Author: Joan Vienot

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Great Paintout at Grayton Beach

On Saturday I joined at least 16 other painters at Grayton Beach State Park, in Grayton Beach, Florida, to participate in the local effort for the Oil Painters of America 8th annual Great Paintout.  It was my first try at plein air oil painting in perhaps as much as 30 years, but something I have been intending to do for a long time.  I have occasionally painted outdoors using watercolors or sketched with pencil or ink, but the last time I remember painting the landscape with oils, plein air, was while on a camping vacation in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1978.  That day, so long ago, was memorable for being so hot and buggy.  By contrast, Saturday was the perfect day for plein air painting, being shaded by the park pavilion, and virtually bug-free.

So what’s the big deal about plein air painting, you may wonder.  En plein air is French for “in open air”, a phrase used to describe painting an outdoors scene “from life”, while actually looking at it, in the often changing light and weather conditions.  It requires intense concentration and awareness, and is much more challenging than painting from a photographic reference in a studio.  It appeals to me in much the same way that figure drawing appeals to me, because time is a limiting factor, so one must work fairly quickly, finishing or very nearly finishing the painting in one session.  For that reason, and because I felt so out of practice, I chose to paint on small 8″ x 10″ canvas boards.  I managed to make a passable effort on two boards.

To a certain extent, this was a trial run for me, to see how my equipment worked, and to start remembering how to paint.  I used just 3 brushes — two to paint with and a third one to sign my name, and a palette knife to scratch out some bush branches.  The brush I used for most of both paintings was a Winsor-Newton #6 round, sable, I think.  It worked better than the stiff bristle brushes I used a month ago in my first effort at returning to oils, in the workshop I blogged about on September 9. My new Coulter System easel and palette/box that I purchased last summer worked like a charm.  I used my 35-year old Grumbacher “Pre-tested” and Rembrandt oil paints from my days doing demonstrations as a high school art teacher.  My oil painting medium is about that old too, and while the paints are still good, I’m pretty sure the medium is degraded.  The paintings I did Saturday are dry today, one day later, but the painting I did a month ago in the workshop, in which I used more medium, is still a little sticky.

The sand dunes at Grayton Beach are made of  sand is so fine that it crunches underfoot like dry snow, and it even looks like snow in the bright sunlight, thanks to the clear crystals of quartz that make up the majority of its composition.  The scrubby oak bushes and half-buried scrub pines round over the tops of the dunes, shaped away from the Gulf of Mexico by the salty seabreeze.  Palmetto bushes and dune marsh grasses dot the lower dunes, fringed this time of year by various yellow wildflowers that some of us locals refer to collectively as goldenrod.  I never got around to painting as much as I would like to have, never adding in the finer details of shadows and sea oats.  I might go back in and put in those details, but the photos I have posted here are exactly as I finished on Saturday morning.

After we painted for about 3 hours, we all got together and looked at each others’ works, and we ooo’d and ah’d before giving feedback.  It was an excellent critique, with the masters of the craft commenting on areas of paintings that worked well, and areas that were challenging, and even discussing compositional tricks, like pointing out places where something in a painting might need to recede, made difficult by being light in value.  (Typically, light shapes and colors tend to advance, and darker forms recede, in a picture plane.  That can be overcome by muting or graying the lighter colors, shapes tending to become less bright as they recede, the way that we see things.)  Everyone was kind to me, not being critical at all, but I admit that I gave fair warning, protecting my vulnerability by explaining that I had just returned to oil painting again about a month ago, and that this was my 2nd effort in 30 years.  That was a fairly clear request to cut me some slack, I think.  The regular plein air painters go out every Wednesday, so if I start coming regularly, I’m sure they will feel more free to make helpful comments, and I will not be so scared to hear them.

Shane McDonald

Some of the artists who were there have their work online:

Becky Perrott

Charlotte Arnold

Rosalyn O’Grady

Margaret Ann Garrett

Jeanette Brooks Sherritze

Nancy Nichols Williams

Melody Bogle

Velda Dougherty

Shane McDonald

Matt Craven

And I wish I had the names and websites of the others there — if you read my blog and know the others, please email me with their names, and I’ll include them.

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

 

 

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The Artist’s Way Workshop

I am two weeks into a workshop on  The Artist’s Way:  A Spiritual Guide to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron.  Joyce Hogue is leading the workshop for our group of 10 or 12 women, at A. Wickey Studio-Gallery in Rosemary Beach, Florida.  I bought the book eons ago, when it first came out, and I started it several times, but my interest always waned after not even one week of studying it by myself.  One of the exercises in the first chapter, which is to continue I guess for the rest of your life, is to write 3 pages about anything, every morning.  I found out in this workshop that I don’t have to use a big notebook, so I can finish my 3 pages inside ½ hour every day.  I think using a fullsize notebook is what cost me my enthusiasm in previous attempts.  I expect the energy of the group to keep me focused.

I am more in touch with my desire to produce art now, and I expect The Artist’s Way workshop to reinforce the direction I am heading.  Anyone following my blog knows that I am not a “blocked” artist, that I have been producing quite a bit of art over the past few years, especially considering that I also have a full-time job and several part-time jobs.  Also I have been much more involved in my local art community, serving on the Board of the Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County (CAA), and working especially hard on CAA’s A+Art Committee.

One of my part-time jobs has been to occasionally produce photographic images for Leslie Kolovich, host of  The Stand Up Paddle Radio Show, a blog with online podcasts of her interviews of interesting people and events connected by the theme of standup paddling.  She also writes “On the Road with Leslie” segments for the Standup Journal, where some of my photography has illustrated her adventures.

So it should not be not a surprise that I took my cameras with me on my “artist date”, an exercise assigned by the Artist’s Way workshop.  I got up early last Saturday, and launched my canoe in the bayou behind my house, and paddled out on the glassy-calm Choctawhatchee Bay at sunrise.  The buoys marking the Intracoastal Waterway captured me, and my half-hour artists date turned into two hours.  I played with some of my photos right there and then, in my canoe, using an application on my iPhone.  I’ve included a couple in this post.  Most of my photography is done with my Sony Cybershot which I dearly love, but which requires a computer for any post-processing.

My practice of photography is paying off.  Next week is the opening of  “Scenes of South Walton“, a juried art exhibit at Hidden Lantern Gallery in Rosemary Beach, Florida, and I am one of the 12 artists selected for the show.  I submitted 3 photographic images.  All of the art is nature-inspired from South Walton County, Florida, my home community, as a part of the Back-to-Nature Festival hosted by South Walton Community Council.  The show opens Thursday, 10/18/12, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

The next night, 10/19/12, A+Art’s “Top of the Class” juried art show opens at Northwest Florida State College, in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.  I served as show coordinator with the Co-Chair of the A+Art Committee, Miffie Hollyday, for the production of this show.  Every member of the committee provides invaluable assistance, and I’m excited to be a part of this team effort.  Working behind the scenes certainly has given me an appreciation for the process.

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

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Oil Painting with Jan Bennicoff

Jan Bennicoff, Demonstrating

Yesterday I attended Jan Bennicoff‘s oil painting workshop at the City Arts Cooperative in Panama City, Florida.  The day before, I packed up my supplies from the list she had distributed, which I have been gathering over the past 6 months or so in preparation for my plan to start plein air painting.  I had signed up for this introductory workshop as a review, since the last serious oil painting I did was in college, dare I tell my age, almost 40 years ago.  I loaded a couple of small canvases, 11×14, my brushes, my new lightweight easel and palette, paper towels, and some containers.  The solvent, medium and the paints, were provided at the workshop for a mere $5.00 supplies fee.  The workshop was free to members of Panama City Artists.

Jan set up a still life of melons, and she began her demonstration by making a line drawing of the subject using a brush and a dark color, red in this case. She instructed us to then paint from dark to light, that is, to paint the dark colors throughout the entire painting first, covering all of the canvas, and afterwards painting the lighter values.  She helped us to see the different colors, shapes, and values in the subject from our individual viewpoints, and gave tips on how to execute them, and how to mix the colors.

While painting, I found that I need to buy a few better brushes.  Some of the brushes I have that are the perfect size for how I want to use them, are a little stiff in the bristles, so that putting another color on top of an area of wet paint results in the bristles scratching off the other color.

I didn’t have too much trouble drawing the subject onto the canvas, even though I haven’t practiced contour line drawing in a while.  I’ve been practicing figure drawing, focusing on light/shadow, and defined vs. lost edges, rather than all contours.  I worried about the composition from my viewpoint, which was nearly split in half, with only a small area of a tray overlapping the right hand masses with the masses on the left.  Jan helped me see the shadows and highlights that would also help tie the two halves together, and I repeated some of the watermelon reds in the orange pieces of cantaloupe, and added some oranges into the red watermelons, to also help tie the two together.  To make the colors brighter, I heightened the background contrast, deepening the blue-brown until it almost became black.  I liked the end result, especially considering I completed it in just a little over 2 hours.

I have always been of the opinion that things are more interesting when a little is left to the imagination.  I know that my tendency is to try to be exact with my art, but the painting style I want to develop will be a little looser, exact only when absolutely necessary to define an essential element.  This will require me to assume that my audience can “read” the painting without me describing every little detail, a leap of faith on my part.

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

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A Little Fun with Effects

Today is the last day of the month, and the second full moon of the month, which is called a Blue Moon.  There have been a number of fancy moon images marking the occasion on the web, but I haven’t learned how to overlay images yet, so my Blue Moon is just the moon.   I managed a fairly well-focused hand-held shot of the moon by setting my automatic digital camera on Twilight, and then I “cooled” the image to a nice blue using the “Cooler” tool in iPhoto Effects.  I re-sized it and added the watermark using Photo Bucket.  As always, the watermark will be removed for purchased prints.

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Paying Attention

Mirrored Bay

Every day I cross the Clyde Wells Bridge over the Choctawhatchee Bay as I travel US 331 from my home to my office.  Though I strive for present moment awareness, I often find I am focused on planning my workday, and I cross the bridge without even noticing whether the water is choppy or calm.  But sometimes the view is so spectacular that I not only cannot ignore it, I am compelled to pull off the road and try to capture it with my camera. Sometimes I share the images on facebook.  The mirrored image at right was especially popular with my friends.

The following series was on just such a day.  The atmosphere near the ground was heavy, but backlit by the sun so that the mist created lighter values behind the successive layers of receding land masses.  I have added some obnoxious watermarks to the downsized images posted here, but have preserved the originals in full resolution, without watermark, in case someone wants to purchase a print.

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

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Photography Image Manipulation

Most of my photography is composed in the viewfinder or on the LCD before I ever even shoot the picture, by where I position myself and how I frame the picture.  Since most of my work is nature photography, rarely do I ever do much more in post processing than just crop and increase the brightness a little or saturate the colors just a bit.  I am cautious not to alter the lighting or the color in an image very much for fear of making it look “wrong”.  I don’t want the viewer to immediately describe the photograph as “Photoshopped.”

But there are many photography applications which anyone can use, and they are fun to play with.  I use two on my iPhone, for fun and experimentation.  One is called Value Viewer, and it is a useful tool for seeing a value study of a composition before shooting it or painting it.  It also enables a lot of manipulation to create images that are strikingly different from the original.  The image below, left, is a dramatic piece in 3 values.  Beside it is the original rather non-descript photo of some random grasses beside the Bay.  Unfortunately, for some viewing this post on their smart-phones, one of the images may be appearing sideways, which makes it difficult to compare the two.  I don’t know how to correct that for phone viewing.

Final Image

Original Image

The image below left is enhanced using the iPhone app called Snapseed.  The original shot is on the right.  I sharpened it as far as the app would take it, and also increased the “drama” a little, to produce the image on the left.

In my last blog entry,  I griped about people “borrowing” some of my images from facebook and uploading them as their own, so you will see that I am experimenting with watermarking my finished pieces that are posted here on my art blog.  Should someone wish to purchase the image, the original of course does not have the watermark.  I am using the iPhone app Impression for simple watermarking.

Final Image

Original Image

 

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Getting My Work Pinched on Facebook

I know I really need to watermark my photography and art that I am posting on the internet, even including work posted here on my blog.  I was reminded of that last week when graphic artist and printer Alison Bailey, of ABC Creations, warned us about internet theft of our art.    She was the guest speaker at a Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County luncheon.  She showed us the excellent quality of reproductions she was able to produce using images posted by local artists on their websites.

A myriad of software is available to create watermarks, and I have purchased several applications, including an app for my iPhone, called Impression.  But I have been pretty lazy about watermarking, and have also become more prolific with uploading my photography, especially to Facebook.  So as my work gets “borrowed”, I am starting to learn my lesson.

Facebook provides a “sharing” tool whereby you can re-post someone else’s image while still giving them credit for their original.  And when you upload an image, Facebook asks you if the image belongs to you.  When someone downloads an image and then re-uploads it as their own, they are going beyond bad manners — they actually are violating copyright law.  All images remain the copyrighted property of the photographer, even if they are publicly displayed.

A watermark identifies my work as mine, via text written on the image, so that someone intent on “borrowing” it would have to do some editing in order to pass it off as their own.  Some artists plaster their watermark right through the center of the image, but that completely ruins the image for ordinary viewing as far as I am concerned.  I prefer a less obtrusive watermark on one of the corners of the image, even though it can more easily be edited out.  As an example, my sunset image at upper left is watermarked on the lower right corner of the image.  I don’t normally include the date or copyright symbol like I did here, but my practice of using one is still evolving.

Below you see an image I shot at a painting demonstration, which I posted on Facebook as a part of a series on the workshop.  And below that you see my same image posted on a local merchant’s Facebook page, appearing to be the property of the local merchant, having been downloaded and re-uploaded without giving me credit.  Facebook’s simple “share” function would have left my name attached, as it should be.  It actually is a little more work to download and then re-upload a photo than it is to simply “share” it, so it is pretty obvious that it is intentional when someone does this.  If I give an image away, that is my choice, but if someone “borrows” it without my permission, especially when they are using it to promote their merchandise, then it is theft.  A merchant pays the photographer when photos are used for marketing purposes.  Then the image belongs to the merchant.  Without compensation, the photographer or artist’s name must remain associated with the photograph or art on Facebook, which by definition is a social (sharing) network.  As a point of clarification, my website is not social media, so art and photography posted on my website is not permitted to be reproduced or re-posted without my express permission.

My name attached to my work is my own advertising.  So yes, I am learning my lesson, that I need to watermark my photography.

 

 

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After a Month Away, Returning to Figure Drawing

It was exhilarating, returning to figure drawing after more than a month.  Colleen Duffley, owner of Studio b, has been in Italy and other exotic places fulfilling her professional photography obligations.

I too have been elsewhere, as my last blog post indicated, including two weeks in British Columbia.  So getting out the chalk and paper and easel and coming back to the Studio was like the proverbial oasis in the desert!

I wasn’t too rusty, considering how long it had been, because I had been keeping up with my daily doodling, but more than that, I think what helped me stay in tune was my continuous practice of photography, which is a great tool for maintaining my “eye” and my feeling for composition.

The model this week had amazing turquoise hair,  and it demanded to be noticed.  As it happens, I have a number of sticks of Nupastel of that exact color, which I had bought expecting eventually to use in background imagery with the colors of the Gulf of Mexico here in Northwest Florida where I live.  The Gulf is an impossible blue-green, which looks unbelievable whenever I have used that color in my art, but which is absolutely correct for the color of the model’s hair.

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

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Photography in British Columbia, Canada

I haven’t posted anything for a couple of weeks.  Lest my readers think I have fallen off the earth, I haven’t, and here’s proof, a photo of me right now, working on my computer, early in the day, still in my PJ’s.   2500 miles away from my home, I am in British Columbia shooting photography and video for friend and fellow stand-up paddler, Leslie Kolovich, the host and producer of The Stand Up Paddle Radio Show, a collection of podcasts discussing everything and anything about the sport and recreation of stand-up paddling.

Leslie’s website, www.supradioshow.com, also includes a a number of posts On the Road, some of which are elaborated in much more detail in a series titled “On the Road with Leslie” for the Standup Journal, the premier quarterly magazine of standup paddling.  We are in British Columbia to produce another article in that series.

We were invited to British Columbia by fellow SUP (Stand-Up Paddle) enthusiast and environmental activist Bob Purdy, who made a commitment more than a year-and-a-half ago to paddle every day to support his personal connection to the planet, in his mission to encourage us all to change the way we live.  He is convinced, and I concur, that if we all commit to changing even just one thing in our lives, that together we will create a wave of change for the betterment of the planet.  I am starting with a small change in my life, and that is to actually use all of the re-usable water containers I have collected over the years.  Who knows why my willing spirit ever bought them but never actually used them.  You may think this is an inconsequential change, but it is my commitment, to reduce my consumption of products packaged in plastic.  When we each make a change, and really commit to it, the ripple effect will become a tide.

Today is Day 538 of Bob’s daily paddling.  Five days ago, on June 16, 2012, World Paddle for the Planet Day, he completed the extraordinary feat of paddling the entire 80-mile length of Okanagan Lake without ever getting off his SUP  board.  It took him 19 hours, and was grueling towards the end.  The weather changed from glassy calm to 2-foot swells, from tailwinds to flat calm to headwinds, throughout the day.  Bob paddled through rain, wind, and sun.  We took an extra paddle board on the support boat where I rode, armed with my cameras.  I was honored to paddle with Bob for 12 miles in the middle of the day.  Leslie started the day beside him, paddling an amazing 20 miles, 16 of it continuously, more than double the distance of our training paddles at home in Florida.  Other paddlers joined in for sections of Bob’s paddle, and he also paddled alone for a good bit of it, with the support boat far enough behind that he could not hear us.

Bob’s purpose in this momentous effort was to call attention to his mission and thereby to attract participation in his effort to create a wave of change for the betterment of the earth.   His mantra is “One person can make a difference.  STAND UP and be that person.”  He supports the David Suzuki Foundation, and all donations he collects go to the foundation to support their mission to protect the diversity of nature and our quality of life, now and for the future, directed to Canadians but of universal message.   As a side note, David Suzuki’s daughter was the opening speaker at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro yesterday.

As guests of Bob Purdy and his life partner, Sharon, we have been wined and dined in a non-stop paddle-tour of the beautiful southern part of the province of British Columbia.  For my part, the kind of nature photography I have been doing here is right up my alley as far as my personal preference.  And the human interest angle is perfect for “On the Road with Leslie”.  Below is my unedited video for part of a segment on one of our cultural tours, First Nations Cree Russell Podgurny, singing for us in a pit house at the Nk’Mip Desert Cultural Centre in Osoyoos, British Columbia.  Leslie posted this clip on www.supradioshow.com as a prequel to upcoming posts.  It is an honor and a thrill to provide photography and videography for the SUP Radio Show.

Special thank you to Leslie Kolovich and Bob Purdy for assistance with this post.

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iPhoneography – Everyone Can Do It

A professional photographer composes and controls his or her image.  The styling, positioning, and lighting are planned to the nth degree.  But today, almost everyone can be a photographer, capturing those elusive moments in time without necessarily planning any part of of the photo.

If you have a cell phone today, then chances are it has a camera.  I’d like to encourage you to use it, and not merely to record events as cameras traditionally have been used, but also to start documenting visual imagery that you find interesting.  There is probably no better way to become more aware of our visual world than by capturing bits and pieces of it, and nothing is more immediate than a camera image.  Much of what becomes your camera sense simply starts out as what you feel comfortable with, whether capturing elements of design – line, shape, size, position, color, texture, density – or elements of composition – balance, rhythm, and harmony.  As for me, my sense of composition is somewhat instinctive, not something I can put words to, so that my photographic decisions are mostly about positioning myself so that light hits the subject in an interesting way.  Certainly, I know about the rule of thirds, and a few other compositional tricks, but in a complex composition such as the one pictured here, the rules of what not to do probably outweigh the rules of what to do.

To enhance the dramatic lighting and create a vintage effect, I used an app called Hipstamatic, with my favorite lens, Roboto Glitter, on Float film.  The result is a mostly dark image with overexposed whites tending towards yellow, anda few turquoise highlights.  The border is black.  In an image with more light, the edges of this film would look spotty, sort of mildewed.

I watermarked this image with my website name, in the lower right corner, and probably should do that more often, particularly when I post something on social media.  Facebook makes it very easy for someone to download an image onto his own computer, and then re-upload it, which then drops the attribution to the original photographer.  If people simply “share” the image, the photographer’s name remains on the image information, but if downloaded and re-uploaded, the attribution is lost.  This particularly offends me when someone uses one of my images on their own website.  I post a lot of paddling photography, and tag many standup paddleboarders, so they might have their website developer use one of my images of them racing or doing some activity on a paddleboard.  I don’t think people realize that images are copyrighted from the moment they are made, and that you cannot use an image without permission.  If asked, I always have given permission for my photography to be used on someone’s website, but I ask the person to give me written credit.  I have given only two of my best friends cart blanche permission to use my images with or without attribution.

A good photographer makes a shot look spontaneous and easy, but even if posted on social media, that doesn’t mean the image is public and free for the taking.