Sky & Harmony

Bid On This Painting
This will take you over to Ebay

Just north of The Grand View Ranch is the small farming town of Gazelle. This little old town on Hwy 99 was once a bustling town but it has shrunk in size, just like so many other rural communities in America that have disappeared because of commercialism and the popularity of box stores. I found this barn as I was searching for new locations for my workshops in Mt Shasta. The morning light was just breaking over the mountain, and I quickly set up my pochade box, and sketched it before the light changed.

Sky and sunlight together harmonizes a landscape, because the color of the light source (sunlight) shining through the atmosphere fills the scene with harmonious colors. But, how do you harmonize your painting? I have heard that some artists mix a mother color (a color that is made of red, yellow, and blue) on their palette, and once they have mixed a tone that is close of a color in the scene, they add it to all the colors. Other artists have a blue or red glass that they look through to see the changing values and see color temperatures. Other artists tone their canvas purple or brown. Although these methods work for some artists, I feel that if you paint all your paintings with the same approach or method, your work will look the same and can become boring. I recommend that you paint what you see. Nature harmonizes everything and always provides the best example: so if you paint what is there, the colors will be harmonious. Whether you paint from still-life setups, figure studies, or by looking out your window or painting outdoors, painting from life provides the most realistic, original, and true to life color, allowing you to create your own view of the world as it appears to you.
.Painting outdoors is not an easy task. You must have everything at your disposal to make it go smoothly. It requires even more discipline than painting from still life or a live model. If you do learn to paint outdoors, you will acquire the ability to see color and analyze values in a very exciting manner that will inspire you forever. If you want to grasp the secret of painting, just paint from life. With practice and experience gained by painting outdoors, you may not want to paint any other way and in a very short time, you will have the power to paint anything that you desire.
We, at the Grand View Ranch, are preparing for the fall workshops, and if you have not had the chance to come to a workshop, I invite you to visit our website at http://www.thegrandview.com/ for information about painting outdoors in Shasta, California. While you are on the website, you can download my free book, “Everything I know About Painting” under “Information” on the home page of the website.

I am offering (for a limited time only) the readers of our blog and Outdoor Painting newsletter, a $75.00 discount off of the price of the workshops that will be held in September and October, 2008. You can call me at 415-606-9074 or register on the website. Space is limited, so call soon.
If you are interested in experiencing a breakthrough weekend that will take your art to the next level, visit our new website at http://www.thegrandview.com/, and you can download my FREE BOOK where I share “Everything I know About Painting.”

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