This past week (middle of February 2012) I have been drawn back to black and white nature photos as I wandered the ravines and river valley in Edmonton. Here are five of my favorite images:
Tall and Bare
Fallen Logs Across the Creek
Black and White Trunks
Shadows Across Frozen Creek
Against the Sun
Do you have a favorite amongst these image? If so, which one and why?
A continuation of an earlier post sharing some black and white landscape photos taken in January/February 2012 in the Edmonton river valley
Open Water and Ducks
Blue on Blue in Black and White
Stairs in the Valley
Grasses, Trees and a Cloud
Beautiful Trail
Winter, in Edmonton, Canada typically means a fair bit of snow and temperatures in the minus 15 to 30 Celsius range. The 2011/12 winter has been atypical. Except for a week in mid-January where temperatures fell to below normal, most of the winter has featured daily highs around freezing. Nonetheless, there has been snow on the ground since November.
This series of photos are some that I took during the last week of January and the first week of February 2012 the the North Saskatchewan River valley in central Edmonton (in fact most are in Dawson Park). Dawson Park lies on the north side of the river valley meaning it gets a lot of sun and the snow can melt (or blow away) relatively quickly on the exposed ridges.
The Ridge
The Steep Path Up
Dawson Park seen from the south side of the river:
The North Bank
One of the fascinating things about Dawson Park is a section of “hoodoos” a geological formation more famously associated with the badlands of southern Alberta near Drumheller.
River Valley Landscape
While the exposed areas have just a touch of visible snow, the sheltered trails are well covered with snow and very wintery in appearance.
Birch and Snowy Path
I recently discovered and purchased the ValueViewer App for the iPhone. This app was endorsed by PleinAir Magazine so I figured it would be good. The premise is very good – take a photo of a scene with your iPhone camera then let the app break it down into a few values (lights and darks) so that you can rough-in the appropriate values to start a painting. Getting the values right, from the start, is a very important part step for producing a representational painting. The basic functionality of the app does allow you to capture a scene, break it down into 3 values and allows you to play around with the composition by zooming in on the image and cropping it to one of 3 common canvas/frame proportions (3:4, 4:5 & 11:14).
However, beyond the basics there is not much to this app. The following shortcomings quickly become obvious:
I do like that there are 7 setting that allow one to adjust the scene for high or low key image. That is you can choose a 2-scale image (mainly black with a bit of grey or mainly white with a bit of grey) or five 3-tone (different proportions of black, grey and white) between these extremes.
So overall this app show promise but I’m afraid it’s not really ready for prime time – certainly not at a $4.99 price. In the current version (version 1.1 released 2011 July 22) I’m not even sure it would be up to the value of other 99 cent apps. The ad in PleinAir magazine does promise “more features coming soon” and it was on the basis of that promise that I made my purchase, to show support and provide encouragement for the developer to take this app to where it should be. It could be a very handy tool for painters working en plein air or in the studio.
A few month’s back, in my quest to learn more about the Abstract Expressionist movement, I purchased a recent book by Irving Sandler. The description of that book intrigued me in that Sandler would be taking a second look at the movement – having written a definitive account of the history of the Abstract Expressionists, back in 1970. I thought it would be best to first read his first account before learning how his interpretation might have changed with 4o years of thought and observation. As luck would have it, that latest book sat on my “to read” pile and in the meantime I found a copy of his first book at a library.
So having now read that first book, The Triumph of American Painting, A History of Abstract Expressionism, I will tell you what I found. 
I enjoyed this book. It was generally accessible and definitely educational. I have read a few biographies of key Abstract Expressionists and have become familiar with the painting style of maybe half a dozen of these artists but I never felt that I had the big picture. I had questions like: where and why did this movement come into being?, what were the influences (from without and within)? and what was the common thread that brought a number of artists with quite diverse approaches to their art, to be lumped into this movement called abstract expressionism? Having read The Triumph of American Painting, I feel that I got answers to those questions.
The 300 page book is divided into 20 chapters and includes a comprehensive bibliography and a section with short biographies of fifteen of the painters. Just over half of the chapters are devoted to individual artists, while the remaining chapters are of a more general nature, with titles such as The Great Depression, The Gesture Painters, The Color Field Painters, The Abstract Expressionist Scene, 1950-52: Success and Dissolution. The artists to whom individual chapters are devoted are:
- Arshile Gorky
- William Baziotes
- Jackson Pollock
- Willem de Kooning
- Hans Hoffmann
- Clyfford Still
- Mark Rothko
- Barnett Newman
- Adolph Gottlieb
- Robert Motherwell, and
- Ad Reinhardt
The book contains many images, photos of paintings, but unfortunately they are all in black and white. It would have been nice to see these works in full color but surprisingly, these monotone images do still convey a strong sense of the energy and style of the paintings. The only little gripe I had with this book and specifically the images, is a lack of indication of the size of each work – especially given how important this element was to a number of the abstract expressionists.
Through the course of the book Sandler describes the origins of the movement from the politics and philosophies of the time, through the drive to create art that would be distinct from the European traditions and particularly the influence of Paris. I learned how abstract expressionism grew out of cubism and surrealism and strove to be something distinct from these movements and how abstract expressionism could be broken down into two main branches: gesture and color field. The final part of the book describes the eventual recognition of the movement in the 1950′s, after a long struggle for acceptance.
As mentioned the author, Sandler revisited the movement in his 2009 book, Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience: a Reevaluation. I am looking forward to reading that book and when I do, I will pass along my thoughts.
Fresh off a brief period of sharp black and white photos, I returned this week to some abstract color images. As I’ve said before, these photos are intended as references for future paintings but so far I have not gotten around to that next step.
Abstract Landscape 361-135
Abstract Landscape 362-165
Abstract 361-143
As you may be able to see, that last one was an urban landscape, a street scene.
Abstract Landscape 361-137
A Wedge of Sunlight
As I have done with previous photos of this style, I used a slow (4-second) shutter speed and moved the camera during the exposure.
Of course there can be color in the winter landscape, you just might have to look a little harder for it. In this post though don’t strain yourself looking for color as I am featuring 5 black and white photos. Although there has not been a lot of snow in Edmonton in this winter of 2011/12 there has still been enough to keep the ground basically white. On the day I took these images the sun was out and the sky was deep blue – which with a color filter in the black and white conversion, yielded a deep dark sky on some images.
Packed Snow Field
Two and the Forest
Lichen
Reach to the Sky
Frozen Bend in the River
Technical Notes: The photos in this group were all taken in the early afternoon on January 7th, 2012, near Laurier Park in Edmonton. I used a Nikon D80 with a 18-55 lens and a polarizing filter. Post processing including conversion to black and white was done with the Capture NX2 software.
Not much to say about this group of photos, other than that they were all taken using long (4 seconds) hand-held exposures with deliberate camera motion. The early morning time of day is responsible the dominating blue cast to these images.
Blue Fenceline
Abstract 356-033
Abstract Landscape 356-038 (River in December)
Abstract 356-034
Abstract 356-039
Being able to match the color you see, with the pigment in a paint tube is a major challenge for many artists. One tool that can help one develop that eye- brain connection is Magic Palette Color Matching Guide from The Color Wheel Company.
The Magic Palette Color Matching Guide consists of 36 cards, one for each of 36 very common artist’s colors. Each card has a sample of the main pigment and 4 tints or shades of that color. The number of tints and shades depends on the relative value of the pure color. With Cadmium Yellow Light, for example, the card contains three shades and one tint. Many of the darker colors, such as Ultramarine Blue have no shades, just the four tints.
Color Matching Guide
There is a square hole in each color sample so you can hold the card up to the real color and check how close the match is. Of course this tool is only based on one color and in reality a real color may be a mix of two or more hues – still this tool should get you close enough to where you can say ” a little more red”, “a bit warmer” etc. to get the perfect match (if that is critical to you).
I intend to play a little game using this tool, by challenging myself to name the hue that I think I am seeing and then use the guide to confirm if I am correct or close. Have any of you used this tool or any thing like it?
I’ve made three visits in the last couple of months to one particular exhibit at the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA) and I suspect I will be good for at least two more visits before the show closes on February 20 2012. The show is State of Nature, Western Canadian Landscape Painting in the AGA collection, 1980 to the present. This exhibit is running concurrently with a couple of other complementary painting exhibitions Prairie Life: Settlement and the Last Best West 1930-1955 (just until 2012 January 29) and a Passion for Nature, Landscape Painting from 19th Century France.
While the Passion for Nature exhibit is larger and with some big names would probably be considered the more prestigious exhibit, I must say that State of Nature is my favorite! State of Nature features nine large works by Alberta and Saskatchewan artists. The paintings are bold and strong, some tending towards abstraction but all recognizable as landscapes and certainly capturing the essence of the landscape from the Western Canadian prairie and parkland. There were a couple of paintings that really connected with me, invited me to sit down in front of them, to absorb the atmosphere and be transported to a different place. One of these was David Alexander’s Swags in a Northern Swamp. This large (approximately 3 by 4 meters) piece features a dominant foreground swamp with reflections in the mid-ground.
My favorite piece in this exhibit is Rockface, Quiet Bay 2008 by Gregory Hardy. This large work dominates one’s field of vision with a rocky landscape refelcted in a lake. the colors are rather subdued but with a few exciting dabs of orange.
If you happen to be in Edmonton, with an opportunity to visit the AGA before February 20th be sure not to miss this exhibit. It is interesting in its own right but especially so when seen against the 20th Century French paintings and the other current AGA exhibits.
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