April 2009 Painting Marathon Redux

April 4, 2009

I'm going to consider today a good day! Compared to what is in store for tomorrow, today is a good day. Yep, snow is on it’s way. I’m not titling any more of these “Last of...”, “End of...”, “The Remains of...” or “Winter’s Last...”.... SNOW! It doesn’t appear that it’s going to end.

I stayed close to home today and it was good. First painted on the main drag through lovely Taylors Falls. Stood in the parking lot of the ‘The Drive In’, that’s the name, to paint the Bench Street house. From there on to the paddle boat boarding area in the state park to paint the beautiful rocks in high water. Those rocks are normally about 15ft out of the water. The rest of the day was under more of those grey skies.

I’ve had a lot of questions about size, surface and how to purchase, thank you! So here’s that scoop. These are all 5”x7”, oil on 8-ply 100% rag museum board with a shellac primer. Once in awhile, about once a day for a change of pace, I'll use one that has had linen mounted to it. They are for sale for $110.00 plus shipping, insurance and tax for MN residents. To purchase you can go to my website and into the collection on the ‘paintings’ page called ‘April Painting Marathon’. The link will take you right there. When you enlarge the thumbnails you will see a Paypal ‘Buy Now’ button below the image. If you want to use that, click on it and Paypal will do the rest. You can either create a Paypal account or use a the one time credit card feature. That is the easiest way to purchase these paintings. The other way is to call or email me if you want to purchase one. If you don’t want to use Paypal but prefer to send a check, that is the method to use. I will tell you though that a couple of people who wanted a painting were emailing me while the one they wanted sold via Paypal. Paypal is fast. Paypal figures the shipping, insurance and tax for us. If you want to use another method I will have to tell you the additional charges above the $110.00 sale price.

Well... I hope that covers that.


“Bench Street Red Door” 5x7 , oil, © Marc R. Hanson 2009
Taylors Falls has many wonderful old houses that I’ve been wanting to paint and for whatever reason haven’t. This is a good opportunity to get to work on that. I had planned to paint houses (lot’s of people ask me if that’s what I do...) all day. That was until the sun disappeared and I lost the shadows. Houses in flat light aren’t that interesting to me.


“Latte On The Rocks” 5x7, oil, © Marc R. Hanson 2009
The water up here is at least as dark as good french roast, maybe espresso. The grays and cool top light on the rocks were irresistible today. Because of the high water the dam up stream is producing a lot of foam and froth. The ingredients for a good Latte!


“St.Croix Falls Dam” 5x7, oil, © Marc R. Hanson 2009
This was painted from a vantage point above the dam. The dam stretches to the left of the picture about another 75 or 100 yards. It has a very graceful arch to the edge of the spill way. The water level is always right at the top of the dam itself. Big fish live in that area!


“Tin Roof Saturday” 5x7, oil, © Marc R. Hanson 2009
Why didn’t I paint this tomorrow... Tin Roof Sunday? It was a relief to be out in the open after so much myopic study and concentration earlier in the day. It was a sigh of ‘Aahhhh, sky and breadth.” The buildings are the last of the old farmstead still standing. The house is a pile of rubble, it wasn’t last summer. Very sad. But the color was beautiful and the sense of what used to be in those two buildings was omnipresent.

April 2009 Painting Marathon Redux

April 3, 2009
At the start of today I was thinking that I’d have to drag out my tube of ‘grey sky’ color once again! I followed the weather report and it said that the sun would be out in Minnesota except north and east of the Twin Cities. That’s pretty much where I live. I wasn’t putting up with that. So I took the truck south towards Stillwater hoping that I’d get an extra hour of that warm friend. Until noon it was grey there too. But then the sky opened up and despite needing to wear the same amount of clothing as I have since this thing started on Wednesday... Man did that sun feel good! I’m not complaining, but the added little bit of warmth was Welcome!!!


‘High Water’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
While waiting for the sun to come out I went down to the flooded waterfront in Stillwater to warm up. The entire walkway and park is under water. So that’s different than normal and the colors this morning were quite rich and attractive to me. This was a quick one, just under 40 minutes.


‘Dancing Reeds’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I love the rich color in the water along the edges of ponds at this time of year. The water reflects the color of the sky but is tempered by the color of the water and the depth of the water. Shallow water darkens the value because you can see into it, the bottom color modifies the sky reflection. The result is usually a very rich, dark color. Add in the light, warm color of the reeds from the previous season and there’s compliments and value contrast galore to have fun with. As I painted and observed this scene, I had the impression that the reeds were moving about, almost like thin legged dancers on a stage.


‘Duck Playground’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
Beautiful cerulean sky with light violet clouds cutting into the horizon of the sky. Ducks, Eagles, Loons all sounding off in the marsh. Sounded like they were having a great time, and so was I.


‘Berg!’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I visited a large lake in the afternoon that was still icebound. But what a treat it was! This place was full of whooping swans, sandhill cranes, geese, shorebirds, and a bunch of eagles out fishing in the open pockets of water. The entire time I was painting, I was hearing the ‘wooop- whhoooop’ and the paddle like splashes of their enormous feet as they went through courtship activities. The painting subject caught my eye because it was the only snow of any amount along the shore and really stuck out like a sore thumb. I like that kind of contrast.

April 2009 Painting Marathon Redux

April 2, 2009

This morning started out promising, full sun and temps in the low 30’s. A little bit of wind, dang wind, but manageable. I was able to use an umbrella to block the sun without the easel taking off. By late morning, early afternoon we had a sky full of very chilly looking clouds, broken with little bits of sky showing, but the wind had picked up and it just felt and looked cold. I was going to explore the farmland all day but by the last painting I had had enough of the open landscape and headed to the park down along the river to get out of it. The afternoon light just never materialized into strong sunlight for the rest of the time that I was out. I’m eagerly anticipating more sun... and more heat! A good day none the less. Met some kids who are also artists and who thought that I was doing an OK job.


‘Prairie Shed’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
To tell you the truth... I was so ecstatic at the sun being out and blazing onto the face of these grasses and the rest of the landscape that I let the color boil a little bit. Meaning that I wanted to paint the joy I had more than I wanted to paint the color as grey as it might have been in reality. I didn’t go that far out of my way to make it more saturated, but this is a painting that is more about how I felt about what I saw than an ‘exact’ duplicate of what nature presented. On the other hand, this is what nature presented and I was thrilled about it.


‘That White House’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
I’ve painted this location in different seasons, winter, fall but never spring. It’s just such an attractive little homestead to me that I always enjoy giving it my attention. It sits along a busy road so this is really the only vantage point that can be safely painted. I haven’t captured it’s personality as I’d like to yet so I will most likely be going back again.



‘Cool April Skies’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
To paint this painting I simply turned in the opposite direction from the previous one. By now I was chilled. But I decided to stay and get # 3 done so that I could head home to warm up before tackling #4. The farm and tree line in this one were silhouetted against the fast moving sky and I found that sort of eerie but interesting to paint.


‘Water Dropping’ © Marc R. Hanson 2009
This one is from along the St. Croix in the Interstate park again. Pretty simple composition, across the river. The challenge again, as in the 4th one from yesterday, was how to deal with a forest full of tree branches without a lot of definition.

April 2009 Painting Marathon Redux

April 1, 2009


'Ice Shelf' © Marc R. Hanson 2009


'Below St. Croix Falls' © Marc R. Hanson 2009


'That Farm' © Marc R. Hanson 2009


'The Only Snow Left' © Marc R. Hanson 2009

These are, as you know, 5"X7", painted on 100% 8-ply Rag Museum board with several different primers on them. As of today, my favorites are those that were primed with two coats of clear shellac. I tone it with some grey pastel dust to kill the white. This is a wonderful surface to paint on. The paint 'sits up' on the surface and doesn't sink in until it's dry. It's a smooth surface, not much tooth. This might be what seems good to me today and tomorrow something completely different might be what I use. 'That Farm' was painted on one that I mounted some very fine oil primed linen on. I suspect that I'll be using a lot of that too.

The first two paintings of the day were painted from underneath the Hwy 8 bridge that crosses the St. Croix river between Taylors Falls and St. Croix Falls, WI. It was snowing pretty good at that time so to stay dry and a little more comfortable, I was a troll. That also goes with my Scand-a-'hoovian' background as trolls are important in their mythology and folklore.

The light today was less than ideal, but the light snowfall made it a great day to paint. As you can see the wet surfaces of dead leaves, grasses and trees reflected an enormous amount of color. By the end of the day the snow was all but gone.

I was surprised to see the large piece of ice left in the painting 'Ice Shelf'. The ledge that I painted, only part of, is probably about 40 or 50 ft wide and pretty thick. It reminds me that this entire area was carved out by glaciers in the past. This little shelf reminded me of a miniature version of one. The color at this time was very, very rich and enjoyable to paint.

After the first painting it was snowing harder so I just turned from where I was standing and looked up river to paint 'Below St. Croix Falls'. What attracted me was the atmosphere, the distance almost a haze due to falling snow. That let up but the river being so high had wonderful subtle patterns of a mix of foam and suds from the dam up river. All of that made for a simple but calming color scheme to paint. There were large 'foam-bergs' floating down with the current. I added a few of them.

The third painting of the day, 'That Farm', was an attempt to back off of my view point and get some open sky and open land around me. Of course it was blowing pretty good out in the open country so I decided to pull the gear back in the car and finished this one from the front seat. I knew that I had another 3 hours or so to go and didn't want to become hypothermic while painting and not be able to get my '4' in for the day.

By the end of the day the snow was almost gone. I wanted to keep the snow as a common thread through all of the paintings for today. So in 'The Only Snow Left' I was painting in the Interstate Park near my house, and walked into the woods a ways to find this little smattering of wet snow still laying in the leaves. That was good enough so this became my final piece.

'From Above'

'From Above' oil on panel - 12x16 © Marc R. Hanson '10

Sometimes I paint just to use materials as much as anything. I love artists materials, they are like having apple pie in the kitchen when coming home from school. I treasure their purpose, I collect them, I even have art supplies that my dad used 40 or 50 years ago or longer. That's another story.

This painting is the result of wanting to paint a buttery warm image last night, and that required on thing... Flake white, made from ground basic lead carbonate. It's a wonderful paint to use. We don't use that often anymore due to it's being toxic if not handled properly. But IF handled properly, there isn't anything quite like it and the handling properties that it has. I have several tubes of it in my paint drawer from a company called Studio Products. They hand grind it in black oil, or did, it isn't shown as available anymore... very sad. I don't use it often and when I do, I am very cautious and that means keeping it off of my skin and out of my mouth, eyes and any cuts I may have.

It's a paint that makes me feel musical because you need to 'work it', to move with it. Compared to titanium white, which goes on the surface like house paint on a house, flake white requires a dance to happen while it's being applied. Okay, I'm over playing it's qualities a little bit, but It is stiffer out of the tube and needs to be whipped a little bit, like a meringue, in order to be workable. This is how I like to use it. Once it is, a touch of colored pigment mixed into it and the color just explodes into the white.

It also allows you to build up some pretty heavy textures of impasto. You can probably see that in the area of the reflection on the water. That paint is about 3/16's of an inch thick.

Well that was fun...

'Spring Arrives'

I think that I'm seeing the benefits now of having spent all last April outside painting the early spring color. This is a studio painting painted from some reference that I gathered a few years ago or more. Sometimes we aren't ready to use an impression of a place until it's had time to germinate, and until we've had time to advance towards it. I love this area and have painted it, hunted it, photographed it and probably put on a good share of the 263,700 miles that are on my truck... driving in and around it. The conceptual part of this painting was formed a few years ago. Last April gave me help with the tools to see it out to the finished painting, and this spring it arrived. I hope that you enjoy it as a celebration of Spring.

This painting along with the last two paintings posted here, 'July Mill Pond' and 'Labor Day' are part of a group of paintings that are on their way to Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, MA on Cape Cod.


'Spring Arrives' - oil on board - 16x20 © Marc R. Hanson '10

2010 Workshop Schedule

2010 Workshops...

Here are the locations and dates-

May 15 & 16, 2010
2 Day Plein Air Landscape Workshop
Zumbrota, MN
Contact: Marie- Crossings at Carnegie
507.732.7616

May 24-28, 2010
5 Day Plein Air to Studio Landscape Workshop
Sarasota, FL
Contact: M Gallery of Fine Art
email: info@mgalleryoffineart.com
941.954.8774

July 15-17, 2010
3 Day Plein Air Landscape Workshop
Fish Creek, WI - Door County
Contact: Peninsula Art School
email: info@peninsulaartschool.com
920.868.3455

August 9-13, 2010
5 Day '4th Annual' Taylors Falls Plein Air Workshop
Taylors Falls, MN
Contact: Marc R. Hanson Workshops
email: paintbox1@frontiernet.net
651.442.3811