This is a video from a series I’ve been doing trying to demonstrate single ideas on painting using short films. I thought it was useful to post it now seeing as the landscape season is in full swing and all. There is an HD version as well, change the setting from 360p.
(Cool fact: the video was edited on a Dell mini 10v while sitting in a meadow).
Today is the last day of the ten day plein air course around Trevi, Umbria. One of my favorite landscape painting spots in the whole world. We had great weather after the first couple of days and I was helped immensely by the multi-talented Daniela Astone who assisted me in teaching.
White roads and hay bales.
Poppy fields below Trevi.
This is the first time I’ve done an extended intensive workshop and it was interesting to see how much the students improve after ten days of straight painting. We were also lucky that two professional painters, Charlie Church and Takuma Kaneko joined us. So often the best teaching is a good example.
Takuma finishing off the day from the parking lot of the hotel.
Charlie helping Denise with her painting.
Ben Fenske also did an excellent demonstration one afternoon on aerial (atmospheric) perspective and planes.
Ben giving a demonstration below Trevi.
We stayed at a charming little agriturismo, Le Vedute, on the hill outside Trevi, where Pietro and Marta looked after us splendidly.
Here are a few more action shots from the trip:
Daniela painting ducks on a river bank.
Maike at the end of a long day.
Bob painting in the shade in the valley.
Luigi painting at the Clitunno Springs.
Overall the course was a a great success and we got good feedback from everyone. Daniela will scout around Maremma for a location for our next workshop together and hopefully we can set something up for September.
A few people have asked me about the weekend workshops in July. I have an invitation to Sardinia so I wont be here this year. Instead I’ll try to do weekend workshops before then in a private garden in Florence. The dates will be the 12th and 13th, and the 19th and 20th of June from 8 to 12 in the morning. There are only a limited number of places so let me know via email if you’re interested in joining: marc@ritratto.com
This is a somewhat embarrassing post, after the buildup about my trip to Albania. The truth is I was exhausted after all the painting I’ve done so far this year and when I got there I just slept on the beach for a week. I did manage to rouse myself on a couple occasions to paint some beach scenes.
Beach Cart at Durazzo. Oil on board, 20 x 25 cm.
Umbrellas at Durazzo. Oil on panel, 20 x 30 cm.
Durazzo. Oil on panel, 20 x 30 cm.
San Pietro. Oil on panel, 20 x 30 cm.
This was my fourth trip to Albania, but the last three times I’ve traveled exclusively in the south. This trip I did manage to make it up north into the mountains for a scout and painted a couple of sketches.
Guesthouse at Boga. Oil on panel, 25 x 20 cm.
The Old Farmhouse, Boga. Oil on panel, 25 x 35 cm.
The mountains above Scutari (Shkodër) are very unspoiled, with picturesque little villages and very friendly people. The roads get really bad after a while (and the electricity ends) so we couldn’t make it very far with the small 2-wheeled car we had. This September I’ll go back for a longer trip with my Land Rover.
Here is a short video I took from the car while scouting around the north. So much of landscape painting is driving or walking looking for views…
Years ago I heard about Edward Lear’s book on traveling through Greece and Albania painting landscapes and managed to track down a copy. At the time I was fascinated by the idea of a writer discussing the technical aspects of traveling and painting en plein air in the nineteenth century.
Unfortunately, Lear’s book has very little discussion of the methods and materials of plein air painting abroad and is more a recount of his travels. His paintings from the area are interesting, but very typical of studio landscapes done from drawings from the period.
I’m off to Albania tomorrow as well, and I thought I’d post a picture of the bare minimum I need to paint for 10 days abroad:
My ultra-portable travel kit for plein air painting.
A cigar-box palette pre-filled with paints, tripod easel with a third hook for the cigar box, lots of prepared lightweight panels, a sketchbook with eraser and pencil attached, camera, cellphone with gps, and finally, brushes. Not shown are my Cowon mp3 player for painting in traffic and learning Albanian in the car, as well as my (non-flammable) medium in a shampoo bottle. I’ll buy turpentine after the plane lands.
Wish me luck with the weather, it has rained in this part of the world since I can remember.
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. Here are a couple of excellent art-related videos on Youtube.
Vilayanur Ramachandran on Neurobiology and Aesthetics (Skip to 21m:45s):
Roger Scruton on Beauty (6 parts):
There is a great wealth of information online these days, but so much of it is hard to find. If anyone else has recommendations, please post them in the comments.
I don’t often post portraits on the blog as the commissions don’t get posted and I rarely paint models anymore. Here is a 6-shot head painted while teaching a short course in my studio.
One thing I’ve often found interesting as a portraitist is how some people are more beautiful when they move, and others just glow when they are still.
Update: Here’s another. This one was just a couple of hours.
Here are some sketches from my trip to London. The weather was great the first few days but then got brutally cold (at least it was if you were standing outside in the wind and rain for hours at a time).
St Margaret’s Church. 12 x 8 in., oil on panel.
Battersea Power Station. 8 x 12 in., oil on dibond.
It was a very productive trip nonetheless, and I was helped greatly by painting with two fine plein air painters, David Bachmann and Roy Connelly, who knew the turf inside and out.
The Thames from Hungerford Bridge. 14 x 11 in., oil on dibond.
Trafalgar Square Lions. 6 x 8 in., oil on panel.
Trafalgar Square Lions. 11 x 14 in., oil on panel.
I really liked the lion statues in Trafalgar Square, though painting there after 10am was difficult with the crowds.
I didn’t have time to see any museums, and a great regret was missing the Edward Seago centenary in March as I’m a huge fan of his plein air work.
Something that is not discussed often enough in plein air landscape painting is the importance of drawing. Looking through books on Corot or Levitan, you will see pencil, chalk, or ink sketches for nearly every painting they did, and a lot of drawings that never became paintings. The Uffizi gallery in Florence has a large collection of drawings they used to allow people to copy from (they would give you the original drawings for every artist except the major Italian Renaissance painters) and I spent hours copying the Corot drawings as a student.
Santa Maria Maggiore from the Società dei Canottieri, Venice.
Often when I travel I’ll spend the first few days just going around with a sketchbook and pencil to scout out places to paint later. It is obviously much easier to move around, but I also find drawing helps me work out the compositions and also makes it quicker when I paint the subject later, having already done the drawing once.
A page from my Moroccan Sketchbook. Palm trees in Marrakech and the Fort at Essaouira.
The sketchbooks are also fun to look back over years later as many of the paintings are long gone (or were never painted to begin with).
For larger work I will often do multiple sketches as well as small thumbnails to try to figure out the best balance for the final composition. As I can’t trust the perspective from photographs, drawings are a much better source for large studio landscapes.
Sketch for Sosta del Papa (over two pages in my sketchbook).
Battersea Power Station, London.
My favorite sketchbooks are the 112 page, 8 x 11 inch Kusnt and Papier hardbound sketchbooks, I usually get them at New York Central Art Supply. I like the paper they use, they’re very durable, and the small amount of pages make the books very light and portable. The pocket, blank-page Moleskines are good too. I use a kneaded eraser, any brand of HB pencil, and a small plastic retractable x-acto knife to sharpen it. Having a long, tapered, insanely sharp pencil lead is the trick to getting drawings to look decent (and lots of practice, of course).
My self portrait from this January (you can see it in this post) is in the Eleanor Ettinger Gallery’s Self Portrait Exhibition which opened last night in New York. It looks like a great show and I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to the opening. Paul Oxborough’s portrait on the Ettinger website looks especially brilliant.
