Photographs: Water

I have been taking photographs of the Mississippi River as part of Project Art for Nature for the last year and a half. These photos have been resources for my paintings of the Mississippi, but I have come to enjoy the photos so much that I am framing them and hanging them in the PAN exhibit at the University of Minnesota at Morris. Displayed here are three of the seven photos.
Each PAN artist must choose two natural areas in which to work. My first site is the Mississippi River Gorge located between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul. My second site is the Review Islands on Rainy Lake along the Minnesota/Canada border, a protected grouping of four islands owned by the Oberholtzer Foundation. Both sites are defined by water and have been created by erosion from volumes of water rushing past rock as well as each tiny wave and ripple slowly lapping against shore. These three photos deal with ripples as pattern on the surface of water. One starts to sense the rugged surface of water which grates away the land. There is also a sense of the volume of water underneath this surface that is at work.

I took my photos and did very little in terms of editing or changing them for this exhibit. I just tweeked the contrast a little. They are framed in black metal frames with a ragboard matte. The prints themselves are on matte heavyweight archival paper. I did not want the sheen of photopaper as I felt that a matte paper would communicate the volume and density of the water better.

If you are in the Morris area between October 22 and November 27 please stop in and see the show. There are ten other wonderful artists in the exhibit and it promises to be quite a show.

More Attempts at a Book Cover

I wasn't quite happy with the last cover I had completed (first image) a few days ago, so I spent a couple more hours at it. I looked over the cover design with a friend, Linda, at work and she had some good suggestions and ideas. I tried those out here in the next design. Changes included moving the ground/dirt aspect of the cover to the bottom of the design. We thought this might "ground" that part of the cover a little more and provide more room for the flower image. We both felt the flower seemed a little cramped in the first image. I also made the old photos look more brown instead of reddish - raw sienna instead of burnt sienna.

I eventually went back to the first image and made more subtle changes instead of the big changes. In the second design there was too much room for the flower and it seemed like I had to add branches and leaves to make it fill the space properly.

I liked the white stripe at the bottom of the first design. It frames the photos and keeps them in their place.  So, in my final design I included the stripe and enlarged the photos slightly so the right side fits the edge better. I also moved the photos down a little so there would be more room for the flower.

On the flower I made the leaves smaller which seemed to open up the space for a little longer stem and room for the words "Parenting and Nature."

All in all I am happy and this will be my final design. Now to tweak the book's interior just a little bit more.

Art Question: How do you make paintings that look dimensional?

What a great question from Carol V. How do you make paintings that look so dimensional? The key is contrast and edges.

Why contrast? Contrast is the tool used to create separation of shapes in a painting. Two shapes next to each other that are in great contrast will separate from each other and create a sense of space. Two shapes next to each other that do not have much contrast will not separate from each other and the sense of space between them will be minimized.

What does that mean?

Let's look at this cabbage painting as an example.
The cabbage seems to have volume and shape. Each leaf appears in front or behind another leaf. This is done by overlapping shapes, but it becomes convincing when you use contrast properly.

In the detail of three layers of the leaves, you can see that the leaves in the background are all darker than the leaf in front of them. The leaf in the center of the detail has a white edge at the top that is in contrast to the darker bodies of the background leaves. The central leaf then darkens as it approaches the two leaves in the front, at the bottom. This creates contrast with the lighter edges of the leaves in front. In this manner space is created, by using contrast between shapes.

Of course, contrast can only happen at an edge shared by two shapes. The stronger the contrast, the stronger the edge. There are edges within each leaf created by the veins. But the contrast and edges between the veins and the leaf are softer than the hard edges between two leaves.

This is the main way in which I create a sense of depth or dimension: by carefully creating or diminishing contrast at edges. There are other techniques you can use to enhance a sense of space, but that is for another time. If you check out the images in my gallery, or other paintings, you will begin to notice this wherever there is a strong sense of space.

Evolution of a Book Cover

I am busy trying to finalize the cover for my book Fertile Ground: Parenting and Nature. I completed the first cover a couple of years ago. I altered it for the first printing. Now that I am ready to start marketing the book more aggressively, I wanted a more professional looking cover. Here are images, in chronological order, of the development of the cover. I won't get into details about each design, but the overall design concept is to show that the fertile ground of human experience and nature are what feed and help a child to grow. The final design was influenced by the fact that when I went to the bookstore to look at books about parenting, I discovered that most of them have predominantly white covers. I'm not sure about the reasons for this, but it made me start to think about my own design and how I could improve it.

Art Question: What Do I Do When A Painting Is Off to a Bad Start

I have not painted a flower-painting-of-the-month for August and here it is September already. So I thought I would paint a vase of flowers from the Farmer's Market. At the market I didn't see any flowers that grabbed me, but I figured I could do something with what was there. I brought a bunch of flowers home, divided them into groups for three different vases. One I gave to a friend as a house warming gift, the other two I sketched from. I had been at Mallard Island a few weeks back and busy as a bee upon my return, so I had not been in the studio for the last two to three weeks. So, here I sit with a bad start to a painting. I could tell that I haven't been in the studio for awhile; the flow wasn't there, I wasn't sure about my decisions, I seemed to be using the wrong size brushes and I didn't have an overall idea of what I was going to do.

Here is the image of the painting I have begun. Even the composition and concept are weak to me. My attempts at painting were clumsy and ineffective. My color mixing was like flatulence. Very little in this piece is working. By the time I was wrapping up for the evening I felt I was finally starting to have a feel for where this might go. I might be able to save it next time I paint, which I hope will be tomorrow night.


What to do when a painting starts out badly
There are two approaches to take when a painting starts out badly:
1. Walk away from it and come back later with fresh eyes. I actually went over to a friend's house for dinner after my bad start on this piece. Upon my return I had no clue as to how to make it better, but my mind was in a calmer place to make better decisions and to focus. Having not been in my studio for awhile my focus was not there when I started.  It is much easier and better to start out focused then to try to recover later.

2. Work your way through it until something happens that you like.
Once I returned with a better mindset, I was able to doodle with the work until I started to find something that was working for me. I started putting in the dark areas and fixing up some edges. I now feel that I will be able to apply some lines and paint over some wet areas in order to improve it and figure the next steps from there. Most paintings go through a stage of uncertainty that just needs to be worked through - sometimes you have to work really hard.  When the uncertainty is at the start of a painting you have to work even harder.

If I never feel good about a painting, I will wipe it off with a rag and start from the beginning. Most likely, a completely different subject.

The important thing is to come to a place where you are in the moment paying attention to the paint, the color, the object. If you can get to that place while painting you have won 90% of the battle. So much was going through my head while painting that I couldn't paint well. Having some dinner and enjoying some time with a friend and his daughter put me in a better place to pay attention - to paint. Part of the reason I believe I can save this painting is that I have begun to knock the rust from my painting muscles after some time off. I will probably be in a better place from the beginning next time.

Update: The painting was a complete loss. It went nowhere even with some work and I ended up painting something else on the canvas - oh,well.  This canvas helped me get back my focus - a small sacrifice.

Art Question: Do I Have To Make Art Tonight, Mom?

I would like to make some art tonight,... or is it that I feel I need to make art tonight. I have a deadline tonight for submitting work to a fundraiser, I need to complete a flower-painting-of-the-month in the next five days, I have a backhall that is under construction, a kitchen full of tomatoes that need to be canned, statements for an upcoming show that need to be layed-out and printed, a couple of videos to download, five new pages to create on my new website (I hope to unveil in a month), a new book cover to design and a few new projects that I want to be working on.

I just spent an hour and a half downloading pictures from Mallard Island and uploading some of them to a Facebook page. Some of the pictures are here in this entry.

I stopped by The Grand Hand Gallery today to check in on the current exhibit with my work. I worked 8.5 hours today at my day job and am now creating this blog entry.

The choices are so many and the energy is so low. A beer and a good friend seem to be the most appropriate and wished for activity.

Although I am very tired, over-burdened and wondering how to squeeze in any kind of creative activity, what keeps going through my mind is Claire and the idea that this planet, earth, is almost dead. Not dead to it's self, but dead to people. The environment we have created has become toxic to us and many other living things. Claire believes it is already beyond the point of no return. She doesn't believe the planet will die. She believes that we will die. We are killing ourselves through our greed and fears. Isn't it kinda absurd that some of our earliest writings recognize this weakness in ourselves and yet we haven't learned anything in 10,000 years? We have prophecized our own doom, we have laid out how we would bring it about, and yet, 4,000 generations later, we are no longer on the doorstep but have confidently and arrogantly walked through the doorway and into the end. It saddens me greatly. We are the sons of Cain.

Anyone for some ping-pong?

Art Question: What Are the Benefits of a Weeklong Art Retreat?

I just returned from a weeklong trip to Mallard Island on Rainy Lake in Minnesota. Rainy Lake is on the Minnesota/Canada border near International Falls.

I was a co-caretaker of the island for the week while a group that calls themselves the St. Croix Writers Group held a workshop. The writer's group was very generous in allowing Beth, the other caretaker, and myself to participate in their evening gatherings and made us one of the group.

Why go on a weeklong art retreat? How does one benefit from this?

The people at Mallard Island this last week were a varied lot. Some were novice writers, some published, one soon to be published (very exciting), a magazine article writer, a photographer, a quilter and a few more things I am sure I am not aware of. Three or four of the participants buried themselves in their writing and we were lucky to see them at breakfast or lunch. Others took the opportunity to get away from their writing to play, interact with like minded people and enjoy the beauty of the islands.

No matter what activity the participants pursued or how engaged they were with their art, they all ended the week with such happiness and satisfaction. They all want to come back again next year. I, myself, although I had plenty of time, only drew for two hours, painted for about five hours and wrote for about six. An outsider might have considered my week a waste of time. They might have witnessed other participants spending too much time cooking, or fishing, or reading one of the many thousands of books on the island. Generally, we think of retreats as an opportunity to delve into our own creativity - an opportunity to be productive.

Some people come ready to produce. They have a project that needs their attention and they are ready to rock. They would rather do nothing else, despite the beautiful sunshine and cold blue water calling them. Others want to create, but something is in their way. I have noticed at Mallard, and at other workshops that I have led or participated in, how many people first turn to grief at a retreat. At workshops like this, I often ask people "what is beautiful in your life?" This leads to all kinds of conversations, but very often the grief we have not been able to process arises very quickly. Our lives are too hectic, too full of distractions to fully heal ourselves from our hurts and losses. When we take the time to have nothing on the schedule for a whole week, it is grief that most wants to be dealt with so we can get on to our happy and creative selves. If we are isolated and alone, the rising grief can become depression. When we are surrounded by beauty and people who care, we talk and we get a little goofy and we draw close to others. Like a metamorphosing dragonfly that squeezes the juices out of its body before it is ready for its first flight, I think we need to squeeze a drop or two of unfettered celebration and happiness with others before our grief is over. It is beautiful to see a person open up their spirit, to see sunshine after a long period of rain and clouds, to see a genuine deeply felt smile that hasn't been there for many months, maybe years.

There are many benefits to a weeklong art retreat. There is the opportunity of extended periods of time to immerse ourselves in our creativity and there is the opportunity to remove those barriers that are getting in the way of our creativity. And there is the wonderful opportunity of making new friends and spending time in a beautiful setting.

Many thanks to Beth Waterhouse and the Ernst C. Oberholtzer Foundation for allowing me to partake and add to the life at Mallard Island.

What's beautiful in your life? http://www.markgranlund.com/