MY LAST POST HERE: moving to a new site

I'm moving to a wordpress site that combines a blog and website so this will be my last post here.

You can find my new site and painting adventures at caubinfineart.com.

I'm closing in on my dream of the RV mobile studio and 2 year painting tour of the Pacific Coast, all of it will be on the new site.

Thanks to all who commented and supported me here, hope to see some of you at the new place when it's up and running JUNE 2012.

I will import all these posts to the new site, but leave this one up for any who are used to coming here or need it for ideas.

My Best to all and don't forget to walk barefoot in the sand, breathe in the salt air and enjoy who you are.

The Rush of Plein Air

Plein Air is a fancy French term for painting in the open air. It's a current hotbed for artists, with many "paint outs" sponsored by big and small organizations, There are national level conferences in Las Vegas, and even a slick magazine called Plein Air with some great art in the inaugural issue.
A painting done plein air is a great challenge for the painter, The light changes very fast, the weather can be bad or near impossible, For me wind blows sand and that sticks in the paint, but in spite of all the hard conditions, nothing is so exciting to try, many of the paintings fail, even for the best oof artists. Most of mine go into a folder for reference to color and light. Some come out with a special flavor of the place that no camera or memory can hold like this small 6x8 oil of Portuguese Point with the wind and time coming in.

Becharmed by the Sea

Sometimes out with the sea a small thing keeps you spell bound, like the wash of a rocky point, At Portuguese Beach right at the South end are a group of rocks. As the tide comes in waves rush from several angles at once over the rocks, and make beautiful curves and flow lines. I know this was really a bit beyond me but got obsessed and decided to try it anyway, its only paint;-). I did lots of little drawings and several small studies then worked it out in an underpainting using a staining technique of very thin paint in local color and values, that I wiped off again until only the stain was there. Now I'm fully engulfed, really over my head, and hoping to come to some sort of finish that is satisfying, but I've a long way to go, At least the rocks are working, These Sonoma coast rocks are not really very paintable as is, great dark lumps of things and in the low light I love no details can be seen unless you are standing right on top of them. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, we'll see how it goes. The main color here is Prussian Green, not a color I use often, but very transparent, mixed with Greenish Umber, it makes colors just right for the waters here. Next to the work in progress, called a WIP is a plein air sketch I'm using to help, I also have about 10 photos of this place all with different waves. This one is made up from lots of them

Big Wave Study

This was a massive challenge, I wanted the big wave to star, with all the wind and force, and the foreground to have a highly agitated feel of rolling movement that expressed the day I saw this. I wanted to do all of it with brushwork suggesting the details without getting out a rigger brush and putting it all in. This is part of Aspevig's idea of "knowledge gaps" that the artist suggests enough, but leaves gaps for the viewer to fill in from their own experiences. When a viewer does this the  discovery produces endorphins in the brain that leads to great pleasure and a very enjoyable viewing experience. 

It was hard to have the big wave star and not lose that to too much foreground competition. I scraped off the foreground 4 times and once got out a rag and took it back to canvas. I'm starting to learn that I can't do it all on one painting and to be happy if some part is there and to know the next ones I'll get more. 


I also created a lavender sky here gradating in warm-cool and in value r-l. I needed a lower value sky to get the blowing spray to show. There is a gentle S movement of light, (Rem naples yellow light, to carry the eye front to back) I used 2 whites a warm one and a cool one, something that is now part of my palette, with so much white in a seascape it helps to create more variety in the pale tones.


In the detail you can see how I'm using brushwork alone to make the suggested details. This work is  6x12, and if I eventually go bigger I can put in more with the space, working up some layers of glazing to enhance the depth.
detail 

the detail is nice by itself, its a good feeling when I get something into the painting that was felt the day I saw it.  

Hard As A Rock

Rocks can be the downfall of a seascape, if they are not right it really shows, after all there are only 3 elements in a seascape, rocks, sea and sky, such a stripped down design means all of it has to work well, no fudging allowed.I'm not a huge lover of rocks, not like some, so I've had to do a lot of work, maybe some of it will be of use to other artists. Stapeton Kearns has a lot of good ideas on his blog, Here are some Ive gleaned from various books the best one is by Curtis, How to Paint Successful Seascapes. He suggests you start very thin and scribble the forms in. I use a lot f Spike of Lavender, or you can use turps or OMS ( odorless mineral spirits) and a tiny bit of paint I usually use a warm tone of Greenish Umber and Venitian red. Do not put any white into this color. Its very much like water color very liquid. Then with a synthetic flat or brigth brkush I scribble the mass, I let this set up a bit then go in with a darker tone and put in the shadows, all rought blocked in. Then I stop let it dry and work on the water, tthe same way very thin color, brushstrokes showing. This allows me to see the developing compostion of the two and if adjustments are needed, its so easy at this point to lift off color with a wet brush or a rag and wipe back to the canvas. Here is a small study with that process just finished, I will let this dry a couple of hours before starting on the impasto painting

Fatal Attraction

Many seascape painters are happy to paint the rocks and crashing waves, I like that, other painters put in the view of the sea as a little piece in a landscape, I occasionally do those too, but my real affection and passion is for the small luminous moments that only last about 15 min. and are so subtle no photo can begin to capture it. Fog, mists, last bits of light after the sun has set, all these attract me more than the more iconic views. I say fatal attraction as they are exceedingly hard to paint,
the American Tonalist painters were the most successful.( will do a post on them later) Its very easy to just go for the flash and overdo it so it takes a sensitive brush and hand. Values are very close and color temperature( how warm or cool a mix) is critical. Also as plein air one only has a very short window of time. The only solutions is to try the same thing over and over until you accumulate enough memory and experience that you can work very quickly. Back in the studio I rely on that memory and my current method of making voice memos on my iphone to go with the photo, this reminds me of what I saw and I have less tendency to copy what the camera saw.

              The Land and Sea and Sky Are  One.    7x9" oil on shellacked paper

This is my first attempt, a studio work, on a very particular light that happens infrequently. There must be overhead clouds, mists and some clearing on the horizon to see this spectacular effect. It seems impossible when it happens and stops everyone in their tracks. Here at North Salmon Creek Beach there is a lot of wet sand to reflect it.  I will need to paint this many times to capture all the subtle color and edge changes, but I really enjoy the challenge, and I'm very pleased with this first try. It took me two days of mixing to discover just the right color of that lit cloud.  Of course this tone only lasts a few min. before it deepens more. I also love the seamlessness of the sky becoming sea becoming sand. It will take many paintings to master.

Brushwork where to start

I've mentioned before that all my university art school training was in abstract art, and until the last 7 years that's mainly what I did. Seascape is the best place for an abstract artist in representational work. The place where both collide like the sea on a rock. 
Todays topic is brush work. We've all heard the term, and I even have the book Brushwork Essentials which gave me some idea there was such a thing. Only lately have I begun to get it going in my own work.  Paying attention to it in yours it can help you to create higher level work.

First notice that each of us has a different "touch" our unique signature, we don't want that to change but to grow, on the other hand we want to make it conscious, to make our hand do what we intend, and not wander off unattended dabbing away. So the first step is to notice that you ARE mindlessly dabbing because you don't know what to do, or your mind has taken a side trip into the past or future. What to eat for dinner, or any other of the 60,000 thoughts they say we think each day. When you notice mindless dabbing just stop painting, redirect your mind to the thing in front of you, find your place and begin again. Staying present is easier if you use physical cues, the sound of the brush, movement of your arm, and then let go, your body knows how to paint if you let it. But slow down, you are not Bob Ross sloshing across the canvas( unless you want that rush of just slapping things on, it's ok sometimes, but seldom gets really great results in brushwork) You are the conductor of the music, choosing violins, here a crashing symbol there a pluck of the harp string, bringing out the music, you are not some dude on a platform waving your arms around, looking like a "painter" but not producing music. 
For the finest example of this watch a Richard Schmid vid. Here he is after decades of work still breathless with the beauty of a single brushstroke of just the right color in the right place. So inspiring, and watch how carefully he places each touch, no dabbing away there, yet still freely done, taking advantage of "accidents" ( room for the subconscious and right brain to work)

Next work make being aware of dabbing away your first priority, start to place your strokes and colors put them down and leave them, stop scrubbing one color into another ( except for the first lay in if you do that) and place them side by side, if you blend do it after they are down...See if that wakes up your work and starts to make not just objects but a beautiful surface as well. 

Breaking Out

This post is mainly for all the intermediate  or  better painters out there, and collectors who want to understand the painting process

When one paints more and more especially on one topic, you will begin to repeat yourself and begin to make a formula of how you work. What was unknown when you started is now known in the left brain as information and you start to paint from what you know. To be an artist is a skillful blend of what you know and the unknown. If you let what you know start to take over, your paintings will become more and more trite formulas. Unless you are a Kinkade type painter who makes millions of painting the same thing over and over, even he got bored out of his skull and hired others to paint his works. So how do we counter that trend?

The book Your Artist's Brain by Purcell is good place to start. It will tell you exactly how and why it happens.  Then finding ways to access your more unconscious side helps. Here are some ways you can trick that systematic left brain in to letting go more.  One way is to make little abstract compositions first, with no subject in mind. No bigger than 3x5 inches, in say 3 colors finding one that pleases you, and using that to plan your work. Robert Bateman the very realist wildlife and nature painter does this, then figures out what animal will fit that composition... Other ways are the informal divisions, not the classic thirds or even Golden section.  Painting upside down sometimes shakes things up. Changing two of your main colors on the palette, limiting your palette to 3 primaries and white, or if you are a colorist, painting in monochrome, or vice versa. Switch mediums. And for the last really big box buster. Take one painting and go for broke, not just nice, or OK but either really great or completely busted. Do to it everything that goes against little fixes...get a big brush, scrape it off and repaint parts completely, turn it upside down and work on it as an abstract shape. In short go from the gut and see what happens. And then PAY ATTENTION as you are working to see the effects of what you are doing, brushwork, color changes all the things you know. 

You and the painting are dancing partners, you are feeling your way along and listening to what the painting is telling you, not just your mind. If you are dancing with someone you don't push or shove them around, you have a dialog going until the two become one.  You are in the moment painting not following along just in the mind but completely alive and aware in that moment, what is really happening, feeling your hand and the brush connect, the movement and sound all of it, really present Now.

Grey days

Getting set up for the grand adventure of painting the sea for a year or two means figuring out how to stay connected on the go. My Internet failed over the holidays so I'm learning how to do this by iPhone and soon iPad. Here is the first post from my phone. A quiet work of quiet color oil 6x8 on linen

Inside the Wave from Magic Seaweed

Any good seascape painter must know the anatomy of a wave, why and how it forms, what shapes it and how it moves from swell to breaking over to foam to scud. The internet is the best place to find this or I highly recommend E. John Robinsons' books especially his "Marine Painting in Oil" where it is all laid out in diagram form. For beginning seascape painters this is the very best book out there, to cover all the aspects of painting. It holds up well though written some time ago, and works for acrylics or pastel as well.

Few of us would ever get this view  in the barrel of the wave as it curls over. The website this comes from is one of my favorites, pointed out to me by a reader of this blog. Magic Seaweed gives me all the surf reports for the area I live in, and daily has photos and videos of the sea and waves all over the planet. If you go to their homepage and scroll down on the right you can find surf reports and information from all over the world and select your local area. If you are lucky enough to  live near the water, you should be able to find something near you.

I check these reports for days I want to go paint, where the surf is, how big it is, and what I'm likely to find. It sometimes is not quite what the report says, but most days are close. I also have bookmarked a cam put up by the Bodega Marine Lab from Davis CA, This cam is 24/7 and is updated every 15 min. So I check to see what kind of day it is, if the clouds are good, or clear enough to see the sunset. Of course sometimes it changes very fast, and what was clear at 2pm is completely fogged in by 3pm, but it gives me a fighting chance. I live about 25 miles from the Sonoma Coast so I'm blessed with having my subject very close at hand whenever I want. I can't imagine how anyone would try to seriously paint the sea unless they had a way of observing it closely day after day. If you are landlocked and hunger for the sea, I hope someday you choose to own a painting of it, from me( check the top link of my blog for Currently Available)  or other artists who really know and love it and have spent the time to faithfully capture its essence not from a photo, but by really being there.

Perspective on the Beach

I had the good fortune to be given a helpful hint for painters and permission to share it here from a very good painter on the other side of the pond as they put it in England, Rob Adams

This is how you can get your figures on the beach (or street) in proper size and perspective, we have and innate sensitivity to the figure so it's quite noticeable when it's not right.  It also works for birds or rocks or bits of drift wood. Its an easy simple way to get it right.

He made it very basic, 

I just tried this with some gulls on the beach  it works very well...


 First get the nearest figure to a size that looks right for you. Then draw vanishing lines from the head and feet to the horizon. Use the lines to measure the figures at the points you want to place them.

 Now cut out the different sized figures and fit them on the canvas. now you can pull horizontally to where they need to be, which allows you to check out the size and place for composition.

The Moveable Horizon

I just completed this trio of small studies. I wanted to see what influence the horizon has on a seascape.
Basically you have 3 choices, up high, mid or low on your canvas. Psychologically you place your viewer in a different relationship to your painting by where you place it. This is only part of the equation, the size of the foreground counts too. If you want a lot of wave action, place it high, you need the space to get the wave up close. If you want a grand view place it low, that means you will be featuring a lot of sky so make it worth watching with subtle colors or cloud patterns.  These studies will be available in the Current Paintings page link at the top of the blog. All are views of North Salmon Creek beach where I go for the long rolling waves, the only place along the coast where this happens,

In these quick studies I tried to keep everything the same except where the horizon hits. You can learn a lot by looking for where the artists put their horizon lines in landscape, as a viewer try to be aware of how that changes your own feeling as you go into the work, and then take that understanding outside to the sea, and standing on a cliff, tilt your head so the horizon is high or low, and catch the fleeting changes of mood inside you. There are so many ways to appreciate Art and Nature, but it all starts inside first.

The Luminous Moment

                                                         No. Salmon Creek Beach at Twilight  7x11 oil on linen
When this is dry I'll soften the transition of fog and sky, but I'm leaving it as is, not quite tweaked to finish, because TA DAH it is the first one that has a particular color effect I've been going for over weeks of time, while progressing through the current 100 Challenge studies of the sea, working to master the longer views of the sea. I'll do a post later on what a 100 Challenge is and why I find them so useful. Keep in mind I have done only studies for over two years to give myself mastery of the basics  in preparation to do my first larger scale works. My own private seascape atelier program


There is an amazingly beautiful light after sunset, that lasts for about 10 min max and turns the sea into a luminous, heart wrenchingly exquisite moment. Most people leave after the sun goes down, next time you are at the sea stay a bit and see if you can see this moment.  It shows best if the sky has thin overcast. Of course I will never be able to really paint it, but coming close will count.


At this time of light all the values are close, if you squint, the sea and foam make one area with just a bit of the top foam lighter where it goes above the main wave, and the scud coming in is a violet shade against the more viridian of the waves...then the sky reflects brilliantly into the sheeting of the spent wave. I have brushed in the foam more directly without fussing with it, much harder to do than laboring over it, by the way, if it is not right the whole area is scraped down and you load the brushes to paint it again. One or two excellent strokes will get it right. Sargent was known for this in his portraits. Often spending a whole day on a face only to wipe it out at the end. The dashing in energy of just the right stroke and fresh paint really adds to the movement I'm trying to get in the foam. 

Here is a detail of the lightest light and darkest dark, the values are very close which is what makes it such a challenge to capture. 

Is It Blue or Is It Yellow

Many years ago I read a shocking book called Blue and Yellow Don't Make Green. Since every painter knows they do I was intrigued. It turned out to be one of the best books on color I've ever come across, it must be as years later it's still published, although I think the original cover was far more attractive.

I came across a statement lately that ties in with this book, so sorry can't remember where on the web I saw it, so if you know please leave a link in the comments.

Color choice is so hard for beginning painters, and for the more advanced and even expert is still challenging. As you learn to paint there are all kinds of formulas and methods, it can become very confusing. So I like this little aid, because it's so simple.... here it is in my words and how it applies to seascapes.

The premise is painter only needs to ask 2 questions about color in the landscape. Is it blue or is it yellow? Red is either a blue red, like alizarin, or a yellow red like cadmium, so you don't have to think about that.

When I look out across the view of my latest paintings, from No. Salmon Creek Beach at sunset......

You can see the choices I made, the very late light this time of year, makes the thicker water in the waves a kind of green blue, and where the water is thinner it becomes shades of yellow.  Yellow also is the color of the reflections from the sky and sun. In landscapes,  the distant land will be in blue ranges, some of it warmed with yellow earth tones, like bt, quin orange, or bt. siennas, but still toned by blues.  Next time you're outside painting or even just looking, scan your view and see how it looks to you if you are just seeing the parts,  is it blue family or is it yellow family. It does make things easier to decide, and changes the old is it warm or is it cool mind set, a cool yellow and a warm blue are possible after all.

Enjoy the view!

Steve Jobs 1955-2011

No way to say how much he has changed our times and lives. This quote is from his 2005 Stanford address. 

 ".. almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."  - Steven P. Jobs

Thank you Steve for your life and your courage, but most of all for your belief in what is possible

the Grand View and Intervals

One of the hardest things about these very big coastline views is to make sure no two intervals are the same. When our linear left brain gets ahold of things it starts making spaces the same and gets  repetitive. A way you can test this is to take a 4x5 space and put in 9 dots at random...now look and see how many are about the same space apart. Do this again and make every space between every dot different,  You will see this is quite a job.

 Nature does not repeat intervals or shapes, even with thousands of leaves on a tree each one will be different. Our eyes through millions of years of evolution are geared for that.  One of the differences between top professional artists and ranks below them is the pros know this secret. Waugh the great American  seaacape artist  said never repeat spaces or shapes, and if you look at his work you'll see he didn't. (He is one of the greats I study and will speak more of him later)

  So in these grand views, it's very easy to start to make things repeat spaces, both positive and negative. Remember every time you make an edge you make two shapes one of the object and one for the space around it. We painters work on 2 D surfaces. So since the tendency is to make the same spaces, one has to be very vigilant to keep that from happening and killing off some of the pleasure the eye and mind take in looking around our paintings, we have, after all, only a few square inches, and Nature has hundreds of miles. So I have finally hit on a method to help me in this.  Most well trained painters are aware of this same interval thing, and on a simpler work it can be done by eye, but on these very small very complex works of  the grandview, I've found it very hard, so the tool is a big help.

I'll still have to be careful when painting to not put them back the same again.

Above  you will find a beginning painting worked out in charcoal, and a little drafting tool with points. With this I can measure an interval and then take that measure and move it around the painting to see if any spaces are repeated. If they are, then now is the time to adjust them I've found several, and each one I changed  helped the painting shapes be more interesting and graceful

The Sonoma Coast reorganized

This is the hardest seascape  composition for me. Our spectacular Sonoma Coast is so beautiful to see and SO hard to paint. After all Nature has hundreds of miles to place her stuff and I only have a few inches.

There's a lot to handle, no two shapes should be alike, and each time a rock is placed it affects all the others, the logical mind wants to line up all the edges, points the ends, and forgets perspective, and then that makes the shapes between like runways. Notice everything in Nature is different, no 2 leaves an a tree of thousands is exactly alike, and neither are the rocks. Our eye is always after novelty an grows bored very easliy, so on a painting it's important to keep that variety. Every time a rock is placed it means carefully looking to see how it affects the overall space relationships. There are 19 rocks in this work each took quite some time to get the shape and exact place it needed to be.

There is  a lot to get right, and only practice can give the painter the skills needed to do it.

In the first drawing you see the orange pastel pencil I use to compose, it easily rubs off for changes.
Next is the bright underpainting that helps me check out the shapes over all
Then the rocks are blocked in

And finally  the painting is fully blocked in the local colors and values. Now I'll let it dry and do the final details which I will post later.

Alexander Harrison

In my quest to become a seascape painter I've searched back through time to find the very best examples of the genre. I have lots to share as we go.... today  it's Alexander Harrison, an Am. Tonalist painter of great repute in his day. In particular one painting called The Wave.  You can enlarge the link I gave, but what we can't get is the real impact. The painting is 40 inches high(99.7 cm) by almost TEN FEET long (299.7) Can you imagine the experience this must give you! Even in the poor internet reproduction you can see the amazing subtle colors he's captured in the overcast light I love so much...Here are just a few things to appreciate and for painters to learn from.

Horizion line
notice how it changes across the work, nowhere is it hard, which would flatten the space, and in some places it's obscured altogether,

Lead ins. 
notice how he leads our eye into the painting with the little wavelets and on a more subconscious level with the reflected darks of the wave in the foreground wet sand linking us to the dark of the wave.

Gradated color/value shifts.
In the sky, a deeper value fog is played off against the light on the water on the right side of the painting, if the sky tone had not shifted that light would not glow so much

The wave itself is pure magic, notice how much he varies the top line, the intervals of dark water and lighter foam, the dimension of the foam and the treatment of the bottom edge shadows and reflections into the water below.

I will be doing some small studies based on some of his paintings. This is how I'm teaching myself seascape painting. I have a few good books by E John Robinson, and one by Roger Curtis, most of the others out there have not been useful to the way I want to paint. But I've learned much more, once past the basics, from study of the great painters who've gone before me.  They are not painters on the radar of the art world anymore, except maybe Homer, but in their day were greatly respected and well known.

more links for Harrison
artencyclopedia.com the way to find all his work on the internet, some have large files
wikipedia.org

and on American Tonalism, (Harrison was a Tonalist) the only home grown Americn art movement, that crashed when Impressionism came along. The paintings are very quiet and subtle and have an intentional spiritual quality. Tonalism has a great influence on my current work as the quality of light along the N. California coast, is that way in nature.

Wave Eye View

One of the new friends I've made with this blog sent me a link to a photographer who lives in Hawaii
Clark Little I love the photos and what it encourages me to do is add more color to my waves. I see it very fleetingly out there but the freeze action of the photo lets me see how much more there is. So I can use my Artistic License( #4736 issued to me for a lifetime)  to add more. Of course the water in Hawaii is a very different situation than here along the No California coast. I lived on the Big Island for 3 years( so blessed to be there before a huge amount of development took place) the color and light here make it a different animal all together.

My new friend and I love waves and chase them along the Sonoma Coast, and someday we might meet out there. I'll post what he shares with me as we go along. Friday is supposed to be a big wave day, so I'll be out there. Enjoy!

On Creativity, and Beyond

Vik Muniz, takes image making beyond the box of paints and brushes, his humor and quirky take on art will refresh you in this TED Talk. He uses chocolate, sugar, even dust from the floors of the Whitney Museum to make amazing representational pictures.  It is so easy as a painter or just a human being to get settled in one point of view. People like Muniz wake us up, one of the purposes of art and creativity.

 This painting is made entirely with sugar on black paper of one of the children on a plantation he visited in Saint Kitts. is "Sugar Children" series consists of photographs of drawings he made in sugar of children whose parents and grandparents have worked on the sugar plantation on the island of Saint Kitts.