Dianna Shyne - Demos

Dianna Shyne studied Russian Impressionism for 15 years and has worked in oils, watercolor and acrylic. In 2000, health issues caused her to discontinue working with oils and turn to acrylics instead.

This is a link to a demo about keeping acrylics from drying on your palette, and here is a page on her website where she does a 30"x40" painting on location.

The painting shown (above) was done during an artist-research project in the Northwest rainforest, sponsored by National Geographic magazine. The artists climbed trees and painted on platforms high above the ground.

Carl William Peters 1897-1980

Carl William Peters has been called "one of the best-kept secrets of 20th Century American art."

He grew up in New York state, in both rural and urban situations, and studied art at the (then) Mechanics Institute in Rochester (now the Rochester Institute of Technology). He became friends with Charles and Emile Gruppe and later attended lectures by Robert Henri at the Art Students League in New York City and its summer school in Woodstock.

While he was learning and beginning to establish himself as an artist in the early years of the last century, Modernism and Impressionism were the primary influences in the art world. American art in general and representational art in particular had gone out of fashion. But Peters always painted common local scenes, both natural and man-made.

Eventually he painted in New England, especially Cape Ann, an artist colony which had been called "The Brittany of America." Art colonies originated in Europe and later appeared in the U.S. around the turn of the last century. They were instrumental in the development of plein-air painting and Impressionism. Certain elements of cubism appear in Peters' work, adding a "Cezannesque formalism" to his basically realist style.

- Sarah Judson

References:

Love, Richard H., Carl W. Peters, American Scene Painter, from Rochester to Rockport, Boydell & Brewer, 1999

Shipp, Steve, American Art Colonies 1850-1930, Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996

Jimmy Leslie - Artist

We just got back from the National Art Materials Trade Association show in Louisville Kentucky (that's the reason for the recent lack of posts here).

While there, we met Jimmy Leslie, a New Jersey painter who has become Resident Artist/Technical Support Manager at Colart Americas, Inc. (the North American distributor for, among other brands, Winsor & Newton and Liquitex). We sent him away with a paintbox, tripod and wet painting carrier.

"As an artist I am not trying to alter anyone’s view of the world with my paintings, nor do I feel the need to address social issues. I simply want to create good, solid paintings, which seems like enough of a lifelong challenge. In doing this my subject matter tends to revolve around familiar surroundings like my neighborhood and my studio and my family life... Finding the message is up to the individual viewer. It might be found in a certain shape, a harmony of color, or a particular light source… I don’t know how to paint apples, trees, or people’s noses. What I do know is that if I paint the correct values, shapes, and colors and place them in the right position, the objects will create themselves." - Jimmy Leslie

Why Cats Paint - Book Review

This cult classic creates a fun kind of cognitive dissonance. We know that cats have keen eyesight, great capacity for concentration, excellent hand/eye(paw/eye?) coordination, a certain amount of color vision, marking and scratching behavior, curiosity...and look at all those beautiful photos! Cats caught in the act of making marks on paper.

But when the authors of this colorful coffee-table book start talking about "exploring inner feelings," "mood piece" and "for its own sake," you think, "Ah...this can't be real."

Four-legged action painters? Spontaneous reductionist? Romantic ruralist? This book is a sweet satire. A gentle parody of the world of art-speak. Elaborate and hilarious.

- Sarah Judson

Why Cats Paint
Heather Busch & Burton Silver, authors
Ten Speed Press; Third Printing edition (May 1, 1994)
12"x10" 96 pages
(Caveat: Some of the books listed on Amazon are a small-size, edited version, not nearly as nice.)

"Florida's Forgotten Coast" Paint Out

Florida's Forgotten Coast is a relatively undeveloped section of coastline on the Gulf of Mexico, just south of Georgia.

Between May 7-17, they are having a plein air Paint-Out with exhibits of fresh (still-wet) paintings as well as paintings from private collections, a Quick-Draw (you can register anytime before May 6), a wine-tasting, a Student Art Day, discussions, many demonstrations by the invited artists, receptions and a Salt Air Farmers Market.

Instructional DVDs

We've been wondering what kind of resources were available in the realm of instructional DVDs. Of course, many professional painters make their own DVDs that are available on their websites. Here are some places that are more general:

Creative Catalyst Productions and Art Workshops TV have been working together to produce and distribute DVDs for all skill levels and media. The DVDs are available online or can be shipped.

The Artists' Place is the distributor for (British producers) APV Films in USA, Canada, Japan, Taiwan and some South American countries. APV has been making films since 1985 with renowned painters on location in extremes of climate and terrain as well as in the artists' studios.

Artist Network TV lets you watch online. You can sign up to watch one or more DVDs online for six months. They also offer DVDs for sale.

The Carder Method is a system that combines a two-DVD set with two tools, a Color Checker and a Proportional Divider, as "training wheels" to teach you how to see accurately when painting from life. Absolutely no talent required. ("Spend a year. Paint ten still-lifes. Learn to see.")

At Amazon, you have to search "Movies and TV" for art instruction DVDs. Only about nine are about painting, and then it starts to get into playing music and bellydancing.

Earl Carpenter

We received a note from painter Earl Carpenter (he also has a page at Ask Art), who has been traveling for weeks at a time, over the last forty years, to paint on location. He was wondering if there are any orgaizations for people who do this, to share information, ideas, suggestions and support. We've heard of RV organizations (there are several), but is there one for painters?

We are always amazed to see the Dogwood trees in bloom when we travel through the midwest in spring, and there must be a thousand such spectacles if you know where to look. On the other hand, maybe ordinary situations, like prairie grass when it begins to turn green, cropland in the fall or a pasture full of cattle, can inspire.

If you know about an existing group, or if you'd be interested in creating one, you can get in touch with Earl Carpenter at his e-mail address, mudroom13@msn.com.

The Hudson River Fellowship

The Hudson River Fellowship is a program to revive the traditional skills of the landscape painters of the Hudson River School. Field studies are an essential part of the curriculum, including pencil drawings, tonal studies and plein air oil sketches. Theory and larger studio painting are also covered.
This charcoal and white chalk sketch is by James David Smillie, dated 1881.

Landscapes of Gustav Klimt

We all know Gustav Klimt from his decorative Art Nouveau paintings, such as "The Kiss," involving gold leaf and mosaic effects. It might come as a surprise to learn that he was also a plein air painter.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire that he grew up in was a cultural center for music, politics, architecture and psychology as well as art. Klimt was the son of an engraver and was influenced by everyone from Freud to Monet and Van Gogh.

His landscapes are quite decorative, flattened and patterned, as opposed to representational. He is said to have used binoculars when choosing a scene to paint. He includes little or no sky, focusing instead on earth, wood and water.

A Symbolist, he painted an apple tree as "The Tree of Life," a house as an archetypal House, a lake or swamp as the primordial source of life. The elements and colors in the paintings are arranged in a naturalistic harmony, like a hymn. He used a square format which implied tranquility and stability, and his pointillistic brush strokes implied infinity without resorting to the use of perspective.

These fairly large (2-3 foot) paintings are a combination of plein air and in-studio work, and a combination of exterior scenes and inner visions.

- Sarah Judson


Johannes Dobai, Gustav Klimt - The Landscapes, Verlag Galerie Welz, Salzburg, 1981

Anderson Ranch Art Center

Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass, Colorado offers all kinds of workshops in the summertime, for all ages and skill levels. It's a beautiful place to study with prominent artists, and you might be able to sit in on a presentation that's entirely different from what you came for. In addition to traditional classes in ceramics, woodworking, printmaking, photography and drawing and painting, they offer unusual interdisciplinary and "new media" classes such as...performance drawing, bookmaking using sheets of mica and wood as well as paper, digital imaging on clay, digital storytelling, etc. They also offer field expeditions to Jamaica (for pottery) and Utah and the Outer Hebrides (for photography).

On the "drawing and painting" list, there are several classes that might interest a plein air painter, such as the following (all are 5 days, except Figure in the Landscape, which is 12 days):

Beginning Oil Painting - Paul Collins
Fresh Air, Fresh Paint - Gregory Botts
Flower Power - Glenn Goldberg
Figure in the Landscape - John Hull
Site and Story - Annice Jacoby & Julie Heffernan

Weekend With the Masters

American Artist magazine is hosting Weekend With the Masters this fall, from September 9-13. It will be held at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, about an hour south of Denver.

The event will include not only workshops and demos but also panel discussions, presentations, an exhibit, a benefit silent auction of donated small works, a sunrise painting demonstration in the Garden of the Gods, lunchtime lectures from noted art historians and museum directors, a showing of the film Local Color followed by Q&A with writer/director (and painter) George Gallo, and an evening reception for all the participating painters, including:

Richard Schmid
Daniel F. Gerhartz
Kevin Macpherson (see painting, top)
Mary Whyte
David A. Leffel
Quang Ho
Scott Christensen
Timothy J. Clark
Sherrie McGraw
Scott Burdick
Joseph McGurl
John Salminen
Jeremy Lipking
Susan Lyon
Skip Whitcomb
Stephen Quiller
Jacob Collins
Frank Serrano

Sketching Birds from Life

If you sit inside a blind (maybe near a water source), remain quiet, wear subdued colors or camouflage, use binoculars and your peripheral vision, have your materials at the ready (using toned paper would be less disturbing to wildlife) and practice patience, you can fill your sketchbook with all kinds of birds and other wild creatures. Focus closely for a second or two (take a "snapshot" with your eyes), then look at your paper and re-create the pose & gesture.

Here is a birder's blog, and here is a quote from one of the posts:

To draw something is to own it. You take home a sheet of paper with an image filtered through you, and you have an intense experience of the subject that can’t be taken away. You have absorbed it’s every motion, nuance, feather tract and life-force and it becomes a member of the academy of brain cells and nerve fibers. If, someday, you see that species again, you have the reserves to work from, the muscle memory, and the proportions are stored where you can retrieve them again. ~ Debby Kaspari

This is her website. Most of her work is done on paper, either in graphite and pastel, pen and ink, or watercolor; acrylic on board or canvas is used as well.