Blog
8/31/2018 1:59:27 PM
I just spent another fantastic week at the Clearing in Door County. It was a class on figures and faces taught by Frankie Johnson from the Mainstreet Art Center in Lake Zurich. She is one of the best teachers I have ever had. We learned how to put crowds of figures into a painting, how to measure properly to paint faces, how to paint figures and blend them into the backgrounds so they don't look like cut outs pasted on a painting. And we had fun. I have been going to the Clearing for painting classes for 15 years, and every year is wonderful. Here are some of the studies I did this year.
9/21/2016 2:38:46 PM
I have been painting in oil for a couple of years, but last week I brought out my pastels. I was a little rusty, but it was fun and it reminded me how much I enjoyed painting with pastels. My friend Sue Flanagan and I went to the Bobolink Picnic area in the Cook County Forest Preserves. This is the result. I think I will stick with pastels for a while, I need the practice.
9/6/2016 1:02:35 PM
"Sterling Lake" is another plein air painting I did recently. Sterling Lake is in a tucked away corner of the Morton Arboretum, one of my favorite places to paint. It is kind of off the main road, and pretty isolated. It is also beautiful. I will never get tired of going to Morton to paint and I don't think I will ever get to all of the "paintable" places there.
8/27/2016 5:21:16 PM
I just finished a fantastic workshop with one of my favorite painters, Bonnie Paruch. It took place at the Clearing in Door County Wisconsin. The Clearing is a folk school and staying there is like a retreat for adults. It is quiet and peaceful, there is no TV, radio, newspapers or WiFi on campus and your cell phone barely works. It couldn't have been more wonderful. You are also fed fantastic meals and all you have to do is spend the week doing what you came there for which could be anything from painting, woodworking, poetry writing, learning about local geology, or making stained glass items. They have different classes every week all summer long. Bonnie is a wonderful teacher and I finished four paintings while I was there. We also had a great time socializing and drinking wine.
7/30/2016 11:42:27 AM
I have been meaning to post this for a couple of months. We got back home at the end of April, but it took a while to get around to posting about the Plein Air Conference. I think it was because none of these paintings could be considered "finished" and I hesitated to put them online. But then I decided to just go ahead and do it.
I had a fantastic time at the Plein Air Conference & Expo in Tucson with my painting buddy Sue Flanagan. We stayed at the beautiful El Conquistador Hotel in the Catalina Foothills north of Tucson. It was billed as the "World's Largest Gathering of Plein Air Painters." There were 900 artists attending the Conference. In the mornings and early afternoons there were talks and demonstrations by world famous artists. In the late afternoons we all went outside to paint at various locations. I have painted many Arizona desert scenes, but only from photographs, never from life. It was a wonderful experience. I brought home about six or seven paintings. None of them are finished paintings, only studies. But they can be used as references for future finished paintings. A few of them may become "wipers." I'm still deciding if it is worth saving them or just wiping them down and painting over them. I will post some of them today, and will decide later if I want to post the others.
This first painting was the view from the patio of our room. I could get used to seeing this view every day.
This image is from Catalina State Park where we painted on the second day.
The next day we painted it was at Picacho Peak. I was trying to paint the saguaro cactus against a background from a whole different direction. I am not sure that was very successful.
Then that evening Sue and I went outside to the area around the parking lot and painted some prickly pear cactuses that were blooming.
I think this is my favorite of all the paintings we did that week.
I have a few more paintings from that week, but I am not that happy with them. It is very different painting in Arizona. The atmosphere and colors are different, shadows are sharper. I think I needed another few weeks there to really get familiar with the differences. But I am very glad that I went. It was an amazing experience.
1/23/2016 8:38:11 AM
This is the first painting I have done from a photo in a long time. At first I was kind of frustrated, since photos don't begin to compare with real life. However, since I am stuck at home with time on my hands, I decided to make the best of it. I am pretty happy with the results. I think all the painting from life I have been doing has really helped me improve my skills.
1/19/2016 10:28:18 AM
I guess I can't exactly call this painting a Plein Air painting. I originally painted it outside at Morton Arboretum, but when I got it home I really didn't like it. I threw it on the discard pile and left it there for a couple of months. Now that I have a lot of free time on my hands I thought I would see if I could improve on it a bit. Well I ended up entirely reworking the whole thing. The composition is totally different. I added the path on the right side, and a lot more of the foreground than what was there originally. I like it much better now, but it isn't really a plein air painting any more. Oh Well.
1/17/2016 6:21:38 PM
Well, I'm up to September. Crabtree Nature Center was painted during the Art In Nature event in Barrington on Sept. 20th. About 50 artists participated by setting up easels on the nature trails there and painting while the public walked around watching them paint, while eating good food and listening to some great music. This was the second year I participated in this fun event.
1/16/2016 12:40:03 PM
We went back to Lake Kathryn again a week later. As I said, there is always something interesting to paint there.
I had to fine tune this one before I was satisfied with it.
1/15/2016 10:28:45 AM
A few of us went to Lake Kathryn in Palos Heights to paint. It is a lovely place and easy to find a subject to paint. This is a view of the lake looking west.
