Blog

I'm primarily a landscape painter. I've done plein air and studio paintings based on scenes around metro Detroit and in other states of The U.S. That said, one of my favorite places to paint outside is in my own back yard, especially of our hawthorn tree. Here are 3 knife paintings featuring our hawthorn tree at different times of the year.

This year, I've been doing more oil paintings with traditional brushes. I've been working with knives primarily for over a decade now, so I figured it would be wise to keep my brush skills up too.

I took some photos of the Hawthorn tree in mid November. It was still half full of leaves. We wouldn't have our first snow for over a week yet. The tree was full of red berries which attracted lots of birds looking for food before winter hit.

As I worked on composing the scene, I liked the layout I got from a square format. I prepped a 16" x 16" canvas and then started working at it with larger brushes, changing to smaller sizes as I got to later stages of the painting process.

I thought the bright afternoon sun peeking through the branches would be a fun challenge to capture. I also wanted to make sure my brushwork was lively and energetic to convey a yard filled with song and activity from many birds visiting our yard. It was important that the final piece had lots of visual touches encouraging the viewers' eyes to move all over the painting and see new things when they return to a spot.

I was a little sad when the painting was finished because I really enjoyed working on it. By the time I posted it on this website, we had a lovely first snowfall. The trees and limbs had a beautiful coat of white snow all over their limbs and branches. Even the few tiny berries still uneaten had tiny piles of fresh snow on top.

I had filled up our bird feeders the day before after hearing the snowy forecast. The next day, we had many birds feasting on the birdseed in the feeders and on the ground. Watching from our living room, I was inspired to do a winter version of our Hawthorn tree painting with birds.

I took lots of photos outside of the tree from many angles in the back yard. Since my appearance in the yard scared away all the birds and squirrels, I had to wait and take closeup photos of them later from the inside of our house.

Like the November painting, I wanted my winter scene done in a square format. I used a larger 20" x 20" canvas so I could focus more on the birds, For brush painting, I like a smoother surface, so I added 3 more coats of high quality acrylic gesso, sanding them with fine sandpaper after each layer was dry.

I composed my scene on my Mac desktop and added a grid. After my canvas was prepped, I drew the same grid on top of it lightly in pencil. My easel is set up next to my old iMac where I could view the reference I composed. Time to start my new painting!

I like a warm undertone, so I did my drawing with brushes using transparent yellow, orange, and red oil paint. I did a loose but careful sketch. I modified things from the photo. For instance, the bird feeder was much farther left from the tree and would have been off the canvas if positioned accurately. I moved it closer. I also removed unwanted distractions in the background like a utility pole and a neighbor's back yard tree that would have been in the upper right.

I used a solvent-free medium by Gamblin to thin the paints for easier coverage and help the undertone dry overnight. Since my basement studio has poor ventilation, I don't want to use any toxic solvents in any part of the painting process.

The next morning, I squeezed out the colors I wanted to use for my painting onto my large palette. From bottom left clockwise to right, I have:

• Warm White
• Titanium White
• Burnt Sienna
• Ultramarine Blue
• Cerulean Blue Hue
• Permanent Rose
• Cadmium Red Medium
• Cadmium Red Light
• Cadmium Yellow Deep
• Cadmium Lemon Pure

I have never pre-mixed colors before, but this time I made a decent size pile of a purplish gray on the upper right. I would use this to add to my mixes so they wouldn't look too bright and saturated. This scene takes place during a snowfall so there wouldn't be any deep shadows or bright sunlit areas. The bluejay and the cardinals are very colorful but I didn't want their colors to look unnatural, and I figured adding some of this gray to their mixes would tone their saturation down.

I did a couple other deviations from my usual painting process. Normally, I like to put in all my darks first and then work up to my mid-tones, then my lights. I also like to work all over the canvas and save any details for the end. I also like to start with big brushes. For this painting, however, I decided to paint the birds on a dry surface, rather than battle with their details working wet-on-wet.

I started first on the blue jay on the bottom. I loaded a smaller flat brush with paint and painted the blue jay with as few strokes as possible. It stood out strongly from the warm undertone surrounding it, so I added mixed some of my purplish gray mix into some white and blocked in the snow around it.

I was happy with how it turned out. I liked how the brushstrokes were able to be seen, showing the artist's hand.

I then painted the male and the female cardinals, the 2 mourning doves, a squirrel, and a bunch of smaller sparrows and chickadees. Again, I tried to render them with as few brushstrokes as I could. I wanted them to have a bit of abstraction. 

I also liked how the largest birds and squirrel form a circular design to help guide the eye through the scene. You can also see some zigzagging of lines in the background. They will end up being fences but they also had dynamism to the design.

Since their cooler colors contrast strongly with the warm background, it's hard to judge their accuracy. I knew the next step would be to try to fill in the rest of the canvas with basic color. The plan is to revert to my usual process of starting with the darks, then the midtones, and finally the light colors.

The darks were quickly and thinly applied. I like to keep them somewhat transparent. They provide a structure to the painting, even though a lot of the darks will be covered up by lighter colors later to convey snow sticking to the sides of the tree limbs and branches.

Still, I tried to keep open areas for places I would paint snow. I don't want the painting to look muddy. I want the snow to stand out from the darks of the bark of the tree.

Looking at this stage of the canvas, it's probably difficult to see this as a winter painting. I make my color mixing decisions based on how I see the finished scene in my head. I keep thinking of the mood I felt when I first watched the birds eating the seed from the feeder and the ground while it was snowing. I let this influence all the decisions I make of what colors I mix and how they will be applied. I want the viewer to get the same feeling I had of the birds' acts for survival in harsh and cold weather.

I worked on this painting for several days, taking my time with it. We're probably viewing this by the third or fourth painting session at this point. I remember seeing most of the canvas still mostly painted with its orange undertone all over and realizing it needed to be painted over before I could work on refining it. This next stage involved applying simple mixes of white with my purplish gray pile all over the undertone.

I didn't rush this part. I wanted to carefully define the limbs and branches of my hawthorn tree, as well as other elements such as the fences and the neighbor's house behind us.

The adding of the light gray for the snow changes the scene on the canvas dramatically. I took another break, knowing my next session of refining would be easier now that my painting definitely looks like a winter scene.

This next stage took two or three painting sessions. This wasn't a commission so I had no deadline. This wasn't a knife painting so I didn't have to worry about getting it down while all the paint was still wet enough to manipulate on the canvas. In fact, some of the paint was dry, which made it easy to cover up with thicker paint and keeping the mixes clean.

The webbing of the fence would be a challenge. I could have painted it using the edge of a painting knife, but I didn't want the lines to look too straight. I took a flat brush with a crisp edge and applied the gray paint by tapping it lightly. I used darker grays for the fence closer to the viewer to achieve a feeling of depth.

I changed the color of the neighbor's garage on the top left to a pale grayish green. This helped make the male cardinal pop out more. The wildlife is the story in my painting and I needed the birds to pop out to the viewer.

The painting was very close to being finished. I'd worked on it on and off for about a week in between preparing for the Christmas holiday. If I had a slight bout of insomnia in the middle of the night, I'd go downstairs and work on this some more. Painting can be very relaxing, and after working on it for an hour or so, I was able to fall deeply asleep for the rest of the night very easily. A lot of time was spent painting lots of falling snowflakes throughout the painting to add a sense of urgency to the wildlife getting their meal in before the day ended.

When I finished it a few days before Christmas, I signed it and then got my wife, Tammie's opinion on it. She always gives me honest and constructive feedback. She declared it one of her favorite paintings I'd ever done, which was most gratifying. I could now declare it finished. 

Here's a few closeups from the painting showing how I simplified the shapes of the wildlife in the painting.

And here is the final painting. I titled it Winter Dinner Party. 

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. I hope you enjoyed reading about the thoughts behind the decisions I made in my painting process. I wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a very Happy New Year.