Soul Food

Garden of the Gods, Sept.4     6x8"       Available Sept. 20-21 during the Pikes Peak Studio Tour

Plein Air painting feeds my soul.  I've been working so diligently this summer on all kinds of things and have been whining in my head about how summer had passed me by. Yesterday, I put on my big girl panties and called my friend, Karen Storm (www.karenstorm.com).  She's set herself the goal of painting in the Garden of the Gods for 30 days in a row.  The sale proceeds of her paintings will go to a friend who is undergoing treatment for breast cancer.  Great idea, right? Anyway, she had invited me to join her, and I arranged to meet her this morning.  Just a couple hours of painting outdoors and my summer was redeemed.  Despite the work left to prepare for the Pikes Peak Studio Tour, I'm going to save my heart and soul by painting outdoors with Karen as often as I can.  Today, I actually created a piece that I can frame for the tour.

Copying a Master: Edgar Payne Part 2

It turns out that this blog post is my 100th!  I'm not sure how that happened so quickly.

The Edgar Payne exhibit blew my socks off!  I found the Eucalypti painting and was stunned to see that none of the values (lights and darks) in the painting were as dark as those in the photo from which I was working.  The darkest foreground trees were no darker than the tree on the left that you see below.  I took six pages of notes such as: "the trees are entirely blue green with only a small amount of yellow greens where the light hits,"  "dark warm brown underpainting for the trees and ground, even under the lightest values,"  "paint is as thick in the sky and background as it is in the foreground," "the grass green is the awful yellowy pea green that is popular in women's clothing right now."  Anything that would give me total recall of what I'd seen!

When I got back to my studio, I began lightening all the values in my painting starting in the background and continued correcting shapes as I went.   As I moved forward, I decided that I really liked having the contrast and depth of the range of light values in the back to the dark values in front and decided to stick with the more contrasty version that I had created...

Another very helpful tip came from an artist friend smarter than I, she suggested that I would be able to see the brushwork in the original more clearly if I blew up sections of the photo, like this:

Such an obvious solution, but it hadn't occurred to me!  I decided that I was happy with the brushwork I'd already done in the sky, but continued from there paying close attention to Edgar's techniques.  At this point, I was unable to continue painting for over a month, but when I resumed, I began making real progress.

Please forgive any difference in lighting and color in my photographs.  I shot the photos on different days with different weather outside the window and at different times of day, so there is naturally some discrepancy. This last progress shot is a little anemic, despite my editing attempts.

The painting is nearly completed, but still needs some tweaking here and there, and some additional work in the foreground.  Stay tuned.

Copying a Master: Edgar Payne

A couple of months ago, I mentioned in a post that I went through my first spell of artist's block this winter.  I tried everything I could think of to pop myself out of it:  painting a different subject matter, using a different palette of colors, a different style, etc. and finally decided that since nothing seemed to coming out of me that I was happy with, I should take a break from trying to come up with something on my own and use the time to learn something by copying a master painting.  I've never tried this before and the idea was very intimidating!

The painting I picked was one of Edgar Payne's landscapes, "Eucalypti."  I'd always loved this painting because it reminded me of the eucalyptus trees that I grew up near.  I was also planning to see the Edgar Payne exhibit and knew that I'd see the original when it arrived in Tulsa.  Before I saw the original, I started working from a photo of the painting I found in a collection of Payne's work.

I began by deciding that he had basically started with a white canvas and drew directly on the canvas with a brush and burnt sienna.  The canvas is 20 x 24," the same size as the original painting and I did color that canvas (toning it) with a pale wash of the burnt sienna to prevent any unpainted slivers of the glaring white canvas from showing.

After drawing it, I could see that my shapes were "off."  I took a photo of my canvas, and then drew on it in Photoshop to make corrections.  

Having drawn out the necessary changes on the photograph, it was much easier for me to make the corrections in the studio the next day.  You can see that I also starting indicating where the darks and lights would be in the painting.

Then, it was time to start painting!  I had done some research online to learn what colors Edgar generally used on his palette.  Most of them are the basics that most artists use, but there was one that I wasn't familiar with, Van Dyke Brown, and one that I didn't want to run out and buy (Hooker's Green), so I did some research to figure out how to mix those colors using paint that I already had in the studio.  After that, I read that Payne made grays that he mixed in with all his colors and that the grays consisted of different proportions of Ultramarine Blue and Indian Red, with a little Cadmium Yellow added.  

With everything laid out on my palette, I started by blocking in the shapes with the colors and values that I saw peeking out from the paint strokes applied over them.  I discovered that I wasn't able to really see Edgar's brushwork in the photo I was working from, so I was kind of on my own with the sky.  I just did the best I could to get the colors, values and cloud shapes correct.

It was at this point that I was able to see the original painting, and came back from Tulsa with all kinds of information that I needed.  I'll start with that in my next post.

 If you attended the April Art Walk, you may have seen the painting in my studio at just about this stage.  I'll have the completed piece on display at my next open studio, Friday June 7th, from 5 to 8 pm.

Color Relationships

Predominantly Yellow               Predominantly Purple

After  my inspiring trip to the Edgar Payne exhibit in Tulsa, I returned to the studio and cracked open my Payne book on composition.  The book shows some sample exercises on color relationships, particularly on the use of complementary colors.  The first one I've done is Yellow/Purple.  Both of these small studies use the same colors, but in different proportions.  As you can hopefully see above, the study on the left uses more yellow than purple and the study on the right is the reverse, more purple than yellow.  All of the colors contain yellow and purple, with the addition of some orange, white and green.  I then took the same colors and did a floral using more purple than yellow.  My next post will show the result.

Three Sisters in Blue

Three Sisters in Blue         6x8 oil on panel

Click here to Bid

The temperature in the studio today was in the 90's.  I can even feel the heat in the colors and haziness of this little painting.  Maybe gazing at "Three Sisters in Blue" next winter will bring back a little of that heat!

The Cherries Are Out of The Bowl

I walked into the room too late to see what happened, but if you ask me, the pig is trying to look casual and the cherries seem dazed and confused....


8 x 8" oil on canvas panel.  To bid or purchase, click here:  My Daily Paintworks Gallery.

Trimmed With Sunlight

I completed this painting several weeks ago, but have held off putting it up for auction because I wanted to enjoy looking at it for awhile!  

"Trimmed With Sunlight" is a 5 x 5" oil on panel.  Auction begins tomorrow on Daily Paintworks.  If you'd like to bid on it, click here.

Day 4

I'm very happy with this strawberry painting and accomplished it on my own with only one comment from the instructor. Carol pointed out that the background strawberry on the left was blending in too closely with it's shadow, but that was an easy fix.


We did a color mixing exercise using the warm and cool primaries. Carol doesn't use the terms "warm" and "cool" though; she instead likes to talk about a color "leaning" toward red, green, blue or yellow. I talk to my students about this "leaning" when trying to explain what colors are warmer or cooler than others, but personally will probably always think in terms of warm and cool as I did when painting these strawberries. Cool reds in shadow and distance, warm reds closer and in warm light. If you look at the painting, you'll be able to distinguish reds with more blue in them and reds with more yellow.

Workshop

Lately, I've felt I'd reached a plateau in my work, as though I was stagnating a bit. I knew that it was time for some new input. I've had a couple of terrific oil instructors on a regular basis, but their primary subject matters aren't still life, the subject that still appeals most to me. I've been following a painter named Carol Marine for the last six years and admire so many things about her work that her workshop was an easy choice. Easy to choose, not so easy to get into. She's an excellent instructor as well as painter, and her classes fill up rapidly. A year and a half ago, I registered for this May 2012 workshop in Sedona, Arizona, and here I finally am!


This afternoon's assignment was to paint anything that we wanted, just to give her an idea of our levels and to see how far we could get in an hour. I looked at my paint and the canvas, and decided that I'd forgotten
how to even hold the brush (I hadn't painted at all in the last two weeks and had workshop jitters.) I just had to close my eyes and go for it without thinking too much about it, otherwise I may have stood there paralyzed for the rest of the week. The resulting painting was actually a pleasant surprise. I don't think that any of my little paintings has been that effortless. Go figure...


I've come this week to learn more about color mixing, edges, and composition (as well as marketing.). After today, I've figured out that I could coast this week if I wanted to, but instead I'm going to challenge myself. I stopped at the grocery store this evening to buy a lot of white items to paint. White still stumps me, so I'll try to work on that this week. I'll try to post all of my paintings, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Forgive me if my pieces look like Carol Marine's, but I always start by trying to duplicate what the instructor is doing and then by using those skills consistently, it doesn't take long to make my own twists on technique and color.


Here's this afternoon's painting.

Sprinkles On Top

This week's challenge was to paint donuts.  It was pointed out that we could paint them instead of eating them.  Yea. Right.  The biggest challenge in painting these (besides not eating them until I was finished) was that the stack of donuts kept falling over.  The combination of the hot light I had focused on them and the weight of the upper donuts slowly crushing the lower donuts was evidently less than ideal donut engineering.  Did you know that when donuts topple over, they make no sound?  

This 6 x 12 inch original oil (unframed) is $175 plus shipping and applicable tax.  Don't hesitate to contact me at info@juliekirkland.com if you have any questions. I'd appreciate it if you'd "Like" this painting on Facebook (button below).

"Julian"

This portrait of Julian was commissioned by his parents.  I fell in love with him as

I painted  his engaging eyes and bright smile .  Doesn't he just exude "boyish charm?!"