Water

I love to go plein air painting in Mexico in the rainy season.
Often, the mornings are sunny and very bright, the rains come in the afternoon or evening.
The water refreshes the colors of the land, the sky, the trees. It fills the lakes, charges the air with negative ions and adorns the sky with beautiful clouds.

The dangers of painting commercial themes

Painting certain themes can be dangerous to one's reputation.
Romantic scenes, cute children and countryside with rustic barns tend to be the popular choice of amateurs and Sunday Painters. And, of the less discerning buyers.
I normally avoid these topics, but sometimes I confront the challenge and see if I can make a good painting, despite the commercial overtones of a view.
This is a street scene in a romantic Mexican village, called Tapalpa, a popular getaway for the people of Guadalajara. In order to pull it off I stuck with muted colors and little detail, as well as a limited range of contrast and color intensity, the opposite of which are the deadly sins, frequently committed by beginners.

August Rains

August is wet in Mexico. You´ll never know when it will be sunny or raining, but you´ll get plenty of both, depending on what path storms and hurricanes decide to take.
I painted this plein air piece from a balcony of a friend´s house in Tapalpa, in Central Mexico. The clouds hurried across the sky and the shadow patterns on the ground changed rapidly. Luckily I had a previously stained linen panel with me, which made the painting go much faster.

Clouds

The rainy season is about to start in central Mexico. For about five months straight, there will be a downpour every afternoon. Some days it may rain lightly all day long, but most of the time there is sunshine in the mornings and precipitation starts around 4 or 5PM.
The landscape turns green within days after the first rains and the moisture in the air creates beautiful atmospheric layers.
This is a great season for plein air painting, especially if you like to do clouds. The light can get very interesting in those last moments before the clouds burst and since oil does not mix with water, I don´t worry if the rain catches up with me.
As long as the car is near!

Trees

Trees are amazing living things.
They provide humans and animals with oxygen, they absorb all kinds of pollution and improve the climate. Their roots anchor the soil to prevent erosion and desertification, in winter their decomposing leaves make nutritious, new soil. They give shelter to birds and other animals. Some trees have roots capable of desalinating ocean water. Managed sustainably, their wood provides us with excellent building material. Even dead trees still work for our benefit, enriching the ground in preparation for new vegetation.
These are just some of the wonders trees do for us, yet sadly, we humans don´t care for them the way we should. I guess we still have not woken up to the fact that trees offer extremely high benefits for extremely low cost. And that life on this planet could not be possible without them.
Now, lets compare that with what cars do for us. !?! But, oh yes, we do take good care of those.
At some point I might paint a whole series of different trees, but then, there are so many other themes, that it might have to wait a bit.

What Are You Painting?

When I do plein air work, inevitably someone comes up to me and asks: What are you painting? Or, even better, what are you doing?
Well, its nice that people find the process of creating a painting interesting, but for the artist, concentration is gone at this point.
I normally don't paint and talk at the same time, so I take visitors as an opportunity for a little break and tell the inquirers that I am painting the scene in front of me, but that I am barely starting, and if they came back in an hour, they would see more. With some luck I am finished by that time.
I made this painting at the river mouth of La Ticla, at the Mexican Pacific coast. Lots of white birds played and looked for food in the shallow water. A recent storm had uprooted a tree and the current of the river had brought it down to the ocean where it got stuck between two sand banks. Could not leave such a scene unpainted!

Low Key of Contrast

In my last post I spoke about high key of contrast. Here´s an example for a low key of contrast painting.
The day was mildly sunny, with a lot of early morning moisture floating in the air, which softened the contours of all the shapes.
On a scale of 9 values between black and white, black being 1 and white being 9, the colors in this plein air painting would correspond to no more than three values: 6,7 and 8, with just a touch of a darker or lighter accent here or there.

High Key of Contrast

Any painting, abstract or representational, can be done in a high, middle or low key of contrast.
There is no advantage or quality issue connected to either of the three, it is mainly a question of personal preference , but in landscape painting, choosing one over the other can be due to the light situation of the scene.
In this example, the sun was very strong and almost directly overhead. Seen from my vantage point, the scene was back lit. I remember struggling with the discomfort of heat and strained eyes, standing there in the open, dry landscape, but I managed to establish the main features and high key of contrast between illuminated areas and areas in shade as well as cast shadows, before packing. The finishing touches I did in my studio.

Trends in Art

Art is not exempt from fashion.
Every time has its preferences and trends and, most people, with few exceptions, follow them.
The last century has seen its share of abstract or non representational art, some of it exceptional, some of it bad, some hardly art at all, but as long as it is in fashion, everything goes.
Now it looks like realism begins to have a comeback.
Recently, work which is shocking, offensive, violent, or which otherwise causes raised eyebrows is being favored by the critics.
Novelty at all cost - but is it art?
I choose to paint representationally, because I feel attracted to the (often hidden) beauty nature has to offer. There is plenty of tragedy and ugliness in the daily news, I don´t need to contribute to that. Besides, I am convinced that it is within the human condition to crave beauty.

Yellow

Before synthetic colors were invented, yellow pigments came from the strangest and most diverse sources: Concentrated cow urine, ox gall, minerals, tree resins and saffron, among others.
Yellow is a primary color, as is red and blue, and when mixing it with the latter, green is obtained.
The hue of any color, when mixed with yellow, becomes warmer in temperature.

Fog at Trinidad Bay

Light and shadow are normally my best tools when I am painting. But on this trip to northern California I was hoping for something else: fog.
My daughters were studying in Arcata, at Humboldt University at the time and they had told me that on most days it was either raining or foggy. Well, it looked like it would not be either during my visit. However, as the last day approached, I had my wish granted. My painting buddy and I set out for Trinidad beach early in the morning and put on all the clothes we had - it was cold, the ocean agitated and the fog thick. After hiking north along the beach, looking for the ideal spot, visibility started getting better and we set up our easels and painted two pictures each.
I worked with a very limited palette, just white, cad yellow pale, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue and green. It´s the ideal set up for traveling, less bulk, light and really all you need.

Painting in Maruata

There is nothing that compares to the feeling of creating a drawing or painting.
A fleeting moment becomes permanently saved the way the artist perceived it, capturing the light, the mood of the scene as well as the reaction of the artist to the subject matter.
I painted this picture standing in the hot sun of the Mexcian Pacific coast at one of Michoacan´s most beautiful beaches, Maruata, and I was looking inland towards the small lagoon. While painting, I listened to the water that comes in regular intervals through the nearby blow hole and my feet were periodically cooled by it.