Lynn’s Demonstation of a Black and White Oil Study

On Day Three, Lynn demonstrated doing a value study in black and white oils. First she did a line drawing by “sight sizing.” Then she established a “bug line,” a term I was unfamiliar with. A Bug Line is the line where light striking a curved surface, divides into light and shadow. In the photograph Lynn was drawing from, the bug line was complex. Both Nanci Fulmek and I were doing side shots of our horses, so the shadows were mostly on the underside of the horse. It’s a little more difficult to see on my painting owing to the fact that Pelee is a bay rather than a chestnut and the sun was lower in the sky.

Black and White Oil Studies, Day Three

The images above are by Fred Senn, Jo Simmons and Julie Rauchwarter.

Lynn’s Studio: Atelier Workshop Day Four

Lynn’s Studio was full of images from her days as a student at Atelier Lack. Honestly, I have never seen figurative paintings this good outside of a museum. I am sooooo jealous. I will also add that the Studio was well-organized and immaculate, unlike mine, which is a mess. It was painted in an interesting taupe color that can look warm or cool, depending upon what is next to the wall.

Lynn’s Color Demonstration Day Four

(Hint: Click on any of the images to enlarge them.)

In a color demonstration from a photograph, Lynn showed us how she delineates the basic contours of her subject, creates the “bug line,” where the light striking the curved surface divides the image into light and dark parts, blocks in the light and dark, then begins to lay in the relative tones of light and dark with the approximate colors. She checks her drawing regularly to make sure her proportions are correct and the shapes of light and darkness are correct. Sometimes, it is useful to look at the image upside down in order to “see abstractly.”

On Thursday evening, the night the Minneapolis Art Institute stays open until 9:00, we went to see an exhibit of William Holman Hunt paintings. Hunt was one of the three original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood or PRB. I was so excited to hear his paintings were in Minneapolis that I could barely contain myself until Thursday. I have been a Pre-Raphaelite junky since I bought a poster of Waterhouse’s Lady of Shalott in college. (It is still probably my favorite painting in all the world and I still have it up in my bedroom.) Pre-Raphaelite paintings are not easy to see unless one travels to England, where they are scattered about with the greatest concentration being at the Tate Gallery. I have known these paintings for years, but many of them I have not seen in person. Among the paintings available for viewing until September 6, are Hunt’s The Lady of Shalott, The Awakening Conscience, Jesus Found by His Parents in the Temple, the sheep painting (for want of its real title) that I had pasted in the cover of my Far From the Madding Crowd, Il Dolce Far Niente, for which his mistress Annie Miller (ironically also the model for The Awakened Concscience) originally posed, over which he painted the “coloration” and features of his wife, Fanny (mmmmmmmm….She still looks more like Annie Miller to me), The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro from Keats’ Eve of St. Agnes, Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus from Shakepeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona, this one, the title of which I can’t remember, but that lace on the dress is beyond belief! and The Boy’s Choir Singing from Magdalen Tower on May Day Morning.

The PRB originally exhibited in 1851 and were roundly condemned. Their work, painstakingly copied from nature was painted into a wet white ground with small brushes, one square at a time, in imitation of fresco paintings. The colors are brilliant. Some of these huge paintings were painted en plein aire! It’s difficult to imagine setting up so huge a canvas outdoors and not having it blown over by the wind. One of the other founding members, John Everett Millais, always my favorite, eventually gave up this painting method, but Hunt persisted throughout his life. I do believe the flora of Millais’ painting of Ophelia was painted outdoors. His model, Lizzie Siddell, floated in a vat of water warmed only by candles burning underneath for hours while Millais painted her. Little wonder she later died of consumption. The incredible vibrance of their frescoesque technique shows in Millais’ paintings of Marianne and Christ in the House of his Parents.

Equine Painting Workshop Day Five

Here is a group photo. From left to right we have Nanci Fulmek, who is a fifth year graduate student of the Atelier, Lynn Maderich, our instructor, Yorke McGillivray, only 15 years old from Arizona, Fred Senn, who did an art degree in college, but has spent most of his life in advertizing, Julie Rauchwarter, a full-time Atelier student with one year under her belt, Jo Simmons, who is in charge of the horse program at Salem Ranch and myself.

Equine Painting Workshop Day Five

The images above are by Jo Simmons and myself. These pictures were taken at the end of Day Five. The procedure was to (1)trace the black and white charcoal drawings from Day Two onto a canvas, (2) block in the light and dark areas and the “bug line” with a turp wash, (3) paint in the correct tones and approximate colors with oils.

I, however, chose to work from a different image than I’d worked with on Days Two and Three because I thought the light and shadows of Pelee standing completely broadside were less interesting than they were in this more intimate scene of Geneia going out to halter Pelee in the paddock. This was the one image I did not blow up into an 8×10 before attending the Workshop, so after Lynn’s demonstation on Thursday morning, I decided I must drive to Target with my camera card to enlarge this image, and as is my typical experience, I flung my self in my car and rode off madly in all directions, which of course resolved itself into the wrong direction. Soon I was headed with great speed down 280 (which was unhandily closed in an actually useful direction for arriving at the Atelier mornings). It took me at least an hour of navigating my way back. Thereupon I consulted the map which Lynn had kindly drawn for me and arrived at Target without further mishap.

My painting reflects a little less worktime owing to my recurrent adventure on the Minneapolis highways. Also, I did not trace this picture from a charcoal drawing, but drew directly in paint on the canvas. I used the same principles of comparative measuring, but it does save time to correct mistakes in draughtsmanship with charcoal, rather than doing it paint. As forgiving as the medium is, correcting in wet paint is messier than charcoal and eraser.

Equine Painting Workshop Day Five Continued

The above images are of our paintings at the end of Day Five (about 9 hours of work). The tones and approximated colors have been laid in. From top to bottom we have Nanci Fulmek (her Arabian gelding, Low Carb), Julie Rauchwarter, Yorke McGillivray and Fred Senn.

Equine Painting Workshop at Atelier Lack

Yester- day, my daugh- ter, Geneia, and I did a little im- promp- tu photo- shoot of her Morgan mare, Pelee, in preparation for an Equine Painting Workshop I will be attending in Minneapolis next week.
Just to give you a little personal history with respect to Atelier Lack, where I will be taking the course:
When I graduated from Saint Olaf in 1979, I was intending to go on to Art School….somewhere….to do post-graduate work. I hadn’t majored in art as an undergraduate because art school in the seventies was all about “expressing yourself freely.” What I really wanted was the rigorous training of painting and drawing from life, as well as learning the techniques perfected by artists of the past, that painters of the nineteenth century had had. (Ironically, a commercial artist was more likely to get that training at the time.) I investigated several schools, one of which – the perfect choice- was Atelier Lack. I learned, however, that the Atelier didn’t accept students as old as myself. (I was 25 when I discovered it, so it was a couple of years after my BA.) In the true tradition of the French Academy, Atelier Lack was looking only for the very young to enroll. (I guess, at its inception, it didn’t even accept women!) I was disappointed, not to say offended.

Then, this spring at the Midwest Horse Fair, I met Lynn Maderich, who in her forties had attended and graduated from Atelier lack. (Apparently they had changed their policies!) Click here to see her work. I was delighted to hear that she was teaching a workshop on Equine Painting this summer and would be teaching the methods she’d learned at the Atelier, which had transformed her painting. I gave a summer’s vacation to be able to attend.

We are supposed to bring reference photos because, even though classical realism is all about painting from life, horses simply won’t hold still and nearly all realistic portrait painters nowadays are forced to paint from photographs to some extent. So, the trick is to bring what one learns from painting from life to bear upon the process of painting from a photograph, interpreting 3-D from 2-D.