Apple Trees & White Paint

As a painter, I spend a certain amount of time waiting for things to happen. Followers of my blog and members of the online art forum, WetCanvas, have heard all about how I waited for my apple trees to bloom. When they finally did bloom -- weeks later than I thought they would -- I launched into a frenzy of painting.

I also wait for paint to dry. The common ironic phrase, "as exciting as watching paint dry," portrays it as a boring task. Lately, however, I've taken great interest in watching paint dry. The reason has to do with the color white. There's a lot of white in apple tree blossoms.

"Apple Tree, Big House & Fog" 8x10, oil, en plein air

I was surprised at how long some of these apple tree paintings took to dry. Some of them, nearly a month done, are still tacky to the touch. The problem has to do with a switch I made in my white paint.

I've been a long-time fan of Permalba white. Soft and easy to squeeze out of its plastic tube, it worked well for me. However, in cold weather, I found that it becomes stringy. Recently, my tastes have changed, and I think its generally-goopy texture also makes it hard to control for detail work. So, about the time I started the apple tree paintings, I decided to mix my own white.

I had in stock a tube of Grumbacher titanium and another of Grumbacher zinc white. I think the titanium, which is nicely opaque, is also too stiff, and the zinc, though buttery, is not opaque enough. I reasoned that by mixing them, I could combine the best of both.

"Apple Tree & Fog" 8x10, oil, en plein air

And therein lies the problem. Both of these whites are slow-drying -- especially the zinc white. I was using a 1:1 mixture of zinc and titanium. Less zinc and more titanium would give me a mixture that dries slightly faster. However, to make it dry as fast as Permalba, which has a length of drying time I'm used to and comfortable with, I'd have to add a drier. Lead white wouud work, as it dries very quickly.

At any rate, I have not found a satisfactory mixture. I don't particularly want to add yet another component to my mix, such as an alkyd resin or a siccative, either of which makes paint dry so fast you don't have time to get bored. Doing so would mean carrying yet another bottle out to the field.

The answer may not lie in finding a satisfactory mix, but in learning to live with the goopiness of Permalba or the slow drying time of my own mix. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, I offer my two, still-tacky-to-the-touch apple tree paintings. (As always, you can click on the image for a bigger version.)

(Don't forget about my new book, Through a Painter's Brush: A Year on Campobello Island. See my website for details.)

Boats as Large Value Masses

One concept I stress to my students is the importance of simplifying the landscape into large value masses. This concept is easy to understand, but when you're looking at a pure landscape -- that is, one without buildings or other manmade objects -- it's sometimes difficult to see where one mass ends and another begins. What helps is to find a landscape with manmade features in it. Manmade features typically have sharp edges and well-defined shadows that make the job easier.

Lately, I've been painting a pair of fishing boats tied up to the North Road wharf. One problem with boats in a working fishing village is that they tend to come and go frequently, especially when you're trying to paint them! Fortunately, these two seem to be permanently docked. However, that doesn't mean they are motionless. Our big tides push them up and down, changing the perspective dramatically in just an hour. When I'm painting boats, I use small panels (5x7 or 6x8) and limit my time to an hour. Even so, the perspective changes enough in that hour that I must capture the large value masses accurately in 5 minutes or so. I use the rest of my time fine-tuning color and detail.

In these two paintings, my subject is the same pair of boats with slightly different compositions. The time of day (light angle) is the same, and since I painted them on two consecutive days, the height of the tide and thus, the perspective, are similar. You can see how I focussed on capturing the large value masses. Using manmade objects made it easier.

"Red Boat, Blue Boat" (6x8, oil/panel, en plein air)

"Red Boat, Blue Boat #2" (5x7, oil/panel, en plein air)

(As always, you can click on the image for a bigger picture.)

Also, if you haven't heard about my new book, Through a Painter's Brush: A Year on Campobello Island, it is now available. For more information, please see my post on it. You can get to it by clicking here:
http://wheezard.blogspot.com/2007/06/through-painters-brush-year-on.html

Through a Painter's Brush: A Year on Campobello Island

I'm proud to announce that my new book, Through a Painter's Brush: A Year on Campobello Island, is in print at last. As many of you know, I've spent the last year painting all over this Canadian island and across the border in neighboring Lubec, Maine. My book is a compilation of the paintings and of my observations on the painting process as they relate to this grand adventure.

I wanted to write a book that offered useful advice without ending up as just one more art instruction book. I also wanted a book that offered a bounty of paintings for the collector's eye without ending up as just one more "coffee table" book with very little textual reference. So, I've created this book to please both student and collector.

Through a Painter's Brush has 144 pages filled with over 100 images -- 75 paintings of maritime scenery complete with detail shots and illustrative photos, two demonstrations in oil and pastel, and, of course, my meditations on plein air painting.

The book is available currently in softcover and also as a download, both from lulu.com.

Price of the softcover is $30 and the download, $20. To purchase the book, please visit the following link:

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=788542

You can also see a preview of the book at:

www.michaelchesleyjohnson.com/html/book.htm

I look forward to hearing how you like it!

Michael

mcj.painter@gmail.com
www.MichaelChesleyJohnson.com

Apple Tree with a View

"Apple Tree with a View" 9x12, pastel, en plein air
(click for larger image)

If winter begins late, often spring does, too. For a painter, a late spring can be a trying time.

When the last snow finally melted, the robins, who had been lurking about most of the winter, came out in droves. The grass suddenly sprang up green. The first, tentative catkins appeared on the alders, followed by the red maple flowers. Waterfowl we hadn't seen in a year suddenly dropped anchor in our bay, filling every dawn with their squawks and pipings. And the apple trees finally showed a few green leaves.

Old-timers here say that when the apple trees bloom, the Island is at its prettiest. I really wanted to paint them at their fullest. The grass grew taller, and the fellow who mows our dooryard said he'd be firing up his tractor soon. Still no blossoms. The weather warmed, and fiddleheads popped up. The daffodils came and went. Raspberry canes thickened with the green of uncountable tiny leaves. Still no blossoms, and the leaves of the apple trees swelled, unfurled and cloaked the limbs. I began to despair that the trees would not bloom at all.

But then the right day came, and our rambling orchard of hundred-year-old apple trees exploded into white.

Color Temperature

Most beginning painters hear about "color temperature" at some point in their education. I did, and it seems a simple concept. Blues are cool; yellows and reds are warm. But, as we all learn, temperature relationships can be a great deal more complex.

For example, temperature is relative. A certain blue next to a certain yellow may appear warm or cool. The rule we learned in our early days is, in fact, more an exception than a rule. Another example has to do with light and shadow. Some painters stick cool blues and purples in shadows as a matter of course, perhaps on the assumption that shadows are always cool. Personal experience does show that it can be 10 degrees cooler in the shade on a hot summer day, but this has nothing to do with color temperature. Sometimes the sunlight is yellow and warm, and we do indeed see the shadows as purplish and cool. But at other times, the sunlight has a cooler quality, more of a yellow-green, which pushes the shadows into a warmer, reddish-purple. Further complicating the issue is cool skylight, which can bounce blue down into the shadows. And what if you have a warm color, such as orange tree bark, in the cool shadows? Life can get quite complicated for a painter.

Lately, I've been keeping color temperature foremost in mind while doing 5x7 oil sketches. I've figured out a sequence of steps so color temperature works for me and not against me:

• Determine whether the sunlight is cool or warm
  
• Verify that the shadow is the complement (and if it's not, re-evaluate the sunlight)
  
• Once determined, stick with your determination
  
• Push the color relationship (that is, if the light is cool, make it more so, and make the shadows even warmer)
  
• Finally, objects in light or shadow, regardless of their inherent warmth or coolness, must always share the temperature (that is, orange tree bark in a cool shadow should be made cooler than you think it is)
  

By the way, to make colors warmer or cooler, here's what I do. First, I use a split-complementary palette and arrange my colors spectrally, from yellow to red to blue. Then, to make a color warmer, I find where it sits on my palette and then move toward "warm" and add a bit of the color right next to it. So, for example, if I want to warm up my Alizarin Crimson, I add a bit of Cadmium Red Light. The same goes for cooling, only I move in the other direction. to cool Alizarin Crimson, I'll add a bit of Ultramarine Blue. (If a color is as warm as it can be, and I still need it warmer, I will cool down the color adjacent to it on the canvas. Temperature is relative.)

Here are two sketches I did this week. It's springtime, and the sunlight at mid-day, which is when I painted them, is definitely cool. I pushed the temperature relationships to emphasize this and the warmth in the shadows. (As always, you can click on the image and see a larger version.)

"Flat Water" 5x7, oil

"Appletree, Birches & Bluets" 5x7 oil

Post Script: After writing this essay, I had someone ask me for a demonstration in pastel of the same approach. Here, by request, are two pastel. First, Cool light, warm shadows:

"Spring Greens, Dark Firs" 5x7, pastel, en plein air

Now, warm light, cool shadows:

"Maple & Dandelion", 5x7, pastel, en plein air