Behind door number 2?

"A Delicate Balance" 

by Scott Powers 

Copyright 2013 Scott Powers

While I was in Idaho last month at Scott Christensen's Workshop, as we came back from painting cottonwood trees, we stopped in this little tiny town to visit another artist's studio.  As we approached the door of this old worn building, Scott said something about "Scotty's Studio".  The  old wooden and stone weathered building was taller in front and sloped down to one story.  There was only small narrow horizontal windows in the front at street level- just the kind you expected to see lots of cobwebs in.  It would be perfect as a building that no one had lived in for a very long time.

The door was opened by "Scotty" and once I saw the art work I knew I was meeting another Rock Star of the art work- Scott Powers.  As 17 of us descended on his studio he was very welcoming.   He was working on "A Delicate Balance" while we were there.  He told us that he had recently decided to rework it.  After some cajoling he showed an iphone picture of it before he started to rework it.  With the exception of Scott Christensen probably, I think every other artist in the room would  have been jumping up and down with joy if they had painted something like that.  However when we looked at it versus the reworked version, you could see just how much better the reworked version was.  Part of being a rock star is not settling for good or wonderful but realizing there is a great and working toward it. 

Coming from Scott Christensen's very neat, spare and well lit studio to Scott Power's cluttered with interesting things everywhere and dark studio with just the painting area well lit was a contrast in the different environments artists' chose to work in.  I'm always fascinated to see pictures of famous artists' studios and palettes.  They both had full bookshelves or piles of books on the floor.  I could have spend days (weeks) just looking through them.

View of Scott's palette.  

We asked him about the big piles of old paint on his palettee- he said they were memories.  He could look at the pile and remember that color on that part of a particular painting.  Just how cool is that!

This is the link to Scott's website.  Hopefully it will inspire you to stretch even further to great!
Scott Power's website

And to all the artists who open their studios and let other people ask questions- Thanks for sharing a little of your art, process, and space!

How Artists are like Golfers... or Golfers are like Artists

Quiet Winter Night 

by Scott Christensen

copyright Scott Christensen

 There are a lot of amateur golfers who play every weekend and who golf plays an important role in their lives.  About the time they are ready to throw in the "club", they will hit a great shot.  That great shot keeps them going for quite awhile.

According to one site there is 61.1 million golfers in the world (and that was of 2003!)  Number of golfers in the world

There are a great many professional golfers that you and I never hear about it.  300,000 Professional Golfers

Then there are the handful of professional golfers who we all know their names- Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Nancy Lopez, ...   So how many of them are there?  less than 25, less than 10?

The degree of excellence in the game increases with each classification.  Their compensation and mystic increases from the amateur, to  professional, to the top of the game.

Artists in the world

Artists are in a similar situation.  There are 4.4 Million artists in the world.  Those artists can struggle and just when they are ready to turn in their paint brushes, they will paint a beautiful passage or a painting will come together almost effortlessly.

There are 600,000 professional artist in the world.  If you are someone who is interested in today's artists you would know some of their names.  But if art is not one of your main interests you probably do not know their names.

There is a much smaller group of artists that are household names.  And if you only consider live  2-D artists the group will be very, very small.)  The mystic of that much smaller group is similar between the golf and art communities.

At the being of June I took a class from of one of the "Tiger Woods" of landscaping painting- Scott Christensen.  It was incredibly intimating to even think about taking a class from someone with his expertise.  The class consisted of a broad range of experience from some who had never painted to people who were mature in their art careers.  Scott was very approachable- willing to answer any questions we had, talk philosophy, talk technique, do demonstration paintings, and critique our work.  Painting outside for 7 days in a row was something I had never done before and would love to figure out how to do on a regular basis.  The last day of the workshop Scott told each of us in the class what he thought we, individually, needed to work on to take our art to the next level.    It was a wonderful experience.

So if you have a chance to play with the "Tiger Woods" in your field - go for it.  It could be an opportunity like no other.

If you want to learn more about Scott Christensen, Brian Nehr did a great article on Scoot, his background, and techniques.

Brian Neher's blog post on Scott Christensen

HIgh Key, Low Key, Soprano, Bass

There are many similarities between various art forms.  Music and painting/drawing have similarities in a couple of ways.

Each singer has a vocal range that is the lowest note the singer can sing to the highest note.  In a choir singers are divided up based mainly on this range.  So for women the categories are soprano, and alto  with soprano being higher range and alto being lower.  For male voices the categories are tenor and bass with tenor being a higher range than bass.  In opera or professional choirs the female and male voices may be divided into more categories.

Anyone who has every played in a band also knows about ranges - soprano, alto, tenor and baritone saxophones

I am a lousy singer which is why I was in the band in junior high and high school- and yes I played sax.  So I'm on dangerous ground talking about voice ranges.

Understanding Vocal Range  has lots of great information on voice ranges and classifications if you are interested in learning more.

So let's make the connection with painting and drawing- we are going to go back to values.

Painter's sometimes refer to a painting based in higher values as high key and one's based in lower values as low key.  So just as voices or instruments have ranges with associated names, so do paintings or drawings- both of which are based being predominately higher or lower.

"Dancer" by Edgar Degas
Pastel on paper

This painting by Degas is an example of a high key painting.  There are no really dark darks.

This painting by Edward Gorey  is an example of a low key painting.  Although there are a few  highlights that are light, the painting is predominately in the darker values.

"Mile Becat at the Cafe des Ambassadeurs, Paris" by  Edgar Degas

However if we go to this painting, again by Degas, you can see that it covers the range of values of lights to darks  with fairly similar amounts of darks and lights.  This painting wouldn't be described as either a high key or low key.

There are other similarities between music and painting that I'll cover in the future.

In the meantime look at the paintings in your house or your favorite paintings - do you gravitate to high key or low key paintings?  Post an example of one of them.