More Lake Superior Rocks in Pen and Ink

Drawing these rocks at the cabin is addictive. Here are six more.
As I said in my last blog, the rocks on the beach at our cabin are lumpy and full of cracks and holes. But if you are looking for interesting shapes to draw this is the place to be.
When you tackle a subject like this it is easiest to do it when the light is intense and when the sun is not at its zenith. What you want are some clearly defined shadows. These were done between about 4:00 and 5:00 on a late July afternoon. Cloudy days when the light is flat will make these rocks more difficult to draw, too. Again, simplify.
The lake is shown in watercolor washes of blue. The bold one in the upper left corner is French Ultramarine blue from my old Windsor Newton traveling watercolor box. That box is too heavy to carry around compared to my smaller Schmincke boxes and I had not had it out to use for ages. Now that I have discovered it again I'm going to take the French Ultramarine pan out and stick it in the smaller box trading it for the Schmincke Ultramarine (UB) pan. I was surprised to see the difference in intensity between the colors. Other washes are cerulean and mixtures of UB and cerulean. The paper is Fabriano 90# cold press in another Roz Stendahl journal.

Lake Superior Rocks in Pen and Ink

The geology of the north shore of Lake Superior has a variety of rock formations. As my wide-eyed four-year-old grandson said, "These rocks on our beach were once red hot lava!"

I always thought it was more fun to draw the rocks were the lava had cooled more slowly into "squarish" shapes. My sketchbooks are full of these more linear formations. If you are just starting to draw rocks, these simple shapes are the ones to start on. Our beach cooled more quickly so the basalt did not have the time to form into large crystal shapes. Instead it is lumpy and irregular and full of holes and cracks. Not as graphic looking but very interesting. the trick is to simplify.

Here are a few pen and ink drawings of our lumpy beach. The lake is indicated by watercolor washes in a variety of blues.

Same View, Different Color

Lake Superior Sunset, Lavender, Pastel 4.25" x 4.25"

Here is another image in the "Twilight" series. The colors in my paintings often bear no resemblance to the local colors I see. However, this and last week's post really do represent the amazing light changes one can experience on Lake Superior's north shore. In both cases the colors are accurate. The light is really gorgeous there. It is a wonderful place to be and a real treat for a painter.

The fact that it is 66 degrees Fahrenheit in Grand Marais right now while we are sweltering in record humidity and temperatures in White Bear Lake makes the lure of the cabin a strong one.

Luminous Twilight Colors

Lake Superior Sunset, Peach Pastel, 4.25"x4.25"

This small painting was done looking west along the shore of Lake Superior to what is known as the Sawtooth Mountain Range.

I started this painting with a watercolor wash to lay in some complementary colors to the pastels used to render the final image. You can see the texture of of the cold pressed Arches watercolor paper. The texture worked out well to help me show both the small waves on the water and the rough rocks of the shoreline. I primarily used Rembrandt and Unison pastels and then put in some details with Carb-Othello pastel pencils.

Pastels work especially well to capture the luminous colors of the long twilight along the north shore of Lake Superior. We are located about forty miles from the Canadian border where in midsummer twilight lasts until after 10 PM on the summer solstice--noticeably longer than twilight in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Not quite the same as the "White Nights" of a Scandinavian summer, but almost.

As I sit here describing this painting, I realize the titles of this series should have been "twilight" not "sunset." Too late: the titles are posted on the gallery walls. If you want to see them in person go to Betsy Bowen's gallery in Grand Marais, Minnesota. The Summer Underground Show will be there until July 27.

Spruce Tree in Prismacolor

Light on Branches Covered With Lichen 10x7.5"

Here is another aging spruce tree near our cabin. Like so many trees on the north shore of Lake Superior, many of the inside branches are covered with lichen which gives them a sort of fairy-dusted look. The complexity of the tangled, needleless branches makes trees like this lots of fun to draw.

This drawing was done with a Prismacolor colored pencil, #931, Dark Purple, on Gutenberg paper. Again, it is from a Roz Stendahl journal.

I had prepared this page by smearing stamp pad ink along the edges and the gutter of the spread before I left home. When I got to this page in the journal it seemed natural to choose a purple pencil and work on the recto half of the spread. Here is an example of how doing something simple to a journal ahead of time gives you something to work with and just launches you off in a direction so you can get to drawing instead of dithering about what to do with a blank page.

Spruce Tree in Graphite

Thermometer Tree 4.5 x 5.25"

This is a drawing of a tree by our cabin's lakeside door. You can step out onto the deck and get a bit closer to the Big Lake (aka Lake Superior). It holds an old thermometer that seems permanently stuck on 65 degrees. This graphite drawing was done in a sketchbook made by Roz Stendahl of 180 gm Gutenberg paper. The paper is a dream to draw on, it provides just enough tug on the pencil and is a soft tan that is expecially nice if you are sketching in bright light.

New Show

The University of Minnesota Morris is the setting of the lastest Project Art for Nature (PAN) Show. I'll be exhibiting along with twelve other artists. PAN is a collaboration of artists and illustrators from Minnesota and Wisconsin who work independently and collaboratively to create artwork which promotes stewardship of threatened natural areas.


Dusk, 6 x16 1/2", pastel

The two locations I focus on for the PAN collaborative are the area near our cabin on the north shore of Lake Superior and the large open space between Bald Eagle Lake and Otter Lake, two of the many lakes in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. The open space is filled with meadows, woods and marshes. The imagery of the marshes is often found in my art.

Evening, 5 x 16 1/2", pastel

The two small pastels above will be in the Morris show along with several other pastels and a set of four monotypes. 20% of the proceeds from sales of the art work are donated to non-profit environmental conservation organizations.

The show opens tomorow, Thursday, Ocotber 22, 7-9 pm at the Humanities Fine Art Gallery, University of Minnesota Morris. 104 Humanities Building, 600 East 4th St., Morris, MN. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday: 9 am - 8 pm; Friday: 9 am - 6 pm; Sunday: pm - 4 pm.

Please come see the show if you are in the area.

Light on the Water

"Hungry Horse Evening," pastel, 6 1/2 " x 17 1/2."


A few weeks ago I was asked to give a talk on the subject of drawing and painting the landscape. The audience was a group of journalers who meet regularly at The Minnesota Center for Book Arts. The talk was to encourage the members who did not often (or ever) use the landscape as subject matter in their journals to give landscapes a try.

The subject of landscape painting is, appropriately, huge. But I needed to boil it down to something manageable in the time I had. After much thought about how it is that I do what I do when out plein air painting I came to the conclusion that my talk to could be summarized in one word: "Simplify."

For me it is a matter of getting down the basic masses and their values. Seems fairly simple to me now, but it wasn't always so. I think it has just taken years of looking and analyzing. And lots and lots of drawing. That said, I had to give them some other practical hints to take home.

I started to reflect on how it is that our preconceived notions sometimes get in the way of seeing. And I remembered the old problem most people have when they draw a face: the eyes are usually drawn way too high on the head resulting in a tiny forehead and a funny looking drawing that does not look like a person. We learn eventually to trust the classic diagram of a head based on actual measurements that shows the correct placement of the eyes to be smack dab in the middle of the face. The other parts of the face like the nose and mouth, distance between the eyes, placement of the ears, et cetera, really are where they are because we can measure them. Once we have measured the distance between features that usually calms down the part of our brain that is yelling at us to say "The eyes are too important. They must be higher on the face than half-way between the chin and the top of the head!"

So, I wondered, if there was an analogy that would help describe something about the landscape. Probably not since there are always some exceptions to the "rule." However there is a sort of rule-of-thumb useful for general lighting conditions from the famous artist/teacher John F. Carlson, author of Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting. First published in 1929 it is now available from Dover Publications, http://www.doverpublications.com/. In it he describes his Theory of Angles.

Carlson believes that "the prime cause of the big light-and-dark relations in a landscape is the angle which such masses present to the source of light (the sky)." In a nutshell Carlson points out that there are four basic planes in a landscape: the ground or flat-lying plane, the vertical plane of the trees, the slanting plane of the hills or mountains and the arch of the sky which is the source of light. "Our landscapes' prime elements--tree, ground, mountains, etc--receive light from the sky differing degrees of light depending on their plane...." p. 33. The result is that the sky is the lightest element, the ground the second lightest, the upright trees the darkest and the mountains/hills the lighter than the trees and darker than the ground plane. (With some exceptions, for example, when the ground is covered by snow it will be lighter than the sky except for the part of the sky near the sun.)

The audience seemed to understand that. And then one of the audience asked me a question about light on the water.

Hmmm. A good part of my life has been spent staring at water or thinking about how light hits the water. In particular the great expanse of Lake Superior. I have, for hours, stared at, drawn, painted and studied the way light changes the look of the water. When she asked me how The Theory of Angles applied to water I could only think of the number of times I had seen it darker than the sky and then of the times it was lighter than the sky--or both at the same time.

(Below is a gouache painting I did one summer while looking out over Lake Superior. Here the water is darker than the sky, but the same scene on a cloudless day might look any number of different ways. In some cases the water would be the same value as the sky to the point that it is impossible to see the horizon. The painting, Hungry Horse Evening, at the beginning of today's entry, illustrates the "rule" that the ground plane--in this case the water--is darker in value than the sky.)


Untitled, gouache, 4" x 6."

As I drove home I realized having a set rule for how light behaves on water was one of those times as Carlson says, "If the student will once recognize the general and everyday value-differences in anything, he can easily see for himself any incidental departure from this common condition. He will in time despise any 'rule' concerning painting." p. 42.

So, in the case of water, look. Then trust your eyes.

Testing a New Daniel Smith Watercolor

Note: Click on the images to view enlargements.

This is an interesting time of the year for a landscape artist: the leaves are not out yet so the structure of the trees is still plain to see. The snow is gone and the marsh grasses are chlorophyll-lacking shades of buff, ochre, khaki—well a zillion shades of brown. For those of you who know my work you know I am not one who is wedded to using local color for my paintings. However, the amazing varities of browns out there have caused me to try to duplicate some of the colors I see.

The solution came in a conversation with my friend Roz Stendahl (famous for, among other things, her galactic knowledge of pigments). The subject of (what else?) pigments came up. We often talk about favorite combinations of this or that pigment with a favorte: PB 60 aka Indanthrene Blue. While she tends toward a more muted result in her paintings I still need those essentail neutrals to show off the intense colors I love. We were discussing the interesting muted colors one sees outside now before the green-up, including the subtle color made by masses of red dogwood. As a suggestion for that pinky-red, Roz mentioned some of the new colors Daniel Smith has introduced, which she had just mentioned on her blog— in particular: Transparent Red Oxide. And soon we were on to the discussion of a great Schmincke color: Translucent Orange.

I made a trip to Wet Paint art supply store, bought my two new colors and the experiments began. The photos show some test spots.

In the first photo above, I have laid down some PB60 and Transparent Orange and mixed them on the paper. To the right (in the little rectangle) are the same pigments mixed on the palette. You can see one gets a much livelier result when the colors let themselves mix on the paper. The swoosh to the right of the rectangle demonstrates how Transparent Orange plays out going from wet to dry brush. I noted a shine indicative of gum arabic when the paint was applied thickly. I don't mind that but will have to keep it in mind so I don't get that effect when I don't want it.



This second photo above shows some experiments with PB 60 and Daniel Smith's transparent Red Oxide (as well as a reference stroke of Burnt Sienna gouache). Next there are two connected swooshes showing Transparent Red Oxide combined with Cobalt Blue! Fabulous grays result from both combinations. The first combo (on the far right) absolutely duplicated the gray basalt rocks found on the north shore of Lake Superior. The second is exactly right for those elusive grass colors.

Just for comparison I laid down a bit of Burnt Sienna gouache. It is a cooler, quieter brown next to the Red Oxide watercolor. (Of course we a dealing with a gouache to watercolor comparison so it is not apples to apples.) The Red Oxide has a kind of snap to it along with a very nice sedimentation. I love the color and will try replacing my Burnt Sienna with it in my watercolor palette. My experiments with the Red Oxide resulted in a bit less of the pinky Pipestone type brown that Roz found but it is a lovely color nonetheless. (She only had a dried paint spot to work from and I was using fresh tube color—that may be part of the difference.)

Next week I will show you some of the little landscape sketches I've done with the new colors. For now I am going outside! 70 degree weather in Minnesota is too good to miss after a long winter.