A Christmas Present for the Rurally-Inclined

"Plein Air" (detail))

"Plein Air" 650cm x 505cm, oil, by Ramon Casas.
In the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya , Barcelona

If you're like me and prefer living in the wide, open spaces, you may find it difficult to get to a good museum. I love looking at art, but frankly, a lot of the art I see is either in magazines, coffee table books or in tiny, highly-pixelated images online.  It's rare when I can view good art in person.

So here's the Christmas present for the rurally-inclined.  It's called the Google Art Project.  GAP has over 36,000 pieces of art, many of them in ultra-high resolution.  If you're the kind of museum-goer who is always told by the guard to step back from the paintings, this is an opportunity to get inches close to the canvas.

In the painting above by Ramon Casas, I zoomed in as far as I could on the tabletop arrangement of bottle, glass and hands.  You can see every brush stroke!

From the Mailbag: Brushes

Recently, a reader asked what brushes I use.  If you look through the art supply catalogs, you'll see an overwhelming variety of brushes used for oil painting.  You can get rounds, flats, filberts, riggers, fan brushes and even brushes tailored to create little marks that look like leaves.  You can get them made of synthetic fiber or natural fiber such as sable, hog, squirrel and possibly even catamount.  You can get them with long handles, short handles and also very short handles that will fit into your pochade box.  There are almost as many choices for brushes as there are for paint colors.

Well, I like to keep things simple.  I use natural hog bristle flats, period.  The flat is incredibly versatile.  With it, I can make wide strokes, thin strokes and dots.  I can scrub on paint vigorously, or I can let off the gas a bit and make delicate, twig-like strokes.  As the flat wears down to more of a filbert shape, I can make very soft, blended passages.  Also, the natural hair seems to have a more gentle "spring" and fits my style of painting better than the "snappier" synthetics.

For painting outdoors in a 12x16 format or smaller, I use sizes 2 through 10.  I don't go for the short brushes or the long brushes - the short ones are too short for my style, and the long ones are harder to control when painting in a small format.  To keep my load light, sometimes I'll only take out a couple of brushes.  For a 9x12, I may use only two flats - a size 6 and a size 8.

Although there are many fine brands out there, I've settled on Silver Brush's "Grand Prix" line.

Yes, I do have a rigger or signature brush and a few sables.  If the painting has dried so much that I can't scrape my signature in with the end of the brush handle, I'll use a rigger to paint my signature.  If I'm in the studio using glazes, I'll use the sables, which won't damage possibly soft paint layers.  I don't carry either of these into the field, though.

By the way, in my online Udemy course, I have a video lesson on how I handle my brush.  I should also mention that you get the full Udemy course as part of my upcoming Artist's Network University online course, which starts January 8.  This is a four-week course in which you get weekly assignments plus personal critiques from me.  Click here for the Artists Network University course.

From the Mailbag: Wearing Gloves

A reader asked recently if I wear gloves when using pastel.  I don't.  The reason is that I use fairly small pieces of pastel, especially in the finishing stages of the painting, and the glove tips of my index finger  and thumb tend to get caught between the pastel and the painting surface.  (I use large but form-fitting nitrile gloves, as seen in the photo above.)  Instead, I'll use a product like "Gloves in a Bottle," "Magic Gloves" or some other barrier cream to keep the pastel out of my skin.  It also helps with clean-up in the end.  Problem is, more often than not I forget to use it!  I found that my local Ace Hardware has small bottles of "Gloves in a Bottle" at the checkout counter.

However, when working in oil, I always wear the gloves.  It's more for ease of clean-up than for dealing with toxicity, but it helps with that, too.

I've found I can usually use one pair of gloves over several painting sessions - at least two, typically three and sometimes more.

By the way, if you're looking for a Christmas present idea - for yourself or another artist - please consider my Paint Sedona and Paint Campobello plein air workshops.  You can even have a customized workshop!  All you'll need is yourself and three others, and I'll tailor the week any way you want.

Workshop Week Wrap-Up - and More on Greys

View of the Rabbit Ears, 12x16, oil - available

Until last night, fall had been unseasonably warm and dry.  The last time it rained was in October.  The trails have been dusty, and the red dirt has been getting into shoes and socks, and my plein air backpack is stained with it.  This all changed when a major storm moved around midnight.  Snow stayed above 7000 feet, but we got plenty of rain down in the Verde Valley.  We are very glad for it.

We knew weather was coming, so we worked hard the first few days.  Usually, my Paint Sedona workshops run 9-1, giving students time in the afternoon to explore or paint on their own.  But this week, we pushed it.  We worked through lunch and beyond, taking advantage of the excellent weather.

I continued to play with the idea of starting off with a monochromatic underpainting, using Gamblin's Chromatic Black plus white.  It's not a technique I teach to students yet, so I'm exploring its feasibility.  I'm liking it quite a lot.  It really "nails" the shadows and darks right off.  But best, I think, is that it breaks down the initial block-in phase into two simple steps.  Figure out the values first, then figure out the colors.

Even I sometimes have trouble juggling value and color in the block-in.  But once you have the greys blocked in, you have something to test your color mixtures against.  You can tell in an instant if your mixture is too light or too dark by putting a little dab of it on the appropriate spot in the painting.

East view of Courthouse Butte, 9x12, oil - available

I've posted some of my week's work so you can see the results.  Some of these rock formations are ones I haven't painted much.  They are over near the Village of Oak Creek near Bell Rock, and I tend to avoid that area because of the volume of tourist traffic.

By the way, I'm getting some really good questions for my blog.  If you haven't sent yours in yet, please do!  You can comment on the blog, e-mail me, ask me on Facebook or send a tweet my way.  If you are so equipped, you may also send one telepathically.

Call for Questions

Hamlet considers a recently exhumed Yorick

Once again, I'm putting out the call for questions from readers.  If you have any questions about plein air painting or topics you'd like see covered here, let me know!  I've been teaching workshops for over ten years and blogging about plein air painting since 2005, so this is your chance to tap my brain.  And if I don't know the answer, I'll do some digging.

You can either e-mail me or leave a comment to this post.

I don't guarantee I'll answer every question right away, but I'll put your question on my list and get to it as soon as I can.  I'd like to make this blog as helpful as possible, and I appreciate your help!