ARTIST TALK 2021

all right welcome to the artist talk for my show at studio gallery typically i do my artist talk in gallery but this year uh they're limited in gallery events for the obvious reason so i am doing it digitally and i'm gonna share it here on youtube um i asked for questions on patreon so i'm going to answer those but first i'll just give you a little background of how i got started in painting i started painting in august of 2003 without any real previous art experience i would sketch once in a while i was primarily into music since i was a little kid started playing guitar around seven or eight years old and then you know was in bands and that whole thing lived in san francisco like rope music and mostly did jobs that allowed me to pursue a creative uh to you know pursue music so i was a courier for 15 years in san francisco um and then i started working in construction mostly doing like um at first it was like kitchen and bathroom remodels and then uh working for about five years just as an electrician and uh the construction stuff was like most of while uh while i was learning to paint um that those were the occupations i had so i'd work like three days a week and then i could paint two days a week so like i said i started in um in august of 2003 so what would that be 18 years just over 18 years of painting and you know some people say well what inspired you to paint and i'm not entirely sure you know it's hard to trace back although there's some things that i think are interesting um before i ever even thought about painting um there were a couple times where i was really drawn to uh like for example there was i was i remember i was driving down el camino which is kind of a main road here on the peninsula uh san francisco peninsula and i remember seeing a plein air painter it was this old dude just sitting you know painting these trees on the el camino and uh and i just i i was like wow that's so cool and i pulled over and then i went over to talk to him he wasn't super friendly actually i went over and i was like you know i don't even know what i was i just wanted to see what he was doing and so i talked to him for a few minutes and he was saying that he was out visiting his daughter from connecticut and that this was how he made his living and i was like wow you make a living painting pictures that's amazing um i didn't realize how hard it was not only to paint but also to make a living doing it but anyway so uh that was kind of an early that was like probably 10 years before i ever started painting and then another sort of early sign that i was interested was um when i worked at dhl as a courier there was a guy named bates and he had a studio down on hate street he was older than me i was like in my mid-20s at the time and i lived in the lower hate uh area in san francisco and he had a he had a studio right on hate street it was kind of a basement studio and i'd seen like a picture or something there was no internet then so i saw a picture of um one of his paintings like he brought some in and i was like wow that's cool i want to come and see your studio like i was super interested and i went down and hung out with him and you do these big acrylic paintings of the city and um so there were little i was always interested in painting um and then you know in 2003 my daughter emma was like two years old and i i remember wanting to have some sort of creative outlet that wasn't super noisy because like music after you know her mom and you know she and her mom went to bed it was like uh you know painting was kind of a nice creative thing that didn't you know it couldn't like pick up the guitar and sing as much um so in any case there was that and then also we had gotten this house here and um i kind of like the idea of having real paintings in the house uh so it's kind of a combination of all those things this percolating desire to paint and then you know this need for something creative when emma quiet creative activity when m was small and then also this desire to actually have real paintings as opposed to prints in my home uh so and then we went out i remember going out to a gallery and looking and the prices were just like i was amazed at how expensive the ones that i liked were there's a gallery in burlingame here called kerwin gallery that specialized in early california paintings so i liked some of the paintings in there but like i said i remember there was one small painting i liked and it was like ten thousand dollars and so i you know i thought okay i can do this myself so it was kind of all of those influences or all of those inspirations coming together um and then once i started my first painting i realized it was a lot harder than i thought and i think that that challenge of that just i sort of got obsessed with it and i would i would stay outside like i worked really early in the morning i had to be up either sometimes as early as like 4 30 or 5 um and but typically more like around six from my to to work at dhl in the beginning there uh when i first started painting i was still at dhl and a courier uh but in any case uh i would spend you know i'd go out into the i have like a studio out back and i'd go out there maybe around 9 30 or 10 o'clock and sometimes i'd be out there until two or three in the morning have barely any sleep you know when i go to work but i just was yeah i was obsessed and i think because of the challenge it was a lot more difficult than i thought um but there were obviously there were enough rewards there that it kept me going like i kept seeing potential so um that's kind of how i started and uh and like i said now it's been 18 years and i started showing at studio gallery i think either 14 or 15 years ago just started off with small shows like group shows and i remember it took a couple years before anything sold and um and then uh you know so i participate in these group shows and then eventually my groups show sales were sufficient that janet the gallery said hey would you like to do a solo show and and so now this is my eighth solo show there um and uh so yeah so that's sort of a back story now i'm gonna jump into the questions that people ask and i try to keep these focused on the show but you know some of them may be you know more about technique or that sort of thing uh so well actually let me talk about the show this year this year the show is primarily uh plein air paintings it's mostly paintings that were done and you you know you can see them on youtube here the videos where the paintings were created in fact jennifer at the gallery did something really interesting and i'll put a link to the show down below but if you if you click on a painting if if the painting that's created if there's a video that corresponds to the painting there'll be a little link in the description on the studio gallery website so you can look through and if you see you know a particular painting you like or whatever you want to see the video or it was actually painted there is a link so that's kind of cool that's the first time we've done that this year we talked about it in the past but i realized like last year only maybe four or five of the paintings i can't remember the exact number um only about four or five of the paintings last year were uh painted in my videos this year my the the paintings that i uh did and posted on youtube or were in videos actually had a higher success rate with my paintings and i didn't even realize that until i started looking through the work and picking out paintings for the show so anyway jump into the questions here uh do you ever have trouble letting go of a painting uh i don't actually i i do have trouble letting go of a painting if i've lived with it for a while so if i hang it up in my house and i live with it and and i like it and i actually grow attached to it then i have trouble selling it and it doesn't even mean that the painting is perfect at all like a lot of the paintings i've hung in my house are ones that don't sell that i like but they're not or even maybe they're ones that i wouldn't bring to a gallery because i feel like you know that they're maybe the level of finish in the past i was uncomfortable with the level of finish and thought oh maybe this is just too loose for a gallery or whatever so a lot of those paintings i hung onto i'll never let them go now they're a part of my life so that's how i get attached to a painting is by living with it having it on my walls most of the paintings in the show i would get attached to if i hung them up but i don't and and so also the other thing is i don't have trouble letting them go because i create a lot of work and there's something really wonderful about knowing that the painting is going to go out and be in somebody's home it's going to be you know cared for honestly better than i would care for the painting um you know i'm so into the process and on to the next one i stack paintings up and i i don't take particular i don't take good care of them really so it's like nice that they're being cared for out there and enjoyed as opposed to like stacked up around my house so yeah i don't have any trouble letting them go unless i've lived with them and become attached to them do you ever uh feel lonely as an artist i used to yes i used to feel like when i first started painting full time you know i uh i'd always had always had jobs that were sort of social jobs in a way where i'd get a social fix from my job when i was a courier for dhl i had a route in the morning um and it was like you know four or five hours but i was in downtown san francisco um just out the market there and it was like i saw so many people in the morning i was like okay i got my social fix just like you know delivering packages saying hello to people and then construction the same thing we would work with smaller teams and everything but there was a social connection there um and then when i started painting full-time i had a bunch of shows or opportunities that required me to just be working almost full time to create paintings for those shows and that was difficult at first not anymore though because i do paint with people and um and so i'm not i'm not lonely ever anymore and and now actually i talked to my daughter more than ever now like probably a couple times a day talk to her mom all the time talk to my family but as far as like hanging out in person um no it's been great lately and it's just like painting with other people and there's a question regarding how i meet people to paint with that i'll talk about in a minute here but it's mostly actually through like instagram and through youtube uh so yeah i was lonely for sure at first not anymore okay what is it like uh selling your art for this or what was it like selling your art for the first time um i'm trying to remember back i think the first paintings i sold i'd been painting for about a year i think in the beginning when i'd sell paintings i was sort of self-conscious i think i was more you know because i just felt like i was learning and i all i could see was the problems in them and so that was a little bit made me a little bit uncomfortable so i just sold them very inexpensively like i think 11 by 14 was 100 you know and um it's more or less just giving them away uh so the first paintings yeah there was but then on the other hand there was some real there was satisfaction there as well in that somebody was willing to buy my work but i would say it was outweighed by my insecurity about the pro but about the paintings if i look back on them now i'm like you know i can see the charm in them or whatever they're not perfect or whatever but i'm not like self-conscious about them um you know it's just i don't i kind of let that go at some point um and where i'm you know self-conscious about my early work or whatever i think i judge myself maybe a little bit too harshly in the beginning and also too it's up to the person if somebody likes your work you know if they like the painting and they connect with it then that's great who are you to you know argue them out of that that's not a good thing to do let them make their own decision but uh there's more to this though so those were the first paintings i sold but then i started selling some little six by sixes online i had a blog and i was doing daily painting for a little while and those paintings at that point i was having i've been painting for about three years at that point or four years had a little more confidence and i was that was really satisfying um and those paintings were like six by sixes for a hundred dollars and i sold i think 85 of them in one year that was that gave me a lot of confidence so that was uh really reassuring you know that people are interested in what i was doing and it sort of gave me the confidence to start thinking about approaching a gallery which i had no idea how that worked and had been sort of intimidated by that um so yeah so those first sales were yeah they were good and and like i said in mostly the ones online those sales those ones where i was feeling pretty good about the work it was a real confidence booster for sure uh talk about the light in your paintings uh so there there are a couple things that are important in my paintings um in this show in particular but also just in general and it's been important since the beginning uh light has always been important like a convincing feeling of light in my paintings and um and that's something i'm always going for it doesn't necessarily have to be a sunny day you know there's overcast light there's you know the light you get on a cloudy day where like a portion of the landscape or the seascape or whatever you're painting will be in shadow and then other parts will be in light and the light when you're painting outdoors is constantly uh changing and in other words if you were to paint the same scene 10 times it would it would you know definitely depending on the time of year time of day etc there would be different lighting effects so yes i'm very fascinated with light um and what else uh and how do i go about as a question let's see talk about the light and how i go about you know having light in the painting is i typically look for um strong patterns of light and shadow they often talk there's like there's an old saying in painting that you paint your lights with your darks or whatever so if you have like nice shadow patterns it's a lot easier to get a lighting effect or you know convincing feeling of light in your paintings the other thing is kind of pushing warm and cool relationships like in other words i tend to exaggerate the warmth in the light and the cool in the the cool colors in the shadows so in other words pushing like the orange yellow red in the light and then the blue mostly like blues and purples uh in the shadow shapes and that and the the you know those two those co those colors play against each other and create a feeling of light you know particularly like the complementary relationship of like blue and orange or yellow and violet or yellow and purple which is something the impressionists did you know and it's one of the great things about painting on location is you can see those subtle colors in the shadows when you're painting from a photograph it tends to be the shadows tend to be really really dark and you don't see those delicate shifts in the blues and you know the warms and cools in the shadow and warms and cool in the light as well uh so that's kind of a brief talk about light um what percentage of my week is spent er what is what's percentage of your week is spent in the field painting usually it's like three days a week although sometimes it's more it just depends or sometimes it's less when i was preparing for this show i was actually uh maybe painting once a week and then mostly what i was doing is building frames and that sort of thing but um this year i think i want to adhere to that like paint you know two or three times in the field and then a couple days a week building frames and doing touch-ups on painting so that i'm not just you know i don't get to to uh the end of the year or right before my show at studio where i'm trying to put it all together at the very end that's not a pleasant way to go every year that that happens there's a point in the process where it's almost like a breaking point where i just feel like you know it's partially just being alone for six weeks i don't hang out and paint with other people i try to continue to make videos and i have this year uh both here and on patreon in fact more videos on patreon i was posting almost every other day at times just sort of you know sharing the process of uh you know of show prep but i think um yeah so going forward this year painting outdoors on location two or three times a week and then um the other days you know editing videos uh doing touch-ups on paintings and building frames and sort of get ahead of my next show you know so that it doesn't just all come down on me at once can you find something to paint regardless of where you go uh i would say probably yes but there are locations that i go to that are just challenging um you know like i like to paint on the coast a lot here at san mateo county coast and yeah there are certain places i've gone where i just can't get a good painting from the location if i go to a place like pescadero i typically there's multiple compositions there that i think work and i can you know i can shift those basic compositional approaches uh like i can vary them and still get a good painting out of it so pescadero is one of my favorite places to paint for that reason also it's like free parking um and but there's like a lot of variety there but there are other places along the coast where i've gone and i just can't make anything of it it's just either uh yeah just the kind of natural the shape of the rocks or it's hard to explain like and i i keep trying you know there's there's a place just south of pescadero that i've gone multiple times and it's really secluded and it's like but i just can't get a good painting out of that place so yeah i know there's i i you know not every place works although i do kind of feel like if you don't give up um that there are paintings to be made everywhere it's just you've got to find them and some places are more challenging than others so i've often thought it could be a fun thing to like you know try to do uh you know just pick a random street corner in san francisco and say all right you've got to make a painting from here you know uh and i've tried that and i look around sometimes i've done that and then i'm standing around i'm like i don't see anything and other times i'll find something that that will work so yeah i think you probably could find yeah i think you could get a painting just about anywhere but some places are really tough okay uh any new direction for 2022 uh as i kind of mentioned a little bit this year i did a lot of plein air painting a lot more than usual and i more like this show i'm mo this is the i am happiest with this show of all of my shows i mean i've always put out paintings that i'm proud of but i think all the plein air painting i did this year really paid off like i started to things were clicking and once the show was all hung in the gallery and i was standing there looking at it there was yeah i was definitely really happy with the work and almost even you know it yeah just pleasantly surprised by how it all there was like a nice continuity and i just yeah i feel like it was i was really ha i'm really happy with this show and really happy with all the paintings in it um so i want to continue a plein air painting because i think it makes me grow as a painter more than anything i will i will be doing some larger studio pieces um and i'm going to try to do those earlier in the year i put those off to literally the last month before the show although they were done from images that i had on my computer that i wanted to paint for years for quite a while um but in any case uh yeah so new direction for 2022 no kind of more of the same um and they're as as as demand like sort of increases from my work and and there are more opportunities and whatever um i'd say that in 2022 i want to be more focused on how i spend my time and because you know if you you you have more if you have more opportunity it doesn't necessarily mean that's a good thing that can kind of it's a good idea to be clear about what it is you want to do what are the important things to do because you can't do everything and so i've kind of you know what i want to do is i want to paint i want to make videos for both here on youtube and patreon totally love doing that um and that's it and surf my deuce you know surfing as much as possible hopefully every day which you know is a big part of it that actually helps me with painting mainly in that i think people don't understand how demanding physically um plein air painting is and i have weight since i've started surfing on a regular basis or like almost daily my stamina for painting is much greater and i think that's also like being more physically fit has really helped me be a big a better painter i don't get tired um as much so i'll be out there for two or three hours and at the end i still have energy and i'm and i'm not like sort of you know fading when i went at the critical part in the painting walking helps too like i have a hill nearby on my house and so if the waves aren't good or whatever i walked at the top of the hill and um that's a good workout too so staying physically fit i think is an important part i'll continue with that as well but it's an important part of painting for me it's like uh really helps so anyway and then the last thing i want to do for 2022 um then is to continue to paint larger the painting the plein air paintings in this show were bigger uh than last year uh like the average size was bigger you know in the past i'd had paintings that were quite small like you know like even a few like six by eights and six by sixes um and i remember even like my first show had probably a quarter of it was like eight by tens uh so gradually i'm getting been getting bigger and bigger so these paintings are more there's a lot of 14 by 18 16 by 20 16 by 24s so the bulk of this show is kind of in that range 20 by 20 sort of in that range and i'd like to have more plein air paintings that are larger than that so next year like instead of having 16 by 20 is my go-to plein air size maybe have it be 20 to 20 by 25 or you know some 18 by 24s anyway something in that range kind of step it up and then occasionally do an even larger piece you know maybe like a two foot by three foot or larger so that that would be another thing i want to do in 2022 and of course those videos will be here on youtube uh let's see any lessons learned during the pandemic not really i mean i kind of it didn't really affect me i mean when they shut down the beaches that really that was not good so um you know no surfing no painting that was a drag and that lasted almost six weeks um but no not really i mean i don't think so i mean i kind of like once the beaches were back open i was it was business as usual for me so uh yeah so kind of although i will say that painting really did help keep me positive yeah for sure and surfing too just anything i was doing outdoors um and i didn't want to do as much studio painting during the pandemic i think because i'd been indoors at first when it was like kind of locked down i did a bunch of paintings indoors little cityscapes and stuff and i was just dying to get back outside i couldn't wait and there were certain places that i i think i tried to paint but a lot of parks were closed too um anyway so yeah i think maybe yeah the pandemic you know made me realize how important plein air painting is to me any ideas or strategies that worked in the past that you've let go i think my process is kind of the same i mean it took years for me to develop you know or to sort of get my plein air set up my easel set up and my tier my materials kind of honed down but they haven't changed all that much in the last you know even 10 years so yeah i don't think there's been anything i've really let go i'm still painting the way i did before i think that the biggest changes because there have been changes in the results of my work i think there were two things that really uh that were big changes number one was this probably three or four years ago really focusing on composition like realizing that you know i looked at a bunch of my paintings i'm like why are they not working you know the ones that don't work and why are the ones that were why do the ones that work work and most of the time it was composition so it became really clear to me that composition was is so important it's like and so i started studying that in other paintings by looking at you know uh sort of classic painters or whatever or even just on instagram or online finding paintings that i thought were had really strong compositions and then and trying to figure out what it was that appealed to me and then have those try to have those compositional elements of my own paintings so just that conscious focus on composition i think was a huge thing and i think that's paid off another thing that i've let go of actually this is true i've let go of this i used to be very literal i didn't i was i was hesitant to i would edit things especially when i was doing city paintings but like i wouldn't move things around when i was plein air painting i i felt like i wouldn't make drastic changes or any or things like that my paintings got so much better when i started you know using the visual uh landscape or whatever the subject matter as sort of raw materials to create a good painting so now you know it's my paintings are rarely literal um there's something else i noticed that was interesting when i was in paris i there's a lot of painters that painted along the the scene and so while i was there at night after painting i'd come back and you know go on my computer and i'd look up different painters who had painted their like you know pizarro or edward hopper or alvaro marquez and who's like a fovus painter love his work and he painted a lot in that area so anyway i look at this i looked at those paintings and and then i kind of walk out on the sand and try to figure out like where they were painted from and some you know that were pretty true and then others like there's one hopper painting that i really like that just not possible i walked along uh the key as they call it i was calling it quay which we do in america i guess it's pronounced that way but the key the walkway along the uh along the sen and i was like i was i knew the bridge that he painted and i knew the buildings and everything and it just was not possible he moved things around just like i did with notre dame so that's very common and um it's something i didn't do in the past and i so i let go of that like being literal that sort of just chained to what i saw it's like no this is you've got to create you're trying to create a good painting um and you're trying to stay true to the scene but in some ways you know you can incorporate you may need to incorporate or move some of the key elements to to kind of create or capture the essence of a scene so uh yeah so that's something i let go of being too literal uh that's about it how long did it take to produce a painting that you are proud of it's a good question i mean i think that i'm i think that i was sort of proud of the elements of my paintings even like right off the bat although i wouldn't have in other words enough to keep me inspired and keep me interested in painting and not giving up i think there are enough little rewards in what i was doing um you know that um yeah that i kept going but as far as like really feeling proud of something or feeling like wow this is really really good it seemed like in 2007 i had some paintings like that you know and that and i started in 2003 so i'd say like three or four years where i felt like that my work was um maybe good enough to be like that like i felt like it was as good as people i saw in galleries or like really close you know and um and and that was the year i actually i sent some of those images to studio gallery and that's how i ended up getting in you know into one of the first group shows so i think it took about four years before i felt like okay i think i'm gallery ready now you know and then that would be maybe one out of ten paintings though but i was still getting i was still achieving that you know once in a while achieving that level of um satisfaction once in a while do you ever wipe out and start over or do i just kind of push through and hope that i'll you know solve the problems or whatever i do wipe out the painting and start over i can now i'm at a point where i can tell whether a painting is going to work or not or at least i feel like i can tell um and as i mentioned before it's primarily compositional so i as you guys if you watch my videos you know i sketch out and burnt sienna i have a pretty id a good idea if the composition is you know gonna work or not um obviously because if the sketch is there and sometimes i'll even with burnt sienna i'll kind of you know shade in the shadow shapes and i do not move forward unless i like the composition and sometimes i'll have to wipe out the sketch two or three times usually not usually it's you know i can kind of um usually now i'm better at having a good compositional idea and then i may just adjust a few of the lines here and there and like i said move things around to make it work but i feel like the drawing portion when i'm drawing in burnt sienna is kind of it's it's it's my way to enter into the subject matter and that's why i don't want to sketch and then transfer it over i i kind of like working things out on the canvas or the panel and if i'm doing it in burnt sienna i can just wipe it down and it's just like you've toned your panel so it's not really a problem um but you know so but once i'm past that portion you know the burnt sienna sketch no i rarely i rarely see because i just don't go if i don't if i don't like what i see if i don't like the composition then i just you know i've learned from experience that the composition isn't good the painting is not going to work out regardless of how nice your brush work is or how accurate your values and colors are and all that it's all wasted and it's not wasted energy but the painting's not going to turn out i mean you may still learn something in the process but you know successful painting is a series of successful steps and and step number one is like deciding on what like if you if the scene is even paintable i may talk about that more in a minute here but is the scene paintable i mean it may make a great photograph that doesn't mean it's going to make a great painting um so i've kind of gotten a better idea of what i what will work as a painting and then composing it okay so if we're if we're at that point and it's still all systems go then you move on to the block in and then you know and then come back once it's blocked in which means just approximating all the colors usually a thin layer of you know scrubbed in pretty quickly sometimes i only spend like 10 minutes on that or less even now it's usually about 10 or 15 minutes and then comes like uh you know refining colors and and that sort of thing and and then having the variety and adding more thick paint and that sort of thing but what you're trying not to do is like you're trying to hang on to uh the composition and and maybe uh but yet like i said sort of flesh it out and start um accentuating or building on the strong points and then eliminating some of the things that aren't working um but they're they're minor things you know it's not like some major restructuring so yeah so i usually the wipeouts happen during the sketch and and that happens yeah quite often uh what are the biggest challenges of plein air painting i would say for me the biggest challenge is number one would be weather like in here in the bay area it's wind we don't have a you know rain is not really an issue but wind is brutal so i'd say wind hands down biggest challenge uh there's a painting in this show actually that i really like and it's dusted with sand but i mean i still love the painting but it's like this if you you know rub your fingers across it it's like it feels like you know a very fine sandpaper um just because there was so much wind it was in santa cruz and and then the sand got in the paint and but i still like the painting you can't really see the sand you know if you get up close you can but uh but you know it'll blow over your easel it's just uncomfortable um so that can be that can be the that's the biggest challenge i'd say i'm not challenged by like people i enjoy interacting with people i like that um and uh i'd say another challenge is that uh it's just more difficult because you're you're you know the to take a whole scene and then sort of compose it and you know kind of narrow that down to a composition that's not really a challenge for me anymore it used to be and now that's a benefit because now if i'm working from an image on the computer i have to deal with like all i've got to choose from is what's in this you know in the image whereas one of the things i love now that i'm actually you know moving things around and including things in the painting that aren't actually maybe like in my viewfinder like i might take the sky from over here or the light that's on a particular tree in this over here and put it on the tree over here or whatever incorporate a foreground that i see over to my right you know it's just so um but in the beginning what was really challenging is i'd be looking through my viewfinder and i'm like not finding it you know it's like because you'll never find the perfect composition through your viewfinder maybe you will once in a while but so that was really hard for me but that's not hard anymore since i let go of that and now i'm just like using like i said using the scenery as raw materials to create a good painting uh changing light as well although even that i'm not as i still can work with that now too that just takes practice so i think the big thing with plein air painting is it's really hard that's the point it still challenges me all the time but you get better at it and you get better at you know something like painting moving things like the ocean for me was just how do you capture that like you know it it was really difficult because it's all in motion you have to kind of learn what the waves are doing and carefully observe and understand the process of you know what they look like in every different stage of building up and then breaking and you know you it's so so it's tough you know you're painting a moving target but those but the ocean paintings i feel that i've done plein air i couldn't do those from a photograph there's no way is it rewarding to uh meet the the collectors who buy your work yes i really enjoy that i mean that's one of my favorite things about the artist that like the reception and um you know it's fun to meet people who have who are like buying my work and talk to them and stuff and we did that a little bit this year we had i was in the gallery for a couple hours on a sunday i think yeah last sunday or was it saturday no i think it was sunday and yeah it's really wonderful it's nice to meet people who um and kind of share you know how the painting or what my inspiration was for the painting that they ended up um purchasing so yeah i love that i do i really like it um and then also too occasionally like and i just posted on instagram you know occasionally they'll send me a picture of the painting and it's you know hanging in their home i love that it's so cool to see where it ends up so uh yeah so that's really nice does your method change when you're painting different subjects no it doesn't really i mean i'm typically looking for a strong pattern of light and shadow create a nice composition that feels you know that works for me um no my process is the same even actually i try to keep my process the same even when i'm painting in the studio i use the same technique or same approach that i use when i'm plein air painting so it does not really change sometimes i will i'll use different brushes the subject matter does dictate in a way how i approach things but basically what it is it's the same approach it's just on a smaller scale if that makes sense i'm still just looking for simple shapes but sometimes i will you know do a painting that just has it's just based on mostly large shapes you know and then there's others where particularly if there's man-made objects like say cars and buildings and that sort of thing then i'll start using smaller brushes still looking for small shapes within say a car or something but i am breaking them down into smaller little into smaller shapes so that's the only real difference depending on the subject um is kind of the scale of the brush work really you know all right what makes a location perfect to paint uh obviously i would say that there are a lot of compositional opportunities like i mentioned pescadero there's just there's so many uh there's like a bunch of paintings in this show that were done at pescadero just because there's i've found multiple compositions that really work so that's one the other is if it's protected not overly crowded is another good um is a good uh quality to have in a painting location um i'd say that's about it really oh if there's a taqueria nearby that's always cool but that's about it you know just a lot of compositional opportunities and you know somewhat secluded protected all right how did you discover your style and technique a lot of people you know want to sort of work on their style or develop your style your style is just going to emerge naturally so you don't i don't i never consciously um worked on that and it's almost it's really hard for us to see our own style uh you know i i kind of think that like i'm not totally aware of my style like people tell me i could pick out your paintings easily you know i know that you did you know and i and i feel that same way about other painters i'm like i could pick out their paintings you know everybody has their own unless you're unless you're good enough to kind of imitate and there are a lot of painters that do that there's a bunch of these painters that are imitating this certain style of cityscape or whatever and oftentimes i'm not sure who did it i'm like oh is that jeremy mann or is it this person or that you know but if you're if you're just kind of doing your own thing um and you're not sort of imitating another painter i i feel like your style will just naturally emerge and it's going to be there whether you want it to be or not um so uh and then as far as technique goes yeah i do like what is this like how do i discover my style of technique um i'd say yeah so style just emerged naturally and then technique was kind of by looking at other paintings and just sort of seeing elements in those paintings that i liked and then going out and experimenting and trying to recreate those in my own painting um and it's so yeah just overall time just by practice continuing to go out and paint and um and then you know evaluating my work looking at other work and like i said incorporating things in in other paintings typically in classic paintings um you know by painters that are have stood the test of time you know uh let's see next question all right why did you choose oil paint over other mediums i just uh i liked the classic element of oil like a lot of the painters that i was looking at when i first started um you know also too like i don't even know that i knew about acrylic paint i just thought all paintings were oil paintings i didn't know anything about it so when i started i just went to oh and then my grandfather had painted he was kind of a you know he he painted um and but he passed away when i was only three so i wasn't around him painting but i do you know i've had paintings of i've seen his paintings and had one in particular of cape cod i have some cottages in cape cod and i grew up with that so and then my mom painted when i for a little bit when i was around five i remember the smell of like turpentine and oil paint and all that so i just i guess i just naturally assumed oh if you're going to paint pictures you paint in oil but i'm glad that i did i really do like oil paint uh the fact that it does dry slowly and it's so creamy and there's like this ability to blend and there is a look to oil paint that that i really do appreciate and it's like the classic medium you know uh so there's this long tradition and so it's kind of cool to be a part of that as well all right and then the final question how do you develop your art to include or exclude details uh i guess i could rephrase that to say how do you know which details to include and which ones to eliminate this is a huge thing um i think that when we do paint complicated scenes like say you know a cityscape you know there's you're overwhelmed with detail uh or you could even paint like a uh what else i mean i suppose there's other things that you could paint in nature that get bogged down you where you could get bogged down with detail as well but i do feel like painting like man-made subjects the detail can be overwhelming but like i said i haven't encountered that as well with um with landscape but the key thing there is again it comes down to composition i'm looking for like an appealing arrangement of large shapes so whether i'm painting a cityscape or a landscape or anything for that matter and that's that's the uh most important thing and then i eliminate all of the detail that detracts from the overall design and it's a tricky thing to decide which things to include and which things to eliminate i tend to what happens for me is if i paint in some sort of detail like let me give you an example like say a house or i remember i was painting a lifeguard tower at one point and it had you know antenna coming out of the top and there was like a bunch of stuff hanging on it you know i just some of that detail painted in a loose way actually was beneficial and some of it i feel like detracted from the painting so you know it's a lot of the detail at the end is just sort of trial and error what's contributing and what isn't but if i if i struggle with some detail trying to make it work and it's not working i'll usually just i won't waste time on it i'm after big shapes and a strong composition and a good feeling of light and if if the detail doesn't contribute to that and detracts from it then it's it goes um but one thing i will say this year i've noticed that sometimes i would simplify rocks when i'm doing a seascape like there might be a bunch of smaller rocks like and i would leave those out and now i include those like in the painting moss beach and i really like that so yeah so it's just trial and error that's that's what it's been and it continues to be anyway so that is it it's kind of a long video but i hope you guys enjoyed this let me know what you think in the comments if you'd like to see some extra videos there's a patreon link down below and if you're interested in seeing the show and with links to see the videos on youtube i'll put a link to the um to the show down below uh and the show is up until next monday at studio gallery uh if you happen to be in san francisco want to check it out so thanks for hanging out guys stay creative and i'll see you guys in the next video [Music] [Music] huh [Music] [Music] you

Channel: chamberlainpaintings

Views: 12,307

Keywords: mike chamberlain, michael chamberlain, mike, michael, chamberlain, emma chamberlain, art, oil paint, oil painter, plein air painting, plein air, instructional, tutorial

Id: zIVSbfqisCE

Length: 47min 24sec (2844 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021