September 6, 2010

I've made an impact! I'm now known as the 'eBay guy', locally anyway. Tonight as I was painting, in the rain, a very nice lady walked across the street from Romayne's Bar and Grill, my subject in the first painting. She initially wanted to know what a guy with lights was doing hanging out on the sidewalk in the dark on a stormy night when all of the summer traffic was gone... NO ONE was in town any longer. When she walked up she said "Are you the guy who's on eBay, painting a couple paintings a day?" Well blow me down with a wisp of air! That took me by surprise to say the least. Evidently she searches for Taylors Falls items on eBay and when she did a search the other day, I came up and she saved my painting to follow along. I gave her a card with my blog address on it so that she could follow the whole kit and kaboodle. I was very proud that in my own town there are people who I don't even know who might be paying attention to what I'm doing in this marathon. I want to thank her here for making the trip across the street tonight to tell me that.

A little side rambling... I can amuse myself with very little, and I'm doing it again. As humans we are so conditioned to act and feel based on similar events in our past. How many of us have eaten something when we were very young, gotten sick on it because we had the flu, mumps, or some reason for it to make us sick other than the food, and to this day we can't stand to eat that food!!!??? For me it's carmel apples (I know, it makes me sick that I can't eat them) and the mumps... haven't eaten one since I was about 8 or 9 years old when because of having the mumps a carmel apple made me very sick.

Conditioning... During my April Painting 'Marathon' 2009, every single day I walked out the door it was nasty, some less than others, but still not all that pleasant and I wasn't all that anxious always to face it. It left an impression.

So here I am in another 'Marathon' and I'm cracking up because every night when I head out I put on long johns, three shirts and a fleece! By the time I get a few blocks away to paint, I'm hot and taking those extra items off. The only reason I can think of that I do this is because I'm 'pre-conditioned' from the 2009 Marathon and I'm doing another Marathon now... So...

To my pleasant surprise each night out, it's actually pretty warm! Once I'm on location I get kind of excited to be painting a Marathon that doesn't require gloves and a ski hat!!!

Like I said... a little side ramble!


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9/6-1 'Golden Light'
This is a painting of the courtyard of a local eating and drinking establishment called Romayne's here in Taylors Falls. I found the dark of the foreground tables sans the umbrellas for the night, played against the lit wall and the 'Golden Light' sign a good subject.

I was pretty excited to just camp on the, now quiet, streets of Taylors Falls tonight and paint. My plan was to stay in one spot and get my work done. Well as usual, Mother Nature had different plans. It was raining when I left the house tonight so I placed myself under an awning so that I could paint in the rain. What I didn't do was take my anti- lightening strike pills. As I was working on this one the skies became evil incarnate! With one strike, I saw at least 6 or 7 veins of lightening careening over the top of the hills in front of me, and my ears were about blown out, it was so loud and near by. That did it... I finished up and came home out of harms way. I don't mind rain, even tolerate wind... but lightening is a force that I just don't mess with.


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9/6-2 'Oscar the Grouch'
I have two pets, Sargent who I painted last night, and my fish Oscar. Oscar started life as a 1-1/2" Walmart resident. I rescued him and he's now about 7" or 8" inches long, the size of a large, really large bluegill. He has that grouchy look that has earned him the nickname 'Oscar the Grouch'. Getting chased inside tonight I thought it would be fun to paint Oscar in his 40 gallon aquarium. He's a beautiful specimen... but he doesn't hold still any longer than his companion Sargent. Animals that aren't on film or a memory card are hard to paint! I'm hoping for good weather so that I can stick to the buildings, trees and other subjects that don't move... ever.

Link to the nocturnes on my website.

Click here to go to the 2010 September Nocturnes from Life collection on my website. If you prefer visuals without the writing and commentary this should do it. Thanks.

September 5, 2010

One things for sure, every day it gets dark. I lived in Norway when I was young and there were a couple of days that broke that rule, it never gets dark on the Midnight Summer's Eve and Night. The other thing that you can count on is never being able to please everyone. I had an email from someone who was complimentary about my work, but who feels that I'm talking too much on these posts... "Here I go again!" I can appreciate someone's opinion that they'd rather just see the art, not hear the artist ramble on. I almost want to apologize for treating this blog and project as a daily journal... but I'm not going to! (I don't really want to apologize, just feel that it would be polite to.) This is my blog, my work and my thought. I hope you like what I'm doing, but it's not a requirement. Thank you.

Okay, rambling along... Tonight was my night back from not being able to paint last night because I wanted to have fun at the wedding. I did...


Click Here to Bid.
9/5-1 Sunset Rain
I set up a little early because I saw on weather radar and reports, that we were expecting some rain. The first painting was begun before dark, but right at sunset. We had a low overcast which held a lot of light for some time tonight. One of the things that I am discovering as I paint outside more and more, is that I'm as interested in what the atmospheric conditions cause to happen as I am in the subject. As it turned out the rain proved to be a very nice factor that influenced this painting.



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9/5-2 Sargent Watching Bugs
Then my CAT... Sargent ... Back up at my house inbetween rain showers I decided to paint Sargent, my cat, because he ALWAYS sits on the window ledge of the screened back porch. Unless you are set on painting him there!!! With some trickery, some treats and a lot of clicks, whistles, squeeking and calling to him I managed about 1 minute of getting him to "model". Still, I feel I caught his attitude and am happy with the results.

Back on track for tonight...

Okay... wedding successful and a surprise morning balloon ride is over so now back to business! I mentioned that I had come up with a way to get the book light above my line of vision, greatly improving my ability to see the subject and the lit painting without loosing too much night vision. Here's a picture of the set up. I'm using a piece of screen door moulding but would suggest a piece of 1/4"x1" flat pine trim moulding (or something like that). The photo was taken with the iPhone at night, kind of grainy.



Have to share some photos of the balloon trip this morning. :-)
Spectacular, amazing, pillowy soft, magical...FUN!

MVFR... Marginal Visual Flight Rules... Meaning that it's legal to fly, but use caution and judgement before doing so. The weather around the area was checked at a number of airports and it was decided by the pilot in command that this was a patchy ground fog and it would be breaking up and not be a hazard to our flight... so we went! :)




The St Croix River Valley at about 7AM, looking north of Stillwater, MN.




Our pilot, Scott Aamodt, brought us down to the surface of the lake...


We actually skimmed the surface of the water, just kissed it enough to wet the underside of the basket...


And then he set it down in less than a football sized parking lot!

September 3, 2010

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ANYONE FOLLOWING THIS MARATHON: I will be attending a wedding Saturday, September 4th and MAY NOT be able to paint. If I can't, I will make it up in the next couple of days. Hey... it's Labor Day weekend!!!

After a day of intermittent rain, wind and generally chilly weather, tonight turned out to be a beautiful one at 51ºF and almost no wind. I'll confess to being worried that I was going to freeze out there so I donned the long underwear, sweater and even gloves and headed down to the Interstate Park on the Minnesota side to paint the first piece of the night. It didn't disappoint.

* FYI* I have solved the blinding light situation!!! This is big news for anyone wanting to paint nocturnes. I've had a number of great suggestions from many of you, including what I will call the 'Pirate Solution'. That being a patch over one eye to "save" it for night vision. That one is a good idea but might get me locked into a twisted tangle of arms, legs, brushes and easel due to really bad coordination at night!

The solution was so simple... GET THE LIGHT HIGHER THAN YOUR VISION!!! This came to me this afternoon. Clamp a piece of wood (1/4"x1") in some way to your easel. I use an EasyL so all I need to do is use two small clamps and clamp it to the back side, the flanges that hold the panels in the back. The 'stick' is about 3' long. Then clamp your book light to that high enough to be out of your vision, but low enough to still illuminate the panel and palette. I wore a baseball cap so that the bill would block the light too. This worked better than I could have imagined. I could see the subject and still see the panel without being 'night blinded'.


9/3-1 'Taylors Falls Queen Rounding the Bend'
The painting tonight started just after sunset but before civil twilight and complete darkness. I was up so late last night that I wanted to end tonight a little earlier. And I also wanted to paint a 'naturally lit' setting for this one. About the time I was starting to block in the shapes and thinking "Okay, this is peaceful but a little bit boring"... a bright light appears down river at the first bend I can see. Suddenly I'm blinded by a spot light and realize it's the river boat 'Taylors Falls Queen' coming up river from one of it's nightly runs. PERFECT! That becomes the focal point of my otherwise empty scene. Taylors Falls has two of these boats, the TF Queen and the TF Princess that run regularly scheduled cruises including dinner cruises.


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9/3-2 'Weber in Waiting'
After the being on the river I came back to my house to see what I could see to paint. The skies tonight were brilliant, and tempting, with all of the stars showing! I resisted that temptation and found what I thought was an interesting scene right out my back porch. My Weber grill waiting to do it's magic. Mmmmmm....

September 2, 2010

Oh boy... it's a late one tonight! A delay to the start, for a good cause, and the temperature a pretty chilly version of September... 58ºF with a 10kt wind... and I'm finishing up past midnight tonight. NO BUGS!!! I live in a fairly small town, lightly populated area, so once the summer temps are gone, along with the summer visitors, and the temps get down to sweater weather the streets empty out long before the Ten O'Clock bell sounds. Because of that I don't head out into the rural areas and park on a deserted road with my book light shining; it's just not smart. You feel pretty much alone and vulnerable to anything or anyone in that situation. So tonight I went into the town of St.Croix Falls, WI on the other side of the river from Taylors Falls to paint off of their observation deck that overlooks the river and the power plant. The power plant went into service in about 1912, following the elimination of the white pine forests and the logging industry, using the river for power seemed like the next best way for the fat cats to make more money off of the abundant natural resource that had drawn man, first Americans and Europeans, to the area for centuries.


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9/2-1 'Dam Lights'
At one time this dam supplied the majority of the power requirements that St. Paul and Minneaopolis, MN had. I painted it for the April Marathon during the day and it makes an even more interesting subject at night.


9/2-2 'Taylors Falls from St Croix Falls'
Last week it was 90º and higher. Tonight I had on heavy long pants, three shirts, a sweater, a polar fleece and my toes were cold! After painting 'Dam Lights' I decided that all I wanted to do was to get #2 done and go home. So I just turned to my left and painted Taylors Falls as it appears from St Croix Falls. I actually really like this kind of painting, especially after the more controlled way that the first one had to be painted. It has an expressive aspect to it that I like.

September 1, 2010

So tonight I learned that what I should have done before starting this one was to approach the mosquito spray companies to see if they'd sponsor me. I'm going to be using sooo much of that stuff that their profits are going to go up and they should share them with me... it's only fair!

It didn't get dark as soon as I had expected, dashing my hopes of being inside and eating dinner by 9:30PM! But I was in by 10:20. I couldn't really start painting until almost 8:30. Before that I could still see light in the sky. In the future, I may decide that a nocturne is really "legal" at "Actual" sunset and not "Civil Twilight" a half hour later when it finally gets 'dark' dark.

Photographing these was as hard as it gets. I apologize for the glare.


9/1-1 "Old Jail B&B"
SOLD

Anyway, I went into downtown Taylors Falls and painted the Old Jail B&B. This was the sight of Taylors Falls first jail. It's always lit up nice and I have wanted to paint it at night for a while now, so I did. The owner came by with his bulldog named 'Jimmy Buffet'??? I have no idea why unless he likes Margaritas, he doesn't look like Jimmy Buffet and I didn't hear him sing anything either???


9/1-2 "Out Back"
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From there I went back up to my house, turned off all of the house lights and was treated to a beautiful starry night with the Big Dipper stage center out the back door. It's a pretty dark scene, as a lot of these might end up being, but I like the subtleties that show up in the light on the utility pole and the grass that is being cast by the street light across the road. Even had shooting stars helping me out. There must be a meteor shower, I saw a lot of them.

I discovered that to paint this kind of scene, a naturally lit scene, I have to turn the light on and off in order for my eyes to stay sensitive to the dark. Some have suggested using a red light, I used to do that as a pilot, but I wonder what that is like to paint under? Might try before this is over. But turning off the light worked out real well. I actually ended up just grabbing the light in my hand and blocking it out every once in awhile. When the light is on, I can't see anything of the subject. But when it's blocked or off, in a few seconds the eyes adjust and all of that beautiful subtle light is available for use.

This is where that crazy exercise that I teach in my classes, The Memory Exercise, comes into play. At last, everyone who I've made do that will actually have a reason to use it!!! Without being able to recall what I saw when the light was off, I could not have painted the second piece tonight.