Before the Storm, the video

It's been a while since my last tutorial (3 years to be exact), so I'm very pleased to announce I finally finished the third one. The subject this time is painting storm clouds. As usual the video follows the painting process, from it's planning stages to the finished work. I'm adding the dry brush to the list of painting techniques. It's a very helpful tool for painting life like clouds. 

I just posted a 6 min. trailer on YouTube and on my website. If you decide to purchase the video, please go to http://paintingskies.com/video/.  

Before the Storm, oil on panel, 70 x 120 cm

Just like before the camera work was done by Theo van Egeraat and again it's simply great. This is the third video we did together and our corporation felt very familiar. I was not at all bothered by the camera while painting.

The music for the video has been specially composed by Udo Pannekeet, bass player, composer and conservatory teacher. His amazing soundscapes add a wonderful feeling to the video.

My friend and fellow painter David L. Smith (great seascapes!) generously offered to edit the English voice over and since I'm not a native speaker his contribution was crucial for keeping the voice over understandable.

Let me know what you think!

Waves

Wave Breaking on a Peer, oil on panel, 33.5 x 59"

I'm in the middle of a wave-painting frenzy. Finished two wave paintings in the last month and I'm working on a third. Really enjoying myself. To me, a successful wave painting is about energy and freedom. Working on one always raises my mood. It's pure painting fun with all it's different surfaces: smooth, soft green patches where the wave is rolling over and explosions of white foam when it breaks. All these surfaces need a different approach: I glaze the smooth parts and for the foam I use pure paint, no medium at all. 

Wave Breaking on a Peer, detail

Highlight of the fun is painting the foam dots that are thrown in every direction. I use a worn out fan brush to splatter the thin paint on the panel. Back in Kindergarden we did it with a tooth brush, but a fan brush gives you some control over the splatters.

Stormy Breakers, detail

Stormy Breakers, oil on panel, 15.7 x 63"

For larger pics (with more details) please go to my website: www.paintingskies.com., or click the link on the title of the paintings.

Later!

Romantic

Caspar David Friedrich
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818

I'm a Romantic. Not that I treat my wife to a candle lit dinner every week (she'd probably think I went mad), but I can relate to the ideas about nature of the Romantic era. It lasted from (give or take) 1800 to 1850. A true Romantic sees nature as a source of very intense and sometimes even religious experiences. The genre to best express that feeling is of course landscape. One of the most important Romantic landscape artists is the German Caspar David Friedrich. In some of his paintings he places a lonely pedestrian facing the overpowering presence of nature. In his 'Wanderer' this figure is still quite dominant, but in other paintings (of different of artists as well) it shrinks to a tiny dot in the vast landscape.

My hometown museum hosts an exhibition entitled 'Romanticism in the North'. In this case 'the North' means the north of Europe. Went to see it last week and came home with mixed feelings. On the one hand I saw some totally over the top paintings (some of them even poorly painted), on the other hand I was stunned by a few large size renderings of nature & drama, like the one I'm looking at in the picture. It's a shipwreck drama bij Wijnand Nuijen, a Dutch painter who was 23 when he painted it. He hardly outlived his masterpiece. Died at 26...

In the catalogue of the exhibition the figure-in-a-landscape theme is seen as symbolic for the deep longing to become one with nature and at the same time for the impossibility of fulfillment. Even though I'm a Romantic this yearning is strange to me. It's like wanting to be something you already are. We don't have to become one with nature, we are nature.

I just finished a painting that I think is definitely Romantic. It's called 'Before the Storm'. Not a human being in sight...
It will be the subject of my next tutorial. We're in the process of editing the vast amount of footage and that'll take a while. Hope to release it this coming May. I'll keep you posted.

Before the Storm, oil on panel, 27.6 x 47.2"

Dry brush

Those of you who have seen my full length tutorials know that I often start with a midtone when I'm painting clouds. It can either become the shadow part or the bottom layer for the highlights. Then I slowly build up the highlights until I get them just right. With 'Tidal Pool' I took a different approach.

 

Tidal Pool, oil on panel, 35.4 x 47.2"

  

I started by painting the blue of the sky covering the entire surface. Waited a day til it was dry. Painted the midtone, a soft purple-like grey. Waited another day. So far so good.

Normally I would've painted a rather thin layer of Titanium White and a hint of Vermillion Red on top of this layer and repeated that in the next few days, up to the right shade of white.




This time I thought I'd try something else. The color mix was the same: Titanium White and a hint of Vermillion Red. The difference: no medium, just pure paint. With a number 30 spalter I bristled the dry paint on top of the bottom layer.The combination of the rough brush and the dry paint worked very well to create a cloud like surface.

I shot the below picture close to the painted surface. Especially on the edges of the highlights it clearly shows the hair-like structure that you get when using this dry brush technique. I left a small zone of the underpainting purple uncovered, to prevent the hard edges that will immediately turn your cloud into an isolated lump. Now it nicely dissolves into the blue sky.

Framing #2

As some of you may know I paint on 6 mil. MDF board. I order them at Mus-paneel, a small Dutch company, specialized in preparing painting boards. They do an exellent job. Got some secret recipe to make the surface as smooth as ice. After doing their magic they ship the boards to my framer to have them cradled.

The cradle is glued to the back of the board 

Cradling is essential, especially for the larger boards. It provides stability and prevents curvature. But there is another reason. I use floaters as a standard frame and the cradle makes it possible for the painting to be screwed to the frame. (By the way, I love that word, floater. It describes exactly what happens: like your painting is floating in its frame. The Dutch term is less poetic: 'baklijst'. 'Bak' means bin, 'lijst' means frame. As if you dump your painting in a bin...)

The width of the border from the cradle to the edge depends on the specifics of the floater you use. The one I've been using the last couple of years allows a 30 mil. width between the cradle and the edge of the board. If you glue the cradle to far from the edge, it will have no frame to sit on. I probably lost you by now, didn't I? Maybe the above cross section will shed some light. 

The Sea, oil on panel, 47.2 x 63"

Anyway, I thought I'd end this rather dull story with a painting. In a frame.

Painting Snow

A White Christmas is very rare in Holland. I don't even remember the last time, but the web doesn't forget, so I looked it up: the last time we had one was in 2010 and the one before that was way back in the twentieth century. We do have snow though, at least a few times every winter. Very inspiring for a landscape painter.

There's a common misunderstanding about snow. I hate to break the news to you, but it's not white. It has a lot of different colors, ranging from yellowish to light shades of purple, depending on the circumstances, but not white.

Snowy Polder, oil on panel, 7.1 x 11.8"

For example: in a snow landscape it gets very clear that shadows have a distinct color. Not just some darker muddy shade, but an actual color. In the above landscape the shadows have a soft purple haze, that contrasts with the warmer sunlit parts. Painting a snow landscape is an excellent opportunity to practice your colored greys. If you want to find out more about mixing colored greys, you could watch the YouTube clip I did on the subject.

Snowy Dune, oil on panel, 27.6 x 39.4"

Snow landscapes often hinge on the contrast between warm and cold colors. A few warm accents in a predominantly cold painting often make a big difference. In the Snowy Dune painting the bottom part of the sky and the dune grass (detail below) do the trick. If you want to be sure of the warm-cold contrast you could try painting your snow landscape on a mars red ground. You'll be surprised!

Snowy Dune, detail

A quick guide to painting oil sketches on paper

It's been quite a while since I last posted a clip on YouTube, it was January 2017 I believe. It's not that I don't enjoy making them, but painting comes first and I've been pretty busy this past year. Anyway, I did another one and you can watch it on YouTube. It's 'A Quick Guide to making Oil Sketches on Paper' of just over 6 minutes. Hope you enjoy it!

Foam on the Beach

I've had better weeks. Felt a little weak on Monday, had a sore throat on Tuesday and was sneezing my head off on Wednesday. Couldn't paint all week. On top of that I managed to loose half of the footage for a video I was editing. Like I said I've had better weeks.

It once again made me realize how important painting is to me. So let's talk about a painting I did recently.

Foam on the Beach, oils on panel, 27.6 x 47.2"

Sometimes, when painting a film of water on a beach, I first do the beach, all the way up to the surf. In the early stages there's sand as far as the first breakers. The basic color here is a flesh tint with a little Sepia and Burnt Sienna. Closer to  the viewer there's evermore Sepia and Sienna.

On top of the beach I then paint this layer of water with it's reflections in thin glazes. I really love how the beach subtly shines  through in the color of the water. That's the beauty of glazing: it mimicks reality. First sand, then water. I've used this principle more often, for example when painting thin clouds over a blue sky. Though there have to be more examples I can't think of them at the moment. Gotta sneeze...

Edgy

I always try to make my paintings as realistic as possible, even thought the scenes I paint are often imagined. When you're aiming for a high degree of realism a few things are essential. Smooth transitions for example. Equally important is the way you handle your edges. (By the way: the painting below is not the same as the one in my previous entry. It's a much larger variation on the same theme.)

Rain Clouds #2, oil on panel, 40 x 160 cm

Anyway, a cloud almost never has sharp edges. I already mentioned it in both my tutorial videos: a cloud with sharp edges is going to look like it's cut out and glued to the sky, instead of being a part of it. The way to paint a cloud that hovers over the earth's surface is by softening its edges. The lightest part is not on the edge.The cloud kind of slides into the background.

Rain Clouds #2, detail

Duhuh, mr. expert painter. Of course clouds have soft edges. They're fluffy, constantly changing phenomena. It's not hard to understand they have soft edges. But how about solid objects, like the pole in the painting below?

Snowy Dyke, oil on panel, 50 x 65 cm

Snowy Dyke, detail

I rest my case. Later!

The importance of framing

Every now and then I get the chance to show my work in Belgium, one of our neighbor countries. Great people. They like (and sometimes buy) my work and that makes me very happy. But lately I'm getting the impression they got a thing with frames. More and more Belgian buyers like to purchase their paintings unframed. Gallery owners can't stress enough they have no objections if you drop off your work unframed.

I'm not sure what the reason is, but I hope it doesn't spread. The purpose of a frame is not only aesthetic, it's for protection as well. The surface of my paintings consists of very thin layers of paint that easily damage, a bit like enamel, so I want them to be properly framed.

And to be honest, I like my paintings better when they're framed. Frames are a visual buffer between the painting and it's surroundings. The picture below shows the standard frame I use for my work, a so called 'floater'. It's a simple frame that underscores the landscape format of the painting and says: "This might be a realistic painting, but it's still a work of a contemporary artist."

And here's the same painting in it's actual frame. The Edgartown Art Gallery (where it's currently on display) asked me to ship it unframed, so they could choose a frame that matches the atmosphere of the gallery as a whole. An old English kinda feel. I went for the experiment, curious as I was how my work would look in a totally different frame and I was pleasantly surprised. It looks great with the wonderful warm-cold color contrast between the frame and the painting. 

If you want to take a closer look at it, please go to my website www.paintingskies.com. It's the first painting that comes up in the Portfolio section (at least for now). When you hit the 'detail' button below the picture, guess what happens...

Rain Clouds, oil on panel, 5.9 x 19.7"

5 tips for a successful exhibition

This week I started working on a one person exhibition early next year in De twee Pauwen Art Gallery. De Twee Pauwen means 'the two peacocks' and the gallery honors it's name. Exactly 10 years ago they hosted a solo show of my work for the first time. It was quite successful and after that I was invited back every two years.

Most of the exhibitions I'm participating in are group shows. Since the economic crises galleries are reluctant to take the risk of a one person exhibition, so I'm really glad with the Two Peacocks. It illustrates the importance of a gallery that believes in your work. Nothing worse than driving home after an exhibition with the same paintings you dropped off a few weeks earlier...

Foggy Sunrise, oil on panel, 15 x 50 cm

So to prevent that I'll give you my 5 tips for a successful exhibition (apart of course from doing brilliant paintings):

1. Make sure you're in the right gallery.
Duhuh, I hear you think. But it's is not as self evident as it seems. If you don't get a lot of opportunities to show your work, you maybe tempted to be content with the mere fact that a gallery invites you at all. Still it makes sense to do some research to find out if your work fits in. Look at their artists and maybe write one of them an email to find out what the gallery is about.

2. A prompt answer says a lot.
When I receive an email from a gallery I try to respond the same day, or the next day at the latest. I like my galleries to do the same. When it takes them a week (or sometimes more!) to answer they should at least apologize for their late response. Otherwise: forget it. It takes a lot of effort, time and money on your part to participate. The way a gallery communicates with it's artists says a lot about the effort they're going to put in. Some of the worst experiences I had could have been avoided if I just paid attention to their reaction time.

3. Do the paperwork.
When you're working with a gallery for the first time it's a good idea to have the gallery conditions on paper. At least have them confirm by email the most important points: their percentage, the exhibition period, the number and sizes of the works, insurance, that kind of stuff.

4. Do the numbers.
When you've done your homework you know which price range the gallery is in. For a successful exhibition it's important to stay within that range. If you have to change your prices to fit in, remember: once you raised them it's a problem to lower them when times get hard. Galleries hate it when that happens. It sends a message to their buyers their artists are overpriced.

5. Enjoy the ride.
With all these do's and don't's you'd almost forget the reason for all this: painting. For an exhibition like this I like to focus on a certain aspect of my work. Last time I did a lot of reflections, this time it's going to be clouds, my core business. I enjoy visualizing the gallery filled with my works, each one of them absolutely brilliant of course. Can't wait to turn my ideas into actual paintings. I'll keep you posted.

New oil sketches

Don't feel like writing a lot this week, so I thought I'd do a little self promotion. 

A week ago I put 4 new oil sketches on paper online. Two of them already found a new owner, two are still available for a friendly price, passe partout and shipping included. If you're interested, please go to my webshop at http://www.janhendrikdolsma.nl/paintings/. Thank you!

(If you read this in, let's say, October 2018 there is a possibility the above is no longer valid...)

Clouds in Backlight, oil sketch on paper, 8.7x15.7"

Cloud Mirror, oil sketch on paper, 11.8x15.7"

Little lies

Every time I put a picture of my work online I'm not totally telling the truth. Not totally lying either, but still. Let me explain. At first sight the two pictures below seem to be photographs of the same painting, but one is a small oil sketch on paper and the other is the finished painting on panel.

Evening Clouds, 11.8x17.7", oil on paper

Evening Clouds, 35.4x47.2", oil on panel

A little over a year ago I made them for an American buyer. To give her an idea of what I intended to do I made the sketch. It's about a third of the size of the finished painting. When you see them like this on your screen they seem to be almost identical. I'll show you some details to demonstrate they're not.

Now I seem to be telling you the truth, but am I? Displayed like this the two details are still misleading, because you see them at the same size. If you really want to compare the two I'd have to show them in a 1 : 1 ratio .

Like this:

And even now these pictures are only telling part of the truth, even though they're the size they have in reality. You're not seeing them in the totality of the painting, they're isolated fragments. And of course you're missing out on the reality of the painted surface. You can't look at it up close and then step back. 

Only way to overcome this problem is go see one of the exhibitions I'm participating in (http://www.paintingskies.com/exhibitions/) If you can't make it there, well, you got to make do with the little lies I tell you...

The brush and the saw

Lately I've been struggling with a 12x20'' painting. Never got to the 'now-we're-getting-somewhere' point. In the same period I sold a 6x20'' painting to a buyer who didn't care for the frame, so I had a spare frame. Of the same width. One plus one is two, eh? I digitally cropped the picture of the original painting to a size that would fit the spare frame and I really liked the result. But there is a difference between Photoshop and reality: cmd z. Once the panel has been sawn in two you can't restore it with a simple keyboard command. 

The 12x20" version, before cropping

I slept over it a few nights and then decided I would go for it. I don't have the tools to get the job done, but I live in a town where they have something called a 'stadswerkplaats', a city work shop. It costs next to nothing, they have all the tools and if you're a bit clumsy (like me), they're always willing to help you.

I just got back from the work shop and placed the new painting in the frame and I must say I'm really pleased with the result.

Which goes to show that a painter needs more tools than just a brush.

Sun & Mist, oil on panel, 6x20"

Now I have a new problem: what to do with the leftover part...

the marouflé technique

As some of you may know I often make oil sketches on paper in preparation of larger works on panel.  I sell them for a friendly price on my website. My frame maker produces wonderful passe partoux to protect them during transport. They look great behind glass. 

But every now and then a buyer wants a proper frame instead of a passe partout. In cases like that my frame maker applies the so called marouflé technique. The word 'maroufler' is French and it sounds quite poetic, but it actually means 'to rub'. The painting (or the drawing) is fixed to a solid ground, such as MDF. When it's done properly you can't see the difference with a panel painting. 

Beach with Clouds in Backlight, 9.8x15.7", oil on paper, marouflé

A long time ago I used to do it myself, but to be honest, I'm not a real handy man, so the results often left to be wished for. But if you insist on doing it yourself, this is how it goes:
- The ingredients: acrylic binder, a solid surface (MDF, masonite), a spalter, a credit card, books and a sharp knife
- The paper must be slightly larger than the panel you're going to mount it on. Later on in the process you'll have to cut off the parts that stick out.
- Thin the acrylic binder with water 1:1
- Bring it on with the spalter on both surfaces, the board as well as the back side of the paper. Be sure to have a smooth surface. No humps and bumps. Use the credit card to even out irregularities.
- Now gently put the paper on your board and rub (there it is!) the paper surface from the center to the edges
- Let it dry under pressure (this is where the books come in) for about 24 hours.
- Cut off the parts of the paper that stick out with your sharp hobby knife. And when I say sharp I mean razor sharp. A blunt knif will completely ruin your work.
- Done!

I'd try the frame maker.

Theory

Probably every artist and certainly every gallery owner always wonders why one painting sells and another one doesn't. They're hoping to find some kind of secret rule that predicts success or failure. Quite useful in an unpredictable environment like the art business. Now take a look at the paintings below and in particular at the year in which I painted them.

Passage, oil on panel, 35.4 x 47.2", 2007

Shore Line, oil on panel, 15.7 x 19.7", 2011

Sunset with Storm Clouds, oil on paper, 11.8" x 15.7", 2016

The first painting is not exactly  a happy painting, with it's dark sky and the suggestion of bad weather. Now look at the date: 2007, one year before the economic crisis. Sales went through the roof and everybody was quite optimistic. The second painting was painted in the middle of the crisis (2011). A bright sunny painting, while the overall mood was pretty down. The third painting is again a rather dramatic, dark scene. The date is 2016. The crisis is over and our ideas about the future are much brighter than five years earlier.

My idea is that people only buy paintings with a dark mood when everything is fine and the mood is optimistic enough to stand a little drama. During the crisis people had enough trouble of their own and they weren't about to pay good money for more gloom & doom. No chance I would've sold a painting like the first one. Sunny works, like the second one, still sold, though  sales went down considerably. Now in 2017 the crisis is over and there is again room for paintings with a dark atmosphere.

Of course this is not an entirely new idea. During the crisis of the nineteen-thirties the great American  show movies with song and dance did very well. Probably the same mechanism. Maybe I should try my luck with a couple of heavy skies again...

Indanthrene Blue

Sometimes I ask my wife (when she's going downtown to shop) to buy me some painting materials. She doesn't always stick to the list I give her. Or rather she brings home more than is on the list. That's how I started working with Transparent White for example. She's an accomplished painter herself and she knows what she's doing. This time I asked her to buy a few tubes of Ultramarine Blue, which she did, but on top of that she bought me Rembrandt Indanthrene Blue.

Now I don't know about you, but I never heard of Indanthrene Blue. It turns out to be a valuable addition to my palette (I told you, she knows what she's doing!). I hope the above picture gives you an idea, but I'm afraid the intensity of the color will get lost on the screen. It's a very deep and rather warm blue, a bit like Ultramarine, but darker.

Most blues loose color pretty quick when you add white and that's a problem when you need a very light sky that is still distinctly blue. Well, this one keeps it's color, even mixed with a considerable amount of Titanium White. I used it in the beach scene below. Just added a hint of Caribbean Blue (mostly in the lower part of the sky). I am really pleased with the result. This is probably not the last time I'll use Indanthrene Blue!

Rising Tide, oil on panel, 27.6 x 31.5"

Levels

'The level at which you're trying to solve a problem is often not the level that causes the problem.' 

I don't remember who said this. I picked it up sometime during the nineties, when I was still teaching art classes. It often helped me to look at a problem from a different angle and this goes for painting problems as well. Here's a painting I recently finished.

Summerwind, oil on panel, 11.8 x 19.7"

This is what it looked like in an earlier stage. Lots of fluffy clouds. I had been struggling with them for some time. Adding detail, changing color, what have you. Nothing worked. For some reason the painting lacked focus, it was in fact unclear to me what I wanted it to be about. When I replaced the clouds with a blue sky I suddenly knew: it's about the sunlit area behind the dune (that you can't even see) and not about the clouds. Once I saw that, it was a piece of cake: I brought more color and light to the sky behind the dune and within half an hour I decided the thing was finished...

Of course I didn't look at my painting and thought: 'The level at which I'm trying to solve this problem is not the level that causes the problem.' I solved it while painting. But still, what happened is that I approached it from another level. Maybe I should remember it the next time I get stuck...

Muddy waters

I usually post a new entry every two weeks, but this time it has been a little longer. I was occupied elsewhere. On Madeira, to be exact. Madeira is a small volcanic island, a speck in the Atlantic. It's the place where Sisi went to cure her tuberculosis. There's a small statue of her where people still put flowers.

Madeira is stunningly beautiful. Flowers everywhere, fantastic scenery and a deep blue ocean. I spent quite a few hours at the waterfront, looking at the Atlantic. I'm used to the North Sea, which is, well, a bit muddy. The color of the water is often brown- or greenish because of the sandy bottom. The Atlantic on the other side is very clear. We saw dolphins swimming underwater! When you see a fish swimming underwater in the North Sea you've probably been drinking.

The painting below was inspired by yet another sea, The Wadden Sea. It's a tidal landscape that partly falls dry at low tide. On the map you can find it between the Wadden Sea islands and the Dutch mainland. It stretches all the way to Denmark. Now here is a sea that is defined by the presence of sand. A lot of sand. When high tide comes in it deposits sand from the North Sea on the banks, that fall dry at low tide. If you're lucky you can spot seals on the banks, chilling in the sun.

A lot of my work is inspired by this particular stretch of water, always changing and moving with the tide. Even the islands move slowly to the east. Now I don't sea Madeira doing that...

Smooth Sailing, oil on canvas, 27.6 x 47.2"

The mirror

Everyone who has ever done any painting has experienced it: you have no idea what you're looking at anymore. Does your painting still make any sense or is it a total failure. Especially after a long painting session you loose perspective of what you're doing.

Most painters have a trick or two to overcome these situations. One of them is asking a person whose opinion you value to comment on the painting. Looking at your work through somebody else's eyes can be quite refreshing, though not always a pleasure. Still, honesty is required if you want the critique to be of any value. I'm lucky to have a few honest people close at hand.

Another way to get a fresh view is to take a picture of your painting, open it in Photoshop (or similar software) and fool around with it for a bit. What happens if you give it more contrast or less light? If you know your way around this kind of software, you can change the color of certain areas and see what happens.

A much simpler trick is the mirror. When you look at your painting in a mirror you almost always see stuff that you missed before. I don't know exactly why. I think it has to do with the fact that the mirrored image is relatively fresh, but it's also easier to see your painting as a whole, instead of as a bunch of inconsistent details.  Whatever the reason, it works, at least it does for me.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot the easiest of them all: take a break...