Bobbi Heath Paintings View RSS

The Right Tools for the Job 18 Mar 2020 1:50 PM (5 years ago)

Have you noticed that part of the enjoyment of starting a new project is researching and buying some new tools? I'm not saying that's a bad thing. A new project means learning something new, and in my experience that's pretty attractive to most people. And we all know how hard it is to build something without good tools, so sometimes it takes a couple of passes to get the right ones.


There are a number of mediums available for making paintings; oil, acrylic, water color, etc. And in any given medium, there's more than one way to apply the paint. Remember finger painting? I'm not going to try that with my oil paints...


Most oil paintings are made using brushes. But painting knives are also used, in a process that's somewhat like frosting a cake. I've tried painting with knives a couple of times over the years. I like the way the paintings look, there's a lot of texture. And I like the looseness I can achieve with a knife. The lack of need for solvent and the way the knives clean up with a wet wipe is also very appealing. You know I'm always looking at ways to make things easier.

What I didn't know when I tried knives the first time is that painting on an easel isn't the best way. To paint with a knife you need to be able to move your hand around the surface of the painting from all directions, and that's much easier to do on a table or with a jig in your lap. And fortunately I had one.


So the new tools needed to paint with a knife are of course, knives. Painting knives have three important characteristics; size, shape, and flexibility. The size and shape you need are determined by the area you want to paint with a given color, and it takes some practice to figure that out. I like pretty stiff knives, but I may go for the softer ones as I get better at it. The other tool you need is a jig to hold the painting, so you can turn it around to slide the paint in your direction of choice. It also helps to keep the paint from getting all over you!

Stay tuned, this summer I'm going for plein air knife paintings of boats.

The Trouble with Buoys 11 Mar 2020 1:43 PM (5 years ago)

I've had my troubles with lobster buoys, they're out there on the bay waiting for the careless mariner, and sometimes that's me. I remember once near Five Islands, wrapping one around the prop of our sailboat. Fortunately we were able to get loose from it without anyone going overboard in a wet suit!


On the other hand, they are beautiful, floating on a calm sea or bouncing in the spray. And they are colorful, which suits my purposes well. Rarely do I get to paint a floating lobster buoy from life, so I spend some time on the water taking pictures of them. It's tough unless our boat is going slow, at 10 knots I'm not such a good shot. I've deleted quite a few pictures where the buoy is sliding off the side of the photo.


They make a great subject hanging on a wall as well, so I've recently spent some time searching for lobster shacks or neighbor's garages displaying them. Singly or in groups, I've been so pleased with how much you all have liked these buoy paintings. It's good to know that I'm not the only one who finds them a great reminder of time on the coast.


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When Color is a Gift 13 Feb 2020 2:40 PM (5 years ago)

Plein Air - My Favorite Way to Paint 12 Jul 2019 12:57 PM (5 years ago)

Tools of the Trade 24 Jun 2019 12:23 PM (5 years ago)

Last week I had the pleasure of doing a demo at the Boothbay Harbor Yacht Club in Maine. I thought as well as doing some painting, I would  go through a few of the basics and tools we use to paint, especially outside. The gang loved it, and wanted a list of the gadgets and tools I showed them. Here it is.

Paint Boxes and Tripods

I brought two paintboxes. The smaller one (top above), which I use for travel, is by Open Box M, and the larger heavier box is an EasyL by Artwork Essentials. The former is very lightweight and fits into the laptop sleeve of my backpack. The later can open flat for use with a Gloucester easel.


Tripods

The tripod I use with my large box, is a Bogen that my Mom used with her camera years ago, with a Manfrotto MA496RC2 ball head. The tripod I use for travel is a Manfrotto available on amazon. The Manfrotto tripod has 5 sections on each leg and folds up small enough to fit in my backpack. When you are buying a tripod to go with your paintbox, remember that the weight rating given for the tripod is for a camera, which is much smaller on each side than the width of your paintbox. Don't buy one with a maximum camera weight the same as your paintbox, it won't be stable when you try to mix paint near the edges.


Brush and Knife Holder


I use a Hershey's candy container with a chips clip to hold my brushes and knives out of the way when not in use. I got the idea from Carol L. Douglas, who uses a Pringles can for the same purpose.


Guerrilla 10 oz Stainless Steel Brush Washer

The brush washer is used to clean your brush when moving from one color family to another. You can usually thoroughly wipe off a brush and continue to use it when moving from one value to another in the same color family. I hang the brush washer off the edge of my paint box on a hook. The thing to look for when buying a brush washer is three clamps to hold the lid on. If you get one with only two clamps, it will leak. This one is available on amazon here.


Gamsol solvent


Kemper Wipe Out Tool



This is great little tool for taking off oil paint. You can buy it on amazon here.


Baby Wipes

It's amazing what good quality baby wipes can remove from your hands and clothing.


Artwork Essentials ValueComp



From Artwork Essentials, this is a useful gray scale and filtered viewer that removes color so that you can see values. You can buy it here. Note that if you are buying more than one thing from Artwork Essentials, you will save on shipping if you place your order by phone. They have numerous other tools that are very useful, in addition to the paintboxes.


Hog Bristle Brushes

Hog bristle brushes work very well for oil paint, because they hold lots of paint, but don't use them for acrylics. Synthetic brushes are best for acrylic. I don't have a recommendation for the former because my favorite Robert Simmons Signets have just been discontinued. I like Robert Simmons Titanium brushes for acrylics. I use mostly flats, with a few rounds in the small sizes.


Canvas Panels

I demo'd on a canvas panel from Ocean State Job Lot, a great value at less than a dollar each for the 8"x10" size in a pack of 5.

Drawing Boats 29 May 2019 2:20 PM (5 years ago)

Drawing boats can be challenging on a number of fronts; getting the basic shape, making your boat float, and building believable reflections. A simple way to draw your boat uses a figure eight. Read through this post and you'll be able to see the figure 8 in the boat above.

Drawing Your Boat


The diagram above demonstrates drawing a boat using a figure 8. The figure 8 becomes the gunnels of the boat. The gunnels (or gunwales) are the tops of the boat's sides.

Step 1: Draw a figure 8 as in the diagram. Note that the right hand orb of the ellipse is smaller then the left orb. We'll make the smaller orb the bow.

Step 2: From the highest point on the right orb, draw a line down and to the left to create the bow, and another line down and to the right to create the stern. These lines can be somewhat curved as in the diagram or straight depending on the kind of boat you want to draw.

Step 3: Draw a line to connect the bow and stern. And connect the right side of the bow to the bottom of the boat.

Step 4: Erase the line that is dotted in the figure, which is not visible.

Step 5. If the boat has a square stern, draw a line across the back of the left side of the figure. If the boat has a square bow, follow the same process.

Floating Your Boat



To make a boat look like it's floating we need to understand the water line, which is the line that marks where the top of the water hits the boat. The waterline is flat (horizontal) if the boat is at eye level, just like in the photo of the blue lobster boat in the top photo above. Note that this is true even though we are looking at both the stern and side of the blue boat. If you've seen a boat in a painting that looks like it's going up hill, it's because this was not understood.

As you begin to look down on the boat more, it moves off the horizontal as in the photo on the bottom left. The more you can see of the inside of the boat, the less horizontal it will be in your painting. In the photo on the bottom right, where we are standing at the end of the boat and looking directly down on it, a line from the center of the bow to the center of the stern is vertical.

Note also that the figure 8 approach works best when we can see part, but not all, of the inside of the boat. In the bottom two photos where we can see all of the inside of the boats it's not as helpful.

Using the Pixlr Editor App to Posterize 21 May 2019 6:13 AM (5 years ago)

In a previous post I introduced Carlson's Theory of Angles, a great approach to simplifying and understanding the values in landscape painting. Now I'd like to show another example, and a useful tool to help you see the values more easily. The photo above is Beaver Brook in Westford, MA, at a spot where I like to paint. Carlson's theory seems to be working, the sky is light, the marsh grass is a little darker and the trees are definitely the darkest. Is there a way to see this more clearly?

Yes, there is. You can turn the image to black and white, and then posterize it. Posterizing is the process of limiting the number of values in a photo. It's easiest to see in black and white, and we are looking for values, so that works well. You can do this with Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, but it can also be done with a free app on your phone, called Pixlr Editor (not Pixlr Collage, though I'm sure I can find a use for that one too!). It's available for iPhone and Android, and also for your computer. Below is a step by step demo.

Download the app to your phone.

Choose the photo that you'd like to process. you'll then be in the editing screen.

At the bottom of the editing screen, find Adjustment (second from left), and click that (see below).


Now you will see the screen below. Move the paintbrush slider to the left to change your image to black and white.

Click OK at the upper right, and you'll be back to the Edit screen. Now choose Effect (to the right of Adjustment) and find Posterize, near the far right, see below.


Click Posterize. You can use the slider to adjust the number of grays, the farther right you go, the fewer levels. Usually 4 works best, as we have here. Finally, click Save in the upper right. Now you have the posterized version, see below.


And Carlson's Theory is still looking pretty good.

Note: This can easily become a crutch, so use it to learn, but don't rely on it.

My 5 Favorite Islands You Can Visit by Ferry - #2 - Peaks 15 May 2019 5:17 PM (5 years ago)

But there's a lot of fun to be had on the island too. Just three miles from Portland, Maine, Peaks Island is home to almost a thousand year round residents and many more in summer. Imagine living on an island in beautiful Casco Bay, only a short ferry ride from the vibrant city of Portland. That  sounds idyllic to me. There is the Richard Boyd Art Gallery, several restaurants, interesting museums, and a wonderful road that follows the edge of the island all the way around. Rent a bike at Brad's Bikes, or bring your own, and take that ride. You'll see cottages, the rocky shore, the bay and the ocean, and lots of boats. Stop to visit the Fifth Maine Regiment Museum, where I once had a delightful tour full of great stories, and the Umbrella Cover Museum, yes, you read that correctly.



For me, the bike ride with my plein air gear is the best part of a visit to Peaks. Most of Casco Bay is protected from the sea and lacking in surf. On the outside of Peaks, there's a rocky shore and a chance of a few waves crashing on the rocks. Perfect for doing some painting.


The ferry to Peaks leaves from Commercial Street in Portland with 16 trips a day in the summer.

My list of favorite islands is not being presented in order. Stay tuned for the other three.

Value Planes in the Landscape - Carlson's Theory of Angles 29 Apr 2019 12:46 PM (6 years ago)

John Carlson made many useful observations in his book, Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting. One of the most fundamental is that light from the sky illuminates planes in the landscape differently depending on their angle to the sun. This concept is known as Carlson's Theory of Angles and Consequent Values, or simply, Carlson's theory of Angles. He proposes that we consider four planes of the landscape, 1) the ground plane, 2) the verticals, such as trees, 3) the plane of mountains or slanted roofs, 4) and finally, the sky.

When the sun is overhead, the sky will be the lightest value. The ground plane, which gets the full force of the sun, will be the second lightest. The plane of the mountains and slanted roofs, will be third lightest, and the darkest will be the trees. I hope that you can see this in the image below, which represents the upper left corner of the painting above.


There are, of course, complications to this, when the sun is not directly overhead. When the sun is low in the sky, shadows are cast on the ground plane, and verticals can be in sunlight or shade. And in the case of my illustration, where the ground plane is water, the surface of the water in wind is usually much darker than when calm and reflecting the sky like a mirror. Even with those caveats, when I keep Carlson's theory in mind, I'm able to find these values in my landscape and use them to make a stronger  painting.

My 5 Favorite Maine Islands You Can Visit by Ferry - #1 - Monhegan 14 Apr 2019 6:27 AM (6 years ago)

There are many more than five islands in Maine that you can visit by ferry, and I'm going to share my favorites in the next few posts. Perhaps these will help you with your summer vacation plans. At the top of my list is Monhegan, the artist's island, ten miles off the midcoast Maine shore.

"Monhegan" comes from the Algonquian Monchiggon, meaning "out-to-sea island." It was first visited by Europeans in the early 17th century and became a British fishing camp and trading post. The island was caught in the conflict between Britain and France for control of the region, but even during the times when the island was not inhabited, the protected harbor was a stopover for ships. The current lighthouse was built in 1850, after its 25 year old predecessor was damaged by storms. There is a wonderful museum in the Lighthouse Keeper's cottage.


By 1890 the island was established as an artist's colony, which continues to today. Edward Hopper, Rockwell Kent, and Jamie Wyeth are names you've probably heard. What inspires artists to paint here? The light and the subject matter. Many places that are surrounded by water are wonderful for painters because the light bouncing off the water is everywhere, sparkling and giving life to the shadows. As to subject matter, the island is made up of the village, the harbor, forests, meadows, and the dramatic cliffs on the ocean side facing the Atlantic. There's plenty there to paint.

Monhegan is .7 mile wide and 1.7 miles long, and is not developed like the rest of the Maine coast. There are less than 80 year round residents, a working lobster fishing village, and a thriving artist's community. The island has no paved roads and visitors cannot bring cars, but if you are willing to walk, you are in for a treat. Two thirds of the island is protected as a nature preserve by the Monhegan Associates, "an island trust which has accepted the responsibility of holding and maintaining the land in its natural form, for all future generations to enjoy". Seventeen miles of natural trails encircle and crisscross the island, through meadows and forests, onto the headlands, and along the coves and ledges. Birdwatchers, nature lovers, and photographers will all find something to interest them. You'll likely see painters in both the village and on the ocean side cliffs. You can download a trail map of the island, courtesy of the Monhegan Associates, here.

How can you get there? Monhegan is served by ferries from three Maine harbors, from southwest to northeast, BoothBay Harbor (Balmy Days Cruises), Round Pond (Hardy Boat Cruises), and Port Clyde (Monhegan Boat Line). You can visit for the day or longer.



My recommendation for a day trip is to take a walk through the village and then visit the lighthouse, where you'll get a fabulous view of the village at your feet and the island of Manana, which makes up the other side of Monhegan's harbor. If you have time, continue past the lighthouse and walk through Cathedral Woods to White Head on the backside. To get a beautiful view of White Head, turn right on the trail and walk to Gull Cove. Alternatively, the walk to Lobster Cove is beautiful, and your rewards is the rocky cove and the remains of the wreck of the D T Sheridan. And FYI, these walks are somewhat rugged.

Where can you stay? The largest hotels/BnBs are the Island Inn, the Monhegan House, and the Trailing Yew, each offering an experience unique from the others. And there are 11 rooms/homes listed on airbnb.com and vrbo.com at the moment.

And if you do visit Monhegan, please let me know how you found it.

Mixing Color 31 Mar 2019 6:51 PM (6 years ago)

When I first started painting, I used very bright colors, mostly green, blue, purple, yellow, and white. I didn’t understand that there are 3 dimensions to any patch of paint you put on a canvas: hue (the named color on the color wheel), value (how light or dark it is), and chroma (intensity or saturation). Think about the last one as bright (highly saturated) versus dull (grayed down). Grays are very important to balance areas that are bright, but mixing grays can be confusing, since they can become muddy. As I watch individual painters evolve over time, I often see the same progression I went through; from bright, out of the tube colors, through a phase where the artist is trying their best to paint what they see in nature, to a place where they create their own color palette. And here I’m not talking about what you squeeze out onto your physical palette, but what you mix with those colors and place on your paintings.

Here are a few things I’ve learned.

Is an Online Painting Class for You? 4 Mar 2018 9:01 AM (7 years ago)

I've been disappointed by the last couple of painting workshops I've taken, and it wasn't because I didn't like the instructors, but because there were just too many students in the class. The result was usually lengthy demos, which could be hard to see, and little individual time with the instructor. Add to that the cost of going to an "away" workshop, and I understand the growing popularity of online painting instruction.

I've taken a few of these classes, some were excellent, and others not so much. Why is that? I think it largely depends on how the course is structured. There are several types of class depending on whether there is instructor interaction, and whether you can do the course at your own pace.  Obviously the former is desirable, but it also greatly impacts the cost, which is only fair. I've found that the kind of instructor interaction and doing the course at your own pace can complicate things.

I'm going to talk about just a few examples here, but there are many online painting classes available. I hope these descriptions will help you to choose wisely if you want to try one.

Example 1: Text - Videos - No Instructor Interaction - Work At Your Own Pace

Leslie Saeta offers a set of classes on how to paint with a palette knife. Each class is organized around a painting, and Leslie takes you through the process of recreating that painting. The classes consist of 10-18 videos. Each class is $35, and you have access to the ones you buy indefinitely. It's a great way to learn how to use a knife. This approach has no instructor interaction beyond the videos, you can do it at any time, and take as long as you want. Since the class covers only one painting, it's pretty easy to work your way through one of these. And then there's the option to do it again when you need a refresher, or to try out another one of Leslie's painting examples for the very reasonable price. The lack of instructor feedback or comments from your fellow students doesn't bother me for this price. For me, this is a clean, well organized approach to an online painting class.


Example 2: Text - Videos - Instructor Interaction by Comment - Work To A Schedule

Deborah Paris' Landscape Atelier offers online classes in numerous aspects of landscape painting. I took her Painted Sky class a few years ago and it was excellent. It included an introduction to several historical painters and their approaches, homework assignments with video demonstrations, and feedback on the homework. The homework paintings were done, uploaded, and commented on by Deborah on a schedule, using a class blog. This worked well for me. I also learned a lot from the other student's questions and their work. This was effective because everyone was working on the same lesson at the same time.  The individual classes run for six weeks and are $250, with bundles of related classes offered at a discount. Access to the class videos is available for a year. In my opinion this is a very effective way to take an online class. I was able to stay on the schedule, finished the course and learned a lot.


Example 3: Text - Video - Live Instructor Question and Answer Sessions - Work To A Schedule with option to Work At Your Own Pace

As bandwidth has increased, instructors have begun teaching classes that include live interaction via a Facebook group. The interaction is often delivered as a weekly Q and A session and is recorded and posted for students who can't meet at the scheduled time. Costs start at a few hundred dollars for a class that targets a particular facet of painting. Some classes delivered with this approach teach a complete method and have a large time commitment with a commensurate cost ($1,000-2,000). Most  offer a year of access, followed by additional years at a reduced rate. These could be characterized as an online atelier, with students working with an instructor over a multi-year period. I follow several instructors who teach these, but haven't yet taken one myself. At the high price, the competition is a live workshop, which could work for me, if the class size is limited.

And finally a caution. When instructors use the third approach and repurpose the material for subsequent class sessions, there can be problems. Repurposing the video content is fine, the instructor interaction is the issue. If, as in Deborah Paris' case, a new blog is created for each session of the class, everything works well, all the students are working on the same time line, and the instructor is giving feedback on one lesson at a time. But when students can start the class at any time after the first time the class is run, and there are no live Question and Answer sessions, it gets very lonely. It can be hard to sift through the past classes' comments to find out how they approached an assignment, and you won't have any interaction with those students, since they're long gone. Finally, watching a Q and A from a class that was given months or years ago, where you can't ask your own questions, is pretty unsatisfying. It's like eating leftovers by yourself instead of going to the dinner party! If you are considering an online class that the instructor offers regularly, my suggestion is to make sure you know how you'll be able to ask questions and receive feedback and whether there will be other students taking the class with you. As to whether you'll do the work if you're allowed to work at your own pace, only you can answer that!

Painting in a Series 29 Jan 2018 2:33 AM (7 years ago)

I like to paint in a series. It's a satisfying way to explore a subject or idea and to create a consistent body of work. I've painted two series recently, an eight painting series of dinghies (or as my friend Michael calls them, "rowboats"); and a 16 mini-painting series. You may also remember my series of lobster buoys from late 2016.





What makes a group of paintings a "series"? There needs to be a common thread, which could be subject matter, as in the dinghy and lobster buoy series. It could be a palette or a composition. It could even be size and medium, as in the mini-painting series. A good way to think about it is like variations on a theme in music. And there needs to be enough of them. I like to have at least eight.


One of my favorite series, which continues to inspire me years later, is the 100 Variations painted by Marla Baggetta in 2009. Marla developed a composition and painted it 100 times using different palettes and value structures. The referenced article from the Pastel Journal is a treasure trove of painting advice.

What are some of the advantages to painting in a series? There are many, some in terms of growing as an artist, some in terms of providing your collectors with insight into your work, as well as more interest from galleries and other show venues. This article is good reading.

Here are a few pointers if you want to try a series yourself:

- Gather and cull your reference material.
- Do some sketches first.
- Take at least one painting through to the end to make sure that you don't see something in the finished work that you'll need to change at the composition stage.

Oil on Paper 2 Nov 2017 4:29 AM (7 years ago)

Generally oil painters don't work on paper. Chemically, oil paint and paper are enemies, over time the solvent and oil in the paint will literally eat the paper. Historically painters have added a protective layer between the paper and paint. Gesso, shellac, and acrylic paint are commonly used for this purpose. In the last few years paper makers have been helping out by creating papers that are treated to allow oil painting. I've tried both the Arches Oil Paper and Canson Canvapaper. I prefer the Canvapaper, though both of them absorb the paint much more than a gessoed canvas. It's annoying to be unable to scrape paint off the surface the way you can on canvas or board.

Why paint on paper? It's less expensive than canvas or board, and you can cut it to any size you want. I love that flexibility! Because of the cost advantage it's great for experimenting, and it allows us to offer paintings at a lower price point.

I recently did some experiments to try and create a surface that I enjoy painting on with Canson's Canvapaper. In this case, I didn't need to protect the paper from the paint, but wanted to create a surface that I can remove paint from as well as add paint to.

I tried these coatings:

1) thin burnt sienna oil paint
2) thin transparent red oxide acrylic paint
3) acrylic white paint
4) acrylic burnt sienna and white paint mixed
5) acrylic transparent oxide red and white paint mixed
6) white gesso (to make this work, you need to apply the gesso to both sides of the Canvapaper, otherwise if will buckle)

My favorite is #5, the mixed transparent oxide red and white acrylic paint. The acrylic paints (numbers 3-5) gave a good surface in terms of removal of paint, but the burnt sienna mixture is too cool for my taste. I might use the white acrylic paint when I want to create a glow with a thinned layer of oil paint. For most of my paintings, I like to work on a warm surface. I use thinned burnt sienna oil paint, which I wipe off with a paper towel, to provide this on canvas.


I'm using #5 for my 30 Paintings in November this month. I'll be painting a mini-painting every day, with the idea of saying a lot in a small format, and experimenting with composition, value, and color. I'm learning a lot already!

You can follow along with me on Instagram (@bobbiheathart) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/bobbiheathartist/). And if you aren't fond of those, I'll be happy to email them to you. Just let me know at bobbiheath@gmail.com that you're interested.

The collection will be available on December 1st for $35 each, which free shipping in the US for blog and newsletter subscribers.

The Oxford Comma of Painting 13 Oct 2017 3:28 PM (7 years ago)

You may never have heard the term "Oxford comma", but you've likely seen it many times. It's the second comma in the phrase "red, white, and blue". Also called the serial comma, whether to use it is a matter of personal preference. You can read more about the pros and cons here. Recently overhearing a conversation about the comma, I started to think about what is a similarly controversial topic in painting, of which I'm sure there are many!

The topic I came up with is whether to include black paint on your palette, or to mix your blacks from other colors. Once again, this is a matter of personal preference. Those on the pro side include the tonalists, who use black to limit chroma, even in their skies. Deborah Paris' online class "The Painted Sky" is a great way to learn this approach. I painted the top example in that class. Black is also commonly used with various yellows to make greens. Of course there is more than one black paint on the market. The most common are Mars black, Lamp black, and Ivory black. Mars black is made from iron oxide, Lamp and Ivory black are made from carbon. The later are somewhat transparent and slow drying, the former is opaque. For more information look here and on wetcanvas.com. I've read comments online as to which of these blacks is more warm or cool, but it sounds like the variations between the manufacturers may swamp this. The bottom line is you'll have to try them for yourself.


On the con side, black paint is said to dull or kill whatever it's mixed with, and thus mixed darks, lacking this characteristic, are preferred. Some popular combinations are burnt sienna or burnt umber with ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson with viridian. If you're willing to mix three colors, there are many possibilities. Personally I like transparency in my darkest darks, so burnt sienna and ultramarine blue work well, and can be mixed to a strong black. And I use ultramarine blue and cadmium red medium with differing small amounts of cadmium yellow medium when I want to steer the mix towards dark purple (least cad yellow), dark red, dark blue, dark green, or dark brown.

And finally, there's another option, Gamblin's Chromatic Black, a mixture of their quinacridone red and phthalo emerald, which "gives painters a dead-center black with life to it and a clean transparency". This one is my preference for black and white value studies.

Style is in the Process 29 Sep 2017 5:01 AM (7 years ago)

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting New York city to see my cousin perform on opening night in the Broadway play "The Play that Goes Wrong". Amelia McClain is a star! What a fun night of theatre!

On my last day in the city I visited a dozen galleries in Chelsea, and did I get an eyeful. As you can probably guess, much of what I saw was abstract, or at least abstracted. And there were several that caught my eye.

At the UNIX Gallery, I fell in love with "Something Surprising" by English artist William Bradley. I love the white negative space, the colors, and the composition in general. I was told that Bradley first mocks up his ideas in water color in a small format and then translates that onto the larger canvas.

At the Morgan Lehman Gallery I was intrigued by the work of Tim Bavington, whose current work is inspired by music. The vertical bands of color represent melody, beat, etc., in the particular piece of music, translating aural experiences into visual ones. The gallery has examples of both the initial watercolor on paper and larger synthetic polymer on canvas pieces as well as archival ink jet prints. I particularly enjoyed seeing the pieces where the artist had tested the synthetic polymer colors against the watercolor or ink piece.



At the Kim Foster Gallery I found a new twist on encaustic painting. Christian Faur uses crayons, pointy ends sticking out, to create beautiful large mosaic paintings. He uses the handmade crayons like pixels, arranging tens of thousands of them to create each painting. Think painting, Pointillism, and digital photography all rolled into one. There were other types of Faur's work in the exhibit, including portraits in a more classic encaustic style, though you could see the melted crayon shapes. I thought these were also fabulous.



While the finished work of each of these artists is compelling, it's the process that grabs my attention. And it's the process that makes them unique. When most of us think of process, we think of how the paint is applied, the steps used to create layers (or not), how the drawing is created on the support (or not), etc. But these artists are going one step further, or starting a few steps earlier, and using their medium in a new way (Faur's crayons), gathering inspiration and structure from an auditory experience (Bavington), or prototyping the work in a different medium (Bradley). We are probably more familiar with Bradley's approach, since many of us were taught do a value sketch before we paint. His was the first work to attract my attention (I won't tell you about all the paintings that didn't reach out to me AT ALL). And it was a great introduction to the more abstracted processes of the other two. Yes, I think you can abstract the process, not just the subject matter! I'm using abstracted here to describe the simplification of the process into a structural/design phase and an assembly phase. The brain work is in the design phase, though careful assembly is required.  My little foray into abstract art in Chelsea has left me with a lot to think about as I continue the journey of abstraction in my own work.

While I usually show some of my own work in each blog post, I won't attempt that in this one. If you'd like to get a daily view of my work, take a look at my Instagram or Facebook page.

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Sunflower Time! 19 Sep 2017 4:14 AM (7 years ago)

I've gone a bit sunflower mad.

Sunflowers are one of my favorite painting subjects. There's so much to them, they're "chunky", in that there are lots of shapes and angles, and they have mass and weight. And bright colors too. There's a lot to love about a sunflower. I'm not the only artist that as loved them, Van Gogh sunflowers, anyone?


I've been using sunflowers this month as a way to learn a few things. One of them is how to make a time lapse video. Another is to play with abstraction in my painting. To do that I'm experimenting with acrylics. Well, to be honest I've painted sunflowers with oil, acrylic, and pastel in the last few days. It's so much fun to stretch my wings!


But the most exciting sunflower adventure I've had was visiting a field of sunflowers in eastern Massachusetts. Wow! Colby Farm is something else. You can wallow in sunflowers there. I was interested to find on a late afternoon visit that the flowers were not facing the sun. In fact the leaves of the sunflower follow the sun by a process called heliotropism, but only the budding flowers do this. Once the flowers are mature the stem stiffens and they always point east towards the sunrise. I was rewarded one morning last week by sunflowers awash in light.


If you want more sunflowers, there are lots of them (including videos of Colby Farm) on my Instagram, along with a selection of my sunflower paintings. I've spent the last few weeks re-launching my Instagram presence, which includes beautiful images of paintings, studio shots, my new demo videos, and what I'm working on "right now". I'd love to have you follow me there. You can do that on your phone with the Instagram app, or online at instagram.com/bobbiheathart.

Always Design First 29 Jul 2017 3:08 AM (7 years ago)

You might think that when you're at a plein air festival and you've only got two and a half days to paint six paintings, that you should just get right to it, and skip doing a thumbnail in your sketchbook. You couldn't be more wrong. The most important thing in this situation is to not make mistakes, because do-overs take a lot of time. I tried to remember this last week at the Castine Festival. Above are two paintings that I very much enjoyed doing, because I love the structure of the subject matter and because I was able to stand in the shade!

Coming up with three thumbnails for the first painting only took about 5 minutes or so, and from those three I was able to move the trees around and design a new scene for the second painting the next morning. What a time saver!

No One Will Steal Your Chair 26 Jul 2017 6:05 PM (7 years ago)

Flattening the Landscape 13 Jul 2017 6:37 AM (7 years ago)

There's a problem with this painting (OK maybe two problems). The first problem came to my notice when I sent a photo off to friend. She thought that there was a meadow in front of the trees on the right. Hmmm, it's supposed to be clumps of small plants floating on the water. Smaller than lily pads, bigger than algae. I asked myself why it doesn't look right. And to aid in the analysis, I went back to the scene, got out my trusty grid on plexiglass, and did a quick outline on top of the grid of what I was seeing.

Despite the fact that the reflection is different (it wasn't as windy this morning as when I painted the piece), it's pretty easy to see the problem now. The floating plants on both sides take up too much space vertically. They need to flatten out. I decided that those on the left weren't too bad (even if they don't look like the drawing on the plexiglass) and focused on the right side.


Above I wetted the dry painting with solvent and redrew the shape of the clump of plants in ultramarine blue.


And then I repainted the reflection on the right and added a few floating clumps in front to enforce the idea. I hope it looks more like floating plants to you now.

The plexiglass grid is an excellent tool to tell you when your drawing has gone wrong. And one of the most common ways drawings go wrong in landscape painting is when we are attempting to show a horizontal surface receding into the distance. Marsh paintings are particularly problematic. When this goes badly wrong, we appear to be hovering over the scene rather than looking into it.

You can make a plexiglass grid very easily. You'll need a piece of plexiglass from the hardware store. At my store they were happy to cut it for me. You'll also need a Sharpie permanent marker pen to make the lines and a ruler. You'll want a dry erase pen for drawing your scene, so that you can erase it. I made a bunch of these for my students in my recent drawing class and they've been put to good use.

To use the grid, you first need to check the aspect ratio. My plexiglass grids are 6"x8", so for this 8"x10" painting, I marked off a quarter of an inch on each side, making the grid 6"x7.5" (an 8x10 aspect ratio). Hold the grid in front of you until the view is enclosed by the grid. Holding steady, quickly sketch the shapes. Now move the grid back and forth in front of your painting until the painting fills the grid. Now you can see where your drawing has gone awry.

And actually, you don't need the grid if all you're trying to do is see whether your drawing has any issues. The plexiglass itself with the dry erase marker will do the trick. But the grid can be helpful in laying out your drawing, and in seeing whether your horizon is straight and whether the sides of buildings are vertical. And of course, it's better to do this at the drawing stage instead of painting over a problem.

The second problem is the slash of sky reflection in the water, it's a bit crooked. I think I fixed it well enough.

Demos Are Fun 5 Jul 2017 5:54 PM (7 years ago)

Doing a demo is a great experience for an artist. It's a bit intimidating the first time, but once you realize that people are really interested in the process, not looking for a masterpiece, and will ask interesting questions, it's a lot of fun. I've set myself a goal of doing four demos this year, in addition to the small ones I do while teaching. Last week was my second, so things are on schedule.

Carol L. Douglas, Ed Buonvecchio, and I were among the artists demo-ing at Boothbay Harbor's Windjammer Days last week. We were fortunate to be able to set up across the harbor from the main part of town, where we had a sensational view of not only the passing windjammers, but the moored lobster boats and Harbor Island. We were in Fisherman's Memorial Park, in front of the Our Lady Queen of Peace church, which dominates the skyline of that side of the harbor. We had lots of visitors, and lots of explaining to do. I particularly enjoyed Carol and a young man who helped her identify each of the windjammers. Not that she needs much help, she's a regular at the boatyard where several of them live. I was busy mentoring his older sister, who wants to be an artist. It is so much fun to take our work out to where people can see it happening, and help them understand the process.



You may ask why we didn't paint an actual windjammer. It's much easier to demo something that sticks around for a least a few minutes, which the windjammers did not. The point is to be there for the people, not to paint the technically most difficult subject you can find. But it was tempting...

I love painting in this particular spot. The island is what the word picturesque was meant to describe. I've painted it before and will likely again.


And before I go, I'm excited to tell you that I'll be co-hosting the Artists Helping Artists blogtalk radio show this month with Leslie Saeta. It's such an honor to do this, and I'm thrilled. I have learned so much from this show over the years. Though the focus is on art marketing, there have been many shows interviewing artists and people who artists depend on. One of my favorites was the interview with Robert Gamblin of the Gamblin paint company. If you aren't familiar with this show, do check it out. The archives are a real treasure trove for artists.

You can listen to the show live, or to past shows which are all archived, at the link below.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/artistshelpingartists

And you can also listen to the AHA show, as it's called, as a podcast.

This week's show is "How to Use Lists to Organize Your Art" at 11AM tomorrow.

Happy 4th of July! 3 Jul 2017 12:56 PM (7 years ago)

Meet the Press 21 Jun 2017 5:15 PM (7 years ago)

This morning Carol L. Douglas sent me a link to an piece in the Bangor Daily News. And I'm thrilled to tell you that my painting, Stonington Green, was the image chosen to accompany the article on the upcoming auction to benefit the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries.

As an artist, I'm regularly asked to contribute artwork to raise money for worthy causes. Usually I'm happy to do that. And it's particularly enjoyable when the cause is near and dear to my heart. That's the case here. Formerly the East Penobscot Resource Center, the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries has a mission "to secure a sustainable future for fisheries and fishing communities in Eastern Maine and beyond". I hope that my paintings of lobstering and Maine fishing communities are documenting a way of life that will continue, and they are dedicated to that.


But back to the auction. It's a very cool event. This August, in addition to their traditional decorative lobster buoys, like the one I painted last year, the auction will include paintings by some of my favorite Maine artists. And that's not all. Nautical experiences will be on the block as well. You can bid on a guided boat tour of Deer Isle-Stonington, one of the loveliest stretches of water anywhere; a course at the fabulous WoodenBoat School; a fly fishing lesson; a day on the water learning how lobstermen work; and the opportunity to be named in mystery novelist Katherine Hall Page’s next book. What a great line up!

To get all the details, check out the Bangor Daily News article here. And thank you, BDN and the Maine Center for Coastal Maine Fisheries, for using my painting in your story!

Painting Pets - As Good as a Dog Kiss 12 Jun 2017 4:32 PM (7 years ago)

This is Troy, he’s my son’s younger rescue dog. He’s not quite two, and the most lovable guy you could ever meet. All he wants to do is play. And when it’s hot out, he droops after about a mile of walking. In the winter, the world is his snow cone.



And this is Clara. She's about four, and she's the boss. Troy may tornado around and try to get her to play every minute he can, but when she says it's time to stop, he stops. She's one of the best trained dogs I've ever met, due to spending a year living with an expert trainer before my son adopted her. The two pups are quite a pair and lots of fun to have around.

There are a lot of good pet portrait painters out there, but there's one that I’d like to highlight. Paint Squared is the website of Elizabeth Fraser. Her pet portraits totally inspire me. She really captures the personality of her subjects, and her color, well it’s fabulous. I interviewed Elizabeth a few years ago and it was really fun to learn more abut her and how she works.




To create a great pet portrait you need a really good photo. Here are a few tips on how to take one from the references listed below.

- Use natural light, and make sure there are some shadows visible.
- Get down to their eye level.
- Get in close.
- Keep their eyes sharp, focus on them.
- Be patient, and take lots of photos. You can always delete the bad ones.

9 Pet Photography Tips
How To Take the Best Pet Photographs
How to Photograph Pets

A Successful Opening 6 Jun 2017 6:13 PM (7 years ago)

I went to two exhibition openings this weekend, both of which I felt were successful. That got me thinking, what makes an opening a success? There are some basics, like great artwork of interest to those who live in the area, and pleasant, well-lighted surroundings. And of course, having the event publicized by the artists and the venues. Simple finger food and a little wine are also great. 



One thing that makes for a good turn out is having the artist(s) present, which was the case for both of the openings I was at this weekend. In one case, it was a show for four artists in the same medium, at a local art center venue, where they regularly have classes and workshops, and exhibitions by groups or individual artists. In this venue there are no “gallery artists”, though it’s such a lovely venue that I imagine there are artists who book it regularly. The other is a gallery that has a stable of gallery artists, and four or five openings a year. Both were very well attended.

The shows were hung differently, but both effectively. In the case of the four artists, each artists work were separated into groups of two or three paintings, and the groups were distributed throughout the venue, so the viewer moved from one artist’s work to another and back again as they went around the three open rooms. Because the work was all in the same medium, it held together really nicely. And by the time I’d seen everything, I felt I could identify each artist’s work with ease. In the gallery case, the space was nicely divided by movable walls into a number of niches for viewing the artwork. Each artist’s work occupied one or more wall of one of the niches. This allowed for lots of hanging space, and easy movement of viewers between the different spaces.




How do you get people to linger, to chat with the artists and each other, and to really look at the artwork? In both cases, the artists were actively engaged in answering questions and discussing individual paintings with the visitors to the exhibitions. It was also very nice to see students of the various artists come to the shows, and great to chat with them.

All in all, I very much enjoyed both of these shows, discovered a few new artists whose work I love, and got a chance to discuss artwork, methods, framing, and upcoming workshops.

The two shows are open for a while yet, and very worth taking a look at.

Nature’s Delight at the Wild Salamander Art Center in Hollis, NH, through June 24:
http://www.wildsalamander.com/whitty_gallery.html

Rise and Fall of Light at Yarmouth Frame and Gallery, in Yarmouth, ME, though September: http://www.yarmouthframeandgallery.com


For more information about my paintings and upcoming classes and workshops, please visit my website.