April 11, 2009

I painted late away from my house and that makes it a late night. That being, I’m keeping the writing to a minimum today. The first two of the day were painted in very bright light and the light was like that all day. Until the end of the day when the last two were painted. I painted both of them standing in the same spot, turning around to paint the second one.


“Pine Point Morning” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
This is the same pond that the ‘Backlit Bugs’ piece was painted at but in the morning vs the evening.



“Blue Reflected” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
Easily the most difficult light that I’ve painted in during this series. similar to the hay wagon painting, very bright and flat. The color scheme on this one was so intense that I had to go against my reaction to it and paint it less than I thought it was in order to keep it tamed. Otherwise the blue would have run amuck and been too much to look at. This is a complimentary color scheme and is very much like painting full color in the fall. Very tough on one’s sense of what it should be.



“South Of Road” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
Both this painting and the next one are more color studies than completely buttoned up paintings. The light was moving so fast that it didn’t allow time for more than a broad statement. A more emotional statement really. Nice little stream working it’s way through the dead grasses. But the color of the shadows on the grasses contrasted with the color of the grasses was all it took to make this my third for the day. Painted very fast and without adding any more than necessary.


“North Of Road” oil, 5x7 2009
I only had about 45 minutes of light when I finished the previous painting. So I just did a 180 degree turn about and painted what was on the other side of the road from the little stream. Fortunately the light was so rich that it could have been anything and it would have been interesting to paint. Having this there was even better.

Marathon thoughts...

Day 11 is about to begin... I'm over the '3rd of the way' hump. I want to say a few quick things about doing this and materials that artists and non artists might be interested in.

First off... thank you for all of the supportive emails and posts. I'm trying to get to them all and eventually hope to do that.
There have been questions about the materials I'm using. I listed my palette in an earlier post, so am not going to do that again, besides I add, subtract and change it from time to time. It's a basic "Schmid" type palette with the sometimes addition of Perm Rose, Magenta, Manganese blue, Transparent gold oxide and probably a couple of others.

My preferred painting surface for these at this scale is the 8-ply 100% rag museum board to which I apply a solution of acrylic primer with pumice, a thin coat, followed by (when dry) a 50% cut of clear shellac. This surface gives me the most 'grab' but also acts like a lead primed surface in allowing the paint to sit on top and not sink in. I love the dimensional effect of the paint on this kind of board. It grabs but isn't so textured that I can't get the kind of brushstrokes that I want for these little paintings. I am also occasionally using some fine linen mounted on board too.

I don't use any medium. Just OMS to clean and thin in initial washes.

Now, I've been thinking about 'why' to do this. Believe me for those first few days of cold and wind, I thought really, really hard about that. But now I'm acclimated and can't wait to be out there each and every day. Four paintings a day isn't really the goal per se, the goal is persistence, the fine tuning of my observation and application skills, and learning more about what I seek out as a painter.

The first two, being dedicated enough to continue this despite all that is being avoided by giving myself this luxury, and improving my speed and application of paint and the principles involved in painting, are obviously going to improve and be met if I stick this out.

The third goal is an on going process. Probably a life long search. But I can tell you that I am finding material all around me that has me stopping to paint. I'm not sure yet what to make of this and will write about it on the blog at a later time when there's been some time to absorb this.

I'm challenging myself to look at the landscape in ways that are different than I might normally. That's hard to do, to take yourself out of yourself. I don't want to produce cookie cutter paintings. Which I could do. It would make more sense to stand in one spot all day and just turn in four different directions and paint four paintings, just to get the four done. More interesting for me is to be like a scout, looking for new possibilities for each one. There have been windy days where I sat in the car all day, the road painting day, and took what was in front of me and went with it. And at the end of the day it's harder to come up with the energy to be as fresh and open as in the beginning of the day. However, some of my favorite pieces have come at the end of the day too. 'Backlit Bugs' is one of them. That painting would be impossible to find earlier in the day due to the quality of the light and location of the sun.

I am challenging myself to 'try' to find a fresh view for each new painting, not to produce 'cliches'. Then again, what's that? A cliche to one can be a new view to another person. I want to make the most out of each and every painting, not to slight one single opportunity to make art. This is one of the great discoveries for me so far, that within a little 35 sq in panel, there is room for an artist to say as much as they would like to say about a chosen subject.

A side benefit, as a result of having to find four new compositions ( concepts ) a day, every day, is the realization that there is NO reason not to have paintings to do for years, lifetimes really. In 10 days I have 40 new studies that in nearly every instance could be the genesis for larger studio paintings! That's reason enough to do this.

To end this for now and to the "Why" of doing this...Why not?

April 10, 2009

Pretty nice again today. The subjects today are varied. I don’t know why, they just ended up that way. This project is like being on a hunt. My quarry is something interesting to me, that’s it’s only identifying characteristics. Some days I feel like doing nothing but looking at roads and the paths they take, others it’s ponds. The sense of discovery is one of the aspects of being a painter that I don’t know that I could replace by another occupation. I did find that same sense of discovery in flying at one time thought that I could be as happy as a bird, no pun intended... well yes it was. But when I talk to pilots who do it for a living, it sounds like that sense is replaced by the responsibility of the job and sometimes that takes over and diminishes the excitement and wonder that discovery brings to the table. Painting has never, ever lost that quality no matter how hard it’s been economically or as a student of the art. It’s always new and never looses it’s ability to challenge my ability. See, once a pilot always a pilot and good luck trying not to get us to talk about it!



“Two Blues” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
The willows are starting to get some color, all the trees are actually. I saw this orange/blue color scheme this morning and decided it was fair game. The two blues were so very different from each other. That’s what caught my attention and why I decided to paint it. It’s almost always more than painting a ‘pretty picture’. For artists making art is about exploring why we think the way we do about things visual, for some about things that we express in a visual way. I’m a ‘reactionary’ painter. I see things in nature and those things cause me to react, using paint to express that reaction. No messages other than “Damn, I love this planet!”



“O’Brien Spring” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
A quiet mid-day at William O’Brien State Park, along the very high St.Croix. This was a peaceful place to be on a nice sunny day. I could sit and watch the calm, slow moving reflections of the trees and warm grasses all day... If I didn’t have so many paintings to do that it.



“Fluff” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I ended up at a little pond south of my house in the second half of the afternoon. While scouting the pond, looking for what I might do with it, I turned around and here are these cattails from last season, all exploding seed into the wind. I gave up the pond idea and found myself in the swamp weeds face to face with “Fluff”. It was a nice change of pace to the day.



“Another Day On The Rocks” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I’ve been here as you can tell. The rocks are growing! Or the water is dropping... the latter I would bet. I bit off a bit more than the light in the canyon would let me chew on. In the end, I moved at faster than normal speed and managed to capture the warmth of a warming spring end of day. I met some nice people while painting here who are going to check into the website to see if I actually finished this... I hope that they like it.

April 9, 2009

Simply gorgeous today! Mid day was a bit bright when I painted the Hay Wagon making the depth of field available slight. Other than that, I’m not saying much more about it. I think that the paintings will show just how much I loved the color of this time of year and today. The next few days are supposed to be better...

Here's a sure sign of spring... a bunch of male hooded mergansers chasing one happless female hoodie.




“Overlooking Behning Creek Valley” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
This is a location in Wisconsin that is definitely hard to find. One day I did and set a waypoint on my GPS as a painting location. Good thing because it’s a beautiful valley and the creek is a trout stream. Better start tying flies. I had an amazing run in with two absolutely stunning critters while painting. I heard a deep throated ‘cre-uck, cre-uck...’ (my impression), looked to my left and saw a beautiful male goshawk about 5 feet above my head and felt the breeze as he whizzed over my now ‘ducking’ head. I followed him in amazement as he zipped into the heavy pines (on the right in the painting), zig-zagging to avoid hitting branches. Almost immediately following that, a female did exactly the same thing! They froliced, chased each other all over in the pines, swatting branches with their wings but like magicians, avoiding a collision with major limbs. I love hawks and have never had that happen with a pair of wild goshawks. Outside of a peregrine or gyrfalcon, this is the most amazing bird on wing.

“Balsam Branch Pond In Spring” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
This is the mill pond for the Kennedy Mill, now a park with trails and a prairie hike. I come here often as it’s only about 20 minutes from my house and has a good mix of both hardwood and northern evergreen forests. The pond is fed by the Balsam Branch Creek.



“Hey... A... Wagon!” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
If you squint it’ll remind you of a covered ‘Radio Flyer Wagon’ with sideboards! As I mentioned the light was blindingly flat at mid day. But it was a surprise to see it parked in an offroad place to paint, so I did.



“Backlit Bugs” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
The bugs are those little specks, finely painted with a #6 filbert and palette knife... no kidding! You’d be tempted to get out a 0000...00...000000 pointed round. That would be a ‘half a hair’ brush. This location made for a glorious finish to the day. Not only was I forced to realize that, ‘yes’, BUGS are about to be exchanged for snow and ice as one of the great pleasures of being an outdoor painter, but the spring peepers were so loud at this pond that I could barely hear my self saying bad things at bad paint strokes. Love the frogs in spring!

April 8, 2009

Today is a late one so I’m not going to talk much. The light today was bright and yellow. I think that it shows in all of the sketches. That’s a very interesting thing to see and deal with every day, the color of the light. There are different schools of painting theory and philosophy and they all have their idea about how to represent this fact with paint color. I don’t ascribe to any one of them in particular, I enjoy them all. All I know is that if you are using a very honest ‘eye’ to paint with, it will show in your work.


“Little Lake” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
If it was in my back yard, I’d call it a big lake. Beautiful clear soft yellow light this morning. Windy though. I’m ready for that to stop.


“Remnants” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I love this old barn and farmhouse. It’s on a Pheasants Forever piece of property and would make a perfect backdrop for a hunting scene painting involving flushing birds and setters. Sad too that it’s about to be taken down if the activity around the property is any indication. I’ve painted around here a lot but not this specific view of it.


“Ribbon Of Light” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I set up to paint a fully lit pasture with cows and a nice fence line weather break of short trees. Very Italian looking. Then the entire landscape went into shadow except for one ribbon of light in the distance. It didn’t last to long, but I decided to go for that effect anyway.


“Thicket” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
This was the reason I’m late. I had come home to feed the cat and then ran out to paint this the last of the day. The light wasn’t as rich as I expected it to be and the wind seemed to have increased it’s velocity. None the less, I liked this one just for it’s sense of the afternoon.

April 7, 2009

Today wasn’t too bad, I was in Luck. Later in the day I got really lucky too. (Apologies to those who live around here for my bad taste in a heavily overused verbal twist! But I can’t help it...)
Okay, Luck, WI is about 20 miles from Taylors Falls. I went there to paint on the streets because it’s so quiet that I knew that no one would bother me. The “lucky” part was the last painting of the day. I had just finished #3 and was wondering where to go next, looked to the left and there it was. I wasn’t going anywhere. Somewhere in the distance, probably near Luck, just my luck to leave early (I’ll stop now), but there was what I assume was a spring burn happening. Perfect timing, or good luck? Either way I felt lucky to have this for my last painting of the day. Whew! Bad, bad, bad joke.


“Tower Of Luck” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
Luck has two water towers, that I’ve seen anyway. I like this one because of the red lettering. The other one is older, the ‘witches hat’ variety, but this one had a great highlight on it this morning, so I painted it.



“Just A Little Luck” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
The title refers to the little bit of town in view. I loved the hot white of the wall of the St.Croix Valley Hardwoods building. Every building seemed to belong to them in a quite large industrial section of town. That accented by the turquoise blue pipes made the choice easy for me.



“Distant House” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I left Luck and headed back to my area with two paintings still to complete. The paintings in Luck took more time than usual due to the more complex drawing involved. I try to finish these by about 4:30 to 5:30pm just so that I can get this all put together for publishing at a reasonable hour. Still having two paintings to do at 3:45 today was making me nervous about reaching my time goal. This one caught my eye because of the white house way out in the distance, lit up like a light, surrounded by all of the bare growth of the previous season. Lot’s of grey/brown in other words. But the light was good, so I painted this one pretty quick compared to the time I’ve beens spending on these.


“Spring Burn” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I finished the ‘Distant House’ in about 35 minutes and was feeling good about my time frame goal. As I mentioned above, I looked just to my left and saw the smoke of a spring burn, rising high into the atmosphere and said, “Boy... I’m a lucky painter!” Last of the day, and last of the Luck jokes!!! Promise.

April 6, 2009

First some house keeping... Thanks you to all of you who are pushing that Paypal button! I can’t believe how much fun that is!!! Here’s the deal though, my website doesn’t automatically mark a painting ‘SOLD’ when someone purchases it with Paypal. I have to go in and manually mark paintings ‘sold’. That means that you might notice that I have to refund your Paypal funds because someone beat you to the punch... by seconds... if recent history is any gauge. I’m grateful for the action, but sad when someone finally decides to give up their hard earned money on a piece of art only to have it result in not being a purchase. I truly appreciate each and every person who wants one of my paintings. I hope that your fingers are fast, some of yours are faster than mine, that’s for sure. Thank you all!

Today was definitely not a day of contrasts! It was sunny, cold and windy, as in gusts up to 30kts... all day long. That being, I decided that today would be a ‘from the front seat of the old Ford’ painting day. This was a good thing. It gave me a theme for the day... Roads. And a secondary theme... Warm. Painting in the truck is a little confining and I think most painters would prefer not to, but in a pinch it’s the perfect solution. It isn’t the temps that are trouble on days like today. It’s that wind again. It is tough to reach for any perfection in your art at all if your hand and easel are being bounced around like a ping pong ball. Even the car was ‘a’ rockin’ today making my mark making difficult at times. But hey, any day painting is better than not painting.


“Red Mailbox” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
We are in the middle of a high pressure system that has ushered in clear skies and very high winds. The result is color that is rich and saturated, unobstructed by humidity and rich because of the still lower angle of the sun. This scene caught me right away this morning so I pulled over and went to work. The mailbox was the punctuation that the picture needed.


“Teal Avenue” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I should just move into one these farmsteads on Teal Ave, I’m there so much. This is the same spot that I painted “That White House” a few days ago. This is the first time that I’ve painted looking this way though. I’ve shot many photos of this farm in the middle of the coldest time of year at sunrise, in summer prior to thunderstorms arriving, it’s always attractive to me.


“Cloud Shadows” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
There was something about the house in the distance backed by a cool treeline, that I found interesting. About the time I set up, having decided that this would be more of a sky themed painting, the clouds started growing in size and casting shadows across the landscape. This was one of those things that happen painting en plein air that you don’t plan on, but that are a godsend. I love the shadowed foregrounds with little slices of warm sunlight traversing across the picture plane in the middle ground.


“Dairy Barn” oil, 5x7 © Marc R. Hanson 2009
My interest in this scene was the bright backlit sky that silhouetted this dairy farm. Once again a cloud co-operated by casting it’s shadow across the road and into the field. Here’s how this works... You’ve set up an entire painting based on a concept that you thought you had in mind. 3/4th’s of the way into the painting, something really cool happens and you basically repaint the entire painting in a few minutes. Hmmmm... so why was I sitting here for 45 minutes? Hey, not everything is evident immediately and those fleeting moments are some of the best. That’s my excuse.