Setting Priorities

9x12 Sketch of Oak Creek - SOLD

If you like the painting above, check out the others in my 

Daily Paintworks page or on my website.

I just put out an announcement on my personal Facebook page that if friends want to contact me, they should do so by e-mail or phone.  Why?  Because I have reset my priorities and will be spending much less time on Facebook.  Facebook was stealing time away from more productive and satisfying activities.  (I won't go into "Facebook envy," but yes, that is part of it, too.)

For me, life is most satisfying when I create.  Facebook, like most social media, is not a tool for creation.  The clue is in the word "social."  Facebook is for networking and keeping up to date with friends and family.  But in my mind, creation is best done in solitude and without distraction.  Imagine if God had had Facebook.  Would the world have been created in just seven days?  I doubt it.

I, like many working artists, had the false hope that Facebook would help me make sales and earn students.  After several years on it, this has yet to happen.  I know many artists, and not a one of them has told me Facebook has helped them professionally.  Better for me with both of these tasks is my blog and my website.  From now on, I'll use Facebook just as a place for announcements.  You'll see my blog posts show up there, as well as other interesting news, but I will no longer be "liking," "unliking" or commenting on the picture of your latest painting or poodle.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not giving up on friends and family.  I cherish my time with them, and I may still engage with them on Facebook in a limited way.  But time spent there with friends and family is not quality time.  And even though I am a very disciplined person, Facebook simply offers too many distractions that take me farther away from the people I love.

As a self-employed artist who wears three hats - painter, instructor, writer - setting professional priorities can be tough. Mine now are:

• To improve my blog and web site so they are better tools for education and for selling my work; 
• To spend more time on larger paintings for shows and awards; and 
• To become a better painter by improving areas where I am weak and challenging myself where I am strong

And, oh yes, and probably write another book this year.  Who's got time for Facebook?

Light and Time of Day

What's the best time of day to go painting outdoors?  In some ways, your own diurnal rhythms should dictate that for you.  For example, I am at my most energetic in the mornings and can paint up a storm, but in the afternoons, even just lifting a brush can be a chore.  Other painters I know do their best work in the evening hours.

But we should also listen to the sun.  Because the sun is always in motion, the quality of sunlight varies constantly, and there are times when the quality of this light is better for painting than others.  Photographers like to talk about the "golden hour" - the hour right after dawn and the  hour right before sunset.  Objects illuminated by sun at these times seem to be richer in color.   Everything is awash with a golden light, and the world can look quite magical.

It's a great time to paint, if you are quick.  Blink, and it is gone.  For some reason, the sun always seems to move faster in the early morning and in the late evening.  (It has to do with refraction, and with light bending as it passes through the lower, thicker and denser part of the atmosphere.)  It doesn't take long after sunrise for the world to lose some of the magic and start looking dull.  In the evening, of course, the light just keeps getting better and better - until, that is, the sun drops below the horizon.

The sun seems to move the slowest in the middle hours of the day.  By then, the shadows are small and few, so there's not much contrast, and the color, being affected by the sun's cooler aspect at that time of day, is less rich.  As you know, strong contrast and rich color are two essential tools in the outdoor painter's toolbox, and without them, it is difficult to build a good painting.  We call this "flat lighting," when the sun is high and everything seems washed out.

There is a compromise, though.  You can get reasonably good contrast and color between the "golden hour" and the middle of the day.  After sunrise, I like to wait an hour or so until the sun has slowed down a bit and the shadows aren't changing so fast, and then I paint for two hours.  In the afternoon (if I can lift a brush), I try to get out maybe three hours before sunset.  I may paint all the way to sunset.  It's always a risk when I do though.  I make sure to get some good painting done before then and move to a much smaller canvas to capture the end of the day.

I remember a workshop I participated in several years ago.  Students and instructors were all staying in common lodging and dining together.  After dinner, just before sunset, one student, who'd had a bit too much to drink, became vocally enamoured of the gorgeous sunset and announced she simply had to paint it.  The moment she finally managed to get her French easel erect, the sun and all of its beautiful color vanished.  Some things just aren't meant to be painted but savored by the eye alone.

I created the above graphic to illustrate the concept.  Feel free to share it with attribution!

Plein Air Painting Workshop Update: Snow in Red Rock Country

6x12, View of Ship Rock oil/panel.
I will get better photos of these and post them at Daily Paintworks
for auction later this week.

Snow comes to Sedona only a few times a winter, and usually it only lasts a day.   This week, however, we had a widespread storm that even dropped significant snow in Scottsdale and Phoenix.   Luckily, I had advanced students who were eager to paint snow.  Cold weather was no problem for the students from Washington State and Taos, New Mexico, and even the student from Phoenix brought warm clothes and did fine with it.  I wore several layers myself - turtleneck, fleece jacket, down vest and down parka, plus corduroy pants, glomitts and what L.L. Bean calls a "Maine Warden's Hat." I stayed toasty-warm.

Snoopy Rock as it is not often seen

Happy, warm students.  We did not build the little snowman; it was already there.

View from the Cultural Park

We had two different types of snow days.  One day, snow squalls drifted over Sedona, obscuring most of the red rocks.  It was an opportunity to figure out how to handle soft edges and subject matter that could simply vanish - and then reappear - without warning.  The other situation was snow on a bright, clear day.  This was a chance to learn how to paint snow in shadow and light.  The trick with snow in shadow is that it must be dark enough to read as shadow but still be light enough to read as snow.  When I run into situations like this, I try to push the brightness of shadowed snow as much as I can but also try keep it in shadow.

On our stormy day, while waiting for things to warm up (it never really did), I did a quick pastel demonstration of Chimney Rock from our studio window. Next, we headed up to Sedona's Cultural Park where there was shelter and a panorama with the Cockscomb butte, Doe Mesa and Bear Mountain in the distance.  I did another pastel of the scene, plus a little oil sketch.

5x7 pastel sketches:  Chimney Rock (top), Cockscomb (bottom)

Cockcomb oil sketch (6x8) on paper.  I did the whole painting in
Torrit Grey (Gamblin) and then added hints of color to "colorize" it.
The vertical lines showing through the paint are an artifact from another
project (this was a scrap piece of paper), and I will eliminate those later.

On the sunny day, we headed right out to paint, even though the temperatures were lower.  We knew that if we stood in sunshine, we'd be comfortable.  We wanted to get closer to the rocks, so we headed up to the Sedona Heritage Park where we had a nice view of Steamboat Rock and Ship Rock.  I did three little paintings there.  The third one, which features an Italian Cypress, is an odd piece, but I needed that cypress to give a proper sense of distance to the rocks.

View from the Sedona Heritage Park

9x12, oil/panel

12x9, oil/panel

My Alla Prima Pochade box

We'll still probably have a few days left of snow on the rocks.  Later today, I'll be taking a beginning plein air class from the Sedona Arts Center out to paint some of it.  Lucky for them, it won't be anywhere near as cold, but we'll still have some snow to paint!

From the Mailbag: Luminous Water

Oak Creek Ripples, 12x9 pastel
Available at Auction!

A reader writes:  I entered a juried pastel show recently and saw a pastel painting that interested me.  It was a  painting of rapid water flow, as one would see during a spring run-off of water over boulders and small rocks in a stream. What interested me about the painting was the luminosity of the water. On close inspection, I could not detect anything, but perhaps was it an acrylic overlaying the pastels that represented the water?

Having not seen that particular painting, I can't speak to it.  I can, however, speak to the luminosity of water in general.  The illusion of luminosity has to do with contrast - but not just value contrast.  You need to consider temperature contrast, as well.

In my painting above, the water sparkles and seems to glow from within.  Part of it does have to do with value.  The sun "diamonds" on the water are the lightest value in the painting.  I made sure that I kept that in mind and keyed down all the other values in the piece.  If you look at the sun diamonds and compare them to the value of the water, you'll note that the water is significantly darker.

Additionally, note the water itself and the colors within it.  I've varied the color from blue-green to red-orange.  These are not only color complements, but they are temperature complements, too.  The red-orange reads much warmer than the blue-green, leading to a luminous quality.  (The French Impressionists discovered this principle.)  By the way, the orange color is due to sunlight reflecting off the creek bottom - not an uncommon sight in the "Red Rock Country" of Sedona, Arizona!

In case you're interested, this little pastel painting is available at auction at my Daily Paintworks store.  The auction ends in only a few days!  Click here for the auction.

The Importance of Drawing - New Video Short

I've created a new video short, called The Importance of Drawing.  Even if you don't see any straight lines in the landscape, angle and proportion are important - and that's what drawing is all about.  In this short video, I tell why.

Also, my new Artists' Network University online plein air workshop starts this Tuesday, February 19.  For details and to register, please visit the link.

And don't forget my ongoing online self-study workshop at Udemy!  It's only $15 for the Plein Air Essentials - the Basics course.