Art and Influence

Art Shows

2012-01-29T17:17:00.000-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

Art shows are hitting new lows these days. The worst offenders are front loaded with fees. They take money for a jury fee, a handling fee for stored shipping materials and even a hanging fee in some instances. I would never pay to hang my work, I don’t care what the venue is. These shows make their money off the fees. Many galleries now keep themselves in existence with these kinds of scams.

If you allow the show to recover all its money before the show opens then there is no incentive for the show to be promoted or to bring in collectors. Which brings me to another little scam where galleries ask for the collector lists of their artists. Never relinquish your client list to a venue. A venue that has no clients, charges you for space and doesn’t promote you in anyway is worthless to your livelihood as an artist and your career.

In my opinion there is nothing professional about these venues and you’re better off renting a public space for a night or weekend and advertising and hanging your own show or a show with a group of like-minded artists.

A lot of artists hold the opinion that it is an honor to show alongside other juried artists. Many times a gallery show will pay a nationally known artist to show at a venue from the upfront fees they collect. It’s sort of like an anchor store at a strip mall; they pull in the other stores. Big name artists are given spots or paid to show to get others to pay for the chance of showing with them. If you are juried into a show you’ve earned your spot no need to feel someone is doing you a favor or you’re lucky.

Art is hard enough, don’t let people take your money or take advantage of you. Shows need good artists good artists don’t need shows. Participate in shows that support the artists and their work and take a percentage of sales; this way the expense and work is shared by the venue and the artists.

Making a Mark

2012-01-22T15:54:00.000-05:00

By
Armand Cabrera

Robert Henri

Brush strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and all the littleness are in it. ----- Robert Henri

Joaquin Sorolla

Painting at its best is communication. A successful painting communicates to others on a personal level. The artist, to be effective, must share something of themselves to make that happen. Their art must carry truth in it. Many times people confuse the truth of a thing with its outward appearance but that is just illusion. The truth of a thing is the whole thing. Not just its how it looks to the eye, but also its character, how it makes you feel. The artist in observing the motif decides to express themselves by capturing it in paint.

N.C. Wyeth

An artist must be sensitive enough to discern the whole and to infuse his paintings with the most important aspects of the thing. This not only takes the skill to paint but the openness to understand and make decisions about the subject depicted. There is facility and thoughtfulness and insight. It is opinion manifest through their ability as an artist and it is hard work. It shuns the superficiality of affectation and artistic mimesis.

Hovsep Pushman

There is a lot of technique being thrown around nowadays. Illustrators and artists are hiding behind technology and routine copying and photographic collage. This slick surface work, lacking any personality except in the most superficial way is completely devoid of the hand of the maker. In my opinion this is artistic cowardice. To remove the artist and their opinion is to remove the art from the craft of painting. Anyone, given enough time and effort can be taught the mechanics of image making but the mechanics alone do not produce a work of art. Art can be anything and take many styles but for it to be meaningful it must always carry the mark of the artist. All great art has an individual point of view.

Dennis Miller Bunker

The great artists and illustrators knew this and poured their thoughts and emotions into their work at every level. They infused their work with beauty, power, passion and care in spite of personal challenges, deadlines or outside influences. These artists left a bit of themselves for all to see and in doing so made their mark on the world of art.

Harvey Dunn

There are ten thousand people in the United States who can paint and draw to beat the band. You have never heard of them and you never will. They have thoroughly mastered their craft and that is all they have—their craft… Merely knowing your craft will never be enough to make a picture… If you ever amount to anything at all, it will be because you are true to that deep desire or ideal which made you seek artistic expression in pictures---Harvey Dunn

Isaac Levitan

Can anything be more tragic than to feel the infinite beauty of your surroundings, to read natures innermost secrets and, conscious of your own helplessness, to be incapable of expressing those powerful emotions? ----- Isaac Levitan

Howard Pyle

Project your mind into your subject till you actually live in it. Throw your heart into the picture and jump in after it….Art is not a transcript or a copy. Art is the expression of those beauties and emotions that stir the human soul. ----- Howard Pyle

Walter Hunt Everett

2012-01-15T19:40:00.005-05:00

By Armand Cabrera

Walter Hunt Everett was born on August 20 1880. He spent his childhood on a farm in Haddonfield, New Jersey. In his teens he attended The Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. Sometime later he attended the Drexel Institute and studied under Howard Pyle.

He began getting professional work in his early twenties. Everett worked for The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s Monthly, Women’s Home Companion, McCall’s, Collier’s,Ladies Home Journal, and illustrated a number of books. He provided color frontispieces for the eighteen volume set of The Works of Louise Muhlbach.

Everett also taught briefly at the Spring Garden Institute and The School of Industrial Art from 1911 to 1915 but quit when he felt teaching was too confining.

Everett’s early work shows the influence of Pyle and other successful illustrators of the day like E.A. Abbey. The designs while strong are simple and the color is subdued.

As he matured his work became more personal. He developed an intricate sense of design and color and he incorporated more figures in his work. His later work becomes more focused on flat planes of painted color and even more sophisticated designs. His brushwork is bold and free but never sloppy or haphazard.

Although he was in demand as an illustrator through the 1920’s and early 1930’s, his temperamental nature and perfectionism caused him to miss deadlines. In a fit one day he burned most of his life’s work and very few originals survive. He was married briefly but his wife left him when he continually failed to pay bills and rent on time. He ended up moving in with a brother in Pennsylvania sometime in the 1930’s and spent the end of his life painting for the pure joy it gave him. Walter Hunt Everett died in 1946 at the age of 66.

Bibliography

Walter Everett Forgotten Master
Step by Step Graphics Volume 4 Number 1
Benjamin and Jane Sperry Eisenstat

200 Years of American Illustration

Henry C. Pitz

The Illustrator in America (3 volumes)

1900-1960, 1880-1980, 1860-2000

Walt Read

I want to thank Kev Ferarra for some of the Everett pictures and information in this article.

Other Articles on the web about Walter Everett

http://www.schoonoverstudios.com/howard-pyle-a-students/pyle-students-bios.html?start=22

http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2008/07/walter-everett-1880-1946.html

http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/11/walter-h-everett-man-preoccupied-with.html

http://gregnewbold.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-walter-everett.html

Sorolla Apuntes

2012-01-08T13:00:00.001-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

In my opinion, Joaquin Sorolla was one of the greatest painters of the early twentieth century. While I know many readers are familiar with his formal and finished works I thought it would be interesting to post some of his sketches or apuntes as they were called in Spanish. These were quick small notes used as reference for his larger works. Most were painted on cardboard and were 3x5 to 12x16 inches.

These are in the catalog from the show in Spain at the Sorolla Museum. The catalogue is in Spanish but contains 1283 images, most in color of these sketches as well as his larger finished works.

Bibliography

Catalogo de Pintura
Del Museo Sorolla
2010

Happy New year!!

2012-01-01T23:30:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-26T00:26:00.002-05:00

Workshop in Great Falls Virginia

2011-12-18T12:49:00.000-05:00

I've firmed up my teaching schedule for next year and for my first workshop of the new year I’ll be teaching a studio class in Great Falls February 3rd, 4th and 5th in 2012; the hours of the class each day will be 10am to 5pm. I will demo every day for an hour right after the lunch break. The price of this workshop is $425.

Registration is through the Great Falls Foundation for the Arts (GFFFTA)

Right now there are still spaces available. The workshop will focus on honing your skills for landscape still life and portrait painting. I will address drawing, color, and brushwork and good studio practices. We will also discuss what makes a successful painting and what step an artist can take to make sure their work has a focused idea from the start.

Students can work from sketches and photographs and I will discuss how to use each effectively to maximize the success of the final painting. We will also have some still life and cast set ups for those that want to work from life in the studio. The instruction will be targeted toward the individual student’s goals as a painter regardless of level of ability. The class size is strictly limited to 15 students.

This is the only completely studio workshop I am scheduled to teach next year, the other two are plein air landscape workshops. For those of you with a broader focus this is the workshop for you.

Henry Ossawa Tanner

2011-12-11T17:11:00.002-05:00

By Armand Cabrera

Henry Ossawa Tanner was born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania on June 21, 1859. He was the son of a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Tanner’s family settled in Philadelphia when he was five years old. At thirteen while walking in his neighborhood with his father he saw an artist painting. The young Tanner was so fascinated by the process he decided to become an artist. Tanner studied on his own and with some local artists for the next seven years.

In 1880 at the age of twenty one Tanner enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Arts and studied under Thomas Eakins and Thomas Hovenden for the next five years. At the academy Eakins gave Tanner the solid training he needed in drawing and painting and Hovenden taught him to infuse his paintings with emotion and sensitivity and to paint from experience. These two complimentary approaches would serve Tanner well as he matured as an artist.

Tanner left the academy before graduation in hopes of creating a successful photography gallery in Atlanta, GA. The endeavor was short lived and he sold the business and moved to the Blue Ridge of North Carolina where he sold photographs and painted.

In 1890, the Hartzells, his best patrons at the time arranged a show of Tanners work in Cincinnati. When the paintings did not sell the Hartzells bought the entire collection. This sale allowed Tanner to continue his studies in Europe.

In 1891 Tanner arrived in Paris and enrolled in the Academie Julian. Here Tanner studied under Jean Paul Laurens and Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant. In the summers Tanner spent time in Concarneau in Brittany at the American art colony there.

In 1894 Tanner had his painting The Banjo Lesson accepted into the Paris Salon. For the next twenty years he would have a painting accepted every year in the Salon. In 1895 Tanner won an honorable mention from the Salon for his painting, Daniel in the Lion’s Den. In 1897 he was awarded a third class medal from the Salon for The resurrection of Lazarus and the painting was purchased by the French Government. After 1897 Tanners work became more personal and his brushwork and color more post impressionistic. He developed a unique approach that mixed the modernism of the time with a solid academic foundation.

Tanner began to explore more religious themes after his success at the Salon. He infuses a sense of place and great emotional impact in these large canvases. They have a powerful authenticity that is usually lacking in this type of subject matter. His characters are not painted as the safe clichéd blond European bourgeoisie in robes walking through candy colored gardens. Tanner’s scenes are the real world experiencing the bibles miracles and by painting them as such they heighten the sense of the Divine for the viewer.

In 1921 Tanner was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor, The highest honor the French government bestows on nonmilitary personnel.

Tanner should be remembered as a great American painter for his accomplishments as an artist but it is also the courage it took for him to achieve his success as an African American man at the end of the nineteenth century that stands out from other painters of that time. Wherever he travelled in America he was controlled by the separate but equal laws of the time, especially in the southern states. The Pennsylvania Academy accepted him on the strength of his work but then delayed his entrance when they found out his race. He constantly suffered racial attacks by other students of his class at the Academy. Joseph Pennell was part of a group of racist students that tied Tanner to his easel and then left him outside in the middle of the street when Tanners ability quickly began to eclipse theirs. He constantly fought to be recognized for his ability alone and to eschew being tied to any type of racial style or aesthetic. His treatment in America was severe enough that he lived most of his life in France.

Henry Ossawa Tanner died in Paris, France in 1937.

Bibliography

Henry Ossawa Tanner
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Rizzoli Publishers 1992

Quote

My effort has not only been to put the Biblical Incident into the original setting but at the same time to give the human touch which makes the whole world kin and whichever remains the same while giving truth of detail not to lose sight of important matters- by this I mean that of color and design should be as carefully thought out as if the subject had only these qualities. To me it seems no handicap to have a subject of nobility worthy of ones best continued effort. There is but one thing more important than these qualities, and that is to try and convey to the public the reverence and elevation these subjects impart to you, which is the primary cause of their choice. ~ Henry Ossawa Tanner

Focus

2011-12-05T00:14:00.000-05:00

By
Armand Cabrera

We’ve talked about practice and tenacity as essential parts of becoming a successful artist. The cornerstone of all good habits though is focus. Focus is the engine that drives all accomplishment. I’ve never met anyone who has succeeded without it. You may not have money or a helper or even talent but if you have focus there is no stopping you.

Focus allows people to take all their energies, resources and time and commit them to a single goal. This is not easy in my experience. People don’t like it when someone is committed to a goal. People will want to distract you and vie for your attention; don’t allow it.

Research studies show that people who multi-task get less done and the quality of their work suffers when compared to people who focus on completing one task at a time and finishing it before moving on to something else.

Tasks like painting, music and mathematics require long periods of focus to achieve successful results. If you want to improve your painting the best way to do so is to cut out distractions and work for as long as you can in an uninterrupted block of time. You don’t have the time you say? That is a matter of priority; you prioritize things everyday so choose to prioritize your painting time.

Here are some ideas for staying on track and keeping your focus.

Be clear about what your goals are decide what you want and how you will achieve it.

Don’t set arbitrary timelines or unrealistic objectives for yourself that is a recipe for failure.

Set a fixed amount of time for practice and study and make sure it is consistent and uninterrupted time. Keep distractions to a minimum and you will accomplish more in the time you do have.

Let the other people in your life know your intentions so they have a chance at supporting your plan.

Don’t victimize others with what you are doing. If you have made prior commitments to family, friends or employers, fulfill those commitments first.

Surround yourself with people who are supportive and respect what you are trying to achieve. It doesn’t matter what level of success you are after.

Always give any chosen task your full attention and best effort.

Weaving

2011-11-27T10:57:00.000-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

When you plan your color and values carefully you can employ them to great effect with what I call weaving. Just like weaving a cloth, ¬the color and values are woven into the painting with intent creating a strong abstract composition. This is not the same thing as toning your canvas and allowing color to peak through the brush work in a haphazard way. Weaving uses the intelligence and creativity of the painter in service of an idea to introduce structure irrespective of subject. It is a powerful and effective design tool. This is why thumbnails and color comps created before the details and subject are overlaid onto the design are important. You cannot rely on motif and subject only to carry your painting. A good painting must have a good plan for all of the elements.

Below are some examples; I’ve varied the subject matter to show that any type of painting can incorporate the idea of weaving.

Dean Cornwell

John Carlson

Aldro Hibbard

Joaquín Sorolla

John Singer Sargent

Emile Carlsen

Jane Peterson

Howard Pyle: American Master Rediscovered

2011-11-13T18:11:00.004-05:00

Armand Cabrera

This week I had the pleasure of seeing the Howard Pyle Exhibit at the Delaware Art Museum. The Preview and show were well attended proving once again how starved the public is for this type of art. The exhibit really shows his range as an artist.

This is the largest showing of his work since his death 100 years ago. The museum also displayed the work of some of Pyle's students, showing his influence as a teacher. Walking around with the other artists we were all struck by his use of color and value and his great eye for unusual compositions.

5am. When I was younger I would've been coming home at this time

In Chads Ford, 10 miles away at the Brandywine River Museum they also had a tribute to Pyle and some of his students, plus all seventeen of N.C. Wyeth’s Treasure Island Paintings on display.

Margo, myself, Jeanette, James, Jean Baptiste, Lester

My trip started with a 5:30 am Friday morning drive up to the Brandywine River Museum to meet James Gurney and his wife Jeanette, Jean Baptiste Monge and his wife Margo and Lester Yocum when the museum opened at 9:30am. Jim had these little pieces of paper with 11 on them and at 11:11:11 on 11/11/11 we took a picture of ourselves. I think it caused a rip in the space time continuum somewhere.

Myself and Garin and our portraits

After seeing the show we went and had lunch and were joined by two other artists Kevin Ferrara and Garin Baker.While we all talked James painted watercolor portraits of me and Garin.

At 5pm there was a 2 hour preview party at the Delaware Art Museum which was very well attended.

Afterward, we left James and Jeanette who had prior committments, and found a diner and talked art for a few hours.

left to right, Garin Baker Kev Ferrara, Margo and Jean Baptiste Monge

Saturday, I was back at the Delaware to get an early look at the show before James Gurneys lecture. People were waiting for the Museum to open when I got there. As I was walking around with James and Kevin we met Noah Bradley who was up for the Lecture and show as well as Patrick O’brien. I was also introduced to John R. Schoonover and Ian Schoenherr. James Gurney gave a 45 minute talk on Howard Pyle and Composition Techniques to a packed crowd.

Kev Ferrara briefly eclipsed by Garin Baker and Noah Bradley

Afterward, a few of us took our lives in our hands trying to caravan to the diner we had been to the night before. After a few close calls we finally made it and enjoyed a simple lunch with more great conversation.

Heading home, I had plenty of time to think about Pyle and his legacy that still touches artists of all ages to this day.

If you are on the East Coast it is a must see show.

Painting with Electronic Media

2011-11-06T03:06:00.002-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

I’m going to rant a little; my comments are about process and fad, not about the quality of the images that are made or the ability of the artists making them. The medium has people who are great at it and those who aren’t, just like in traditional media.

The “new” craze is to take your IPad, other tablet pc or laptop and paint either outdoors or in a studio setting like life drawing. My reaction is why bother? Unless you work in an industry where the facility gained painting on a computer translates to your job, there is no upside to it as an artist.

It isn’t even that new. When I was an in-house production artist we started painting with our computers in the early 90’s. I have been painting with my laptop since the early 2000’s. The industry and to some extent illustration has been digital for at least 15 years now. The fact that my aunt now has an IPad and paints with it, doesn’t make it new or very interesting. If you think finger painting on an IPad is difficult try painting with a mouse in index color using Deluxe paint.

But it’s cheaper than traditional media

Not really. A tablet computer will run you $400-800 for the tablet alone; double that for a usable laptop. Then make sure you add a 300-500 for some decent paint software and maybe a stylus with pressure sensitivity. If you have a laptop you will need to buy a drawing tablet like a Wacom Intuos, add 300. You will need an extra battery on your laptop after it runs out so add that second battery cost to the hardware section. The IPad doesn’t have a replaceable battery. So you have 5 hours of practical battery life for each charge. With traditional painting you can recoup the cost of the materials by selling the paintings when you’re good enough.

Where’s the image?

Oh yeah, right, there isn’t an actual painting. You could print out the image you do and make a giclee of it but those are just poster quality reproductions with no real intrinsic value to them. First you would have to buy a printer and inks and paper to print it on. Remember the file would have to be a high enough resolution to make the print acceptable. You might be able to get 20 bucks for it.

People are claiming that digital is closer to true color and light because it is additive, not subtractive like painting. Untrue, for it to be additive it has to produce white when you mix the colors together. All paint programs on a computer mimic subtractive painting; so it’s even dumber than painting with real paints because it takes an additive environment (the monitor) and makes a false subtractive output (the paint program) which is code written by people who aren't artists so other people can use it to paint with.

Don’t quit your day job

The biggest problem I see for practitioners is digital art leaves nothing tangible for the effort; no chance of selling it for any real money, which forces digital outdoor work to be a hobby or just practice. I think that mindset affects the outcome of the work. Part of the destruction of design, production and illustration wages can be linked to this attitude.

Digital image creation is geared for disposable art and massed produced and cheaply made prints. It has to do with the marketplace and the value of physical originals over prints that lack uniqueness. For it to be taken seriously digital artists must overcome that idea and create a paradigm shift in the thinking of collectors. I personally don’t see that happening in my lifetime.

Translating the Idea

2011-10-30T17:57:00.003-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

I constantly see people in my classes and workshops struggling to find the right approach to painting from life. In my demos I try to stress the importance of good drawing and accurate color and value relationships. These tools allow you to make the marks you want to make when and how you want to make them. This is facility but facility only gets you so far. Many people think if they can just copy what they see the painting will be successful. The problem is you can’t copy, ever. What you can do, once you have the facility to make the marks you want is translate what you see into an intended arrangement of shapes.

Translating is the key to a successful painting from life. Everything you do, no matter how tightly or expressively you paint when working from life, is always translating.

Translating is turning 3 dimensional objects into 2 dimensional marks on your painting surface. What separates the more successful artists is the ability to only use the information that enhances the painting and doesn’t detract. This is easier said than done.

Everything is relative- color, value, shape and edges. All must be used in service of an idea that you hold in your mind for the finished painting. Translation requires more thought and ability than copying which is why so many artists struggle with painting from life successfully. You must understand that you are trying to fool the eye for the viewer and at the same time be aware of the marks you make and how they relate to the whole as just marks of color and value. It is this last part that gives the viewer the emotional response to your work. This is especially true for outdoor work.

When you paint outdoors you are always keying the color and value. Keying is limiting the range of color and value available to you in pigment and observed in nature. It is your exaggeration and sublimation of the information presented by you in an intelligent way that leads to a finished painting with clear intent.

No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition. Claude Monet

Tom Thomson

2011-10-23T19:17:00.001-04:00

Armand Cabrera

Tomas John Thomson was born near Claremont Ontario Canada August 5, 1877. One of ten children he was raised in a rural area on a farm where Thomson developed a love of the outdoors and nature.

Thomson tried different jobs during his twenties apprenticing as a machinist for a short time , attending business school and working as a commercial artist. He tried to enlist for the Boer war in 1899 but was refused because of his health.

It was in 1909 after securing a job as an engraver for Grip LTD that he began to paint in his spare time. The other employees included Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, Frank Charmichael and Fred Varley. These men would later form the Group of Seven along with AY Jackson, JEH Mac Donald and Lawren Harris. Though Thomson painted with these men he was never officially part of the Group of Seven.

Thomson continued to work as a commercial artist until 1913 when he decided to try and paint fulltime. He never realized his goal and found side work as a guide, fire fighter and ranger to help supplement his income. Thomson painted many outdoor sketches of the untamed northern wilderness. It is this raw and rugged aesthetic that he is best remembered for. His strong graphic design and bold, sometimes crude brushwork captured the spirit of the places he painted.

Thomson died unexpectedly, in 1917 at the age of 39, of a possible drowning accident. Since his death his art has come to stand as Canada’s first national art with little connection to Europe and its influences. The work of Thomson and the Group of Seven still has a powerful influence stylistically on Canada and its subsequent generations of artists who respond to its bold honesty.

Bibliography

The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson
David P. Silcox
Firefly Books 2003

Quote

The source of our art then is not in the achievements of other artists in other days and lands, although it has learned a great deal from these, our art is founded on a long and growing love and understanding of the North in an ever clearer experience of oneness with the informing spirit of the whole land and a strange brooding sense of Mother Nature fostering a new race and a new age... ~Lawren Harris

New Paintings

2011-10-16T17:57:00.002-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

I’ve returned from two weeks on the road. I got back just in time to catch peak color of autumn on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I taught a workshop, attended my reception for my one man show and visited with a new gallery owner in Florida.

The workshop was small but I had a good group of students. The weather was perfect. The reception for my one man show was well attended and sales were good. The show will continue through the end of the month.

Here are some outdoor paintings. The first three I did as demos during the Saint Simon Island workshop. The last are some fall color paintings from here in VA. All are 12x16 inches.

Gascoigne Bluff

Clam Creek Inlet

Christ Church Afternnon

Old Rag from Skyline

Pinnacles Picnic Grounds

I was unable to finish this painting. I started it in heavy fog and rain but the sun came out and stopped me from finishing it.

Bull Run

Chin Ridge

St Simon Island Workshop

2011-10-02T19:01:00.008-04:00

First Lght 36x48 oil on linen

I'm here in St Simon Island for my workshop and show this week so my blog post willbe a little late. I should have a demo or sketch to post by Tuesday or Wednesday evening. I am sorry for the delay.

Professional Framing Techniques

2011-09-25T14:54:00.001-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

Framing is almost as important as the painting itself. While people can disagree on the color or style of frame there are some basic approaches to framing that makes your work look more professional.

These are the steps I take when framing a painting

Here is how my frame looks just out of the box.

When I remove it from the plastic the first thing I do is put my name on it. This prevents galleries and venues from swapping my nice metal leaf or in some cases gold leaf frame with finished corners for some cheap chopped frame from Graphic Dimensions or Michaels. I also put the title on the back of the painting and a sticker with contact info. This allows collectors to find me since most galleries nowadays don’t give out collector info to the artists.

Next I put rubber bumpers or felt bumpers on all the corners so the frame doesn’t leave marks on the wall. If I have a case where I am framing stretched canvas I put them on the corners of the stretched canvas if it makes contact with the wall instead of the frame when it hangs.

Never nail your paintings into your frames if someone wants to swap the frame down the line you have to use something that doesn’t hurt the wood. I use offset clips or S clips to do the job. This way I can swap my paintings in and out of the frame with just a screwdriver.

I keep a number of sizes for the different sizes of my paintings. Because this image is on linen panel the clip is facing down into the frame.

If it was stretched linen I would flip the clip over so it stood out away from the frame to hold the canvas.

Once I screw in the clips I place the wire holders and attach those to the frame low enough that the wire will form a triangle shape when hanging but not stick out above the frame.

Next I get my picture hanging wire and attach one side to the wire holder. I do this by looping the wire thought the holders ring twice and then twist it back along the wire.

This insures it won’t unravel and bonk someone on the head while my painting is hanging above them on the couch.

I then measure where I want the wire to end at its apex. I do this so when it hangs it doesn’t stick out above the frame. I cut the other side of the wire and fasten it in the same way.

I’m done and the picture is ready to hang on the wall. Only 24 more to go for the show this week at Narmada.

Workshop and one man show at Anderson Fine Art Gallery

2011-09-18T13:57:00.003-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

Clam Creek 36x48

Passing Rain 24x36

For those of you in the area I will be teaching a four day workshop followed by my one man show in Saint Simon’s Island Georgia. There is still room in the workshop if anyone is interested. I will be showing students how I approach a painting outdoors and in the studio and how to organize and complete small sketches on location in one sitting. We will go over composition, color theory and mixing from a limited palette, drawing, and application. Information is here or you can call the gallery directly at 912 634 8414.

View of Cumberland Island 24x30

Marsh Edge 18x24

My one man show is called Seascapes and Shorelines and I will have 15 new paintings. The paintings range in size from 36x48 down to 18x24. These larger works represent 6 months of my studio time this year. All are done from onsite sketches and photos from my trips to the area. I was really focused on emotional content and mood for these paintings. I love painting in the golden isles of Georgia I am looking forward to the show. The show will be up for a month and the artists reception will be from 6 pm to 8 pm October 7th.

First Light 36x48

Sunrise 24x36

Art or Illustration

2011-09-12T12:30:00.001-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

N.C. Wyeth
The conversation about art and illustration keeps coming up. People want to draw a line making one better than the other. I think this is foolish.

Since I work both sides of the fence as it were, I thought I would lay out a couple of things I’ve noticed about the different disciplines and maybe help dispel some myths about both along the way.

Aldro Hibbard
First myth, gallery artists have to sell which means they have to paint what people want and that means they are just like illustrators. Wrong. In gallery work people may commission you to paint a painting, they may even ask you to paint a specific scene but what they don’t do is ask you to submit roughs, then color studies and then fiddle with your picture as you paint it. Gallery artists paint what they want to paint and then take it to a gallery that sells it for them. No one has ever told me to fix or change a painting that I have delivered to a gallery. This happens all the time in illustration. Very few illustrators get a phone call for work, come up with an idea and paint an image for the client without outside feedback on that image.

Second myth, gallery artists are more artistic than illustrators. Wrong. The level of artistic accomplishment lays with the individual not the profession. Many golden age illustrators have stood the test of time and the works they created are now considered art. I would argue their work was always art. Their work has transcended the original intent of the painting. Some gallery work on the other hand has not done so well because of its trite treatment or overly sentimental subject matter.

Jeff Jones
Third myth, if you take money for your art you are selling out. Wrong. Selling out is a term that gets thrown about quite a bit in the artist versus illustrator discussion. Artists look at illustrators as sellouts for offering their work as a commodity designed by a committee. Those same artists have no problem giving up their self-respect begging for grant money to fund their projects or going to openings trying to sell paintings at a show of their work. I think selling out is copying another artists style for monetary gain. Neither profession can claim the high ground here. And both fields have their hacks that chase the style of whatever artist is commanding the most work and highest prices. I see it in galleries and illustration.

People who respect their craft and their profession create things worthy of any museum; to label it unworthy because of the original intent is ignorant. All creative work is communication and will be judged by the ability to reach other people. An artist must impart truth to what they create for it to have value beyond the moment. Successful artists must satisfy the needs of their profession and the desires of their soul if they wish to survive and continue to create works that can stand the test of time.

Dennis Miller Bunker

All art for this article is copyrighted to the respective artists, their estates or the artwork owners

Drawing How To: Pencil Masters

2011-09-04T17:02:00.003-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

I thought I would post some drawings by artists I think are the best at landscape drawing. These drawings are more than rough sketches and show a command of handling and design. This type of drawing is becoming a lost art with computers, photos and projectors. I like both these artists for different reasons, they each capture the truth of a scene at the same time imparting their own style to it.

Ted Kautzky
Ted kautzky books on bookfinder

James Duffield Harding
JD Harding free google books

Drawing How To: Process

2011-08-28T16:39:00.001-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

When I’m drawing it’s important to have the simple value plan. I like three or four values at the most depending on the image. I start with placement. After observing the scene and getting the sense of the light and shadow patterns I come up with an arrangement that I think will convey the sense of this place. I want to incorporate the cloud patterns across the landscape and use them to help my center of interest and create a feeling of depth.

When I draw initially I like to keep my lines flowing and not too broken and scribbly. This establishes a sense of rhythm for my shapes.

I fill in the values for the sky and big hill and lay down some strong darks around the house. All the time I am working I’m watching the cloud patterns and thinking about how I will integrate them into the final scene.

Next I work on the foreground and decide on the lights and darks placement there.

After laying in the tones I clean up with a kneaded eraser and add a few more details and I’m done. Total drawing time is about 40 minutes on an 8x 11 pad.

These exercises help in a number of ways. It helps you to reduce shapes to contour lines first. This requires organization on your part. You learn to simplify the scene to a black and white image and to design the elements not just copy. The more you work at it the more you can take it to a high degree of finish and control. Learning to control the pencil and the strokes will help your painting. You will break a lot of pencil lead but I think it is worth the extra trouble in the long run.

If you work in concept or production art this type of sketching will help you build a mental library of real life experience to help in construction and design of environment drawing. I always felt one of the advantages I had getting work in those industries was the amount of drawing and painting from life I did and how it affected my work in the studio..

Drawing How to: Materials

2011-08-21T17:30:00.000-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera
There are a lot of things you can draw with; Charcoal, pastels, pencils, pens, felt markers for the sake of brevity I am going to focus on pencils.

There are a few basic things you need to have.

A kneaded eraser is a great eraser; I like them better than the hard pink ones. The eraser keeps things crisp and your whites white. I let the blank paper be my white but it helps to have the eraser to pick out areas that might smudge when working. A separate piece of paper works as a hand rest to reduce smudging also.

Pencils come in different lead grades and these control how dark of a mark you can make. I like a very dark one and a medium one. With those two I can get any tone I want. I like a 5 B and a B but try a variety and see what works for you. I use Derwent Graphics, Berol and General Artists Series

A small utility knife for sharpening your pencils is a very important part of your tool set. When you sharpen them do it so you have about an inch or more of lead showing. That way you can get a fine line or a very broad stroke. In the beginning you will go through a lot of pencils when you sharpen them this way because you will break them often. Practice on some cheap pencils first.

I keep everything in an old pencil box. It is the kind that has three tiers of compartments and a sliding lid. It’s compact, light and efficient. I can keep all my drawing supplies in it when I’m traveling and it will fit easily in a pack.

I use sketchbooks with smooth paper in them and buy them in bulk online. I am constanly buying sketchbooks. Crescent black books are my favorite but again try some different things and see what works for you. I know some people take a hundred pages of their favorite paper into a FedEx Office Store and have them bound into spiral sketchbooks for a couple of dollars. It’s a great solution if you can’t get the exact kind of paper you want already in a sketchbook commercially.

Next week, I’ll go into process and some ways to approach a drawing.

Drawing How To: Working with Purpose

2011-08-14T19:22:00.000-04:00

By

Armand Cabrera

Developing your artistic skills is a lifelong commitment. Learning to draw is at the foundation of that process. To paint well one must draw well and to draw well one must be able to draw from life. Too many painters use drawing as a short hand, barely more than scribbles. For them drawing is simply a hurried step to get to the painting process. Like a little kid they race through their dinner so they can have some dessert completely missing the importance of their food and the main course. What these people don’t realize is that inability carries over into their painting with every mark they make, rendering the outcome mediocre. No amount of expressive paint or pure color can mask an under developed drawing ability.

The way to improve your drawing is to get rid of the 3x5 inch sketchpad and draw at a proper size. Work on drawings in a book or pad 11x14 or larger and practice one drawing per page. Learning to draw at larger sizes keeps your skills at their best. It is easy to draw smaller once you learn to draw large but the reverse is not true. More than painting, drawing the landscape requires translating the things you see not only to a 2d surface but also to value only. These limitations help you learn to organize your image into a thoughtful picture.

When I teach drawing, I start with just the attributes of line quality. By learning to control and manipulate line with pressure, thickness and value many beautiful results can be achieved using contour alone.

After contour drawing the next step is learning to draw with massed tones. This type of drawing achieves an even closer look to painting.

When you are mass drawing it is important to have the proper tools. If you are working with a stick of solid material like conte, graphite or charcoal, make sure you keep a crisp edge on at least one end for crosshatching and fine lines. If the medium is in a wood pencil form the pencil needs to be sharpened the correct way to get the full range of effects.

Drawing paper is important. Newsprint is cheap but not good for graphite. Save your newsprint for chalk, conte and charcoal drawing. Drawing with graphite is better on white paper. The kind becomes a matter of personal choice. If you are just starting to draw, cheap printer paper is a good place to start since you will be going through a lot of it as you build your skills. For a couple of dollars you can have pages bound at your local office store. This makes carrying it and storing around a lot easier.

Next week. A look at process and tools for drawing.

Barrel Oak Middleburg Demo

2011-08-07T13:08:00.004-04:00

Armand Cabrera

Yesterday I spent the afternoon painting a demo in the Barrel Oak Gallery in Middleburg. If you haven’t been to the gallery yet and you are in Virginia please come on by, taste some fine Virginia Wine and view the art. I have 60 paintings on display.

I started with a small field sketch from autumn last year. The sketch was painted in one of my favorite areas of Virginia on the eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains near the town of Etlan.

The demo painting is 20x24 on linen panel. I followed the same procedure I do for most of my paintings by establishing a drawing with my brush and then blocking in the larger masses and refining those into smaller shapes . I’m careful to preserve the light and shadow in the painting and not let the details detract the big effect. The complete working time was about four hours.

8x10 field Study

Autumn near Etlan 20x24 oil on linen

Thomas Worthington Whittredge

2011-07-31T03:50:00.002-04:00

by Armand Cabrera

Thomas Worthington Whittredge was born in 1820 on his family’s farm near Springfield, Ohio. His father was a retired sea captain. The family had moved from Massachusetts in 1817 and settled on the little Miami River. Whittredge’s education was extremely limited; most of his time was spent working the farm as a child and trapping animals for their pelts. Whittredge asked his father to leave home at 17 and with his father’s blessing he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to serve as an apprentice house and sign painter to his sister’s husband.

As a sign painter he learned to draw and letter and was soon creating pictures for all types of signs and banners. He later tried his hand running a daguerreotype studio in Indianapolis, Indiana, to disastrous results that left him broke and sick and was taken in by Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. For helping him recover, Whittredge painted portraits of the Beecher family members.

In 1843 Whittredge decided to pursue landscape painting, and secured lines of credit against the paintings he would make abroad. In 1849 he traveled to Düsseldorf, Germany, to further his training at the Düsseldorf Academy. He received informal training from landscape painter Andreas Achenbach and became friends with Carl Friedrich Lessing. Whittredge travelled through Europe and sketched with Albert Bierstadt staying for 4 years in Rome where they were joined by Sanford Robinson Gifford and William Stanley Haseltine.

In 1859 Whittredge returned to America to live in New York City. He rented a space in the now famous Tenth Street Studio Building. Whittredge sought a unique approach for his American landscapes. He turned to nature and he began painting the Catskills and along the Hudson River with his friends Sanford Gifford and Gervis McEntee. Other painters were also pursuing an American aesthetic they were John Frederick Kensett, Richard Hubbard, George Inness, Alexander Wyant John Casilear, James Hart, William Hart and of course Frederick Church Asher Durand and Albert Bierstadt. These artists came to be known as the Hudson River School.

Just before the outbreak of the Civil War in 1860 Whittredge was elected to the National Academy of Design and becoming a full member in 1862. Whittredge tried to inlist in the war but was turned away. During the war he worked to help raise money and make clothes for the troops. He became President of the National Academy of Design from 1874 to 1877.

In 1865 Whittredge accompanied General Pope on a tour of the Missouri Territory, the Eastern Rockies and New Mexico. Worthington married in 1868. In 1880 bought some land and built a house for his family in Summit, New Jersey. In the 1890’s Whittredge began writing his autobiography which he completed in 1905. Thomas Worthington Whittredge died three months before his ninetieth birthday in 1910.

Bibliography

The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge 1820-1910
Edited by John I. H. Baur
1969 Arno Press

Techniques of the Artists of the American West
Peggy Samuels
1990 Wellfleet Press

Quote

A landscape painter is only at home when he is out of doors. It matters not whether he is an Impressionist or one of the older schools who dwelt with more rigors on form and outline.~ Thomas Worthington Whittredge

Quotes from Harvey Dunn part 5

2011-07-24T10:05:00.000-04:00

This will be my last post on the Harvey Dunn quotes. The blog is a labor of love for me and one of its perks is getting to correspond with other likeminded artists. Some of these people I have not met in person but still I am glad for their contact with me.

Kev Ferrara is one such person. I would like to thank Kev Ferrara for sending me some more Dunn images to post with the quotes. Between fighting the good fight on just about every art blog and forum I read and also offering his insight and knowledge about the art process to people, I don’t know how he finds the time to draw and paint. Thanks Kev! I hope we get a chance to meet some day.

To visualize the simple values, think of how things appear in the shadow when your eyes are accustomed to the bright light and of how things appear in the bright light when your eyes are accustomed to the shadow. How many values can you distinguish on coming from indoors into the brilliant sunlight and vice versa?

Lick touches of light into the shadow field to give zip to the points of interest in the quiet tones and to tie the light field and the shadow filed together, similarly put a few flicks of dark in to the light field.

Only the greatest contrasts are at first perceivable. The value range will be light, halftone, shadow. The subtler values will be lost. This is the effect to aim at when expressing strong light. To see simply is to see pictorially. In strong light there will be no color in the shadow. By using absolute shadow or black, to draw in the shadow forms, all the values can be painted in local color.

Balance: Opposition of lines, values, colors forms, textures etc. in unequal but related proportions.

Maintain the integrity of the local value of every form. Paint the black, black and the white, white as it appears. The light will unify the values. One fleck of light on the dark will serve to bring the whole form into light.

Ideas are intelligent active things which present themselves to your consciousness for expression. You can only be receptive and express them as they will be expressed. It is not possible for a man to sit down and cold-bloodedly think up ideas- ideas can only come to you when you have an open mind to receive them.

If your life is full you will paint full pictures If it is empty your pictures will be empty too.

Any picture that needs a caption is a weak picture.

Get it down and get it said, to hell with everything else.

Quotes from Harvey Dunn Part 4

2011-07-17T03:22:00.001-04:00

Quotes from Harvey Dunn Part 4

The lightest light and the darkest dark is in the eye.

Do not be so afraid that your picture will not be seen. Who tells you to make everything hard the art editors? Why if they knew how to do it themselves, they would not be art editors, they could not afford to.

Commence your picture by first establishing the three main values of your focal center, as hair face and background; and work on that until you have it right. Then paint the rest of the picture in that tonal range and do not under any circumstances depart from it. With your main tones decided you have the key to all the remaining tones. Use all the tones you want within the established values.

A background can be painted in the same range of values as the foreground by reversing the light effect; painting the lights cool and the shadows warm in the shadow plane and warm lights and cool shadows in the sunlight plane.

Use separate brushes for warm tones cool tones and mixtures.

Use shadow tones of white for highlights on the dark.

You establish the key for the picture when you put down your first strokes for the flesh in shadow.

The center of the shadow tone in a large light area may be lightened to throw more light in the shadow, as the edge will carry the mass.

Paint related masses together as one. It will simplify the composition and give greater carrying power to the masses.

Where a few details will serve to convey the idea, don’t use many.

In a decoration do not go into factual detail or anything else that does not contribute to the decorative effect.

In design darks may be used anywhere, but in representing natural phenomena they must follow visual laws.

In decoration contrasts must be softened in receding planes.

The light pattern and shadow pattern of a design must be kept apart.

If the light source is cool the shadows must be warm.

If the shadow tone of white is high in value eliminate as much as possible from the background.

In design tie the sides of the shape together with a pattern of shadow. Then draw in the form with deep shadow (dark) leaving the light area to the last. The whole picture will thus fall into a simple scheme of light, halftone and dark.

A man of but mediocre talent who is furiously driven by deep desire will get somewhere. He who doesn’t desire deeply isn’t hurt much by failure.

Quotes from Harvey Dunn Part 3

2011-07-10T16:05:00.002-04:00

These quotes are compiled from students notes. They were passed down to me from some of my teachers who studied with Dunn Students like Harold Von Schmidt and Kenneth Riley. Some of these quotes appear in a slightly different form in 'An Evening in the classroom' I have two more pages of these to publish, about 1300 words in all. I have published two other posts of Dunn Quotes here
These have been a great source of inspiration to me over the years and I hope you find them helpful.

Try planning a picture in ivory black and raw sienna.

When we start a picture we begin with a shape. Our first problem is to introduce into the shape a form. It may be only a line that will tie the sides together.

If the distance is dark the values will grow lighter towards the foreground.

One authentic detail will make the whole picture.

You cannot paint a picture from the model.

Keep repeating your main values it will give your picture unity.

An arm is all one; paint it so with one stroke of the brush

Play up to one color note

Light and dark, warm and cool colors, in equal proportions produce static neutrality, balancing each other right out of the picture.

To simplify your scene, paint as many things as possible in the same value. Then vary the texture and edges. Let modeled form come against flat surfaces, detail against simplicity, hard against soft etc.

When the center of interest is established in its tonal relations, that becomes the key to the picture and you have to stick to it whether you like it or not.

Eliminate everything that is not relevant to the main purpose.

When two values nearly alike come together, paint them as one value.

Dark in light must be at least as the shadow tone of white. If the light is soft paint it soft.

Form is expressed in the light tones by dark accents, in the dark tones by light accents.

Pictorial art is relating tones to create beauty- like chords of music- not the faithful copying of the model.

In the model there is a confusion of tones that have no meaning in art.

Do not have an important dark and important light in the same picture they will destroy each other.

If you see a thing dark make it darker; large paint it larger; small paint it smaller, then your work will be positive.

One dark accent will give accent to a high key picture.

Make your picture either a figure with a background secondary or a landscape with a figure secondary.

One dark note in a passage of light will heighten the effect of light.

To make light more brilliant, raise the value of the shadow. The light in your picture must be kept separate from the shadow. If you bear in mind that the light on dark must be at least as light as the shadow tone of white, your values will take care of themselves.

Begin a picture by first laying in the values, and then clearly define the edges.

Paint the large areas as indefinitely as you like, but paint the details with integrity.

Armand Cabrera featured at a new Fine Art Gallery!

2011-07-08T11:14:00.001-04:00

I am now showing my work in Middleburg Virginia in a new gallery and wine tasting room.

I have sixty paintings on permanent display for sale. The owners are Brian and Sharon Roeder of Barrel Oak Winery. The tasting room serves Barrel Oak and other local fine wines from Virginia. As an extension of the Barrel Oak community, the gallery is dog friendly.

The new venue is called the Barrel Oak Fine Art Gallery and Wine Tasting Room it is located in downtown Middleburg right on highway 50; the address is 8 East Washington Street ( Highway50).

If you are in Northern Virginia and want to have a glass of wine while viewing art this is the place to come.

The space has two floors; the downstairs has my paintings of Virginia and the tasting room with tables and chairs and the upstairs has another tasting bar and work from my painting trips of the last few years. This was a huge commitment for me, coming up with so many framed paintings but I think all the hard work has paid off.

I will be in the gallery painting on July 28th from 5pm to 8pm. If you are in the area stop by and have a glass of wine while watching a painting demonstration. I will finish a painting from a blank canvas and answer questions about my process, artistic influences, and philosophy.

The gallery and tasting room hours are Thursday and Sunday and holiday Mondays 11am to 7 pm and Friday and Saturday 11am to 8pm.

Barrel Oak Fine Art Gallery & Wine Tasting Room

8 East Washington Street

Middleburg VA

Gallery Phone 540. 687. 6111

View Paintings at Barrel Oak

Harold Von Schmidt

2011-07-03T03:11:00.003-04:00

By
Armand Cabrera

Harold Von Schmidt was born in 1893 in Alameda California. One of five children, he was second to the youngest. Von Schmidt’s father was a sea captain and his mother was a ballet dancer. Both his parents were killed in an accident when Von Schmidt was only five. His sister who was the oldest child was sent to live with an aunt. The boys were sent to an orphanage in San Mateo where they were split up again because of their ages. Von Schmidt stayed with his younger brother Roland. Von Schmidt immediately had to learn to fight to protect himself and his brother. The fights continued when he entered elementary school where he was singled out for being from an orphanage.

Eventually Von Schmidt and his brothers went to live with their grandfather who was in his eighties. His grandfather had been an engineer and a surveyor in the Sierras. The stories his grandfather would tell about eastern California delighted the young Von Schmidt. He spent his time drawing cowboys and horses. His Grandfather gave him a set of watercolors and would encourage him to paint things. He studied at the California School of arts and Crafts for a year and a half starting in his last year of high school and later taught as an assistant at the Unviersity of California Berkeley.

Although he always wanted to be an artist, Von Schmidt had many rough jobs when he was young. He worked in a logging camp, helped build dams, and worked on the docks and in railroad yards as a lumper, loading and unloading freight. In high school and college he played football and rugby. In 1920 at age twenty seven Von Schmidt played rugby in the Olympics for the American team and they won the gold.

His first job as an artist was in San Francisco, working in advertising, he rented a space in a building with other artists of the time, Maynard Dixon, Armin Hansen and Gottardo Piazzoni. Von Schmidt worked as Dixons studio assistant for three years where he was introduced to Dixons friends Charlie Russell and Ed Borien.

In 1924 after a failed marriage to his high school sweetheart Von Schmidt moved to New York. His friend Joe Sinel, an illustrator he had worked with in San Francisco, convinced him to come east and there he began getting work in advertising. He remarried and he and his new wife had two children.

Von Schmidt still wanted to be an illustrator for the magazines, at thirty one he had been working as an artist for nine years. He knew he wanted to be a better artist. Von Schmidt enrolled in Harvey Dunn’s night classes and credits Dunn with changing the way he thought about illustration. Dunn taught him not just to illustrate the story he was assigned but to paint the epic so that the painting would stand as a picture in its own right.

Von Schmidt went on to illustrate for all of the major magazines of the time including Colliers Weekly, Liberty Magazine, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and The Saturday Evening Post. He was president of the Society of Illustrators from 1938 to 1941, served as an artist war correspondent in World War II, and helped form the Famous Artist Course School in 1949.

Von Schmidt was elected to the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1959, and was commissioned by the Postal Service in 1960 to create a stamp commemorating the Pony Express. He was the first artist awarded the Trustees Gold Medal from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1968.

Harold Von Schmidt died in 1982 at the age of 89

Bibliography

Harold Von Schmidt Draws and Paints the Old West
Walt Reed
Northland Press 1972

200 Years of American Illustration
Henry C. Pitz
Random House 1977

The Illustrator in America (3 Volumes)
Walt Reed
The Society of Illustrators 1966, 1980, 2000

Famous American Illustrators
Arpi Ermoyan
Rotovision 1997

Quote

I draw and paint outdoors not to make easel pictures but to acquire experience and knowledge as reference for both the form and color of a locale and the people who live there or travel through it. This has helped me to handle a variety of subjects. It has further sustained my interest in illustration. The world exists as reference, and I try to use it. I constantly bring parts of it into my files in color and forms, through sketches and drawings. They are mine alone and have paid me well for the time, money and love expended on them. The beauty and value of field work is that though many have commented on nature, here is one place where each artist can work out their own approach to it.~ Harold Von Schmidt

Drawing Through the Form

2011-06-26T16:12:00.001-04:00

By
Armand Cabrera

Many painters get stuck on contour and see only 2d shapes instead of drawing and painting the solidity of the forms they are trying to translate to canvas. When an artist sees everything as a flat shape they tend to ignore the visual clues that help give it more dimensions. You can teach yourself to see the form of a thing by doing what we call drawing through the form when sketching.

Drawing through the form uses construction lines to further enhance the 3d effect of an object and to set its depth clearly in your mind so you can then translate it to your canvas. It uses perspective, geometry and basic shapes to build your subject with. It is a constructive approach but can be used as an observational approach also.

It’s a good idea to practice sketching like this at all times until you automatically visualize everything you see this way. Some people prefer to start with red pencil or blue pencil to separate the construction lines from their refined final drawing. Doing this allows you to pick out what’s important to you.

Illustrators and production artists are aware of this approach because many times they are inventing scenes and characters from their imaginations but there is no reason for gallery painters not to use this tool also. Many problems can be avoided by paying attention to volume when drawing a landscape, figurative or still life picture.
(images from top to bottom Will Pogany, Peter Helck, Armand Cabrera all images are copyright to their respective owners)

Maine Workshop

2011-06-20T15:27:00.001-04:00

by Armand Cabrera

I will be teaching another workshop in Maine again this year at the Acadia Workshop Center on Mount Desert Island. The center is close to Bass Harbor, Southwest Harbor and a short ride from Bar Harbor and Acadia Park. It will be a fun intense workshop and a chance to paint some of the most beautiful scenery on the East Coast. I hope you will join me. The workshop is from Sept 19-23 2011 and is limited to a maximum of 12 students. The weather is usually mild that time of year and we have a big professional art studio if inclement weather does occur. I hope you will join me.

For More information contact Gail Ribas at the Acadia Workshop Center

Gail Ribas
Workshop Director
Acadia Workshop Center
7 Bernard Road
Bernard, ME 04612
207-460-4119
awcmaine@gmail.com

SourceTek Products

2011-06-12T10:42:00.001-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

From time to time I get questions about the type of materials I use and where to buy them. For my panel supplies I use SourceTek. It is a small company in Scottsdale Arizona that handcrafts their panels from the highest quality materials. JoAnne and Will Pierce are the owners of SourceTek and they are dedicated to excellent customer care and service.

SourceTek panels are the best panels on the market. I’ve been using them for almost ten years now. I just wanted to bring some of their new products to your attention. They have expanded their panels to include archival hardboard and a less expensive Academic Line that offers the same handcrafted professional quality of the other lines. The Premium line oil primed linen panels are made with Claessens linens. They also use Claessens acrylic cotton canvas for their Universal Line and the Academic line uses a medium weight polyflax canvas.

SourceTek offers three different substrates, Baltic birch, gatorboard foam and archival hardboard. These substrates are available with or without canvas and linen. They now offer more than 350 different panels.

Other products include the Silver Brush Grand Prix line of paint brushes and Holbein and the Che Son Painting Knives. Che Son knives are manufactured in Italy.

SourceTek has always been about providing artists with solutions for their painting needs. For years they have consistently maintained their quality when everyone else is cutting corners. If you are in the market for quality artist supplies and panels I recommend you give SourceTek products a try.

Website:

http://www.canvaspanels.com/

Email:

General Information: Info@CanvasPanels.com
Sales: Sales@CanvasPanels.com
Service: Service@CanvasPanels.com

Telephone:

(480) 483-6883, Arizona and Canada
(800) 587-5462, Toll-Free Within the United States
011-480-483-6883, International

Mailing Address:

SourceTek
P.O. Box 14765
Scottsdale, AZ 85267-4765

Henri Fantin Latour

2011-06-05T23:07:00.001-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

Ignace Henri Jean Theodore Fantin-Latour was born in 1836 in the town of Grenoble France. His Father was a pastel artist. Henri studied drawing with his father at age ten. At fourteen he studied under Lecocq de boisbaudran for six years at the Petite Ecole de Dessin in Paris. Latour attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was expelled after three months for showing no signs of improvement. After his training he began making master copies in the Louvre for twelve years. The practice was an almost daily obsession.

It is in the Louvre that he met many artists including Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. It was Whistler that introduced him to important English patrons and this is where Latour found a lifelong market for his still life paintings.

He exhibited with the Salon between 1861 and 1899. He also exhibited in the Salon de Refuses in 1863 but refused to show with the Impressionists. In 1878 Latour received a medal at the Salon and the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was a prolific painter producing 2500 paintings in his lifetime. Nearly a quarter of them were still life paintings and most of his paintings were created in a twenty year period from 1870 to 1890. Besides still life paintings he also painted portraits and figurative work.

Toward the end of his life he looked upon still life painting as forced labor but it was so lucrative he could not give them up. Henri Fantin Latour died in 1904 at the age of 68

Bibliography

Henri Fantin Latour
Edward Lucie-Smith
Rizzoli 1977

The Impressionist Still Life
Eliza E. Rathbone and George T.M. Shackelford
Harry N. Abrams 2001

Quote

I tried to make a painting representing things as they are found in nature; I put a great deal of thought into the arrangement, but with the idea of making it look like a natural arrangement of random objects. This is an idea that I have been mulling over a great deal; giving the appearance of a total lack of artistry~ Henri Fantin Latour

Negotiating Contracts for Freelance Work

2011-05-29T03:47:00.002-04:00

By
Armand Cabrera

In writing these articles, I am sharing my opinions and experiences as a freelance artist. I am not a lawyer nor am I offering legal advice.

In this article I am not talking about gallery contracts for easel paintings and this article is geared towards freelance production or illustration work. Gallery contracts have been covered before here.

Let’s say you have set up your business to start freelancing. You have a website dedicated to your work; you have a business name and bank account. You have a portfolio to show. You have done your homework and decided on a range of pay that is commensurate with the industry you want to work in. You start applying for work and get a return call about your portfolio and a client wants to hire you for a project. You speak on the phone and maybe meet in person to nail down the specifics of what is expected of you before you agree to take the job. This is a good time to be professional and ask about scheduling, delivery, compensation and payment. You are negotiating a contract.

At its basic level a contract is an agreement between two parties for services and compensation. When agreeing to work for a client you are entering into a contract. Do you know what the terms of that contract are? You can never assume anything about an agreement to perform work and that is why it is better to have a contract in writing. Some people are afraid to ask for a contract thinking they will lose potential business, but a contract protects both parties involved and helps clarify any misunderstandings before they can occur.

If a client is reluctant to create a formal contract I make sure all my questions are answered in emails as a follow up to the initial discussion. If I have met with the client over the phone or in person I tell them at the end of the conversation that I would like to clarify the discussion and that I will email them my understandings. This gives them a chance to correct any misunderstanding before work starts.

The courts have ruled that promises made in emails can be binding under certain conditions. Emails are not considered legal contracts. When I talk to clients either in person or on the phone I write the down the key points of the conversation in a notebook. This way I am creating a journal of the discussion and all of this information helps if there ever is a problem and you have to go to court or arbitration.

I stay positive and don’t expect problems, I just prepare for them. As a freelancer here are things you want to negotiate before you start work.

Compensation

Are you being paid by the hour or the piece? Either way make sure the compensation offered is adequate with the work involved and fits into your predetermined range for work. I like to break up the assignments into first pass, second pass, and final approval. Once approval is given for a piece any changes afterward are a new assignment for work and requires more money.

Time

How long do you have to complete the assignment? This includes the time it takes for research and reference and of course the work itself. Will the client provide any source material or supporting material? What are their deadlines for delivery of those assets?

Delivery

How is the work to be delivered? If it is digital what are the specifications for the type and size of the files? What software do I have to choose from to do the work? If I am creating traditional art what medium can I work in? How is the piece to be delivered, can I send a digital file and who pays for scanning?

Payment

Payment is not the same as compensation. When and how are you going to be paid? Check, electronic transfer? Each system is a trade between cost and convenience. Do your homework and work it out with your bank or service ahead of time so there are no unexpected charges for you.

Do you get a portion up front? I always ask for a deposit up front and most of the time I get it. A deposit does two things it shows you the client has money and that they don’t expect you to work for free. For long term jobs for games I like to set up milestones. I don’t like going more than a month at a time for payment, two weeks is even better. That way I don’t have too much invested if the check bounces or doesn’t ever arrive.

Model fees

If you are doing illustration it is always good to ask about model fees if appropriate. Some clients have a budget for them and some don’t; either way you need to know so you can negotiate a fair wage for your services.

Ownership and use of images

How will your work be used and what rights are being negotiated? You need to discuss this before you start the job. Can you use the work in your portfolio? If so when would that be appropriate? For movies or games you might have to wait until the property is released publicly. Make sure all this is understood from the beginning.

Starting a Career in Art part 2

2011-05-22T17:56:00.001-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

Starting a business as an artist or illustrator is a huge leap of faith for most people. I used to joke with my family that at least I didn’t want to be a professional poet which was the only other profession that you have even less chance of making your sole income from than being an artist.

Respect the process and yourself. Whatever it is you choose to do, treat it with reverence. I don’t kid around about my art, I treat it seriously. I am never afraid to turn down work that I think is beneath me or I think would demean my skills. I try not to be rude when asked to do something silly because I am an artist, but I really don’t need to paint signs for lemonade stands in the neighborhood anymore.

When I started and I would get turned down for a job I would ask why and if I was lucky enough to get an honest answer I never ignored the advice given. Especially if it had to do with improving my skills so I could get professional work.

I have turned down questionable jobs because on top of everything else they wouldn’t sign a contract. Contracts not only protect you but also your clients. In my experience the only people who don’t want to sign a mutually agreed to contract are people who plan to break them anyway or have some hidden agenda that they don’t want to reveal.

If you take a job, do your best work possible. One of the bad things about lowballing jobs is it creates an atmosphere of doing things just good enough. I make sure that if I agree to a price for a job I get paid well enough to do my best work. If you aren’t going to do your best don’t take the work at all.

Reward yourself for a job well done. One of the things I learned was to pay myself first. Give myself a little treat when I finished a job just to make the parts of it that weren’t fun worthwhile. In really slow times that might not be buying something, it may be just a day off to sit around and read. Rewarding yourself for a job well done is important, especially as a contractor when a lot of the time the only compliment is the check.

Starting a Career in Art

2011-05-15T14:22:00.002-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

I see a lot of young people coming out of art schools these days saddled with high debts and little to prepare them for the real world of a working artist. I thought I would offer some advice on making a living as an artist.

A portfolio is worth more than a degree

Your portfolio is your strongest asset, degrees don’t matter. When you start looking for work avoid jumping into the market too soon if your work isn’t at a professional level. This is the biggest problem I see for most students when they decide to get into art. They compare themselves to the bottom of the professional market. Always compare yourself to the top of the market and work on your skillsets to achieve that quality.

Know what you are worth

Decide on a price for your work before you ever approach a venue with a portfolio. Do your homework for the industry you want to work in. Know what salary ranges are and what is expected from you as an artist. Never apply for a job beyond your skillsets no matter how much you want to work. Make sure you know what you need to make each month monetarily to pay your bills. Know how long it takes you to paint each piece in your portfolio. That way you know how much work you have to finish each month to live comfortably.

Never undersell yourself.

While it is good to start low and work your way up, don’t give away your services –ever. Respect the process and your craft and it will provide you with a living. There is a lot of noise about how tough it is to get into the industry. There are more opportunities now than when I started. There are so many venues now; social gaming, online gaming, plus all the consoles on the market and all the TV and Movie opportunities. There is a lack of qualified artists in the industry mainly because schools are cashing in on the art craze but aren’t training the students properly.

Start small and work your way up.

I started getting work locally then regionally then landed bigger national jobs. I didn’t start by trying to get a job at the top. I built a portfolio of solid work at every stage that I was proud to show.
I went to conventions a couple of times a year and showed my work. It is how I landed my first jobs in the industry.
I did the same with competitions when I wanted to get into galleries. I entered local, then regional, then national competitions. I Stayed and competed at each level until I received recognition and awards.

Go where the work is

When you are starting out you can’t really afford to stay in East Gall Bladder forever if there are no jobs there. Those smaller markets tend to be more saturated because of the limited jobs opportunities. The pay tends to be lower and the skill requirements do too. That can help you find work if you are properly trained but probably won’t sustain you fulltime. Once you conquer the local market it is time to consider going to where the jobs are. You have a much better chance of getting an art job in Los Angeles or Seattle than South Dakota.

Create your business identity

This is often overlooked starting out. Have a professional looking website or blog and show only your best work. Secure your domain name and use an email with it for work. Don’t advertise for Hotmail and Google. Your email should be your name. Like soandso@yourname.com. Join as many professional networks as possible. Avoid creating blogs where you express your opinions on aliens and the illuminati conspiracy.

Have business cards that have all your contact information. Get in the habit of handing them out. While it is okay to have a digital business card to share if you have a smart phone but smart phones only make up 19% of the market.

I will come back to this in a couple of weeks with more on the actual process of running a business. Invoices, contracts, tax strategies for a sole proprietor and the like.

Village Square Demo

2011-05-08T17:10:00.000-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

I had a great week of painting with my friend Paul Vosper who was out visiting from the Seattle area.

One day we drove up to Winchester and painted in Old town there. It was a beautiful spring day.

We were both drawn to this café scene of the Village Square Restaurant. They were just opening for the local lunch crowd so we set up and got right to painting.

First I made a relatively careful drawing of the scene. Scenes like this one require a more careful approach than your usual outdoor landscape painting. I decided on the placement of my larger shapes and marked those on the canvas.¬

Next I placed the elements in relation to my initial drawing.

Since most of the scene was in shadow I started blocking in my darkest shapes so I wouldn’t paint the rest of the shadow planes too dark.

I then proceeded to work around the canvas to establish the big color shapes of the various elements. Usually I just focus on the value and colors aspects at this stage having already locked in my drawing but in this case because the drawing was so complex I am correcting small errors in size shape and angle as I go.

As the lunch crowd arrives I place them for interest before going on with the rest of the painting. While patterns of light move through the scene I pick and choose their placement to enhance a sense of movement.

I finish with the trees and background buildings and tighten up the people. I let edges go where I think it is appropriate. The complete painting time is three hours. This painting will be the basis for a larger studio painting of the same scene.

The village Square 12x16 oil on linen

Donald Teague

2011-05-01T03:50:00.001-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

Donald Teague was born in Brooklyn New York in 1897. After high school he studied watercolor briefly at the Pratt Institute before attended more extensive studies at the Art Students League under George Bridgman and Frank Vincent Dumond. In 1918 Teague served in the Navy at the end of World War 1 On his return to the states he continued his studies at the Art Students League and met and was helped by Dean Cornwell. Teague credit Cornwell as having the most influence on him as an illustrator.

Teague landed his first illustration job in 1921. HE received his first assignment for the Saturday Evening Post in 1923. After the Post he quickly gained recognition and began working for Colliers, McCall’s, American and Women’s home Companion. The work helped him to meet and friend many other illustrators of the day. Teague became friendly with Harrison Cady, Harvey Dunn, N.C. Wyeth, Mead Schaeffer ,Norman Rockwell and Tom Lovell just to name a few.

In 1927 Teague moved to London and rented a studio in Chelsea. He met Frank Brangwyn and Norman Wilkinson. Teague Studied watercolor and marine painting with Wilkinson. After returning to New York it was a meeting with Henry Quinan the editor of Colliers Magazine. Quinan encouraged Teague to focus exclusively on Watercolor’s promising him all the work he could handle. It was a pivotal point in Teague’s career and helped to establish him as one of the premier watercolorists of the 20th century.

As his success continued Teague continued to travel the world in between his magazine assignments. In 1937 he sailed the world going from Brooklyn to Cape Town on a cargo ship and then continuing to Zanzibar, Mombasa, Singapore, Bali and finally returning home. Teague painted all along the way completing hundreds of watercolor sketches.

His family had always vacationed at a ranch in Colorado Which instilled a love of western themes in the young Teague. When Teague met and Married his wife Verna, the two moved to Encino California. Encino was the center for western work for Hollywood. From Encino Teague was surrounded by cowboys and ranch life; all of which added authenticity to his illustration assignments featuring western themes.

In 1949 The Teague family moved to Carmel. In Carmel Teague continued working at an illustrator but also had branched out into national art shows where he had won awards for his watercolors. In 1958 when Colliers stopped publishing Teague left illustration to concentrate on landscape paintings in watercolor. His timing was perfect and immediately became a successful gallery artist.

Teague went on to win many awards including gold medals from the American Watercolor Society and Gold medals for Western Art from the Franklin Mint. In 1969 he joined the Cowboy Artists of America where he won three gold medals and two silver medals. Teague was also a member of the National Academy of Design The National Academy of Western Art and The National Watercolor Society. =His work is part of the permanent collections in The Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis Indiana, the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa Oklahoma and The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City Oklahoma. Donald Teague passed away in 1991.

Bibliography

Donald Teague: A Life in Color
Claudia Meyer
Nygard Publishing 1988

Forty Illustrators and How They Work
Ernest Watson
Watson Guptill Publications 1946

The Illustrator in America 1900 to 1960
Walt Reed
Reinhold Publishing 1960

The Illustrator in America 1880 to 1980
Walt Reed
Madison Square Publishing 1980

The Illustrator in America 1860 to 2000
Walt Reed
Watson Guptill Publications 2000

Quote

There is always someone who comes up with a new angle on time tried landscape subjects, an arresting arrangement of familiar objects or a different aspect of a figure subject which stops the viewer on his tour of an exhibition. I suggest that those things are arrived at by more acute observation, by an increased awareness of the possibilities involved in any subject, but most of all by the process of good solid cerebration combined with an intense emotional reaction.~ Donald Teague

Carmel Mission Demo

2011-04-24T23:26:00.003-04:00

by Armand Cabrera

I was in California this last week teaching a private one on one class with one of my students. We had a great time and painted all the sites around the central coast there in Monterey and Carmel.

One morning was spent at the mission. The property is still active and has tours all day long but we picked a spot against a wall to paint out of the way of the crowds.

I started with a careful drawing made with my number four brush and a thin wash of paint. The first thing for the drawing was to establish the longest axis of the mission ( in this case the Dome and tower) within my picture plane, this insures everything will fit into the picture. All my subsequent marks will be measured against this as proportions of its height

Once my drawing is done I check it and correct any inaccuracies before starting to paint.

Because I am looking into a bright foggy sky I establish my dark areas to keep me from painting the mission walls and foliage too light.

Next I work on the middle tones throughout the painting at this point in the day the fog is starting too lift and I have to bounce around the canvas more than usual while I wait for the light to stabilize.

I paint the larger shape of the plaza and paint the shapes of the details on the mission, leaving the rendering of their forms for a little later.

I fill in the sky and work on the garden areas surrounding the mission and the patterns in the plaza.

Just as the sun breaks through the fog, I finish up with the tree and plants and model the more precise architectural details on the mission and within the grounds. My total painting time is three hours.

Carmel Mission 12x16 oil on linen.

Road Trip

2011-04-19T11:13:00.003-04:00

Armand Cabrera

Sorry for the delayed post. I've been teaching in California and have had limited access to the blog for some unknown reason. Here are some of the outdoor paintings I've painted while here. I will post the complete process for a couple of them when I get a chance.

The weather has been mild and perfect for painting outside. Painting the ocean from life is always satisfying. I've been working on 12x16 linen panels. Just having one size makes travel a lot easier.
I shipped the OMS to the hotel ahead of time. and there was only one slight hitch with that.

It seems you can't ship OMS or any solvent in containers larger than 32 ounces in CA anymore. Of course the way the law is written, you can ship as many 32 ounce containers as you want ; go figure. So instead of shipping a gallon can of OMS in one box, I had to buy and ship four 32 ounce cans in one box, which is still a gallon last time I checked. So all this law has done is made it more expensive to buy and ship OMS because you are now buying it in smaller units. I love government.

Charles Muench Workshop

2011-04-10T13:26:00.004-04:00

I want to announce a great opportunity for artists. Charles Muench is offering a workshop in June.

I've known Charles for quite some time now and he has become one of the best painters around. I know that phrase gets thrown around a lot these days but in Charles' case it is backed up with a string of top awards from some of the most premiere events in the United States.

Charles just recieived the Southwest Art Award of Excellance at the California Art Club's 100 Gold Medal Show this year. In 2010, Charles won the Edgar Payne Award for Best Landscape at the California Art Club's 99th Annual Juried Exhibition. He was unanimously elected a Signature Member of the California Art Club. Charles received the First Place Award at the 2008 Heritage Art Exhibition presented by Joan Irving Smith as well as the Collector’s Choice Award at the 2008 and 2005 Maynard Dixon Country Invitational. Charles was awarded the First Place Award and “Best Painting of the Cove” Award at the 2007 and 2005 Crystal Cove Alliance Invitational in Laguna Beach, CA. He also was honored with the Best of Show/Artist’s Choice Award at the 2006 Telluride Plein Air Show. Charles received the Gold Medal Award at the San Luis Obispo Plein Air Event in October 2002. Charles has had his work included in the Arts for the Parks Top 100 Exhibit. His work is accepted annually in the California Art Club’s Annual Gold Medal Exhibit and the Gilcrease Museum’s American Art in Miniature Exhibition

Don't miss your chance to study with one of the best contemporary painters in the country. Here are the details

HIGH PLAINS PAINTING

Five Day Workshop Painting the Eastern Sierra

CHARLES MUENCH WORKSHOPS

Locations include the California Sierra alpine of Hope Valley to the high plains desert of Nevada- all within 30 miles!

Two states and a lot of scenery!

June 13 – June 17th

$550.00

E-mail Charles Muench for deposit and reservation information.

There’s a lot of land between the eastern Sierra and the high plains of Nevada to paint! Come on out and catch the transient beauty of spring in this unique country. We’ll make the most of each day- demonstrations, painting, critique, and taking in the gestalt of a group of artists painting together. We meet each morning at a different location. Having lived in this area for over ten years, I know of a lot of sweet painting spots and late spring in the Sierra is a truly unique experience. We will paint the ranch lands of the Carson Valley. We will paint the vast landscape of the Pine Nut Mountain range looking across to the Sierra range. We will paint the architecture of the rural Sierra town of Markleeville (my personal mountain Wobegon!) I will also offer a special hiking trip, for those who want, to paint the spectacular spring run-off of Markleeville Falls- less than a mile but some up hill (and with the amount of snow, this will be a record year!) For those who don’t want to make the hike- no worries! I will do two demonstrations during this day! I have attached a class description as well as a materials list.

There are many good hotels in the Carson Valley. Here are a few. Budget hotels are also available.

Holiday Inn Express

Carson Valley Inn

Best Western Inn

Contemporary Realism and Modern Technology

2011-04-04T13:59:00.001-04:00

by
Armand Cabrera

As an artist in the beginning of the 21st century one of the things available to me is ease of travel. I can paint anywhere in the country and to a larger extent the world because of relatively inexpensive travel.

I can drive to just about anywhere on the east coast in a day and in a couple of hours I can be anywhere in the country by jet. These facts separate my body of work from artists who were painting 50 or a 100 years before me. Many of these artists spent the majority of their lives in one place making only a handful of long distance trips away from their homes .

As a painter this allows me to build a career based on the quality of my work not just the subject matter where I live. Galleries, because they are mostly brick and mortar establishments have been slow to accept this fact of modern life. Many galleries only deal in regional subject matter and won’t even consider taking work based on scenes outside their geographic area.

I think this is to their detriment. My best selling galleries ask for my best work; they aren’t concerned with location as much as my other galleries and I think it is reflected in my sales for those galleries. What other galleries fail to realize is long distance travel is a fact of life for most people who can afford to buy paintings. If they take the time to use the technology available to them they can quickly build a following of collectors not based in their little region of the country and in fact the better galleries do this with blogs and newsletters and a strong internet and social network presence.

Artists have changed quicker than galleries and if galleries want to survive they must change too. Sitting in a gallery waiting for people to walk in and buy something is no longer a viable business model. This is reflected in the amount of galleries that have closed their doors in the last three years most of which failed to grasp the importance of information networks and social media.

A Small Delay

2011-03-30T08:52:00.000-04:00

I apologize for missing my usual Sunday post. A combination of the flu, taxes, an important deadline and the cherry blossoms peaking has thrown me off track. I will return to my regular schedule and post this coming Sunday. Thanks for your patience.

Nicolai Fechin Art Quotes part 2

2011-03-20T17:30:00.000-04:00

By Armand Cabrera

Born in Russia, Nicholai Fechin was Ilya Repins greatest student. Fechin immigrated to the United States in 1923 with the help of W.S. Stimmel, one of his American collectors. The quotes are from the two monographs listed in the bibliography.

The beginner usually endeavors laboriously and literally to match colors he sees (or those he imagines) by mixing endlessly the paints on his palette, and the results are dirty and dead. Everything which is alive reflects color and every reflection is a vibration. Hence, if one wishes to produce this living vibration one must resort to the use of pure basic colors and “build” with them in such a manner as to give this living effect and vibrancy.

The beginner is always tempted to take the path of least resistance .He usually takes as his model the reproductions of some fashionable painter and copies them, believing that by doing so he acquires knowledge. Such a beginning is unsound, because it starts with the end product of the original work- the finished results of an artist’s long and patient toil. Superficially absorbing the final expression, the student bypasses the process of attaining these results and does not comprehend at all the work of creating.

Before defining his own field of work, it is essential for the beginner to acquire a great a variety of knowledge as possible. The more consummate his technique, the easier it will be for him to free himself from all dependence upon a subject. What an artist fills his canvas with is not so important. What is important is how he does it. It is sad if an artist becomes a slave to the object he seeks to portray. He must be able to deal with it according to his own point of view. In other words, the portrayed object must serve as nothing more than an excuse to fill his canvas. Only then does his work acquire value for an artist, when it passes through the filter of his creative idea. Therefore, a beginner must always avoid the conventional, whether it is color, line or, above all of course, in the choice of the subject itself.

Technique should be considered only as a means to an end but never as the end itself. To me, technique should be unlimited, fed by a constant growth in ability and understanding. It must never be mere virtuosity but an endless accumulation of qualities and wisdom.

For my own work, I do not like to use medium. This dissolves the paints too much. The pigments mix together and cannot retain their individual distinctiveness and thus again lose much of their fresh intensity.

All creation is personal and belongs to you alone. The teacher must not touch this. His main reason for existence is to see that the work of the student is well thought out and constructively organized.

I have been asked which of the arts I consider most important. For me, no one particular art is greater than another. I can only say this; when you find yourself in the presence of creativeness…take off your hat.

Bibliography

Nicholai Fechin

Harold McCracken

Hammer Galleries 1961

Nicholai Fechin

Mary Balcomb

Northland Press 1975

Nicolai Fechin Quotes on Art

2011-03-13T03:44:00.005-04:00

Armand Cabrera

Born in Russia, Nicolai Fechin was Ilya Repins greatest student. Fechin immigrated to the United States in 1923 with the help of W.S. Stimmel, one of his American collectors. The quotes are from the two monographs listed in the bibliography.

Artists and critics compete with Each other in their endeavors to destroy the traditional approach to the fundamental principles required for the careful technical execution of any work. In their mad pursuit of novelty, they do not have enough time for a conscientious development of their ideas and, as a result, they have had to make legitimate that which I would call “illiteracy” in the arts. Such an attitude in the art of our day is harmful not so much in itself, but in that it is used by intellectuals, by means of the written word, to influence the unprepared mind of the student. Youth is infected with a careless and irresponsible attitude toward the execution of work, with a sense of easy attainment, seeking to attract attention by shallow-minded novelties instead of real innovations and discrimination.

Any standardization is negative in its meaning. If conventional shades and colors are used, the ability to see them in reality is lost. It is essential that the artist should regard every new painting as an entirely special world of color, light, form and line. Every new canvas is a completely new challenge.

Fine painting is simply a matter of putting the right colors in the right places on canvas.

As a matter of fact an artist has to deal with only three basic colors: red, blue, yellow (all the rest are combinations of these fundamental colors). Everyone knows this, but few pay attention to the fact. Thus the first step for the artist to learn to see these primary colors and to distinguish them separately one from the other.

Concept or rendition: which is more important? That is a basic question in art. In the first case it is frequently said: “Not badly conceived but poorly executed!” Such evaluation is no credit to an artist. On the contrary, fine workmanship makes one forgive even triviality. In such cases it is said: “Stupid, but devilishly well executed!” This is a common rule. A high degree of expertise in technique has always had, and always will have, a predominate place in art. The subject, in itself, has value only according to the mode of the day. Tomorrow it will be superseded by a new fashion or fad. With the passing of time, the subject loses much of its meaning. But the fine execution of that subject retains its value.

No one can teach you how to paint and how to draw except you yourself. You cannot learn how to paint by watching a well-trained master painting, until you yourself, have learned how to paint with some understanding first. Only by the path of much practice and experience can mature results be reached.

Bibliography

Nicolai Fechin
Harold McCracken
Hammer Galleries 1961

Nicolai Fechin
Mary Balcomb

Northland Press 1975

Painting Demonstrations and Other Events

2011-03-06T13:57:00.002-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera
With spring and summer approaching fast, there are some things I want to let you know about in the Northern Virginia Area. I will give a free painting demonstration On April 2 and again on April 9 At Barrel Oak Winery in Delaplane VA.

I will start from a blank canvas at noon and complete a painting in about 3 hours.
Feel free to bring your dog, sit on the wonderful patio with incredible views, drink wine, listen to music, have a picnic lunch and watch a plein air painting being created!
I will also explain my process and answer questions as I paint.

I plan to do these free events as time and weather permit throughout the summer and I will post the information on my website and here as we lock down more dates.

These events are a lot of fun and I never know how many people will show up. I have had as few as 6 and as many as 100 come out to watch.

I also have a couple of workshops later in the year up and down the East Coast. These are already filling so make your plans soon if you would like to join me at one of these venues. More info can be found on my Workshop page on my website or using the links to the contact info below

In the fall I have a workshop in Maine at Acadia Workshops, the dates are Sept.19-23. More info here

October 3-6 I will conduct a workshop through Anderson Fine Art Gallery on St Simons Island in Georgia this will precede my one man show at the gallery. Contact Anderson Fine Art Gallery for complete Info 912-634-8414

October 13-16 Northern Virginia Fall color Workshop. Come paint fall on my new home turf. More info here

Thoughts on Failure

2011-02-28T16:47:00.001-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

No person gets to be successful without learning to deal with all the little failures and setbacks that are part of the experience of any worthwhile endeavor.

I have learned many things the hard way, most of my life. This comes from jumping into things too quickly. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

I have always had a stubborn determination to finish what I start. This drive to paint through any difficulty has helped me to get to this place in my career but not without the pile of bad canvases that usually don’t see the light of day. As I have aged I’ve tried to be more thoughtful at the beginning of the process without sacrificing passion. This is easier said than done sometimes. While emotions are good they can also cloud ones judgment.

Last week’s painting excursion was one such trip. I had been out the day before with some other artists at Great Falls National Park and had managed a good little painting. While we were on the way to our location I spotted a scene in the road that I wanted to paint. I decided to come back the next day and work on a large 24x30 canvas of it at the same time of morning.

Arriving early the next day to get set up, I knew it was going to be one of those days. Meeting my friend Jack, the weather looked iffy. Although the weather was supposed to be clear and in the seventies it was cool and overcast. I waited around for things to burn off but it never happened. Jack got in two paintings while I fumbled around.

I decided to go ahead and paint the scene anyway even though it didn’t have the charm of the day before. About two thirds into the canvas the sun came out and ruined any chance of finishing the painting. I wiped it down and we decided to head over to the falls to paint one more time.

The falls didn’t go any better for me. I was tired from the first attempt and my mind was still on the first painting. Not a good way to begin a large painting of a complex subject. I have painted the falls many times but not with such a large canvas. I wasn’t focused on what I wanted to do. I didn’t think about the composition and I spent too little time on the drawing and jumped into the painting too quickly. Instead of showing nature I can’t be beaten so easily after my first attempt; it whacked me over the head twice to remind me never bring a knife to a gun fight, and always bring your best effort.

I didn’t wipe the second painting mostly to have something to show for seven hours’ worth of effort. It seems I still have to do things the hard way every once in a while to remind myself nothing is a given, success has to be earned one canvas at a time.

Red Wolf Demo

2011-02-20T11:32:00.001-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

This is a Step by step demo of a Red Wolf head study I did for an art forum I frequent. Someone on the forum was wondering how to paint fur. I thought I would repost it here too, so I apologize if you’ve already seen it. The photo was taken by me when I was out in California at one of the zoo’s there.

The size of this painting is 10x12 inches and I am working in oils; my palette consists of Viridian, Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Permanent, Cad Red Light, Cad Yellow Light, and Titanium White

The first thing I did was draw the contour of the wolf with a brush getting the general shape down quickly.

Then I looked for the big color and value changes and blocked those in ignoring details and edge quality at this point.

Next I start to modify those big shapes by adjusting the smaller changes within them and paying attention to their edges.

The last thing I do is scrub in a background so I can paint the highlights and paint the details and refine the proportions where I think they need it. I am not really trying to paint any differently than when I paint a landscape. While there is a little more accuracy involved here, the approach is basically the same for whatever subject I tackle.

Complete time for this is two hours. These types of exercises are great for practice; changing subject matter is a good way to apply the ideas of picture making that you have developed. If your ideas have any veracity they should work for any subject matter. If not they are most likely a formula and should be re-thought or discarded for something more universal.

Shapes and the Importance of Edges

2011-02-13T12:04:00.000-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

We all understand that a lone tree or a mountain against a clear sky creates a defining contour and shape that separates its boundaries from its background. These attributes are easy to discern and their edges are apparent no matter how soft or crisp.

Shapes and edges and the dependence on correct observation of their transitions are paramount to the success of representational paintings. It is not enough to try and make a literal transcription of what you see; the best art in my opinion comes from the design of shapes and their edges.

Let’s start with some definitions; basic shapes are quadrilateral, circle, and triangle. From these you can form any complex shape by combining their structural elements together in varying degrees. You learn to see their structure in more complex shapes and these in turn help to create the illusion of forms. You use the abstraction of them to compose your designs.

Edges play an important role with these shapes because where you see the transition of one shape to another is controlled by the edge and its quality. The concept of hard, soft or lost edges control shape. All of this is conceptual with no basis in reality, which makes it difficult when you are starting out.

When we start to paint, we talk in terms of the thing we are trying to paint as opposed to the shapes we are trying to make. This inability to conceptualize the world and abstract it holds us back as painters. In the beginning we are convinced that we are drawing or painting trees or buildings or faces when all we are making are shapes on a canvas.

Even the idea of solidity and form is based on making shapes that really only mimic form to our eyes. When working from life these shapes and edges are controlled by the angle of your view, move a little in one direction or another and how you see those abstract shapes will change. Everything we do in painting is translating a 3 dimensional scene or object into 2 dimensional shapes.

This move away from thinking in terms of the objects you see to the marks that you make , takes time. You are not only training your hand eye coordination when you are learning to paint. You are also reprogramming your brain to think in terms of shapes of color and value. Learning to see as a painter. And it takes a lifetime of practice and study.

How you see those shapes and their properties of value and color attributes; where they divide into other shapes and how well you translate them and the quality of their edges, not only decides your painting style but also determines your ability as a painter.

Paintings from top to bottom Anders Zorn, John Singer Sargent, John Singer Sargent, Dennis Miller Bunker, William Bliss Baker, Peder Mork Monsted, Carl Rungius, Fantin Latour, Emile Carlsen.

Stanley Meltzoff

2011-02-06T14:38:00.001-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

Stanley Meltzoff was born in Harlem in New York City in 1917; At eight years old he enrolled in a cartoon mail order school. He was allowed to go through school at his own pace an was enrolled in college by the age of 15. He attended City College of New York graduating with a science degree. HE then attended the Institute Fine Arts at New York University. Meltzoff was drafted into the army and was in Italy WW II 1941-45. He worked for the Stars and Stripes, an independent newspaper published for the troops.

After the war Meltzoff taught painting and art history first at New York City College then at the Pratt Institute. In 1949 Meltzoff took the plunge and became a fulltime illustrator. Hi first assignments were for Scientific American, but he would go on to work for just about every major publisher of the time including the Saturday Evening Post, Life, Sports Illustrated, Field & Stream, Atlantic, Colliers, Redbook, Cosmopolitan, National Geographic and New American Library for pocket book covers.

At a time when most artists were emulating a flat poster like graphic style with as few elements as possible. Meltzoff worked in oils creating complex scenes filled with people and things all fully rendered with a loose realism that set him apart from the crowd.

His successful career as an illustrator came to an end with the demise of the major magazines. Slowly photography replaced illustration in what was left of the market and at almost sixty Meltzoff struggled to make ends meet.

His second career was born out of this struggle and he turned to his love of diving and fishing and began painting the fish he hunted in their natural habitats. His work was unique at the time for showing fish underwater in their natural settings. His training as an illustrator gave him the tools and skills he needed to paint these pictures convincingly, using his visual memory of his dives, photography and specimens brought into his studio to be used to paint from life.

Collectors and sportsmen responded to his honest depictions and Meltzoff successfully created a new career for himself. That career was still going strong at the time of his death and he was considered one of the premier painters of fish in their habitats in the world. While working on the book of his life and work, Stanley Meltzoff passed away in 2006, he was 89. There is a website dedicated to his work which sells prints and originals and you can also purchase a copy of his book.

Bibliography

Stanley Meltzoff Picture Maker

Stanley Meltzoff, Mike Rivkin

Silverfish Press 2010

Quote

Visual Equivalence is not transcription but translation. You cannot make a copy of the real world in a picture or a photograph, but only mimic some of its visible qualities and the feelings it provokes.~Stanley Meltzoff

All images and copyright belong to Stanley Meltzoff estate

Knowledge versus Formula

2011-01-30T17:58:00.000-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

As artists we constantly strive for truth and originality in our work but to do so requires many incidental pieces of knowledge, some experiential or practical and some theoretical or constructive.

The best painters use the knowledge they have obtained as an outline or guidepost for the efforts, many times adding their own unique perspective to age old fundamentals.

We must all beware of the trap knowledge brings which is a formulaic approach to painting. The phrase formula painter gets bandied about a lot, especially when someone hits their stride stylistically and makes some subject matter their own.

Many times it is used to marginalize the success of that painter as if the mere fact of their success has tainted the purity of the work. The painter has sold out in the eyes of their contemporaries.

In my mind it is not about success or having “made it” whatever that means. To me formula is less than a best attempt, where an artist will rely on convention and ability to get them through, but not breaking a sweat with the effort put forward. This is not tied to style or subject; many non-objective painters fall into this trap and in my opinion they do it more often than representational painters do.

I don’t really mind the exploration of a theme as Monet did with his haystacks or paintings of Rouen Cathedral where his focus was not so much the subject itself but the exploration of light and atmosphere and how that affects our perception some familiar thing. In these cases the motif is the anchor for the viewer and the different canvases challenge our experiences.

Some painters like John Fabian Carlson or Fritz Thaulow explored an area of the country over and over again but each time, the experience was captured with a fresh eye and keen observational skills. The unique experience of that time and place is what the painter was after.

The line is crossed though when nothing is being added to the original idea. There is no transition from one canvas to the next, except the movement of the pieces of the design. It becomes an endless assembly line of the familiar and the banal. The artist explores nothing but the tolerance of their audience to suffer through the same thing for as long as the artist can sell canvases.

A great artist keeps their fire and passion for their work, and while being human allows them some leeway in difficult times of their careers; overall, they approach each painting as a student, seeking knowledge and truth from the places they know and love. This is what makes great art.

Images for this article, first five, Claude Monet, next two John Fabian Carlson, last three Fritz Thaulow. All copyrights are wth the families or institutions that hold the paintings.

Sunrise and Sunset Lighting

2011-01-23T19:08:00.001-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

I am defining Sunrise/ Sunset paintings as images where the sun is placed in the picture. These situations are more difficult to pull off and the approach needed is counter intuitive to the way a painter normally handles an outdoor sketch.

Sunrise and Sunset painting are the two extreme situations of lighting that are the most tantalizing for the outdoor painter and they are the situation we all try eventually. Personally I think painting a scene with the sun it, unobstructed by anything, is an impossible task. Even paintings by my favorite artists of this subject fall short, in my eyes.

A much more effective approach is to have a scene facing the sun with its orb blocked or partially blocked by some object or meteorological phenomenon. These scenes are possible and there are many fine examples of them in the history of representational painting.

There are two general ways to approach these kinds of scenes. The first is to focus on the contrast between sky and land, relinquishing strong color for one or the other major elements and relying heavily on strong values of light and dark.

The second way to approach this subject is to key the values and color to a narrower range to heighten the overall effect of light in the scene. Both of these approaches take skill to execute effectively. The composition and the design of these scenes take on a higher degree of importance to coordinate all of the elements successfully.

Making the scene brighter around the sun requires to raise the saturation of the paint, to make it look lighter you raise the value. Many painters confuse these aspects and their paintings suffer because of it. In these kinds of scenes you must lower the saturation and the value for the rest of the painting away from the sunlight.

In my opinion paintings that are keyed to a narrow tonal and hue range are more successful than ones that rely on full range contrast for the effect.

Paintings in this article from top to bottom are, Frederick Church, William Trost Richards,Peder Monsted, Thomas Moran, William Trost Richards, and Albert Bierstadt. All copyrights belong to the respective owners.

Moonlight

2011-01-16T12:28:00.001-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

Painting moonlight is not something people do much these days but I thought I would address the lighting effects from moonlight anyway. Moonlight is really strong reflected light and because of its weaker source, moonlight appears very cool to our eyes. Like ambient light, you lose the reflected light from other surfaces. The exception is in snow, where a strong enough phase of the moon with a clear sky will give you some reflected light, depending on the angle to the viewer.

The whole value scale is squeezed down to two thirds of the full normal value range. Edges lose their crispness compared to daylight situations and because of these lower values most hues have lower saturations. The cool light, warm shadows adage works well here too. Many painters start with a warm compliment wash of a deep red or yellow before painting the rest of the scene.

In a moonlit sky the light spreads out in prismatic order, this is especially apparent when clouds or fog is present and can add a dramatic effect if you are skilled enough to capture it.

One of the problems with painting at night is, it’s hard to find a good enough light source to paint by. I wear a head lamp that is used for camping and I have a barbecue light I can attach to my painting rig for my palette. It has a c-clamp style base and works well with all my various setups; French easel, pochades or A-frame easel. This way I can have light on my painting and palette at the same time, although I won’t be making any best dressed lists in this getup.

The biggest challenge of painting at night is finding a safe location that allows you to paint but won’t get the cops called on you. Most people think you’re pretty weird when standing around in one place with a headlamp on. If you get too far away from people, you run the risk of being harassed by the lower elements of society.

Too much blue in moonlight scenes seems to make them less effective than if an artist orchestrates his colors and shifts them to the cool end of the spectrum still retaining the reds and yellows and greens with less saturation and lower values. The form principle still applies in moonlight so shadows shift temperature from the lights. Moonlight is directional like sunlight, so the light, even though much weaker than the sun, is not top down and flat as the light on an overcast day.

Paintings in this article from top to bottom, Charles Rollo Peters, Knud Andreassen Baade, Frank Tenney Johnson, George Sotter, George Sotter, Frederick Remington

Overcast Light

2011-01-09T19:32:00.001-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

An overcast day loses the direct light source of the sun and with it, most reflected light. When the sun is occluded by clouds or fog this leaves the scene with only ambient light or sky light. The difference is that this light is more neutral than on a sunny day when the color of this light is blue shifted from the sky color without clouds. In this type of lighting the objects have localized shadows and a tint from the cloud cover. Shadows tend to be warmer than they would be in full sunlight. The saying 'cool light warm shadows', applies here and can be used to great effect in this type of scene.

Color transitions are softer with subtle hue shifts and saturation shifts. Geometric planes are harder to discern. The direction for this light is top down as in most outdoor ambient light situations and the shadows have softer transitions. The lack of reflected light causes objects to darken in value toward their under planes continuously.

A full range of values is possible for overcast days but the light is shifted to the top planes and objects are dominated by local color with no strong light source to alter them. The light plane, upright plane and the shadow planes are closer together than they would be for objects in direct sunlight.

These kinds of days offer a longer period of time to paint from life because of the lack of a strong light source lessens the directional effect on shadows. More time allows for a more careful selection of the motif to maximize the pictures effectiveness as an overcast day painting.

Three Sources of Light in Outdoor Scenes

2011-01-02T12:28:00.002-05:00

by
Armand Cabrera

The three sources of light outdoors are the primary light source of the sun, the secondary light source of ambient or sky light and the tertiary source of reflected light. Painting outdoors people tend to pay attention to the primary light source in a scene and maybe some reflected light but rarely do people include all three sources. If you spend a little more time observing before painting, you will see the effects of all three giving your paintings that sense of light that we all seek as painters.

These three light sources really affect the illusion of form and that is what makes their inclusion so important to a painting. The aspects of light are its direction, its hue and its strength. Because of their relative strength compared to the sun, reflected light and ambient light have their greatest affect on shadows. Painting them correctly requires sensitive observation and an understanding of the form principle. This principle uses the abstract concept of geometric forms as the bases for any complex object. The idea is once you understand how light affects these simple geometric abstractions you can use that information to help you see the affect in the more intricate elements in nature.

The first thing to look for is the direction of the light source. Ambient light or sky light is easy since it comes from the sky. Reflected light is a little trickier so remember this idea

Any object that has light falling on it becomes a source of light itself

This will help you to first look for reflected light within shadows or other areas and determine the direction of the light. Once this is understood you can paint the objects planes that are facing the source.

Merry Christmas from Art and Influence.

2010-12-26T14:45:00.002-05:00

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I also want to thank everyone for their support and encouragement. This blog is a labor of love for me and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

I specifically want to thank Jim Gurney, Matthew Innis, Stapleton Kearns and Frank Ordaz, who according to my stats, send me the bulk of my readers; I am truly humbled by their generosity.

I also want to thank my lovely partner Diane who has supported all my artistic endeavors all these years; I couldn't do it without her help.

Best,

Armand

Painting the Sky Color in a Landscape

2010-12-20T12:23:00.001-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

By their very nature landscape paintings generally contain mostly land in the division of space in the painting. Usually less than a third of the canvas area is reserved for the sky. This seems to confuse most people when they start painting and they ignore what they see and paint what they think they know. What they think they know is the sky is blue and so it has to be a deep saturated blue in my painting.

This causes problems for the rest of your painting, because the sky, more than anything else is the key to how the light in the painting is behaving. Get the sky color wrong and you ruin the sense of light in the painting. If we examine the area of sky that is actually in the painting we will find for the most part it is made up very little blue if any. The blues that are there tend to be very high key, with lower saturation than at the skies zenith. So what is going on here?

Well, if you measure the relative size of visible sky included in your painting you will find it is barely above the horizon line. All of that blue sky you are looking at has no place in your painting if this is the case. The sky just above the horizon is affected by dust and clouds and rarely presents the deep blue of the zenith. At the lower levels toward the horizon the sky leans toward a greenish blue depending on the meteorological conditions. This is especially true in the summer when the air is warmer and the angle of the sun higher. In winter the lower sun angle and cooler air offer more opportunities for a clear blue sky.

Painting outdoors offers the artist a unique chance to observe these affects firsthand. When painting from nature it is important to leave your preconceived ideas at home and be open to the experience. This is especially true when including skies in your painting.

Painting Snow

2010-12-12T13:19:00.000-05:00

by Armand Cabrera

Since the first snow storms are here I thought I would throw in some observations for those artists willing to get out and paint in winter weather. Painting snow presents a unique challenge compared to other subjects. The relative brightness of the landscape can hurt your eyes even when the sun is not out, the extreme temperatures can affect more than your comfort and actually harm you if you aren’t smart or careful, and conditions can have an adverse affect on your materials.

Being aware of all these things, you may question why someone would want to paint outdoors in the snow in the first place. For me it is to capture the wonder and beauty the frozen landscape has to offer. Snow is almost impossible to photograph effectively so your only real alternative is to paint it from life. Colors must be organized for maximum effect, compositions carefully thought out and value ranges keyed for each picture.

There are some things about snow you should look for when painting; some of these things are observable but others must use constructive techniques express them in an image. Practice outdoors and trial and error are your best tools for these decisions.

There is always a slight bit of subsurface scattering going on in snow, even on overcast days, this softens transitions between light and shadow and gives the snow a tinge of the hue from whatever local color is affecting it. Where the sunlight hits snow, it spreads out in almost in a prismatic effect, the shadow areas pick up the light of the sky color and reflections from sunlit areas. Because of all of these effects snow is never pure white except where you have a direct highlight from the sun. When you are in a position to actually see the highlights, you quickly realize how much relatively darker the rest of the snow is even in the lit areas.

Different types of snow affect these properties in different ways. Snow that has been melted and refrozen looks and behaves differently than freshly fallen powder. Snow patches appear more contrasted because there is no snow around them. When there is snow everywhere, that snow has a tendency to lighten everything around it with reflected and ambient light lessening the contrast and raising the key of the painting over all. These things are observable and paintable if you are willing to get out, experience it and see it first hand for yourself.

Paintings in this article are, from top to bottom Aldro T. Hibbard,
Fritz Thaulow, Birge harrison, Isaac Levitan, Edward Redfield