A few questions answered and a farewell

Its almost time for SNOW! I am so excited, snow is absolutely my favorite thing to paint. I would much rather paint outside in January than June! One of the ideas I am kicking around is a winter workshop, up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Any interest in a three day workshop on snow painting? Let me know.
I am going to post some of the next years workshop schedule soon. I have a number of them over the first half of the year, spread out across half the country it seems like.

I could have called this another ask Stape but I thought I would spare you the image of me as Ann Landers. But I am going to answer a few questions that came in briefly. Here is one

Hey Stape, when I buy paint in a can, there's always a skin that forms on the paint - even with the can tightly lidded. Any tips on avoiding this? I end up throwing a lot of paint out when removing that skin.

The answer to that problem is twofold. The best way to avoid that is to tube the entire can the day you open it. Problem solved. Heres how. However if you don't want to do that, after you have removed what you want from the can, level the surface with your palette knife. Then cut a piece of saran wrap about the size of a handkerchief and smooth it out onto the surface of the paint left in the can. That should keep it from forming a skin.

A former pharmacist and soda jerk, turned plumage hunter asked;


I just have this feeling that modern chemistry is being under rated in this area and perhaps, we are missing something by insisting on the natural pigments.

The "earth colors" we use today are no longer naturally occurring earths dug from the groundd. They are actually, like mars colors, laboratory made oxides of iron. They are far superior to the ochers and siennas of our granddads time.Some lines of paint, like Sennelier still use natural earth colors and they seem very dirty to those of us who are used to the modern substitutes.You might like them though, but be forewarned, buy a small tube first rather than a 200 ml. tube that you might not use, like me.

Another retired pharmacist and former MOXIE eschewing soda jerk asked;

What do these companies mean when they describe their colors as "transparent"? I have tried some of these and they are pretty concentrated pigments. I would assume that they can be seen through. What is the difference between Transparent Gold Ocher and Gold Ocher? How is a "Transparent pigment supposed to be/mean to be used? As glazes? For a certain style of painting? Weak tints? What is going on here?

Transparent means you can see through it of course. It is possible for a transparent color to have great pigmenting strength though sometimes they are dyes mixed into the oil, like alizirin crimson.So transparent and weakly tinted don't necessarily go together and some really powerful colors can be transparent. These dyes mixed into the oil are called lakes and they tend to be a nuisance,as they handle poorly and may dry more slowly than conventional pigments and may be prone to cause cracking and poor paint films.This is one of the reasons that I recommend you switch to permanent alizirin rather than true alizirin. It is actually quinacridone and is stable and no longer causes the problems the old alizirin did. It is also less blacky and of a more roseate hue.Some colors are dyes that thave been percipitated onto chalk to give them some body and make them opaque.The metallic pigments like the cadmiums tend to be good examples of opaque colors. White is opaque, although that is relative, titanium is very opaque and flake and zinc are more transparent. When you add white to a mix you generally make it opaque. That means as you use it it will be called a scumble rather than a glaze. Painters who work over drawings and underpainted foundations tend to like transparent formulations for that work. In my own work, if given a choice between transparent gold ocher and the regular I go with the opaque. I like it a lot better, however I work straight paint and not in glazes over fixed grounds.

I attended a memorial service in Rockport last week for a remarkable woman who I knew there. Ann Fisk. She was a former director of the Rockport art association and it was Ann who was the director when I served there part time as a janitor in 1983. I have written about that era ain this blog in my chronological history. Here are some excerpted parts of her epitaph.
Anne did a lot for the community of Rockport through her long political involvement on a number of causes. Her contributions to the art colony are largely from her selfless organizing and leadership. She was one of the last of that generation who were the Rockport art colony when I arrived there in the early eighties. She handed me the first dollar I earned upon my arrival there. Thanks Ann.

Ann Lindenmuth Fisk of Rockport, Massachusetts, died peacefully at home on Thursday, October 8, 2009 after a battle with multiple myeloma.

The daughter and granddaughter of artists, Ann showed an early talent for art and received lessons from her mother, E.B. (Elisabeth Boardman) Warren and her father, Tod Lindenmuth, himself a pupil of Robert Henri. She continued to paint throughout her life, primarily creating watercolors, pen-and-ink drawings, and pictures combining the two media. She also did oil paintings, block prints, and relief carvings. Many of her paintings depict villages or individual buildings, often with whimsical ornamentation. Occasionally her compositions included landscapes, waterfront scenes, and still lifes.

Like her parents, she was a lifelong member of the Rockport Art Association. An expert in the earlier generations of artists of Cape Ann, some of whom she recalled from childhood, she became a collector and dealer in the works of many of them.
She was instrumental as well in helping restore and augment the town's museum collection of paintings by Rockport artists.

Ann Warren Lindenmuth was born in Newton, Massachusetts on September 12, 1929. Her parents lived and operated a gallery in St. Augustine, Florida during the winters, and she graduated from Ketterlinus High School there in 1947. The family summered in Provincetown until 1940, when her father decided Provincetown had become too touristy and decided to try Rockport instead. They found a small fishing shack on Bearskin Neck and set up a gallery in the front room and rustic living quarters above.

One summer evening during a band concert on Back Beach, she was introduced to Charles Fisk of Cambridge, Massachusetts, whose family also summered in Rockport. "That's the man I'm going to marry," she recalled thinking. The couple did marry, on July 2, 1950, and moved to Palo Alto, California, where Charles was planning to pursue a graduate degree in nuclear physics at Stanford University. Ann, having completed three years of college at Florida State University, transferred to Stanford and received her B.A. in Design there in 1951.

A few weeks into the graduate course, Charles decided physics was not for him and changed to taking courses in music. He also began working informally for the local firm that maintained the pipe organs at the university. The couple later moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where both worked for the Holtkamp Organ Company, and then to North Andover, Massachusetts when Charles bought into a partnership in the Andover Organ Company. In 1961, the Fisks, now a family of four, moved back to Rockport and Charles founded C.B. Fisk, Inc., which he eventually built into one of the leading pipe organ firms in the world. The couple divorced in 1977 and Charles died in 1983. Ann remained in Rockport until her death, residing in the home in Pigeon Cove that she and Charles had designed.

Cheap palette

Dear Stape:
I am a penniless widow with only one arm, living in a squalid fifth floor walkup next to the container docks in East Boston. I want to paint the beauty I see all around me every day. Could you recommend a palette I could use that would be mostly series one colors and as high a quality as I can get while spending as little money as possible?

Signed ; One Ulna

Dear; Ulna

Since you have but the one arm I can't recommend that you buy your paint in cans from RGH and tube it yourself, which would give you the best quality at the lowest price. So I would recommend you use Jerrys artarama, or Dick Blick or one of the other mail order firms to buy your paint in the most economical way.

There are a number of reasonably priced lines of professional paint and I would shop among them for the best price. Often Lefranc is a good choice, those 250 ml. tubes are a great deal. But Rembrandt or Gamblin or Utrechs or several others may offer a paint that you like at a price you can afford.

I know you asked for me to recommend only the series one colors, but I will have to choose one that is not. You simply have to have a real cadmium yellow, and not a series one hue. Nothing else is an effective substitute for that. I would spend the money and get that big tube of Lefranc, it will last a long time and the quality is good. Most the other colors can be sort one. You will need yellow ochre, thalo blue ( a tube of this will last a long time so if it isn't series one it will still be economical, and a proprietary red. Rembrandt makes a nice one, most of the makers market a permanent red. You will need burnt sienna and although I usually recommend permanent alizirin you will perhaps want to buy the Alizirin from one of the student grades or maybe a permanent rose. Winton in the 200m ml. tube will do for this. Ultramarine is usually a series two, so buy the Winton version of that in the big tube also. For your white I recommend either the Lefranc, it is about 14.00 for 250m m ls. that pretty cheap and it is excellent. The other possibility is Permalba. The warehouse mail order guys often have 3 packs that are very inexpensive. Permalba is a high quality but unusual white. But we are out to work as cheaply as possible so some compromises have to be made.

I recommend that you work small, as the amount of paint you will use is much less and it is usually easier to sell small low priced paintings. You won't be stretching your own canvas will you? So I recommend painting on Ampersand or other similar pre primed panels. Order Damar and stand oil from Utrecht, they have great prices on those by the quart and you can then make your own medium very afford ably. You WILL have to make that with real turpentine though. After that use odorless mineral spirits from the hardware store for thinner.

That ought to save a few bucks, if put your mind to it you can paint very cheaply indeed and I have had periods in my life where I have had to do that.
................Stape

MOXIE!

Tonight's post is a little off the subject of painting, but I have been pretty good about staying on topic of late, so allow me a diversion. I am going to tell you about a fine "tonic", as old time New Englanders call what those in the Midwest call "pop". This is my drink of choice and I am here tonight to advertise it. I should get paid to shill for RGH paint, Moxie and a few other fine products.

If you wonder what the official soft drink of American Impressionism was, I am guessing Moxie, now I can't find a photo of Willard Metcalf drinking it, but it came out of Lowell Massachusetts at the same time he did. In his lifetime it was bigger than Coca Cola. I bet Hassam drank it too, who knows? Sargent was in Boston frequently for much of the last twenty years of his life. Since Ted Williams advertised it, Aldro Hibbard must have been a fan of it too.

Above is the one hundred and three year old, thirty two foot high Moxie bottle now preserved by the International Moxie Congress at their museum to the historic soft drink in Union, Maine. I am certain you will be exited by the line of Moxie collectibles they are selling. Moxie is the official soft drink of the state of Maine. Here is a link to the International Moxie Congress. This giant bottle was used as a promotional item and could be taken down and transported from venue to venue. Moxie was served from the bottle for many years and then the bottle became part of a private family cottage. As it was disintegrating a group of Moxie enthusiasts bought the thing, restored it and built a building to house it at a little Moxie shrine and Museum in Maine.

Moxie was first created in 1876 in Lowell, Massachusetts by a druggist, and was marketed as a patent medicine and nerve food until the food and drug administration came into being in 1906.

In the 1920's Moxie outsold Coca cola, but gradually lost market share, and is now mostly a regional curiosity in New England. Its some what bitter and unusual flavor is totally unlike anything else in the soft drink market. Some people love it, others hate it. My kids won't touch the stuff. I have been known to pack a couple of twelve packs for trips out of New England.

Recently Cornucopia beverages of Bedford, New Hampshire bought the Moxie franchise and is working to revitalize the brand and has even begun distributing it in a few test markets outside of New England.The brand once advertised by Ted Williams (in headier days!) is now easier to find in markets across New England and people are even selling it on e-bay for shipment across the country.

Here are the new 2 Liter plastic bottles of Moxie and the other updated and handsome packaging now available . These are bottled right here in nearby Londonderry, New Hampshire. Here is some packaging from Moxies remarkable history.

And below some packaging through the middle of the last century.

In the early 1900's before Henry Ford made the automobile common and affordable Moxie was one of the first company's to use the new fangeled things to advertise and deliver their products. Drivers in those days had to be mechanics and salesmen as well. Many rural Americans first saw an automobile with the name Moxie lettered on it.

Here is a link to a site shipping Moxie in gift packs across the country, so whereever you are reading this, you too can try this historic New England drink. They also are selling Moxie hats.

Halloween (and green)

Its Halloween tonight and I am writing this sitting in the house rather than the studio, about every three minutes the doorbell rings and I have more kids at the door. Trick or treat! Our dark neighborhood of small antique homes is very charming with all of the porch lights on. We all have porches with bracketed posts and spindled railings. It could be a scene from fifty years ago.We live in town, so it is a village scene. The streets are full of people, there are big groups of adults pushing strollers and their kids are running up to the doors in costume. Paging Norman Rockwell. Would Norman Rockwell please report to the nostalgia portal? I hope my candy holds out.

Here is the finished version of the painting of which I showed you the demo week or two ago. I sent it back to the gallery of CNY where they sold it in an hour.I think the economy is turning around, at least my sales seem to show that. What a difference there has been in the last couple of months. I hope all of you reading this who are arting for a living, are having the same experience.


I am going to finish the posts on making greens with a few more things, and then tomorrow I will start a new subject. I was asked about the pink I was using. Since I tube my own colors, I can tube mixtures. My pink is my own homemade version of a color available from Williamsburg paints that they call Persian Rose. Persian Rose is a quinacridone rose and white mixture heated up with a shot of diperrolpyrroll orange. That gives it a hot undertone. It is the antidote for green though.
I call the version that I make Pornstar Pink. When you look at it on the palette it looks fluorescent. You would wonder what on earth I would do with a strong pink like that. Its enough to make a feather boa blush. Several of my artists friends are using my pink and when I make it now, I have to make about a quart. I can't easily describe to you how I make my version so I suggest you acquire a tube of the Persian Rose which is similar.

The last addendum to the mixing greens series is this. I am always urging the readers of this blog to make decisions about their art. You have heard me say things like "you cannot observe good design into a painting". The same is true with color and doubly true with the greens. I manipulate my greens a lot, desaturating them, pushing them in different directions to get variety and installing warm notes. I push a lot of reds into my greens. In the summer everything is either yellow or blue or a combination of the two (green) so I smuggle red, I wrote a post about that here.
A thing to watch out for and avoid is chartreuse, in the summer it is easy to fill paintings with poisonous yellow greens and some painters have done that, their paintings get poisonous. A great variety of greens and a careful control of the yellower and cooler greens will usually result in better landscapes. Here comes my old joke again but I do mean something by it. "I want to make paintings the color of 500 dollar suits. What I mean by that is there are loud greens in nature that would never make it onto the racks at Brooks Brothers ( a local retailer known for their restrained taste and high quality). You may want to use those hues, but do it sparingly, if you do use an acidic color, make it an accent, allot to it the area you would a tie.