Henry Wo Workshop

I just finished four days of painting with Henry Wo and the end always comes too quickly. This is the fourth such workshop that I've taken with Henry, but it was the first time I've been to his studio in Fairfax County, VA. If you are not familiar with Henry's work a quick google search is worthwhile. Start with this brief bio http://www.piercegalleries.com/artists/iart_woyuekee.html

My first class with Henry in West Palm Beach literally changed my life. I expected to learn the basic Chinese brushwork and techniques needed to paint on rice paper, but instead I learned how to view the object of my painting, feel its essence, and find the "beautiful mark" that will represent its chi. Its not about visual realism or impressionism, nor is it about expressionism per se, but the latter is close. It is about the artist acting as a translator of the dragon fly's chi, or that of the fish, the bird or the bamboo. If done well, the "feeling" of it comes to life even if the shape or colors are not realistic. As Henry might say, it may not be good picture but is good art.

Loading the brush with multiple colors, making the mark in one continuous fast, slow, straight, twisting, or other simple or complex motion is the technique. But deciding what that mark should be is the challenge. Executing it with feeling is the art. To this day, Cheryl tells me (and anyone else who will listen) that my paintings changed dramatically after my first session with Henry. They became softer and more colorful. She says Henry put me in touch with the feminine side of nature. Bold is attractive and masculine but it only comes to life when complemented by its contrast with the feminine. The combination brings balance. The rough branch supports the delicate flower, etc.

Henry is a true master of his style of art. If you ever get a chance to paint with him, do it. I'll try to find some better links to his painting and he has several books of his work available for sale.

Eric Wiegardt Workshop

I just returned from a wonderful week of painting with Eric Wiegardt in Myrtle Beach, SC. I always enjoy the workshops that Springmaid Watermedia sponsors in the fall and spring at their ocean front resort/hotel (http://www.springmaidwatermedia.com/). Eric is a very analytical guy, yet his paintings exhibit a very loose feel. His approach is based on values and getting the big shapes in first. Once the light, mid, and dark shapes are set, he then puts in a darker light in the light, a darker mid in the mid, and a darker dark in the dark to spark interest. But he is careful to make sure that these in-between values only appear in their respective ranges.

At first I found the idea of imposing such a rigid structure a bit restrictive, but I decided to try it anyway since I already work in the three value format and what is the point of taking a workshop if unwilling to try new things. What I found was that these in-between values actually made it easier to keep track of the values and gave me more freedon in adjusting the warms and cool hues as well as the intense and dull chromas.

Eric also dips his "mop" brushes into several colors with very little mixing prior to hitting the paper, which may be wet or dry or both. Thus, he gets rich blending on the paper along with a variety of textures. It is fun to watch, and he genuinely seems to have fun doing it. It made me wish that I had my Chinese brushes (squirel, horsehair, rabbit, etc) with me. Eric did provide some of his brushes for participants to try, but I'll try it with my own Sumi tools this week.

Eric is a nice guy, a serious artist, and a very good teacher. I highly recommend him.

Tony Couch is coming to SSI

Every year for about the last decade, I have taken a week off of work to paint with Tony Couch, and this year is no exception.  He'll be on Saint Simons Island, GA April 20 - 24, and he has a few slots left open (http://www.tonycouch.com/).  There is a reason that I keep repeating his class, besides being a very slow learner, which is: I learn something new every time, and the quality of my work gets better.

In fact, I think it is essential to periodically paint with people that I consider better than me, which is why I attend two or three professional workshops each year.  Thus, over the years I have painted with Don Andrews,  Skip Larwence, Tony VanHasselt, Judy Wagonner, Alex Powers, Henry Wo Yue Kee, John Salminen, and others.  Each has a different perspective on art and a host of different techniques, but Tony Couch is my annual reference point.  I think it is important to have a mentor (even an informal one) as an anchor to which I can append new skills and insights.

Tony teaches both technique and design, he is the author of the best selling Northlight book Watercolor, You Can Do It (also available on his website), and he was a repeat student for years to classes taught by his friend and mentor, Ed Whitney.

The 3 Dimensions of Color

Color has three dimensions: hue, value, and chroma.   Hue is the position on a typical color wheel where red is opposite green, blue is opposed to orange, and yellow is across from purple.   Value is the lightness or darkness and goes from white to black.  Chroma is the intensity or dullness of a color.   Everyone understands hue, but value and chroma are often confused.  Orange presents a good example of the difference.  I can make it lighter or darker just by adding more or less water to it which is a change in value.  I can make orange duller by adding its opposite hue, namely blue, which is a change in chroma. What makes orange so interesting in this context is that the addition of blue can take the orange to brown and even to black.  In other words the color that we normally think of as brown is not a different hue, it is really just a dull orange.  Similarly when we dull down a yellow we get olive which is not really a green at all.  Whodanode!  Now I need to figure out how to add pictures to my postings so that I can insert examples.  Anyone with any ideas, please leave me a comment on how to.   Thanks   

Ends verses the Means

My first 2009 class went well today, and I was reminded how important it is to focus on the means rather than the ends. Yes, having a goal is important, but it can also be discouraging when the plan isn't unfolding as intended. Fortunately, those of us who have worked in watercolor for a while know the value of the "happy accident," and are willing to alter the plan to accommodate it. Some of my best effects have come by chance or distraction and I take full credit for them :-). But the truth is that I treat each painting as an experiment. I'm not out to create a masterpiece; I'm simply trying to see what I can do with this wonderful wet medium and pushing the limits. Control is nice to have, but I'd rather have beauty. Since the essence of watercolor is its ability to produce magnificent soft diffusions, I'd be working against its strength to focus on control rather than just letting the paint mix in the paper.

In today's class we practiced the four basic ways to apply paint plus two ways of taking it off, namely, lifting and scraping. We did a value study of the lighthouse in sepia. Next week we'll get into color.

Four Basic Ways to Apply Paint
1. Wet Paint on Dry Paper
2. Dry Paint on Dry Paper
3. Wet Paint on Wet Paper
4. Dry Paint on Wet Paper

Main Characteristics of each:
1 Easiest to control, hard edge quality, good for small calligraphic details, a.k.a. Beginners trap.
2 Also easy to control, good for rough texture, nice effects, easy to over do, a.k.a. Dry-brush.
3 Uncontrollable, beautiful soft diffusions, the essence of watercolor, a.k.a. Wet-in-wet.
4 Hardest to control, rich darks, full range of edge qualities, no mud, a.k.a. Master Stroke.

The first technique is as far as most beginners get before being lured into the control trap. It is sprung like this: You put wet paint on dry paper and it stays where you put it. You start making shapes and people recognize them as trees, mountains, or whatever. You find you can even sign your name this way. Then someone compliments you, or worse they buy it from you, and slam! You’re trapped. Now you must at least repeat that performance and this is the only tool in the toolbox. It gets boring rather quickly, but I’ve seen people stay trapped in it for years.

The second technique is used by the better amateurs. An easy way to distinguish wet paint from dry paint is to see if it runs as you lift your palate to a high angle. Dry paint is about toothpaste consistency on your brush. Try putting that on dry paper and it will only hit the tops of the ridges in the paper while leaving white in the valleys. It makes great rocks or tree bark.

With the third technique we begin to exploit the essence of watercolor that leads to the beautiful soft diffusions that drive the oil and acrylic painters mad. Control is severely limited and the advanced amateurs will use it in spots like sky, water, or within shapes like an apple.

The fourth technique is known as the master stroke because that is what most of the pros do. It takes a little practice to get a hard or rough edge on wet or damp paper, but once you get it, the world of watercolor opens to effects that simply cannot be had by any other means.

I was drawn to watercolor by the fresh, spontaneous, luminescent quality that I saw in some paintings. It took me two years in the trap of the first technique, grappling with mud and hard edges everywhere, before I broke out. The key was the realization that in watercolor, I must first understand the flow of water before I can get the bright rich colors.

I’ll cover all four techniques in my first class which starts on Jan 10, 2009 at the GAA 912-638-8770.

Style over Substance

I was reading a wonderful little book* by Mary Whyte when I came across this paragraph:
“Throughout my years in art school, the courses I most anticipated were the painting classes. I was continually disappointed. Most of the teachers seemed focused on abstract expressionism and what was showing in New York, emphasizing the creation of a radical social statement. Little mention was made of sound drawing skill and the fundamentals of composition and design, and never was there any discussion about the painting methods and tools of the early masters.”

As a professional educator, myself, I had to admit it is easy in art to confuse style with substance or the ends with the means. So it got me thinking about the way we learn, and thus about the way we teach.

One of the most powerful tools of learning is categorization, and academia uses it to distinguish disciplines like biology from psychology or history. We even see sub categories to distinguish one period of time from another by the characteristics of its music, art, science, etc. The Baroque verses the Classical, the Renaissance verses the Impressionists, and the Alchemist verses the Physicist. The evolutionary dialectic of each new era seems to condemn its predecessor to antiquity. What we forget is that evolution does not flow in a clean line; it is simply the line remaining after the others dead-ended, and it is always clear in hindsight. In economics, they call it survivor bias where the stock market gains are based on the companies alive today ignoring those that failed. Such evolutionary dead-ends are common but forgotten by history because they add nothing to the present. A stroll through the National Gallery in Washington, DC is all I need to clearly see the path that art took and the contribution of each era to the next. What I do not see are the paintings that did not make it into the gallery.

The abstract impressionism is still popular in many sectors and whole galleries are dedicated to it. But I would not be surprised to see abstract expressionism treated as a dead-end in art history, a distraction, and an act of desperation by starving artists in the age of photography. I remember touring a huge show of the works of Willem deKooning at the National Gallery in the early 1990s. By the time I viewed the sixth roomful of paintings, I turned to my friend and said, “this is pure crap!” You could have heard a pin drop. What my mind saw was an unemployed painter teaming up with an unemployed Madison Avenue marketer during the Great Depression to bilk the surviving industrial robber-barons into thinking such modern art would add to their respectability. Those guys must have laughed their butts off while kicking themselves for not having asked higher prices for these childish tantrums.

The point is that Mary’s teachers taught her the latest style which unfortunately was art based on emotional and fleeting feelings. It is a bit like learning the lingo of the latest management fad to cover the fact that they were promoted into management without a clue of what skills were required. Style replaced substance. Similarly, art schools felt that they had to teach the latest style of art, and discovering that it required no skill, were left with nothing to teach but so called creativity. Creativity is defined as “artistic or intellectual inventiveness,” which left many in the educational establishment with no idea of how to proceed. Mucking around is fun, but as any professional educator will tell you, learning is work. The problem that Mary experienced with her art education was not that we lacked the educational tools; it was that art teachers failed to use them.

Everyone knows that learning is a progressive skill with each step depending on the success with the preceding one, and in the 1950s Bloom's Taxonomy provided us with a coherent set of steps. The six levels are knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In the first two steps, we learn about the tools of the trade and the context in which they are used and why. In the application and analysis phases we practice using the tools and break the results down into their component part to see what worked and what did not. Then in the synthesis phase, we put things back together in a new way or with different methods. This structured experimentation is real creativity. The last phase, evaluation, is an assessment of the work’s value by us, our peers, or the buying public. Unfortunately, we artists have little control over that last phase. Hiring a good marketing agent or gallery owner can do wonders for an artist’s work and reputation.

Not to belabor the poor Hoboken house painter, but many WPA era painters could paint circles around Willem de Kooning, but as in any game of chance, few come away rich. The 1989 sale of his Pink Lady at Sotheby’s for $3.6 million looks more like asset inflation than intrinsic value. It was a mess when painted in 1944, but it was an original mess! Unfortunately, by many accounts Willem was senile by the time of the '89 sale.

The problem I have is not with the path that de Kooning followed or with abstract impressionism as an art form. My problem is with the abdication of the art instructor’s responsibility to lead and facilitate the development of future artists. The muck-around method is not a teaching style. The ultimate irony in all of this is that de Kooning was formally schooled for eight years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques. He knew how to paint, and then decided to depart from the basics to create his own style. As art teachers, we have a responsibility to first provide the tools and insights on how to use them through the application and analysis phases of learning. We can even facilitate the creative synthesis phase, but that requires some more sophisticated teaching methods that are best described in a separate article. The artist craft is not about natural talent; it is about knowledge, practice, and experimentation. There are no shortcuts.

Now a confession: my personal definition of art is anything that alters my mood. So in that sense, I must admit that my attitude toward de Kooning’s work is proof that it is indeed art, and very effective art at that. I just don’t happen to like it.

* An Artist’s Way of Seeing, by Mary Whyte 2005, Wyrick & Co., Charleston, SC.