Hunter McKee - Artist

Most of New Jersey artist Hunter McKee's paintings are done plein air, combining expressive color, confident brushstrokes and dramatic perspective & cropping. They vary in size from 6"x8" up to 28"x49".

"I paint directly, on-site, using opaque colors in response to what I see, think, and feel about a subject. It’s a challenging, time consuming, and rewarding process."

He was a student of George Nick at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, who also combines ordinary subjects with fresh enthusiasm, and who paints exclusively from observation.

William Jameson - Artist & Teacher

William Jameson loves to travel and paint. His land- and seascapes feature the Bahamas, Italy, France, Mexico, Colorado and Montana as well as his beloved home state of South Carolina. Their sizes vary from 8"x10" up to 52"x72" (the one shown here, Apallachian Textures II, is 72"x48").

His workshops are open to all levels from beginner to advanced, and instruction is offered in oil, watercolor, acrylic or pen and ink sketching. His wife Anne is also a painter and participates in the workshops.

“The more I paint, the more I must paint. The need to…is never diminished by having completed a painting, but rather there’s an immediate need to begin another.”

Paint the Town in Marble Falls, Texas

The Fifth Annual Paint the Town plein-air art event will be April 16-18 in historic downtown Marble Falls, in the Texas Hill Country west of Austin. More than 50 juried artists will set up their easels, and the public is invited to watch the painters at work. There will also be live music all three days of the event.

This year’s finished paintings will be judged by plein air artist and teacher V....Vaughan (painting shown). She will also present a gallery talk on Sunday the 18th about her plein air project and book, Last Year on the Farm, a collection of 365 paintings of her family farm. Fifty of them will be on view.

"I have lived here 30 years . . . most of my life. My husband has lived here his entire life. Our three children are the fourth generation to live here. The farm has sold now and development is coming soon. We are moving to other pastures. The seasons are changing . .. forever."

Florida's Forgotten Coast Plein Air Paint Out

Time once again for the Florida's Forgotten Coast Plein Air Paint Out, a ten-day event taking place from May 7-17 on northern Florida's Gulf Coast.

More than twenty nationally-known painters have been scheduled to participate, and the Quick Draw event on May 8 at Saint George Island Lighthouse Park is open to anyone over the age of 14.

There are all kinds of events open to the public, many of them free, including 11 demonstrations, a roundtable discussion, children's art activities, artists' receptions, student art day, exhibits, entertainment, and 3 workshops. In addition, of course, everyone is invited to watch the pros as they paint in eight locations along the waterfront and the inland town of Wewahitchka.

You can also find out more about it on their facebook page.

Sergei Bongart: Notes on Painting

Graphic designer and fine artist Norm Nason has compiled and posted a page of Sergei Bongart's Notes on Painting. A student of Russian realism and American impressionism, Bongart was an influential painter and instructor until his death in 1985. Here is some of the guidance that he gave his many students (and note the encouraging disclaimer at the end):

It is vital at the start of a painting to cover the white of the canvas with chosen silhouettes of color. Do this as soon as possible. A white canvas masks the truth of the color relationships.

It is entirely possible, and often advisable, to spend 90% of your time merely adjusting the big, simple shapes before ever moving to the rendering.

Of all the properties of color, value is by far the most powerful. Value and design set the painting; all else builds from them.

When dealing with complimentary colors in a composition (warms against cools), a good rule of thumb is to shift both to the same side of the color wheel. This may help harmonize and otherwise sharp composition. Take, for example, yellow and violet. Move them both to, say, the red side. The yellow then becomes a yellow-orange, while the violet becomes a reddish violet.

A light object against a dark background (in intense light) will have its edges flare and soften into the darkness, taking on the intense color of the light. The human eye naturally focuses on one distinct area at a time, leaving everything else softly out of focus. When painting, pick out a few hard edges at points where you want the viewer to concentrate and soften the edges elsewhere.

Disclaimer. All of the above are basic observations of light on form. Things tend to play in reality the way I've stated. However, you can easily find wonderful exceptions in the art world to everything I've told you. Use the information as a tool to learn color, but don't feel inhibited by it. Remember that art, at its best, is the seeing of life in new and exciting ways, not as rote formula.

Stay in the paint!

Sergei Bongart

David Slonim - June Oil Painting Workshop

There are still a few spots open for David Slonim's June 16-18 workshop sponsored by Indiana Heritage Arts (there is an application form at their site). All levels of oil painters are welcome.

This workshop will focus on the universal principles of visual communication used by every great painter, regardless of style or time period. It will include plein air and studio time, demos and individual attenion. It will cover not only some of the key principles, but how to continue learning on your own after the workshop ends.

"The goal is not to get you to paint like I do, but to paint like yourself with more beauty and power of expression in your work. It’s not about technique or style, but a mindset."
- David Slonim

Quang Ho - Artist & Teacher

Painter and instructor Quang Ho had his first one-man show at the age of sixteen. He's been painting ever since, and, in addition to a successful career as an artist, he has been teaching for twenty years at the Art Students League of Denver.

He recently completed three instructional DVDs: Nuts and Bolts, Painting the Still-Life, and Painting the Figure in an Interior. His teaching focuses not only on the elements of a painting such as light, edges, abstract shapes and the way they fit together, etc. but also on "visual vocabulary," the artist's intention and the qualities that the painting expresses.

He will participate again this year in the Weekend With the Masters, which will be held in Dana Point, California September 23-26.

He is also completing a series of illustrations for a children's book and preparing for an exhibit in London.

He does take time out for dinner with friends sometimes, and he has done several paintings of the kitchen in his favorite restaurant, Mizuna in Denver.

Dominik Modlinski - Adventurous Artist

Canadian artist Dominik Modlinski has traveled (almost) from pole to pole in the Western Hemisphere. He is offering workshops this year on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, in Yukon Territory, Alaska and Todos Santos, Mexico. You can also hire him to lead an expedition/workshop for you and a few friends in the location of your choice.

Since most of his paintings feature wilderness, it's interesting to see his blog posts from Japan, where he is following the cherry blossoms, starting in Hiroshima and traveling north. A much tamer place than his usual domain...(although he did encounter some wild boars!)

M.E. "Mike" Bailey - Artist

Santa Cruz artist, teacher and new president of the National Watercolor Society, M.E. "Mike" Bailey has a degree in engineering and, in spite of an early interest in art, didn't get into painting in a major way until he was 46.

He uses both watercolor and oils, and there is a list of free articles on this page of his website dealing with process, elements, intentions, creativity and other aspects of art and being an artist. There is also a beautifully illustrated page about travel journals. In addition, he posts news and demos regularly on his lively blog.

He will be offering a workshop, "Watercolor Beyond the Obvious" in North Carolina next month.

On the Watercolor Landscape page of his website, this is what he has to say about painting plein air:

"There is nothing better (or worse!) than to paint outdoors! The distractions and confronting challenges are myriad and the conditions often very uncomfortable. It is where lessons of light are learned the hard way! Frankly, few of my plein air attempts come out as ‘nice’ as a studio painting. There is, however, an urgent energy in paintings done outdoors, which is quite charming."

National Parks Artist-in-Residence Program

Artists have been part of national parks since the 1860s and 70s, when painters, photographers and writers played a vital role in documenting the spectacular landscapes of the West and convincing Congress to preserve certain places as a public trust.

Today, 29 national parks around the country participate in an Artist-In-Residence program for painters, sculptors, writers, poets, photographers, composers, performers and craft artists to live and work on site in the park. Usually, artists are expected to donate a piece of art or offer a public presentation in exchange for a place to live and work in the park for two weeks or more.

The photo above shows John B. Fairbanks (1855-1940) painting in Zion National Park in Utah.

Michael Newberry Tutorials

Painter, gallery owner, art critic and instructor Michael Newberry has posted 49 tutorials on his website, three of which are specifically about painting outdoors.

This one (which is in two segments) demonstrates his dark-to-light plein air technique. This method is helpful in three ways: "It enables the painter to work quickly (an absolute necessity for outdoor, quick painting in under an hour). This approach keeps the highlighted areas clean and bright, which solves the problem of the oils' tendency to become muddy. This technique easily merges, or groups all the shadow's colors--giving them a translucent, natural feeling."

And this one, called "Finishing Off Plein Air Paintings," shows how it's possible to use a retro-active thumbnail sketch to recallibrate the values or other elements in your painting.

He is also offering three plein air workshops in Santa Monica, Mexico and Canada this spring and summer.

Bill Cone - Pastelist at Pixar

California artist Bill Cone has worked as a commercial illustrator, a set designer for the movie Toy Story and as production designer for A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, and Cars.

About ten years ago, he started taking pastels outdoors to study the various effects of sunlight and atmosphere. He was captivated by the qualities of natural light and color, and he continues to work in both worlds - fine art and animation. The study shown here is from a trip to the Sierras, where for the last five years he and some fellow artists have hired a cook and pack mules for a trek into the mountains.

He will be participating again this year in Sonoma Plein Air. There is a wait list for his class this July at the Sierra Nevada Field Campus (the class size is limited to 12).

"Natural light has such an extraordinary range of complexity and subtlety, that it is truly a bottomless well of inspiration for any artist that has gone outside to work. To capture even a fraction of those qualities in an image is a worthy goal."