Observation #14 Followup to Old Joe's Barn

March 23-spring ? still winter here                                                                                                             

This 'should ' conclude the painting- of Old Joe's Barns. It has taken longer than I thought -and although the photograph of the finished work may not look a lot different than the original, I assure you it is ....

This shows the first step in eliminating  that fuzzy edge and the first step in reducing the size  of the bit of                                                                              hanging red vine.

this may be the solution but it still seems too large....

....so....

                                          paint it out and put in something smaller Other changes

                                         may be seen but It would take too long to mention them all.
                        Its been so long since I did this I have the feeling that I have already included this one.

...if so here it is again....

with more shape changes....the rail brought in from the edge of the canvas

adjustments to the green were next

there has been changes to both roof areas and the sky

During these long cold winter days Ruth and I have had a few games of scrabble/

 I have only used all the letters a few times in the 47 years we have been playing the game so this game was an unusual one with two occasions to use all 7 letters-in one game!

To be fair  on the same day in another round,  Ruth used all her 7 letters -but only one time !!

-she won that game handily.....

back to what is close to the end. When I was thinking about lightening up the foreground and adding more contrast I painted some not quite opaque white over parts I thought could be lighter.

at this stage I lost the edges of the rails on the ground so...notice at the end they weren't quite so obvious.

Finished (for now). Ruth says she thinks this one 'could sell' (a rare compliment) she likes it !

a sense of the scale (size) 3 ft. X 4 ft.

a look at Tonal Values

There have been lots of changes since I started to work with the camera beside me but they didn't seem to be worth mentioning .That's it for now. As usual I feel like I have had enough of whatever the subject was-

-more than enough in fact-but knowing as I do, that that feeling is only temporary, I now just wait for the

dust to settle, -the dust of my realizing how far short of my goals I fall. So far some friendly Muse 

has always come along and landed on my shoulder. After 6 weeks of this I don't know what's next.

Maybe more landscapes , maybe Inglis Falls, maybe something from Leith, maybe some straight Drawing-

It would be a treat not to have to struggle with colour  ...I'm looking forward to seeing new work by an old friend Barry McCarthy April 26. If it's not snowing I plan a trip with my son Dennis to Barry's exhibition at the Loch gallery in Toronto. His work has always inspired me- google his name...

...maybe Spring .

Observation # 13 -follow up to #11

                         If I am to keep things in order this is # 13 but it should be numbered 11.1                                                                           It is the last day of February-the cold persists...
          If anyone remembers, I claimed that there was one major aspect of that first barn painting in Owen               Sound that I  thought was 'off' ...well there were probably more 'off' parts than that...but never mind....
                                Here are the before and after photos showing the change(s) I made

this is the way it was the last time it was seen-the fence seemed too white 

a pure stark white probably looks OK on the screen bit trust me 'in person' it was too white

(sorry these photos should have been taken under the same conditions...alas...)and this painting IS better in person- aren't we all!

        ........... so about an hour ago I dug out the mars black, Payne's grey, titanium white and burnt umber

          and proceeded to  reduce the intensity of the white -to almost a middle value grey in some places.

I had to use pure undiluted paint  because of the rule "Fat over Lean'   which refers to the necessity of never putting a lean or diluted paint over a thick heavy application of paint-----could cause cracking  down the road......Now, if this had been done in Acrylic it would have been much more simple just to put a light wash over the too light parts

                      This little experiment is now over. I'm not sure if I'll continue with oil or not-I appreciate all the  qualities about Oil paint that in many ways make it superior to acrylic. If I do another I'll try  cotton                                                           canvas-a much more flexible surface.

                       One of those superior qualities of Oil is that nice luscious texture one can get.

            If you ever get a chance to see an original A.J.Casson,1898-1992- one of the Group of Seven, check out his textures. His work is much more 'labored' than Thomson's. Remembering the surface of a               Thomson sketch in oil on an 8 X 10 makes me think my own brush handling in this barn is not very                                                                                 thoughtful.

I might never get a chance to 'name -drop" Casson's name again so- what the heck : I met him in 1970 in the     St Thomas Art Gallery  he was one of the jurors and told me the night of the opening he liked my work. 

            (I was 23 he was 72, he was a kind fellow). I met A.Y. Jackson about 1968 in Kleinburg

at the McMichael Collection. It was a chilly but sunny day and he was sitting outside wrapped in a blanket                       He had a stroke a  sometime earlier- but was smiling and saying brief hellos. 

     Every now and then I drop out to the Leith Cemetery and have a chat with the guy who inspired them             both- Tom Thomson....I imagine Tom to be there even though he's probably up near Canoe Lake in

                                                            Algonquin Park

              The last photo here was taken with a strong raking sunlight-showing the brush work

              -next step- in 6 months-apply a final varnish.-I haven't done that in a long time

                                                                   -farewell

Observation #12 another re-working of a BARN

 It is Feb 28 2014 .
The snow has returned after a few days of relief.
                       Here goes again with another sort of  step by step set of alterations (changes) to an 'older' work
           Sometime, years ago, I did a careful drawing of the following setting in an abandoned farm yard. I did it on unprimmed cotton canvas-it was a sort of experiment and I've told myself not to do it again.-and I haven't.
          The paint (acrylic ) soaked into the canvas and while it was a nice surface to draw on, painting on it was not easy to do because it was so absorbent-so I left it at a stage where I 'thought 'maybe someday I would put a thin coat of Acrylic medium on it and finish it-paint over it some more.
      Well one thing led to another, the years slipped away and I never really gave up on it, but other work seemed more interesting- more importantly my brother actually bought the  thing- then years after when he and his wife downsized -to less wall space-they gave it back to me
                           The buildings were really great to draw and paint both inside and out. Inside the distant barn was a great setting of an old traditional barn interior with things from an other era of farm life. I found some eggs in the chicken roosting nests that were at least 10 years old- vitrified and lots of that evidence of a quick abandonment of the place.Maybe I'll put those on here sometime...
         ( I really should take the time to at least make these  photographs less crooked -maybe next time)
                       the following is the Painting back in the early autumn of 2013- it is 36in X 48in.

After living with it for awhile I decided to make some changes .I had just planted a young maple with large leaves that were just changing their colour so I drew in two leafless small trees-in places where I thought their shapes would improve the composition.

I also decided to make the two cedar fence rails in the bottom more prominent so I lightened them, thinking I would later  bury them in grass and weeds- still leaving them more obvious.

 

considering the location of the trees with some green tape 

Lots more changes took place to do what I thought would make this painting better-

What's Better?

I the past when I showed anyone a painting that 'to them ' looked finished , I would hear :"oh don't do anymore to it ................."Maybe that was good advice sometimes but usually I ignored it and never felt that I had the time or the listener really wanted to endure the explanation of  those principles of design -the stuff of balance-eye movement, the sense of space(overlapping shapes -of light, of colour trying for a unity of colour.... and those are just some of the aspects of (for me) making a painting successful.In this case 'better'

This time, unless it's really not obvious, I think I'll just put the photos up - some show obvious "before and after effects". Some of these may be obviously out of order 

Perhaps I should look again at Alex Colville's moonlight paintings  -no not this time

Making the branches lighter  -too light to start- will tone down later

later...

I have to say a bit about this next image ,because as I was thinking about what to do in that central part where that original large dark green "black hole' at the bottom of a rather featureless wall seemed to create a sort of dead space, I received a letter from a friend in Australia. The letter included a poem by Norman MacCaig-called:

   Summer Farm    I'l quote just the first verse

"Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass

And hang zigzag on hedges. Green as glass

The water in the horse trough shines.

Nine ducks go wobbling by in two straight lines.

A few years ago when I was prowling around near Kingsbridge  I walked through a field on my way to Lake Huron and noticed an old farm that I have vivid childhood memories of.

I made a detour and after an hour of  memory making- picture taking. I was just about to continue on when I noticed a horse trough. It was all overgrown with weeds growing out of it's dry form,and I remember seeing gold fish in that cement trough....so I took some shots of it ...never knowing when they may come in handy and  now 35 years later MacCaig's poem  awoke those memories.

 Thanks Shell for sending it to me .

while I was at it it seemed that the rail on the left of that group needed a new angle.

...so with a value 7 grey ..well you can see what happened next-

further changes to the vine and the size of the wooden rails...

 A horse tough from that era was usually a cement container sort of like a bath tub.I have seen them under  the downspouts from an eaves-trough, or close to a windmill or a hand pump.After decades of use the 

    edges became rounded and water freezing in them in winter would sometimes cause cracks in the cement.

This was the state of affairs at 4:30  on the last day of one of the meanest Februaries I can remember- All roads in Bruce County closed yesterday to day? .With the exception of some more texture in the foreground and maybe breaking up those large flat green roofs on the distant barn I am almost finished-maybe another 2 long days .Then it's back to the Old uncle's Diary.

I'm always aware of the possibility of tickling a painting to death.It can happen easily if you don't keep your eye on the big picture-Sometimes as you go along pushing this back, sacrificing one part for another

adding -subtracting -when you take a step back it's an : "OH NO!"

 think I'll call it done for today -maybe read this over tomorrow and 

post it -then finish it -post that -then start something new.

It's OK going back like this -sort of satisfying to do a Lazarus

kind of thing,  and I know for sure this work is a lot better than when I left off

working on it all those years ago

 just noticed that hazy brown-yellow light area just behind the barn-take a step closer and it looks like yellow         ground fog-  I kind of like the 'feel' of it but........

Till next time...........................Brian

Observation # 11 Feb 6 2014 Barn # 1-PART TWO -probably finished

 Before I return to Barn #1 it might be fun to go back 44 years to the 2 remaining barn drawings from the dozens I did over 3 of the 4 years at O.C.A.-these were done on the spot -often in black conte (a hard chalk)

 Now that the paint from the early stages of this has almost dried to the touch and I could  use a brake from

            other work maybe I'll see if I can finish Barn #1.This is what it looked like a few weeks ago:

When I looked at it a few hours ago I observed the following: -the upper left area of the sky didn't look 'conscious'- too much ill considered texture, -the top edge of the light clouds above the barn seemed poorly designed too much sameness-

-the tree on the left is flat- no form or volume-brush strokes too similar,, -the right side or the end wall of the small building is too dark and the tree beside it doesn't seem to be spatially in front of it,-

the barn roof isn't finished- is looking too sloppy,  an unfinished loose, not overworked look is good but this is sloppy, the light I used to lighten it looks hazy ,-the fence is too ...one value of grey

and the red of the vine/ ivy is too spotty-

Also I remember that I have not yet used any darks as accents in the barn wall-the boards .....no doubt there will be other things that I will notice as I go along 

this is before

This is after:-it is partially the light from the photograph that makes the surface seem so hazy/milk

-you can tell here too that I put some lighter shapes into the Vine

Next that annoying little dark triangle on the small building

better (I guess)

You may have noticed that dark line under the roof of the small lean-to on the right-

 the next two sots will show a difference-these are close up shots -so when the work  is seen at arms length

 the effect is not the same as what is seen here on the scene (sometimes I wish it were)

 that dark line just seems to sit on the surface.so.......

not so noticeable  eh ? but what's this    ?? -a stray brush stroke

just above the faded green (above the roof) carelessness tut tut

Ok it's gotta go

ok now its' gone...what's that ugly yellow spot ? I didn't put that there

..........somebody's been in my studio messin around!!

damned waste of time -if I did things right in the first place I wouldn't have all this adjusting and fixing up to do!- OK it's Gone  SEE!

What's next ? How about comparing how much more light there is in the barn wall and how there is an

hour or so of defining things 

this is from a couple of weeks ago -my how the time flies when you have to get up every rotten snowy winter morning and clear the driveway.

the next is after some black and white were added to the boards- notice how some of the brush strokes don't look so poorly applied-this is a good time to compare that dark wall on the small building  with the way it is now and to compare the rather flat hard edge of the light orangish band in the sky above the tree on the r far left 

I think the fence is better now

 yeah I know this little detail  (look  below) is better than the whole damned thing  put together

the story of my life !-

it does however give me an idea of how I would like to approach the next one

remember I said that-(I'll forget)check out the band of light sky above the tree on the left(wish I had a pointer here-like my good old laser pointer) 

                     here is the almost final......................

Just a reminder

 this Panel is 9 7/8 , X 14 7/8- just a bit bigger than legal size paper at 8 1/2 X 14

and this detail of the fence is about the size of the normal 

 3 X 5  photograph.

For a while I thought: "this is it ".good enough- not a master piece but not something I need to be ashamed of  either-then as I put it upon a shelve in better light I noticed  something  right away.

        I'm not going to tell you what it is, but anyone would and will agree that there is something 'off 'about

one of the major parts of this composition- it's a fairly big change and will take at least an hour.

Send me $10.00 and I'll tell you !  -no? OK then you'll have to wait-

maybe a week, maybe a month, maybe longer- OK then  $ 5.00

to see the change that I'll be making 

you'll kick yourself for not seeing it! Right now I have to go and clear the drive way. Ruth is going 

to the gym to pump Iron- wonder woman

 until next time  B.

Observation # 10 Barn #1 2014

more Observations    January 16 2014
  -a new year- some old year's past  resolutions renewed-one being to do some 'on the spot'painting  stuff    -'Pleine Aire' to the more sophisticated, on the spot to me but... it is ' tres hiver' -too cold to even draw a bit outside... unless through the car window .
The astute reader might notice I have decided against worrying about my writing- formal writing (sentence structure, syntax  grammar paragraph formation etc etc)
 so, if this works as communication that's cool, the reader might consider a 'take me as you find me'attitude
I don't talk so good either....
But that is not what you came here for(what did you come here for?)-
whatever it was  you'll find this old geezer putting some oil paint on panels and canvas and observing what happens. 
              The first image is the typical monochrome(one colour) sort of--it's a grey on the burnt sienna/raw                       umber base dashed in using a #2 'bright brush (about 1/4 in wide) -a fairly good one. 

   This fall while working hard at procrastinating I prepared over 50 masonite panels and gessoed a few dozen canvases.-even stretched a few myself- this is one of them. 
I've been spending the mornings on my Uncle Mike story-which after 5 or 6 hours is really draining (but it's going well)- that's where I have been trying for some more erudite writing (ahem)That is the mornings after I spend 2-3 hours shoveling- and Blowing snow!
 so now since I have been taking pictures of barns from inside and outside for about 45 years, I have a heck of a lot of them- a lot taken since I got the digital camera-that was about 2003
                  So, why barns?  lots of reasons, I suppose' but it seems to me they are probably quite mundane to city folk  or easily accused of being Cliches or being stereo types, stereotypical hackneyed romantic symbols or something an intellectual would say....about a fading way of life -of the good old days of the family farm. I sure wouldn't fault anyone else for  saying those things but  lately I have been repulsed by artists who take themselves  really seriously and expect others to do the same...so I don't have any 'Deep' personal reasons for doing barns...  personal  sure but not deep...let me just say  some of my first memories are of barns-some of my worthwhile experiences were in barns, some probably sort of profound in the scheme of things and some just plain fun.
                                 I don't feel like the sort of 'Romantic' who sees barns as some really big deal-they are architecturally pretty small potatoes  when you stack them up against the great Cathedrals  of the world. I think I like them for the same reasons that I like bridges  -this shows the looseness of the application of paint thinned a very little bit with Turpentine

                                 I like bridges... as a kid I used to fish off bridges -good memories-walking over the Brooklyn bridge was almost as good as seeing it from a distance...but there is a little (by comparison )'trestle bridge just west of Ripley(believe it or not), that is my all time favourite bridge...but I digress, as of yet I don't have a favourite barn...too many good ones...
                    But I do like the way barns stand out against the sky,or nestle in a valley or lean out over a hill or are surrounded by trees-  the way they look silhouetted against a sunrise-the way they disappear in the fog  and if you happen to have been in a rural Ontario barn in the evening during a cold winter evening while your cousins were 'doing the Chores',  with the 60 watt bulbs  burning and the radio, on CKNX  turned down low...I remember that  looking like a Rembrandt scene-that mellow warm light-with deep shadows.
And barns are a lot bigger than they look from the road.
   Yeah I was a country kid. My Parents left farming before I was born.  Although I always lived in the country as a kid I only experienced other people's barns. For part of an unusual summer I milked 21 or so Holstein cows for a local farmer who tried to make a man out of me...and I do appreciate the time I spent with that man of the soil. There were two local farmers actually with whom I had good barn  learning experiences. I think I was 13 or 14 when I learned just how beautiful a summer sunrise is when you walk through the grass to 'get the cows'. This stage shows the addition of some cerulean blue tinted with white.

              But now I'd like to just do some landscapes with barns in them, or barns with landscapes around them. As always I'm not sure where this will take me....part of the fun is exploring what a painting directs me to do and  if I can make something that is aesthetically pleasing - make a pleasant  interesting image  then I'll be satisfied.
                          Don't think that any big psychologically or socially significant observations will come of this....Mostly I'll be commenting on the procedure.... but just now as I look out my window to the west the winter sky has a warm glow   and I suddenly recall the 3 or 4  barn fires I saw as a kid-----huge powerful events- unforgettable at any age.....and tragic.....
           Here one can see the addition of a patch of manganese blue sky and some Turners yellow that I                     knew at the time was too yellow but thought I should give it a chance. I don't really know what I'm                          doing at this stage -A LA PRIMA (at the first go ) painting ain't my forte

     So that's  a couple of pics of my set up and a laying in  of a barn on the edge of a long low valley with a crooked rail fence. My oil paint consists of 'some tubes that are 40 years old  most of it  over 15  years old and  here is something to remember : Scarlet Lake(that is a  kind of a plum red) cannot be reconstituted
---I think I'll cut the tube in half for fun to show how hard a 30 year old tube of paint can get---thinking about it maybe I could scrape the paint out of the tube and grind it with linseed oil-maybe later...

Most of  what I have is in pretty good shape. I keep the lids on things. At over $ 100.00 for a 150 ml of some colours (that's  like a normal tube of toothpaste ) who could afford to leave the top off ?
  I'm using quick dry medium made by Demco and by the smell in this room will have to get some odorless turpentine (and keep the doors to the  rest of the house closed)
 -one more thing-   I'm saying now that I  intend to do these without doing any preliminary drawing  and without  a lot of delineation (detail) (line work)- keep them about the shapes and space-but I wouldn't believe me if I were you... I'd like to go for atmosphere and a mood--I'm not thinking about what dangers lie ahead for the serious artist (and I am a serious artist (sure you are).
              It does not matter to me that next to bad paintings of Birch trees, bad paintings of barns are right up there with the worst of the worst.  At this point I think I'll just put the stages in without much comment -You can see for yourself what was done--you may not think whatever it was, was the right thing to do... I wonder about that myself but what the heck I never let 'doubt' stand in the way-be paralyzed if I did...

   When I was at OCA and later at the University of Guelph ..someone accused me of being a member of the                                   Dead Barn School...never phased me a bit...good to be self referential.

                      If, and it's a big IF, I can remember to take pictures as I go along , this might be something I'll learn something from..... if anyone else does that's good, but it's not my goal  -  too much like teaching. I'd have to do it right!  
                   Here's a close-up that shows a change in that too yellow band of colour just above the barn-above the right side of the barn roof  you can see that the colour has gone from that yellow to a more orange red colour.  I used cadmium red and white with some of the intensity diminished by adding a little sap green-                  at this point I also notice that the top contour of the barn shape is awfully wiggly  -

           Some one asked me a while ago if I miss teaching.....yes and no is the best answer I can think of , but it just hit me that maybe I am attracted to doing this because it feels a bit like the fun I used to have showing                   kids how to do things..then watching their  'doings'....  by "this", I mean this Blog.

   The other thing noticed were those rather un natural horizontal bands of colour -the way the bottom band                                           of blue was so uniform in width seems poor...so...

     Trouble is, here in this blog thing I feel like I'm talking to myself and finding that I'm not a great listener....so if anyone ever reads this,    how about a comment... or a joke or a suggested  blog for me.
                             Time to add the vine  or is it ivy that had climbed up the side of the barn-there have been other changes too as you've no doubt noticed  the barn boards have been altered  some darker some lighter -and now to see if that red is too full of itself books on colour like to point out something about red not                                                         having a lot of energy , but I wonder....

here's a close up pretty red eh ?...well that's easy to fix

this may not be the final 'fix', but it is the final image in this section

I know this is way to long , but....

Now it's time to step back and see what I think of the 'Whole'

-been looking at the 'Parts' too long

Right now I can see that that dark triangle of the small building on the left is 

demanding my attention too much-but there is hope .

Is it appropriate in a Blog to say :"until next time"

-etiquette  and 'proper form' is so important !

 Here's a look at the palette just before I wipe it clean 

it's always fun to fool around with colour

 .