Water Lilies WIP (part I)

After my last posting, where I showed 4 pictures I was considering for my next painting, I chose one that had richer colors (thanks to photo editing software!) and a more panoramic view of the pond, although not as wide as the original. I kept asking myself, "What is the story I'm trying to tell with this picture?" The answer I came up with was that the painting would be about the pond of lilies, not just the lilies. That cut out the close-ups (those can be other paintings!). Because of the size planned for this piece (24 x 36 inches - about 67 x 100cm), there will be room on the panel for details in the indiviual plants. The trick will be to then not have the details be too busy. I might even write myself a big post-it that says, "SIMPLIFY!" and post it on my easel.

In the black-and-white sketch pictured above, I wanted to work out the composition, but more importantly the values. Since the original photo had many many shades of green, combined with reflections in muddy water, it was hard to tell what had a light value and which were darker. You can see by my notes in the margin that I notated where the lightest and darkest spots were.

I'll be posting as this work progresses. It's the largest pastel I've done, and since I'm on break, I have more time to be on the computer....Keep in touch!

Pastel Musings

Summer Ripples (16 x 20 pastel on panel)

I thought I'd dig into my archives for today's post. In looking back through my postings, it's been awhile since I've posted a pastel.

The board for this painting was green.

And I mean a warm green similar to the middle value of the trees on the right. That made the sky pretty difficult, since I didn't want any of the color showing through. I might as well have started with white. I had to work with the panel flat, so that when I colored in the sky, all the extra dust stayed on the surface. I could then take an old paintbrush and gently work it into the crevasses. After that, I used my finger to build up the pigment so that the green was completely hidden.

Next came the golden hill and the faraway trees, which I wanted to keep especially cool. The color of the foliage in this picture is different from the forests around the Midwest in that the overall color temperature is cooler. I had to keep that in the forefront of my mind since my tendency is to use the warm greens that are found in Illinois.

For the beach, I found out just how many uses Great American's Violet Grey has. It's great for sky as well as rocks.

The grasses along the side went in easily. I was please that I chose a warmer color for the tassels. Then the reflections went in, and finally the moving water with the reflected sky.

The water was the part I was the most nervous about. I had just finished Summer Idyll and Chinook, where the water worked out great. But those were still waters, and the little ripples in this one made me unsure. But I looked at them as colors and shapes and recreated them rather than trying to represent ripples. It was really quite easy. After laying down the darker Neptune and Bismark (and maybe some Navy), I was able to scumble Denim over the surface, and viola! ripples.

But I've decided that I love painting water. There are so many variables - the lighting, the distance of the reflected items from the edge of the water, the cloud cover, the wind, etc. It's a great challenge. I think that growing up on lakefront property helps a lot, too. I have a firm memory base of what water looks like in various states, and I believe this basic understanding helps a lot in my landscape painting.

Keep noticing the details!

Pastel Guy

www.matthewweld.com - landscapes in pastel

www.studio206.etsy.com - handmade jewelry for sale

What Good is Your Memory, Anyway?

Today, I received an email from my gallery to let me know that I had sold another painting! Although it's only an 8 x 10, I'm pleased, ...and so is my credit card company. *grin!*

This particular painting is titled "Bitterroot Aspens" and although it is not an actual place in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, it could be. Every summer, my family and I fly up to Missoula to visit extended family there. Having grown up in the most beautiful part of the country I've ever seen, it's always like going home. This particular scene was painted back here in Illinois from memory of no particular place. During our vacation, we had taken a drive down the Bitterroot Valley, and had seen many hills like this covered with grass turned golden by the end of June. This is one of those paintings that really clicked for me, perhaps just because it was from memory. I think it was finished in about an hour on a day when I completed four paintings.


Over the weekend, I was reading in Edgar Payne's Composition of Outdoor Painting (first copyrighted in 1941!) about how he would have his students construct a field study one day, and then the next day, they would actually paint the piece from memory. His assertion was that painting a scene from memory brought to the painting what was emotionally important to the artist, rather than making the painting a recording of every detail seen outdoors. Taking Payne's opinion and reflecting on my own work, I can see how drawing/painting from memory would be allow you to simplify your composition, since we don't remember every single detail - and it's those little details that can really make painting en plein aire challenging.

In Bitterroot Aspens, the sky and the hills were a snap, as were the fields. I remember the trees being pretty easy, too, I think because I wasn't trying to copy a particular grove of aspens. Rather, I was painting for the composition, and that made all the difference in the world. The biggest decision was deciding which color I should sign it with! HA!

Tell us what you do - do you paint strictly from memory? Are you a strict plein aire artist? Are you a studio artist who uses photographs as reference material?

Keep painting!

Pastel Guy

www.matthewweld.com pastel website

www.studio206.etsy.com jewelry store

Ramblin' Art - As Usual

OK. Back to pastels for a moment.

("Yeah, right," you think. "He's always got something more to say than just art!")

Busted.

You know, I never really ever had an opinion about anything. Now I can write about all kinds of things. My opinion on this subject of not having opinions is this:

If you're never asked for your opinion, you don't learn how to form them. Now that I'm a teacher, I have to make all sorts of decisions throught the course of a day. I remember that during my first year of teaching, the one factor that really caught me off guard about teaching was all the decisions I was having to make. I knew there would be lots of grading, and lesson plans, and committee work, and blah blah blah. What I didn't expect was, "Where should I put this?" "If I turn this in tormorrow, what will my grade be?" And then there are the questions that I could never answer: "What's my grade?" "If I get a 100 on this test, what will my grade be?" And the worst question ever: "Did we do anything important yesterday?"

Anyway. Where was I? Right. Pastels.

The painting shown here was actually painted last year. It was taken from a photo shot from a moving car. The reason I dug around and found it was because the picture was taken on our way to our first camping experience with the kids. Fortunately, they loved it, and so this last weekend we had our first 2-night camping experience with the kids. We have the best family! We have so much fun doing not much of anything... Every time we pass this portion of the interstate, I have to point that particular farm out to anyone who's listening (they're getting pretty adept at feigning complete absorption in other activities by now!).

A little story about this painting.

The farm went pretty well. The buildings and trees went in without too much trouble. The sky was just plain blue and the field was green (it was just soybeans, after all). After sitting on the mantle piece for a while, I decided the field needed some visual weight to balance the busy farm. So I started adding that red color, and it really made it work for me. That led to the yellowish highlights, and pretty soon, I had this amazing foreground.

Then the sky. (I have to admit, there was a little alcohol involved with this one).

The sky really irritated me. The clouds were too fluffy, so I started adding purple. After a couple days of this, I finally poured myself a couple fingers' worth of whiskey and started really adding texture and color. I had to adopt that who-cares-I'm-so-flippin'-tired-of-this-stupid-painting-anyway attitude. Presto change-o. Dramatic clouds with a dramatic foreground suddenly made the busy farm seem somewhat, well, pastoral.

This was one of those times when it was the journey that really made a difference, and not the product. I learned several lessons from this one that I have carried over into subsequent works.

Keep Doin' What You Love!

Pastel Guy

www.studio206.etsy.com - yes, I do jewelry, too.

www.matthewweld.com - the official pastel website.

Finding Subject Matter - in Canada

Blustery Day 16 x 20 pastel on panel

Every summer, for the last 6 years, I have accompanied teenagers into the Canadian Wilderness. We take high school students into Quetico Provincial Wilderness through an ecotour outfitter Voyageur Wilderness Programme. The Savoie family in charge does an amazing job of educating youngsters in environmental stewardship by example, teaching, and practice. For 7 days and 6 nights, we travel through the wilderness practicing no trace camping in an area where motorized anything is banned. What an exhilirating experience for me and a life-altering experience for them!

With so much beautiful scenery, it's hard not to be inspired to paint. This last July when we were there, we went along a mile-long portage (where you have to carry all your gear from one lake to the next) that bordered some amazing rapids. Since I usually miss all the scenery on a portage with my head stuck in a canoe, I had to make a trip back sans gear to catch some of views. The painting above was done from a photo taken along the portage. The energy experienced in the rapids along the ground and in the clouds flying by in the sky was overwhelming on one level, and quite peaceful on another. One minute I felt very small and insignificant, yet the next I felt as though I was a part of the vastness - the oneness - and that I could just sit and close my eyes...

All that is what I tried to capture in this painting. I started the sky and the spruce trees in my grandmother's basement in Montana, and then finished it here at home in Illinois. Yet every time I make a painting from a place I know, it takes me back, and that's just one of the great things about art.

I just hope that other people make a similar connection. I realize it won't be the same, but perhaps they have experienced something similar in a completely different location. Or maybe this scene just reminds them of a place, or perhaps they just connect to the energy.

Peace, and keep doing what you love,

PastelGuy

Inorganic v. Organic

Every once in a while in painting, you stumble across a roadblock - OK, so it happens a lot. But solving these issues is what make your paintings stronger, and you as an artist more successful. If you can work out your own issues and then internalize them, you will find that the next time a similar issue comes up, you will be prepared.

In this painting of a flowerbox on a houseboat in Seattle, I found that I really wanted to emphasize the difference between the manmade house and the organic flowers. I thought that the best way to do this would be to make the window, the siding, and the flowerbox all have very distinct lines and edges (more on that later!), and keep the lobelia, lavender, and geraniums very impressionistic. Since most of my landscape painting is very loose (see www.matthewweld.com for more of my work), I had to figure out how to make a hard, straight edge for the manmade elements.

In the end, I used a ruler, broke my pastels into pieces with sharp corners, and ran the pastel along the ruler. Without moving the ruler, I then used a finger to rub the pastel into the pumice (I use Gator Foam with pumice powder gesso) to create the hard edge. Repeat on the other side of the shape if necessary, and then fill in the middle as needed. The trick was figuring out the order in which to do the shapes, considering that while pastels are basically opaque, you can still see the undercolors through the more recent layers. Also, I have both very light and very dark values in the window. In the end, I think it worked. I especially like the little details in the window woodwork that can only be enjoyed when looking closely - a sort of reward for taking a second, closer look.

Window Garden 16 x 12 pastel on panel (2008)

Keep Painting!

Pastel Guy www.matthewweld.com

Goals for an Art Blog

Welcome to my blog! As a newbie blogger, I have several reasons for starting a blog:

1. To increase awareness of my art.
2. To allow people (artists, collectors, anyone) to learn more about me and therefore about my art.
3. To provide a place for me to journal. More on this below.

In the interest of actually making a profit at art, I have heard/read that creating a blog is an excellent way to connect with people, not only potential collectors, but also fellow artists that may be able to provide constructive criticism to my work and to my writing and ideas.

I originally hail from Montana. College years were spent at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa securing a BA in Biology, and finding the love of my life (I've now been with her longer than I was without her!). For a career, I've pursued interior design (glorified furniture sales person!), nursery worker, graduate student, dental technician, and currently, 7th grade science and language arts teacher.

Art started in high school with watercolors, with which I obtained some college scholarships (didn't use them, however). Oil painting courses, a one-man show, and my first art award happened in college. Then, about twelve years later, I took a class in stained glass. That led to the craft fair circuit, which I found rewarding for a few years. However, when people tried and barter down an original picture frame priced at $35 that took hours to make because they could go to a box store and buy equivalents for less, I knew that stained glass was not going to be very lucrative.

What I discovered was that the jewelry I made during the stained glass phase was extremely popular, could be massed produced, and sold at a good profit. However, I needed to be able to broaden my offerings, so that led to the new tangent of beaded jewelry, under the company name of Studio 206. This venture was much more lucrative (still is!), and I have slowly moved into the realm of silversmithed and custom jewelry.

On track to define a couple lines that could be mass marketed online, I opted to take a course in pastel paintings at Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, TN from noted pastelist Susan Ogilvie. That brought the jewelry thing to a screeching halt as I realized that I really loved working in two dimensions, and the challenges that it brought. Pastels especially provide a more sensory experience in the art; you actually can rub your fingers raw blending colors. They seem so under admired in the art world, yet they seem like the pure essence of 2D work with their pure pigmented colors and techniques that draw heavily from drawing (no pun intended!). More on this in a future blog!

As a result of the workshop, my New Year's Resolutions shifted to include submission of my work to two venues: a juried art show, and a juried art exhibition. I juried my work to two of each, and was accepted to one of each. The gallery presentation is in Tacoma Washington at the American Art Company, hosted by the Northwest Pastel Society. It runs through August 16th, 2008. The art show is here in southern Illinois August 22 - 24th, called The Midwest Salute to the Arts.

My family and I were actually able to see my painting in situ at the Tacoma Gallery, and were pleased to walk in and find that my painting had won an award! Another first, and definitely a proud moment in my life.

Next weekend is the big show here in Fairview, and I think I'm about ready. I have 19 paintings framed and ready to go, not counting the two that are required for the donation to the children's art section. I have set my new display system up in my garage, so that I can fuss with the placement of the pictures and with the lighting. I have also obtained a machine to start taking credit cards - until now, I have only accepted checks and cash. It's all quite overwhelming - fortunately, I have started displays from scratch for my jewelry and for my stained glass, so I'm not a total novice!

The third reason I started this blog was to give myself a place to journal. In my language arts classes, I keep nagging the kids to keep a journal, because it's a great way to put down your feelings, and in so doing, really exploring those feelings and ideas. This summer, all four of us in my family kept a journal of our vacations. I really enjoyed it, actually, and need to find the time to sit down and put the finishing touches on it. Natually, mine had sketches in it, as well as little momentos that I collected along the way. My wife's (she the type A organizational guru) journal was a list of places we went and the money we spent. She calculated gas mileage while I analyzed the colors and shadows of a thunderstorm.

There's a little about my and my motivations for blogging. I hope to philosophize more on art, pastels, pastel techniques, etc. in later blogs. For now, peace, and enjoy the last half of August!