Tag Archives: outdoor painting

A ten day extravaganza in Tuscany, Italy

It was a pleasure to be back at Abbondanza, once again working with the wonderful Paula and Karolina.
We had a great group, total of 19 people with several non-painters, or ‘civilians’ as they liked to call themselves!
Paula’s is one of the best workshop venues when it comes to European painting trips. It is hard to top this experience. There is a chef on location and a driver for the daily excursions, done in a luxurious bus that can hold up to 20 people.
Some of my students who took the workshop two years ago are still raving about the culinary experience they had at Abbondanza!

One of the highlights this year was painting in the Villa Reale gardens near Lucca where John
Singer Sargent painted a long time ago. We found the exact locations he picked. Out of respect and reverence, we decided to paint a different view, from the opposite site Sargent had picked.
Unfortunately, it was a rainy day and we ended up working with umbrellas in one hand, paint brush in the other. That didn’t stop us, however. It may be a once in a lifetime opportunity so nobody was deterred from trying. Nice light would’ve been a treat but the weather is what it is!

Villa Fiori, our accommodations, were located about a 20 minute drive from the city center of Lucca, high up in the hills. The location couldn’t have been better! There was an olive garden and medieval church right outside, which we painted multiple times in different light.
My workshop was well received and I got many positive reviews. Students really like my teaching style and emphasis on sound painting principles.

As a fun side-note: the week we were there, the Rolling Stones were also scheduled to play a concert in the moat next to the city walls of Lucca. So the town of only 10000 grew to more than 60000 on the day of the concert. We made sure we stayed far away from Lucca that day!

The editing process: a pain in the…

I had the chance to visit Ellicott City on my trip to Maryland last June. While there was no time to actually paint en plein air, I was able to take pictures in this remarkable town.
(the name is a bit misleading, it is definitely a small town)

Ellicott City was founded in 1772, so it is quite old by American standards. It is nestled in a narrow valley and unfortunately, that contributed to a devastating flash flood a few years ago. But the people are resilient, have battled their way back and rebuild their dreams!

I was immediately attracted to all the odd views of old Architecture, hilly terrain, beautiful craftsmen and Victorian style buildings. Busy streets and storefronts and some nice galleries as well.

In fact, finding a paint-able scene was quite a challenge, because there seems to always be too much in the viewfinder. Too much and all stacked up! Arguably one of the hardest things to find is a scene that can actually be good painting material. I did find a few eventually but not without doing some pretty drastic editing first.
Side note:
On the day I was there it was actually cloudy. Fortunately, my painter friend Thomas Bucci was able to take pictures the day before when it was sunny. This picture was taken by him and he was kind enough to let me use it.

This is the reason why I wanted to write this blog post: How do we edit scenes with way too much information in them? As with everything else in art, there is no easy answer.

A good way to think is like this: First, what is essential to the scene, what elevates the painting? What has to go in so you can ‘say’ what you have to say?

Second, what does not help the scene? What can I change and still say the same thing?
In this case, the building on the left has a very long extension to the right that does not all have to be there. So I shortened it. Needless to say I didn’t want to paint the trash cans.

The right side is also too complicated: the truck takes up too much space. I added people instead which, in street scenes, always seems to help develop a focal point. I changed the format to vertical and made the scene more mysterious by adding clouds and the background hill which is really not visible from my viewpoint.
Color harmony was created by the repetition of the red and by playing with shadow angles throughout I think I was able to paint an interesting, engaging scene.

As a final thought: these design problems have to all be worked out in advance. As should be pretty obvious, once we start putting pigment and water on the page it would be too late to try to resolve all of this. Time well spent before painting!

Plein air with friends

Moods of Wilder Ranch, by frankeber 2012       

Outdoor painting is definitely one of the pleasures of being an artist! Not many people do it nowadays, the comfort of the studio is just too much to resist. They are missing out!
There is no substitute for the direct interaction between you and the subject matter. Sure, it’s possible to do more elaborate, bigger and more involved work in the studio. But oftentimes it’s the small and spontaneous paintings that people like the most, especially when it comes to watercolor painting!

Unfortunately, going outside and setting up oftentimes comes with adversity. While painting at Davenport, we went to a cliff side (see third image) to get a good view onto the ocean and the Torey pines in the background. We did pass a ‘no trespassing’ sign, clearly there to prevent people from taking a 100ft fall onto the beach below. There was a guy in a fruit stand selling his wares at the side of the road and sure enough, he called us in! Minutes later, one of the two (!) employees of the decommissioned concrete factory came over and wanted us to leave. As it turns out, it is part of their property. It took quite a bit of persuading but eventually, he let us stay for another hour! Talking about pressure to finish your piece!! In the end they were cool, he never came back and we stayed on for much longer.

One of the best tips for painting outside is looking for something manageable. If everything looks too much or too intimidating, pick a detail view of something you like and just do that. It doesn’t always have to be an overview. It takes a bit of experience to pick the right subject matter, but if you persist I guarantee you the rewards are plenty!