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!

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!

Middle Key of Contrast

In this painting I used a middle key of contrast.
The colors are neither very dark nor very light in value, keeping the range wide, but without using the extreme dark values 1 and 2 nor the very lightest one, corresponding to 9 on the value scale. Even though it can be, the choice of key of contrast is not often a deliberate one for me. I just respond the scene in front of me.
On this particular occasion, some friends and I were on a plein air painting trip in New Mexico, and this rural scene caught my eye. The time of day was late in the afternoon, color in general looked rich and the cast shadows were glowing. What a privilege to be a painter!

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.

Plein Air painting

I made this little PA painting from one of the terraces at the Villa Amor resort in Sayulita, Mexico.
It was a particularly sparkling day, the sun was hot and high, and after years of visiting that beach, I knew the light was special and I had to capture it quickly before it changed.
I have a series of 8x10 s of Sayulita beaches hanging at home, painted in all kinds of light and weather. Makes me want to go back!

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.

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.