Field Study
I am regularly asked if I ever rework my plein air studies when I get back into the studio. The answer is yes I do. Most times my hunting and gathering trips into the field end with a good set of finished paintings that are ready for a frame and a trip to the gallery. But once in a while I just miss it and I do a piece that
is functionally a good painting but at the end of the day, it just doesn't measure up. This is one of those paintings.
About a month ago I took a week long painting trip to Estes Park in the Rocky Mountain National Park with the Outdoor Painters Society. Over a five day period I painted four paintings a day for a total of 20 paintings. Not a bad week's worth of painting, but along the way I realized my focus had turned to getting four paintings done a day instead of producing paintings of true quality. It hit me the day I did the painting of the cabin pictured at the start of this blog. I was painting alongside Randy Saffle and Frank Gabriel.
Randy Saffle
Frank Gabriel
We stood pretty much in the same spot so we all were painting the same scene. As I was doing this 12" x 16" I was actually pleased with what I was doing but the minute I saw Randy's result I realized just how far off the cliff I had jumped and how badly I really missed capturing the scene.
This kind of experience leads to plenty of inner soul searching and questioning of one's approach. Had I gotten so cocky that I thought I could go out and totally ignore the true beauty of what I was seeing? Do I need to have my eyes checked? When did I decide I could just wing it and not really seriously study my scene? Where had my sense of study and dedication to capturing the true essence of the scene gone?
When I got home and looked at my photos from the trip and, in particular this scene, I knew I had to correct the situation. I can't have a bad painting hanging around the studio. Its just bad Karma and it infects all the blank canvases yet to be painted, so I have a duty and obligation to keep the Karma positive in the studio.
So today is the day I put that bad boy on the easel and slap it silly with new paint.
The first step is to cover the entire painting with a layer of Liquin. This evens out the values and returns my darks back to their original value so when I put new paint on top I can match values where necessary.
The cabin is my center of interest and I realized I needed to adjust its shape and value. The entire rest of the painting will be done to support the cabin as the main object in the painting.
"Be bold or go home" is my approach on this one. I decide I want to drop the mountains really far back so I paint on a very light purplish gray and cover the entire mountain range in it.
I'm going to be completely redesigning the mountain range so I want to obscure anything I had before so it doesn't influence my new design. Even at this point I like the sense of distance and atmosphere this is creating.
Between the cabin and the distant mountain range is a smaller tree covered hill so I put this in to be able to judge the values I will use on the mountains.
Now I move to the next level of mountains. With every brush stroke I am judging color temperature and value in comparison with the middle hill and the foreground cabin. Something I should have been doing in the field. I have to create the feeling that this part of the mountain is farther away than the middle ground hill and that the hill sits between the mountain and the cabin.
I have completed the first row of mountains. Notice how much bluer the color temperature is than the middle hill. Now its time to carry the painting out the top with two more rows of mountains.
I decide to create a little tension in the upper right corner of the painting. The cabin sits kind of low left of center. By putting in the sky it will help take the viewer's eye past the cabin, through the mountains and out the top. If I had taken the mountain all the way out of the painting there would be no reason to view the entire painting and the viewer's eye would get stuck on the cabin. This way my painting tells a complete story.
With this close up you can also see how close in value each mountain is and yet they still separate visually.
After a little more work on the cabin and trees I have finished reworking my plein air study. Now the question becomes "what did I learn from this process?" Well the honest answer is I realize that I blew it in the field and that I have to get better at studying my scene. Many times I am an illustrator stuck inside a painter's body and the illustrator takes over at the worst moments. I am going to have to fight that tendency in the future and trust the painter in me to make the proper judgments when in the field.
10 comments:
Thanks. Well done. I may try that.
Great Post...many wonderful lessons in this one!
Thanks for sharing your process Rusty. My "inner illustrator' comes out at the worst times too - that made me chuckle.
The reworked piece came out great!
Good explanation, Rusty. Also, nice improvement.
Rusty, I shared your blog post to my Facebook page because it has such a valuable lesson in it. Thank you!
Hi Rusty:
While I didn't think the initial plein air piece was that bad, the end product of the "do over" resulted in a significantly better painting. *significantly*.
I find that the more I paint, the more I realize that an alla prima piece may be in need of a "time out" from the artist and then a revisit later to see if it needs work.
Really enjoyed this blog post and seeing the transformation. Your resulting improvement is definitely full of GOOD karma!
:)
I loved reading this post. It was affirming and instructive and clear! Thanks!
And yes... the final fix is MUCH better than your field study.
Love your work.
Thanks for the compliment Rusty, but you paint four paintings in one day and some will be better than others. We all know painting outside is not easy and I bet the majority of your work on the trip never needed another second of work. It's funny that I had my version out and was thinking of all the things that I could do to it to improve it too. I didn't get enough juicy paint on it and may have taken the scene to literal and needed to create many of the same design changes you just did. Great post and it's always good to remind yourself to really look at the subject, but you do a fantastic job of getting "finished" high quality paintings in the field. Those 30 minute river paintings rocked!Looking forward to the next trip already my friend!
I want to thank everybody who commented on my post. Good to know I'm being read and that my blog makes sense. I really appreciate the comments.
This was a very helpful post. I, too, am an illustrator who attempts to paint. This post shows your thinking and process in reworking the painting. I hope you do this again.
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