Oil Painting

Today’s blog is from OPA Master, Dan Gerhartz, with some insights he shared during the 2012 “Weekend with the Masters”. Though it is a few years old, the information is timeless.

Portrait Demonstrations… Weekend with the Masters

I have had the privilege of teaching the art of painting for the last twenty years or so and have chosen the portrait as the vehicle to explain the concepts because of the exacting nature of the subject, forcing the student to be precise in their seeing and drawing.

What remains my greatest challenge in the process of teaching is conveying in the simplest of terms the most direct, systematic approach to solving the problems before us.  As we stand with loaded brush before the model, so many decisions need to be made at once, often instilling panic in our hearts while we try to sort out the visual information.  Organization of thought in the beginning is paramount in the process and seems to be the only way to wade through the ordeal with any peace of mind and success in the endeavor.

“Yes, yes”, you may be saying, “but organize what?”

It has been my goal to stress the critical nature of categorizing the aspects of drawing, value, edge, and color from the outset so as to build on a solid foundation.

This needs to be accomplished before I apply paint to the canvas so I can break down the elements in a way I can wrap my head around and not be overwhelmed as the avalanche of information pours in.  So, before I begin to paint, I will make these visual observations and mentally categorize them in terms of hierarchy of value, edge, color, etc…

Value…  Look to see while squinting where the lightest lights and darkest darks are and then make a concerted effort to keep all other values in their proper range compared to the extremes.  i.e.(Not allowing the reflected lights to become too strong so to break out of the simple shadow shape or applying too many highlights to destroy the subtlety of tone.)

Edge…   When squinting, what edges emerge as the sharpest and which visually subdue to create the most variety to add power and drama to the subject.

Color… Where are the strongest colors and how do all of the others relate to them.  Also, what is the color of the light and do I see its influence on all of the top planes of the scene.

If I take a few minutes before the work begins, often it alleviates some stress and possible mistakes along the way… Keep Smiling!

These two works were completed as Demonstrations at a conference in San Diego.

www.danielgerhartz.com

I have received a number of questions about painting “backgrounds” specifically for portraits. Too many students spend their time rendering the subject and then try to paint the background at the last moment. The result is often a disaster; the figure looks pasted on or there is a formless envelope around the head. The problem is that the background is an afterthought rather than an integral part of the painting. 

Don’t forget, someone looking at the painting sees the whole…not just the subject. In reality, the background is vitally important because it defines the center of interest. My pastel mentor, Harley Brown, told me “always work the background at the same time as the subject”. The key is to give some thought to what you’re doing and why. Here’s a great quote from Quang Ho: “If you make a decision, it’s always right!” Think about it! 

I think of three elements and three approaches when I make decisions about the background: 

Elements:

1. Value – is the background darker (like a typical Rembrandt portrait), lighter  (like a more contemporary graphic piece) or the same value (used by some artists to lose the edges on the light side of the face).
   
   
2. Hue – A background that is the complement of the dominant color of your subject (either grayed or high-Chroma) automatically defines the subject as the center of interest. Furthermore, if you place equal amounts of the discords (two steps on either side of the subject’s hue on the Munsell color wheel) near the subject you reinforce the effect.
   
   
3. Shape – Rather than have a flat tone around the portrait (boring) you can create secondary points of interest…the three approaches listed below. 

Approaches:

1. A specific scene or environment. Sargent did this in almost every portrait. He used columns, chairs and vases as secondary points of interest to create a mood.
   
   
2. A suggested environment. Abstract shapes still place the subject somewhere other than empty space. 
   
   
3. A vignette– although the picture plane is not completely filled, the shapes that are there fulfill a design purpose. (I was taught that it’s a good idea to have a vignette touch three sides of the picture plane. I often design the “background” to have a movement that opposes the thrust of the figure.)

Here are some examples of all three approaches. By the way, I cover this (plus a lot more) in my workshops and DVD on Design / Composition Secrets of the Masters. 

I have been teaching art for over 50 years and drawing and painting for 75 years. Where did the time go?! Like most people, I have certainly had my ups and downs and now that most of my life is behind me I have the tendency to reflect and think about what the heck happened! I was fortunate to get a lot of support from my family, friends and most teachers. Drawing was my favorite thing to do, other than sports and most of the first half of my life revolved around either or both of those activities, along with backpacking and traveling this wonderful world that we live in.

I never had much confidence in myself when I was younger, mostly just a very curious and competitive nature while being raised in the magnificent Gallatin Valley in southwest Montana surrounded by mountains, just North of Yellowstone Park and hanging out with some great friends helped me get through a lot. I have heard some horrible stories of people who were not allowed to follow their passion for a whole lot of reasons…probably with good reason. As for most of us, it is the great love and passion that takes many years of hard work to get anywhere good at it, unless we were one of the lucky ones blessed with superb talent, genes and maybe a trust fund or two! 

I had a little of the talent, however, one of my great uncles was one of the countries better sculptors. I was very competitive, inspired mostly from lack of self-esteem and on the flip side from a fairly poor family, which isn’t always such a detriment in small-town America. Most of us seem to have a mixture of positive and negative influences whether we want them or not and I think the bottom line again is that we really must have the love for doing whatever it may be as that is what can carry us through rejections, tragedies, and disappointments so many of us may have to endure. Growing up in Montana, I was not aware of any great artist role models, probably more due to my lack of initiative to find any. We had Charlie Russell and that was about it! That era from 1940 to 1980’s we were fortunate to have so many great magazines and books mostly chock full of some very great illustrations, a lot of it being great art done by some really great artists! We didn’t have the great museums as in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the other great cities of the world, so those magazines for me were a wealth of inspiration and I kind of wanted to make pictures but deep down I felt that I could never be able to do that.

I kind of wandered around for my first 17 years, dreaming, but somewhat disillusioned of what I could do with my life, and won’t go into all of those details here (a long story). But my father (we did not see eye to eye on much, another very long story), finally got it out of me what I would really like to do, to become an illustrator, and he told me to give it a chance, but to try and get into the very best art school that I could get into. He was very competitive also and those were the people I would have to match to make a go of it! To his generation, failure was not really an option! Well, we both researched around for the art schools and living in Northern California decided that the Art Center School in Los Angeles seemed to fit that bill. So, we drove down to L.A. and had an interview with them. I put together a rather shabby portfolio of my drawings and a few paintings. I figured that there was no way that I could get accepted, woe is me, yet they seemed to be impressed regardless of my lack of faith in myself and accepted me (Art Center was and still is one of the hardest art schools to get into and also one of the hardest to graduate because of its high standards. If you didn’t quite meet those standards you were politely asked to leave!) On top of being accepted and because of our rather poor status, I was also offered a full scholarship after the first three semesters. A semester was an outrageous $410 back in the early sixties, which I think is about $30,000 a semester now, but don’t hold me to that. We from Montana have a tendency to exaggerate at times! 

I managed to graduate, a wonderful experience surrounded by such great students and friends and best of all, the instructors were all working professionals who knew what it took to succeed at whatever program you chose. One of their premier offers was automotive design and all the Detroit car companies got most of their top designers from Art Center and also sent promising students to the school. Certainly, in hindsight, I know that so many other artists, for so many reasons, were not that fortunate. Right around my graduation, autumn of 1963, they had the draft and so I had to go into the service. Two of my best buddies and I joined the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War was just around the corner. Needless to say, my experience was short-lived and I got an Honorable Medical Discharge (a mental and physical breakdown, another long story) and so missed that awful, misunderstood and divisive part of our history. Sorry for these distractions, but I think they are related to the struggle to keep trying, sometimes against great odds, and how I as an individual and with individual issues somewhat succeeded. As in this case, I was in a vegetable state, discharged, hospitalized and felt I had let myself and my country down and scared to death of what may happen! I was lucky to have friends and family to get back on my feet again.

Eventually, I got a job as a laborer, then a carpenter, and to work as a postal carrier, a wayward art student, not knowing what to do! I at least had the sense to go to some life drawing sessions at night, twice a week to keep my hand in the game and slowly regained some confidence to the point I was going out with my portfolio to ad agencies, book and magazine publishers, whatever seem related to my goal of being an illustrator/artist. I had some pretty darn good skills, but not much confidence to go with them! This is where my main theme of trying to succeed comes in. I call them the three P’s! Passion, Perseverance, and Patience. Not that I was endowed so greatly with them all but at least had some of them and mostly less of the Patience one… Perseverance, being a lot of stubborn… and Passion, wanting to be able to eat!   

It took me about two years to where I was slowly going out to agencies, publishers and a couple of galleries, that I was getting assignments. Hearing that I would get a call for this assignment or that, but, discovering that once out of sight I was pretty much out of mind as there was a pretty constant flow of other artists knocking constantly at their door. Pretty much the same with the galleries. This is where perseverance comes into play and the love of what we want to do. Some are so gifted that THEY are getting the knock on the door or phone call but for most of us, that is not the case.   

Around this time, I was also taking workshops from the very best artists that offered them, such as, Richard Schmid, Sergei Bongart, Harley Brown and Del Gish. They gave me the confidence to teach my own workshops.

By having to put painting into words as best one can really helped me to visualize my own work better and helped to pay the bills! As I improved over time and was invited into or applied to some of the better exhibitions with many of the very best artists, I would get a few of the calls from other shows and good galleries. Needless to say it sure is good for one’s self-esteem and that struggle for recognition is finally rewarded! One of the very best exhibitions in the country at that time was the “Artists of America” show in Denver, Colorado. It showcased the very best traditional/impressionistic work from all over and the show that everyone wanted to be in. The best collectors and gallery owners would fly in to see all of the fine work. One could apply to the show and they had a jury panel that would screen the work and that would vary ever so often. I applied for about eight years and always got turned down, but finally, because of new jurors maybe I did get selected and was even invited to give a demonstration at the show. To say the least, very grateful, humble and nervous throughout, as I was in the presence of so many of my heroes and other great artists. The Director of the show, bought one of my paintings.

I didn’t think it could get much better than that! Unfortunately, because sales were down, the Exhibition closed the following year. I got into some other top shows and looking back I feel very fortunate that I was able to experience, what for me was some recognition after 30 years of ups and downs and trying to do my very best. After overcoming so much I figured that my last few years would just be spent enjoying creating, pretty much what I wanted to, and whenever I wanted to, but alas, I had to face some of the biggest challenges of my life when about eight years ago, an old football back injury caught up with me. I had excruciating pain that use to go away and this time did not. I had to have back surgery and when I woke up I knew something was not quite right, but went into instant denial. I had an almost dead left leg and in chronic pain, another long story, and told that another surgery might fix it. That did not happen and with my denial, I thought I could just keep charging forward, doing the shows, galleries and a lot of plein air shows hiking and painting pack trips and still traveling the world a bit. I suffered a lot more than I should have, but keeping busy and working on my painting helped me to think less of the pain.

After about four years of that nonsense, I finally started to accept being marginalized. Some of the denial still lingers on and I have learned and accepted, along with being 80 years old, and in love with a most wonderful woman that really cares about me, accepts me and herds me around when I certainly need it! I guess it helps that she herded and ran a dairy farm for her sick uncle when she was just a teenager! Recently I have blessed with this rare disease, “autoimmune pancreatitis”, not life-threatening, but mostly have to watch what I eat and drink, and since I love to eat all the great foods of the world and love a beer or wine ever so much I am still adjusting to all of that. Yes, I do feel sorry for myself at times, other issues also to be dealt with, but I guess I would be crazy if I didn’t. My love of painting and Karen are my great blessings and so I persevere on and am still challenging myself to do a better work of art than the last one, although I still manage to do some real clunkers, but try and cut those down with more time with working out value and color studies.

My productivity is down, but very grateful to still be able to do what I love the most! Trying to think of a moral to this story is, maybe you can come up with something better? I have included a few samples of my work from my teen years up to the present day. It’s nice to see the progress and I think that some of the work I am still doing is going in that same direction. Trying hard to come up with something unique, at least for me. I must quote an old artist’s proverb, as I see way too much of it lately…” to copy from one person is plagiarism, to copy from four or five is creativity”. Look at great art..not bad art..it gets in our brain, it is humbling, which is OK, but also inspiring!  Thanks for getting this far and bearing with most of my story. I only hope that with whatever travails you have to deal with you can find some inspiration, hope, and solace in your own work!

I have a Facebook group where I have demonstrations and videos of my processes including portraits, figures, studio, and plein air landscapes along with explanations of demos and references I use and why and how I put them together. I have been teaching for over 50 years and painting for 75 years and so have a lot of experience, knowledge and some wisdom to share. I am also a “Designated Master” with both the Oil Painters of America and the American Impressionist Society and I love to share my process with others. You can go to this link: Ned’s Artist Buddies or go to my website at: www.nedmueller.com and click on works and then “Artist Buddies”. It is a very good deal!

“Sometimes it takes an expert to point out the obvious.”   

–Scott Allen

On a recent fall afternoon, noted painter Ken Spencer, my wife Lynn and I were privileged to accept an invitation from Albert Handell to visit his studio, at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two of his students were working there, amid the stored stacks of paintings and around the large glass-covered table surrounded by a shelf of innumerable oil paint tubes, of all kinds and colors. After a warm greeting for all of us, he swung around to his well-stocked storage files and exclaimed “Here, let’s look at some paintings!” Ken and I were in the presence of a mentor.

You might know Albert as a master pastellist and oil painter, who teaches both nationally and internationally. He has been a member of OPA since 1997. In 1987, the Pastel Society of America elected him into the Pastel Hall of Fame. In his “Ask Albert” newsletter, he answers artists’ questions regarding painting and career building. In January of 2020, he will be participating in the Palm Springs Mentoring Program. 

What will Albert be doing in this program? As you might know from Homer’s Odyssey, Mentor was the teacher/trainer that Odysseus selected for his young son Telemachus, to raise him up in his absence. Telemachus came of age during this tutoring, and grew to be an emotionally and physically mature warrior, like his famous father. In Palm Springs, Albert—like Mentor–will be doing what he has been doing for years, and what he did with Mr. Spencer and I on that warm fall day in his studio: taking questions, enlarging our comments, introducing his own tips and techniques, and sharing the love of art and painting with fellow artists. Plus, he illustrated it all by demonstrating how it all worked in his own paintings. Ken and I listened, and learned.

I believe that every working artist wants to improve their skills, deepen their understanding of the arts, and discover that way of working that is most natural to them and most effective for communicating their personal vision. How can we do that most efficiently?

First, we need to take advantage of all the ways that we can learn. We can see what we need to know; read it; or hear it. We can receive instantaneous revelation or inspiration. Someone may tell us, then we could choose to act on it. Or someone may tell us, we try it, then we practice it. Or someone shows us, we try it, and practice that. Which is the most effective way to learn? I would suggest that it will be the way that gives you the result you want and that will stay with you.

In the visual arts, Jackson Pollock benefited greatly from the input of Thomas Hart Benton, and painter Bo Bartlett deepened his work through the profound influence of both Nelson Shanks and Andrew Wyeth. Andrew’s father, N.C. Wyeth, enjoyed a very successful career as an illustrator based on the foundations of design as mentored by the great Howard Pyle.   

In this way, the rewards of having a mentor and being a mentor are invaluable. My own experiences as a mentor over the past forty-five years have brought some of the greatest lifetime rewards in my dual career as artist/teacher. From it all, I have learned that self-education is necessary, and that it is a lifelong process…and that it happens much more quickly and personally when you have someone standing right there who knows what they’re doing while you practice what you want to know.

The accomplished classical figure- painter Ryan Brown has authored an article entitled, “What It Takes to Become a Professional Artist.” I think this excerpt from that article would interest anyone who is headed in that direction:

“In the book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise (2016), co-authors Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool discuss in-depth the basic realities of human development. It expands the concept of the 10,000 hour rule to include three key factors. One is time spent in practice, of course. The second factor is that this time in practice is spent in a well-designed progressional system meant to build skill or knowledge from simple to more complex. And the third is to have that organized practice watched over and criticized by one who has mastered the elements of the given field of study…Without an organized or deliberate approach to practice, one is more likely to merely become increasingly efficient at doing something mediocre, rather than developing greater skill and a deeper knowledge. And having consistent criticism from a proven source serves to bring awareness to elements of knowledge one is unlikely to discover on their own.”

Working with a mentor can open up your universe. Let’s say you’re an artist—specifically, a female actor– trying to break into Hollywood: how can you make that happen? In a recent interview, Reese Witherspoon (a highly-accomplished female actor) was asked that very question. She called on employed actresses, and female board executives and directors to take up the mantle of mentoring, to take aspiring actors under their wing, take them to events, to open up networking opportunities for them. She knows that an effective mentor may help her/his mentee in many ways:

• Develop the mentee’s skill and competency
• Provide a second, experienced perspective
•  Improve  confidence in the ability to focus, problem-solve, then execute
•  Improve communication skills.
•  Provide practice in accepting feedback and critique
• Expand contacts
• Inform  about opportunities, events
•  Teach the mentee how to be accountable and  maintain a professional relationship
• Share the mentee’s success,  encouraging them to share their success with others, and possibly become a mentor themselves.

Isabel Lamont points the way to effective self-education in her article entitled “Mentors will be the Key to Success in Today’s Art World“(from the website Visual Arts Re-Imagined). She points out that “the job market for professional artists isn’t projected to grow at any miraculous rate over the next four years, and only ten percent of all artists who graduate end up making a living as a working artist,” in any 9-5 situation. However, there is increasingly more and more demand for the visual arts in film, digital media, and in print, and our “concept of what a working artist looks like will be vastly different from before…We are in the age of creative entrepreneurs, and people want to purchase art that is sold well to them,” such as online platforms like Instagram, personal websites and blogs. “Whether or not you ‘make it’ will depend less on your raw talent and more on the connections you build,” Lamont concludes.

A mentor may provide connections to one working to be a fine artist. But more so, a mentor can help one to refine those particular skills to create the quality artwork that is initially necessary, before it can even be appreciated as fine art. That was the system of the Renaissance, in which young artists learned their craft from the masters. It is true today, in many artists’ studios across the globe, in which interns and assistants learn the craft from experienced masters. It is a relationship that is mutually beneficial. Both the mentor and mentee “are looking to grow in some way,” Lamont suggests. She goes further to say, “The ability to be mentored is one of the most crucial attitudes of exceptionally successful people.”

Finally, Lamont concludes: “For creatives today, it will be…mentors…who will help them embrace the changing art world. In today’s economy, creatives will need to adopt a wide variety of skills, from their craft to business skills to emotional intelligence skills, and the most efficient and valuable way to acquire these skills is through being mentored.”

To be mentored, one needs to put ego aside, to be receptive, to be humble. In the article “Seven Benefits of Having a Career Mentor, Even If You Love Your Job,” Natalia Lusinski advises, “Treat every mentor conversation as a learning moment, not as an opportunity to get answers.” In describing a good mentor, she also advises that “Mentors should guide, but not steal the process of your journey.” You don’t have to be a credentialed teacher to be a mentor, just knowledgeable and willing to share personally what you know with those who ask for it—as Mr. Handell did with us.

We can all advance the purpose and elevate the impact of the visual arts on our culture if we learn more about what we do. It will take all of our lifetimes.

 Find a mentor… be a mentor… and keep on painting!

Remember paisley?  I do.  My brother had a 1971 Plymouth Fury Gran Coupe with a paisley vinyl top.  It was a boat of car like those behemoths you’d see in Dirty Harry movies. It looked like a family man’s car.  Like something, an accountant might drive to the office.  But underneath the reserved styling was a pure 1960’s muscle car.  Lots of horsepower and very fast.  And, oh, that vinyl top! The paisley was brown on brown and smartly understated.  Just enough to add a decorative flair.  But not so much that it attracted too much attention to itself.

Enough about the car.  Let’s talk about what paisley has to do with painting dappled light!  Paisley is an intricately woven pattern of tear drop shapes.   It originated in Persia in the 3rd century.  Before gracing vinyl roofs on cars, it was an ornamental textile design.   The shapes themselves can be long and narrow, short and wide, big or small.   For me, the beauty of paisley is that it appears to flow randomly across whatever it’s used to decorate.  It’s utterly designed in a logical repetitive fashion that feels random and conveys movement.  Lots of movement.  And that’s where the connection to dappled light comes in. 

When painting dappled light we shouldn’t blindly try to copy our reference.  We should take advantage of the opportunity to design a more interesting pattern than nature sometimes gives us.  One that intentionally moves the viewer’s eye in orchestrated fashion through the painting.  That’s what I did in “Charleston Charm”.  The flow of light filters through the Crepe Myrtle onto the wall in an interlocking pattern of jagged shapes.  It moves from upper left to lower right.  When the light contacts the sidewalk the pattern angles back toward the left, leading the eye to the yellow parking stripes on the street which direct the gaze back to the upper left and the viewer’s path begins anew.  With each circular pass through the painting more interest is discovered; the door, the railing, the post on the left and so on.  But it’s the seemingly random pattern of interlocking light and shadow shapes that generates all the movement.

The best example may be “Mending the Sail” by Joaquin Sorolla.  Truly one of the all-time Tour de Force masterpieces, this huge painting features a seemingly random pattern of dappled light.  At 7’3″ x 9’10” this is certainly not an alla prima painting where Sorrolla observed the pattern of light and painted what he saw.  Surely, he observed this scene or something very similarly.  And he must have done preliminary sketches and studies. But no doubt he did a fair amount of designing the pattern of dappled light.  Why wouldn’t he? It lends itself so well to helping direct the path a viewer’s eye would take.  And therein lies one of the least discussed, yet most important skills a painter can possess, the ability to orchestrate movement. 

I’ll discuss that subject in depth in my next article.  But for now, let’s take a quick look at how Sorolla used dappled light to help move the eye through “Mending the Sail”.   There are other very powerful compositional elements here, but the pattern of light certainly plays a prominent role.  The strong vertical pattern of light and shadow to the left, just beneath the woman in pink, grabs the eye pulling it into the heart of the painting.  It moves the gaze downward toward the folds below.  Then the eye meanders along the spots of light on the folds until it reaches the figures on the right.  And suddenly the strong verticals are repeated in the silhouetted chair behind the older gentlemen.  The gaze catches the heads and faces and more dappled light on the left and makes another pass spiraling outward as it goes.  But it’s the dappled light that initiates all the movement.  It’s a little like noticing the paisley first then the car.  In that sense, both the paisley and the dappled light are functional decoration.