Plein Air Weekend Show

Just a reminder to those who live in Southern California. I will be plein air painting this weekend down in Temecula at the Falkner Winery. The public is welcome to attend this big wine shindig and there will be several artists painting away both Saturday and Sunday. There will be an artists reception on Saturday so please come by and hang out, talk shop and enjoy some wine!

Thomas Van Stein Lecture

Under The Hunters Moon

I had the good fortune tonight of attending a lecture on Nocturne painting with Thomas Van Stein. The lecture was at the Wildling Museum in Los Olivos, CA. I had been waiting for over a month to go to this event. The wait was well worth it. Van Stein spoke about the history of nocturne painting while presenting a slideshow of nocturne images, some of which I had not seen, images by Turner, Whistler, Van Gogh, Frank Tenny Johnson, Rembrant, Remington, Granville Redmond and a host of others were shown. Van Stein also presented images he had painted in France and along the California coast.

Thomas Van Stein with demo painting on the left and one of his framed works on the right.

After the presentation was finished we all went outside where Van Stein had his easel set up for a demonstration of nocturne painting. This was great and allowed us to see how Van Stein works his magic. Van Stein chose this night as it would be under the Hunters Moon. Earlier in the evening before sunset the moon had risen and was quite the sight to see. I took this photo from the backyard shortly before heading over to Los Olivos for the presentation. The Hunters moon was showing it's dominance over the landscape and why so many of us artists are drawn to painting it in our nocturnes.

Van Stein was very gracious and allowed us to ask any questions we wanted while he painted. The painting was completed in about 30 or so minutes to a level he deemed enough to finish off the small details later in the studio. I was amazed at how fast he was able to block in color and then refine the painting all with a minimum of light. Van Stein uses two book lights mounted to the easel and a Maglight mounted on the cap he wore. After the demonstration we all went back into the studio to see the painting in better light. Here is a close-up of the Demo painting...not a very good photo because you can't see the detail and color work in it. Sorry about that.

It was a beautiful brightly lit night that was perfect for this demonstration. I had a great time and was able to speak to Thomas who is a very cool guy. I learned a few things and saw some deadly nocturne paintings in his presentation so it was a very good night. I wish I had remembered my camera in the car to show more pics but I was busy drooling over the nocturnes.
Click here to see more of Van Steins Work

Wet Canvas Carrier

9" X 12" Wet Canvas Carrier

made from scrap pine lumber

I'm tired of placing a wet painting in the car trunk or on the floor of the car and hoping like heck something doesn't fall on it or it flips over. I decided it was time to get a wet canvas carrier. I went online looking for one and found that they run around $60 for a 9" X 12" model....with that I wandered down to my garage to see if I had any scraps of wood to just make one...I did so I headed off to Ace Hardware and bought the needed hardware, hinge, hasp, handle and feet...the last two aren't neccesary but cool to have. Cost was about $10. After a fun afternoon spent in the garage building it I can give you 50 reasons to build your own. Note....a table saw helps immensely.

A wet canvas carrier is basically a box with strips of wood inside used to keep your paintings seperated while transporting them. I made my box to carry wet panels made from 1/4" masonite that are covered with canvas. This is what I normally paint on. You could make your box to carry whatever you paint on. I'm pretty sure that Ray Mar panels are thinner so you'd have to adjust the spacing for that if you paint on Ray Mar panels.

The box was made from a sheet of 1/4" scrap wood for the sides, bottom & lid and 3/4" for the ends that have the strips glued and nailed to hold the panels. If I did this again I would have made the top out of 3/4" because it would have made nailing on the hinge and hasp a lot easier. I took a wide sheet of wood and thined it down to 1/4" thickness and then cut the strips for the inside first. The strips are cut wider than 1/4 so it will make it easier to get my fingers on the panels when removing them from the box. It is also better if these are wider so your nails or brads have plenty of room to go through the wood strips without splitting them.
The piece of wood with the divider strips is 3/4" thick and 4" wide. The length was cut just over 12" long to allow for panels not cut exactly at 12". Once you build these two ends you then put in a panel and that tells you how wide your sides will need to be cut. To get the length of your sides you just add the thickness of your lid and bottom to the length of these end panels. My ends were just over 12" so I add the bottom (1/4" thick) and the top (1/4" thick) and you come out with just over 12, 1/2".

Sounds technical but once you build your end panels with the thin divider strips everything else is just measured off of that. It is a lot easier to build it than it is to describe it. Fun project.

Sort of Plein Air, well.....

I had to go with Linda to Santa Maria today. She's been doing a lot of driving lately so I decided to drive her up there and take my plein air gear with me. It has been windy lately and I didn't have much time to get loaded up so I just grabbed a small painting box I had. I would paint inside the truck to avoid the wind. I used to take this box with me when I used to sit (work at for the day) the galleries. It's small, light and only lets you hold the basics. That's important because you can take way too much gear with you at times. For a quick, easy, no fuss painting I take this box and prop my canvas on the lid. One of these days I'll fix it so it holds a 9"x12" in there securely.

My plan was to paint while Linda was inside of the place she needed to go to up there. We figured she would need an hour or more so that gave me time to do a simple painting. Turns out where I parked the truck there was nothing of interest to me....the side of a house across the street, the back of a hamburger stand, an intersection and part of a parking lot. I like urban art scenes but I don't paint them very well and didn't feel like it was lesson time given the short time available to paint. Instead I used my memory and plunked this one down in a little over an hour. This was where I had to stop since I had to give her back her seat. The wind had her hair looking like it was possessed.
Linda came out before I could add detail to the trail and flowers, some shading on the mid ground so I did that once I got home. I painted this sitting in the passenger seat and using only imagination for reference. I'm still working on painting better grasses and this was a good one to work on that....also gave me more practice with the oak tree. A fun little painting, not really a plein air painting, but something constructive to pass the time while waiting for Linda. Here is the final painting.....
"Wildflowers"

9" X 12" Oil on panel

Kalyra Vineyard

Kalyra Vines

12" X 16" Oil on panel

This vineyard runs along the south side of the Santa Ynez valley. Below the vineyard run the Santa Ynez mountain range seen here in the distance. I tried to paint this one Alla Prima but everytime I plan on doing an alla prima that never happens...things pop up that need taking care of etc....in my opinion, you need to sneak up on alla prima work, hahaha.

Anyway, this one is more practice for the show down in Temecula next week.

Santa Ynez Ridge Scene

Late Poppies on the Ridge

12"x16" Oil on panel

Thought I'd try some more rock fun. I still think mine never turn out as good as most other painters' rocks. I have seen some rocks that I just drool over. I really think it is a mental thing when there is something you paint and you can never seem to see it as being ok. I tried to keep my edges soft so the rocks don't appear to look like Colorform rocks, in other words, having that pasted on look. When the edges of rocks are too sharp they look as if they were cut out of a magazine and glued onto your canvas. Another thing I tried to do with these rocks was not to mess with them too much. I've done rocks in the past where I tweaked them nonstop for 2 days because they didn't appear right to me. I put down my shadowed areas of the rocks and then just added the highlights and blended lightly for a very short time. I think my downfall in the past with rocks was just repainting them over and over...never being satisfied with the rock appearance.
Well, enough about my rocks because I could whine and whine all day about them.

Nocturne, The Wee Hours

"The Wee Hours"

9"X12" Oil on panel

I painted this one about 3 weeks ago but couldn't get a good photograph of it at the time to post. I finally gave it another try and this will have to do. It's pretty close to the paintings actual colors.
This was just an attempt to try out Thalo Green to give that nice greenish look to the night sky. They had a very cool Nocturne show at the Wildling Museum in Los Olivos last November and there were a few paintings with this greenish touch. I loved the look of that and wanted to try it out. There was a painting by DeWitt Parshall titled "Night Near The Village" that beautifully used this greenish color in the background night sky. I tried hunting on Google for a picture of the painting to post here but couldn't find one. If you ever see it you'll love it.


Parshall went much darker with his foliage which appears almost black in the painting. I'll try one like that down the line too.
At this show was a painting by Charles Rollo Peters, "Mission Santa Ynez". It was first exhibited by Peters in New York in 1899. I live about 5 minutes from Mission Santa Ynez so it is really cool to have seen that painting and think about it everytime I go to the mission to take reference photos.

The Deep of Night

"The Deep of Night"
9" X 12" Oil on panel

Had to stop painting for a few weeks due to needing to do chores around the house. Life creeps in from time to time and you just have to stop painting and get things done. I was also putting together a book for my Army Reunion and another book that I'm waiting on before I speak about that one. The Army Reunion book came out great. The guys are gonna love it.
To get back into the swing of things I decided to do another nocturne....good thing too because because I was rusty. I've been painting lately with Lukas 1862 paints. Their Cad Yellow Light is the closest Cad Yellow Light to match Windsor Newton Cad Yellow Pale. The bonus is it's about 1/3 the price of WN CYP. Actually, the Lukas paints are pretty good and I'm still trying their mixes out....pretty darned good so far. I also entered a Lukas Paints painting contest and won a gift certificate to Jerry's Artarama Artist Supplies....very cool deal!
I decided to go very dark on this one since I really like dark nocturnes. The painting is lightened here to show the detail...it's actually darker IRL. I added the trail at the last minute to spice it up a bit. Fun little 9x12.