Vineyard Scenes

I used to hate painting vineyards...too many rows to mess with and they slow you down. Then I began to realise after painting a few that vineyard scenes usually have the things I like painting...deep shadows, great contrasts in dark/light due to the bright highlights on the tops of the grape plant and room to allow great sky work. They also offer the chance to work on atmosphere as well as give you a chance to work on painting distance into a scene.

Working on these paintings is really good practise in capturing all these elements in a painting so I've done a few of these now. I just recently finished 3 of them and thought it woul be cool to post them together to show the variations in painted vineyards. I am totally no pro at them yet, or with any other subject for that matter, but I am always trying to paint better paintings and this is the price for that...paint, paint, paint.

Here they are..........

Vineyard Shadows

12"x16" Oil on Canvas

Domaine Alfred Vineyard

9"x12" Oil on Canvas

Mosby Sunlight

12"x16" Oil on canvas

Foxen Canyon Field

"Foxen Canyon Field"

20"x20"

Oil on Gallery Wrapped Canvas

I saw this scene one day while driving in Foxen Canyon. That pale blue sky behind the warm earth tones got to me fast and out came my camera. Back in the studio I decided to paint it on 20"x20" gallery wrapped canvas that I had made. I think it is a very cool painting. I have been striving to get grasses painted better so this was a good excercise for that. Sometimes the loose stuff is the hardest stuff to paint. I think I'll make a frame for this one.

Oil Spill

"Oil Spill Training"

16"x20" Pen & Ink - Stippling
First off, I apologise for the terrible photo of this drawing. My scanner is once again on the blink and a photo of a drawing in stippled ink is hard to get right. This drawing of a Coast Guard cutter was submitted by me for jurying into the CG collection in December and got in. Jurying was done by the Salmagundi Art Club in NY. I've already mailed it off so no chance of a decent scan now.

I wish I had allowed myself more time to do this drawing. I had to rush on it and completed it in about 4 days. I should have done it at 11"x14" but being insane I went with 16"X20". Lots of dark fill work and the hull took forever! I'm really proud it got into the collection and hope they don't file it in some dark warehouse now that they own it.

First Serious Artwork

I just ran across this image I had scanned a few years ago. Blair High School in Pasadena was where I actually started my first serious work into art. This all thanks to Mr Gerald Garden and Vince Melie. After I got out of the army in 1979 I went to Pasadena City College. I took aa drawing class there and Mr Melie was my teacher there too. Mr Melie had been all around the world and had the stories to prove it. He was a very funny and kind human spirit. About 2 years after that class Mr Melie suffered a heart attach and passed away. I think of both of these teachers all the time still. Most of these images were paintings or pen & ink drawings with watercolor or tempera washes done in cartooning class in which I sat at a table and really did illustration work. Mr Garden would hand me an editiorial cartoon from the LA times and say "think you can draw this?" and that's where I learned the use of quill pens and my first ink work. I never saw a rapidograph until college. Sometimes Mr Garden would hand me the cover of a sunset magazine and I'd learn to paint using tempera. I did the tall cowboy with the rifle for my Dad for Christmas one year...the Jaws boat was inspired on monday after seeing the movie on Saturday night, (I still won't swim in the ocean!), that was done from memory because computers weren't around to let you look up anything and everything on the planet.

I remember the day we took this photo. I had brought all of my work home from that year 75-76 and my Dad and sisters friend told me to bring it out in the backyard and we'd take a photo...good thing, most of these have dissapeared over the years. I still have the Kissinger Time magazine cover...that was done in Conte Crayon. My Dad still has his cowboy. I also have a small editorial cartoon left too done in ink and stuff called Zippatone for shading...that's how they shaded cartoons back then for the newspapers. I can see these drawings and pretty much remember when I was working on most of them throughout the year. It's nice to have those memories. I'm now a "half a dollar" as my grandma once told me when I asked her how old she was. To me, taking this pic seems like yesterday. Hard to believe it was 32 years ago. Oh, for those of you who don't think illustration board doesn't last, I've got a piece of one with a cowboy holding a rifle on it that looks pretty damned good for being 32 years old!

Nightpainting

Well, just finished doing another painting and the session ran into the wee hours of the morning. I'm trying to catch up to all of the paintings I have not done due to life creeping up on me lately. I actually love to paint into the late night...things are quiet, no one else is awake to bother me and radio just gets better without all of the commercials. The painting on top was finished a few days ago and the one on the bottom took me a day to do. It would have been Alla Prima but I kept stopping to run errands in the car and go eat lunch in front of the tv to catch up on the campaign. I'm loving Alla Prima but I'm still at that stage where if I plan it it doesn't happen...something always stops me. Now I try and sneak up to it! Too this pic right before I went to bed because I wanted to see what the painting looked like when the lights were on it. It was late...or early, about 2AM. The top one is now dry enough for me to sign my name...that will be tomorrow for the bottom one. I try and do that before I move it somewhere else to finish drying because I'll forget until the day I need it for a show or something. So many things to remember.....

Wine Label Commission

As things were winding down at the end of the year, or so I thought, I was contacted by a local vineyard about doing a wine label drawing for them. This is an organic vineyard with a very limited production of grapes to be sold to other labels. They do however hang on to enough grapes to make a small run of their own label in various types of wine, Pinot Noir, Chardonney and a red I can't think of. For their label they choose a local artist of their choice to do their Artist Series wine label.

I drove out to the vineyard and snapped a lot of ref photos with an idea of putting their dog on the label...fat chance, about 3 previous artists did that same dog. They were at the time training a sheep dog to watch after sheep they would use in the future for mowing the grass between the rows of grapes...remember, organic vineyard. I got the idea of putting their sheep grazing in the vineyard so here is how I came up with my label.

Problem 1... it was December so no wonderful thick grapeleaves in sight. Here you can see my angle I would use with the distant mountains...the only thing in this scene I would use. This is one of the refs of the actual vineyard.

Next thing to do was come up with some cool rows of grapes with leaves. I had snapped some ref photos at another vineyard while doing a show there so I used their grapes.

Here are the vineyards sheep who posed for me while eating lots of grass....any grass!I took these images into Photoshop and put together an image that worked...sent it off to the vineyard for approval and then drew the image on illustration board in light pencil to begin inking. They wanted an oval format and I played with the values in black and white to make the image work better for their sake.

My drawing is lighter here. I tend to draw light but that's ok because in working with various printers I found the printing ink usually darkens any drawing a few values. They use the blackest ink I've ever seen for printing. I let the owners know about this and even asked them to reduce the vlaues a bit to make it look better. I didn't like the values in my original drawing...too light and it looks better notched down a bit.Here is a preview of what the label will look like. They liked it a lot. They will bottle the wine next August and release the wine in Feb 2009. A long wait but it will be fun to see the label.

Santa Barbara Streetscene

Tried another streetscene. This time one in downtown Santa Barbara close to State street. The mountain ridge with all of the houses is an area known as the Riviera. Wasn't looking to paint that but it was my background and ads more to the depth of the painting.

12"x16" oil on Canvas

This one had more detail and took about 3 days to finish. Longer than the last but there was more to learn on this one. Here is a detail of the mountains. I like the way they came out, very subtle work there and I'm liking that more and more in my work.

I like keeping some degree of detail in the distant backgrounds but also staying very suggestive with it. Balancing suggestive and detail takes work. It looks easy but it took me a while to get them the way I wanted.

Here is another detail...

Keeping from painting too tight and too detailed on the cars is something I'm reminding myself as I paint. I painted that front van where it looked pretty straightedged but then went back in and loosened it up a bit.

I think the flags look pretty cool in this painting. I don't know why the city had them up but they looked cool. Tried to keep very lose on them. The hardest part of this painting was finding the right colors for the foreground street....shadows still mess with me. Anyway, I think it came out ok for only the second in street scenes that's I've done. They really are very different types of work. Lots of new things to figure out in doing these.

Monrovia Alla Prima

I love when things go right painting wise...your colors are close, the image looks cool and more importantly, the paint tacks up like you want it to! I started this one last night at around 10 or 11 and finished around 4am. Alla Prima work can be so fun and just a fun challenge to finish with a decent painting.

Here I snapped a shot of my darks going in. The sky and base paint for the mountains was done already. I thought I'd add my darks and go to bed but you know how that goes when the painting is going good. Next thing you know it's morning.

Here is the finished painting....it's a scene looking up Myrtle Ave in Monrovia, CA. I've been up this street many times in my life. When I was a kid my Mom used to drive us to JC Pennys which was on the right hand side in this scene. My older brother had to have JC Penny t-shirts so that's where my Mom would take us. Pennys moved to the Arcadia Mall way back in the 70's but all of the buildings on this street are all the original buildings from back then. I used to work just down the street in the 90's. I've been amazed at the work of Brian Simmons who has put out some really cool street scenes in Vancouver so I thought I'd give it a try.

Myrtle Ave, Monrovia

16"x20" Oil on Canvas

And some detail shots....

(Looks like an old rambler!, hahahaha.)

Figueroa Mountains

Figueroa Mountains

8"x10"

Oil on stretched canvas

I received some Grumbacher Pre Test oil paints for Christmas and thought it was a good time to give them a try...good thing because I was out of Windsor Newton cadmium yellow pale!...my favorite yellow for making my greens with. The pre test paints work nicely and I did this one with them.
This scene is looking across the Santa Ynez valley. I just love the colors of our mountains up here. There are so many shades to them and at given times of the day they are luminous shades of blues and greens. Sometimes I think if I paint those people wouldn't believe it. I tried to capture some of that wonderful blue here...I think the intensity is a little strong in this photo but it's pretty close to this. If I painted this scene again I'd lighten the background. I worked on this one and another one at the same time. The other painting is below and you can see how light I lightened the mountains to push the distance more. When painting two paintings of the same area you tend to guage your colors off of the other painting. Fun stuff.

Deer Crossing WIP

I came across this reference photo and decided to paint a scene of it. I liked the distance of the mountains coupled with the dark contrasting oaks in morning light. I was about to paint it and then decided to try something new...add a deer crossing the road. We have lots of deer around here and so it only seemed natural to try and add one to a landscape painting.

Here you can see my initial sketch. Very simple lines of the treeline, road and the deer.I began with my sky colors and then the mountains base colors. I'll add the mountain shadows next. I've also added spots of sky color that will be behind the trees.

Now I put in my mountain shadows and at the same time fill in an area that is toweards the valley floor...fields etc...nothing exact, just suggestive work here.

I now begin adding my darks. This is various mixes of Ultramarine Blue, Cadmium Yellow and Alizarin Crimson.

It's time to put in thwe road and my mid greens. It's starting to come together now. I felt my deer looked a little low so I will move him up a bit before painting him in.This is how I will move my deer up. I first paint in the area under the deer to fill in that area.Now, I will scrub out the painted area that is still wet on the road where my new deer position will be. I use a small clean brush with turpentine to scrub the shape of the deer out. Wipe it off and soak up more of the now diluted paint until the area is clean.

I scrub out just enough of the wet paint to have a nice pretty dry area of canvas to paint in the new deer. I'm not the greatest wildlife painter so please excuse my deer. Maybe if I do a lot more deer I'll get them down better. I tried to keep good loose edges on my deer but I could have gone a little looser I think.

My favorite part of this painting is the nice contrast of the dark green oaks and the far side of the canyon mountains....nice!

And finally, the finished painting. I like it. It was fun adding some wildlife to this piece and really catching the distance of those mountains. I also like the very dark greens in the foreground which adds to the atmosphere of this painting. Trying to catch the light of the day is always a workout and there are a lot of painters who do it very well. It's always some thing to aspire to.

Gallery-Wrap Oak Frame

I have seen some paintings by a few local painters here in the valley that are gallery wrapped paintings in natural finished wood frames....I know, gallery wrap pieces are not usually framed but they sure look cool floating in a wood frame. So, I decided to make one since buying one for a 20"x40" painting I had done was between $130 and $150 at online prices....I didn't even want to ask my local framer how much he'd make one for. I bought some oak at Home Depot and cut it down to a thickness I wanted and began cutting the bevels and mitered corners. I glued and nailed it together with a new air-powerd brad gun since my old electric one couldn't handle the toughness of oak wood. The airgun made it a piece of cake to shoot the brads in. Once the glue had dried overnight I shot the brads and then began sanding. After that I wiped it down and rubbed oil/sealer/polisher to bring out that awesome golden oak finish. I mounted in to the frame and snapped pics to show you. I might make more of these later on when time permits since I have it figured out now. I'm still trying to build a workbench in the garage to work on these frame pieces but I'm backed up in painting since I've spent so much time preparing for the shows lately....all of that uis done so it is back to painting.

Featured Artist Show

I've just finished hanging the new work at the Morro Bay Art Association Gallery in the seaside town of Morro Bay, California. This will be a Featured Artist show with 2 featured artists, myself and watercolorist, Shirley Puttman. Shriley won a show when she was 16 years old and the Honorary judge was Salvador Dali, so I'm in good company.

The gallery at MB is awesome...one of the best I've had my work shown in. The members are a great bunch of people and of course if you want awesome fish and chips you can't beat Morro Bay while on your trip to see art....trust me, I know! Anyway, this show will run for the month of January. An indicator of how well the show will be were all of the great comments made by members dropping off their art for the current show yesterday. Both Shirley and I were given some hearty pats on the back. The best thing of showing your work is the positive comments from your fellow artists.

Linda and I quickly had my work up on the wall with nothing more than some nails, hammer, step stool and a tape measure. Linda and I have hung shows at out local guild and I swear we are like pros! I'm familiar with the gallery at MB so the night before we went to eat at McDonalds and I sketched the wall out and drew the way we would hang the work on a napkin...that helped a lot. We had the image in our minds and slammed it up in about 20 or 30 minutes.

The Artist Reception is next Sunday, the 13th from 1-3 PM so if you can make the drive to Morro Bay please stop by. Wine and refreshments will be served and we can talk. The address is 835 Main Street, Morro Bay, CA. (type that in on Google Maps to get directions.)

SEE YOU THERE!!!!!

WIP Above Eaton Canyon

Here is a short work-in-progress (12"x16") that allows the progression of this painting to be seen to completion. It is another painting looking up at the mountains above Eaton Canyon.

In this part I had blocked my colors working from top down. There is only color changes on the mountains and the greens and darks for the foreground foliage are a reddish undertone. This area will be in shadow.

I've now begun to add my lighter greens to the foreground here. I've also begun to shape the foreground too. I left to tops highlighted areas of the trees unpainted in the last stage so I wouldn't be painting wet on wet there. The mountains near the tree area was painted with a mix of paint and turpentine so it would tack up faster so I could paint the green highlights over the tacky paint. Still, it is better to leave your highlight areas unpainted as much as possible. Now further defining the foreground. The darks were painted with the initial block in but put in as a thin mix of paint/turps. I'm blending my lighter greens down into the dark green mix which gives the shadow effect. Blending into the darks takes away the flat look of the darks and gives them a 2 dimensional look.

Now finishing up the foreground area and adding detail to the mountains. At this point I thought the darks were too light and went back in and put in additional darks and blended again to meet the lighter areas. This really worked much better as you'll see in the finished painting below.And the finish....

Eaton Canyon

"Canyon Wall"

12"x16" Oil on canvas

I grew up in Pasadena California Which is at the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. If you've ever seen the Tournament of Roses parade on tv on New Years day the mountains you see in the background are the San Gabriels. One of the canyons below them is called Eaton Canyon. I've hiked there many times and still go for the occasional hike when I'm in the neighborhood. This scene is of the east canyon wall in early morning light.

The Cafe Show...

I forgot my camera...twice! Wanted to take pics of the show reception at the cafe and forgot to take it with me that night. Then, had to go back there the next morning and forgot to take it again! A mind is a terrible thing to train.
The show recption at the Los Olivos Cafe went better than hoped...not sales-wise, I mean we actually had people show up compared to other receptions there where no one shows up. I was more worried about that than selling. We put the word out to our artist friends and former customers and we had both show up...a nice little crowd but all the ones we hoped would have come and a few who were a complete surprise.
By the end of the night we had sold another painting which is a big relief from being there for a month and selling nothing. I have to tell you...the art is lit up at night and boy did it look good! All of those who came and saw it at my Studio Tour couldn't believe how different they looked with the lights on them.
The show will run all month and lots of people will see the work so that's a good thing. I was just happy we had those who came by make it to the show...all had a fun time talking and the cafe is a great place to have a show. I'll try and get pics later this month...at the moment I have moved back into Gallery Wrap frame maker for a friend which has been lots of fun.

Artist Studio Tour Part 3

OK...the pics I had hoped to take came out terrible so I won't post any of those. It's taken me two weeks now to get around to typing this only because immediately following the studio tour I had to get last minute things ready to move a lot of my work into the restaraunt show in Los Olivos. You'd think I would have been ready but no way. As for the tour, in the end we sold 6 paintings. 2 Large pieces and 4 small paintings. I could have sold another small one twice but I let the prospective buyers know I wouldn't sell that one. It's an earlier piece that let me know I was making good progress in my painting so I'll keep that one as a reminder of the hard work.
The money was really good for "2 days of work" and the museum sent our check within a week. The museum got 30% but I get to write their part off as a donation to the museum. This was their best Studio Tour yet and everyone is already looking forward to next years show. We were smart to cover a wide price range...not everyone was driving shiney cars. Lets face it, art is a luxury so doing work for various budgets is a smart thing to do.
What did I learn?? Next year I'll get some brochures or free hand outs for people to take home reminding them of my art. I'll have more smaller pieces ready to go. People weren't drinking wine on Sunday so I only need to buy enough for Saturday. And...I'll try and get people to write legibly in my guest book and get at least an email address! Small mistakes but learned ones.

Artist Studio Tour Part 2

10:45 PM Saturday Night.....
All of the hard work paid off. Contrary to what I was told we had visitors galore...one after another they came in and I was on my feet from 7 AM till 8 PM. Some were fellow artists and a lot were people wanting to see art. I had some really good conversations and received plenty of compliments. Sold 4 paintings and a print. People were grabbing plenty of brochures and business cards so maybe they will remember the art down the line and come to future shows.
I had planned on taking pics during the day if anyone showed up but was so busy talking and being a good host I really forgot to take any. Sorry...I'll take some tomorrow or hand the camera to someone if it gets busy.

Between 4-7 there was a show reception at the museum and lots of people showed up. An elderly man walked up to me there mentioning that he ran out of time to get to my place but promised he'd be there tomorrow so that was really cool. I talked with some of the other artists involved and they all had good days, lots of visitors and sales. Very cool! We are all in the same Guild so we have become pretty good friends who really respect each others talents and goals and support each other. That's one of the very cool aspects of being in a Guild.

Highlights of the day.....Some of my fellow Guild artists not involved in this showed up to add their support which was very cool. It was great to see retired people and 20 somethings all showing up with one thing in common...a love of art. Shows that art will always be appreciated as time goes by, even in a bad economy. Aspiring artists of various ages showed up and asked for my 2 cents which I gladly shared and we tossed ideas back and forth.

It was a good day today! Hope tomorrow goes well. Even if I don't sell a thing tomorrow, today has already made up for it.

Artist Studio Tour Part 1

I'm one of 18 artists participating in a Studio Tour put on by the Wildling Art Museum in Los Olivos, California. I have spent the last week in a frenzy to frame dried paintings, reorganize the studio, make coffee, hang work in the studio as well as the house, paint our deck, mow the lawn, vacuum everywhere, drink coffee, run errands to pick up stuff needed for everything, finish 2 paintings, do more framing, re-hang paintings, drink more cofffee and shampoo a couple of rugs...and make more coffee.

It was late Friday night but is now 1:30 AM Saturday morning,...the studio tour starts at 10 AM this morning. I wanted to get this posted before it starts. Never been in one of these so I'm going to post whatever happens Saturday and Sunday. I'm almost all set for the tour to start. I've been told not to expect a ton of visitors since I am on the outer fringe of the tour area...the next city in fact.

One artist I know last year sold 3 paintings...but she lives right next to the museum where the visitors all start out from on the tour. I heard another artist was complaining no one came to her place and she lived pretty far out there...farther than me. So, I'll see what happens but I'm not expecting a hugh turnout. The "iffy" world of art.

Here is the beginning of hanging in the studio...these are mainly pieces of mixed frames and odd sizes.

And this is when it was all set up ready to roll later that night. I'm a happy clam...tired, but happy.