Slippery Noodle

5

I love the night-time reflections in the road when it is raining.  I have enjoyed trying to paint those kinds of scenes.  On some rainy nights I grab my camera and tripod so I can capture the beautiful colors in the wet roads.

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On one night I drove to downtown Indianapolis. I was especially excited when I saw the Slippery Noodle. It is the oldest bar in the city. There were reflections from all the neon signs as well as the lights from inside. The taillights and headlights of the passing cars made great reflections as well.

I set up my tripod and started shooting. Soon, someone came running out with a plastic bag. They saw me out there and wanted me to put it over my camera so it wouldn’t get wet.

When I painted this, I looked for shapes of different colors. I saw chunks of white, pink, blue and green in the road area. I put them in. Then I looked at the buildings. I followed the same technique – I drew in the shapes of the different colors and values, then painted them in individually. I didn’t blend the colors together, but kept them separate. It all came together like pieces in a puzzle. By the way, I didn’t use the plastic bag. I dried my camera off with a towel in the car.

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Sunflowers

4

 

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Within a five or ten minute drive from  my home I am in farm land. Cornfields grow right to the sides of the roads. One day my daughter, Nicole, was riding through the rural landscape when she discovered these wild sunflowers poking their blossoms up through the corn. It was as though they were pleading for the sun to wash them with its light.

I have tried to represent their gesture and the dramatic appearance of the petals and leaves. You will see the shadows and light. There are differing shades of green and yellow. The blue sky peeks out between the clouds.

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Painting Sunlight

9

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This painting shows the early morning sunlight flooding over the ground. If you actually look at the color of early morning or late evening sunlight on grass, it is usually a light yellow. Many people just go ahead and paint the grass green, but it is not what they actually see. Since the sun is low to the horizon, the shadows are long. The sunlight is yellow, but the shadowy parts are green. There is a strong highlight on the person and the trees where the sunlight hits them, but a definite shadow on the other side. If you look at the flower pots you will see reflected yellow light which bounces up from the grass to their sides.

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Fun in Europe

6

I love Europe. The architecture is fantastic, the art museums are fabulous, and I really enjoy talking to the people there. Probably the thing I like most is walking past sidewalk cafes. It is so much fun to see the people sitting there, eating and talking. Each little cafe has its own atmosphere. I’ve enjoyed painting some of those scenes.

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This is a cafe in Stockholm. I’ve tried to portray the relaxed feeling of the customers as well as the friendliness of the waitress. The people up close are detailed, while the ones further back don’t have the same coloring or shading. Notice the different skin tones on the three people up close, as well as the light and shadows.

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This scene is from Montmatre in Paris. I’ve concentrated more on trying to develop personality in the subject’s faces. You can imagine what they may be thinking or saying. In the bottom left corner I’ve painted three people in their own intimate group, while the other two are leaning close together for their private gossip. The top left shows someone in a doorway and to the far right are more customers. If you go to Montmatre you know that many tourists are walking past these people as they sit. Maybe they are what the subjects are talking about.

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Monument Circle

7

At the very center of downtown Indianapolis is a circle. In the middle of it is a tall structure known as the “Soldiers and Sailors Monument,” so the circle has been named “Monument Circle.”

I’ve wanted to do a painting of the circle for a long time. I knew I needed a view from above. One day I went with my camera to some of the buildings surrounding the circle to see if I could take some pictures. I wasn’t having any luck finding observation decks that were open. Finally I went to the tallest building. I got out my business card and and told the guard at the desk that I was an artist and needed to do a painting of the circle. He told me to go to the various floors and ask the businesses if I could take pictures out of their windows. That is what I did. I liked the view from about halfway up, about the 25th floor. The people were very willing to let me go in their offices for the view.

I wanted to do a large painting. I stretched my own canvas. It is 72″ x 48″. Here I am trying to paint it:

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I had to block it in first. You can see the shapes I started with. I painted them separately just so I could tell them apart. I tried to figure out which direction the sun was shining so I could add shadows and light.

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Here is the finished product. Note the windows, shadows, and even tiny cars on the circle. It was pretty fun to paint. The only problem was getting a painting this big to the gallery. I don’t remember how I did it, but it’s hanging on their wall.

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Leiden

13

Before the Pilgrims sailed for America on the Mayflower, they moved to Leiden in Holland so they could have religious freedom. After a few years they decided they needed to leave because their children had picked up much of the Dutch culture. They were concerned about preserving their English heritage. They left Leiden to go back to England. From there they sailed to America.

My ancestors were part of that group. They sailed to America on the Mayflower. I was excited when my daughter took my wife and me to visit Leiden where our ancestors lived four hundred years ago. We walked the streets and found where they lived. There is a monument dedicated to them.

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This painting shows a canal in Leiden. Boats are pulled to the sides. Cars park right at the edge. You can see that I have tried to portray the reflections in the water of the boats, the colorful buildings and the trees. The portrayal of the cars is very simple – just a stripe or two of color.

Happy Thanksgiving.

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Great Outdoor Art Contest

5

Recently my students wanted to participate in the Great Outdoor Art Contest at the T.C. Steele state park in Brown County Indiana. I had gone there many times and didn’t feel like painting at that place again. It is a nice place with lots of trees and flowers. It is where the home and studio of the late T.C. Steele is. He was a famous painter.

I told my students we could go there and paint, but I would just stay in the parking lot and do paintings of the cars. That’s just what I did. There were around a hundred artists there. We all painted for a few hours, then our paintings were judged. Guess what? I got third place. That’s kind of funny, considering I was being stubborn and didn’t want to paint what everybody else did. Here is the photo of me from the newspaper article as I painted:

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I used the technique I always use. Instead of thinking about painting cars, I looked for shapes. I saw shapes of light blue, of dark green, of brown, etc. I drew the shapes on the canvas, then filled them in with the colors. It worked again like putting together a puzzle. Keep in mind I only worked on this for about two hours.

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Maybe I was stubborn, but at least I had fun.

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Class Demos

6

When I teach my classes I always begin by doing a demo of the subject I am trying to teach. Here are two of them:

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Whenever I do a still life I light the subject with a lamp so I’ll have shadow and light. I draw the scene on the canvas. I draw each shape I see, like the shapes of shadows or of light. For example, I draw the shadowed areas of the bananas, then the lighted areas. Once the drawing is in, I begin painting. When I paint I don’t think “I’m painting a banana”, instead I think “that shadow shape has a blue tint to it,” so I’ll paint that. Then I might think “there is a blue-green shape” and I’ll paint it, instead of thinking I’m painting the edge of a plate. The cloth is white, but with the yellow light shining on it I put a yellowish tint. If you think about it, my process is like putting together a puzzle: I paint shapes and colors and they eventually come together as a picture.

Here is another class demonstration:

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I’ve done some cars driving past the Indiana State Capitol building. I use linear perspective. There is a vanishing point around the left-center of the picture. The road comes from that point – the left side comes almost straight down and the right side is nearly horizontal. The cars are drawn in the same way with their left and right lines. You also see them driving up the street using atmospheric perspective.  The closer cars are bigger and more detailed while the ones further up the road are smaller with very little detail. You will note the sunlight on the right side of the capitol dome and the yellowish tint on the road. These things, as well as the color of the sky and the shadows on the ground, suggest it is late afternoon.

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