Charles Muench Workshop

by Armand Cabrera

                                Bend in the River            12 x 16                   Oil on Linen


I wanted to share a great opportunity with everyone. My friend Charles Muench is teaching a workshop in the Sierras this June and there are a couple of spots still available.  Charles is a highly collected and award winning artist. His solo shows have been sellouts for the last few years and he lives in the Sierras and paints in all four seasons outdoors there.

                                     Mount Ritter            36 x 30                Oil on Linen


Charles awards include an Award of Excellence from the Oil Painters of America in 1999, the Gold Medal at the San Louis Obispo Plein Air competition in 2002, Artist Choice in 2003 at Telluride Plein Air, Best of Show at Telluride Plein Air in 2006, Best of Show at the Crystal Cove Invitational in 2007,  First Place at the Joan Irvine Smith Heritage Exhibition 2008, The Collectors Choice Award at Maynard Dixon Country Show in 2005 and 2008, The Edgar Payne Award for best landscape at the California Art Club Gold Medal Show in 2010, and the Southwest Art Magazine Award of Excellence at the California Art Club Gold Medal Show in 2011, and the Irvine Museum Purchase Award at the California Gold Medal Exhibition 2012.

Hope Valley Spring Workshop

Four Day Workshop Painting the Eastern Sierra

Spring time in Hope Valley.

June 9th – June 12th

$485.00

Not only is Hope Valley one of the most beautiful places in all of the Sierra, it is also one of the most accessible. Easy walking to great scenery!

Wildflowers, snow capped peaks, and the meandering West Carson River.

Accommodations are available in Markleeville, Hope Valley, and Woodfords.

Charles will make the most of each day- demonstrations, painting, critique, and taking in the gestalt of a group of artists painting together.

E-mail Charles for deposit and reservation information, materials list, accommodations, and any questions you might have.

For more information, click here to visit Charles' website:

                         CHARLESMUENCH.COM

Spring Wildflowers in Hope Valley.

Spring snow-melt demonstration.

If you are looking for a chance to study painting with a contemporary master in a spectacular setting I highly recommend this workshop.  

Round Valley Spring   20 x 30   Oil on Linen

Discovery Retires

by

Armand Cabrera

My friend Gary and I went and  watched the Discovery land at Dulles Airport  today. We were lucky and were right under the flight path for three fly overs. It landed on the third pass and we had a great view on an overpass near the end of the runway. I was happy to see so many people turn out for the event. It will be interesting to see how the privatization of space will work now going forward with companies like SpaceX .

FREE PAINTING DEMONSTRATION

Bull Run Bluebells              16x20                       Oil on Linen

I will be conducting a painting demonstration  For the McLean Project for the Arts at the McLean  Community Center this coming Friday April 27 from 10:45Am to 1:30 PM. The demonstration is open to the public.

 

The address For the McLean Community Center is 

1234 Ingleside Avenue, McLean, Virginia.

info@mpaart.org

 I will start and finish a large oil painting from a small sketch painted outdoors. If you are in the area come on by and watch and ask questions about the painting process or the business side of being a professional artist. Last time we had quite a turnout with over 75 people showing up.

Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale

by

Armand Cabrera

Eleanor Brickdale was the youngest child of a barrister. She began her formal study of art at 17 enrolling in the Crystal Palace School of Art and then the Royal Academy School in London. In 1894 her father was killed in an alpine accident and the family moved to Kensington. She began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in the black and white section starting in 1896 and won a prize for her painting, spring in 1897. That same year she had a feature in The Studio on her work.

The prize money from her award let her concentrate on larger paintings for the Royal Academy shows. Her first large scale oils were shown at the RA in 1899. That same year she illustrated Sir Walter Scotts Ivanhoe. In the summer of that same year she received a commission from London Gallery owners Walter and Charles Dowdeswell for a solo show of watercolors, to be delivered and paid for in quarterly installments over the next two years. The exhibition of forty five pictures opened in 1901. The show was widely reviewed and well praised and all except two paintings were sold.

Brickdale received another article in The Studio in 1901 with eight monochrome and two color pieces written by Walter Shaw Sparrow. The next year Brickdale was the first woman elected to the Institute of Painters in Oils and became an associate member of the Royal Watercolor Society.

More book commissions came in and Brickdale continued to regularly exhibit her watercolors in the bi-annual shows at the Royal Watercolor Society from 1902 and at least one oil painting a year at the Royal Academy. Dowdeswell Galleries renewed their commission for another show of watercolors in 1905. In 1909 Leicester Galleries commissioned a show of 28 works based on Tennyson’s Idylls of the King.

Brickdale and her work continued to be popular and more commissions for book illustrations and gallery shows kept her busy until 1932 when her eyesight began to fail.

Brickdale suffered a stroke in 1938 but continued to show paintings at the Royal Watercolor Society shows until 1942. Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale died in London in 1945 at the age of 73.

Bibliography

Women Artists and the Pre-Raphealite Movement

Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerish Nunn

1989 Virago Press

Bluebells demo

by
Armand Cabrera

The bluebells are starting to peak around the Piedmont here and I had to get out and paint them while they last. They usually come and go in about 10 to 15 days. My two favorite spots are at the old stone bridge at Bull Run in The Manassas Battlefield and Riverbend Park on the Potomac in Great Falls. The Bull Run patch is much smaller than Riverbend Park but provides an intimate setting within the trees along the river. The painting time for this 16x20 was two hours.


In this scene everything is backlit, the sun is low in the sky and is moving from left to right as the sun sets. In a scene like this it is important to lock in shadow patterns and stick to them from the beginning as they will change in a matter of minutes.

I establish my horizon line and big anchor points first in the correct tone and color.

My goal is to cover the entire canvas in the first few minutes to get the color and value relationships that will be constantly shifting later as I paint. While I am willing to incorporate some changes that occur later it is important not to deviate too much or the strong sense of light and shadow is ruined.

Once I have the big shapes established, I start adding elements by designing them into the scene not just trying to copy their placement.

I want to use the colors of the bluebells and there leaves and the game trail that is leading away from me to weave back through the painting breaking up the verticals of the trees and the angles of their cast shadows.

I continue to add elements and refine the larger masses of the painting.

At this point the light has changed enough that I focus on the painting looking up occasionally for information from nature to resolve any passages that haven’t been resolved to my satisfaction.

The finished painting, Bull Run Bluebells 16x20 Oil on Linen

Artistic Integrity

By Armand Cabrera

As an artist I love the process of painting. I’ve always taken an illustrative approach to my painting in that I painted anything people would hire me to paint. Commissions were a partnership entered into with the idea someone was hiring me to give them my vision of the agreed upon subject. The client’s participation stopped at the edge of the canvas and the rest was up to me. They had right of first refusal on the work but they didn’t have the right to stand over me and guide my decisions as I painted like puppet masters pulling the strings for every aspect of the art, from subject to style of execution.

Even as an illustrator or production artist I expect to be hired for my knowledge not just my wrist. I am not for hire to render someone else’s vision; it has to be a collaboration or it’s not worth my time and effort. In the last few years people seem genuinely shocked by my stance. I guess the downturn took more than money out of the economy it also took many artists self-respect with it.

I am not talking about large projects that require multiple artists to complete them like television series’, movies or games. In those instances the project style requires consistency. I’m talking about smaller projects like ad campaigns, illustration assignments or gallery work that is completed by a single artist.

I believe if you hire an artist you have a responsibility to be familiar with their work. If you want to have a painting in a certain style of a living artist, then hire that artist. Don’t hire someone to be a stand in for that artist. If you can’t afford the original artist then then hire an artist whose work you can afford but let them paint it in their own style.

I think it is our responsibility as artists and illustrators to buck this trend. Who wants to be known as the guy who paints like (fill in the blank) only at a cheaper rate? Do you even have a career if all you are is a wrist for hire by people who can’t draw and paint?

Do you agree or disagree?

Jean Giraud 1938-2012

By Armand Cabrera

The French artist Jean Giraud, who went by the pen name Moebius died on March 10th 2012 after a long illness, he was 73.

I was first introduced to his work in the 70’s when Heavy Metal, the American reprint of Metal Hurlant hit the stands here in the USA. For someone raised on American comics his work was boundary stretching and beautiful. He drew like no one else and elevated comics to an adult level in theme and content. His line work was precise and seemed effortless, like Fred Astaire with a pen; you knew it was a lot harder than it looked.

He was not a super hero guy, although after modest success here in America he did draw some super hero comics for Marvel. He had an exquisite sense of design and color, a wry sense of humor and a seemingly endless well of creativity. He worked doing design for movies like Alien, The Abyss and The Fifth Element. He got his start drawing Blueberry, a western but is primarily known in America for his series The Airtight Garage and Arzach

I had the pleasure of meeting him at a show of his work in the San Francisco Bay Area in the Nineties. There were 100 pieces of art on display at the show, everything from comic pages to film design to personal work.

He was soft spoken and gracious. He seemed genuinely surprised that people loved his work and you felt he really didn’t care about success or fame and would much rather be drawing. He was an artist’s artist in that sense.

Composition

by
Armand Cabrera

Not too long ago I was given a link to another art website where someone was going on about

the rules for composition.

How’s that again? This person had 20 or so rules to avoid for bad composition. There is only one rule of composition-

You emphasize the center of interest and deemphasize the rest of the painting so as not compete with it.

Achieving that goal has no set boundaries. There is no rule about placing the elements of your painting. Rules about leading from the corner or avoiding the center of the canvas are developed by people who have no understanding of painting. They are lazy truisms by lazy painters; just like don't use black or the color blue always recedes rule or the term muddy color.

If your eye goes to a corner when you don't want it to, it’s because you haven't got a strong enough focal point, not because you have a lead in at the corner.

Sayings like, don't put something in the corner or in the center or don't divide your canvas in half, can't be rules because they can't know how the elements of the painting are organized for every possible painting.

To prove my point every painting I’ve posted goes against the truisms you hear repeated in bad art classes by incompetent teachers. Dividing the canvas in half, placing the subject in the center of the canvas, Starting a lead in with the corner, the use of black paint and don’t have vertical shapes too close to the edge of the canvas. All of these paintings are better than any of the paintings by the people handing out the advice.

A hierarchy of Forms

By
Armand Cabrera


A hierarchy of forms is an important step in representational painting. Keeping the big forms apparent after the application of details is necessary for a successful painting. Primary, secondary and tertiary forms must preserve their relative importance.

The idea for Primary forms is a simple one. At its root all forms have a base structure that shows the effects of the overall light and shape without any details. Painting this correctly gives a sense of volume and weight to everything. Seeing this imposed construction on natural objects helps nail down this effect from the very beginning of a painting or drawing and locks in the big idea for the image quickly. Often times this is overlooked for the details of an element which can ruin the significance of the object in the overall scene.



To quote Harvey Dunn, “You must make the main thing in your picture appear most important. If anyone tells me my hat is more important than my head –by God I’m taking off my hat.”

Secondary forms complement the primary form but never obscure it. An example in landscape painting would be a hillside of trees seen from a distance. The shape of the hill would be the primary form and the trees the secondary forms enhancing the character of the hill but not confusing its overall shape. It must always read as a hill. The way you would paint the light falling on the hill would be paramount and you would always subordinate the details of the trees to that effect.

Tertiary forms would be the individual trees on the hillside; you may choose to add enough details to some of these to create interest for the viewer but again they should always compliment the larger forms not obliterate them.This idea applies to anything- portraits, still life, figures or landscapes and is an essential tool in preserving the sense of solidity in your pictures.

Plein Air Article

by
Armand Cabrera


This will be a short post this week after skipping last week, I will be back to my regular schedule next week.

I am happy to announce the current issue of Plein Air Magazine (February/March 2012) has a three page article about me and my work. I was interviewed by editor-in-chief M. Stephen Doherty for the piece and it includes images of five of my paintings.

Walter Hunt Everett

By Armand Cabrera

Walter Hunt Everett was born on August 20 1880. He spent his childhood on a farm in Haddonfield, New Jersey. In his teens he attended The Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art. Sometime later he attended the Drexel Institute and studied under Howard Pyle.

He began getting professional work in his early twenties. Everett worked for The Saturday Evening Post, Scribner’s Monthly, Women’s Home Companion, McCall’s, Collier’s,Ladies Home Journal, and illustrated a number of books. He provided color frontispieces for the eighteen volume set of The Works of Louise Muhlbach.

Everett also taught briefly at the Spring Garden Institute and The School of Industrial Art from 1911 to 1915 but quit when he felt teaching was too confining.

Everett’s early work shows the influence of Pyle and other successful illustrators of the day like E.A. Abbey. The designs while strong are simple and the color is subdued.

As he matured his work became more personal. He developed an intricate sense of design and color and he incorporated more figures in his work. His later work becomes more focused on flat planes of painted color and even more sophisticated designs. His brushwork is bold and free but never sloppy or haphazard.

Although he was in demand as an illustrator through the 1920’s and early 1930’s, his temperamental nature and perfectionism caused him to miss deadlines. In a fit one day he burned most of his life’s work and very few originals survive. He was married briefly but his wife left him when he continually failed to pay bills and rent on time. He ended up moving in with a brother in Pennsylvania sometime in the 1930’s and spent the end of his life painting for the pure joy it gave him. Walter Hunt Everett died in 1946 at the age of 66.

Bibliography

Walter Everett Forgotten Master
Step by Step Graphics Volume 4 Number 1
Benjamin and Jane Sperry Eisenstat

200 Years of American Illustration

Henry C. Pitz

The Illustrator in America (3 volumes)

1900-1960, 1880-1980, 1860-2000

Walt Read

I want to thank Kev Ferarra for some of the Everett pictures and information in this article.

Other Articles on the web about Walter Everett

http://www.schoonoverstudios.com/howard-pyle-a-students/pyle-students-bios.html?start=22

http://illustrationart.blogspot.com/2008/07/walter-everett-1880-1946.html

http://todaysinspiration.blogspot.com/2011/11/walter-h-everett-man-preoccupied-with.html

http://gregnewbold.blogspot.com/2011/11/more-walter-everett.html