Nocturnes and a Sunset In The San Gabriels
Seeing In The Dark
As you may remember, I have lately had a fascination with nocturnes. However, it is difficult for me to go out to paint at night. Occasionally I get to go out with a friend but that doesn't happen often. Also it's difficult to leave the family behind in the evening. During the day they are all out and about doing their own thing so it's easy for me to get away to paint outside. Not so in the evening.
So in order to get a bit of advice and information from an expert as well as to have some companions while painting at night I decided to take a nocturne workshop from Eric Merrell. Eric's work intrigues me. It's different in a way that goes beyond subject matter and I really like it. PLUS he is one of the few artists around who offered a nocturne workshop.
The weekend of the workshop was the weekend the temperature was over 110 during the day. We met at Eric's house in the late afternoon. Eric talked about his work and showed us lots of wonderful examples of both his field studies and his studio pieces. We stayed there at the house reviewing this work while he talked about how he takes notes about his feelings and the mood of the scene. He showed us studio pieces that were based on his field studies.
He also helped us with our lights. We attached filters over the lights he had suggested we purchase.
We drove to the Cobb Estate about sundown. I was so absolutely surprised to see how many hikers are still out in the fading light. Amazingly there were hikers on the trail until quite late at night.
Eric took us to an area surrounded by trees, hills and trails. As light faded, he helped us see the shapes and shadows still there in the night. The moon is an amazing light that castes beautiful shadows. It was clear that at night there is quite a range of values. Color, however, was not as clearly seen. The filtered lights did help with seeing the colors on the palette. They didn't help at all with seeing color in the environment.
It was all quite challenging. I tried like mad to see color but I couldn't. Also every time a hiker went by with a headlamp or flashlight, I had to shield my eyes so I could still see the surrounding fields and trees.
Eric did a demo both nights. I thought it was interesting that he uses chipboard to do his field studies. It underscores his feeling that these are studies... not finished paintings. He talked about color temperatures when doing nocturnes and demonstrated it in his demo.
I tried using the chipboard each night. The chipboard really sucks up the paint, but I sort of liked using it. While painting my own study, I had to fight my inclination to use color that I "knew" rather than color I could see. Since I really couldn't see color, or temperature most of what I painted was my best guess.
Here are the two studies I did during the workshop -- they are pretty sad. However, I really enjoyed Eric's workshop and I think his advice will help me with future nocturnal adventures. I've decided, though that I will use my nocturnal studies as experiential and if there is anything I like about them when I see them in daylight, I may use them to do studio paintings -- but I'd never use them as final products.
Sunset
The painting you see at the top of the page was started in about a 15 minute window while we were waiting for dark. We were standing in the field talking about equipment and color temperature and seeing in the dark when I looked up and saw the most magnificent light on the mountains and across the field. I sat down and put as much down as I could before it all disappeared. I finished up at home.
