light and shadow Archives - Page 2 of 2

Posted on 07/19/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Camp Creek Wetlands Plein Air Painting Video Progression

My best friend Leslie Kolovich‘s home and studio look out over the beautiful wetlands of Camp Creek Lake, one of the rare coastal dune lakes of Walton County in Northwest Florida. True coastal dune lakes, which periodically exchange water with the sea, exist in only a few places in the world. Ginger Jackson Sinton has written a book about our lakes, Rare Coastal Dune Lakes: Biodiversity and a Sense of Home. A contributor to SoWal.com, she writes, “Walton County defines coastal dune lakes as shallow bodies of water located within two miles of the coast that occasionally intermingle with the Gulf. The lakes are composed of both fresh and saltwater from tributaries, groundwater seepage (from the uplands and the Gulf), rainfall, and coastal storm surges. Their levels rise and fall due to frequency, strength, and duration of storm activity, tidal flows and wind conditions. When water levels reach a critical point the lowest level of the beach opens up, creating a temporary outlet, or outfall, into the Gulf.” (Click for whole article.)

This past Wednesday afternoon found me at Leslie’s studio. The late afternoon sun was painting the top of the marsh grasses with golden light. Leslie has often said that I should paint from her upstairs porch, so we went up for a look, and I immediately went back out to my pickup to get my painting backpack. Early morning and late afternoon light require fast work because the light and shadows are changing so fast. Leslie shot a few short videos showing the progress of my work. I had toned an 8×10 canvas panel a light muted tannish-green, and I chose that panel for this painting so I wouldn’t be worried about white glaring through if my brush skipped over any of the canvas — an unnecessary concern as I painted alla prima impasto.

Below are five of the videos Leslie shot, sometimes with talking, sometimes not. It’s difficult for me to talk while I’m painting, and Leslie and I had a few laughs about that as I sometimes struggled for words!

Posted on 05/20/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 3 Comments

Learning to See Better through Plein Air Painting

Don Demers, one of my workshop instructors last week, tongue in cheek, said “Plein air painting creates bad drivers.” He explained the hazard, that as a practicing plein air painter, one could be driving along and become mesmerized, staring at the shape or color of something, perhaps even something so interesting as the shadow of an underpass. We all laughed of course, but I recognize the truth of his statement. After practicing plein air painting for 8 days, I can’t look anywhere now without noticing wonderful value contrasts, delicious color intensities, and patterns of light leading my eye through compositions waiting to be painted.

The first workshop I attended was by invitation. Twelve painters were selected to be in the “pilot” course for the Apalachicola School of Art Plein Air Academy. Master plein air artist Don Demers is designing the curriculum, and Joe Taylor of the Apalachicola School of Art is planning the logistics. Together they will come up with a course to be offered as professional development for the advanced plein air painter. Don spent a good bit of time talking with each of us, as well as offering constructive tips with our paintings. Of most practical value to me was his suggestion to set intention before starting a painting, and then to stick to that intention. He suggested we draw “thumbnail sketches” of our intended paintings first, studying the value relationships and evaluating whether the composition would work as a whole, before we spent 3 hours painting it. Some of my sketches progressed into paintings, some were mere studies of shapes or ideas discarded as perhaps too complicated or logistically difficult (the one above left required me to stand in an ant pile; the one above right was too complicated for my limited knowledge of fishing boats).

I learned something about photography after doing one such value study, and that is that my iPhone camera does not see the light the way I do. In fact my camera hardly picked up the power of the light at all. Here’s a comparison:

I completed two paintings and a couple of studies in the Plein Air Academy workshop. Integrating what I am learning is always difficult — there has to be a period of intense, grinding focus, because painting is for the most part so visceral, and newly learned information so very intellectual. I found myself completely exhausted by the end of the first several days. I must have had every muscle in my body tensed as I tried to incorporate what I was learning. I literally came home, ate supper, and went straight to bed, for the first 3 days.

Here are a few of my paintings from the Apalachicola School of Art Plein Air Academy workshop.

Typical page of notes

Over the next few days I attended the Forgotten Coast En Plein Air event workshop with Greg LaRock and Ken Dewaard. I wish I could remember everything they said. It was fun to watch the different approaches of two accomplished artists. Both were very strong on compositional tips. LaRock often mentioned ways to lead the viewer’s eye through the painting, and Dewaard pointed out subtle color changes to look for, like the change in the tint of shadows depending on how much of the sky color they might be acquiring, or how much of the color of the ground. Hopefully I absorbed a lot of it, even though I can’t recite it. Below are the paintings I produced during their workshop. In the first one, my challenge was to make the pile of rubble, mostly chunks of concrete, look interesting, like a rocky shoreline. The paintings of the boats and of the shirts for sale both challenged me to simplify.

2014-0511 Port St. Joe Rock-Lined Harbor

2014-0513 T-Shirts for Sale, Apalachicola

I actually had energy to paint a few small studies outside of class, the last several days, below. Apologies for shooting the photos slightly crooked!

2014-05 Morning Light, Two-Mile Channel — Available for purchase. Click the painting for a link to order it!

Oil painting of evening light on Two-Mile Channel, Apalachicola, FL

Oil painting of full moon rising over Two-Mile Channel, Apalachicola, FL

NOTE: light added to 2nd painting above, at https://joanvienotart.wpengine.com/?p=7003

And now back to my day-job! But the shadows of those underpasses are starting to look mighty interesting!!

Posted on 12/05/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Painting Plein Air with an Extra-Long Filbert Brush

This blog post could be subtitled, “Where did November go?”

Soon after my show, “The Present Moment”, opened at Grayt Grounds of Monet Monet, I received an email asking if I would paint, plein air style, a view from the balcony, for some second-homeowners to hang in their “first” home in Tennessee. I met with them, to visit and to look at their view of the coastal dune lake, Redfish Lake, and the Gulf of Mexico. They gave me a few favorite photos, with morning light. A day later, they sent me a photo of wind-driven clouds that they liked, and I started to work on the 24×36 gallery-wrapped canvas, with a 16×20 practice piece on the side. The day before, I had painted with the local plein air group under the very clouds my clients had photographed. So the scene was familiar enough to me that I was able to work from the photos and still have the feeling of being there. I have nearly finished it and have posted photos below showing both the practice piece and the actual larger commissioned piece. I have a few tweaks yet to do, especially perhaps darkening the tile roof on the gazebo.

Yesterday our plein air group met at Henderson Beach State Park, in Destin, Florida. I painted with an extra-long filbert, size 7, made by Winsor & Newton. The filbert, which I have sketched at left, is about 1/2″ wide, but the bristles are 2″ long. I had bought it about 6 months ago, just to try out, but had never used it. Last weekend I watched a painting demonstration on DVD by Frank Serrano. I was inspired to try painting an entire painting using only one brush, and I thought, why not the extra-long filbert!. So when our plein air group met at Henderson Beach State Park, in Destin, Florida, this week, I chose a scene which could easily be simplified, so that learning the brush would be my only challenge. I grew to like the brush as I painted with it. The extra long filbert holds more paint than an ordinary brush. Because the bristles are longer and thus not as stiff, it required me to lay color onto the canvas instead of scrubbing it as I sometimes do with stiffer brushes. It was perfect for the texture of the fall-colored grasses on the dunes.

The day was gray, without direct sunlight, and the mist during the drive had dried up by the time I had set up my easel on the boardwalk to the Gulf. A light breeze cooled it to a balmy 72°. I painted fairly quickly, the scene complicated only by the structure of the dune walkover. I had to use a small rigger to paint the walkover, but I used the extra-long filbert everywhere else. The values and colors were muted by the indistinct light. Because I had arrived about 40 minutes late, I worried that I would run out of time. But I felt the 8×10 painting was finished after only about an hour, so I tried another, smaller one, 6×6, and wrapped it up fairly quickly too. I started a third painting, 8×10, and gave myself the challenge of looking directly at the highlighted Gulf, sparkling white where the sun was peeking out of the darkening sky. It turned out quite a bit more dramatic than the first two, because of the heightened values. At right are the three paintings. Silver plein air frames show them off nicely. I have priced them for sale but may keep all three for my own collection.

If anyone did not get a chance to see “The Present Moment”, many of the pieces will remain at Grayt Grounds of Monet Monet, and some will be lining the stairwell on the way up to Bob and Cheri Peebles’ real estate offices on the second floor of the building, at Beach To Bay Realty.

Below is the not-quite-finished commissioned piece I was writing about, and below it, the practice piece where I worked out solutions to the problems I encountered along the way.

Oil painting of the view from a balcony at Sanctuary By The Sea, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida: Redfish Lake and the Gulf of Mexico

24 x 36, commissioned oil painting, view of Redfish Lake and the Gulf of Mexico from Sanctuary By the Sea

Practice piece for commissioned oil painting of the view from a balcony at Sanctuary By The Sea, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida: Redfish Lake and the Gulf of Mexico

16 x 20, practice for commissioned piece above

Posted on 06/10/201104/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

A Photo-Shoot in Chattanooga

Since my favorite subjects for photography are outdoor nature scenes and landscapes, I was thrilled to be asked to shoot photos and video of stand-up paddlers in Chattanooga, TN, where every shot is scenic. I was shooting for Leslie Kolovich, host of the Stand Up Paddle Radio Show, for advance publicity for Stand-Up Paddling events newly added to the Chattanooga River Rocks Festival schedule this year in October.

My approach to nature photography is to watch where the light is doing something extraordinary and then to capture that. Rarely do I do much with post processing, other than perhaps crop a little here or there to help the composition.

The photo at left was taken at the Webb Brothers country store at Reliance, Tennessee, on the bank of the Hiwassee River where the stand-up paddlers were navigating some whitewater. The sun was shining from above and behind the hollyhocks, rendering the petals semi-transparent, and offering rim lighting on the fuzz on the stem and buds. I didn’t enhance anything digitally, but I did trim the right side just a little, to make the composition more interesting. Otherwise, no need to improve on Mother Nature!

Leslie interviewed me after the show. The following link opens the podcast, and my segment is well into the second half of the podcast:

http://www.30aradioshows.org/stand-up-paddle-boarding/chattanooga-tennessee-river-rocks-festival-on-the-road-with-leslie-kolovich/

The story and some of the other photos are posted in The Stand Up Paddle Radio Show website, at http://www.supradioshow.com/2011/06/chattanooga/

The “On the Road With Leslie” is published with my photos in the print magazine, The Standup Journal. Here’s a sample (link).

Most of my images are available for purchase. Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

Posted on 05/26/201104/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 2 Comments

Professional Models in Figure Drawing

Modeling for figure drawing is a hard job. Try sitting still in a posed body position for only 5 minutes, and then try it for 25 minutes, and you will see what I mean. Even seemingly-relaxed poses, even reclining poses, can become torturous. Our model at Studio b. this week is a an experienced professional. His poses are rock solid, with no sinking, from beginning to end, from head to foot. Fresh out of a boot for a repaired Achilles tendon, our model first performed 5 1-minute poses and then we graduated to longer poses and the final drawing was about 45 minutes.

The model challenged us later in the session, by posing with a picture frame as a prop. Props hugely increase the challenge of figure drawing. I drew the figure first, and then placed the picture frame. Ideally, I would have drawn both at the same time, as a whole unit, because there were interesting negative shapes created by the frame. But I was being cautious, having drawn this same model with this same frame but in a different pose, sometime last year, and having had trouble with the proportions at that time. My drawing with the frame is more correct this time.

Our instructor, Heather Clements, has often suggested to me that I vary the direction of my pencil strokes to help convey the rounded form of the figure. I rarely remember to use that technique. I usually just draw the value patterns of light and shadow to express form, rather than changing the direction of my pencil strokes. But on the final drawing of the night, the model stood with one knee advancing towards me. I varied the direction of my pencil strokes to show the rounded form of that thigh and knee, and I think it was successful. As a result,the sense of mass in his left thigh is much stronger than for example, his upper right arm, which I drew as one mass, with pencil strokes all going the same direction.

Most of my images are available for purchase. Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

Posted on 03/08/201104/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Portrait Drawing: Practice, Practice, Practice

2011-0308 Plane Man, Arnold Workshop — Plane Man: Graphite, vine charcoal, pressed charcoal

Craftsmanship is different from art. Craftsmanship is a familiarity and skill with subject and media. I do a lot of work to try to improve my craftsmanship. I think the craft of drawing is really an exercise in seeing. By practicing, of course I am practicing with various media and subject matter or poses, but what I really am doing is learning to see better. Today I started a 5-week, 3-hours per week, portrait workshop taught by Charlotte Arnold in Destin, Florida. I’m not actually interested in drawing portraits, which is fortunate given that symmetry escapes me, but I would like a better understanding of how to draw the head for my figurative works.

2011-0308 Plane Man 2, Arnold Workshop — Plane Man: Graphite

Charlotte referenced the 10,000 Hour Rule, which says in essence that if you practice anything for 10,000 hours, you are bound to get better at it. She suggested we keep a sketchbook with us at all times, and to practice all the time, drawing ellipses if not actually representational subjects.

She brought in a life-sized plaster cast called Plane Man and set a floodlight on it, for us to draw from various angles. I’d never actually seen Plane Man before, except in art supply magazines. I probably should have picked it up and touched the various planes, to learn a little more about it before I started drawing it, but I just drew whatever I could see. Some of the planes were indistinguishable from the adjacent planes because of the lighting, and the rest were much more obvious in the white plaster than they are in a person’s face. Charlotte said that if we learn the angles on the Plane Man, we will know what to look for when attempting a portrait.

One half of Plane Man’s face was made of very angular planes, and on the other half the angles were more subtle, with maybe a hint of a curve here and there. I drew on manilla paper, not intending to keep them except for a before-and-after reference that I can look at when the course is over.

Portrait workshop instructor Charlotte Arnold recently moved back to the area after being gone for nearly 8 years. She has spent the last 4 years in the Chicago area studying and working in the open studios at The Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Art in Chicago where she is an Artist Member. She is also a member of the Oil Painters of America, Portrait Society of America, Portrait Society of Florida, Women Artists of the Southeast, and Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. www.charlottearnoldfineart.com

Posted on 03/06/201104/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Figure Drawing without the Model

In the last post I showed the drawing above left, which I was unable to finish during the 30-minute pose. I worked on it a little this evening, to give the hair, arms, and hands some form. Without seeing the light on the form, I suppose my effort is passable, but the experience was hollow. It felt like mere craftsmanship as I worked in my studio, without the power and intimacy of a live figure drawing session.

Unless the artist is there to talk about the work, ordinarily the viewer of a piece of art is far removed from the process — all he or she sees is the product. But for me as the artist, at least 50% of the value of a figure drawing is in the process, in the capture of light and shadow across the living form. Otherwise, why attend organized sessions and pay a model? After all, there are countless photographs of people in every conceivable position, if it were just a matter of transposing a form onto the paper. My joy is in the moment, with the actual lighting, the model, and the creative energy of the group.

All that said, I wish I had a photo so I could have finished the head and arms with more confidence!

Posted on 03/11/201004/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 1 Comment

Figure Drawing: Focus on Light and Shadow

This week at the Wednesday night figure drawing session at Studio b, instructor Heather Clements gave a demonstration. I love watching the magic of an artist working. The transformation of the blank surface is mesmerizing.

Tonight Heather was continuing with last week’s focus on light and shadow, to define shape. She showed examples of high-contrast lighting (Andy Warhol’s self-portrait), where only two or three values with very distinct edges are mapped out, as opposed to tonal development with a full range of values (self-portraits by Edward Hopper and Chuck Close). She talked about local values, such as dark hair vs. light face, and then she reminded us about various effects to look for: the lit side of the subject, the unlit side, the midtones, the highlight, reflected light, and the cast shadow, including how a cast shadow is sharply focused close to the object, but less focused further away.

Heather also gave a demonstration on the reverse process, toning the paper overall and then erasing the lighted areas, and perhaps adding some darks at the end. I was happy with the results of my effort towards this reverse process (at right).

Posted on 03/04/201004/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Drawing Through the Fog of Cold Meds

Nude Female Reclining Away — Value Study

Before last November, it had been a long time since I had a cold. I know the last time I had the flu was New Years Day of the year 2000. I’m pretty sure I had gone at least 7 years without a cold. I have an immune system made of steel. And then came this winter. This week in March of 2010 was Round 4 of allergies or colds dragging on and on. I went to the doctor yesterday and got some antibiotics and other medications to kill the germ and relieve the symptoms. The most noticeable side effect was a distinct lack of patience and the karma of drawing to myself a number of taxing situations testing what little patience I had. Tonight’s figure drawing session extended my torture. I kept losing track of time, getting very little done with each pose before it was over. It was taking me nearly the whole allotted time for the pose, just to lay it out on the paper, which left no time for development of tonal values. On the last pose I moved around the room to see if there were any other more interesting viewpoints, and discovered that just about anywhere else in the room was a better place to be than where I had been. Instructor Heather Clements’ suggestion at the beginning of the session was to focus on light and shadow, with development of a full range of values, from the darkest dark to the lightest light. I had been drawing in the one location in the room that had very diffuse light, so that the form was almost all one value except for some very dark cast shadows underneath — no wonder I had been having such a time! I moved to another part of the room, and found a lot more variation of values for the last pose. Even so, it was a struggle — I think my cold meds made me stupid. But the other artists there at Studio b were encouraging. It’s nice to be in the company of other supportive artists.