Plein Air Workshop with Joe Paquet

A gentle rain over Hagaparken

En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air" and it´s used to describe the act of painting outdoors. Now, painting en plain air in Sweden in July does not mean the same thing as painting en plein air on Capri, Italy.  Please note the vast difference in weather conditions when you see the pictures above and beneath.

Carl Wilhelm: The Marina Piccolo in Capri and the Siren´s Rock

 

In July I attended a 5-day plain air workshop with the American artist Joe Paquet. He´s an excellent painter and teacher.

This is Joe´s own words about his workshop: This workshop will introduce you to the power and subtlety of the Prismatic Palette. You will learn to capture what makes each day unique through the use of an elegant underpainting, rhythmically connected drawing, structured value scale and solid understanding of color as value.  Further we will delve into how color is affected by atmosphere and the Prismatic Effect. You will never look at nature the same way. Humility and a healthy respect for nature required.

Joe Paquet: underpainting

Joe Paquet: underpainting 

The underpainting is done with a mixture of cobalt blue, black and white. You use more grey in the front, adding more blue to the back as seen in the examples above.  At this stage you´re "organizing and clarifying what you see in nature." The object of the underpainting is "to form descriptive darks that tell the tale of form, character, atmosphere and connectivity." 

When you have the "skeleton" of the painting you start adding color in the same value as your greys.

Joe´s finished underpainting. Note that the trees in the front are grey and the ones 
in the back are more blue.

Here Joe has added color with a variety of 

brush marks and with variety in the edges.

Joe Paquet doing a demo

Downpour over the Royal Haga Park

Mixing colors

When painting en plain air there are obviously a lot of greens around to be caught on canvas and this is how you mix them:

THE GREEN VALUE STRING:

 "the parent green" 2-3% phalo green + 97% light yellow cadmium
"middle value green" 50% french ultramarine + 50% light yellow cadmium
"blue violet" 5 parts french ultramarine + 1 part alizarin crimson

These greens will get the vegetation right; highlights, shadows, cast shadows and everything in between! Can you figure out when to use the light "parent green" or the dark "blue violet"?

Erica Stenkrona: View over Brunnsviken, my first landscape painting (oil on panel) 

 I have 19 pages of notes, I wrote down every word that came out of the mouth of mr Paquet. With tongue in cheek,  I call this blog "a complete guide to becoming an artist".  I must say I feel more complete as a human being and as an artist in the making after having stood by my wobbly easle in the rain, trying to mix the right color value and trying to make sense of all the information in front of me so I could get it down on the canvas. Here are some quotes from Joe that were part of the introductory lecture.

Failed paintings are important.

Embrace the failure (but don´t make the same mistake twice).

You will confront everything you don´t know.

Why?? Why are you doing it?

The world needs authentic pictures.

Tell the world world what you love.

If you don´t bring genuine connection, love and passion into your painting it´s

just another picture.

In place of sensitivity we exaggerate.

Never regret that you didn´t start earlier. Bless that you are here now. You´ll improve from now on.



Joe Paquet: A Gentle Indifference

To see more of Joe Paquet´s paintings click here.

And I never meant to cause you trouble

For a long time one of my favorite songs has been "Trouble" with the British rock band Coldplay. The band was formed in 1996, one year after my son Arne was born. I was never quite sure what the lyrics meant (was it about a spider?) but now I think it is as simple as a person regretting words and actions that, though not intended, hurt another person. 

As a mother I can relate to that. I have done so many mistakes as a mother - but "oh no, I never meant to cause you trouble". Today is my son´s birthday, he is a middle child. It is rough being a middle child. (I am a middle child myself). "The oldest kid gets undivided attention from overeager parents, while the youngest gets more freedom and special treatment. Meanwhile, the middle child is just there, squished between siblings.Right? 

In the book You’re a Better Parent Than You Think, Dr. Ray Guarendi defines MCS as “feelings of isolation, of not belonging. Enjoying neither the parental attention and expectations given to the eldest, nor the relaxed parental standards experienced by the youngest, the middle child is supposedly lost in the shuffle, caught in between with no unique position of his own.”(Quotes from Yohana Desta on Mashable).

Arne before he became a middle child

Well, we recover. And I know "that my [parents] never meant to do [me] wrong." I made this picture for Arne for his birthday. It is my humble way to express that I always loved him and I am sorry for words and actions that have caused him trouble. "I never meant to do you harm"!

Pencil and crayon on Canson paper

Someone has to be the middle child!

Russian painting on the lid of the wooden 
box where I keep my Caran d´Ache pencils

The Evolution of a Painting

Allt ordnar sig, oil and textile on canvas, 2011

In 2011 I painted this clever looking little figure assuring that everything will work out. Don´t you just frequently need to remind yourself of this; everything will work out in the end?

The other day my brother was celebrating his 50th anniversary and it is customary to bring a gift to the birthday child. I decided to make a painting but I was slow in executing my intention;

a couple of days before the handing over of the gift I got started. 

Painting with oil paints is no quick thing; first you need a canvas of suitable size and grain. Then you have to prepare the surface, in my case I used a "used" canvas so I had to apply two layers of gesso (a mixture quite similar in the consistency of sour cream). 

While the canvas was drying I made some sketches. What I came up with was a rather serious looking young man. 

I traced the sketch onto the canvas and since I was in a hurry I had no time to adjust anything. The serious looking young man morphed into someone else.

To get the nose and lips right (or at least acceptable) I looked at the paintings of Gustaf Lundberg and Alexander Roslin for guidance.

It all works out (in the end), oil on canvas,  2015

I wanted to write something inspiring but I usually use stencils when I put words on my paintings since I am not very good at writing freehand. Unfortunately the time was running out so I did not have time to make new stencils. Incredibly, tucked away in a corner of my studio I suddenly found stencils that I had already cut out in 2011. With a swift hand I finished the painting and now I hear it is hanging on the wall in my brothers apartment.

It all works out in the end... 

I hope I don't offend anybody...

...with this picture.

Today it was totally wild  at Folkkulturcentrum. Four male acrobats from Cirkus Cirkör were performing. Three of them in the nude. Two  musicians were playing flute, clarinet, chello,drums and sometimes they were chanting.  This occasion called for another medium; acrylics on a large piece of brown paper.

Acrobat from Spain, without his beard

Today also was the last day of school, now I'm officially on Christmas break. Talk to you later!

Discouraged...

He is staring at me with his unseeing eyes. I´ve been so discouraged thanks to this figure.

I´m working on a drawing of this head; front, side and 3/4 side view. I thought it would be easy.

I was wrong.

My teacher Farigh has studied at the Repin Academy in St. Petersburg, that is where he picked up this figure. He told us about his Russian professor who almost NEVER used an eraser, he was so skilled in drawing. I use my eraser ALL THE TIME. It´s really hard to get the proportions right (I even have a hard time spelling the word "proportions"). 

It´s not a pretty sight. Yet.

My other project is this Bargue drawing. It´s killing me as well.

I left" the Russian head" and the Bargue drawing and went to

Folkkulturcentrum. The models for the day were two opera singers who is performing in an opera for children, "Hans and Greta". 

Hans and Greta (Margareta and Pernilla) and Bosse.

The models take their seats, in the background you can see the gingerbread house.

My sketch of Margareta, pencil on paper

A good painting always starts with a good drawing so even though I sometimes feel discouraged when I struggle at the drawing board I know that, step by step, I will master the

art of drawing if I´m diligent.

“One must know how to draw before one becomes an artist. It is because the ability to draw is the basis for the art. These skills should be developed from early years so that the artist as soon as he starts thinking and feeling, could express and convey his thoughts accurately and without any hindrance, so that the pencil could run at an artist’s will and thought.”                          

Karl Pavlovich Bryullov , Russian artist 1799-1852                                                                                                     

Talking about the Russians, one of the biggest museum collections of Russian art in the United States is found in Springville, Utah. To read about how this came click on this link http://upr.org/post/utahs-famous-collection-soviet-art . I visited the Springville Museum of Art in January this year.

Yuri Stanislavovich Podlyaski (1923-1987)

Portrait of Masha Surtukova Reading (Yellow socks)

Oil on canvas, 79x52 cm

Akmed Abadullovich Kitaev (1925-1996)

Miru Mir (Peace to the world) May Day, Red Square, 1964

Oil on canvas, 96 x 194 cm

Nikolai Ivanovich Ulyanov (1922-1990)

Invasion: Enemy at the Door, 1965

Oil on canvas, 200 x 100 cm

During the 1960s it was a fashion in Soviet painting to attempt to create suspense for "the next moment". In this painting we see a German soldier during World War II, who has come to the house to plunder whatever he can from the house. Or will he just shoot the sickly grandmother and the toddler? Or give them some chocolate?

Evtikhi Aleksandrovich Konev (1914-2008)

Sunday Picnic, 1962

Oil on board

I love the way the artist with very few strokes with the brush has described the shape of the woman in the white dress and the yellow wrap she tied around her head. Simple but totally convincing.

Yuri Petrovich Kugach (1917-2013)

Wedding Dinner Study, Girl in Polka-dot Dress, 1959

oil on board

Fedor Vasilevich Shapev (1927-    )

Country Doctor, 1967

Oil on canvas, 105 x 140 cm

This piece depicts a physician making rounds to the villages in her region. During Soviet times most doctors were women, because medicine was not the prestigious profession it was in Sweden or the United States. The artist says it is his quest to make the figures speak to the viewer and reveal their best attributes.

Arkadi Akeksandrovich Plastov (1893-1972)

Village Girl in the Snow, 1950

Oil on canvas, 60 x 46 cm

Tatyana Nilovna Yablonskaya (1917-2000)

In the Artist´s Studio, 1954

Oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm

Eriska Thereski Arneskaya (1961-    )

Figure Study with no 

Trace of the Russian Method or Knowledge of the Traditional way of Painting

Oil on Canvas, 2011

One thing I learned during my first year as an art student, is that the whites of the eyes are not white. It´s a globe and the color should indicate just that.