Tag Archives: watercolor workshop

A week in Maine!

Once again I was hosted by Coastal Maine to teach a workshop in this beautiful state. In 2016 I was teaching in Belfast and this time it was held in Rockland. A beautiful seaside town, famous for its lobster industry, among other things. The best (and reasonably priced) lobster roll is available at “Claws” on Hwy1.

I also went back to see Andrew Wyeth’s work at the Farnsworth museum in town. Always a treat to see his paintings.

I had a full class with 16 students and the week was a blur of painting, sightseeing, eating and more painting!
Thanks to everyone who who came out! I’ll be back in 2020

Amazon prime membership; is it still worth it?

 

Not the content of today’s blog post, but it certainly gets more attention than talking about painting. Or maybe we should discuss politics in America instead!
Wait: it *is* better to talk about painting!

I find myself in a bit of a painting slump right now. Coming back from painting and teaching on Cape Ann MA I have a lot of new references to paint. I took lots of pictures in Gloucester and surrounding areas. It’s just that I don’t feel inspired to paint them. Quaint boats in harbors. What normally sounds great just makes me yawn. Maybe it’s the heat, I don’t know..

How do you find new, inspiring subject matter? You have painted the same things over and over. You need something else! One of the biggest things in painting is the continued inspiration to keep it up. Being able to be inspired over the years.

Below are my thoughts on this topic. Feel free to pipe in what works for you. I would certainly want to hear it! Thanks.

Travel to a new place
Arguably, this one should always work, except it didn’t for me this time.  A new place – new inspiration!

Paint something you’ve never painted before
This is harder than it sounds. If you’re like me, painting a still life might not be something that sounds so interesting but it is definitely worth a try.

Start sketching with pencil or charcoal
If you just draw, you get into the mood. I do this quite a bit in my sketch book. It usually works to get new ideas for painting. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’re still sketching and therefore honing your artistic skills!

Look through art books
Very good for inspiration! We all have books with high quality prints of artist’s work we like. Internet can work too but pictures are usually not high resolution and often distorted. Colors also look different on every screen.

Experiment within your medium
When painting in my studio, I always try to do something new. Well, almost always. It can be something really small like experimenting with new pigments, white paint, or some new technique. It can lead to new discoveries and bring freshness in your work Take risks you normally wouldn’t take, even if you ruin it…that’s how new styles are discovered!

Change medium
When I don’t feel like painting in watercolor I paint oils. It’s usually so much easier and more relaxing, so a very nice change.

Go paint outside
That one almost always works for me. Meet with some friends and go paint. Even if you don’t feel like it, you have no choice. Once on location I usually get into it.

Pick a picture and just do it
That is another good tip. I just pick any reference and just start without thinking much. The motto is, better to paint than not to paint..

Visit a museum or a gallery exhibit.
Great for inspiration. Nothing like seeing new work or paintings of artists you admire in person. Makes you want to go home and paint!

Do something completely unrelated to art and painting
Taking yourself away from the whole thing form time to time is important. There is a whole world out there and if you’re like me you have other interests as well: hiking, playing a musical instrument, researching the next gun you’re gonna buy etc. (I do live in the wild west, it hasn’t changed)

Spend time in your head
You need to be alone for that one. It helps to zone out sometimes, clear your head

Listen to music!
Doesn’t have to be classical, can be anything

Work out your body
Another unrelated activity that can recharge the creative juices. A run or workout in the gym etc. can make us feel like new

Do Drugs
Some artists do drugs or drink when they want to write songs or paint. I’ve never tried it and wouldn’t know what drugs to get, but it’s no secret that many experimented with LSD, Cocaine or even just Marijuana. Probably not a good tip!

Play with your dog, cat or your kids!
Less harmful than the drugs!

I am sure everyone goes through creative slumps every now and then. To get out of it will be a different process for every one of us. I will most likely just paint portraits for a while. Something I am not that known for but love doing. That will get me back into watercolor landscapes eventually.
On another note: my 2019 workshop dates are up on my site! Consider joining us!!
http://www.frankeber.com/workshops/

 

 

What is a good painting?

In my last blog post I have talked about how painting can be compared to music. Personal taste is ultimately the reason why an individual likes a painting or a song. Good art, bad art? Who’s to judge? What’s great to one person may be horrible to another. In music, there are people who love endless jazz solos and others would want to run screaming out of the room if they were exposed to it. There may be paintings that I like a lot and someone else hates them. Overall, I think that’s natural.

But there is some music and some art almost everyone can love, maybe Mozart? Paintings by Sorolla, or more contemporary, Dali? Ancient Notan art of the Japanese and Chinese. In other words, there is a consensus where most of us feel the same way about something. To take it further, most people would agree that Audrey Hepburn was a beautiful woman. So there is almost like a standard for what’s beautiful.

How would that apply to painting? I think, ultimately, it comes down to the personal style of any given artist. The artist’s personality that has its presence in their work. We can see it. Sometimes you look at some painting and you just know, that’s a Sargent or a Zorn! The masters have their own distinctive style. It is *their* own personal vision of beauty that we pick up on and it resonates within us.

Nature by itself is not art per se, it is what the artist expresses when they paint her that becomes art. A painting that has the mood of a landscape is more powerful than one where the artists tries to paint every leaf on a tree.

Art and music are also influenced by the aesthetics of a people and societies in general. Sense of beauty and taste also changes with time, although some art and music is ‘timeless’. Landscape painting is timeless, I think, because we as human beings come from nature. It is in our DNA. In music, the classics like Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin etc etc. are still liked and listened to today even though their music was written hundreds of years ago.

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!

More vine charcoal drawings

Doing many of these charcoal studies that may or may not develop into a painting! Drawing skills are so important! Watercolor is a drawing medium, so most watercolor painters know how to draw.

Drawing also has another purpose: it lets you get to know the subject and pick up what goes deeper than the surface appearance. Usually it is an emotion, that something that gives it life. Not just in portraits but landscapes or anything else!

If we don’t pick up on this ‘undercurrent’, we end up just painting shapes and pushing pigment around. That, in my opinion, is the real crux of painting or of art in general.

There are so so many artists out there who miss this completely. They are great draftsmen and even have amazing technique but their art lacks life and emotion. Painting is a lifelong pursuit but to have that force of life in your work is a goal that few ever attain. I hope I’ll get there eventually…

Technique, therefore, must be seen as a tool. It must be mastered in order to have the ability to muster this sort of expression in painting. Time spent drawing is time well spent. Understanding form, design, balance, rhythm is essential. Every time I draw I am surprised how much I don’t know and can’t do instantly. Out comes the eraser: start over, change, alter…it’s ok, that’s all part of growing.

These are done with General Pencil Co. Vine Charcoal and Pitt Artist Pastel Pencil in 101 White.

Robert Henri put it this way in his book The Art Spirit: ‘The student must learn to read the state, temperament, action and condition of their subject through the outwards signs, and use the same as a means of expressing and making special what is important to them in the subject.’