Convention Recaps!

I try to keep up with my blog posts about once a week, but with two trips out of town in the past few weeks, things have gone off track a bit...but for good reasons!

The first trip was to the Oil Painters of America (OPA) National Exhibition and Convention in Fredericksburg, TX last month. I'm still on cloud nine just knowing that I had work included in this extraordinary show. Plus I had the awesome opportunity to meet many artists I've admired for quite awhile and watch some incredible demos! I don't have as many photos to post as I do with what I discuss below, but this event was certainly just as exciting and inspiring!

"Afternoon Refuge" proudly hung in the OPA national show.

Then last week I attended the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) Convention and Exhibition in Albuquerque, NM. This was my second time attending this inspiring week of nonstop pastel EVERYTHING! I watched demos and took workshops from some of my favorite artists, purchased a couple of much needed pastel supply items, and even got in some painting time at some gorgeous locations in the area. I also, again, had the wonderful opportunity to meet many new artist friends.

A couple of other exciting tidbits from IAPS...my painting "December Heat Wave" was awarded an honorable mention by Terri Ford, who judged the Master Circle portion of the IAPS Exhibition, and I also received my Master Circle medallion.

"December Heat Wave" was awarded honorable mention.

This thing is heavy!

Although I've been an instructor myself for a number of years now, whenever I take a workshop, I always make sure to put myself into "student mode" and turn myself into a sponge, absorbing as much new information as possible. As an instructor, I teach methods that I've found to work best for me, so it's tempting to want to approach any painting I do in a workshop using my own method. But I find that it's a waste of time and money to do this in a workshop taken from another instructor. The reason I set aside time and money to take any workshop is to learn how a certain artist does what he or she does. So I turn off all previous knowledge, I do my best to bring exactly the supplies given on the workshop supply list, and try it totally and completely their way. Even if I don't want to later continue to paint exactly like these particular artists with whom I'm studying, I want to find out how they achieve their unique "look."

My first workshop was with Terri Ford. Her "deeper, darker, richer" approach helped me see that a more intense color can be used rather than a lighter value in order to liven up color that may show up dull, or even nonexistent, in a bad photo. After a few attempts at her approach, I found myself making some exciting new color choices I wouldn't normally use. Loved it!

One of my paintings from Terri Ford's workshop.

The other workshop I took was from the amazing Richard McKinley. This was only a one-day workshop, and I sure wish I could have spent more time watching him paint and hearing his comments on my own attempts. I really wanted to better learn his watercolor underpainting approach. So I watched closely, took lots of photos of his demo, and spent lots of time on my attempt. As I mentioned above, I really try to purchase the recommended supplies. I did have a varied supply of the watercolor paint recommended, but I knew going in that I may not have the best quality watercolor paint. They were artist quality, but not the kind Richard uses. I wanted to buy more before the workshop, but it was a budget limitation. This made a difference in the color vibrancy that Richard was able to achieve vs. what I painted.

Richard McKinley's vibrant underpainting.

My much duller underpainting.

My finished? painting with pastel added.

When taking a workshop, I bring a variety of my own photos that are similar to the typical subject matter that the instructor normally paints. And after watching the demo, I choose a photo from my supply that's as similar as possible to what the instructor just painted. In this case the most similar photo I had on hand coincidentally was the one I referenced for the painting I had in the OPA show!

During the convention, I also watched demonstrations by Marla Bagetta, Desmond O'Hagen and Lorenzo Chavez...three of my favs! All were spectacular and a joy to watch!!

I'll end this post with a few pieces I painted on location in Albuquerque among many other incredible artists. All were painted in the beautiful magic hour of the evening light, with the last one at the bottom painted fast and furiously as the light disappeared.

Upcoming Summer Workshops

For artists in Georgia or Michigan, I'm teaching a few workshops this summer...

All-Media Composition Boot Camp - Spruill Center for the Arts, Dunwoody, GA, July 27
and The Art Loft, Dahlonega GA, Sept. 5 & 6

Interpreting the Landscape in Pastel - Leelanau Community Cultural Center, Leland, MI,  Aug. 19 & 20

See my website at www.barbarajaenicke.com for details or message me for more information.

The Wall of Green

Through the Woods, pastel, 10x8

Painting the greens of spring and summer are always a challenge, but when there's not a lot of distance within your landscape, and you have the "wall of green" all up close, I find it to be even trickier. Increased distance between landscape elements gives the artist the luxury of using atmospheric (or aerial) perspective, which helps to create the illusion of depth and distance. Value, color temperature and manipulation of edges come into play when working with this illusion. But when it's all fairly close to the viewer, we don't have all those "tricks"...or at least not as many, and to a smaller degree.

Color temperature and edges are the two "tricks" we can still use, although not to the extreme that we could if more distance were involved. To push back the foliage furthest behind, I cooled down the color temperature a bit more than my photo was telling me and softened the edges. Where the sunlight was hitting more directly also dictated where my warmer color temps would be placed.

reference photo

Since I didn't have a whole lot of value differences in the foliage area (other than where sunlight was hitting), I needed to depend on my color temps and edges to do most of the work. Below are a few progression images from my demo. In the first image (the underpainting) I used exaggerated warms and cools to help with pushing back and pulling forward.

Spring Greens, Part 3

My Quiet Little Spot, pastel, 8x10

For our last week of our series on painting spring greens today, I chose a spring landscape photo that was shot later in the spring. The landscape had greened up some more compared to the ones we painted earlier in this series. However, the grass still lacked the deep, rich greens that come later in the summer, and trees still weren't completed filled out with their foliage.

We still had lots of green to contend with, though. And when that's the case, I treat it like a big balancing act between warms and cools, and pay close attention to the values.

I wanted to create depth between the foreground/middle ground bushes and the taller trees further back. To do this, I used cool hues and lighter values (cooler and lighter than what my photo was telling me) in those distant trees, and established the cool color temperature right from the start in the underpainting. Contrast between soft and hard edges helped here, too. And even in the areas more toward the foreground, I still needed to balance the warms and cools. Since the sunlight was hitting the ground more that the bushes, with the bushes only getting skimmed with light, I used subtle shifts in warms and cools in the bushes (without too much value contrast) to indicate which areas were in light and which were in shadow.

The values of the foreground/middle ground bushes compared to the ground was a tricky area. In an effort to  depict the highlights on the bushes, it's tempting to make those highlights lighter than they are. But I needed to pay close attention to the fact that the LIGHTEST areas of the bushes were still DARKER than the ground.

Below are some progression shots, starting with my initial block-in and the alcohol wash underpainting...

Spring Greens, Part 2

Springtime Awakening, pastel, 8x10

We continued with our series on painting springtime greens this week. When I was choosing the reference photo for this week's demo, I struggled with whether or not I could make something out of the photo I used for this one, "Springtime Awakening." The light was a little flat, and it really had quite the tangled mess of sparse springtime branches and foliage. Starting with large, simplified shapes was a MUST on this one!

Sorry, I was a bit lax on getting my progression shots this time, but below is my underpainting just after I applied the alcohol wash. I also included my reference photo below.

With the flat light, there wasn't much contrast between the foliage masses and the ground, so my large tree shapes in the underpainting couldn't be too dark.And as the painting progressed, the lighter overall values of the trees had to remain pretty close to those of the fresh spring grass With this subtle value range, I took my time searching for correct values, and hoped I wasn't putting any of my students to sleep as they waited for me to make my selections.

I was careful to place only a few well chosen very dark values where necessary to break up the close value ranges most everywhere else. The roof line of the distant structure helped to balance things with some horizontal dark accents.

Spring Greens

Springtime Afternoon, pastel, 8x10

Although many artists love the idea of painting the fresh bursts of springtime color, I find spring to be the most difficult season to paint. I think the vibrant greens of spring are the most challenging shades of green to paint. Conveying the vibrancy without the resorting to the "fake, storybook" shade of green can be a tricky, fine line. And rendering the tiny buds on trees and bushes without painting too much detail presents yet another challenge.

As with any landscape, I find that balancing the warms and cools within the local color helps to convey colors to the viewer's eye that are truer to the colors that actually exist in nature, rather than simply using the local color that we're conditioned to believe should be there. How the light hits all of these colors will affect the warm and cool hues.

Summer greens tend to have deeper, richer greens, whereas spring greens often have a variety of colors as they're in transition from their winter state. The foliage on the trees also is generally lighter in value than summer trees, since the foliage is still somewhat sparse, allowing more sky to peek through.

Below are a few progression shots from my demonstration of "Springtime Afternoon."

Mondays and Underpaintings

The Journey Onward, pastel, 10x8

I just began teaching a three-week series on underpainting techniques at Spruill Center for the Arts in Atlanta, GA on Monday mornings. This week I demonstrated the method I normally use, which uses an alcohol wash brushed over a thin layer of pastel.

Sometimes I use a more monochromatic approach, but for this demonstration of "The Journey Onward" I used several vibrant, warm colors in the underpainting, which I thought would appeal to this particular group of students. This class is titled "Pastels for the Paintbrush Painter" and is geared toward artists experienced in a medium such as oil, acrylic or watercolor, which uses a paintbrush. The class is meant to make use of their current skills "paintbrush" painting skills in our underpainting stage, and then introduce the application of pastel to that initial foundation painting.

Below are some progression shots of how this one came together. Something I pointed out often during the class was how soft and vague I keep all edges in my underpainting, which I've found to be crucial to avoid an overly stiff look to the landscape. My apologies for forgetting to snap a shot of the very first stage before I wet it down.

Next week we'll address a watercolor underpainting, and an oil stain underpainting the following week.

Going with the Flow, Part 2

From the Top, pastel, 10x8

For the second part of our series on "moving water" in my pastel classes, we studied a tall waterfall that travels down a much farther distance than the subject we painted last week. Some of the same basic observations from last week still applied (i.e., the center most, or more concentrated, area of the waterfall is lighter in value and warmer in temperature than the edges), but from a composition standpoint, we found that the placement of the water in this particular scene was important.

Since the waterfall here is more of a rapid trickle, rather than a "Niagara Falls" type, the angles and "thicks" and "thins" of the water movement are important in order to depict that the water is falling from one ledge of rocks to another.

The treatment of the edges are also key. The further the water free falls without obstruction, the softer the edges become.

The bright splash of blue in the sky was a fun element to add. Under normal conditions, the sky is a lighter, less intense color where it meets the land at the horizon. However, since this scene has the viewer looking upward a great distance, a deeper, more vivid blue sky is seen there. For color harmony, I made sure to work some of that vibrant blue into the rocks, which worked nicely to perk up the otherwise neutral colors.

"From the Top" was my demo from this morning's class. Below are some progression shots of the demo, which began with an alcohol wash over about six Rembrandt pastels.