Watercolors from Costa Rica

   I just got back from a great trip to Costa Rica last week, and I was able to do some small watercolors while I was there. I love working in oils, but a lot of times for travel, especially with my entire family, it is more practical to bring along a small watercolor kit and some paper, rather than a french easel and solvents. These all have touches of goauche over top of the watercolor and are 7" x 10". The tropical flora in Costa Rica was quite fun to paint, forcing me to use brighter and more intense pops of color than I normally do.

from the James Island Connector

     In the Fall of 2015, I worked on two separate commissions. The first will have to wait for another post, but this one was a landscape from the James Island Expressway, a high causeway which connects James Island to the peninsula of Charleston. The client had seen my work in Charleston before they moved to Utah, and wanted a painting of this view as a Christmas present for his wife. He contacted me around Thanksgiving, and since I had a lot going on at the time, I told him it wasn't possible to get the entire painting completed by then, but that I would do my best to get a few studies to him for approval by the holidays. He described the view that he wanted, which is a great panorama you see coming into downtown Charleston. The elevation is high (unusual for the Low country) and from there you can see the Charleston marina, various church steeples punctuating the skyline and the iconic Ravanel Bridge in the the distance. It's a similar view that I've wanted to paint for years, from another causeway bridge that I drive over almost every morning after dropping my kids off at school, so this seemed like a fortuitous opportunity.
     Since this spot is impossible to paint on site, I had to work exclusively from photo reference. Although I prefer to work from observation, in the end, I can work either way (and I'm usually the only one who can tell which are done from the motif and which are done from photos). It proved to be a difficult spot even to take the photos. I managed to convince my wife to pull over to the shoulder of the expressway one afternoon, with my whole family in tow, risking life and limb as I reached out the passenger side door as cars were zooming by at 40-50 MPH, to take about 2 dozen reference photos. I edited a few larger panoramas and from there the client and I agreed on the final scope of the scene and size (it was a longer format than I'm used to painting on, and I rounded the proportions off to a double square, 12" x 36")

     From the photos, I did this mock up drawing, trying to set up visual rhythms in the rectangle and adjusted certain elements so that they would line up with the rebatement of the square.

     After the drawing,  I transferred this to some paper, in order to do a color study. The thing that I dislike most about working from photographs is the amount of distortion that occurs in the color. Things usually tend to be 'bluer' and have more contrast then if observed with the eye, but I pulled out some other plein paintings that I had in the studio with a similar light (midday) and painted during the same season (late Fall). In the end, all paintings are fabricated 'lies' this way; an artist tweaks and distorts various elements of color, light and form to make a constructed, 'painted' reality.

     After the client approved both studies (he was a pleasure to work for, having no objections to what I proposed and sent along the way), I stretched the final canvas and began work. Because there was a lot of earth colors in the foreground and a large area of water, I decided to start off with a toned canvas rather than the white of the gesso. I usually do this by thinning a mixture of raw umber and burnt umber with turpentine, brushing it over the gessoed linen and then rubbing it off after about an hour. Once this dries, I start back in with a thin brush and black paint, drawing the linear elements and blocking in larger patches of color with a palette knife and wide brush.

     My biggest problem with studio paintings, especially ones done from photographic sources, is that the situation lacks the immediacy of working directly from the motif. Trying to capturing Nature's more fleeting elements (clouds, light and shadow, and the different subtlties of color) keeps me on my toes; without that, the brush work and paint handling can stiffen up and get contrived. I try to augment this tendency by sometimes working on the painting upside or without any reference in front of me, seeing the painting as an abstract organization of colored shapes and textures. Here are some of the progress shots along with details that I sent the client along the way:

     I usually frame my own paintings with a recessed dark shadow strip and oak edging. I can control the color of the shadow strip by actually using the same dark oil paint that is in the image, so there is a cohesiveness to the whole thing. Once the final was approved, I let it dry for a few weeks, framed it up, made a crate and shipped it out. Here's the completed painting with frame:

Fall Events

FALL EVENTS 2015

Upcoming Exhibitions:

"Passages" Annual group show celebrating 10 years of Horton Hayes Fine Art Opening Reception Friday, November 6, 5-8pm Horton Hayes Fine Art 30 State Street Charleston, SC 29401 info@hortonhayes.com www.hortonhayes.com

"A Feast of Planes" Exhibition of recent paintings by: Michael Ananian Lin Chen John Dubrow David Gloman Marcus Michels Stephanie Pierce Eleanor Ray Francis Sills Kimberly Cole Trowbridge Jordan Wolfson Curated by Professor John Lee through November 6th  Andrews Gallery College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA link to Andrews Gallery College of William and Mary

PALMETTO MAGAZINE Thanks to Palmetto Magazine for the profile in their latest Fall/Winter issue! Link to "A Matter of Perspective", Palmetto Magazine

francissills@gmail.com | francissills.com

STAY CONNECTED:

Sketches and Drawings from Europe

     I had an amazing adventure this summer with my family traveling around Europe at the end of July and beginning of August.  We traveled for almost 4 weeks and our trip included: Florence (with overnight trips to Rome and Venice), Paris, and Marlow, England.  We rented apartments in each city, which gave us a great 'homebase' with a kitchen and more room for everyone. The weather was drastically different in each place, so we packed for the heat (in Italy, the hottest heat wave in 130 years) to cooler, almost autumn-like weather in England. My wife and I both brought painting gear, and we managed to get some work done. I drew in my sketch book, and had a half box French easel with an umbrella. For the paintings, I worked on Arches oil paper with a small panel of gatorboard to tape the paper to. I brought brushes and palette knives, and bought the paint and solvents when I first arrived in Florence. Some of them smeared in transport, so I had to repaint some areas when I got back to my studio. Here are some of the drawings and oil sketches I did while I was there:

near the Duomo, Florence 8.5" x 11"graphite

Florence courtyard, 8.5" x 11"graphite

Ponte alle Grazie, oil and graphite on paper, 9"x12"

Along the Arno, oil on paper 9" x 12"

Florence courtyard, oil and graphite on paper 9" x 12"

Jasper on the train to Venice, graphite 8.5" x 11"

Fountain in Florence, oil and graphite on paper 9" x 12"

Rome, graphite on paper 8.5" x 11"

Paris studio, oil and graphite on paper 9" x 12"

Paris studio II, oil and graphite on paper 9" x 12"

Paris studio III, oil and graphite on paper 9" x 12"

Parisian rooftops, graphite on paper 8.5" x 11"

Marlow hedge, oil on paper 9" x 12"

Oak in Marlow, graphite on paper 8.5" x 11"

Fort Moultrie jetty

14" x 21"

15" x 23"

14" x 21"

     I started these 3 paintings in May, and worked on them most of the month, rotating through each one depending on the tide and weather. I was little more limited with the 2 paintings of the retaining wall, as the spot I was painting from was only accessible when the tide was out. It's a great spot to paint, a small cove at the tip of Sullivan's Island, with the famed Fort Moultrie a few hundred yards in. I had remembered the retaining wall, with it's large rocks and old pier stumps, as something that I wanted to paint; their muted earth tones creating interesting textures and shadow shapes.
     It was a challenge to paint these, as the tidal shift puts an extra element of pressure to capture the transient effects of nature on the scene. The sun became brutal by midday, bleaching out the colors on my palette and the surface of the painting. After each session, I had to tweak things in the studio a bit, reducing its whiteness and punching up the tones.
     These will be in a group show, "Passages" at Horton Hayes gallery this fall in Charleston. Besides referencing the way your eye takes you through different passages of paint across the canvas, this spot is also, literally, a passage for the ships that come in and out of Charleston harbor everyday. 

Porch at night

     I've had this idea for a painting of our porch for a few years now. It's a space we use a lot, mostly in the Spring and the Fall, when it's neither too hot or too cold outside. I started doing drawings for this one in March, testing out a few different angles and sizes in my sketchbook:

sketchbook 9" x 12"

sketchbook 9" x 12"

     This last drawing is larger and I experimented with having a figure in it. Painter John Hull came to my studio at the start of this painting and he told me how he makes cut outs of figures on paper and moves them around within a drawing of the space he is painting. I tried this with my daughter posing on the bench, but I felt that the space would seem too crowded with a figure.

pencil, 21" x 18"

     In my interiors, I've been investigating these near and far spaces, and the porch offered a perfect stage for this indoor/outdoor space. I was interested also in how different light is portrayed in a single image; string lights vs. fading sunset, warm interior space verses cool outdoor space. The composition ordered itself symmetrically, but I was interested in how the triangles re-iterated themselves and how your eye bounced around the patterns. The symmetry deflected at times by the thrust of the table and glow of the drawing on the easel.
      From the drawings I blocked in the darks on a toned linen canvas. I took progression shots along the way, usually after each painting session: 

   The table in the foreground was initially empty, but one night while I was set up painting, my wife walked through from outside and placed the flowers in the vase on the table. I put them in quickly that night, perfectly serving as a counterpoint to my daughters drawing on the easel across from it.

     The painting slowly built up over a long period of time, the sweet spot of the session being when I raced to set things up so I could get those 15 minutes of purple/blue light as the sun finally sunk. Trees in the distance dissolving into fuzzy silhouettes against the sky.  I worked on this one vigorously over 3 or 4 months, usually about twice a week for 2-3 hours at a time. As the painting went on, I started working more and more without the motif, in my studio, tweaking things here and there, building up the surface and marks. Here's the finished version:

oil on linen, 22" x 24"