Grand View Ranch Spring Runoff

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The spring melt has begun at The Grand View Ranch, and the many creeks that surround our ranch are bursting with water. The oak trees that flank the creek banks are like islands surrounded by rushing water and everything is holding on tight trying not to be swept away.

The forest is a place of peace, a sanctuary, a wonderfully balanced ecosystem.
When I enter a forest, I am aware of an eloquent silence with a myriad of pleasant sounds that seem to hang in the air. The mighty old oak trees with their rugged moss-laden trunks and twisted branches are the stalwart guardians of the forest. They welcome me into their home with their branches reaching high above, meeting in a cathedral style arch overhead. As the morning light shines down through the trees, the leaves reflect the glow causing millions of dancing shadows and golden-flecked spots of light to fall upon the thickly covered forest floor. Hundreds of tiny little eyes gleam timidly from their refuges; they sit motionless, their small ears alert to determine the intention of an intruder.

Every tree has a personality, yet it is common for a painter to take them for granted. Beginning painters paint trees and the forest as a heterogeneous multitude of vertical sticks with some horizontal green strokes to simulate branches. Trees and forests are more than just objects to paint to fill up a canvas, or be painted in a flip, blasé manner that detracts from a viewer’s serious appreciation of their beauty. Painting trees involves more than merely slap sticking a #2 fan brush across a vertical line and hoping that the viewer will get the message. Trees must be studied on location, and the best way to do this is to take a pencil to paper and draw them. One good pencil drawing detailing every branch of the tree will teach you everything that you need to know about painting trees.I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.

If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com

Grand View Burn Opus 1

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Recently, we have been preparing The Grand View Ranch for upcoming workshops in April, May, and June, and have spent many days clearing dead trees and fallen limbs left by the winter storms. Because the property is cluttered with 70 years of growth, we are clearing it branch by branch, and this takes many days of hauling and burning. One of my favorite activities is “The Burn.” We drag 40 to 60 lbs of tree trunks over an acre of land to a burn pile, and then, we hoist them onto the burning flame. Grand View Burn Opus 1 is one of a series that captures this activity.

When painting fire or anything that would be an eye-catching subject, it is important to make good color choices. A painting is most effective when the color relationships and transitions are well synchronized so they themselves express the idea of the picture. Good color does not mean prettiness, or color that is dashed upon a canvas. It is color that is intentionally used to make a powerful statement; and to use color powerfully means to reserve for it for the punch or climax of its full force on the central focal point. An exercise for seeing if there are good color relationships and transitions is to turn the painting up side down to view the painting as an abstract, and see if anything stands out as being out of place.

Blog readers have asked about my goals for The Grand View Ranch. It is my dream to create an idyllic artist retreat, where artists can participate in location painting workshops that nurture the artist in a place of unparalleled beauty and inspiration. I am interested in offering an experience that reflects the philosophy of one of my mentors, John Ruskin, author of “Modern painters.” Ruskin rejected the dehumanizing effects of the Industrial Revolution, similar to what we are going through right now, with mass produced imports from other countries, and very few items made with the artist’s hands, mind, and heart. I hope to work with other similar thinking artists to make a difference, and to provide a location for human connection and artistic expression to grow. This type of project takes a battalion of helpful colleagues to make it work, and many artists have contributed to this dream. I thank them with all my heart.

I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.

If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com

Basalt Cliffs North of Shasta

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To the north of Mt Shasta, the climate is dryer and the landscape is like a high desert. Throughout the region, there are dirt roads that lead explorers to amazing vistas that few people ever venture off the paved highway to see. This is the part of California that resembles the way that America was 100 years ago with very little population and seemingly endless roads that were seldom traveled.

The spot that I painted today is one of those places. The incoming storm provided dramatic lighting, turning this rocky basalt range into a glorious ever-changing kaleidoscope of color. I will explore more of this mountain range in future blog paintings, so stay tuned.

I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.

If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com

Shasta Barn Opus 3

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Painting expands our intelligence and develops sensitivity to all things in the world. Our curiosity about everything is awakened. Every day experience is enhanced when you explore the world around you and share it with others on canvas. Painting can create a record of your life, lived.

Just down the road from The Grand View Ranch is the Hoy Ranch. This 2,000-acre farm has an extraordinary view of Mt Shasta. I painted this fabulous barn on the Hoy ranch to add to my “The Barns of Mt Shasta” series. This spring when I give my on-location painting workshops in Mt Shasta, we will paint this awesome location.

The artist is a juggler trying to keep many balls in the air. This is especially true on location when every moment is part of the experience, and the painting. There are vast amounts of information about the subject matter to see and sense about what you are painting. One’s senses are filled with smells, noise, wind, bugs, tourists, exhaust, warm sunrays, and cold feet. It is a wonder that we can keep our wits about us to do the task-at-hand.

As you begin, you must focus and imagine the concept of what you want to paint before painting the first brush stroke on the canvas. Then, with eyes wide-open, look at the subject before you, and see color, composition, light, shadows, form, dimension, atmosphere, prospective, values, weight, movement, balance, rhythm, and the subject itself. Then, you make important choices; what the painting will include and exclude, what time of day, where the focal point will be, and so on. Choosing is a very powerful and essential part of successfully developing and portraying what you feel about the subject or place. This is where all great works of art begins.

I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.

If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com

Shasta Mountain Lioness

Shasta Mountain Lioness

Part 1

This is part one of a three-part demonstration of a studio painting that is in progress. In the next week, look for parts two and three to see how this painting progresses. This is the first day of painting, and, as you can see, after just a few hours I have a clear vision of my inspiration captured on canvas. Later, I will complete this painting with details and lighting.

While exploring and painting the wild country in the American West, I have witnessed hundreds of compositions like the one I am painting. This weekend, on a steep and strenuous climb that I thought would take me up to the Eddys, the rock that I was standing on suddenly dropped away, and I realized I was on a ridge. As I looked around, I was inspired and had a vision for a painting of the matriarch of the forest, a mountain lioness, as she surveys her kingdom overlooking Mt Shasta, the jewel of her crown. Perhaps the simplest way to understand me is to recognize my intense attraction to the mountains and all the living things within them. In nature, I find endless ideas for paintings. I marvel at the way Mt Shasta can appear beautifully, then vanish, and reemerge as clouds and fog roll in and out over the mountain. I feel grateful to be able to witness sunsets and storms that are in themselves the work of a higher power. My most memorable impression of traveling through the Shasta wilderness is how vast it is, with distances that seem to go on forever. The enormous volcanic mountain does things in a big way.

In this blog, I have suggested that artists paint from life, capture what they see, and convey their unique experience of the world to the viewer by painting. However, artists and collectors who know my work know that I create my studio paintings in a very different way.

The sketches that I paint on location train my painting reflexes and are recorded in my memory, so that I can render them again in future paintings. I am able to combine personal observations with passionate memories to compose paintings in my studio. None of the elements for this painting comes from photos. In fact, I rarely travel with a camera. I cannot stress the importance of painting from memory. In this blog, I refer to painting on location as a way of learning to see what you are looking at. It is with our imagination that we excel in the art of painting. If you would like to practice painting from memory, after painting on location, paint your painting again completely from memory in your studio without your sketch or photos.

I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.
If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com

The Old Bunkhouse

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This afternoon I discovered a wonderful ranch that was established in 1854 just outside the town of Edgewood at the foot of Mount Shasta. Jackson Ranch is a 2000-acre ranch that a prospector homesteaded after making a fortune gold mining in Yreka. As I began painting, an old man came out of the forest with a rifle flung over his right shoulder. He had a kind and welcoming smile. He noticed that I was painting and wandered over to see what I was doing. He told me that the structure I was painting was the old bunkhouse that his great-great grandfather built it in 1856.

The great thing about painting on location is that it is not like jumping out of a car and snapping a photo. Painting invites conversation. People stop to talk with you, and have nothing but praises to say about what you are doing. Most people admire the fact that you have the ability and interest to do what you are doing, and wish that they could do it, too. It is very intriguing to see a painter in a field with an easel and umbrella, and the old hunter’s curiosity led him to approach me when he saw me painting “The Old Bunkhouse.”

Often I paint what I see as an exercise in capturing the mood of a place in the moment. Today the light was defused by clouds and offered little highlight, but the soft light intensified the feeling of history as I painted the old structure. The mood of a painting conveys the artist’s emotional response to the place, object, or person that is being painted. Mood is the prime differentiating quality between a painting done on location and one painted from a photo in the studio. The more you sketch on location, the more you store feelings and observations to use in future expressions on canvas. Great paintings are mostly studio paintings that originated from a personal experience, recalled later in the studio, and expressed through the artist’s brush from memory.

I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.

If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime. I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com

Shasta Valley Opus 1

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While exploring some of the country roads that crisscross the landscape in Shasta Valley, I discovered thousands of landscapes waiting to be painted. Hay and alfalfa farmers along with their livestock made this fertile valley their home. The grand landscapes and the ever-present shadow of Mt Shasta in the background dwarf the little farms and rancheros. The landscapes whispered to me “come here and paint me.” It is difficult to paint every subject that you see. There is a moment that you must just stop the car and say, “this is it.” I set up my supplies, and then stood with my brush poised, took a breath, and allowed my thoughts to focus on the result that I wished to capture. Once the image was clear, I started painting.

There are rules that help to create a sense of space or the feeling of air on a two-dimensional canvas. One rule that governs color gradations is that all colors become cooler as they recede from the eye, except white. Color that recedes into the distance has some blue added to it. Likewise, objects in the foreground are warmer with yellow or red added to the hue. Orange is the warmest color of all. Additionally, yellow fades out as the landscape recedes. That means that the green in the foreground will have lots of yellow present, but in the middle ground, you will find the yellow gradually diminishes yielding a grayish blue. In the background, the yellow will fade all together and become a bluish color.

Another rule that helps to create aerial perspective is that all things get lighter in value the further they recede into the distance. By adding white to a color that is receding, it becomes lighter in value and appears to be distant. Be sure to squint and observe the landscape before painting any color, because to create depth, the value must be correct. Notice that the colors and values change and become cooler and lighter as they recede into the distance in the newest painting, Shasta Valley Opus 1.

I hope that we can build a community of artists that can share information with each other.If you know of any artists that might appreciate being included, let them know about this blog.

I hope to offer more painting tips as this conversation continues.

If you have questions that you would like me to answer, please don’t hesitate to email me anytime.

I welcome your feedback. Stefan_Baumann@yahoo.com