'Myakka Afternoon'... Some revisions.

After thinking that this one was done, I took a longer look at it and talked to my other 'critical eye', Kami, for input. We both decided that the foreground was too busy, that it acted as a barrier to entry into the focal area of the painting, the palms and then into the distance. It's a good thing to have a trusted artist close by who you respect and know will give you an unbiased, honest opinion about your work. Kami is that for me, I am that for her. When we both agree that something is off, whether her painting or mine, I know it needs some serious thought. After I resigned myself to the fact that this area would need to be worked again, the painting sat for some time while I finished up some other work... and for me to think about it.

Below is the "finished" painting before the changes...


'Myakka Afternoon'... Before the rework...

I prefer not to ruin the rest of the painting by what I am about to do to it... that is...to fix it! In light of that profound idea, I like to use acetate to work the problem out on first. I tape a piece large enough to cover the area that needs fixing, and then to paint the fix on it. I don't spend a lot of time at this, just enough time to get an idea of what to do when I pull the acetate off and work on the actual painting. Because the camera does strange things, I actually took a picture of the acetate fix, corrected it in Photoshop, then viewed it on the iMac screen and used that as my guide. Mainly because you can't really see what you did on the acetate when it comes off of the painting. The paint is 'stingy' and transparent on the acetate, and doesn't show the color like it did against the painting when it was taped on to it.

Here's that photo... All of these pics of the acetate work were handheld... sorry for the blurriness but they're just for the idea of how I do this. The next photos to follow are all of the work on the acetate, except for the last one which is the new revised version of the painting. I only put these up here in case the idea might be of help to anyone who doesn't know about this technique and is wondering what to do to try out a revision on a painting.

The weird reflections are of me taking the pics...


This is how I view the acetate work on the iMac screen.







And the 'final' finished painting... I think.


'Myakka Afternoon' oil on linen, 24x36 © Marc R. Hanson '10

Interlude... 'Wood Stork'

'Wood Stork At Rest' oil on linen, 8x10 © Marc R. Hanson '10
I'm doing three posts today. Before I get into the 'Myakka Afternoon' rework post, I wanted to post this little painting of a Wood Stork that I did this afternoon. Might be 'Big Bird Part II'?

'Silent Wader'

This painting seems like it took a long time if I think about the first posts about it, the concept studies. But there have been several other paintings come to life in between the start of this one and now. So I thought that I'd sort of review this one by including all of the posts of the steps along the way, the finished painting, and some detail shots of it.

I'm happy that in the end the final painting is very close to one of these initial color comps. I chose the one on the right to paint. I preferred this idea because it kept almost the entire painting in a cooler open shade with just a little warm light sneaking in to the image. And I liked that there was vegetation to use compositionally to soften the transition between the egret itself and the reflections/background.



This was my initial block in for the painting. Remember that the linen that I was working on wasn't working with me. You can go back in the blog and read that if you don't know what I'm talking about here, I'm not going to take the time to re-hash it now. Let's just say that I dumped this one and re-stretched a new type of linen that became the final image.



In the meantime, I had my fill of the whole situation and decided to have some fun. :-) No I didn't paint Big Bird... just borrowed him digitally.



This is the first step, actually the first day, of the 'renewed' effort on a new type of linen. Things went much smoother on this new surface and it became a matter just putting on enough paint to cover the 1200 sq inches of paint surface. Of course it had to be in the right place, the right value, the right color, etc..



In this step you can see more development of the image. I began to add color into the reflections but knew that I still had a long way to go before making a final decision on the 'final' look of those reflections. For one thing, they had to reflect something... and 'something' wasn't painted into the painting yet. You can see where I did add a few weeds, just to give myself some idea of what to expect when it came time to add them all in. When I started to paint those in I knew that it would have to be one long day of work. I couldn't start them, get interrupted for a day or more, and then continue with any sort of cohesion to it all. But it was important to see what would be needed in terms of the scale, color and dimensional size relationships of the grasses.



A few days had passed between the last step and the start that led to this the final. That was a fortunate thing because it allowed me to oil out the painting, to rub a barely perceptible coat of an oil medium into the surface of the painting that would give me several days of working time, and that would let me paint into the painting as if the underlying surface was still wet. Painting into a dry painting is kind of like fingernails on a chalk board. I don't like the grabby, dry, chalky appearance of new paint on top of dried paint in a painting like this where subtle transitions are a necessity. The oil mix I use is walnut, poppyseed and clove oil. This keeps the paint wet for a long time... it's still wet. But the advantage is, as I mentioned, plenty of time to work the painting with pseudo 'wet into wet' edges and blending. When you oil out a painting, you first apply the oil with a brush or rag, then you wipe what you would think is ALL of the oil off. You do not want a detectable amount of oil on the painting. It's there however, even if you can't see it physically. And obviously, the painting better be completely dry or you'll be wiping off the previous work as well.

In between, the entire painting area was worked and reworked, with the exception of the upper third which was not touched at all. I take that back. I did drag some dry brushed color lightly over the dry paint, mostly cool colors to help push the area back.

The most enjoyable part of painting for me is when you have a coat of fresh paint on the painting that is still wet, to some degree. This sets things up for some very, very fun tactile sensations that result from dragging brushes loaded with wet paint into, against and across the still wet, but drying, paint surface.

That's when I feel like I'm a painter, manipulating, moving and modeling the paint as if it were clay.
In the end, I stuck pretty close to the initial concept, a success in that respect.


'Silent Wader' - oil on linen, 30x40 © Marc R. Hanson '10

The following are closeups of the painting...

'Afternoon Shadows'... Step by Step

'Afternoon Shadows' - oil on linen - 24x36 © Marc R. Hanson '10

The painting is the result of my recent trip to Florida to teach a workshop and open an exhibit of my work at M Gallery of Fine Art in Sarasota, FL in early January of this year. One of the locations that we painted during the workshop was a state park called Myakka River State Park; Myakka is the second largest state park in Florida. I was and am really captivated by this park, or more correctly the landscape of Florida that has been left the same as it has been for eons.

There is a primordial quality to this park that really grabs me and has a tight hold on my artistic sensibilities. It has all of the ingredients that attract my landscape painters' eye... wildness, water, jungle, trees and vegetation that are so varied that they present a textural salad of everything from Spanish moss covered majestic live oaks to palms and palmetto. The arrangements of Florida flora are punctuated by snaking rivers and streams that are teaming with life, but especially with large birds and large animals. On top of the textures, the color of the varied vegetation is rich, especially when the sun is low, rising or setting. Another feature of this area of Florida that makes my mouth water, is the moisture rich air. As Maggie Kruger, owner of M Gallery of Fine Art, told me, the air is so rich with moisture and nutrients that much of the plant life in Florida can grow without much soil; they receive their needed nutrients from the air. Any environment with that kind of particulate matter in the air is going to provide some rich color when the sun's rays are low and having to make their way through it all.

That is what I was painting in this painting. As the sun began to set we were making our way from the river's edge back through some of the swamp and trees, towards our cars. It was then that the pink of the sunset lit up the landscape. It was amazing but short lived. When that happens about all there is to do is to get somewhat of an image captured on the camera and then to try to emblazon the rest of the sensation onto your brain. Hopefully when you get home, you'll be able to recall that experience and put it down on canvas... or linen!



#1- Because most of the color in the design would be on the cool side, I made the choice to tone the linen with a warm wash, mostly Transparent Oxide Brown with some Viridian and Alizarin Crimson added. I applied this pretty heavily, as a wash, then wiped with paper towels until the primer was stained and most of the wash had been removed. I started this at night so that was it until the next work day when I began to lay out my composition with this warm color slightly thinned. Since the arrangement of palmetto against a couple of tree trunk would be the most dominant area of the painting, I started there with the drawing.


#2- In this step I blocked in the large dark mass that is in shadow. That includes the tree masses and the ground shadow.
The paint is watery thin at this point without anything but OMS (odorless mineral spirits). There is some notion of color. I kept the washes dark but warmer than what the overlying color would be to play against the cooler tones of the palmetto fronds in shadow.


#3- This step shows the first use of any opaque color. I am keeping the strokes broken and open in order to feel my way around the composition. Because of the nature of the color of the final painting, I am starting my color out a little more intense than I plan to have it end up. I do that because I have a tendency to want to 'naturalize' my color as a painting develops. If I start with color that's more intense, I figure that as I naturalize it, I'll get close to where I want it to be.


#4- This step shows the painting entirely blocked in in terms of 'general' color passages. I am working on a linen that needs a layer of paint on it in order to start working 'with' you. So the idea is to get the thing covered, go to bed, wake up and start really laying down some paint.


#5- About all that you'll notice here is that I have put some light on the right hand tree trunk. That tree, and a distant bit of water reflecting the sunlight, are the two items that I hope will provide some compositional balance to the heavy shape of the palms.


#6- Here you can see that I've started to work into the foreground shadow and vegetation pattern. I think that the background that has been done is about what it is in the finished piece.


#7- In this step and the next one you're seeing my working back and forth with the foreground. There were several sessions of painting layers, scraping and overpainting until I was happy with the feel of the area. It was as a toss up as to how much to show, always an issue. I feel that in the end I met some middle ground and am happy with the way it worked out.


#8- More foreground work. I was doing a lot of, for lack of a better word, scumbling. It was more like dragging paint over slightly tacky paint to get some textural effects that I wanted. Looking for a light pattern in the shadows was another topic in my discussion with the painting. I won!


#9- Finally 'satisfied' with the ground area, I decided it was time to attack the palmettos. These were a lot of fun to paint, I'll admit. They're so bizarre in their makeup that I just had fun. The challenge was to think like a bird flitting in and around them, looking for the way they projected out and around the trees. My photos didn't do much to help, so it was mostly a memory and 'practical thinking' exercise. At first I wanted some light striking the back of one of the palmetto fronds on the lower right of the tree, and on the one to the upper left. But the one on the lower right upset the shadow area. So I played it down with just a hint of light hitting it's back, just to relieve that area from being all dark. I'm happy with that.


#10- In this the final day of painting, today, I adjusted the fronds of the palmettos. I lightly brushed color across the forms to add interest to the darks. You can't probably see much of that in the photos. I knocked some back, brought out a few others to bring the light across the space. That's about it.

'January Moonlight'

"January Moonlight" - oil on linen - 9x12 © Marc R. Hanson '10
I had to go paint the nearly full moonlight tonight. It's cold, -4ºF, but with 6 or 7 layers of polypropelene, fleece and arctic boots rated to -120ºF... I was actually real toasty roasty warm. There wasn't a breath of wind and that made the difference. Of course I forgot one of the most important items, the mast to the EasyL that holds the panel. I nearly panicked, I did not want to have to go home to get it. Finally figured out a solution, using up my 'warm' reserves, then got to work. The light was not as cool as it is sometimes. But as I was coming home, and right now at 9:00 pm, the moon is really lighting things up and the light on the snow is much more blue in color. Can't do this again tomorrow night, but maybe again on Saturday, the full moon night. I spent about 2 hours outside between getting set up, painting and taking down. The biggest problem in the cold is 'moving' due to all of the clothing, glove liners and gloves and or mittens. That... is frustrating when it's biting your butt.

Here's the only pic that I could take. The batteries didn't make it and the spares were being used for the book light. I went through two sets of those during the hour and a half painting time. Tried to use the flash and that was all she wrote...

Michael Skalka 'The Mystery of Solvent Safety'

I'm posting this newsletter because it's so important to our safety as practicing artists. Michael Skalka, Conservation Administrator- National Gallery of Art, writes this newsletter and discusses materials that are of interest to artists. Scroll down to the bottom where he has an email address that you can subscribe to if you are interested.

Grammar of Color
Volume 6, No. 1

The Mystery of Solvent Safety

Greetings again. I must apologize for such a long hiatus from writing. However, so many transitions have taken place over the last several months that writing has had to take a back seat to other pressing demands. The conservation division has moved from the area it once occupied since the late 1970s to a new temporary space that will accommodate us for about two years while our former studios are reconfigured with new plumbing, heating/ventilation/air conditioning, electrical and safety systems. Once put back together it should serve the needs of the division for many years to come. We have also made a transition to new leadership in conservation and we are all settling into new work roles. To further add to the workload, I have taken on a project of refurbishing an 1880s Italianate style townhouse so my free time is spent painting with a roller rather than a small sable brush and my palette is straight from the commercial world of paint chips with dazzling room color ideas. The shift from a plein air paint box to a roller pan requires some adjustment. I am measuring usage of paint in gallons rather than squirts of paint from a tube onto a wooden palette.

Painting walls and ceilings with commercial paints has led me down new paths that did not exist the last time I did any major house painting. The somewhat new world of low VOC and no VOC paints offers fewer pollutants for house painters personally, the home environment and the planet as well.

We think of acrylic paints as not having volatile organic compounds (VOC) since they clean up with water and don’t have the harsh smell of mineral spirits. However many, traditional acrylic paints for walls as well as our artwork have a small percentage of volatile organic compounds that aid in the formation of a durable paint film. Some VOCs are coalescing agents that assist the acrylic polymers in melding together to form a continuous film. Think of it as a bit of solvent that melts the outside of each acrylic polymers and fuses it to an adjoining polymer. Other organic compounds contained in acrylic paints are not necessarily solvents but nevertheless are volatile in that they evaporate into the air after the paint is applied. Given the large surface area after fresh paint is rolled onto walls and ceilings, a substantial amount of VOCs are released quickly as the paint dries and beyond the initial drying stage for a period of time as these compounds work themselves out of the paint film.

With all this wall painting close at hand, the smell of the VOC exuding from the paint inspired me to think about solvents in a broader sense as they apply to artists. This is also where one of the major paradoxes occurs in the world of the art as it clashes with the worlds of chemistry and physics. To fully understand health and safety issues, one has to take an interest in topics far outside of the world of art.

Most artists I meet focus on making art using the media they choose to manipulate. Overall, I don’t encounter many artists who are extremely interested in the subtleties of the materials, especially the chemical and technical aspects of art products. The commercial side of the paint world does not reveal itself easily to anyone. I don’t believe that one should have to get a degree in chemistry or industrial hygiene in order to understand the list of benign or harmful materials in paint related products. It is a morass of confusing acronyms, a display of complicated testing and reams of nearly undecipherable numbers. While it is easy to throw up your hands and say that it is too complicated to understand, the consequence of ignoring some fundamental issues with materials of a harmful nature in paint products can end with some tragic personal health results. This is one case where ignorance is not bliss. Apathy or improper handling of certain materials can result in both short and long-term damage to one’s health.

The industry does not do the artist or homeowner any favors. Request a Materials Data Safety Sheet (MSDS) from a vendor or manufacturer of materials that contain hazardous products in them and see just how much of it is understandable, especially the critical parts. Knowing that solvents are not to be orally consumed, splashed on skin or inhaled in a closed room is just the beginning of the process of understanding how material safety sheets provide valuable information.

As with nearly all things art related, art materials are derived from the larger world of commercial products. Solvents in particular, are the companions for oil paints because they possess the special property that allows then to dissolve the oil binder in paints and to be the vehicle to both dissolve and spread certain resins classified as varnish. Unfortunately, solvents come in various types. Some are very powerful. Others are weak. Some evaporate quickly while others linger for extended periods. Some are outrageously toxic and some are not acutely dangerous, but they all share the common component of being harmful to some degree to human health and a pollutant to the environment.

This article is not a course on solvent safety or selection, but rather an introduction calling artists to create a protocol for personal health and the safety as well as those who work around them. Education is essential to understanding what to use and what must be avoided both in selection of solvents and ways to use them.

Here are a few important things to know about solvents in a general way. Read more for yourself and make educated judgments about what to use and how to use it to maximize your safety.

What are you buying? Two aids in making educated decisions about solvent purchases can come from vastly different sources. The Materials Data Safety Sheet (MSDS) provides identification information on what harmful components are contained in a solvent product. Thankfully, in an odd way, MSDS lists chemicals because they are considered harmful and MSDS sheet focuses on these hazardous components. It will not provide information on benign or proprietary materials contained in a product. The other helpful entity is the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) number. Chemicals are cleverly identified by a unique numbering system so, despite the name of the product, which may be called mineral spirits, thinner, paint thinner, solvent, Stoddard Solvent, VM&P Naphtha, or by trade names, if you dig down you can find the CAS number of the solvent and identify it. A word of caution is in order. CAS numbers are not so precise to identify exact materials. Some variations exist. See the section below on more bad news.

What are its properties? Artists who are concerned with solvent working properties will examine how fast they evaporate, if they leave any residue or what materials they will dissolve. For solvent safety, the task is a bit more complicated. Fortunately, a federal acronym….I mean agency, and other institutions provide some meaningful safety data on solvents. The Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA) publish volumes of information on materials used in our modern world. OSHA publishes a guide that focuses specifically on a measured amount of time and concentration of solvent that can be present in a space that will not cause long-term harm to a worker. That measurement is called the Permissible Exposure Level (PEL) and provides some indication of how much or little solvent in vapor form can exist within a workspace before harm is caused. Think of it as a gross indicator of the danger a solvent poses. A higher PEL means that more solvent can be in a workspace but still not cause harm. A lower PEL number implies that the solvent has more dangerous components in it and a work environment must maintain a low level of the solvent vapor in the air around a worker. The measurement is expressed in parts per million. Note that these levels of permissible exposure are extremely low from a standpoint of a person being able to detect solvent odor if they entered a workplace that stayed within permissible exposure levels of solvent concentration. Good air exchange is an essential factor in maintaining low exposure levels. Further, the use of personal respirators appropriate to the materials used, add to maintaining low exposure to solvents by people who work with them on a daily basis.

For example, many artists know that OSHA rates turpentine as having a PEL of 100 parts per million (ppm) exposure before long-term harm is caused. That means that if an environment exceeds 100 ppm the risk to health is increased. Odorless mineral spirits are generally rated around 200 ppm PEL for exposure. A few heavy hydrotreated Naphtha solvents are rated as high as 300 ppm for the exposure threshold. In a relative way, that makes them safer than turpentine because the ppm can be higher without causing adverse health risks. However, 300 ppm is not insignificant, allowing artists to ignore a concern for safety measures. An artist still has to maintain a studio space with proper air exchange using outside air as well as keeping the container holding the solvent closed as much as possible. It takes a concerted effort to provide good air exchange. Opening a window or two does not constitute adequate air exchange.

The bad news! I hate to break this to you after reading up to this point, but we artist as mere mortals have no way to measure the parts per million of solvents in an environment without complicated and expensive equipment. These measurements require testing gear that goes beyond what most of us would be willing to buy or spend to evaluate our studio space. So we just don’t know how many ppm fill our studios if we crack open a can of solvent and let the vapor escape into our work area. Further, we cannot rely on odor concentration thresholds (the strength of the smell of a solvent) to help us determine if we have exceeded the maximum ppm as indicated by OSHA guidelines. This is especially true when using odorless solvents. We all have different sensitivities to odors. Some strong odors are not indicative of high concentrations and some dangerous solvents are not particularly outrageous in odor but can be present in very high levels of concentration that could cause harm. So drop the idea that you can become a human gas chromatograph and know when a solvent has reached a concentration strong enough to cause lasting damage. Overall, we just cannot use the OSHA PEL ratings for solvents to assure we have a safe working environment in the presence of these painting materials. The PEL is just a rough guide to understanding relative harm a solvent can do to human beings.

More bad news! OK, so we can’t use our nose to detect dangerous solvent odor concentrations and monitoring/testing is too time consuming and expensive. The other disheartening information to share is that not all solvents are pure and unadulterated. A thought-provoking article in the American Institute for Conservation Newsletter by Alan Phenix discusses discrepancies in solvent safety labeling for products. The same Chemical Abstract Service number can have small variations in the list of ingredients that if broken down indicates a large percentage of one main solvent and smaller amounts of other solvents. In many cases, those smaller amounts in the mixture have far more harmful properties than the larger one and that will change the warning label on the solvent. Thus, two products labeled “Mineral Spirits” can have confusingly different PEL ratings. For example, a product I found labeled “Mineral Spirits” indicates that it contains both Stoddard Solvent and 1,2,4, Trimethylbenzene. The Stoddard Solvent is rated at 500 ppm PEL but the other ingredient is rated at an alarming 10 to 25 ppm PEL. The 1,2,4, Trimethylbenzene has such a low level of allowable concentration that this solvent is a hazard in a typical artists’ studio where ventilation is rarely up to industrial standards. Note that the label on the container says “Mineral Spirits” but it really is a mixture of two petrochemical distillates. Artists should not only look for high PEL rated solvents but also make sure that no other more toxic solvents are mixed into them. Understand that refining solvents is costly and that purer, more homogenous solvents require more effort/money to produce. While it is not suggested that you run out and look for reagent grade pure solvents, some careful reading when selecting solvents is in order.

In the case of solvents, cheaper is not better. Low cost solvents are more likely to contain adulterants that have very different PEL ratings than the primary ingredient. This is the part where ignorance can be very harmful to you and those around you. Be selective about your solvent choices and use the manufacturer’s research, MSDS data and reputation of the manufacturer as a guide to buying products.

The Orange Myth: The Internet is filled with references that promote the safety of solvents based on the oil extracted from the skins of oranges. What could be more wholesome? Orange citrus cleaners and environmentally friendly orange solvents are all marketed as alternatives to those bad, nasty hydrocarbon solvents. Some advertise the solvents as “food grade” in purity. However, referred to by the MSDS names, Orange Terpenes or D-Limonene, the concentration for Permissible Exposure Limits is a frightening 30 ppm. That is only 5 ppm higher than 1,2,4, Trimethylbenzene and nowhere near the level of highly refined Naphtha at 300 ppm.

Artists have many choices. They can use few if any solvent products and still paint with oil based materials. A system for working solvent-free has been well documented. Artists can also engage in various levels of solvent use from judicious to outrageous. Some think nothing of using open cans of solvent in poorly ventilated rooms. Others carefully use solvents and pay close attention to how long they keep any solvent open to the air. Either way, one rule about the universe prevails and that is the consistency of the physical properties of materials. It does not matter if you choose to become savvy about solvent use or carefree about exposure to them, the harmful effects will apply to everyone without regard to how much you care to learn about the subject.

So in closing, the caution is this. The harmful effects of solvents are not someone else’s problem to confront. It is yours. Art materials are derived from a technical world and you can choose to disregard the complexities of some rudimentary chemistry but you will pay the price at some point. Make the effort to learn how to handle solvents and how to select them. Learn what harm they can do to you, design a safe system that keeps solvent vapors at low levels so that you can reap the reward of what will hopefully be a far longer and productive painting career than if you choose to ignore the danger.

The Grammar of Color


Lecture Announcement

Reflectance and Luminescence Imaging Spectroscopy of Paintings, Works on Paper and Illuminated Manuscripts

(Please note: This will be a technical lecture and is intended for an audience interested in analysis of works of art.)

Dr. John K. Delaney
Andrew W. Mellon Senior Imaging Scientist
Scientific Research Department
National Gallery of Art

2:00 PM, Tuesday Feb 16, 2010
West Building Lecture Hall


Abstract: Imaging spectroscopy, the collection of numerous calibrated images in narrow spectral bands, is a powerful technique for remote identification and mapping of materials. Using reflectance imaging spectroscopy, minerals have been identified and mapped on the Earth and Planets. Luminescence imaging spectroscopy is used in biophysics to follow complex cellular activity by separating and mapping various fluorescently tagged biomolecules. In this talk we present our group’s findings on the application of both forms of imaging spectroscopy for the identification and mapping of artists’ materials in paintings, works on paper and illuminated manuscripts. The results are compared with those obtained from X-ray fluorescence, polarized light microscopy and SEM/EDS. Imaging sensors employed in the study consist of novel hyperspectral (hundreds of spectral bands) and multispectral (15 spectral bands) cameras operating from 400 to 2400 nm. Results will be presented from the study of paintings, such as Giorgione’s The Holy Family, Picasso’s Harlequin Musician, Gorky’s Organization and Manet’s The Old Musician. Using high sensitivity spectral cameras, imaging spectroscopy has also been proven to be useful for the identification and mapping of artists’ materials in works on paper, such as those by Mark Rothko and John Marin and illuminated manuscripts, such as Christ in Majesty with Twelve Apostles from the workshop of Pacino di Buonaguida. These results show that combined reflectance and luminescence imaging spectroscopy in the visible and infrared is a powerful in situ tool for the identification of artists’ materials and that it can serve as a guide for the selection of sites for further chemical analysis.

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M Gallery of Fine Art - Sarasota, FL Workshop - 1/4 to 1/8, 2010

It's taken me a while to get to blogging about the workshop that I taught in Florida in early January. I'm still working on the 'Egret' painting, and have started another 24x36 Florida landscape that I'm taking progression photos of. But I need to talk about this workshop before it gets too far out.

I arrived the day before New Years Eve! On New Years Eve Maggie and Lawrence (her husband) took me to a New Year Eve party unlike anything that I've ever been too before. The home of an artist who has turned his entire property into a fantasy land of architectural assemblages that you could only understand if you saw it yourself. I'm not even going to try to explain it. Let's just say that it was "fantasylandtastic"... my word.


Maggie Kruger ( at the paint out, above ) owner of M Gallery of Fine Art hosted the workshop... and me in a "royal" way! She has three wonderful employees, Crystal(the M Gallery manager), Karen ( on the left in the pic above) and Natashia. They took care of everything other than actually painting my paintings for me. Karen was in most of the workshop herself and had some wonderful breakthrough moments in her own painting advancement. I was treated so well that I'm going back in late May for an encore... more on that in the next week or so. A little teaser... the next workshop will be a 'Plein Air to Studio' workshop. I taught this curriculum in New York last summer and it was extremely gratifying to see what developed in the class.

We all had a Great time considering the weather. During the week we experienced the longest lasting cold spell that Florida has seen... ever! Now you might think that for a Minnesotan like me that's no biggie. This Minnesotan went to "sunny" Florida with not much more than sandels, lots of short pants and T-shirts. IT WAS COLD! It was like getting sucker punched.

Despite that the crew (class) of 14 students held their interest and eagerness to learn out in front of their desire to escape into a warmer environment and diligently pushed ahead and produced A LOT of good, studious work. Once again the benefit goes to me. I get to spend five days talking as much as I want to about something that I live and love for, art... painting. On top of that the time is spent meeting and getting to know other artists who are interested in learning more about this thing that consumes our lives and takes us to places within our deepest inner selves, and outside of our comfort zone. The experience for all of us, me included, is one of joy and discovery and I cherish every single moment of the journey.


Class... you all get an 'A'.

I am going to post a lot of art here to explain the workshop philosophy. Some of the photography was done down in Florida on my little Canon Power Shot SX120 without the best lighting or time to do it properly. So I apologize for the glare and other photographic aberrations ahead of time.

I arrived in Sarasota a few days early to get to know the area a little and to paint. The painting didn't go quite as well as we had planned due to rain. But I did get one little study done and a number of artists who Maggie rounded up went to Myakka River State Park on Saturday to paint. This first painting is a little study I did very quickly between clouds and rain one of the first evenings in Sarasota. I was on Bird Key looking across the Intercoastal Waterway at the Sarasota skyline.


'Sarasota Skyline' - oil on linen - 6x8 © Marc R. Hanson '10

We had a great time and Myakka has become a favorite place of mine as you'll see. One of the very fine painters to join in on the Myakka paint out was Hodges Soileau, an extraordinary painter who's had a background as an illustrator that is to be envied. Take a look at his website to see more of his wonderful art.


Hodges Soileau

The next two paintings are the ones I did at our informal 'paintout' at Myakka River State Park.


"Florida" - oil on linen-11x14 © Marc R. Hanson '10
Will the real Florida please stand up? This was my first sight of the 'real' Florida and it was inspirational. Myakka River State Park is a 'large' chunk of 'real Florida' realestate and it's a treasure... and it's protected as Florida's second largest state park. I was taken with the warmth of the shadows in the forests. The palms added a texture to the landscape that was odd to me, but an 'odd' that I fully embraced with interest in trying to understand and paint.


"Backlit River"-oil on board-6x8 © Marc R. Hanson '10
Following my introduction in the painting above, I only had a short amount of time to paint another painting. So as the sun was getting lower I decided to try to catch that in this little painting. Drama comes to mind.

Workshop...
In the interest of me getting some sleep tonight, I'm not going to launch into a spiel that fully explores what happened(s) in my workshops. You'll have to come to one to find that out! :-) But I am going to try to give you an idea of what we do in an abbreviated way.

My philosophy is that I serve my students best if I teach workshops that take them back to the basics, not workshops that simply provide them with 'paintings' to take home. I would rather they go home with a pile of work that sits in the corner for a while until they're ready for it to be applicable to them and their work. If they leave exhausted, slightly overwhelmed, but questioning, I feel that I've done my job.

In light of that... I operate under the idea that to better understand COLOR, the one thing that we all seem to love about painting despite our own personal style or approach, we first need to better understand 'value' and how that relates to the color we see and use in our paintings. So I Always start out my workshops with some Black and White (VALUE) exercises. I emphasize, in this order, the importance of DRAWING, VALUE, COLOR and COMPOSITION or DESIGN before we talk about anything else.


The first exercise we did involved all of the four elements listed above, though COLOR was only involved as its' being understood as VALUE first. The students had to paint three panels that were appx. 70% dominant in one value family. A Light, Middle and Dark VALUE design was required. In my demo above you can see that due to our overcast skies, it was hard to find a very light composition. About all I could find for the 'Light' panel was the parking lot. I was stretching my guidelines but the point was illustrated. Ideas touched on were learning to design an 'image' using 'value keying' to create a mood in the paintings, and learning to categorize the elements of the design into their appropriate value families. Another important point made is 'massing' of value families in order to learn to simplify more in the designs.


The second day I used a project that is designed to take the students through the first days work, massing, identifications of value families within the composition, and design. But then we add color to the mix. This exercise first has them create a composition using no more than 3 values, a light, middle and a dark. Then halftones, dark accents and highlights are added, but the integrity of the value families has to be maintained. From there the same process is repeated in panels 3&4, as in panels 1&2, but in color.

Despite the cold, windy, Minnesota in Florida weather, we had a nocturne painting night down on the docks of the Bird Key Yacht Club. A number of us participated, in part because Maggie fed us hot soup and hors d'oeuvres before hand that warmed our internal furnaces. Pardon the glare, and the color, not too good...


"Bird Key Nocturne"-oil on linen-9x12 © Marc R. Hanson '10
Let's just say that it was cold. This was painted looking across the water at a pretty nice house... :)... and all of it's lit up exterior. I wish that I had a good pic of this one.

The following day I gave the class a 'Memory Exercise', followed my a demo in the afternoon.


"Tiki Bar"-oil on linen-11x14 © Marc R. Hanson '10
Truly sorry for this pic too. There was a great little bar and restaurant in the harbor area of Sarasota. I wish it would have been warmer and I'd had the time to sit there, watch the waterfront action and sip on a beverage of some kind. Still I was trying to tie together some of what we had done to this point in the class. Massing of values, color temperature, etc..

On Thursday we headed back out to Myakka River State Park and had a great day! This was the best day for everyone in the class. I wanted them to think about our work with the simplification of masses both in value and of course, in color. So their assignment was to paint small studies in about 45 minutes or so. The studies were to use as few value/color masses as possible to get their point across. We spent a fair amount of time talking about CONCEPT also. "What is it that you are here to paint?"... "What do you want to say about your subject?". I think that almost every student painted at least 4 studies in the 6" to 8" range, and some went on to paint a larger piece in the afternoon also.


"Myakka Morning"-oil on linen-6x8 © Marc R. Hanson '10
This was my demo for the morning showing the idea of massing value and color into one cohesive compositional statement.

The entertainment for the day was undoubtedly the Black Vultures. They were all over the place, along with a Limpkin and it's chicks, not to mention the Gators. I had Gator for lunch! :) Mmmm... tastes like chicken.

The next few pics are of our companions, feathered and leathered, for the day...











It was a good thing that Thursday was so nice because Friday wasn't! I barely finished my morning demo when we were called off of the island we were on by our fearless manager, Maggie. A very nasty storm was blowing in from off shore right over us and prudence dictated that we 'exit' stage right. We did that and then headed back to M Gallery of Fine Art to close out the week with a little demo on photographing art work, Q&A and farewells.

I can't thank the 'crew' at M Gallery of Fine Art enough for doing such a great job in keeping a rather 'scattered' artist/teacher better organized, fed and entertained. Can't wait for the May workshop!!!


"Lido Beach"-oil on board-8x10 © Marc R. Hanson '10
My last demo of the week... cold... windy... stormy! But we saw a pod of dolphins and the park racoons.