Compositional Studies to Improve My Paintings

Edgar Payne’s book Composition of Outdoor Painting contains a series of black and white marker drawing with different compositional elements arranged. I spent some time this summer looking at, re-drawing, and organizing his small composition drawings. Then I added to that with comparing the compositions in various reference photos and photos from my travels to see how compositions were arranged. I have multiple pages of my own small sketches with different elements organized within each. I’m finding that just devoting some consistent effort to the study of composition is improving my paintings overall. It’s also making them more consistent, and makes it easier for me to naturally identify compositions I like within the natural world as I’m seeing painting locations.

Some of my compositional studies.

Finished my second year of the #stradaeasel 31 day challenge!

Painting from life every day has a powerful effect on my growth as a painter. I don’t have time to paint from life every day, but participating in a challenge really helps! I did it last year during the month of January, and then again this year.

On January 29th as I stood in a snow-covered field at dusk, with no one else around, I watched flocks of geese screech across the pink sky. I folded up my easel since the painting light was gone, put on some warmer gloves to revive my hands, and walked further into the field to admire the mountains and feel the cold air on my face. January has taken on a brilliance now that I’ve done multiple plein air paintings during the last two Januarys and it’s been amazing.

I hope you enjoy my collage of January paintings from 2019!

Urban Painting: "Next to the Post Office, June Evening" 8x10

The day my Peaks and Valleys show started at Marmalade Library, I decided to reward myself with a nice evening plein air painting. I grabbed my gear and headed toward a historic sign near my house, but the building is being converted to condos and the sign had been taken down. I hope they will put it back up when they are done - it's a favorite sign of mine in Sugarhouse.

I ended up in a great spot I had scoped before - the front lawn of the Sugarhouse post office (zip 84105), looking south toward a 1920s falling-down garage with the cityscape in the background. The post office closes at 6pm, and is federal property, so I was able to get started quickly when I arrived just after 6. There were so many people around. I'm always amazed that the busier the area you paint in, the less likely it is that someone will come by and ask you what you are doing and want to talk about painting. I did meet a great gentleman named Dominick and we talked for a few minutes about painting.

There were so many gnats in that spot, and a few of them stayed in the final painting. I could only pick out so many without having to repaint the spots where the gnats were stuck. It was about 90 degrees with the slightest breeze. I really prefer to be in full sun (and have my palette and panel in full sun) so that I am able to match the colors well.

Here's to a great evening painting! Don't forget to see the show at Marmalade Library until July 20th. Please contact me if you'd like to purchase one of the paintings from the show.

Peaks and Valleys: Around the Wasatch Front

Join me for my solo show of plein air works at the Marmalade Library between June 4th and July 20th, 2018. There will be an opening reception where you can meet the artist and view the works on Thursday, June 14, 2018 from 7:00 to 8:30pm. 

The show will include primarily new works from 2018 of plein air scenes from around Salt Lake City, Ogden, Lehi, Midway and a few other spots in the valley. 

I'm so pleased to get to share my work, answer your questions, and also showcase this valley I've grown to love living in. Please come by and see the show!

Overcast painting in Sugarhouse

Choosing the light for your plein air work can be such a challenge. Standing in front of the subject, I quickly lay in my underpainting and mix the colors from life in order to prepare for the full painting. That takes me about 30 minutes (I'm always hoping to get faster at it!). It always likely that your first 30 minutes will be under far different light than the time it takes for the rest of the painting. This particular Saturday afternoon was radiantly sunny all over Sugarhouse while I drove to my location and considered where I would stand. I delayed for about 20 minutes on a phone call before starting the underpainting and color mixing, and by that point, the brilliant light had entirely fled. I had one more glimpse of the sun a few minutes into laying in color, which I had to freeze in my mind, and then refer to that mental picture while I continued the painting from life. That painting from life was primarily from memory for the colors, but the drawing and details could still be taken from life.

Choosing the right time to either snap a reference photo (didn't get a good one during this session) or commit to the light you can see will save you from painting colors and shadows from the beginning of the session in one corner of the painting and finishing the painting with highlights you can see two hours later. This is one of the joys and frustrations of plein air painting. But when you get it right, it feels great!

For comparison, see the Karma Coffeehouse painting in the Plein Air gallery and compare it with the flat and overcast lighting from the end of my painting session.

Plein Air to Studio Workshop by Doug Braithwaite, May 2016

I just finished a great workshop with painter Doug Braithwaite through the excellent Illume Gallery in Salt Lake City. The Illume Gallery regularly hosts painting workshops, but this was the first I had taken through it. The experience was such a treasure, and I loved learning from Doug.

We did a plein air study on the first day, and then spent the next two days in the studio creating a larger work from the plein air study. There were so many perfectly refined techniques Doug shared that helped me to embrace the color (seen vividly through the plein air study the first afternoon), the composition (which was refined the first day in the studio), the hard and soft edges in glazed layers on the final, larger panel, and more.

I chose to face to the east (in the afternoon sun) and paint a small, golden-stuccoed guest house connected to a larger house, complete with two patio chairs just begging to be sat in. Between the red roof, the immaculate landscaping, and the tininess of the house, it was a delightful subject.

A trip to Arches National Park

Last weekend we had a phenomenal first trip to Arches National Park. It's strange to think how long we've lived in Utah as adults and this was our first time to Arches. We went to Zion and Bryce about 10 years ago, but this was an excellent visit.

We opened our trip bright and early on Saturday morning with a hike on the Park Avenue trail. I found a perfect painting spot, while avoiding the delicate cryptobiotic soil, facing the Tower of Babel monument. I started painting only to be mobbed by foreign tourists less than 10 minutes in. Fortunately, my husband whisked me away to a spot farther down the trail, and slightly further off the trail so it was more protected from hovering visitors. I enjoyed every minute of this plein air sketch, and there was a cute lizard near my feet who enjoyed having me around for a while too. We hiked Delicate Arch, napped near Balanced Rock, and did the Devils Garden loop as well.

Figure in Oil Class

The follow-up to my first class on figure drawing was a weekend of figure painting in oil. There was so much to learn during this session, and I was grateful I had the figure drawing class refresher to build from.

Some of the most important things I learned were about limiting the values of a work and still getting the same message across. The last session of the workshop was a limited value piece of a figure in front of a bright window, and it took so much mental concentration to express the figure with the appropriate values and watch it come to life. I am ready to put my new skills to use!

Winter Plein Air

Hey there! Today we went on a nice adventure so I could get out and do some plein air (painting outdoors). We drove up a canyon near our neighborhood, grabbed the gear, and I picked a spot to paint. We had an appointment at 6pm we didn't want to be late for, so I set a timer and painted an 8x10 panel in less than 1.5 hours! (That's a record for me). It's not my very favorite plein air, my fingers were cold, I had some new gear to try, and I was standing on a bed of squishy, wet snow in dim winter light. The warm yellow glow right over the Oquirrh Mountains was reflecting off the reservoir, and that was my inspiration. Loved getting out to get some chill on my cheeks!

This was also a return to the first place I painted plein air, and this one was much more relaxed, and turned out much better than the first scary attempt.