Reflections of an Artist

Karl Dempwolf Showing the Field Painting and Enlarged Sketch

      I recently went to a demonstration by Karl Dempwolf at TAG Gallery in the Bergamot Station. A large crowd turned out early on a rainy morning for the opportunity to see Karl, a California Impressionist painter. I have taken a plein air class from Karl Dempwolf and credit him with my addiction to painting outside, on location. Karl started his demonstration by showing us his process for starting a large painting from a field study. Following is my interpretation of the morning demo.

1) Take photos of the scene and paint a small field study (see the photo above with field study)
2) Start with a thumbnail sketch with values before painting. Above is an enlarged version of an initial sketch. On the left of the board is a small rectangle. That is the actual size of the sketch that Karl makes.

Karl Starts the Value Under-painting

3) Karl prepares his panel himself by gluing linen to a luan board. I use New Traditions linen panels but they are best for 16x20 and smaller. You may prefer stretched canvas.
4) Tone the panel or canvas with a mid tone color. Some people use a combination of burnt sienna and ultramarine blue, or cadmium orange, or burnt umber and yellow. This is something you have to experiment with to see what you like, but try to always tone the panel. If you leave the background untouched the extreme white will make it much more difficult to achieve proper values. It is also much more interesting if some of the toned color shows through the paint in small areas.
5) Now you can start on a monochromatic blueprint. Edit the shapes to at the most 8 or 9 masses.

Adding Color

6) When you have the blueprint completed you can start to block in the colors starting with the darks.
7) The paint should still be quite thin in texture and this is the time to start refining the shapes. Keep the masses interesting, variety of line and shape is very important.
8) As you work the details, this is where the paint is applied thicker.

Series Showing How to Develop a Painting

      Above was another series which Karl brought to show the steps in developing a studio painting. Throughout the process Karl referred to his field study, not the photos. He emphasized that his interpretation of the scene was more important than painting it exactly as it appeared.  He continually asked, "How can I interpret what I am seeing?" Karl is an artist who evaluates his paintings and is always looking to improve his work. In my next blog see Karl change two of his paintings and talk about why he made those changes.