Summer Painting

Perhaps a Dutch Treat?

I've been thinking a lot about Holland recently. So much in fact that I'm thinking about a possible Dutch Workshop. Today I spoke with a couple of friends about it at my studio.

So I thought I'd put out the idea to see to whom it might be of interest. I haven't chosen a location, and the dates are very much up in the air. Monday, July 8 through Sunday, July 14 would be good for me, but I'm open to anytime in August or September. Let me know what might be good for you. You can write to me at dbjurney@verizon.net . If English is not your first language, but you think you might have enough language skills to enjoy the workshop, do write to me.

Here's a Jurney, of Delft, painted en plein air in 1980.

 

And here's one from Schermerhorn in 2004:

Two very different styles!

 

Following are some paintings of Holland by painters from the 17th and 19th centuries.

First, I can't not include Piet Mondrian, and his Broadway Boogie Woogie.

Below is what he was doing in 1905.

Chris van de Windt (1877-1952):

 

 

 Willem Tholen (1860-1931):

Cornelius Vreedenburgh (1880-1946):

Anton Mauve (1838-1888, married to Van Gogh's cousin)

Paul Gabriel (1828-1903)

Jacob Maris (1837-1899)

 

Fritz von Uhde (German, 1848-1911) I couldn't resist these kids,

though I can hardly guarantee they'll still be in that street for us.

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

 

 Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)

Jacob van Ruysdael (1628-1682)

That's all I have time for right now. Hope you enjoyed them. I could have picked forty different painters. The choice is almost inexhaustible.

For now I'll be thinking of the Rijksmuseum, with all its Rembrandts and with Vermeer's Woman Pouring Milk, of the Mauritshuis with its Vermeer, View of Delft, and of the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.

So let me know soon if you're thinking a Dutch Workshop might be right for you, and let me know, too, when would be best for you: July 8-July 14, or sometime in August or September.

Cheers, Donald

St. Patrick's Demonstration

Demonstration...the next part

On St. Patrick's night, I did a demonstration for about thirty souls at the Newburyport Art Association. Actually it was in two parts. First, I did a grisaille from scratch, massing the forms in my usual blend of burnt umber and ultramarine, The panel was a wipe-out from the last day of the Savannah Workshop in February, and once had a view of Forsyth Park. (16x20, Claessens #13 SP, mounted to a panel).

In the second part of the evening, I worked on a painting begun en plein air,  last summer, in class. Many of the students were very familiar with how I begin paintings, but were less so with the next step.  

Tonight's post will deal with the grisaille I started at the demonstration. You'll see that I have a full spectrum of colors laid out on the palette in the picture. I would normally, painting out-of-doors, have only a few on the palette, adding others as necessary. In this case, I was anticipating the second part of the demonstration, working on an already- started painting.

The demonstration grisaille ended up like this. When I do these I am always painting out of my head, under a time constraint, so they aren't usually the most sophisticated of compositions.

 

As you can see, the panel had a tint of transparent red oxide, and a bit of the wiped-off Savannah start. Here's a detail.

 

I was thinking this morning about last night's post, and about the discussion of warm versus cool shadows. This prompted me to work on the grisaille, not using blue or violet in the shadowed areas, yet still trying to get a sense of summer warmth without the color temperature contrast.

This is where it wound up.

When I was cleaning my brushes, I realized that I didn't like the falling line of the treetops, angling down toward the right. So I redesigned them. Unfortunately there was wet paint in the area, so they lack some of the oomph they might have had. This is where it actually stands now (plus a detail):

 

Looks to me, now, that I did more than just change the tree line. I confess that my brush spends a lot of time dancing around, not always under my control. I'll sort some of it out tomorrow when I have a couple of painter friends visiting the studio.
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No one submitted any questions. I guess answers are not needed at the moment.

Germany and Russia have now surpassed France in recent blog-following. Perhaps we'll get some new friends for the English and French Workshops?



 

Questions and Answers

In the interest of more speedy replies, I've decided to have an occasional post featuring questions I've received and my answers to them.

This week I've had questions from two blog-followers living in France. 

About the paintings on your blog: do you paint them from imagination?
Except for my plein air work, usually done for classes, I usually paint from my imagination. Often a sketch will be the original germ, but I rarely follow it too scrupulously.  
Or maybe from sketches? 
For a number of years, I worked directly from my sketches, including very many from the sketchbook I published. In the making of all those drawings, I learned a good deal about the landscape, and I began to develop a vocabulary that I could call upon when making a painting from my imagination. Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts to gaining that vocabulary, just hundreds of plein-air drawings.
 I guess you don't work from photos. What about the cow? I have worked a few times from photographs, and I tried to do so many times when I was just beginning. I always found that it was very hard for me to be selective among all the information in the photo. Often, on looking at the photo, I was no longer sure why I'd even taken it. When I make a drawing, I edit as I go, stressing the parts that are of interest and just letting the other stuff go. Consequently, when I look at a twenty-year old drawing I immediately know what I was thinking about when I made it.
The cow(s) presented a big difficulty. I have no real familiarity with our bovine sisters, and so I had a good look on Google images. Unfortunately, no one seems to have wanted to take a photo of a cow on a steep bank, facing the camera almost head-on.

So I was forced to consult The Atlas of Animal Anatomy for Artists. This of course had no view such as I wanted, but it certainly had lots of information which has proven valuable.

In the end, I went to my 19th c. Dutch landscape painters.

Anton Mauve

Willem Maris

Between them and the anatomy book, aided by a few not-right Google images, I plunged in. Because information comes from multiple sources, my cow is less like pure beef and more like meatloaf.

I received a number of critiques of the length of the cow's head, one from a farmer's daughter. They all centered on the head being too long and narrow, not triangular enough. Consulting Ellenberger's Atlas, I discovered that there's a considerable difference in the heads of cows and bulls.

I also looked at a plate with a cow's head. Seems long to me.

In any event, I've shortened her head, and managed to bring the water level up to her. I'll include a photo in another post.

The question might well be asked, "Why didn't you paint a cow from life?" Two reasons: 1) I might spend many a year looking for a cow in the position I wanted her to be, and 2) this time of the year in New England, with all the snow on the ground, Bossie is safe in the barn, drinking unfrozen water.
  
I'm experimenting with your ""process"". I was wondering about the fact that if the deepest darks are warm and if the impressionists, etc., moved from Corot et als' brown shadows to violet - how does a grisaille/brunaille/block-in, in blends of burnt umber/ult blue, or prussian green/brownish madder, give the correct transparent shadow colors?!

Manet used black, in the great tradition of Hals and Velasquez.  Monet didn't. I love them both. 
The impressionist "discovery" of violet and blue shadows is a very valuable addition to our visual language. In my experience, shadows are blue or violet---except when they're not. 
I'm very suspicious of color prescriptions, and color banishments. It's certainly true that a lot of historic landscape painting was made with a rather rich, brown gravy. But then there are heros of mine who never heard of the impressionists, and wouldn't have cared if they had. A great example is Jan van Goyen (1596-1656).

Jan van Goyen

As you can readily see, he did fine without Claude Monet's memo. I should be very pleased to have painted that. Giving Monet (also, I admit, a favorite) his due, here's a painting with great blue shadows.

 
You might well make the case that the Monet is closer to the look of the real world. But his painting is automatically bluer because of the snow.

Here's a painting I did a few years ago (30x46) where there is very little blue in the shadows, despite most of the painting being in shade.

(30"x 46", 76 x 116 cm)

It has a lot more of the 'local color' without striving for an impressionist palette. It's just my way of looking at things.

Generally I find that I 'see' lots of warm colors in shadows, often caused by warm light from the lit areas bouncing up into the dark masses. In the painting below, there is a great deal of brownish-madder bouncing around.

(42" x 28", 106 x 71 cm)

In using burnt umber and ultramarine transparently in my underpaintings, I enjoy being able to go back and forth, cool to warm. Usually only small amounts of either are still evident in the finished painting.




I would have expected something more along the lines of alizarin crimson or pyrollo vermilion + ultramarine blue to give crimson-ish extreme darks + violet shadows ... ?

For me, the underpainting is not the place for such a definite color statement. Because the vermilion is opaque, even when thinned, it tends toward mud in mixtures with blue----and transparency is my primary aim in the beginning. Crimson and ultramarine are both cool colors, despite the crimson being a sort of red. I don't want to be all on one side of the warm/cool divide. The painting below was certainly started in burnt umber/ultramarine. You can see how I have a lot of red in the shadows on the right foreground, and that the shadows get bluer as they move away from the viewer.

(36"x60", 91 x 152 cm)

(Because you're one of the lucky devils coming to the French Workshop in June, you'll be able to see then how I work with my two 'grisaille' colors.)
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If you have any questions you'd like me to address, leave a comment with your question or, alternatively, send me an email. I'll answer them when I can.

Keep painting!
 

 

For Dillydalliers and Shillyshalliers

Come Paint the Splendor of England!

The deadline to sign up for the Plein Air in the Cotswolds Workshop is fast approaching. As we contemplate the snow that is coming to us in New England later tonight, it's great to think that we shall be spending a week in the Cotswolds during June, England's most glorious and most floriferous month.
Warm Cotswold stone, lit by the afternoon's sun is marvelous color, and the lanes and byways are alive with birdsong and hedge flowers. Come experience this enchanting landscape!

I've lived in the Cotswolds twice, 1966-1968 and 1984-1985. I can attest to the magic of the landscape and of the light. Long evenings---one can paint outside til almost 11 p.m.---add to the delight.

For spouses traveling along, there is an abundance of things to do, from visiting Oxford and a score of stately homes, to long rambles, golf, and garden visiting.

OXFORD (photo: ibtimes)

Barnsley House Gardens

Cotswold Hills Golf Club

The workshop is set up to have two free days. On these you can choose to sightsee, work on your already-started paintings, or go off on your own to follow country lanes. The choices are so abundant, in terms of what to paint, that you'll be giddy with the opportunities.
About an hour-and-a-half distant is Highclere, the actual location of Downton Abbey. Perhaps you'd like to drop in on Lady Grantham?

Here's a fanciful Cotswold painting by James Bateman (1893-1959).

And one by Sir Alfred East (1844-1913).

Here's a place to paint!

(Photo: Cozy Tours)

 Or why not this?

Maybe you'd like to paint here, one of the villages where I used to live? 

We're sure going to have fun. Join us!

Here's a painting I made in 1984, inside my village pub, The Plough at Cold Aston.

As you'll see, there are three pints of beer on the mantel, waiting for us.

More information about the workshop is on the workshop blog . There you'll find all the things you need, and many helpful links about the Cotswolds.

But remember, you'll need to get your ducks in a row. Last day for registration for this workshop is only three weeks away (April 8th)!

Feel free to write to me (dbjurney@verizon.net) if you have any questions not covered on the workshop blog. But hurry! We want to paint with you!