Sedona Plein Air Festival - Day 7

As I mentioned before, I spent yesterday adjusting my paintings and framing. "Adjusting" consists of putting the unframed painting up on the easel and looking at it for a bit. Sometimes nothing is needed; sometimes the painting would benefit from a few extra strokes. I may add darker accents, correct some highlights, smooth out a brush stroke or two - minor stuff. If I had to put a percentage on it, I'd say that at least 95% of the painting is done entirely in the field. I know of very few artists who never touch a painting once it comes indoors.

For the festival, I painted a total of 10 pieces, not including today's Quick Draw piece. Six of these made it into the show. The other four I deemed needing more work than I wanted to put into them. They've been stuck in a box awaiting future consideration - they'll either be adjusted or recycled. For the six that made the cut, I had to give them a number from one to six, with one being, in my mind, the best. (A very tough and somewhat arbitrary decision, once you've picked the six that deserve frames.) The staff will take my top three and put them in the Patron's Gala tonight; the other three will serve as backups as the top three sell.

I delivered the paintings to the Festival last night - what a relief! On your first day, you always wonder if you'll even paint three good ones, much less have ones good enough to serve as backups. I'm happy with the paintings I did this week. Now I'm getting ready for the Quick Draw event. The 30 artists will converge on L'Auberge de Sedona along Oak Creek this morning. A 10 a.m., a virtual gun will go off and the artists will start. We'll paint furiously until noon, and then we must frame and deliver the wet pieces to the ballroom by 1 pm. The public is, of course, invited to the Quick Draw.

The Patron's Gala starts tonight at 6. Tickets are $125 each. This is your chance to get first pick at the paintings, and to experience some really good food courtesy of L'Auberge de Sedona! Awards will be given out then, too. The Gala is at L'Auberge, down by Oak Creek. If you don't make the Gala, paintings that don't sell will be at the Public Sale, which runs Saturday (10-6) and Sunday (10-3). The Public Sale is at the Sedona Arts Center. I hope to see you at one place or the other!

Here are my six, framed, and then are closeups of each, from #1 to #6.

#1: "Moon Over Sedona" 9x12, oil

#2: "Edge of Ruin (La Victoria)" 12x16, oil

#3: "Red Rock Sycamore" 16x12, oil

#4: "Secret Canyon" 12x16, oil

#5: "Road to Mingus" 12x16, oil

#6: "Snow Over Jerome" 9x12, oil

Sedona Plein Air Festival - Day 5, Continued

I promised I'd take a picture of the last painting I did in Jerome as the snow came down. After toning the canvas with a light wash of blue in the sky and orange in the foreground, I went right in with the knife. I needed to speed things along, as a snow squall was moving in. This morning, I spent some time making adjustments. This is on a Raymar canvas panel, 9x12.

Last night, William Scott Jennings, a master at painting mountains and canyons, gave the keynote lecture at the Sedona Arts Center for the Festival. The topic was "From Plein Air to Studio." It was probably one of the most informative talks I've heard. Scott's an excellent painter and teacher, and I enjoyed listening to him. It was a multi-media experience - a slide show ran behind him as he spoke, and we also got to see some plein air pieces and larger, studio pieces first-hand. (See http://wsjennings.com for his paintings.)

Typically, he paints small in the field - 8x10, 9x12 - with the intention of gathering reference material for the studio. Rather than create finished paintings, he studies light and color. Rather than try to capture the entire length of a mountain range with all the detail, he paints just a small section. This will have enough information in it so that, supplemented with photos, he can create the whole range on a much larger canvas. Studio pieces typically run six or eight feet long, and he can finish such a painting in about three weeks.

Like most plein air painters, when he paints the field studies, he works quickly, eliminates as much detail as possible and keeps to large shapes. For each shape, he mixes what he sees as the average color and value. Then, he permits himself to "model" each shape by adding two more values, each a half-step from the original. Each of these new values must also be a different color. So, if the shape is a dark purple, he'll add perhaps a slightly lighter green and a slightly darker red. (Not his example, but mine. I'm not sure if he shifts the color in a color-wheel sense or chooses random color.)

I'd always wondered how someone paints a really big studio piece. Scott actually starts with a grisaille. After outlining the paintings few large masses, he blocks in the shapes with grey values and a brush. The early stages of the step-by-step progressions he showed us had only two or three values and very strong designs. This greyscale underpainting serves as a roadmap and keeps him from getting lost in the design. Next, he moves to color, applying paint almost exclusively with a knife and making sure to make his color mixtures match the greys in value. He says the knife automatically creates suggested detail through "random accidents" with the paint, something almost impossible to do with a brush. He also likes to build up the paint into impasto as he works the foreground, increasing the sense of distance in the painting. In addition, whereas in field sketches he limits himself to three values in a shape, in the studio piece he'll expand this to as many values as needed to model a shape.

Scott also addressed how to develop a style. Rather than try to change your natural tendency to handle brush and paint in a certain way, it's more effective to change your materials. For example, a knife will give you a much different style than a brush, as will working on smooth panels instead of stretched linen. In developing your own style, he says, it's helpful to analyze a style you admire as a product of the materials used. As an example, he pointed out how his work has changed since he started using a knife for the large paintings.

As I said, it was a wonderful lecture. Maybe Scott is working on a book.

Sedona Plein Air Festival - Day 5

Dawn came with clear skies. Where was the predicted snow? After a hike up Sugar Loaf, I drove down to Jerome for our "Day in Jerome." To entice the artists, the local restaurants were offering us free lunch, and the town, coffee and snack goodies. The coffee was especially welcome - the temperature was barely tickling 40, and the wind was gusting. Some of us regretted not bringing gloves, hats and heavy coats. Fortunately, I'd brought a wool cap, my glomitts and a down vest. But my view required that I work in the cold shade rather than the warm sun, and I regretted not putting on my long underwear!

I painted one of the several bordellos in this old mining town. (For those of you who don't know Jerome, it is built on a 30-degree slope, and at one time it sported 13 hotels, 21 bars and 8 bordellos.) "La Victoria" had a store on the first floor and rooms on the second. Today, it's a beautiful ruin with a glass studio out back. (http://rakugallery.net/LaVictoriaGlass.asp)

"La Victoria" 12x16, oil (not finished - tweaks to follow)

While I painted, clouds swept in, and by the time I finished, the sun was gone. The wind threw a snowflakes across my palette. I packed up and found other artists packing up, too. The skies did look threatening. Several of us headed to the Mile High Grill for lunch. Here's a photo. From left to right: Ken DeWaard, Carolyn Hesse-Lowe, Scott Prior (behind Carolyn), Bill Cramer, Jill Carver, Joshua Been, Cody DeLong.

After lunch, it looked like the snow was going to pass. I headed down the street to set up my gear, and ran across Jill Carver, who was back at work on the piece she'd started before lunch. She'd very trustingly left it up on the easel while we ate. Here's Jill in her winter outfit, plus a photo of the painting. She continued to work on this beautiful piece after I left, and I'm eager to see it in the show.


I had just enough time to do an 8x10 oil before the snow really started coming down. I knew I didn't have long, so I used a palette knife, which made the work go much faster. As I write at home this evening, the light has gone, so I'll take a photo of it tomorrow. Tomorrow is my "tweak and framing" day. I have to everything done - tweaked and framed - and delivered by 6 p.m.!

Sedona Plein Air Festival - Day 4

Morning came early with a 7 a.m. breakfast provided for the artists at the Sedona Heritage Museum. Since it was only 41 degrees, I chose to take an hour for breakfast and coffee. By 8, though, the sun had risen and things were heating up. I chose to do a vista of Ship Rock from an angle different from what I did the other day. Clouds began to spill in, and by the time I'd finished, the nice highlights on the rocks had vanished. Fortunately, I spent most of my time working on the peaks and captured the effect.

I was a little puzzled as to what to do with the foreground. I wanted it soft and fuzzy so as to not detract from the sunlit peaks, but I didn't want it to be so soft and fuzzy that it looked like a three-week old peach. My friend Betty Carr (www.bettycarrfineart.com) set up her easel beside me, and I asked her advice. Betty's a teacher, too. "Betty," I asked, "if this were your painting, what would you do next?"

She liked the painting very much and was at the brink of saying "Nothing." But then the foreground caught her attention. One of the trees made an unfortunate tangent with a bit of light on the main sunlit peak, and she suggested I move it left. I did, but I can see now that I did so without success. So, this one will need some work still during my "tweaking" period.

After lunch, I watched Clark Mitchell (www.cgmitchell.com) give a pastel demo, and then I went over to Windrush Gallery (www.windrushgallery.net) to do a demo for John McCullough. The sun had totally vanished by then, the wind was gusting, but I did a nice little piece with a theme heavy in the violets and cool greens. I'll try to get a photo of that tomorrow.

Sedona Plein Air Festival - Day 3

In anticipation of the wind that we're supposed to get on Tuesday and the possible snow on Wednesday, I think everyone pushed themselves today to get a lot done. I did three paintings. First, just after dawn I headed up to the end of Jordan Road and did a small painting of Ship Rock. After a short break at Pink Java (coffee and danish with panoramic views of red rocks to infinity), I went to the Arts Center to give a demonstration. Both of these paintings were 9x12. Finally, after a lunch event in which we met with the M. Graham reps, who gave each artist a goodie box of free paint, I headed down to Red Rock Crossing. It was getting hot, and I thought it'd be cool down by the water. Well, it wasn't. So, I literally turned my back on the water and discovered this beautiful sycamore tree in the shade. I turned it into a 12x16.


I then headed home to freshen up for the Artists' Reception and the opening of the Showcase Gallery. Each artist brought a few paintings, either plein air or studio, to hang in this gallery, which will be up all week so the public can see samples of our work. I finally got to meet William Wray, an artist from California whose "urban blight" paintings I really admire. (www.williamwray.com).

So far this week, as each painting comes off the easel, I've been putting it right into the box, out of sight, out of mind. I have yet to critique them to see what adjustments need to be made. This is an essential part, in my mind, of the plein air process - reflection. But I have to invoke the right state of mind for this, a state of mind that can be created only by quiet and a cup of coffee. I'll do this on one of the bad weather days. If a painting needs a few tweaks, I have no compunctions against doing that in the studio.

By the way, tomorrow (Tuesday) at 2 pm is my painting demonstration at my Sedona gallery, the Windrush Gallery. It is in the Garland Building at the end of the bridge on 179, just past the Tlaquepaque plaza. Hope to see you there!