The paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck

The Convalescent • Helene Schjerfbeck, 1888

Helene Schjerfbeck (pronounced sheriff-beck) was a Finnish painter who lived from 1862 to 1946, and whose work changed considerably over that time from realism to something much more simplified and abstracted. She was continually pushing her work and growing over the entire course of her artistic life.

The Convalescent is a good example of her earliest work. Painted in 1888, when she was 26 and living in St. Ives, England, it won the bronze medal at the 1889 Paris World Fair.

At Home • Helene Schjerfbeck, 1903

According to Wikipedia, at Helene_Schjerfbeck, Schjerfbeck is considered to have become a modern painter by 1905. In At Home, you can see how she has simplified her forms. She is painting a portrait, but she has simplified the figure to its biggest, most basic shapes.

Katkelma • Helene Schjerfbeck, 1904 – 5

In Katkelma, painted in 1904 – 1905, notice how, in addition to her simplification of the shapes of her composition, Schjerfbeck is experimenting with underpainting and the use of texture.

School Girl II (Girl in Black) • Helene Schjerfbeck, 1908

In School Girl II (Girl in Black), painted in 1908, the girl's figure has essentially become a flat shape in the composition. Schjerfbeck has reduced the figure to its essence, and is working with the composition in terms of two-dimensional shapes.

Under the Linden • Helene Schjerfbeck, 1911

In Under the Linden, Scherfback has continued to simplify the figure, retaining the beauty of the girl's gesture and a lovely sense of the light, but simplifying in a way that creates a rhythm and movement in the composition that is distinctively her own. Her work serves as a wonderful model and inspiration for learning to find the big, simple shapes in whatever it is we see, and to translate them into paintings.

You can read another short, insightful biography at Artists in 60 Seconds: Helene Schjerfbeck.

Seeing the Big Picture - I

Looking Down Yosemite Valley • Albert Bierstadt, 1865

Have you ever tried making thumbnail sketches of great paintings?

It is a great way to get at the essence of the painter's composition.

The painting above, Albert Bierstadt's Looking Down Yosemite Valley, from 1865, is a wonderful example of monumental 19th century landscape painting. It measures 64.02" x 96.26" (about 5 1/3 ' x 8'), and in every way conveys the grandeur of its subject.

In making a thumbnail sketch (no more than a few inches wide), you want to get down the big picture. There's no room for any of the glorious details of the original. You want to get down the essence of the painting quickly, in just a few minutes.

Thumbnail sketch of Bierstadt's Looking Down Yosemite Valley

© 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Here is my quick pen-and-ink thumbnail sketch of Bierstadt's painting. My objective was to get the essence of the painting down in a few minutes. Because light and shadow are important in this, I decided to include values. Although the proportions are a bit off, it was a good way for me to study the composition.

Ten-minute sketch of Bierstadt's Looking Down Yosemite Valley

© 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

Having seen the difference in proportions, I decided to make a second, ten-minute sketch. A little more detailed than the first (though the same size – these are about four inches wide), notice that I am still concentrating on the big shapes.

You might prefer drawing in pencil rather than pen (it feels more forgiving). Look closely at the painting you're working from (try Bierstadt!), keep it small (even two or three inches in size), and see what you can do in a few minutes.

Here's a link to a large gallery of Albert Bierstadt's paintings. Remember, keep it simple. Enjoy!

Mixing it up - II

Mixed media painting in process • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

In the previous mixed media post, I began with an already completed painting, which became the center of interest in the new mixed media painting.

This piece began with a blank canvas. I underpainted it in red, with acrylics, and used a combing tool to add striations and texture. I added layers of paint and papers (again, scrapbook papers), using masking tape to cover and then reveal different areas of the canvas. (You can see the blue painter's tape masking areas for new layers of paint yet to come.) I attached the papers with Golden's Soft Gel (Gloss), which allows the colors to glow richly. If you like a duller, more antiquish effect, you could use Golden's Soft Gel (Matte).

I had no particular plan – this was just about getting into the process and playing, seeing where it takes me. I could, if I want, use this process on heavy papers, creating art papers for other collages. I could also paint another painting over the top of this, allowing parts of this surface to appear, and disappear, wherever I wanted.

The point of it is to dive in and play with the materials. See where they take you!

Artrails, Sonoma County's open studio tour

The second and third weekends of October are open studios time for the Sonoma County artists who participate in Artrails (it is their 25th anniversary). Like Napa Valley Open Studios, it is juried – but, befitting a larger county, there are 149 artists this year.

You can download maps and look at artists' work online at www.sonomaarts.com/artrails.

Mixing it up

Mixed Media - graphite, acrylics, pen, collage • © 2010 Karen Lynn Ingalls

It's always good to try something different now and then. It invites you to play. You need to approach new things – whether new media, techniques, colors, or whatever – with a beginner's mind. And that keeps you from getting into a rut, creatively speaking, and expands your sense of possibilities. You learn new things that you may call upon in the artwork you do the rest of the time – or you may find yourself called to explore new directions. All in all, creative play is a good thing.

Mixing it up with multiple media is a good way to play creatively. The piece above began as a graphite still life drawing, with acrylics used as watercolors, on watercolor paper, that I did as part of a series. You can see other pieces in the series at my painting blog, at "A last look at Open Studios" and "Simple Pleasures: Show at Napa Senior Center."

In this piece, the composition just got away from me. It needed another few inches at the top of the paper to make it work. Last week, in class, we used it to create a mixed media collage. I cut off the top of the painting, and we all chose scrapbook papers (available in single sheets or books at crafts stores) that looked interesting with it. I covered an old canvas in yellow ochre acrylic paint, and, when it was dry, began a collage layering process, combining all the pieces we'd chosen, along with the cut-out painting. I skewed the vertical stripes, to make them a little more dynamic, and I added pink polka dots on the table surface to give it a little more spice.

This painting may not be done – I'm not sure. This was how far we got in class on Wednesday. It was fun, it shook us all up creatively and put us in a playful state of mind, and it used the interesting parts of a painting that otherwise wouldn't have worked.

New class session begins this week

View of some of Karen Lynn Ingalls's paintings

at the Calistoga Art Center, during Napa Valley Open Studios

Our second four–week fall Acrylic Painting class session begins this week, with classes on Wednesday, September 29th, from 1 to 4 p.m., and on Friday, October 1st, from 1 to 4 p.m.

If you're new to the class, you can find out more, and enroll, and download a materials list, at http://www.calistogaartcenter.org/adultmatureteenclasses.html. I look forward to seeing you!

If you'd like to see something of what you might have missed during Open Studios, if you weren't able to stop by, you can see these posts at my painting blog, Karen Lynn Ingalls: Line, Color, Paint, Joy:

Napa Valley Open Studios 2010 - first weekend

The magic of light

Napa Valley Open Studios 2010 - second weekend

The Birth of Impressionism - my favorites

The Family of Jean-le-Boîteux, peasants of Plougasnou • Jean-François Raffaëlli, 1876

San Francisco's Birth of Impressionism show not only set the context for the beginnings of French Impressionism, and, ultimately, the revolutions in painting that sprang from it, but it included many paintings not often seen.

Jean-François Raffaëlli and his work were new to me. A contemporary of the Impressionists, he had a landscape painting accepted into the Salon in 1870, when he was only twenty years old. He then turned towards realism, painting the people of his time with an unsparing honesty quite the opposite of idealized salon painting. This painting of a peasant family from the exhibit particularly struck me as contemporary. The composition, with the figure on the left cropped in half, the arrangement of the figures agains a flat wall, and the suspicious, sharp look of Jean-le-Boîteux, seemed very modern. Painted on a heroic scale, the figures themselves are not heroic, but instead worn and work-hardened.

The Tuileries • Claude Monet, 1875

Another favorite of mine from the show was Claude Monet's The Tuileries. I can't find any images online that capture the beauty and subtlety of its color - greens and pinks and yellows that sang.... He drew the sense of the trees with lovely loopy brushstrokes that enchanted me.

La gare Saint-Lazare • Claude Monet, 1877

La gare Saint-Lazare, painted in 1877, was another surprise. Although I'd seen it reproduced in books, I had no idea of the wonderful subtlety and brilliance of the colors. Monet could scumble like nobody's business. Trust me, this lovely little image of it does not do it justice.

The Magpie • Claude Monet, 1869

The Magpie was a painting of Monet's that I did not remember seeing in books before. A docent said that, at Museé d'Orsday, reproductions of it sell more than those of any of their other paintings. I was unexpectedly charmed, and could understand why that was so. Again, it had a subtlety and variety of color that reproduction cannot manage to convey. Monet used his artistic license, too, in reversing the shadows of the magpie and part of the gate (hey, the composition works better that way). A good reminder: never let reality get in the way of a better composition!

The Cradle • Berthe Morisot, 1872

Another painting that was a wonderful surprise was Berthe Morisot's intimately-sized The Cradle. Again, the subtlety and variety of scumbled colors, the beauty of the composition, the delicacy of the line and the sheer drapery above the sleeping child and more wowed me. It's easy to think of both this painting and The Magpie, because of their subject matter, in sentimental terms, but the strength of each makes them far, far better. Don't dismiss either.

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night

Landscape at Twilight • Vincent Van Gogh, 1890 • collection of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night is a current show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Although these paintings won't be among those coming to the de Young Museum in its second exhibition of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings from Musée d'Orsay, they may give you a foretaste of what is to come.

You can see more of Van Gogh's night paintings at www.artdaily.org.