123 Tree! Demo

                  Detail of a painting from 2010

There, a eucalyptus tree. Well, the way I like to paint them right now anyway which is not to say you can't paint them any other way. I'm still evolving with my trees with each painting too. This demo I took from a painting done in 2010, and sold to a good friend here in the valley, shows basically a 3 step process I use quite often for trees.

Step One....the basic tree shape is blocked in with the dark shadowed colors. I like to use a mix of ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson and just a slight bit of cad yellow light or pale. for this reddish dark color it would be like UB 40%, AC 55% and CY 5%.  I always throw in a bit of cad yellow. The more cad yellow you add the greener it becomes.  Try to paint the darks of the tree as thin as possible so the paint can tack up some. If you are working alla prima then try and paint just the areas where the darks will be seen and leave other areas for the lighter colors.

Step Two....you can do this 2 ways. Add a lot more cad yellow to make a lighter mid value green out of your dark mix or just mix up a new batch of mid value greens. I do it both ways. If I am adding to my dark mix I try and save some of the dark mix for later touch ups if needed. Work from the top down and let the dark colors blend into the mid value mix. This fades the light colors into the lower areas of the tree and the shadowed side of the tree.

Step Three....either add more cad yellow to your mix or mix up a brighter yellow/green for your highlights. This is added just where the sun is really hitting the tree. I like to add some yellow ochre too in spots. Yellow ochre gives you that great olive drab color which is perfect for oaks and eucalytpus trees.

 Lastly, I add the trunks using pinkish whites, greys, tans or even light pale blues. At the tops of the trunks I add a little more ultramarine blue to give them shadows as they disappear under the foliage. Gives the trunks a nice realistic look and sense of tree shape....branches causing shadows. Also, add skyholes. Trees are rarely solid masses except in the distant background trees and at times they even have some skyholes. I always save some of my sky colors just for this purpose. Shape your skyholes to line up with some of the trunks to make the trunks believable. Actually, you are creating shadowed trunks and branches with the skyholes. Just imagine the trunk or branch shape and paint one side of the skyhole and then the other leaving the dark trunk or branch in between them. What then appears as trunks or branches are actually just your darks of the tree that you painted in Step One. It's all an illusion that makes sense once the painting is finished.

There are many ways to paint trees. There are many color palettes and paint combinations you can use. A popular one to use is blue or even dark green shadows....cool colors. I've done those too if I'm not using a warm color like my dark red here. They say there are no rules in art right so you could use any color you wanted as long as it is dark....I tend to use the reds, blues and greens depending on my overall palette of the painting. My foreground grasses in this painting were warm ochres so I went with warm shadows. Had the grasses been spring or winter greens I'd go with cooler shadows like green or blues. This is in keeping with the color harmony working in a painting. Whatever dark you use make sure your other colors have just a hint of it in them to work the color harmony.  Dark grey shadows...mix grey greens for mid values and lighters greys to your highlights....it's possible, anything is possible when you paint.   
        

Painting and Pen & Ink

Before I painted I used to work mainly with the pen & ink medium. I was fond of the stippling technique and most of my drawings were large pieces...up to 18"x24". That's kind of an insane size to work with considering the small pen nib sizes I used. Stippling is the process of applying single dots of ink one at a time with a Koh In Noor Rapidograph pen. The ink work is usually done over lightly drawn pencil lines used as the guide for the artist to follow. I enjoyed pen & ink work. It's hard on my eyes now but I've loggged thousands of hours dotting away quite happily.

The effect of stippling is much like printed images you see in the newspaper....halftone images, a reprographic printing process, is simply an image being formed by dots of ink creating toned images which I call value images. If you want to better the values in your painting do pen & ink work...you'll see values easily after that.

When I started with pen & ink there were not a lot of art instruction books out there for it. Wanting better compositions I turned to reading painting books. Composition is composition so it worked for me. As for colors you just insert values. One thing about your point of interest is putting it in the right place and then directing the eye there. I had a drawing of a boat that really illustrated this point well.

Here is the initial point of beginning the drawing. Tha man working on the boat was my point of interest. That area should have the darkest darks and lightest lights.

 Continuing on, I began to fill in the rear elements and foreground area....keeping the foreground boat just a bit lighter in value.

Now it was time to finish up and adjust things along the way. You can see how the dark line of the rubber bumper leads right to the figure. The dark edge line of the shadow in the water leads to the figure as well as the nonskid deck surface doing the same. These linear paths leading to the figure help to establish the point of interest. The values kept stronger and darker in the area of the figure draw the eye there to to discover that man working. The foreground boat would normally have the stronger darks and lights but for this drawing with a midground POI the values were kept much lighter in the foreground. It worked.  

You can get very nice control of your values using rapidgraph pens...these are technical ink pens that can be reloaded and used over and over. Many artists today are now using throw away type pens since we now live in that state of mind. Good ones to buy for that are Pygma Micron pens which have acid free archival inks.
My favorite pen....Koh In Noor's Rapidograph which comes in different pen sizes and are refillable.

Goodbye Mr Guthrie

Leon Guthrie and me....

I've put art aside for a while because my heart really isn't into it at the moment. My Dad passed away peacefully from cancer a few weeks ago. My Dad lived a long good life. Like any son I can say my Dad meant the world to me and guided my life. My Dad provided for me as a child and was there for me when I became a man and ran into life's curveballs. My Dad believed in my art and helped me to love working with wood as much as he did. My Dad taught me how to appreciate Big Band music as well as Country music. My Dad came from humble beginnings and lived a humble life. Although my Dad never served in the military he appreciated that I did and was proud of me.

My Dad sort of forced me into playing football. He told me either I play or he was going to take me to the barber and get my hair cut. I signed on to play and they cut my hair anyway. My Dad was also clever. I now, and forever, was glad I played football. My Dad was wise.

My Dad made sure that 8 kids had a home to grow up in. He got them through school, sports, took them camping, fishing and fed them. My Dad did all of this and a lot more by simply going to work everyday and being there for all of us.
Later in my life I was going through my divorce and my Dad was there for me. 

I'm fortunate that I wasn't a kid who didn't get along with his Dad. I talked countless hours with my Dad over the years and was always amazed at how much he knew. I was handed down my Dad's wood working tools and will think of him everytime I walk into the garage...that of course will be when I'm not busy thinking of him all the rest of the day. Good work Leon.    

US Coast Guard Art Exhibit - Coos Bay

My painting above will be part of the US Coast Guard Art Exhibit at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay Oregon. This show will feature 18 COGAP artists and 12 of the artists are members of COGAP from the west coast. COGAP, US Coast Guard Art Program, is comprised of many professional juried artists living across the US who donate their work to the program to show the various missions performed by the US Coast Guard.

The Coos Art Museum is a great looking museum and has many diverse shows throughout the year. I strongly urge any of you that can get to the museum to stop by and see this show. 
Show Date - Aug 3 to Oct 5, 2013.

Coos Art Museum

235 Anderson Ave. Coos Bay, Oregon

(541) 267-3901 

Waterscapes, California Art Club Show

"Waterscapes", is the current running California Art Club show at the beautiful Altadena Town & Country Club. This show will run from May 24 till September 17. June 6th from 6-8pm is the Artists Reception. I was fortunate enough to have my painting, "Stream In The Arroyo", juried into this show. Yahoo! There looks to be some seriously good pieces of work in this show so if you are close to Pasadena please try and go see the exhibit.

The Altadena Town & Country Club, 2290 Country Club Drive, Altadena, CA  

Santa Barbara Show Extended

 

"Eaton Canyon Fall"

20" X 24" Oil on Canvas

The "Shared Visions" show at the Divine Inspirations Gallery in Santa Barbara has been extended until July. This is a PACC members show and all of the artists have brought in new pieces to spruce up the already great looking show. If you are in the Santa Barbara, CA. area please try and drop by the gallery to see the exhibit. This is a great looking show by the members of PACC.

Divine Inspiration Gallery of Fine Art

1528 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA.

805-962-6444

"Young Mission Olives"

12"x16" Oil on Panel

Another one from the Santa Inez mission paintings. This one painted while we still had a bit of Spring lingering around the valley. These trees are young trees so they don't have the typical look of olive trees seen in most paintings. I painted them young as a matter of record. One day the olive trees will be mature trees being picked every season and I'll paint them again as a matter of record. The fun part of these paintings were painting in the mission on the bluff. From this angle you can't see the parking lot in front of the mission so it has that old look and feel to it. 

Mission Santa Inez Olives Paint Out

Had a lot of fun painting down at Mission Santa Inez today. I arrived around 8:30 and met up with the other 4 artists from the show at the Elverhoj Museum to paint the mission olive grove....or any other scene we wanted to do. Eventually we had about 16 or more artists painting for the day so that was a lot of fun. I was surprised that all of the green grass that was here a few weeks ago was now long gone and replaced by summer colors. I wanted green for the mission painting. You can see from above that I went with the summer colors while I was there but I think I like a painting I did this past week in the studio with green grasses.

I had done another painting with green grasses from a reference photo taken a few weeks ago that was very similar to this so it was still in my mind.
Linda came down with some lunch for me so that was cool. She got to be cameraman while I painted. Lots of bugs down there landing on the painting but no biggie. I think painting later in the afternoon would have worked better since the winds kicked up and it got much cooler....plus the light is better then. 
All in all we had a lot of fun but it got hot around midday. I was ready to head home by then. We all ate our lunches and joked and then headed out. Here are some pics of the day....

 

Santa Maria Path

"Santa Maria Path"

16"x20" Oil on Canvas

I got the idea for painting this scene when I had to go up to Santa Maria for a physical. I'd been there before and know that the clinic is right across the way from the Santa Maria airport. There are wide expanses of fields there with large eucalyptus trees. This scene here is looking away from the parking lot of the air museum there. There is a road that crosses where the path winds into the distance behind the foreground trees but I left it out since it doesn't add to the scene, just crosses the field back there. I liked this scene for the strong contrast between the distant trees and the foreground trees. This painting was done alla prima which means in one sitting. Really fun painting.

A detail of the tree in the foreground......

Mission Santa Inez Paint Out Event

Would You Like To Paint ???

Artists invited to “Paint Out”

at Santa Inés Mission Mills complex on April 20

Elverhoj Museum of History and Art invites artists of all mediums to bring their art materials for a “Paint Out” at the historic Santa Inés Mission Mills complex on Saturday April 20, 9:00am to noon. This is a special opportunity to learn about the history of the site, meet area artists, and document the beautiful site located below the Santa Inés Mission.

Artists are invited to sketch, paint, make a color study or photograph the site for future work. An optional brown bag lunch and discussion will follow the Paint Out.

Artists Peggy Brierton, Ron Guthrie, Renee Kelleher and Carol Wood will be working on site and offering their support and guidance upon request. Each of these four accomplished local artists displays their diverse visions of the Santa Ynez Valley in the current Elverhoj exhibition, “The View From Here.”

The property is part of the Mission Santa Inés National Historic Landmark District and includes olive groves, an historic grist mill, a fulling mill, and the beautiful Alamo Pintado Creek corridor with the Santa Ynez Mountains as a backdrop and the Mission in the distance. “With wildflowers dotting the olive groves, this historic site is an artist’s paradise in the spring.” says Elverhoj Executive Director Esther Jacobsen Bates. “And as Aldous Huxley wrote, ‘The olive is essentially a painter’s tree.’” 

The Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation (SBTHP) manages the 39 acre property on behalf of the California State Parks and is in the process of developing a public use plan. The Paint Out is a collaboration between The Trust and Elverhoj.

The Mills property will be the subject of an upcoming juried art exhibition at Elverhoj. An open call for entries and exhibition specifics will be released in early summer. Interested artists can email info@elverhoj.org to be added to the list to receive a prospectus and entry form.

The Paint Out is free for Elverhoj members, $10 for non-members. Reservations can be made by phoning Elverhoj at 686-1211, or via email to info@elverhoj.org.

Imagine That!

Above is an image of a plastic model of a WW2 ship. When I was growing up I built dozens of models...the USS Franklin, Titanic, Queen Mary, P51's, P47's, P40's, B17's, B24's, B25's, Lancasters, F4F Phantoms, Sabres, the Saturn 5 rocket (a 5 ft tall model!)....not in a million years would I have ever guessed that one day one of my paintings would be displayed on board one of these ships...in real life! But low and behold, yesterday I received an email from the Coast Guard of what paintings in the collection would be displayed during the 2013 year. One of my paintings titled "Capsized" is going to be displayed aboard the USS Yorktown which is now a museum in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina from the later part of May till the early part of June in conjunction with the Spoletto Festival activities.
....And can it get any better than that? But of course! Turns out that Linda's Dad served aboard the USS Yorktown when he was in the Navy. Sometimes it is really cool being an artist. 

The 4 paintings that were juried into the Coast Guard Art Collection this year will be on display at the Salmagundi Club in New York May 26 through June 14 as part of the Inaugural Exhibit.

Another painting of mine, "Surf Training", will be part of a show at the Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay Oregon,  August 2 through September 28, 2013. Yahoooooooo!

Shared Visions Show Reception

Sometimes a show reception can just go bad from the beginning! Well, not really the show reception. The show reception down in Santa Barbara was beautiful. It was held on Santa Barbara's First Thursday Art Night so that meant a lot of people would be coming to the gallery...and they did. The Divine Inspirations gallery was pretty much packed all night. As you can from above I took my camera to take a few pics but most of the shots are horrible because there were just too many people to shoot a good pic. No, what went wrong was with me.
On monday morning after hanging the show I was driving back home and could feel myself coming down with a cold. By tuesday I had chest and sinus conjestion. I wanted to cancel going to the show but it was our groups first time showing together and I was also commited to delivering a painting I had sold to a couple back in September who were going to the show. I felt horrible. When Linda and I got home I had a 103 degree temperature.
The couple showed up to take their painting. I love that painting, a desert painting I did back in August on 1x3 ft luan panel. I called it the "Song of the High Desert" since it captures the dusk lighting in California's Mojave desert not far from Lancaster and near the foothills of the San Gabriels. I was happy to finally get that painting to it's new owners. I received a wonderful email this morning about it from them so it was worth the trip and misery of being sick. The show was great and our group received lots of great compliments. I ran into artist Dan Schultz who is one of the artists from my gallery in Pasadena, Galerie Gabrie. His wife and their son were out enjoying First Thursday. It was good to see Dan again.

        "Song Of The High Desert"

Santa Barbara Show Reminder

 

Artist Reception

Thursday, April 4, 2013 5-8 PM

Shared Visions PleinAir & Studio PACC Show

at

Divine Inspirations Gallery

1528 State Street, Santa Barbara, CA 

Phone : 805-962-6444

Show runs April 4 - May 31 2013

This is an absolutely gorgeous show by members of PACC. We hung the show on Monday morning

and the quality of work is hands down gorgeous! The 6 artists of PACC brought out some outstanding pieces of work. If you are in the Santa Barbara area please come to the artist reception on Thursday. You will really see some outstanding work.

PACC members Sheryl Knight and BJ Stapen busy hanging the work.

Just about ready for the show, this is a wonderful gallery in Santa Barbara.

Santa Barbara News Press Review

Art About the There There

IN 'THE VIEW FROM HERE,' THE CURRENT EXHIBITION AT SOLVANG'S ELVERHOJ MUSEUM, LOCAL ARTISTS PRESENT THEIR PERSPECTIVES ON SANTA YNEZ VALLEY

Josef Woodard, a News Press Correspondent.
March 29, 2013   

           This is an excerpt from a review of the Elverhoj Museum of History and Art show I am currently in titled "The View From Here". The show consists of paintings created by 6 local artists and how each artist interpretes their view of the valley in their art. The show is wonderful thanks to the calibre of the artists and each of them has their own take on what we all see in our daily lives here in the valley. I was very happy to be asked to be a part of this show.
  
          "With the show truthfully titled "The View from Here," six area artists take on the subject of the "there here." What emerges is a sense of place via landscape painting, of six individual sensibilities at work. Along the way, the show roughly tells the story of this Valley's continuing evolution over the years.

Entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted dramatically by the tall, vivid presence of Ron Guthrie's "Morning Sycamore," on the far wall facing the entrance. But the same artist also shows a more unusual painting just to the right of the door, "Mission Santa Ynez Bluffs," a happy convergence of hillside, trees and yonder foothills, a poetic pact of light and composition. Mr. Guthrie also impresses with the vertical tree study "Majesty" and the peaceable atmospherics of his "Storm Clouds Over Adobe Creek."

The rest of this very good review on all of the artists is availble to read in the "Scene" section of the SBNP paper...cost $2.50 to read if you are not a subscriber, sorry.
...a very cool review of the show Mr Woodard, thanks!

Old Mill Road Sycamore

"Old Mill Road Light"

12 X 14 Oil on Canvas

Not far from Mission Santa Ynez stands an adobe grist mill that was built in 1820 by a Bostonian named Joseph Chapman. Chapman had travelled here with a pirate named Bouchard. When they arrived here the pirates, along with Chapman, burned down the Ortega Adobe at Rancho De Refugio. Chapman was arrested and tried and sentanced to a firing squad. Eventually Chapman was parolled to Mission Santa Ynez. Chapman was a master builder so he built this grist mill and another duplicate of it at Mission San Gabriel. I occasionally go down to this mill and take pictures. Along the way there stands this old eucalyptus tree with many twisting branches. I like how the morning light played across this tree and cast long shadows across the mill road.

The old grist mill, now a Santa Barbara historical site

,

  

Shared Visions Show

Shared Visions Plein Air & Studio Show 

A group show of Plein Air Painters of the Central Coast Apr 4 - May 31, 2013

 I will be part of the PACC show "Shared Visions, Plein Air & Studio" show at the Divine Inspiration Gallery of Fine Art in Santa Barbara, CA in April. The show is comprised of 7 Central Coast artists who paint plein air and of course create paintings in the studio. PACC was formed this last Winter and we have had several group paint outs. All of the artists have participated in various shows with each other over the years but never as a group. Each member has a their own unique way of painting scenes of the Central Coast and we saw a really nice balance of those styles when forming the group.

The artists reception will be on Thursday, April; 4th from 5-8pm at the gallery. If you are in the Santa Barbara area please come and enjoy some great art by some fine artists. I'll be there showing my paintings of mostly works depicting scenes of the Santa Barbara area. Should be a lot of fun!

A Sycamore

"Sycamore"

24" X 24" Oil on Gallery Wrapped Canvas

I painted another scene with this same tree that is now hanging in my living room continuing to dry in a pretty snazzy frame. When I finished that painting I had cropped a couple of detail photos of it. One of the detail photos was very similar to the scene in this painting. I decided to crop again from my original reference photo, based on the previous cropped image, and used it for this painting. I also had two 24x24 cnavses I had painted yeyars before that I was never happy with and didn't bother to varnish so I sanded one down and painted over it reusing the canvas.....there is a lot of that going on considering this wonderful economy we're in. Funny, I mentioned to another painter down in Pasadena that right after Christmas I went through all of my old paintings and pulled ones I decided to paint over to reuse the good canvas and she had done the same thing in her studio! Apparently I'm not alone in making ends meet.

I'm really enjoying painting sycamore trees with their spotted bark and scraggly branches. Their bark reminds me of Winter camouflage the military used to use. I wish now that I had taken more reference photos of these trees this last Fall since I've been painting so many of them. I'll have to wait until next fall. In fact, next Fall I will go out to paint some sycamore scenes plein air. Should be fun. Even though this is one Gallery wrapped canvas I'll probably make a nice oak floater frame...or maybe just an oak frame to pop it in...should work nicely like that. I'll wail until it dries to touch and then paint the sides a dark color in case I go with the floater frame.

Santa Ynez Valley Inspired

Valley Evening

12x16 Oil on panel

Continuing my fun with trees, namely eucalyptus trees, this is another Santa Ynez valley inspired painting. The only drawback to this looking more like the valley is the pinkish violet mountains. Ours usually turn a bluish color with pink highlights along the ridges. Still, these scene reminds me a lof of the valley in late afternoon light as the sun goes down over the Santa Rita hills to the west of us. Threw in the little trail here and added some birds....the birds came along because this morning I was thumbing through an old Walter Foster book written by artist William Palluth and he used birds a lot in his paintings, thank you Mr. Palluth. I liked the way Palluth painted his foliage and grasses. If you ever come across some of his work or one of his old books take a look, you'll enjoy the paintings of his.

Here is a detail shot of that nice looking tree to the left......fun with trunks!

Trail and Trees

"Trail To Evening"

8"x10" Oil on panel

Working in the same vein as the previous painting to try slight little variances. I'm still messing with getting my trees to look right. I like to trying things out, playing with shape and color, lighting etc. Always something to learn and workout and I've yet to be satisfied with any of them, haha.

Some details of the painting.....

I like the trail and wish I had raised it up higher. I'm worried the frame edge will cover too much of it...oh well, live and learn.

  

A Santa Ynez Scene

"Evening Colors"

8"x10" Oil on Panel

The Colors of Evening Light

I have driven around this valley so many times in the last 8 or 9 years that the colors in the evening are made permanent to my memory. It always amazes me how rich evening colors become and for only a short while before it is too dark. Artists refer to this period as the "Golden Time". In this painting I wanted to try painting that time but just as it is about to end and go dark...it is really the last bit of light the sun gives the day. Once that sunlight is beyong the horizon all that is left for we brief moment is a subtle glow and then all colors become muted and dull. This, of course, happens everywhere each evening and one only has to go outside and wait for it to happen. When I worked in the Los Angeles area I would see it happen usually sitting in LA traffic. It was a brief moment to forget the congestion and racing the clock to just get home. It is one of those gifts nature gives us that gets forgotten or overlooked by most too busy with their daily grind.

A detail of the painting....