Oil Painters of America is a national organization of artists dedicated to representational art. Each year, among other regional exhibitions and events, they conduct a juried exhibition.

This year’s exhibition, consisting of some 200 works, is currently on display at the Insight Gallery in Fredericksburg, Texas until June 17, 2013.

There is a page devoted to the winners of the juried categories on the OPA site.

In addition, Insight Gallery has online presentations of the participating OPA Masters and OPA Signature and Associate Members. When viewing the individual works, note that though the image on the page is not linked, there are text links to the right to “Click for full-size image”.

In addition, the OPA website has an Online Showcase, a blog, a searchable Member Directory and other resources.

(Images above: Kenn Backhaus, Rebecca Leer, Richard Biddinger, Richard Allison, Kathie Wheeler, Nancy Wagstaff, Fran Rowe, Frederick Somers, Teresa Elliott, William Alther, John Michael Carter, Sherrie McGraw)

Bracketed by Walt Disney reading quotes from Robert Henri’s The Art Spirit, this delightful short from 1958 briefly visits four Disney animators in the studio, where three of them are at the time working on the classic Sleeping Beauty animated feature, and then follows them into the California countryside, where they paint an old live oak.

Accompanied by jaunty Disney documentary background music, the four artists, Marc Davis, Eyvind Earle, Joshua Meador and Walt Peregoy, set up their equipment and, in a variety of media and styles, each paint their interpretation of the subject.

I was particularly interested in the approach of Eyvind Earle, who I have featured previously, as he painted the detailed textures of the gnarled tree trunk in casein (images above, bottom two). Earle eventually went on to a successful career as a gallery artist.

[Via Mark Frauenfelder on Boing Boing]

The Wayne Plein Air Festival, held here in Southeastern Pennsylvania each May, is now in its seventh year and has grown into an important regional plein air event.

The participating artists paint for three days at locations within 15 miles of the town, one day in nearby Philadelphia and one day in the town of Wayne proper, where it is easier for onlookers to watch them painting.

I got a chance to walk through the town on the last day of painting last week, and to speak with a number of the 30 participating artists, who come from up an down the Eastern seabord, and sometimes further. I hope to highlight several of them in the next week or two.

There is a gallery of work by some of the painters on the site of the Wayne Art Center, which hosts the event. Though not of paintings painted for this years event, they are representative of the artists’ work.

There is also a PDF copy of an article from Chester County Life and an article on NewsWorks with a gallery of work from last year’s event and a brief interview with local painter Michelle Byrne.

The exhibition of work from this year’s event will be on display at the Wayne Art Center until June 28, 2013.

(Shown above: Elise Phillips, Charlie Hunter, Lisa Mitchell)

Most artists who work in oils recognize three general grades of oil paints. For lack of better terms, they can be called student grade, artist grade and premium grade. There are numerous levels of variation within those categories, of course, but they will do as a generalization.

In student grade paints, the price is kept to a minimum and an attempt is often made to keep a level of price consistency across most colors, both by using fillers and extenders in the paints and by substituting “hues” for expensive pigments.

(When you see the word “hue” in the name of an oil paint, it means a substitute for a particular pigment, created by trying to match that pigment’s hue with other, often cheaper pigments, sometimes mixtures of two or more. For example, paint labeled “Cadmium Yellow” is made with cadmium sulfide, an expensive material that produces a beautiful color with excellent covering strength; but “Cadmium Yellow Hue” is made with materials other than cadmium, like arylide, that are modified to initially look like Cadmium Yellow out of the tube, but in use produce a weaker, less desirable color.)

Some examples of familiar student grade oil paints would be Winsor & Newtons’ “Winton” line, or Grumbacher’s “Academy” student grade paints.

The middle level, “artist grade” would correspond to Winsor & Newton’s more familiar “Artist’s” line of oil colors, or those by Gamblin or Holbein. These are noticeably more expensive than student grade paints, and within any of these lines, the range of prices for different pigments within the same brand varies more dramatically, reflecting the varying cost of the actual pigments.

These are the most familiar oil paints. They have fewer fillers or extenders than student grade paints, though there is often some adulteration to facilitate machine-filling of tubes or to maintain a price point for competition within the larger art materials market.

The third level is perhaps less familiar to some, and that is premium grade artist’s oil colors. In these, the manufacturers compete more on quality and reputation than on price, working to produce paints that are more pure combinations of pigment and oil, using higher quality materials and taking greater pains in the preparation and grinding of the pigments. Often the tubes must be filed by hand when additives intended to make machine filling practical are eschewed.

Familiar names in this category might be brands like Old Holland or Williamsburg. They sell at a premium price, often considerably more expensive than the mass market “artist’s” colors, and the difference in price between expensive and inexpensive pigments within a given brand (e.g. between cobalt colors and earth colors) is even more dramatic.

I think most experienced painters have learned that student grade paints are seldom the bargain they are positioned as, their much weaker pigments actually require more paint to produce a similar effect in mixtures, and they often evidence an overall dullness of color and less than desirable handling characteristics. “Hue” colors in particular, are usually much weaker than their nominal genuine pigment counterparts.

Many painters, though, find a similar value in using premium grade paints over the more common artists grade, with an apparently similar valuation of the latter as false economy. They find the more intensely pigmented formulations and handling characteristics of premium oil colors worth the higher initial cost.

Others will insist that the main difference in premium grade paints is just marketing and branding, and don’t see a difference in value worth the expenditure (and will sometimes be quite adamant about it).

Some will pick and choose particular colors from one range or the other, as they prefer certain colors by certain paintmakers and find them individually worth the expense. (There are also proprietary colors, mixtures formulated by particular paintmakers that are not offered by others.)

Until recently, my personal experience had been limited to the first two grades of oil colors, understanding the value of using artist grade paints over student grade, but thinking of the premium colors as an unnecessary luxury — nice if you can afford it, but not likely to make enough of a difference in the practical sense to justify the expense on my part — basically an “Audi vs. Toyota” kind of difference.

There is something to be said, however, for making your judgment after having driven an Audi and then going back to driving a Toyota. Similarly, I’ve found that having had the opportunity to work with premium artists oil paints has changed my attitude about their value.

The paints I’ve had the opportunity to work with are from a small independent paintmaker called Vasari Classic Artists’ Oil Colors, and here I must make a disclaimer.

Though I was familiar with them by name, my experience in actually using Vasari’s paints came about as the result of being hired in my capacity as a website designer to design a new website for them. Their current site is the one I designed (image above). So there is, of course, no way I can claim to be impartial. They are my client.

That being said, I think most readers of Lines and Colors know that I rarely mention something in my posts unless I actually think it’s of value, and I pretty much shoot straight from the hip, so you can balance those factors out and make your own judgment.

Vasari is in many circles the highest ranked of the premium oil paint makers, commanding a premium price and available only through their website (with a $100 minimum order) or at their one retail store in NY, but not in chain stores, catalogs or online art supply companies. They are smaller than most, and devote their efforts only to making oil colors, no other art materials or types of paints.

In the course of an initial meeting with Stephen Salek, the founder and principal paintmaker behind Vasari, he asked about what paints, and specifically what colors I use. Shortly thereafter, I received a box from Vasari in which he had sent me samples of his versions of the colors in my regular palette (which are fairly common), with, I thought, the intention of seeing if they would convince me of the superior quality of his paint while I was in the process of working on his website.

So I set out my usual palette using their colors to give them a test drive. I suppose I was expecting to notice some small difference between their paint and the regular artist grade I have been used to, but I frankly wasn’t thinking it would be dramatic.

I was wrong. I was surprised. I was delighted.

The paints handle with a smooth consistency quite unlike other paints I’ve used. The colors have a vibrancy and subtle strength that kept me fascinated with them.

For the first couple of weeks, in fact, it was a bit distracting. I would be mixing colors while painting and find myself getting lost in just mixing and playing with the colors. I would be in the process of mixing a color and stop partway through, thinking “That’s not the color I’m trying to mix yet, but OMG that’s a beautiful color!”

After working with the initial set of colors for a while, I turned around and bought another box of their paint, filling out from my normal limited palette of six colors to my extended one of twelve, dying to see what their Cobalt Blue and Transparent Red Oxide were like, fascinated with my paints in a way that I haven’t experienced since I was in art school.

Since then, I have tried going back to my other paints and found it disappointing, and I have to say that I’m now rather spoiled. Not only are these paints wonderful to work with, I see a difference in the surface quality and color of my finished paintings.

Of course, using premium paint won’t necessarily make someone a better painter, any more than better brushes or higher quality canvas. A good artist can make a good painting with cheap materials — but it will be more difficult. If I have the option of using the best materials I can get, why not take advantage of them?

I’m not suggesting that everyone run out and buy premium oil paints; their relevance to any individual artist will inevitably depend on each artist’s values and personality — i.e. “Your milage may vary.” I’m just reporting on my personal experience.

Some will fall on the side of not finding the difference significant enough, but some may find the experience an eye-opener, as I did.

To be clear, I don’t mean to intimate here that regular mass market artists grade oil paints are somehow “bad” or inadequate, just that there is value in the difference found in premium paints.

I should also point out that the Vasari Classic Artists’ Oil Colors are the only premium oil paints I’ve worked with to any significant extent, so I can’t make any across the range comparisons. However, I have done some reading in artist forums and blogs about comparisons between premium brands, and have found that when Vasari is mentioned, they’re generally at the top of the list of premium artists’ oil colors.

The take-away is simply that in my experience there is a significant difference between regular artist grade oil colors and premium colors like Vasari; and that if you have the opportunity to try them (and aren’t afraid of being spoiled), they may well be worth a look.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to get back to playing with these beautiful colors… oh yes, and painting.

Back in 2005, the year in which I began writing Lines and Colors, I reported about an artist from Virginia named Duane Keiser, who had the year before begun a practice of painting a small painting every day, posting it to a blog titled “a painting a day” and placing it up for auction on eBay.

It seemed a unique thing at the time, and as far as I can establish, Keiser was indeed the originator of the practice.

In my article, I remarked on what a great idea this was, and how I wished I could emulate the discipline. It promised the kind of advancement as a painter that only regular painting can provide, aided by the incentive of selling the paintings as they were done.

The following year, I reported on others who had become “painting a day” participants, like Karin Jurick, David R. Darrow, Shelly Grund, Elin Pendleton and, in particular, Julian Merrow-Smith.

Over the years since then, I’ve watched and reported on the burgeoning of the “painting a day” phenomenon, although it has become so widespread and generalized that the term has lost much of its meaning, and I now tend to use the more general term “painter/bloggers”.

This is a practice in which hundreds of artists, at all levels of experience, are painting and posting their work on blogs and connecting with buyers through online auctions, PayPal payments, Etsy shops, group sites like Daily Paintworks and other means of direct sales — either bypassing or supplementing the traditional gallery system.

After following this for some time, and having gradually brought my own painting practice somewhat up to speed, I’ve decided to jump in and try it for myself.

The regimen of painting every day remains appealing, and the idea of selling the work makes it more likely I will adhere to the practice and hopefully will allow me to devote more time to painting.

What I’ve learned and decided so far.

I’ve tried to observe some of the best practices from those who have been doing this for a while; and as I begin my process, I’ll try to make occasional reports on Lines and Colors for those who might be interested in what I learn.

I’ve also tried to follow my own advice in my article on “How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web” and the follow up series on “How to Display your Art on the Web“.

So far I’ve established a few things that seem basic and essential, and I’ve also made a few decisions to vary from the mainstream.

Though I endeavor to paint every day, my goal for posting finished paintings will not be “a painting a day” but a more modest one of two small paintings a week, which I will try to post consistently on Mondays and Wednesdays. [Addendum: I've changed this to Mondays and Thursdays.]

The blog

Like most painter/bloggers, I’ve created a blog, on which I will post my paintings as I put them up for auction.

Unlike many, however, I’ve decided that on that blog I will only post paintings, and not water it down with posts about works in progress, studio photos, the new brushes I just got, the weather, or any other topics not directly related to the paintings. I will continue to insist that the home page of a website, or the top of a blog’s home page, should always be aimed at the first-time visitor, not those familiar with the site who are returning.

For the design of the blog itself, I’ve deliberately chosen a dark neutral background, as I think it shows off the color of images to best advantage. Many painters without design experience don’t realize how much a colored web page background, that may seem appealing for the blog itself, can compete with and detract from the presentation of their work.

I’ve made a point of dedicating the sidebar to introducing myself, and describing the intention of the site, the size, medium and support of the paintings, the process, and my policies for selling and shipping the paintings. I’ve also made sure to provide a contact email address.

The current painting will appear at the top of the page, and visitors will have the ability to click on the image to view it large, or click on a link to view or leave comments. Comments will not only add interest for those visiting the site, but hopefully provided informative feedback on the paintings.

The auctions

I’ve chosen to use eBay for the auctions, primarily because I already have an account and there is no upfront expense as with the Daily Paintworks auctions.

Most of my paintings are 5×7″ or 6×8″, and in keeping with the kind of size-based scale I would apply to gallery pricing, I’ve decided to set their auction minimums at $100 and $125, respectively.

I’ve also decided to limit my auction periods to 3 days, though this is one of the elements of the process of which I’m least confident, so it may change. [Addendum: Yes, changed to seven days.]

On the blog, I’ve provided a consistent line below each painting on the entry to show the painting’s status: At Auction, Available or Sold, and a clear link to the auction.

There will be an archive of past paintings, sold or otherwise, and a page for available works that are not at auction. Paintings not sold at auction will be priced at what I would consider gallery minimums at $200 for the 5×7″ and $250 for the 6×8″.

Contact and promotion

Near the top of the blog, I’ve included a sign-up for a newsletter, by which those interested can receive an email notice whenever I post a new painting.

For this, I’ve chosen to use MailChimp, which allows you to create and manage an email newsletter list for up to 2,000 subscribers and 12,000 emails per month for free.

I’ve created a new email address, specifically for contact through the painting blog.

I’ve created a new Twitter account, @CParkerArt, specifically for announcing paintings as I post them. I had to log out of my Lines and Colors Twitter account to create the new account. I’m using TweetDeck to manage multiple Twitter accounts now that they’re established.

I’ve also given the blog some basic search engine optimization (more on that later) and I will probably leverage my ability to place an ad on my own general topic blog (i.e. this one) to perhaps send some visitors, and some “Google love”, to my new painting blog.

Waiting

One thing I’ve decided to do differently than most painter/bloggers is to delay posting the paintings for several weeks.

Common practice is to post a painting as soon as it’s done, hot off the easel, so to speak. This, however, means that the purchaser, whether direct or through an auction process, must usually wait several weeks for an oil painting to dry enough to be shipped.

At the risk of appearing out of sync with the seasons, particularly as they change, I’ve decided to wait three to four weeks for the paintings to dry, and then apply a light coat of retouch varnish — with another week for that to dry, before posting the paintings and putting them up for auction.

This will allow me to ship the paintings as as soon as the auction closes. I’ve tried to weigh the the plusses and minuses of both approaches, but if I buy something, I’m much happier when I receive it sooner rather than later.

Varnishing

My decision to varnish the paintings is as much a desire to even out the painting’s surface appearance as to provide protection. I seldom use medium when painting, so even though I’m using a very high quality paint (more on that later), passages in which I’ve used thinly applied chromatic blacks in particular (e.g. Alizarin plus Viridian or Ultramarine Blue plus Burnt Umber) can look flat or “sunken in” compared to more thickly applied areas of brighter color.

After a bit of research, I’ve decided to use Gamblin’s Gamvar synthetic resin varnish, thinned with odorless mineral spirits (OMS to varnish 5:1), to act as a retouch varnish. This can be applied much sooner than a final varnish as it allows the paint to continue to dry. A light coating of this also has much less gloss than a full coat of final varnish.

Photographing the paintings

Unfortunately, I can’t say I’ve arrived at a completely satisfactory method of photographing the paintings. I’ll go into more detail on what I’m doing in that respect in a future post.

The start

I’ve been pretty consistent in recent weeks with painting every day and finishing two small painting each week. I’ve just posted my first painting (above, top), which was painted at a nearby state park several weeks ago (with a few finishing touches in the studio).

Progress reports

I’ll try to occasionally report on my progress here, as I learn what works for me and what doesn’t.

Of course, I’m always open to comments or suggestions from others who have engaged in the process.

It’s all about learning.

I’ve written before about my admiration for the classic instructional books by the early to mid 20th century American illustrator Andrew Loomis.

In particular I’ve enthusiastically reviewed two of the superb new editions from Titan Books of his too long out of print classics, Figure Drawing for All it’s Worth and Drawing the Head and Hands (links to my reviews).

My recommendation for the relevance for these volumes from the 1940′s and 1950′s to contemporary artists comes under two principles: “What’s old is new” (or fashionably retro) and “Some things are timeless.”

The latter, of course, is the primary qualification for Loomis’ teachings; they go to the heart of figure drawing, and in his signature work, Creative Illustration, he also goes to the heart of composition, line, tone, narrative imagery and creative idea generation.

The book, published in 1947, was aimed at professional illustrators; and while some of the advice about the nature of the business may be dated, some is not, and the principles of composing and creating illustrations in various media are essential and timeless.

Some may find Loomis’ style “old fashioned” — others, myself included, find it both timeless and wonderfully retro, as fresh as when he was working.

There is plenty of it to be seen in Creative Illustration. Loomis has packed it with instructional drawings, layout diagrams, sketches, process sequences, paintings and illustrations in diverse media. It’s a visual treat as well as a treasure of art instruction.

He even goes into his admiration for the work of the great American illustrator Howard Pyle, including some tone studies he made of Pyle’s works (above, 7th down).

Once again, Titan Books has gone beyond a respectful reproduction and brought us a beautiful edition of this classic work, from the facsimile cream-colored paper to the color reproductions to the crisp black and white and tone illustrations.

The images above are rough scans from an old edition and don’t by any means do the current volume justice. So far I’ve been unable to convince Titan to provide more in the way of previews. In lieu of that, see the reviews that include previews on Parka Blogs (including a video flip-through), Parka Blogs Flickr stream, Boing Boing and Wings Art.

Creative Illustration is a 300 page tome bursting at the seams with essentials of image creation and Andrew Loomis’ beautiful work, sage advice and straightforward instruction.

Thomas Kegler is a Western New York State painter and senior member of the Hudson River Fellowship who was the subject of a Lines and Colors post in October of this year.

In addition to the instructional materials and short videos on his website, Kegler demonstrates his painting techniques in an “instructional documentary” titled Painting en Plein Air: Resolving the Landscape.

This is an hour long video, professionally produced by Black Horse Videography that follows Kegler through a two day location session in which he paints the aged maple tree in the composition shown above, bottom.

The artist provided me with a review copy.

One of the flaws I frequently find in a number of the painting instruction videos I’ve seen is the tendency to rush, fast forward and compress time too aggressively, as though those with a desire to watch an instructional art video would somehow be bored by watching someone paint.

This is not the case here, and in fact, I was tempted at first to think that the video started too slowly. I soon realized it was in keeping with one of Kegler’s major suggestions to those painting outdoors: to slow down— look, sketch and draw and immerse yourself in nature before rushing to begin painting.

The video follows Kegler’s process from initial thumbnail sketch to prepared drawing to the stages of painting on location, throughout which the artist comments and describes his working methods as well as his philosophical approach to painting technique.

Even though there are aspects of Kegler’s process that I would personally have trouble adopting, such as the use of an armature for composition and a relatively broad palette of colors, I found the entire process informative.

I’m perhaps not the most experienced of plein air painters myself, but I was introduced to several points of technique with which I was previously unfamiliar, such as drawing a preliminary sketch on the canvas by using a rubber tipped shaper tool to pull lines out of a wet imprimatura, (also used to make marks and adjustments within the actual painting at later stages), as well as the approach of making slightly tinted grays by starting with a neutral tube gray and adding touches of color rather than mixing down to a chromatic gray from complementary colors.

Kegler also demonstrates his approach to applying an overall glaze of warm color to a landscape in its later stages using Oleogel medium, pulling the glaze away from selected passages.

The instruction is aimed at experienced painters rather than beginners, and is a good foray into a naturalistic but painterly approach to landscape

Painting en Plein Air: Resolving the Landscape is available from the artist’s website as both a digital download and a physical DVD.

There is a brief trailer on the wesbsite and YouTube, and another, preliminary trailer on Vimeo.

There is also a review on Gurney Journey.

I had the pleasure on Wednesday night of attending a figure painting demonstration by Nelson Shanks at Studio Incamminati here in Philadelphia.

Shanks is a well known and highly regarded American artist and teacher, known in particular for his portraits of iconic contemporary figures.

His work has been exhibited in numerous museums and prestigious galleries, and his commissioned portraits include U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana of England, Queen Silvia of Sweden, Pope John Paul II, Luciano Pavarotti, the Chairman of the Board of the Museum of Modern and of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many others.

Shanks has been a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a visiting professor in Fine Arts at George Washington University in Washington, as well as conducting seminars at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the New York Academy of Art, and teaching at the Art Students League in new York, the National Academy of Design and the Art Institute of Chicago.

His style is academically precise and refined, but vibrates with lively color and a sense of life that artists with a similar approach sometimes lack. Not only does he communicate the personality of his subject, sometimes in quite subtle ways, Shanks’ feeling for the tactile presence of the objects surrounding his subjects often gives his portraits an undercurrent of the appeal of fine still life painting.

He studied at the Art Students League, additionally pursuing independent study with artists like John Koch. His skill and dedication earned him grants that enabled travel in Europe and study at the Accademia di Bell Arti in Florence with Pietro Annigoni.

Shanks’ experience as a painter, his grounding in traditional art training and his experience as a teacher came together in the establishment of Studio Incamminati, an atelier style not for profit school in Philadelphia dedicated to instructing “those who are progressing”, which is the meaning of the name.

The studio was co-founded with his wife, painter Leona Shanks, and grew out of a series of workshops conducted in the late 1990′s that indicated the need for the kind of immersive and dedicated instruction in “humanist realism” this kind of atelier could provide.

Nelson Shanks’s dedication to the studio includes occasional painting demos, in which he does portrait or figure painting in sessions that attract attention and new students to the school.

The session that I attended with filled to capacity with a mix of existing students and paying visitors who, except for breaks, sat in silence, enrapt for the three hour session while shanks worked from the model. Starting with a blank toned canvas, he brought his study to the state shown in the image above, bottom, in what was probably less than two and a half hours of actual painting time.

My snapshot doesn’t do it justice, but the study includes a rich variety of color, particularly in the shadows, and a wonderful economy of brushwork. Watching someone at Shanks’ level paint is like a condensed course of instruction in itself, and I recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to attend a similar session.

You can get a rough idea of what his demos are like from a brief, time-compressed video on YouTube. In addition, Matthew Inness has an article about a demo at the National Arts Club in 2011, and painter William Secombe gives a description of a similar demo at the Art Student’s League from 2009.

There is also a video available on YouTube, The Portrait as Fine Art, in which Shanks briefly discusses his philosophy of painting and which includes nice close up views of some of his paintings, supplementing the limited selection and somewhat small size of the images on his website.

You can find some larger images of his work on the Art Renewal Center (and here).

In 2011 Shanks became only the second American painter for which there was a dedicated exhibition at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg. The show was later on display at the Russian Academy of Art in Moscow.

While in St. Petersburg, Shanks conducted workshops at the Repin Instutute. There is a video about the exhibition that gives additional brief views of some of his paintings (and offers a glimpse of the artist’s studio in Bucks County).

There are additional videos available on YouTube, with interviews and events that sometimes include scenes from painting demos. I’ve listed what other resources I could find below. There was apparently a collection of his work printed in 1996, but I can’t find much information about the book.

I admire the fact that Nelson Shanks was a staunch defender of the traditions or realist art during periods in which that was quite difficult. He continues to champion the teaching of those traditions and, through both his personal influence and through Studio Incamminati, works to bring the benefit of his experience to a new generation of artists.

See my previous post about Nelson Shanks.