The Light in August

"Painted Path" 8x10 oil on Ampersand Gessobord (collection artist)

Happy August everyone! Many thanks to all my summer students who keep painting and working hard despite the many other enjoyable distractions of summer.

Happy hard-working oil painters in my Denver oil painting summer class

New August Oil Painting Workshop
Before my group painting classes resume this fall, I’m really looking forward to teaching an enjoyable 2 day “summer retreat” oil painting workshop at the Foothills Art Center in Golden on August 23/24. Think of it as a 2 day painting vacation—with comfortable AC! We’ll learn lots so come join us! You may get info and register for the workshop here: http://www.foothillsartcenter.org/adultsclasses/

Summer’s Picture Perfect
Quick reminder that summer is the perfect season for what I like to call “image collection.”  Whether your summer travels take to you exotic locales or just really enjoy local exploration like I do here are some quick tips for taking painting reference photos:

• Venues like cafes, parks, farmer’s markets, gardens, street scenes, festivals, neighborhoods, trails, marinas, the beach, etc. all make for interesting photo references you could use later for a class or workshop. 
• What makes a strong painting reference photo? That’s going to differ depending on your art goals but in general it might be a subject you enjoy (like my pinto horse today), or dramatic light and shadow, interesting shapes or textures, eye catching color, early or evening light, etc. Again the more photos you take the more ideas and options you’ll have.
• Once you have man photos it can be very helpful to take a few hours and sort them into groups or galleries with painting themes like landscapes, still lifes, flowers, skies and clouds, animals, people,etc. This makes it much easier and quicker to find just the right photo when you need it later. 

Finally, be sure to have some kind of back up for your photos—either with a cloud, online storage, or on a memory stick just in case. Happy photo gathering--Have a wonderful summer and hope to see you in a class soon!

That Which We Already Possess

"Painted Pony" 8x8 Oil on canvas-SOLD

It's great to be back. Has it really been almost two months? I didn't mean to take a such a long break but with some out of town travel, a few non art related business projects (thank you clients!), and lots of new students (thanks and welcome!), it's been hard to find easel time late in the summer but as fall approaches (along with some show deadlines) I'm ready to focus and get back to work.  

During my blogging break I've had some amazing art inspiration--a long awaited trip to exotic Kauai (one of the most amazing places I've ever seen), meeting one of my long time art idols Dan McCaw and his sons in person at Gallery 1261 a few weeks ago, participating in the Denver Plein Air Arts Festival (reminding me just how challenging plein art can be), and attending Core Gallery's Black and White Show to see one of my student's first shows. If you paint you know how exciting that is--Congratulations again Grace!

I felt a bit like a groupie waiting in line after Mr. McCaw's gallery talk to have him sign his book. He could not have been more gracious. If you read my blog you know it's one of my favorite art books of all time. Well worth the out of print price on Amazon. I'm sure this isn't the first time he's written this but it felt like it to me. And I wanted to share what he wrote since I think it perfectly and eloquently captures how I also feel about teaching:

We are both on the same journey to find and value that which we already possess. Good Luck.

The only thing missing was that I would have loved to follow him (but in a non stalking way!) to his workshop at the Weekend with Masters. Maybe next year...Coincidentally last week's Artists Helping Artists talk show featured an interview with Dan McCaw and I highly recommend listening to it whether your a fan or not. All of the above events have given me a slew of painting ideas, such as a very colorful pinto horse painted on a red toned canvas.

Finally a big thanks to all my summer students and their parents. Especially those who returned to high school and universities--I miss you already but it was great sharing my summer with you and I look forward to seeing you next year! And for all my new fall students, welcome, I know it's going to be super colorful season and journey!

One Horse in a Blue Moon

Hope you are already enjoying 2010! This is a good example of an oil painting where I combine a variety of themes, goals, and inspirations. Which for me is how I like to paint the most. For example, I was thinking about the recent rare blue moon--it only occurs one ever 19 years on New Year's Eve in fact. So we won't see another until 2028...

I also challenged myself to paint in fairly dark, limited range neutral palette--but of course some color made it's way in as I worked along. So I'd like to try this again and really try to keep the color at a minimum just to see what happens.

Originally, I wanted to play with balancing 2 objects or key shapes, in this case 2 horses, but in the end it wasn't working and I decided to simply paint out the second horse. Just for fun though I left the ghost of his shadow on the left. Ahh artistic license...And to balance the remaining horse I added some mysterious figures (?) on the ridge.

I should note that this was entirely from my head which helps me at least to focus more on shapes, patterns, line, edges, values, etc. This is one of the paintings where I may be tempted to keep playing with it, but it's frankly sometimes best to move on with what you've learned in this one.

For more information about my work or my classes, as always I welcome your emails. Please write to me at the email in my blog header. Have a great first week of 2010!

Manely About Color

While working on my equine painting a few weeks ago, I was inspired to do a quick color study of a single horse.

I love abstracted horse forms and while I didn't approach this painting as loosely as I originally planned, it was still an enjoyable practice of the equine form. As I often do at the end I worked some calligraphic strokes and line work into the piece, I like to do this in pure color sometimes to add that certain sparkle.

I've always loved the color of buckskin horses--the great contrast of glowing ivory coats with lush dark points as accents.