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| Don Demers New Plein Air Video |
A friend of mine recommended Don Demers as a landscape teacher, so when a one-day workshop came up in our area this Fall, I jumped at the chance to sign up. The location was incredible--Gouveia Winery in Wallingford, CT--and the day was action packed. Don did a small field study of a CT farmhouse surrounded by Fall color, then we painted, then later he showed us how he would take the field study and do a larger studio painting. My friend had taken a 5-day class with Don in Chatham, MA on the Cape, and I felt sorry for Don, trying very hard to impart so many important ideas in such a limited one-day format.
Que the video! At the end of the studio session, he brought out a stack of his new videos, "Painting the Coast of Maine". I was lucky to get a copy, and have no regrets about the purchase. It should be posted on his website for sale shortly: http://donalddemers.com/index.html.
The video is a standard DVD, 48 minutes long. The production quality is excellent--great camera work, great sound, appropriate music--and the subject, a Maine coastal scene held my attention. Don helps guide your decision making process when you are faced with beautiful scenery and fleeting light effects. He suggests that you not be in a hurry to select the subject, but try to figure out why you want to paint it and how it will work as a painting. If you do happen to see a light effect that you want to capture, try doing it from memory, after you have gotten the placement of the basic shapes. He urges you to "be a poet, not a newspaper editor" (trying to capture every accurate detail.) He shows you his "tools"--French easel, homemade wet panel box, palette, brushes, mahl stick (old collapsable curtain rod). He talks about weather considerations--whether you will plan to do a painting in one session, or will plan to work on it then take it back to the studio to finish, or just use it as a study of the scene.
He discusses how he "builds" a palette, based on the colors he sees in the scene rather than starting out with a fully loaded palette. He talks about getting to know color theory and developing a heightened sense of the subject by immersing yourself in it over time (like his own wave studies.) View your painting as a process, not an end product. He does not discuss his standard palette in detail, but from the one-day class I took, here is a starter list:
Ultramarine Blue
Rembrandt Green Earth
Cobalt Blue
Alizarin
Burnt Siena
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Viridian
Yellow ochre
Burnt Umber
Cadmium Red
Titanium White
Griffin Alkyd White
Liquin medium
Gamsol OMS
And a couple of extra "white alternatives": Williamsburg Unbleached Titanium, and Old Holland Zinc Buff
Don jumps in with a small brush and starts drawing off the placement of the major shapes with burnt umber on a white canvas. In our CT class, he insisted we do a 3-value thumbnail sketch, which we should keep right next to our easel for reference to our original idea. He does not do that in the video, instead he does a modified "imprimatura" lay in of the basic shapes using thin transparent darks, adding thicker opaque highlights later. Two of his recommended transparent darks are Rembrandt Green Earth and with Ultramarine Blue with a touch of Liquin medium. Very simply remember, shadows=atmosphere, lights=form. He recommends mixing Griffin White Alkyd with Titanium White to set up the lights faster. There is good footage of his brushwork in the video, ie, gently stroking the dark up into the light sky with practically no weight on a sable round brush. He suggests "scumbling" to correct color temperatures of shapes, ie, cooling rocks, but notes that would have to be done after the paint has dried, back in the studio or on another day of outdoor painting, same location.
Sometimes it is difficult to have enough ground space to step back from your work to observe it at a distance painting on location, but consider it a really valuable tool of painting--you are constantly interweaving masses and studying the landscape as you do. At the end of the video, he includes some quick critiques of paintings of students who have accompanied him on the outing. All of them got excellent starts, and he makes some very valid points, and gives additional helpful tips.
All in all, it was a short concise video that made me want to go out and paint, armed with new insight. Buy it! Better yet, sign up for a class with Don.
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