values Archives - Page 2 of 3

Posted on 09/10/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air Painting What You Can When You Can

So often I pass a scene that begs to be painted, while on my way to some other engagement I am obligated to or have committed to. And then other times, when I have my paints and the time, the setting doesn’t seem right or the light is wrong, so there I am, all dressed up and nowhere to go. When the two come together though, it is so much fun! Today was one of those days, in both cases: first in that I had an obligation and couldn’t paint, but then when I was finished with my prior commitment and made my way to this week’s location for the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters, the setting was right and the light was right, and I was so very happy! It was the first time I had been at Marse Landing in Freeport, FL, and I was so impressed with all of the beautiful plein air possibilities. The light was shining through the cypress trees onto the wetlands plants alongside the creek, the impossible greens and yellows begging to be captured. I knew I was getting a late start, so I made a preliminary values sketch, and then got out a couple of tiny 4″x4″ gesso boards and got busy. Below are my two efforts:

Small plein air oil painting of wetlands plants along Four Mile Creek in Freeport, FL

Small plein air oil painting of wetlands plants in Four Mile Creek, Freeport, FL

Posted on 08/03/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Reconnaissance for Plein Air Painting

Photograph of hibiscus at Oyster Lake in Santa Rosa Beach, FL — 2014-0803 Hibiscus at Oyster Lake (iPhoto)

Today I loaded my painting backpack into my pickup before daylight, had my coffee, checked the news, and then started driving to my intended painting location when raindrops started falling on my windshield. I prefer fair-weather painting, and even better, I much prefer sunny days. So today I changed my plans, and instead, scouted a new location. There used to be a causeway over Oyster Lake, one of the rare coastal dune lakes found here. It regularly used to flood, and it prevented free flow from the marshy headwaters. So the county removed and replaced the causeway with a footbridge, and the view of the shallow marsh from the footbridge is unbeatable. I took a few photos, with plans of returning.

A good plein air painter can find something interesting and beautiful in just about anything he or she looks at, but it’s nice to paint things other people instantly find beautiful too, at least if I want to sell my work. So I always have an eye out for typically beautiful landscape scenery. This location was the mother lode. I took shots from several different viewpoint, a few in black-and-white to make note of the values that the camera “saw”. I make note of that because the camera never sees things the way a person does, but it “takes good notes” when I am in a hurry. I rarely return to the studio to paint, prefer the immediacy of plein air painting.Taking photos merely helps me remember places I want to go back to.

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 05/04/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air with Laurel Daniel – Blocking In

2014-0424 St. Andrews Beach, Jekyll Island — St. Andrews Beach, Jekyll Island

2014-0425 Muted Perspective, Unfinished — Gascoigne Bluff, St. Simons Island, unfinished

2014-0425 Slave Cabins, St. Simons Island — Restored Slave Houses, St. Simons Island, incomplete (Some heavy energy remaining here)

2014-0425 Sunrise Over the Marsh — Nupastel drawing of my marsh view at sunrise

2014-0426 Sea Island Marsh 1 — Sea Island Marsh 1

2014-0426 Sea Island Marsh 2 — Sea Island Marsh 2, incomplete

Coastal Georgia was a beautiful place to be, last week. I drove from my home in Northwest Florida to St. Simons Island for a plein air painting working with Laurel Daniel, a fabulous artist whose work I have been watching for years, following her blog even before I ever decided to try plein air painting. Laurel is a master at ‘definitive suggestion’ in her work, leaving out just enough of the smaller details which invites the viewer to participate. I am a fan of this kind of work, because the longer the viewer will look at the piece, the more they will appreciate it, and not just see it and walk away.

Joan Vienot at work (Photo by Laurel Daniel)

Laurel worked hard for us, teaching us to show distance by muting intensity and tapering values to mid-range, but her primary focus was teaching us to block-in the basic shapes and values before getting down to the business of painting. Each day she demo’d a different way of blocking-in, before painting luscious scenes “From Marsh to Seaside.” Her three block-in methods include dry brush sketch in a dark neutral; mid-toning with a neutral and then wiping out lighter values and adding darks; and the most difficult, blocking in with true colors at correct value. Laurel put the dark elements in the painting first, leaving the lighter values for later. Her reasoning was to get down the shadow patterns first, so that we would be able to hold onto them throughout the painting, because the light and shadows change throughout the two hours you are painting. In this location, the tide changed as well. A marsh full of water might be nearly bone dry by the time you were finishing a painting, so what started out to be a pattern of light on water, could be dark mudflats by the time you finished. Laurel blogged about her workshop at http://www.laureldaniel.blogspot.com/2014/05/marshside-palms-demo-georgia-workshop.html. We were treated to an opening of Laurel’s works at Anderson Fine Art Gallery on St. Simons Island on Friday evening, midway through the workshop. There were a lot of red dots on the labels by the end of the evening, indicating “SOLD”. I would have loved to have brought one home with me, but it already had a red dot on it, sold before I arrived. I was happy to see works by other amazing artists in the other rooms of the gallery, including Morgan Samuel Price from whom I took a workshop in April. On the last day of the workshop, my muted phone started buzzing while I was shooting some progress photos of the instructor’s demo — it was Joe Taylor calling, the organizer of the Forgotten Coast en Plein Air. I will be attending a workshop by Ken Dewaard and Greg LaRock after that event, so I thought it might be some details about that. But no. Joe started by asking me if I had received his email, and I drew a blank. I went from confusion to shock, when he said he had emailed me to ask if I would like to be one of the students in a pilot workshop that is being designed as Advanced Plein Air for the Apalachicola School of Art. I managed to compose myself enough to say Yes! So I will be taking 2 workshops, back-to-back, next week. When I set the intention of taking as many plein air workshops as I could afford this year, I didn’t know that I would be getting more workshops than I can afford! (This one will be free!) I am delayed in getting this blog posted. We had a flooding rainstorm that shut down the entire Florida Panhandle, closing roads and bringing everything to a standstill. About 2 feet of rain fell in a 24-hour period. I was fortunate that my home and business did not suffer any damages, other than a sign blown down. Many others are not so fortunate. The same storm spawned killer tornados in other states. Nevertheless, it kept me from getting back into the studio to practice my new awareness gained from Lasurel Daniel’s workshop. Here’s a quick video of the bridge over the slow moving swamp I cross every day, a half-mile from my home. http://youtu.be/3cGH-p9XM00

Posted on 04/16/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 1 Comment

Plein Air in Fresh Air

Oil painting of the four trees in front of Nick's Restaurant at Basin Bayou, Florida - www.joanvienot.com

Oil painting of the old fishing boat, Pompano, at Nick's Restaurant - www.joanienot.com

After a month of high pollen alerts, torrential rains have cleaned the air and a very chilly air mass ushered in an ideal day for plein air painting, with stark shadows and bright colors. I met up with the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at Nick’s Restaurant in Basin Bayou, which is on the north side of the Choctawhatchee Bay, halfway between Freeport and Niceville, in Northwest Florida. Shortly after we arrived, the neighbor released his penful of exotic chickens, and they provided distraction and amusement while we painted, the young roosters strutting around, trying their first crowing in cracking, adolescent voices.

I remembered what I had learned in Morgan Samuel Price’s workshop 2 weeks ago. I worked with the intention of creating the illusion of space, with horizontal surfaces catching much more light and vertical surfaces much less, using values to lead the eye through the painting.

For my first painting, I was interested by the four trees along the shoreline, so I opted not to include the boat, “Pompano”, which stood on dry-land props between two of the trees. My interest was that one of the trees was as orange as it was green. After I finished it, I painted a second, smaller painting, this one of the boat. Both paintings accomplished what I set out to do.

Posted on 03/30/201404/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 1 Comment

Studying from Morgan Samuel Price

2014-0323 Apalach Afternoon Behind the Island — The view from where I stayed

2014-0324 Coombs Inn — Coombs Inn and the Church

2014-0325 Scrub Oak Grove — Scrub Oak Grove, St. George Island

2014-0326 Apalachicola Marina — At the Marina Under the Bridge

2014-0328 Rainy Day at 'Up the Creek' — “N 2 Deep”

Last week I attended a plein air painting workshop in Apalachicola, Florida, taught by Morgan Samuel Price. The location of this fishing village is just two hours from my home, an easy drive but far enough away that I chose to stay in a rental property rather than commute. I learned so much I hardly know where to begin. It will probably take me years to assimilate it. The difficult thing about an intense learning situation, is that much of it is communicated abstractly in words and absorbed into the left brain, while painting is performed on the right side of the brain. Fortunately, Morgan demonstrated during and after each lecture, to help us make right-brain sense of the concepts she was teaching. And she didn’t seem to mind repeating answers while each of us gained just enough understanding to ask the same question the previous student had just asked. “Morgan, what colors are you using now?” “Ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow,” Morgan would answer. And the next student would ask, “Morgan, what colors did you mix to get this color?” And Morgan would patiently answer, “Ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow.” To be fair, though, the different colors we were asking about were entirely different colors — it’s just that Morgan is a wizard at color mixing, and can make any color on the palette out of ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow.

The first day, Morgan taught us about various materials and how to hold the brush for different angles of brushstrokes, and she taught us about color value, intensity, and temperature. She taught us more about those topicss every single day. She also taught us about color in context, about composition, about creating the illusion of receding space, how light falls on horizontal surfaces vs vertical surfaces, how the eye moves through a painting, and even how to doodle on a scratchpad that sits by the telephone. She taught us about clarity of value and precision of shape. She taught with ease and good humor. And she patiently answered again, “Ultramarine blue, cadmium red light, and hansa yellow.”

We had some good sunshine the weekend before the class, but our only sunny day during the class was the first day, Monday. After watching Morgan paint a simple alleyway with so many luscious values and such obvious perspective, making it look oh-so-easy, she turned us loose to paint in the afternoon. I choose the bright yellow siding of the Inn where everyone else was staying, and tried to capture the perspective of the sidewalk receding toward the church in the background. Even in my frustration (left brain / right brain confusion), I already had begun to learn. It is in the struggle that I find I truly learn, whether the painting shows that learning or not. There is some confusion between the palm tree and the porch roof which makes the porch roof look like it is angled wrong — it’s not. But as we joked in class, sometimes we need arrows and words printed on our painting to explain different elements. My painting of the Inn could use several arrows.

The next day we drove to St. George Island, and I painted a grove of scrub oaks which had a play of light on the tree trunks that interested me. I struggled with that light, but Morgan said to be definite with it — so I put down my tentative little brush and made some bold swaths of light, giving it much more of the feel that I wanted.

On Wednesday, two of the other students and I got lost from the rest of the class. We painted near the base of the bridge to SGI, at a marina. I painted on 16×20 canvas panel instead of my usual 8×10. I enjoyed using bigger brushes, but found myself being very stingy in mixing my colors, never mixing enough paint. It’s difficult to paint with no paint on your brush.

Thursday found us at Scipio Creek, at another marina at the north edge of Apalachicola. The pelicans and seagulls put on a continuous show for us while we caught the hazy pinks and lavenders in the middle ground and the muted grays in the distance, in contrast with the richer colors and more contrasting values in the foreground.

And then, sadly, it was Friday. I painted beneath the overhanging deck of ‘Up the Creek’ Restaurant, with a vicious thunderstorm popping lightning all around me. Nearby strikes three times chased me back further underneath to the center of the marine storage area under the building, which I imagined was safer. All of the colors of my scene were washed out, at times it being so dark there was no color at all. The last thing I painted were the reedy grasses and trees in the background, when suddenly I realized it was time to critique, so I packed up and hurried back. I will dim the intensity of color on that foliage to make it recede more — it’s a little too bright, like the sun is shining on it, which it wasn’t.

A plug for my excellent host, the owner of the property where I stayed, Robert Lindsley: Visit the Robert Lindsley Studio and Gallery at 15 Avenue E near the waterfront in Apalachicola. And to the VRBO agent, my new friend Mike Klema — just search “VRBO Apalachicola” for Vacation Rentals By Owner, and Mike’s units will come up. He was very accommodating, and I loved my place behind the island, right on US 98! I had the thrill of seeing both the sunrises and the sunsets, as well as the parade of fishing boats every morning, and the abundant species of birds. I’ve posted below a few photographs of my week, which all in all I enjoyed very much.

Sunrise	Sunset	Low tide	Atmospheric scenery
Fishing boat	Eagle below my house	Demo in the alley	Class and demo on the beach
Morgan critiquing	iPhonography Bicycle	iPhonography Grasses

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.

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

16 x 20, practice for commissioned piece above

Posted on 09/26/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Brighter Colors in Plein Air Painting

Oil painting of Hogtown Bayou looking west from Cessna Landing

I was showing a friend my paintings in my studio last weekend, and she remarked on the light and color of one row of paintings, which indeed were more vibrant than almost all of my other work. I explained that none of the five were plein air, that they were exercises done in a workshop I took last summer, from Julie Gilbert Pollard, “Wet and Wild: Painting Vibrant Water Scenes in Brilliant Color” (See my blog post). Ordinarily, that would have explained the difference as far as I was concerned, but I started thinking more about it. Granted, Julie taught us to use bright under-painting, and to use color for its value, rather than strictly for its hue. But as I looked around at my paintings, I realized that at the time I was painting them, I thought I was painting very brightly, but in the studio they looked a less brilliant. Then it dawned on me — I try to paint the colors that I see when I paint plein air. And usually the sun is shining brightly, so light and color are at their optimum. But when I bring my paintings indoors, the light invariably is never as bright as the sun, even using “daylight” bulbs. When I take those same paintings into the sunlight, they are much brighter. So I realized that in order for my paintings to have the same brilliance of color indoors that I see when I am painting them, I might need to paint with brighter color than what I see. I’m going to think about that some more.

For today’s plein air session I took some canvas panels that were already under-painted, like we did in that workshop in July. I had under-painted two 8×10 panels with red, and a third 6×6 with sort of a buff color. I let some of the under-paintings show through, not covering the entire canvas with paint. and I scratched out some of the grass and tree trucks, revealing the underlying color. Below are my results.

Posted on 07/24/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 1 Comment

Water , Water, Everywhere – Julie Gilbert Pollard Workshop

Oil painting of reflecting water scene, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop - first try

Oil painting of reflecting water scene, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop, second try

Last week I learned that water can see. Who knew?! That was just one of the hundreds of tips Julie Gilbert Pollard gave in her workshop in Panama City Beach, Florida, “Wet and Wild: Painting Vibrant Water Scenes in Brilliant Color”. This tip came on the first day, when we were working on reflections. In other words, Julie said, “Water reflects as if you were looking at the scene from its vantage point.” To illustrate, if a dead tree is angled out over the water sideways to the viewer, the reflection is a reverse mirror image, the same size and directly underneath the tree, in reverse angle. But if the tree is angled towards the viewer, the tree above the water will appear shorter due to foreshortening, but the reflection will be much longer in proportion, because the water is “seeing” the tree from underneath.

So I look at reflections differently now. I look at color and shapes differently too. Everything is more colorful since that workshop, and I am seeing much better. I find this is always the case after any period of immersion in art, that I see better and am more aware of colors and shapes. One of the other participants in the workshop said that one of the few things you get better at as you age, is art. I laughed, but I understand that statement.

We worked in the classroom, from sample photographs Julie provided which illustrated the concepts and techniques she was teaching. She used the first four chapters of her Adventurous Oils, a Workbook Companion to Brilliant Color as well as several hand-outs. It was a treat being taught by someone who understands how artists learn, who was able to paint and talk at the same time (no small feat, integrating both the left and right brain at the same time!), and who was able to provide constructive assistance as we worked on our various pieces. And the participants were a happy bunch, the paint-mixing and experimentation punctuated with their softly-spoken stories to their table-mate and their laughter. My own table-mate, Faye Gibson, owner of Meacham Howell Design, also was using oil paint; the rest were painting with watercolor. Since the instructor was giving demonstrations in both watercolor and in oil painting, I brought in a 6-color Walmart watercolor set and made a watercolor painting and then painted an oil painting the second day when we were studying waves, shown at left. The watercolor painting was snatched up by a good friend of mine as soon as I posted it on Facebook.

The third day we studied cascading water. Julie teaches cascading water as if it were a gathered skirt of a wedding dress, with the initial drop being the waist and flowing skirt, followed by a ruffle of white where it splashes down on the pond below, with a “train of lace” surrounding the splash on the flat pond. I painted my first palette knife painting that day. Clean-up is much easier at the end of a knife painting — all you have to clean is the knife!

The fourth and fifth days we were supposed to finish the paintings we had started the first 3 days, but I had already finished mine and painted a second one each day too. Plein air painting has made me pretty quick. So the fourth day I cut a few flowers off the crepe myrtle bush in the parking lot, and put them in a pitcher of water on my desk, thinking I would learn to paint the pitcher full of water. But the flowers fascinated me, so I painted them primarily, with only a suggestion of the pitcher underneath. Our technique for the day was negative painting, where you paint the negative space surrounding the form. My efforts taught me the techniques, but made the painting very twiggy, so the following day I painted out most of the twigs and branches, and it became flowers again.

Oil painting of a wave, painted with bright colors as a value study of color, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop

Photograph of bright color painting, de-saturated to show values of pure colors

On the final day, the technique assignment was to paint a scene in pure color, using colors straight out of the tube, or pre-mixed, using colors for their inherent light-dark values instead of as color. I again painted with a palette knife, using the wave photos for reference. Anywhere there were dark values in the painting, I used ultramarine blue, violet, and reds, and cobalt green, lavender, and orange for the middle values, and orange and yellow for the lighter values, with white for the froth. The idea was that if you took away the color, the painting would read correctly as a black-white-gray value study. So I took a photograph of my painting, and then de-saturated it to remove the color, and was pleasantly surprised that indeed, it looks “right” as a value study.

To top off the workshop, there was a drawing for one of the instructor’s paintings, and I won it! Icing on the cake!

Joan Vienot with Julie Gilbert Pollard
Photo by Helen Ballance, Beach Art Group

Incomplete oil painting in progress, crepe myrtle, negative painting assignment, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop

Oil painting of crepe myrtle flowers, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop

Posted on 03/30/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air Painting Progress Report: Leaps and Bounds!

Oil Painting of Old Boat "Pompano", Nick's Restaurant, Basin Bayou, FL I am starting to see in color. That may sound strange, but the fact is that most of the time in my normal everyday activity, I hardly pay attention to color. When I was focusing on figure drawing, I occasionally used color, but for the most part I was focused on line, shape, and value, usually rendering the whole piece just using a black-white value scale. Now that I am painting again, I am noticing for example, when a white railing is picking up the blue of the sky, or how intense a green becomes when it is contrasted with red. I am finding that much of what I think I am seeing as different tones of a color are actually the same color which looks different depending on what color is next to it. I am particularly challenged by all the greens I see, when landscape painting. If I try to mix an exact shade of green, it often seems muddy compared to what I actually see. Who knew, that Einstein’s theory that everything is relative applies to painting as well as nuclear physics, that the better way to achieve a color is to find the color next to it which gives it the quality I want. Resisting the temptation to launch into that as a metaphor for life, I’ll instead move on to my adventures in plein air painting over the past week. Last week we painted at Nick’s Restaurant, and I bemoaned the fact that I know very little about boats. The next day I decided to take another run at the featured boat, using my photo references, and came up with the piece at top right. It was the little paprika-colored spots of rust washing out from the old nails in the hull, that gave the greens and turquoise the punch I wanted. So I wafted a little of that color into the foreground grasses too.

This week is the largest of the spring-break tourist weeks in the beach resort communities of Panama City Beach, Seagrove Beach, and Destin, FL. So when the announcement came that the plein air painters would be meeting at the docks again in Destin, I knew the drive would take all the fun out of the adventure, so I opted to paint from my dock in my back yard. I had thought I would be painting my view of the creek leading into Tucker Bayou, but when I looked upstream, the color of the bayou grasses intrigued me. My initial 6″ x 6″ study, left, did nothing for me by way of planning my painting, but rather served more like a singer doing la-la-La-LA-La-la-la scales to warm up her voice before performing.

I needed a warm-up! The temperature was less than 40 and the wind was chilly. But it was a clear spring day with bright light. I roughed in the composition and then went to work on the trees at the edge of the Bayou. The spring gold-greens of the new leaves contrasted with the rich, dark pines and the shadows underneath. I resisted the impulse to paint the shadows a colorless dark value, which has the potential to suck the life out of a painting. Instead I darkened my green shadows with a touch of the same deep red I used to tint the pink flowering trees in my distant neighbor’s yard. I stuggled with the grasses, because the shiny highlights were picking up every color of the palette. Uncertain whether I was just making a mudpie, I plowed onward through the painting, until I was satisfied I had achieved an approximate similarity to the colors I was seeing. My two cats initially were scared by my unusual activity on the dock, but they grew braver throughout the 2 hours, wrapping their tails around my legs as I scratched some final textures and highlights into the grasses and the tree trunks. Upon completion, I stood my painting up against a piling and stepped back from it only to have a bitter wind gust blow it onto its face, requiring repair where it had landed on an edge of a dock board. Remembering the worm crawling across my finished painting two weeks ago, I decided that paintings are not really finished until restored from an inevitable mishap at the very end.

The day before yesterday I was excited to find a delivery frames on my package stand as I entered my driveway, so even though it was late, I spent the next couple of hours framing my earlier paintings done in November and December of last year, when I first resumed oil painting after a 30-year hiatus. Looking at them, I realized that I am growing by leaps and bounds. The rate of my improvement surprises me. I thought I would progress more slowly, and even be tempted to give up, because oil painting so intimidated me, no doubt from my tortured efforts during and shortly after college. I find I am enjoying the time limitation of plein air painting, which while still allowing for tortured effort, does not allow it to continue for very long, with only a two hour window before the light changes so much that further attempts at capturing an impression are not worthwhile.

I continue to play with my photography. I am learning about photo-editing, taking a class in Photoshop Elements from Jackie Ward at Northwest Florida State College, South Walton Center. She is teaching us what Photoshop can do. It’s difficult for me to remember. My poor brain may be overloaded, trying to run my business, my day-job, the one that pays the bills, while I try to learn more about photography and painting. I still enjoy the easy editing that can be done with Snapseed App on my iPhone. Yesterday I paddled my canoe on the Bayou with a dear friend, a fellow photographer. You can’t take a bad picture at sunset! Most of my editing of my iPhoneography consists of simply straightening the horizon line and perhaps a little cropping, but I had some fun dramatizing and saturating the photo below.

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