painting – Page 7 – Bern Abplanalp

Waiting to Sail

SPRING POINT BOATS | 10 x 8” | Oil on Canvas Board

This is a follow-up to a previous post while in Maine. SPRING POINT BOATS was started en plein air, the session just long enough to allow me to lay in a solid structure and composition that was interesting. There was some artistic license taken in terms of boat placement and colors, but the remainder of the setting is, believe it or not, an accurate depiction.

While the paint didn’t effortlessly jump off the brush, something did click regarding boat shapes and structure. I’m not happy with how some of the areas look a bit chalky, but that should be easy to improve in future efforts. I believe I relied too much on Titanium White to lighten values throughout the piece, as opposed to reserving it primarily for the boats. However, the sense of a strong mid-afternoon sun on a calm day came through pretty well.

The last self-critique, and it’s a big one, is the compositional structure. I didn’t notice until the work was done, but now I can’t “unsee” it, that the lighthouse jetty looks artificial because it comes into the painting in a parallel that’s very distracting. It needs to be more angular, or at the very least, I need the sight line to be above the jetty so you can see the side and top, not just the side. I have to laugh, though, because I was so proud of my artistic licensure of the boats, yet I ignored the massive rock jetty in the background. Oh well, there’s always next time.

Thanks for reading!

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October 6, 2023 by Bern Categories: plein air, SeascapesTags: art, boat, Casco bay, Lighthouse, maine, painting, Sailboats, sailing 1 Comment

Juicy Kernel

POPPED PERFECTION | 14 x 11” | Oil on Canvas

In the spirit of fun and interesting still life subjects, please welcome this tasty kernel… POPPED PERFECTION! This is my second popcorn themed composition, but unlike the original, which featured 3 pieces of the corny goodness, the focus is a single, beautiful popped kernel.

Popcorn is a tricky subject to paint, in large part because there’s nothing standard about any of it’s shapes or surfaces. Had I tried to paint this as a novice I would have found a new hobby and never painted again. That said, when you get it right, it’s a thrill!

There are a number of ways to add artistic interest to this type of still life. I wanted to emphasize the transparent elements of a nice big juicy piece of popped corn, thus the focal points with orange and yellow where light can penetrate. To really make the piece pop (sorry, couldn’t help myself) I used a blue background, which is the complementary hue to orange and therefore provides a strong contrast without having to worry too much about the similar values. Furthermore, the piece is very simplistic in terms of having nothing else on the canvas, which is meant to help it jump off the canvas from across the room.

Thanks for reading!

September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 by Bern Categories: still lifeTags: art, painting, popcorn, still life 4 Comments

Sailboats, Ospreys and Bird People

SPRING POINT BOATS | Oil on Canvas Board | 8×10”

SPRING POINT BOATS is a work in progress from a gorgeous day on a pier overlooking a marina adjacent to Spring Point Ledge Lighthouse. This initial session was about 2.5 hours, half of which was spent establishing the composition structure and a practice sketch to verify the arrangement of the boats. Note that boats move, even when they’re tightly anchored in the marina, so photos of each boat in the desired position are essential to finishing a seascape like this in the studio.

The temperature was perfection in the shade, my wife was with me enjoying the outdoors and providing very helpful compositional tips, and there was a family of Ospreys on the other side of the marina (right behind us) that are the talk of the town… amongst bird people at least. I’ll admit they are interesting to watch, as the parent (not sure which one, I’m not up to speed on Osprey gender identification) was busy dropping off fresh caught fish for the two babies. At some point, one of the bird watchers rounded the corner of the pier where I was painting, said “hi”, and I was convinced she was about to ask to see what I was working on, only to then question “why aren’t you painting the Ospreys?” Of course I told her I hate birds, was dismayed at the tankards of shit they spray all over town, and that their screeching was something of nightmares.

Of course that was with my inside voice. My public self, using my actual voice, told her instead that the Ospreys were entertaining but difficult to paint, an answer she seemed to deem acceptable – perhaps she hadn’t considered the complexity of painting moving birds in a nest of twigs atop a 75’ pole in the middle of the bay. She giggled and shuffled away, apparently never having noticed I was painting. Perhaps some grumpy plein air painters – you know who you are – scared her off in the past and she’s afraid to ask. I digress…

As to this painting, I had already decided this was going to be a 50/50 job, namely half outside, half in studio. The goal was to lay down a solid structure and really balance the massive blue expanse of the sky and sea with the focal points of the boats. The lighthouse should give perspective and some added interest to the piece, but the intent to so give the sense of place sitting on the water watching the day go by. For me, this is still very difficult because virtually all sailboats are dominated by white, either the sails or the top deck, so the brush strokes have to be very intentional and the values need to shift much stronger than what I see “live”, at least that’s how I think it should be done.

Stay tuned for the completed work, which I’ll keep very loose and painterly in an attempt to put the viewer outside with the boats.

Thanks for reading!

August 24, 2023 by Bern Categories: plein air, SeascapesTags: art, Lighthouse, maine, osprey, painting, plein air, Sailboats, spring point lighthouse 2 Comments

A Gaggle of Geese – Part 2

MILL CREEK POND | 8 x 6” | Oil on Canvas Board

This is a follow-up from the Gaggle of Geese post a few weeks ago. The finishing “touches” for the studio ended up being a little more like finish “construction”, but I finally got to a point that seemed good enough.

Let me admit, I don’t like this composition, but I really like parts. Others might see something more appealing, as art tends to work that way, but it seems artists trying to sell works tend to force themselves into liking everything they paint. To the uninitiated, know that they’re lying. There’s not an artist out there who likes even most of their final pieces. At the end of the day, our compositions tend to have really cool elements that we love, and various faults that distract us to no end.

MILL CREEK POND was a joy to paint. If you’ve read the previous post and seen the video of the geese, you understand why. In terms of the studio work, I was really focused on simplifying the trees. Apparently I ignored a few basic compositional tenets along the way and ended up with two trees perfectly aligned left and right, meeting in the middle of the canvas. So annoying, but that’s what happens if you don’t step back frequently at the beginning and take the time to ensure the layout works.

Regardless of the “amateur hour” compositional oversights, I had a lot of fun learning how to simplify the masses of the trees, especially the purple oak. Living in Texas, there are no purple oaks, and everything that’s green has a coating of yellow cedar pollen, so things skew very warm. Painting a very dark purple oak tree with huge leaves that gather in numerous masses is, well, an awkward endeavor and hard to create on the first go. Ultimately I gave up, said it’s good enough, and pivoted to the warmth of the setting sun on the trunks, grass, and lily pads.

Hope you enjoy the final product regardless of my self-critique. It worked out in the end… kinda.
Thanks for reading!

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August 1, 2023 by Bern Categories: Landscapes, plein airTags: art, geese, landscape, mill creek pond, oil painting, painting, plein air 1 Comment

Cuz White is Boring

PREBLE SHED | 8 x 6″ | Oil on Canvas Board

In an effort to up my “en plein air” game, I’m going to do a few sessions this summer focused on simplification. The plan is to either find scenes that are lacking details and complexity, or zoom in on the focal area of a detailed scene and cut out the noise in an effort to simplify.

The Preble Shed is an example of the former approach, namely it ain’t complicated… it’s a shed. However, I spent a lot of time also streamlining the background, almost ignoring what trees were actually in the background. I also made a point to blend, perhaps even muddle, the tree edges into the sky. I think it worked pretty well and added atmospheric perspective, something that has eluded many of my previous efforts. Progress!

Not surprisingly, the shed itself was the real challenge. It has a thick coating of paint because there were a number of re-dos as I struggled to find a good light and dark color pairing. I noticed that so many professional artists who do sun-drenched urban landscapes tend to focus on white or very light yellow, using a contrasting blue-purple for the shadowed sides of the structure, which works really well, but honestly strikes me as a little boring. My goal with the shed was to use some hues that could be incorporated into other elements of the landscape – namely the flanking tree in the foreground, the fence in the background, and the sunlit grasses. I went with orange, about the 50th attempt, and can’t tell if I stopped there because I was satisfied or just worn out trying.

Thanks for reading!

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