Musings

Start to Finish...

2011-05-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

It's like 10 miles of 2-lane/ on a South Dakota wheat plain/ in the middle of a hard rain ("Steady On," Shawn Colvin)
Sorry, it was going through my head all the way through So. Dak.

On our drive home from a trip to Wisconsin last month, we experienced some very wet, foggy, and at times snowy weather across Minnesota and South Dakota. The whole drive, I kept saying under my breath, "Dang, this is so BEAUTIFUL!" and my husband, each time, responded, "You're joking, right?" and "Are you being sarcastic?" To each of his questions, I apparently looked at him blankly, as if not understanding the language he was speaking. I suppose I was so taken with all the painting ideas that my right brain had taken my left brain hostage. Ha ha! Has that ever happened to you?

Anyway, you may have deduced that I find aesthetic pleasure in weather that would be otherwise described as nasty, bleak, or [insert your own negative adjective here.] The aforementioned road trip left my mind racing, my sketchbook full of thumbnails, and my camera full of blurry photos shot through the window of a speeding truck. Though I prefer to paint on location when I can, memory work is useful, and sometimes the ideas worked out in your mind when you can't paint lead to some interesting results in the studio.

Just for fun, I thought I'd share with you the process of one of these kinds of paintings, start to finish.

The idea started w/ a couple sketches and notes I made in my sketchbook as we barrelled down I-90. In case you're curious what the scrawl says: warm, wet gold of spring fields fading to gray - almost white- of fog ribbon of silvery light with w/ wet earth around edges very dk brwn. Should be about texture, soft transition, interesting division of space by rivulet of drainage.

I create pastel paintings on a variety of substrates, but most often, as in this example, it's Wallis paper (museum grade) mounted to acid free foam core, then toned with an acrylic or watercolor wash. This is an 11x14 (I have full sheets of Wallis mounted by my framer. I often will tone the full sheet and then cut that down into various sizes for use in the studio or the field).

Next step: using a warm-ish, fairly dark pastel, I first mark the center of each side as a reminder to avoid cutting spaces in half. Then I make a "map" of the most important elements and shapes. This painting will be about texture, progression of color and value from the front of the picture plane to the back (bottom to top) and an interesting division of space.

Here, I begin adding color, thinking somewhat in reverse. My final piece will be about subtlety and grays, so I begin with much more saturated colors than I will use in the later stages of the painting. I know that I want my warmest tones in the front (though it will be mainly golden greens, rather than the golds noted in my sketchbook) fading to a cool gray at the high horizon line. So I begin with oranges under the green areas. I stick with violets under the cool gray areas, as I want the most vibration to be in the foreground.

Here, I've massed in the big areas with the colors that I want to show through at the end. These colors will influence the final colors but will not be the dominant color of the painting. I'm always trying to match values, regardless of color.

The neighbor's cat comes by to check out what I'm working on. He's fairly critical. You can't tell, but he's glaring at that tree. I should have listened to him from the beginning...

Next step is to scrub my underpainting colors into the tooth of the Wallis paper. This eliminates too much of the tooth being swallowed up by the first layer and allows me to work many more layers into the paper without worrying about fixative. I just use an old bristle oil brush. This is a great way to use brushes that are too worn for oil painting. Don't use your good brushes - the tooth of the pastel paper will eat them up!

Here's what it looks like after a good scrubbing.

The scrubbing softened some of the shapes and darks, so I go back and re-establish those.

Now I start adding the greens I want in the foreground, beginning with the darker shades and building up layers.

I continue building local color, trying for variety of texture within the grass areas. I also am addressing edges, looking at how the edges of the major shapes come together.

Here, I begin dragging grays over the whole painting like a glaze, starting at the top (background, horizon line) and dragging down, working with the lightest, more bluish grays at the top and progressing to slightly darker and more violet grays as I come towards the foreground. I added a tiny bit of water in the lower right foreground to continue the reverse "S" shape and lead the eye through the foreground mass.

Rivulet, pastel on mounted paper, 11x14.
©Jennifer L. Hoffman, 2011.

As you can see, I removed the tree (as Sid the cat suggested) and eliminated the edges from the water in the distance, making the ground disappear into the fog, as this was my initial intention. I also really worked on the edges of the water shapes in the foreground and simplifying the large grass areas. I think it's finished, though I'd like to do several of these paintings, exploring the idea of breaking the space into interesting shapes, and pushing the abstraction even farther. We'll see where that goes.

Plein Air in April (Wyoming-Style)

2011-04-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

My husband, great dad that he is, agreed to host my daughter's playdate with her best friend last Sunday, freeing me up to get in the studio. Trouble was, I couldn't seem to get anything going in there. Not that I don't have tons to work on, but for some reason, my head was not in the game. I think it was because I had the itch to paint outside. I looked around the back yard, but nothing was inspiring me. So, with hubby's blessing, I threw the gear in my car and took off down the canyon.

Now, plein air painting in Wyoming in the winter is no mean feat, especially an impromptu trip without the appropriate gear like snowshoes and snow pants. Not many pull-outs are plowed, and often you can't see over the snowbanks. Without snowshoes to hike across the drifts, you're out of luck.

Wait a minute, you say, it's APRIL - that's SPRING, not winter. Well, just for giggles, I shot a pic of myself at my painting location (near Bondurant, WY, at the other end of the Hoback Canyon). Looks like Spring!

Spring in Bondurant, Wyoming.

This road is a favorite of mine - it is maintained throughout the winter and recently became much wider due to a number of private homes being built along it. Nonetheless, it's mainly for access to a couple of large ranches, and the scenery all along it is spectacular (it's a loop through ranchland and National Forest). The wide road and low traffic mean easy painting and access to off-road sites too (though not right now!). Even though I swore I wouldn't paint another snow scene...here I am. Painting snow.

Pastels + Snow = Perfection!

I painted here for an hour and a half and not one car passed me the entire time. I did get a visit from a pair of bluebirds who perched on a clump of snow just a few yards from me and looked at me curiously as if to say, "What the heck are YOU doing out here?" The brilliant blue of the male was breathtaking, but of course, my camera was not in reach. I did, however, catch this fellow later:

Chilly robin wondering if he took
a wrong turn at Albuquerque.

There is something so freeing
about being out painting in nature, alone, with no one watching but the birds. Time flies, my heart soars, and I do crazy things like dance. Often I just enjoy the sounds of nature as I paint, but this time, since it was windy, I used my car as a windblock and the foam headphones of my iPod to keep my ears from freezing off. So, singing at the top of my lungs, dancing around my easel, I painted snow and felt like everything in the world was perfect, at least for that moment.

Field Sketch from April 17, 2011

©Jennifer L. Hoffman

It's Raining, It's Pouring...

2010-10-24T22:56:00.000-07:00

Rainy day on the Snake River.

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain on our metal roof. Looking down the canyon, I saw my favorite kind of painting day: saturated golds against moisture-laden grays. Living in dry Wyoming, I don't get a lot of these days, so I don't mind getting a little wet in order to capture some inspiration. After eating a quick breakfast and getting my daughter fed, (and thanks to my husband's willingness to have a Daddy day : ), I loaded up my car and headed down the road.

Super double secret painting location.

I don't make much progress on days like this. It takes me 20 minutes just to travel a mile, stopping every few hundred feet to evaluate the potential for paintings, maybe shoot a few photos, maybe do a sketch. I finally ended up in a secret favorite spot. Okay it's not that secret, but I won't tell you more than it's near Pritchard Landing, just a couple miles from my house. The color and light were heart-wrenchingly beautiful, and despite the continuing rain, I set up my french easel and umbrella, figuring it would slow eventually, and I'd be all ready to go. Meanwhile, the back of my easel was filling with rain. I couldn't get my sketch finished because my sketchbook was getting soaked by huge drops of rain, even under the umbrella (which continuously dripped down my back). Despite all my rain gear, I was well-soaked within a short amount of time, as the rain never slowed. To add insult to injury, my panel had gotten wet during the set-up, and paint wouldn't stick to the surface; I'd lay down a stroke and as the brush dragged over the previous stroke, it would lift it back up. Sigh. I admitted defeat and packed up my muddy, water-logged gear (the wood of my easel had swelled enough to make the thumb-screws impossible to loosen, so I had to shove my easel into my car with the rear leg still extended).

Ah well. Plans foiled. But the rain! It was making everything so phenomenally, moodily beautiful. I couldn't go home yet. So I drove on down the canyon, stopping at the East Table boat ramp on the Snake River. The rain had let up a bit, so I slogged off along the river, enjoying the kaleidescopic color of the wet cobblestones, inhaling the damp autumn perfume, and listening to the river rushing by me. The painting might not have physically happened, but in my mind it did. And later, in the studio, I got to put some of that inspiration down. In the meantime, I found some treasures for my daughter. And some for me as well.

Treasures found (with boots).

Happiness found (with rain).

2010-05-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

I am a poetry fanatic. I adore words - beautiful, ugly, descriptive, blunt, emotion-filled, and emotionless words. I began college as an English major, my focus on literature and poetry. I love to write almost as much as I love to draw and paint. I had the unbelievable good fortune to take a poetry class with the great W. D. Snodgrass while there. He was visiting the University of Delaware for one semester. How I managed to get that class is beyond me, but I had an entire semester to be treated to his amazing poetry readings as we dissected and savored some truly great poetry. He set me up for a lifetime obsession.

At this point in my life, it takes me months to whittle my way through an entire book, but I almost always have time for a poem. Like art, poetry can transport you into the world of the poet, can help you see yourself in a different light, or can simply entertain you for a brief while. Some of my favorite poets: Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, E. E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Billy Collins, Galway Kinnell - well, I could fill this blog with lists of favorites. There is so much good poetry being written today, and people who take the craft of poetry as seriously as the expression of it. I am regularly inspired by the fruits of their labor.

Today I was reading a poem by Arra Lynn Ross, called Mother Ann Tells Lucy What Gave Her Joy (you can read it here: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21427 ). So many things bring me joy: the smell of my daughter’s hair when I hold her, the saturated greens of a rainy spring day, the dance of joy my dog does when I come home from anywhere, my husband coming through the door after a day of work, sitting in the passenger seat next to my husband on a long road trip, holding a brush in my hand and feeling the paint dancing on the surface of a newly-stretched piece of linen, watching the colors of pastel mingle as I drag one color over another, reading a beautifully-written line of poetry or prose, seeing pelicans soaring in their spiral air-dance, late afternoon light pouring through the trees, standing in the dark listening to the snow fall, seeing a shooting star, hearing my daughter singing to herself, dancing (in front of the easel or with Amelia)… Our tiny joys are inspirations that feed our souls and our art-making. Too often, we take these tiny moments for granted. Today, poetry inspired me to acknowledge a few of them – what are yours?

Dry Spells

2010-04-03T15:52:00.001-07:00

I don’t know about you, but it happens to me so often. (Cue: crickets chirping. Tumbleweeds rolling across studio floor.) Part of it is because I am trying to juggle life as an artist, an employee, a mom, and a wife. But it seems like I am so often rolling along, painting ideas coming without much effort, finding inspiration around every turn, and then…bang! A wheel comes off. Amelia gets sick and has to stay home from daycare. Or we have to travel out of town and I miss a week of painting. Or I get a migraine (I get a lot of those dang things) that takes me out of the game for a day or two. Currently, I’m in the midst of a big dry spell.

I long to get into the studio when life keeps me out, but sometimes the loss of momentum seems almost insurmountable. All the ideas I had before the “time out” are still there, in some form, but suddenly I can’t remember why I wanted to paint them in the first place. The painting I was so excited to be working on suddenly appears uninteresting, or even intimidating. Then my brain gets to work, trying to guilt me into the studio, incessantly listing all the tasks I SHOULD be completing – the deadlines, the paintings waiting to be finished, the canvas boards I should be making, the photos I should be shooting…etc. etc. ad infinitum. Meanwhile, I begin practicing avoidance – doing all the laundry, cleaning the bathroom, washing dishes, brushing the dog…you get the idea.

Eventually I do manage to cajole myself back to the easel, but the going is always slow, and I feel like it takes a week at least to get back to where I was (precious time, since I only have one studio day per week right now plus whatever I can eke out on weekends).

So, dear reader, if you’ve struggled with dry spells – whether imposed by life or self – what ways have you found to get yourself back on track? I’d love to hear your suggestions and stories.

Drawing Birds (or Anything) with Gesture

2010-02-09T21:53:00.000-08:00

Below are the notes from a very basic introductory class on drawing birds from the collection using gesture that I led at the National Museum of Wildlife Art for their Art After Hours program. It was great fun. I thought this would be a good repository for the notes.

Why Gesture?

Gesture drawing is useful to record the essence of a subject in a very short amount of time. It is effective for capturing the movement or form of an animal, the curve of a model’s pose, the windswept appearance of a tree or bend of a river. Even in abstraction, gesture provides a backbone upon which other important elements can be built. Practicing gesture drawing helps an artist to develop a quality of line and drawing ability that is a bit like calligraphy or handwriting and is unique to the individual.

Artists like Alexander Calder drew animals from life using gesture to capture the most fundamental information. For Calder, the exploration of line, movement, and balance was quintessential to his artistic vision. Bob Kuhn spent hours drawing animals from life and then would make thousands of drawings (on napkins and scraps of paper!) from memory until he found a gesture on which he could build an entire painting. Figurative artists for centuries have learned to draw the human form by repetitively drawing the model in 30, 60, and 90 second poses, forcing themselves to capture the character of the pose.

For Those New to Gesture Drawing

-Before attempting to draw something, it is important to get to know the medium and tools that you are using. Whether you draw with conté, vine charcoal, compressed charcoal, graphite, mechanical pencil, ball point pen, marker, or crayon, get to know how your chosen tool makes marks! Play around, until you feel comfortable with the types of marks you can make.

-Gesture drawing depends on a variety of marks and strokes to communicate information simply.

-Heavy, dark line can imply weight or form coming towards the viewer.
-Wide lines (i.e. side of the conté) can indicate shadow.
-Delicate, lightly-drawn lines can imply light hitting the form or the form turning
away from the viewer’s eye.

-Experiment with other types of lines – broken line, stippling, thick-and-thin. What do these marks say to you?

Using Gesture to Depict Birds (or Anything Else)
-Take a moment to look at the whole of what you want to draw. What are the most important angles? What shapes are the most significant?

-Let your hand react to what your eye is seeing. Imagine your hand moving over the forms as you draw the lines.

-If you have difficulty getting an angle right, you can hold up the tool or your finger to help approximate the angle. Try not to worry too much about accuracy. It’s more important to capture the feeling of what you see rather than the measured detail.

-Draw several quick gestures of the subject you want to draw.

-Repeat. Have fun!

Alla finale

2009-07-21T00:39:00.000-07:00

So I had a conversation with friend and fellow artist Michael Calles a while back (his painting, Hunkered Down, at right). He came by the gallery to drop off some new (AMAZING) work (if you don't know his work, do yourself a favor and visit his website: http://www.michaelcalles.com/). Michael is an exceptional wildlife painter with his feet firmly grounded in art history & the academic tradition. We met because we are both very fortunately acquainted with the great Ned Jacob and took an outrageously challenging horse-painting workshop with him a couple years ago. Shortly after, he approached Galleries West for representation and voila! Suddenly we are represented by the same gallery. Great opportunity for some great conversations that would bore the pants off the general public.

When we were chatting I was horribly jetlagged and, therefore, verbally incapacitated, but our conversation sparked the topic for this blog. We talked about the importance of plein air work, and of working from life. As we talked, I struggled to express what I am about to say here:

Winterdance, pastel on mounted paper, 8x6.

Alla prima is not my personal favorite approach. Don't get me wrong. Richard Schmid is a master, and there is nothing I don't love about his work. I love the how fresh and immediate a painting done in one sitting can be. But for years, I struggled to be a purely plein-air painter, believing that you must paint directly from the subject if you want to capture a moment. The birth of my daughter and the resulting limited painting time forced me to become more of a studio painter, and it was that change of lifestyle that led me to a more mature, less literal style of painting.

For me, painting in the field is where I react to the environment around me, where I observe and collect information, where I absorb the complex beauty of the natural world. But my best ideas seem to come afterwards. Sometimes months, or even years, after the first painting. When an image has distilled in my mind, and with distance from the original subject, my initial idea or reason for reacting to the subject becomes clearer. I am forced to rely on the knowledge I've gathered in my years of plein air work and freed to orchestrate the composition to communicate that abstract idea. The paintings move further away from documentary and more in the direction of poetry. At least, I hope.

Rejection

2009-03-08T13:43:00.001-07:00

In Shadows Cast. Oil on linen, 20x24.

Recently, I entered a juried exhibition held annually by a professional organization of which I am a member. I uploaded my digital image on the jury service's site and anxiously awaited the day when all the accepted names would be posted. When it arrived, I felt like I was back in high school field hockey summer camp, standing among the other anxious girls to see if I made the cut. As it turned out, I didn't make the A-list for this show. While rejection is a big part of our careers as artists, I have to confess that it cast a pall over the rest of my day. Whether we want to admit it or not, acceptance feels better than rejection.

As artists, we feel pressure to compete, to earn badges of authentication by jurors & peers as evidence our work's value. Galleries, collectors, writers, museums all expect this kind of vetting. Lest I sound too cynical about the whole process, let me stress that there are positives despite my adverse mien. It is a good thing to have a deadline and a purpose for painting. Even the most driven artists can use the extra incentive to focus their energies. The prospect of being juried helps to magnify and hone the process of self-editing. Juried shows encourage us to look outside of our studio doors, and even outside our regular comfort zone of subject matter and style. Looking at other's work can help us to see our own in a new light. Regardless of the ultimate result, our work can only grow from these exercises, provided we don't lose sight of our own goals.

Honors and adulation, though encouraging, are largely arbitrary and fleeting. At the end of the day, in art as in life, the only validation that counts is that which comes from within.

Do We Really Need Art?

2009-02-19T11:58:00.000-08:00

Still. Pastel on mounted paper. 12x18.

Our world is so volatile, so full of violence, so loud and busy and dangerous and exciting. We work hard to make money, to take care of our children, to provide the necessities. Isn't art just a frivolous luxury?

Well, I'm not going to make the argument that we need art to survive. It doesn't physically sustain us or provide shelter or warmth. But, that being said, art definitely provides sustenance for our spirits. We as human beings are reflected in art, and in turn art gives us pause to reflect. In a time when all the negative, the ugly, the terrifying is reported around the clock, art helps us to remember that there is still much beauty and grace in our amazing world. Then, not all art is about beauty. My own work is as often about silence, about meditation, about melancholy. Many people make art about injustice, pain, and anguish. The beauty of art is in its ability to transcend difference to speak to others. That connection we feel with another person's expression is what makes us eminently human. It's a connection that we need most in troubling times.

Children using art in education can learn about mathematical concepts like proportion, spatial relationships, fractions, geometry; they can learn concepts in chemistry and physics; they can learn about history, culture, music; the applications are endless. And children who are exposed to art also experience connection. They experience a learning process that is deeper and more approachable. They begin to realize the interrelatedness of disciplines and ideas.

So I guess I believe that while art is not a physical necessity for survival, a society's willingness to embrace and support the arts is a direct reflection of that society's vitality. We are all enriched intellectually and spiritually by our exposure to art, and I know my life is more meaningful because of it.