Finished my entry to OPA this weekend. I submitted “Sunset at Pine Tree Forest” and this painting of a mountain man.

For this painting, I knew that the powerful value contrast was very important. I wanted to keep the colors muted (staying in the grey and brown range) and exaggerate the values. So I did a value comp in Photoshop.

*Click to Zoom

Working Out the Values with a Comp

This time I simplifying the values to only 4. Sometimes I will go to 5 values organizing it like this:

1. Shadow - Reflected Light
2. Shadow - Core Shadow and Dark Accents
3. Light - Dark Halftone
4. Light - Light Halftone
5. Light - Highlight

If you’re not familiar with some of the terminology, reference my tutorial on Direct Light.

So, with this value comp I decided to combine the highlight and light halftone values to get a simplified 4-value study.

Detailed Close-ups

Career Goal  - Participate in 10 Painting Competitions

At this point in my career I need to start getting my name out there (one of the many reasons I started this blog). Participation in competitions or juried shows can get you noticed by major magazines and gallery owners. It can also get you some commissions. Not to mention many have large cash prizes. I don’t expect to win any because of the extreme skill out there, but I do expect to meet many people and learn a lot from the experience.

10 is the goal, but I feel that I’ll end up applying to more. I’ve gathered a list of competitions and still adding more. If you know of some important painting competitions or juried shows I’ve missed, please share with everyone in the comments. If I get a list that I feel is complete enough I’ll start a new ‘reference’ section on this website.

So here’s my list so far along with the approximate submission date according to last year’s deadline:

1. January 25 - OPA - National Juried Oil Exhibition
2. February 1 - Torrey Pines - Art at the Pines (only for San Diego residents)
3. March 1 - Portrait Society of America - Competition
4. April - Scottsdale Artist’s School - Beaux Arts
5. May 3 - Artist’s Magazine Competition
6. June - Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery - Outwin Boochever
7. July - American Impressionist Society - Annual Juried Exhibition
8. August 30 - Blossom II ~ Art of Flowers
9. November - ARC Salon
10. December - CAC - Gold Medal
11. December 14 - Portrait Society of America Members Only Competition

If you plan to participate, keep in mind that OPA, CAC, AIS, and Portrait Society of America require you to be a member. So, start planning early.

Personal Goal - Exercise daily

That means 365 consecutive days of exercise. I’m going for at least 15 minutes of some kind of fitness activity. I’ll try to keep most days short and intense, but every now and then slow it down. To keep it fun and fresh I’ll do whatever I’m in the mood for that day. I could go to the gym, use my p90x DVDs, run, surf in the summer, go hiking, exploring, swimming, etc… The point here is to develop a habit of daily exercise.

Even though this is an art blog, I don’t feel like I’m getting of topic because exercise is an important part of mental clarity, stamina, and performance. Exercise will improve all aspects of your life, including painting.

I’m 25 days in to this goal and I can already feel the results. Yesterday’s painting session lasted 4.5 hours and I felt more focused in the end then in the beginning. I didn’t want to stop, but it was 4 pm and I needed to eat lunch. Usually, after 3 hours I start noticing myself slowing down and getting lazy with decisions and mixing paint. I’m liking the perks of this exercise thing.

Clove Oil

For the alla prima wet-into-wet oil painter - I recommend putting 1-2 drops of Clove Oil on each color on your palette when you’re working on a longer studio painting. This will slow down the dry time of the oil paint. You can return to the painting a week later and it will be as wet as if you didn’t leave at all. 2 weeks isn’t uncommon either. It also keeps the paint on my palette wet forever. Clove oil along with an air tight seal (more on my masterson pallete) is the perfect combination to keep your paints fresh. I have a glob of white on my palette that has been wet for over 3 months… Amazing.

Be careful though, if you want certain areas on your painting to dry for layering techniques, you might be waiting for a while. And if you know the painting will be getting shipped somewhere soon, I wouldn’t recommend it either. To be safe, plan on 4 weeks for it to be dry to the touch. Otherwise, I love this stuff. It does exactly what it’s supposed to.

The only source I know of to get pure clove oil is LorannOils.com, recommended by Jeff Watts. Watch out, the stuff you get from Trader Joe’s isn’t pure and I haven’t tried it. So, I can’t vouch for it. If you find another source, please share in the comments. Also, get an eyedropper since it comes in a bottle. Please don’t pour it on your paints!

It’s finally finished! Feels good to close this chapter, since I put so much time and effort into it. Scaling up to 24 x 36 from a 4 x 6 color comp was a bit tricky. There’s much more detail to put in, but I tried to stay loose at the same time. It turned out that the hardest part of the painting wasn’t the bears, or the rocks, or the sunset coming through the trees, but the leaves on the trees. More specifically, the trees in the center. It felt like painting mashed potatoes.

I’m really happy with the way the bears turned out and the feeling of warm light throughout the painting. Also, glad that the fallen tree isn’t too distracting.

Critiques and comments are welcome.

*Click to Zoom

And here are a few closeups:

I can’t wait to see the painting in person. The show opens Saturday, February 6 and will remain on exhibit through Sunday, March 7, 2010.

Thank you Mrs. Situ for permission to use this image.

“The Uninvited, Angels Camp, California, 1849″ - By Mian Situ

View all the artists at Autry National Center website
Visit Mian Situ’s website or the Situ Art Gallery

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One of the best things about painting a landscape is that it’s not a portrait. You have a lot more freedom to change shapes and move things around. If you move an eye a centimeter to the left, everyone will call you on it. “What’s wrong with her eyes? She looks cross-eyed.” If you move a tree an inch to the left, or even to the other side of the canvas, nobody cares. It still looks like trees in a field with clouds in the sky. I don’t mean that you can put anything anywhere and it all works itself out. The composition still has to be balanced and the perspective believable. There’s plenty of books written on that alone.

My point is, you can get away with a lot more in a landscape and I like to take advantage of that. As soon as I realized that I don’t have to get every shape the right size and in the right place, I loosened up and started designing my own shapes. The reference became just that - reference. Not the goal. I now approach a plein air painting with a lot more conviction and start with bold, confident strokes. I focus on designing the shapes and trust my design sense to make the right decisions. The more you do this the better your design sense will get. You can also develop your design sense by watching experienced painters. You will subconsciously pick up on small nuances of the way they design.

My method of painting plein air can be broken down into 3 steps - layin, under-painting, thick tiles to a finish.

1. Layin

So, I started the layin with confident, large shapes. Not worried about getting it exactly the way I see it, but just to create a balanced composition. I try to keep my lines thin, for better control of the shape designs.

2. Under-painting

At this point I establish the major colors and values of all the shapes. All the paint is thinned with turpentine. I’m going for a graphic look at this stage, disregarding the edges. It’s all about the value and color breakdown at this stage. I will focus on my edges in step 3. I will usually take a little break to let the turpentine evaporate from the under-painting. If there’s too much turpentine on the surface, thicker paint won’t have anything to stick to and will just slide around.

3. Finish

Start with the focal point 1. I am better able to concentrate on shape design and edge-work in the beginning of the painting session. Towards the end I can get tired or restless and start making poor decisions. 2. Sometimes I setup in a place I think is ideal, but after a few hours that spot isn’t so good anymore. During this painting for example, the sun came out after about 2 hours and hit my palette and face. The glare made it very hard to see the waterfall and the colors I was mixing.

Finish strong You might get tired and hungry, but you have to push through and finish that painting. “I’ll take a picture and finish it at home” usually doesn’t work. Try to develop your endurance to stay focused and make strong decisions to the end. It gets easier with time. As I get towards the end of the painting, I find areas that need to be simplified. If there are areas that are over worked, use the side of your brush and take out the details. Keep the viewers eye in the focal point.

The Zoo Trip

The zoo trip turned out to be a great success! The grizzly bears were very active, giving me many angles and poses to choose from. I ended up with almost 400 photos. Thank you, Hemal, for using your guest pass on me.

It took me a few hours to look through them all and test some of my favorites in photoshop. I ended up choosing this one as my favorite:

Photoshop the Bears

I use the Extract tool (filter > extract) to cut the bears out of the photo. Then, I copy them over to the landscape photo, resize them and play around with the placement. Brightness, contrast, and colors need to be adjusted to fit the lighting of the new environment. I also added some quick rim light from the sunset with a small brush and used the burn tool to darken the ground underneath the bears, representing a soft cast shadow.

After doing the gouache color study, I decided that I don’t like the rock in the lower left corner. So, I added a fallen tree instead.

I like this composition because all the shapes in the lower part point to where the bears are headed. And it tells a calm story - A sunset marks the end of the day for the bears as they retire for the night.

Next - Part 6: Finished Painting

Finished my color study for of the landscape. I didn’t put the bears in because I started this study before I went to the zoo to get my bear reference and I wanted to work out everything behind the bears first.

I used a 4×6 piece of thick watercolor paper that I’ve had lying around for years now. It has a bit of texture, but it didn’t bother me. I like to paint the color comps using gouache paint. Gouache dries within seconds, so blending is difficult. This forces me to mix every color tile and put it down next to the previous color tile. Kind of like paint-by-numbers, but without the numbers.  I create the numbers. Gouache is similar to watercolor, but it’s more opaque and you can reactivate gouache with a little bit of water. Watercolors can’t be reactivated. Once they dry, they are dry.

My main focus with this color comp was the sunlight coming through the trees creating a glow. I wanted to transition from warm trees on the left to cooler trees on the right. Also, wanted the rim light on the rocks to be believable.

Next step - Figure out the placement of the bears! I went to the zoo and got 350 pictures of grizzly bears. It’s gonna be fun looking through them all and thinking about how they can fit into and improve the composition.

Next - Part 5: Placement of the Bears

Click here to see Reference Photo

The Shape Design Study

At first glance, the photo reference is overwhelming. There’s a lot of stuff going on and all the trees blend together. So, I felt it was important for me to study the shapes in more detail and redesign some for a simpler and more powerful effect. And just to have more confidence knowing where the major tree masses are once I go to paint the final piece.

The Rocks

I started with the rocks. I knew that I wanted to keep their triangular nature and even exaggerate it. So, I kept the right end flat and pointed the triangular shapes toward the rocks on the left of the composition. I also lined up the right ends of the rocks to be parallel to the distant path in the background. I injected some straights in there focusing on separating the  top planes from the side planes.

The Trees

Overall I like the shapes of the trees. The branches seem to mainly point down towards the center of the composition. I want t make sure I don’t lose that. However, I didn’t like how the two thickest trees are at the very edges. So, I moved the left tree to the right and will move the sun to right right as well.

The Mountain

I moved the mountain to the left for two reasons. First, I didn’t like how the edge of the mountain lined up perfectly with the top branch of the tree on the right. I felt like they needed to be separated. Second, the peak of the mountain felt to far to the right in the composition. So, I moved it closer to center, which provides for a better shape in the window through the trees.

Next - Part 4: Gouache Color Study

The Value Comp

I started preparing by doing a comp of the major value break down of the painting.

• At this point I’m thinking of separating the foreground, middle ground, and background.
• I’m grouping objects together that are closely related in value.
• And starting to think about how these major groups lead the viewers eye throughout the painting. Making design changes in the shapes to lead the eye where I want it to go. I’ll focus on this in more detail in the next stage where I’ll do a shape design study.
• I’m also working out the value composition, making sure it feels balanced. Once I add the bears into the composition, I might need to make some adjustments.

Separating Foreground, Middle Ground and Background

To show depth and atmosphere in a landscape you must separate the foreground, middle ground, and background.

• The foreground will have a full value range, meaning the shadows will have black accents and the highlights will be white.
• As you look further into the distance, values begin to disappear and blend together. In this painting the middle ground is very dark, so the range is from black to a value 5.
• The background is very light, so the mountains and sky will be limited to only about 2-3 values in the lighter end of the scale. I will use color to separate the mountains from the sky.

Foreground - Full value range
Middle Ground - Limited value range
Background - Very limited value range

The Eye Path

I want the viewer’s eye to travel in a circle around the painting and then everything to point back into the lower center of the painting, where the bears will be roaming. I can use the branches of the trees as fingers pointing at the focal point.

Next - Part 3: Shape Design Study