beneath it. I do love the look of thick, lush oil paint but somehow my hand just keeps doing something else. And I prefer this more abstract approach to landscape. The actual details of a scene aren't usually what makes it appealing to me. It's the interplay of color and shapes that fascinates me. I suppose I might as well go with it, huh?