This was done using a mixture of magnetite, chalk, and home-brewed linseed oil as an underpainting. It's good for that purpose because it dries quickly and has a nice feel, somewhere between charcoal and sumi ink. I was trying to primarily catch the movement of the snow and letting the static structures fall into place as the picture developed. , and a video of me in the act
We finally got a respectable snowstorm out here and I went out back with ArtisticInTent to commune with it. This work in progress is a quite bit more expressionistic/chaotic than my usual, but its part of an idea I've been working on for a while, which is to incorporate the feeling of the whirling snow directly into the painting from the beginning, rather than establish the scene and then add the snow on top. Even though I started out very loose and unplanned, it wasn't long before geometrical and structural elements began to emerge from the mush.
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| ArtisticInTent |
I started this one back in April 2019 and wasn't too thrilled with it at the time. I put it up on the studio wall along with its large family of unfinished siblings and just recently returned to it. I'm much happier with it now - I think I needed to acquire the vocabulary to express the way the scene felt to me.
Oil on linen panel 10" x 12"
I started this back in May and returned to it recently. It is now at the stage I am calling "asympotschke" - when continued daubing produces ever smaller returns while never quite reaching completion.
Oil on linen panel 6" x 8"
I used my small cigar box pochade mounted on my bike to paint the view from a local abandoned golf course.
I did this in two short sessions after researching the local tides charts so as to maximize time painting at low tide. At this point I have the main shapes blocked in and some indication of the lights and darks. We go home tomorrow, so any further progress will have to be from memory or photo ref.
I made a serviceable little wet panel carrier for the 6" x 8"s that I use with the small cigar box pochade out of scraps of birch plywood. It holds up to 8 panels back to back in four slots, which I hogged out with the table saw and cleaned up with the Dremel tool. The top is held on with Velcro.
I use my tripod with several different pochade outfits, equipped with their own quick release plates, as well as my camera, which isn't; so I need to have a separate plate on hand, but not taking up the space on the tripod head. Using a hose clamp and a 1/4" 20 nut, I fashioned a quick release caddy. After hacking out an opening in the hose clamp strap and supergluing the nut to the underside, I attached the hose clamp to the tripod leg and can now tote the quick release plate by screwing it into the nut.
I wanted to get a higher horizon on the view out back, so I constructed an extension to hold my pochade box at the top of a stepladder. Judy took a nice video (with Foo Fighters soundtrack) of me trying it out for the first time - it went pretty well, even on a brisk, windy day. The other pictures show the elevated workspace, and a side view of the extension showing the 1/4" 20 bolt that fits the tripod fitting on the box and the stabilizer bar at the far end. The near end has a hook that secures it to the top step. It's enough to support the weight of the box, but in practice I added a couple of clamps to relieve the strain.
Day two at Cape. Work in progress - oil painting of dunes and distant houses from our porch.
1. Current state
2. Set up and ready to paint.
3. Initial sketch, tape cropping to root 2 rectangle.
4. Starting to find the dark accents.
5. Blocking in the middle values, connecting the darks.
6. Starting the sky, restating the darks.
7. Me at work
When I started this one I marked off the rectangle I wanted on a larger panel with blue tape. Today I made it official, lopping off the extra with a table saw.
Took the new brushaside for a shakedown cruise on lakewarner with SketchpadL. I had done one additional mod - I turned the bolt hole into a slot so I wouldn’t have to disassemble it on the high seas. It’s much easier to drop it in and give the bolt a few turns. I found a nice motif in this old shack with its handsome stove pipe. Got as far as a basic block- in. The BrushAside worked fine, apart from being a bit bouncy.
The tiny DIY pochade box I use with Sketchpad*L now been retrofitted with BrushAside and Palettevator technology. This version of BrushAside is made of plexiglass with holes cut for little bottles of thinner and medium. The bottles screw into the holes and hang there. There are magnets for the palette knives and holes for the brushes. Palettevator raises the plexiglass palette up to a more convenient position, but allows it to be lowered for storage without touching the wet painting. You can also see the system for holding the panel in place, made of hair ties and bent paper clips.
Made a version of the BrushAside to fit the pochade box. Like its bigger sibling, it has holes for brushes and neodymium magnets for palette knives. It’s cantilevered off to the side of the drawer. I think it will help to improve my practice - I tend to keep banging away with whatever tool is in my hand when I should stop and select the right one for the job. This keeps them conveniently available and in display instead of hidden in a dangling container.
