This morning a very enthusiastic group showed up at the North Hero Library for a resumption of our “Drawing for the Terrified” class. Obviously no one was terrified. It’s great to teach with this group. They are all very interested in learning how to draw better, and everyone there already has some drawing skills. They are all about my age, or perhaps a little younger, and this is a much different experience than teaching first year students at UVM – not better or worse, just different. I didn’t have to tell anyone to turn off their Ipods or cell phones, and everyone paid attention. This was a short session (three hours) compared to the weekly four hour UVM sessions, and no grades, exams or papers are necessary. That makes it much more relaxed, for me and for the students.  I did ask everyone to write a bit after some of the drawing exercises in order to reflect a bit on the drawing process.   This was something not all were used to doing. We meet again next Monday, May 5, for another session which will involve some gesture drawing, and the use of charcoal as a medium. If you are interested in joining the group, email me (my email address is in the contact section of this web site.) We are limited by the size of the library to a total of 12, and it is first emailed, first served.

Finishing up a variety of paintings in the final push for the Catamount Gallery exhibit.  The cards are being printed up.  Scanning through images I came across the one below and thought I’d post it today.  It was taken about 8 years ago in Jerusalem.  Am  now off to the office to collect stuffed critters to bring to the North Hero drawing workshop tomorrow.  I’ll try and take a few pictures to put up in the next few days.  Weather today is less sunny and tomorrow, finally, it may rain and rescue the lawn.  It’s been almost California weather here for the past week.  Amazing.  Is this what global warming will bring?  We have a nesting couple of cardinals out in our backyard this year.  Beautiful birds. 

The top image is a painting I bought from Tad (he gave me a real deal.) I framed it and it is now above our mantle. Photo was taken in early morning light, which isn’t too good. The middle image is obviously incomplete. I’ve wiped off the top three times trying to get it to recede with the proper colors and shapes. I want dimished contrasts in the distance of this landscape. I’ll get there as soon as this layer dries. The bottom is a painting with a TON of paint and marble dust/linseed oil putty. It is as abstract and heavy textured as I’ve done.  It was made with dayglo cadmium colors…. SO different than the more muted colors I usually use. You might note it is similar to a watercolor I did some time ago. I thought I’d try the image in oil. More to go on this before I sleep!

The top image is another layer on top of a duller underpainting- that I had given up as a lost cause – of a farm on Hinesburg road in South Burlington. I used three primaries to mix all the colors. I have more to do on this. It was a practice run using Tad’s putty system, shown in the bottom image. Starting with ultramarine. blue, permanent rose and indian yellow, I mixed these with increasing amounts of zinc white to get pastels of paler and paler intensity. I need to do the same with the secondaries from these primaries (orange, green, purple) as I approach doing the next layer. Each color combination is mixed with the putty (marble dust and linseed oil). They dry overnight!! I’m experimenting with adding metal salts to quicken the drying time. Cobalt chloride works well. It’s a great system to begin to learn with.

There are so MANY variables though. I read about them all on Tad’s web site as he ruminates and contemplates them. The bottom image was taken after he spent a couple of hours in my studio helping me to undertand the basics. I’m fortunate to have a such an accomplished mentor who takes me seriously. Nothing like that has happened before. It’s happened in my professional life (Larry Andrews at UC Davis, who passed away a few years ago was such a mentor in my life as an evolving chemist). It’s great to do something totally different – oil painting – and have a guide. Only problem is my age. I don’t have the physical and mental stamina that I had as a younger person.

The “Drawing for the Terrified” class in North Hero is now filled and has a waiting list.  Our first class up there at the N.H. library is on April 28th at 9 a.m. (to 12).   I’d be happy to start another section of this class in my home studio in South Burlington.  I have room for about 5 or 6 people, but it would take a little organizing.  I could also do it in my studio/office at UVM, so if you are interested in coming to one in the Burlington area, please let me know.  I know 2 or 3 who are interested, and all we need to get this going are 2 or three more.  The cost is $20 per session.  You’ll need pencils, sketch books, erasers, and some other materials.

Enrollment has begun in our UVM CE class “Writing and Drawing to Learn Across the Curriculum,” worth one credit.  It will happend on July 7 and 9 (8 to 4:30 p.m.).   There is still plenty of space, but don’t wait till the last minute as it could fill up.

Both these classes have elements of my Honors (TAP) class, “Drawing as a Way of Knowing.”  You can read descriptions in the “Courses/Workshops” section of this website.  No previous drawing experience is required.

Please feel free to email me at Michael.Strauss@uvm.edu

It’s been a difficult endeavor, learning how to paint in oil, with dozens of false starts, and many failures along the way. As I’ve become more experienced, these difficulties have diminished, but they never really end. They’re part of the process of visual thinking, rethinking, painting and repainting that may create something interesting or new. When you have to look at something for many days, or even weeks, as you do when you paint it, you begin to really see all the shapes, light, shadow and color which compose it. You often miss these details with cursory observations. It’s always a challenge to paint what I see, and not what I know, to keep my perceptual experience clear and unobstructed by naming, labels, and preconceived notions about what I think I should be seeing.

Sometimes I really don’t know if a painting is ever done. Even when finished and framed, I often pop them out to continue working. I’ve made some better, but also ruined a fair number by overworking them. Some preliminary studies are shown here, as well as accompanying explanatory texts and images. It’s only a partial view of course, a small window into my own beginning efforts at composing, drawing and painting, and the many variations, dead ends, and partial successes that have occurred. There is no one style or subject matter. I make no apologies for that. I’m exploring and inviting you to take a look at where I’ve gone and what I’m finding.

The sequence of work displayed is not linear. Your can start anywhere. I hope the bigger picture is apparent when you are done.

The above words are a first draft of a number of pages of text to go with this exhibit:
LOOKING UNDER THE SURFACE

MICHAEL STRAUSS
Recent Landscape and Still Life Paintings in Oil
Explorations in Text and Images
July 1-31, 2008

Catamount Art Gallery, St. Johnsbury, Vermont

The sequence from drawing to final pass.  This still may have a way to go.

The top image is a copy of  a Corot which I am working on.  I just finished a thin wash of raw sienna over the whole painting and then darkened the foliage.  This helps direct the eye towards the central figures and road.  Tad came and spent a bit of the afternoon helping me out with this.  He also showed me a painting system of putty with three primaries mixed with increasing whites to give a palatte that can be used much more easily than the method I was using.

The bottom image is a shot of me checking out the details of paint and brush strokes in one of the Monet water lily paintings.  Look at the SIZE of it.  There are four in this room, built specifically to display them.

The Place

It’s really a big pond. In my youth I would have called it a lake. It’s a few minutes from our house, and I go there often to sketch and paint and sometimes just to paddle around in my canoe. The day I went two summers ago there were four boys, fishing and sailing toy boats.

The problem in painting figures from life who aren’t posing is that no one stays put. Even in landscape painting the clouds move, light changes by the minute, and the wind blows. Those boys were all over the place.

Sketchs can capture a few components of a scene, and those were done. And my camera is always with me and I took lots of pictures from different angles. What I wanted from this scene was the light filtering through the trees, the boys, their boat, and the lake in some harmonious compositional framework. My main focus was the light , warm in the sunshine, cool in the shadows. I’m not good enough a painter to set up an easel right there in the boat access parking lot. So I worked from sketches and photos back in my studio. I paint outside (plein air) sometimes, but more often I’m a studio painter, working in layers which dry in between applications.

Composing Shapes

The first thing I felt in looking at my images of the boys and pond (1st photo) was: too many boys and too many boats. My eye was roving all over the scene. Playing cut and paste I took out the fellow on the right and shrunk and moved the shoreline boat right above the tallest boys head. Then I moved the trees on the right closer so they guide the eye to the group. The trees on the left were removed because they competed too much with those on the right. What I was most interested in was the light and shadow in the foreground. That was to be a major focus, with the boys and boys right above it.

Color

At the time this was painted I wasn’t interested in too much detail. My main focus was color and design. I went for the colors I saw in my notes and photos, embellishing lights with very warm colors like Naples yellow and shadows with quinacridone purple and viridian. The result was rather iconographic, but that’s where this particular project ended up. Not my typical style, but fun to do.

You can see the final painting in the Art and Images section of the website (above). The third image above is a bit distorted from the web posting software and the color is different from the final version.  In addition there is glare in the upper left corner from the photography. The final painting is better.

Stone Throw – New Haven River

16×20, oil on canvas mounted on 3/4 inch board (final version can be seen in this website under Art and Images – ["Oil Paintings"] above.

On a very hot and humid August day in 2006 we went down to the New Haven river to a well known swimming hole. A young boy was running up and down the rocky shore throwing stones into pools on the other side of the river. I did lots of sketches that day and took many photos of the river and Vermonters cooling off. The contrast between the rock thrower standing in bright sunlight and the cool shaded area across the river was intense. In this painting I tried to capture that, as well as the point just before a throw when there was a lot of tension in the arm poised to lauch the stone. I tried to reinforce this tension with opposing diagonals of rocks and trees in shadow.

The painting began, as do many, with a wash of red earth followed by a red earth value study. Cool colors were then added as the painting was developed as shown below in layers three and four. You can also see the warm red/orange tone of the underpainting showing through in the body of the boy and in diagonals of stone and foiliage on the opposite side of the river.