In Robert Henri’s classic book “The Art Spirit,” he speaks of “more than ordinary moments of existence.” A spontaneous trip to Madrid with my artist friend Jim Aplin led to such a moment. Actually it was a series of moments over a period of three days. The setting was the Sorolla Museum. This is no ordinary museum. It is the artist’s home and studio. It almost feels as if he might step back in the room at any moment.
There is nothing so inspiring as standing in front of a great work of art and studying every brushstroke. Joaquin Sorolla filled his canvases with skillful drawing, rich color and juicy brushwork. A feast for the eyes.
His materials and supplies offer an intimate and fascinating view of the man and his methods.
At the age of 57, while out in the garden working on this portrait, Sorolla suffered a stroke. Although he lived another three years he was never able to paint again. But what an extraordinary body of work he left for the world to enjoy, and what an inspiration he continues to be.
“My only ambition was to create an honest picture that would interpret nature as she really is, as she ought to be seen.” -Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923)
Oil Painting
The Art of Gradation
One of the more overlooked technical devices in creating a painting with sophisticated interest, is gradation. Although it is easy to think of gradation in terms of color or value, by extending your gradation vocabulary in all aspects of the work you can add interest, excitement, passive and active passages, elicit specific responses from viewers of the art, and produce paintings that invoke mood, time, and feeling in a more calculated way.
COLOR AND VALUE
Before we look at more advanced ideas, let’s look at a few common examples of using gradated color and/or value in the landscape. If you paint landscapes, you may have been taught to apply gradation of lighter to darker or warmer to cooler in a large expansive sky. Not being one to fall back on formulas, I suggest my students begin to recognize when this truly happens in nature, at what times of day and with which specific colors and values rather than automatically reverting to this concept in every single case. Sometimes the sky may also gradate from warm to cool (or vice versa) as it spans from left to right rather than from horizon to Zenith. Learning which of these devices to use to convey a specific idea can strengthen your landscapes and keep them from all looking the same.
Gradation of color and value can also be useful when painting other subjects. In a still life, for example, you might use a gradation in the background from left to right and from top to bottom. Notice in this quick head sketch how color gradates and alternates from warm to cool to warm to cool to warm to cool as it wraps around the form of the form.
Still another way to think of using gradation with color, is by varying the amount of color intensity from very neutral to extremely chromatic. Notice here, from left to right, we experience neutral, chroma, less chroma, neutral. See how the most intense chroma is where I want you to linger the longest when you look at the painting. I use this same type of gradation many times in the landscape to move the viewer’s eye around the painting, lend atmospheric perspective, and add interest.
SHAPE, LINE, EDGE, and TEXTURE
Now, let’s take a look at gradation and how it can be useful in reference to other technical aspects of painting.
In this same painting, notice how the edges are gradated. See how they are much sharper and harder in the most important parts of the painting, and gradually become lost and soft as they radiate away from them.
Practice seeing and using gradation as many ways as you can. Then edit and use the types that work best for your subject. This sort of experimentation brings a load of learning at the easel and buzz and excitement to your next exhibition.
On Workshops – Can't get there? Bring 'em here!
So many great artists, so many great places to see them, just not possible? Bring them to you!
If you’re like me, and most artists I know, you dream of going away to a workshop to immerse yourself for a week (or more) coming back full of knowledge and new approaches and having taken giant steps forward in your work learning from the masters. But let’s face it, we can’t all do that. Your resources may not allow for the expense of workshop plus travel and lodging, you may not be able to take the time away from family and/or work, or you may be holding back because you aren’t at the ‘right level’ yet.
There is a solution, a way to ease in, invite the artist to your home art league or organization. If you are not already in one, join one!
There are many advantages to bringing the masters to you. Here’s the who, what, wheres, hows and why from convenience to affordability to the truest value of it all.
Where to have it is the next thing to consider. Our league had a retail space for a gallery with a back room big enough for classes and workshops. The convenience of your own space is that you can set up ahead of time and leave supplies and work out over night all week long. You can run successful workshops at community centers, libraries, church trailers, and even hotel meeting rooms (we’ve done three of the four.) If you do have to pack up and take everything out with you every day have a few extra facilitators to help with set up every morning. It will be very hard for artists in the workshop to do the set up and take down every day and still get everything out of the workshop that they desire. Our league is made up of volunteer members so we can divide the work up under the guidance of a workshop director. Cost of space is part of your workshop fee of course. If you have the means, use them. If you don’t, be creative! In our town there are grocery stores with community areas built for local organizations to use. To keep cost down check these things out. Figure out rental fees or percentages of workshop costs to make it profitable as well.
Another where is the place your guest artist will stay. Being in a league/organization helps. WAL has members willing to host visiting artists, both teachers and students, during workshops. This really keeps your workshop fee as low as possible, and helps those attending from just a few hours away from having to spend on lodging. Do make this one of the first questions you ask a potential visiting artist. If they are willing to stay with a member that is wonderful, let the member also serve as their chauffeur for the workshop. If they are not willing to stay with a member, wonderful too–they are still coming! But you will have to find a hotel and that along with their transportation to and from hotel will add significantly to your workshop fee. Nonprofit organizations like WAL do get discounted rates at hotels for workshop artists.
His first workshop for The Woodlands Art League was two weeks long. It was a great success. He has since returned in 2011 and 2014. We are planning his fourth workshop here for June 2015.
So that’s the priceless value of bringing a master artist to your group–building a relationship. As artists painting together, growing together, with guidance from a master artist, our abilities develop along with our friendships and our commitment. As Clayton says, “I see the progress as I return to a student and know the marks they are making on the canvas are done with greater understanding and ability. Very rewarding as a teacher to see such thing. I tell the students they are painting in the workshop to let me directly into their thoughts. It helps to know what a painter needs to hear so I have direction as a teacher.”
Proof–a few words from artists that attended his latest September workshop:
“I experienced a delayed absorption of information, because it wasn’t until weeks after the workshop that the words Clayton shared impacted my thinking and my approach to my artwork.”
Julie Graham
“What a lesson! After the demo already I felt I’d ‘leveled up’ as an artist! Clayton’s voice is still present as I work my own pieces and repeated in my elementary classroom as I share and remind my students of the importance of making every visible application intentional.”
Abby Salazar President, Woodlands Art League
“I hear Clayton’s words, “Is it in the light or in the dark?” I am reminded to put brushstrokes down only if I am sure that temperature and value are right. I think about area of emphasis and this new “awareness” makes me go back to reading and researching and putting it into practice every time I paint.”
Carolina Dalmas
Jill Behrens
“When I have an opportunity to study with one of these artists that WAL brings in, I jump at the chance. Not having to pay for my own room, board and transportation makes workshops exceptionally affordable. I’ve taken local workshops with Judy Carducci, Clayton J Beck III, and Rob Liberace. Each time I have studied with these great teachers, I’ve been able to adjust my own sensibilities and I’ve seen a maturing in my own work.”
Suzie Baker
The impact of the master artist can be felt throughout your home league and your community, not just those in the workshop. Ask your guest artist to participate in an evening reception open to all members and the public at large. By hosting an Artist Reception and Demo those not in the workshop still have the chance to meet the master and learn, still get a chance to build a relationship and grow. AND you spark interest for your upcoming workshops!
There ya go–it’s that easy to bring the master artist to you!
My Favorite Photo-Editing Tool: Instagram. Right on your Phone.
There are moments when I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life for the iPhone and Instagram to be invented. I so often see things that catch my eye—everyday scenes, sweet little compositions, visually appealing scenes I notice. My sketchbook is one way I observe and record this stuff— I have a whole shelf of sketchbooks. Painting right on the spot is another. But sometimes I am just not fast enough—the scene might be fleeting, or I might be fleeting. This is when a camera comes in handy, especially when it is already in my pocket. Usually my photos don’t quite show what I saw, though, because my photography skills are only fair to middling, plus the camera is indiscriminate and my eye is usually picking out some particular thing.
Instagram has a dozen or so built-in filters that change the look of a photograph. By changing the color and contrast, by darkening the edges (“vignetting”), by using selective focus and blurring the rest of the photo—and you can control all these effects individually—it allows you to see different ways of visually interpreting the same scene. Just play around with it until you get the effect you like. Pretty neat.
Now of course iPhone photos are not terribly high-res, particularly after you crop to an area that is maybe one-fiftieth the size of the original (like I did in the example above). But so what. I’m using them as reference for paintings, or just to make a photo for my own entertainment. If I paint from it I don’t need that much detail anyway.
If you want to save the edited photo to your phone’s camera roll without publishing it on your Insty feed, just do a screen capture when you’re done editing, and then crop it in your photo viewer
Edited photos can be used as scrap for paintings just the way we used to use regular old print photos. I mostly try to get the composition I want and then make the color how I want it.
Here are some of the effects you can get, applied to a photo of a still-life setup.
As painters we have an ability–some say an obligation–to make choices about how we see, what we choose to put into a painting from all the visual information available to us. Expanding and strengthening this ability is important. In a way, Instagram can show us different ways to interpret an image–seeing more or less contrast, joining shadows together or showing definition in shadow, showing more or less color.
Debra Joy Groesser Interview
Debra Groesser is a signature member of the American Impressionist Society, American Plains Artists, and Plein Air Artists Colorado. She’s an associate member of the Oil Painters of America, and American Women Artists…and she’s on the Board of PAAC.This folks is your current president of the American Impressionist Society…one busy lady to say the least.
It took several months to finally complete this interview, but I believe you’ll find it worth the wait. I first met Debra a couple of years ago in the Flint Hills of Kansas during a plein air event organized by Kim Casebeer. I found Debra to be a delightful person.
There is more to this interview than shown here, so I will include some of her other comments in future blog topics I have planned. I hope you enjoy the interview.
What’s the correct pronunciation of your name?
Grow-sir.
How did you first become interested in art and what led you to becoming a professional?
I just remember always being interested in drawing. My favorite thing to do as a child was to copy the illustrations out of my story books. I also copied the words and by doing that, taught myself to read at age four. My favorite book was “Barbie Goes to a Party”. I would love to find a copy of it! Back in the days of Romper Room (giving away my age here), they would put pictures up on the TV screen for kids to draw and mail in to the TV station. My mother sent one of mine in when I was three and they put it on TV…I don’t remember it but I guess you could say that was the start.
In my coloring books I always put light and shadow on everything. It was never just flat coloring. I had a friend in 5th grade when we moved to Nebraska who was also very artistic. Instead of playing the usual games that kids played, we would draw for hours. We set up tennis shoes, still life’s, drew the trees in the yard…anything we could find. I just loved it. From there, I took every art class I could in high school and then earned my BFA degree in college (studio art/painting).
After graduating, I married my first husband, and began working as a graphic artist for a local bank. I tried to do a little painting when I could find time. My husand decided to start a home building company in 1980. We had two children, and when they were almost two and four, I left my graphics job to stay home. For the next couple of years, I did the bookkeeping for my husband’s business, painted and did freelance graphics work when the kids napped and at night after they went to bed. That lasted a couple of years until it became necessary to get my real estate license so I could help my husband’s business by selling his homes. Ironically, the week that I was waiting for the results of my real estate test, Denise Burns, founder of Plein Air Painters of America, was in our town to teach an oil painting workshop, which I attended. She really inspired me and encouraged me to pursue my art (the painting I did in that workshop still hangs in my studio next to my easel).
I passed the real estate test and, reluctantly, ended up having to put my art career on hold. With two small children, the demands and time commitment of a real estate career and still doing the bookkeeping for the home building business, there was no time for art (other than drawing architectural renderings to advertise the homes we built). Three years later, we divorced.
Throughout my time in real estate, I never lost sight of the goal of returning to my art career someday. I always considered myself an artist first, and real estate was just temporary.
In late 1991 I married my husband Don, with whose love and support I was able to return to my art career. By this time I was doing architectural illustrations for several home builders and little pen and ink drawings (sometimes with watercolor added) of people’s homes to give as closing gifts. I also did note cards printed from my pen and ink drawings of homes. Soon, other realtors started ordering my drawings and cards for their own clients. Eventually I got to the point that I was earning almost as much from the “house portraits” as I was from selling real estate.
I started painting again a couple of years later. When Don saw my paintings and how happy it made me to be painting, he encouraged me to let go of the real estate career and get back to creating my art full time. We remodeled our basement into a small classroom where I taught art classes for children. I painted, and continued doing the house portraits, renderings and graphic work. Eventually, my art took over the spare bedroom, the basement, the office and then the dining room. At that point, in 1996, we bought a small building in our little downtown area and remodeled it to house my studio, a large classroom, a frame shop and a gallery…and I let my real estate license go. That freed up my days for art and my evenings and weekends for family time. Each year we analyzed which areas of my art business were profitable for the amount of time and money being spent, and reviewed and set new goals. I closed the gallery after four years to spend more time producing my own work, and eventually stopped doing commercial framing for the same reason. Next, I let go of the renderings and graphics work, and started scaling back on the house portraits (which were all deadline oriented and not as enjoyable as painting) so I could concentrate just on painting.
Also in 1996, the same year we opened the downtown studio, I began taking one painting workshop a year to help improve my painting skills. The first one was with Tom Browning in 1996. In 1999, my first plein air workshop was with Kevin Macpherson in Bermuda…AND I FOUND MY PASSION. I went on to study with Kevin several more times as well as Kenn Backhaus, John Cosby, Kim English and Scott Christensen. Other than traveling to workshops, I stayed pretty close to home until my children graduated from high school. I began entering juried shows and competitions, first locally, then regionally, and finally nationally. Being accepted into several, and winning a few awards, brought attention from some gallery owners and resulted in representation by three of the four galleries who currently represent me. Although I’d been a full time artist (which included painting too) for about ten years, my goal was to be a full time painter. I made that transition about seven years ago.These days, I try to paint during the day and do my marketing in the afternoons and evenings. Some weeks I’ll set aside a couple of days just for marketing. I spend probably about as much time on the business side of art as I do actually producing art.
What is your role as president of the American Impressionist Society?
I’m still very much in the learning process since I’ve only been in this position since the end of January of this year. Communication and coordination best describe the biggest roles I have at this point, and working with the board, the founders and the officers. The first priority was to get to work on our 14th Annual National Juried Exhibition with our Show Chair, Suzanne Morris, who had already been working hard on the show for a few weeks. The show will be held at M Gallery in Charleston SC in October. I’ve worked on things like writing the show prospectus, arranging for the workshop in conjunction with the show, communicating with our web designer, recruiting volunteers to help with various aspects of the show, updating the AIS Facebook page as needed, and writing communication for the membership. Now that the online entry system for the national show is active, I’m fielding questions from members and helping however I can. I’m actively seeking ideas and suggestions for new opportunities and ways to serve our membership so we can continue to build on what is already a great organization. We already have one exciting thing in the works…but as nothing is finalized yet, you’ll have to stay tuned for more information as it progresses.
There are so many art groups today that differentiate themselves according to medium, subject matter, style, region of the country, or even gender…what are your feelings about that?
There really are a lot of them. I think that many of these groups do give artists a place where they feel their art fits in (style, medium, subject matter), as well as opportunities to meet other artists, network, paint together, take part in workshops and, often, group exhibitions. The main thing I’ve done is research what they offer and decide which of the groups fit my needs, my goals and my work. My style of painting is more impressionistic and I do a lot of plein air painting, so I’ve done well with AIS and plein air groups, such as Laguna Plein Air Painters and Plein Air Artists Colorado, as opposed to other groups who, for example, favor tighter realism. There are not a lot of artists in the area where I live, but through one fairly new group, the Missouri Valley Impressionist Society, I’ve been able to connect with many artists who live in about a three hour radius of me. Through MVIS I can participate in paint outs and exhibits closer to home that I otherwise would not have known about. I paint landscapes, but I also do portraits and figurative pieces, so I’ve been encouraged to join the Portrait Society of America, which I’m now seriously considering. In my experience, there are a lot of benefits to be gained from being a member of a group or groups.
Several contemporary art movements seem to have a pretty fuzzy definition as to what fits into their “movement”…What is your definition of Impressionism? Is it merely surface appearance, intention, a philosophy…or is there more to it?
Impressionism is more about spontaneously capturing a moment in time, an “impression” of the subject, by carefully observing and quickly rendering the effects of light on the subject, the colors, the atmosphere, movement. Impressionist paintings are representational with visible brushstrokes but without a great amount of detail (think plein air paintings as the most obvious example). Tightly rendered pieces with a lot of detail and smooth surfaces wouldn’t fit into that definition. The American Impressionist Society, Inc. defines American Impressionism as “the concern for light on form, color, and brushstrokes. It allows equal latitude between these attributes, and recognizes not a single definitive element, but several factors – including high key light and hue, visual breakdown of detail, concern for contemporary life, and cultivation of direct and spontaneous approaches to a subject”.
What proportion of your work is done en plein air?
Probably about 70 to 75%.
What qualifies as a plein air painting?
There are so many different opinions on this subject. To me, if the majority of the piece is painted outdoors, on locatoin, from direct observation, from life, it qualifies as plein air. Now “majority” can mean different things to different people. I think some touch ups in the studio are permissible for it to still be considered plein air. I have a couple of pieces I did in Zion National Park that need tweeking, but probably 85-90% of these pieces were completed on location. Just because I will finish them in the studio, the overwhelming majority of each was plein air. In my opinion, they will still qualify as plein air. I’ve had to paint from inside my car during rain and thunderstorms, and because I’m painting it from life, on location, from the actual observation of the scene in front of me, I consider that plein air as well.
What are the major problems encountered when translating a field study to a large studio painting?
The major problem is to translate that freshness and immediacy that you achieve in the field on to the canvas in the studio…it’s very, very difficult. So much of that freshness is achieved because the time is limited in the field…the conditions are changing so rapidly that to capture the scene, you have to paint quickly and more intuitively. In the studio, there are no time constraints. The light isn’t going away. The shadows aren’t moving. There is much more time to think about what you’re doing and that in itself takes away from that original feel of the field study. I no longer try to make the studio pieces be an enlarged ‘copy’ of the field studies. Instead I use the studies as color reference and inspiration. It frees me up to play with composition, color, mood, etc, in the larger paintings and is much more fun.
What advice do you have for a first-time plein air painter?
Keep it simple! Pack as lightly and as compact as you can when it comes to your gear. There are a lot of options out there for equipment. Be sure to have a hat with a good brim, sunscreen, bug spray and plenty of water to drink. Avoid wearing bright colors when you paint outdoors as they will reflect onto your canvas and skew the color in your painting. Keep your canvas and palette out of the direct sunlight…even if it means having your subject behind you. Keep your compositions simple. Block in your shadows first and commit to them. Avoid ‘chasing the light’ (changing your painting as the light changes). Work quickly.
What are your artistic goals for 2013?
To stay organized, to successfully serve and lead AIS and find new opportunities for our members, to produce another 20 paintings for the solo exhibition this fall with historical works by artist Abby Williams Hill, to have a successful National Juried Exhibition for Plein Air Artists Colorado (I serve on the PAAC board and am the show chair this year), be more consistent with my blog, to get out and paint on location locally as much as possible, and to create a new body of seascape paintings from the plein air studies and reference photos from a recent trip to California. I will be traveling and painting for a month this fall as well.
Thanks Debra for your time, for your active participation in so many art organizations…and for your boundless energy. From your resume, it’s pretty obvious…you’re not done yet.