plein air

If you want to do some hard work, there is no better place to do so than on a farm. 

So it was fitting that when Jie agreed to spend some time with me landscape painting, he chose Fowler Farms from the list of places I suggested we paint.

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 Yesterday I went back to the farm that supports Farm Burger and Farm 255. I got to meet John and Holly Ivy, who own and live on the farm. They were super hospitable and I got to learn a lot about the place I've been painting lately.

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 Well, the last two paintings I attempted were two more forays into speed painting. The first, which is shown here, was done in about twenty minutes. We were at the Rocky Mountain National Park on the Ute Trail. The view was sublime and the spot I was at was over 12,000 feet above sea level. I think it was my first

painting above the tree line. 

The temperature was cool but very nice. The mountains reminded you of a scene from The Sound of Music. I talked to a couple of park rangers about my work. Kate and her folks were going to hike the

Ute Trail, so I had a good couple of wonderful painting hours in front of me. Except for those dark clouds off in the distance. They had me a bit concerned.

The clouds came up quickly. I adjusted my painting speed accordingly. I furiously mixed paints and slung them across the canvas. I saw Kate and her parents coming back on the trail after just being away about ten minutes. My brush was flying across the canvas and as soon as Kate got to where I was set up, I started packing up.

About the time I got the last few items into my pack, a crack of thunder struck. Then it started to rain. Kate and I ran down the trail. Before we got to the car, it began to hail. Alas, the perfect painting session was cut a bit short by Mama Nature. They aren't common, but this was another day that I was very irritated at Ma Nature's mood swings.

The next outing didn't produce a painting, at least not yet. I may work on it later, not sure. The last day, Kate and I returned to the Rabbit Ears Pass Trail where we had hiked earlier in the week. There was a particular spot that had an incredible vista.

Kate painted with me this time, and I was very happy that she was starting to paint with me. We both got set up, and I was excited because there was not a storm cloud to be seen. Perfect sunny day, great light, lots of beautiful wildflowers, perfect temperature and we had the whole afternoon.

Then a couple of mosquitos bit us. We had sprayed ourselves with repellant before we came out, but these two suckers found the spots that weren't sprayed. Then about the time I had a few strokes on the canvas, eight billion mosquitos attacked us. Not the huge Texas or Georgia mosquitos, but little bitty S.O.B.s. 

At first I was going to fight through it, but then they started biting through my clothes. Kate packed up and walked around to shake some of them off. I then threw in the towel and packed up. As I was packing, tens of them were on my face. It was as if they were saying "Get the hell out of here! We hate plein air painting!"

We ran back to the car and decided just to go hiking (if you were moving, the pests didn't seem to attack you). I was slightly disappointed, but the vacation was so great it really didn't bother me. I was very pissed off at the mosquito nation. And made a note of yet another outdoor painting device I need - a bee keeper's suit.

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For the second time, I painted on a boat. Last week, Kate and I took our summer vacation in Steamboat Springs, CO. We met her parents up there and one day rented a pontoon boat. We rented it at the Steamboat Lake State Park, which is a great deal and Kate had to make the reservation well in advance of our trip. I sat at the helm and painted away while Kate's dad Bill maneuvered the boat so that I somewhat kept the view. Kate and her mom Judy grilled brats and we all enjoyed a day in the sun at 70 degrees. 

That is, until the storm clouds came up. At that point, I finished up quickly and we headed back to shore about 45 minutes before our rental time was up. The weather in Colorado this time of year is mostly perfect. Around 70 degrees during the day, zero humidity, and cool nights. The only problem is that you have to dodge storms most every afternoon. More on this later.

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Back in 2008, my friend Marc Taro took a speed plein air painting workshop from Xiangyuan Jie. I really like what Marc did that week, but unfortunately, Jie hasn't done another workshop of the sort. I also haven't set aside time to practice in that manner, as I usually set out to get in more finished work when I'm in the field. 

However, I've had a few outings lately where speed painting was the only way I could get any painting in. Still not quite as limited a timeframe as Jie's workshop (I think they worked on 5

 minute paintings), but quick nonetheless. In fact, I seemed to have just enough time to mix different colors and get them on the canvas. I did spent about half the time on the cows, as I wanted to practice cow painting for my Farm to Canvas series.

Why did I have a limited window? Well, this painting was done in Gerton, NC during a weekend getaway June 20th with Kate to celebrate our one year anniversary.  Gerton is just outside Asheville, in th

e heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We had a great time. Asheville is a fantastic place, and we hiked at Chimney Rock State Park, dined at great restaurants, and visited some very excellent art galleries.

I found time to sneak away while Kate napped to do this sketch. It was at a farm just down the road from our cabin. I'm not sure if this farm is organic or if these cows are exclusively grass-fed. However, Asheville is very much into local produce and meats, and is an excellent place for Farm to Table lovers.

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 I spent another day at the animal farm owned by Farm 255 and Farm Burger. Kate joined me and we spent several hours in a cow pasture in the hot Georgia sun. It was a breezy day, so it was nice most of the time. We both worked on some good farmer tans, too.

We started the day by driving to Athens and eating brunch at Farm 255. It was our first time there and we loved it. Kate had the rustic eggs with grits, and sausage. I had a braised beef, egg and cheese biscuit. The biscuit was one of the best I've ever had. It was served with pork braised greens. I'm not the biggest greens fan, but those were really good. Not sure if it was the pork flavoring or the fresh, local greens... 

So this scene is from the middle of the cow pasture. The cows did a very nice job moving around so I could choose from a lot of poses. The barns are the two main barns on this property, and the yellow emblem on the barn on the left is of the sun. I painted this on a 9x12 canvas panel so I could suggest a panorama.

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As I've written many times before, I find it awesome when I am outside painting. Even when it is hot, flies buzzing around and smelling like manure, I easily get 'into the zone'. The zone where time has no meaning, and I get lost in my work. Even if you aren't a painter, I'm sure you can imagine the process I went through today. You focus on the task at hand - the task of handling the paint, light and shade, color and value.  You evaluate the spaces and decide on the composition. You weigh out the main subjects, and gain an appreciation for the energy and life around you. Dark violets over there. Sunny yellow greens here. Repeat that nice pink and umber hue. Capture how the sunlight falls and the the trees make those nice transparent shadows. Make your best effort to translate what it is that you feel at this moment, in this place. Step back and realize that your painting features a hog's ass.

The fine folks at Full Moon Farms sent me an email after my last post! To help me with my "Farm to Canvas" series, they graciously gave me access to their farms. Today I went to the animal farm. I can easily find hundreds of scenes to paint there. They have several acres where they raise pigs, cows and chickens. The place has several nice old barns, big trees and wide fields. So expect to see a lot of pieces from this place, and I expect I'll tackle a few of the subjects more than once. In fact, I wouldn't mind doing a painting of the other side of that pig.

It was actually a real treat to hang out with the hogs. They w

ere very friendly and came up to me when I first got there. A side benefit when painting with animals around, they quickly get used to you and you get to observe how they behave normally. These pigs have it great. They have a lot of forest to roam around freely in, with several great mud pits where they can cool down.

Many thanks to George, and Jason for their hospitality. Special thanks to Jared for showing me around and the recommendation on where to paint.

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 Kate and I have been really getting into the 'farm to table' craze, which focuses on locally grown food. Most of our favorite places in Atlanta use local meat and produce, with much of it raised naturally and organic.

Our new favorite is a place called Farm Burger in Decatur. They grow a lot of the food themselves, and all the beef is natural and grass fed. The burgers there are just amazing. I went Friday night and I am already anxious to go again.

I'm such a believer in the organic and local food movements (pause while John Kuehne makes a joke), that I decided to start a series I'm calling "Farm to Canvas". So today I set out to find and paint a scene at the source of Farm Burger's mana, Full Moon Farms. 

Full Moon Farms is near Athens, GA. I arrived at the address I found on the internet, only to find that you couldn't see any part of it from a public spot. Since today was Sunday, I knew that I wouldn't be able to get a tour, especially on short notice. So I used my iPhone to see if there were any other eco-friendly farms and found out that Full Moon had moved to two locations. I set out on the one location that I could find an address for, Flat Rock Farms.

Actually, I'm not sure if I found Flat Rock Farms. I was at the address I found, but didn't see any sign or other indication that I was at the right place. But nevertheless, I found a great scene to paint. I set up in the church parking lot of Johnson United Methodist Church. It was a very enjoyable day, and I even had a couple of nice folks stop by to see my work. One was another artist who asked me several questions about oil painting (and if you read this blog, please send an email or comment!). It helped my painting a lot explaining some of the aspects of plein air to her. As she drove off, I thought about how I needed to apply my own advice. 

So these cows may or may not be raised organically. I can vouch that they ate grass when I painted them.

Now that I know the area, I plan to see if I can get access to some of these places so that I know I'm painting an organic farm. I really would like to see the operation at Full Moon Farms. And I really want to visit Athens and trying their other restaurant, Farm 255. 

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 I put the final touches on the Hohokam park painting today. I mainly shortened the shadow and put in some highlights.

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 I've updated the Hohokam painting. There are just a couple more things I'd like to do, but it is much closer this time. It is amazing how much more you can do in the studio on a dry painting, as opposed to en plein air. And yes, I had a snooty look on my face as I wrote en plein air. I think it is required. But the big drawback in the studio, in addition to not being there, is that you can't look at the subject. I don't like to work from photos too much, and didn't have any good ones to use in this case.

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