Sometimes, summer can be very green. Trees are green, grass is green, as in this painting of a parklike landscape. Could I keep intense greens, and still maintain a sense of depth in the landscape? The painting fought me, but I think I won in the end.

See the large version of the painting. It looks better there, more like the original than the very small picture in this blogpost.

Pictures of paintings really do not do justice to the paintings, althought we artists try to make the image look as much as the artwork as is possible. The camera 'sees' less than what the human eye does.

Here are some details from "Towards the Light", so you can see some of the strokes that make up the painting.

Water:



Foliage:



Stones:



As you see, the quality and direction of strokes varies as the surface vary, and as is needed. It wouldn't work well to do this kind of water with the same type of random marks as foliage. A boulder wouldn't look rounded by age and water if all strokes had been horizontal.

Initial strokes (no picture), are usually made with the side of the pastel stick. Think of it as a broad brush, and the tip of the  pastel stick as a small brush.

Varied strokes tend to give a livlier appearence to a painting, and helps build character and form.

This painting started 'life' as a Plein Air study, and this is the studio version of it. It is a place I like to visit, quite near to my home. A narrow sound (or strait) between two islands in the Stockholm archipelago, a lovely spot that is also the place of a famous battle.

The Battle of Stäket 1719

 (Adapted from Wikipedia.) Russia sent a large Baltic fleet with orders to pillage and harass the eastern Swedish seaboard. The Russian fleet proceeded burning cities and farmsteads.

The Russian admiral Apraxin had already investigated Baggensstäket, "the backdoor to Stockholm" (a narrow sound) as a way to reach the capital city without passing the fortress.

On August 10, Russian units were spotted in the archipelago. If they could pass through Baggenstäket it would be possible to reach the capital while completely out of reach of the cannon of Vaxholm.

On the morning of August 13, Russian galleys had been spotted at the entrance to the passage. The closest large Swedish army unit, the 800-man Södermanlands regemente, was alerted and force marched 19 kilometers to meet the enemy. A small force was sent ahead to protect the arrival of the rest of the regiment. After a rapid march through rocky and densly forested terrain under a hot summer sun, they  reached Baggenstäket before 7pm without encountering any fire. However the Russians by then had disembarked their forces, on both sides of the channel's eastern entrance. (Right behind us in the painting.) The Swedish forces arrived, and battle was engaged.

After two hours of confused fighting the battle was over, and the Russian solidiers retreated into their landing craft.

This “minor victory”, as it is called, may have been major in the respect that the capital was not taken by the Russians. Swedes speak Swedish, not Russian, thanks to the valiant and heavily outnumbered forces beating the Russians. It is quite possible the pile of stones in the painting were used to sink the ships that blocked the straits.

Today, the spot is nearly as rural and idyllic as in the 18^th century.The nursery garden belonging to the near manor has a cafe with a view, children swim here, adults picknick or hop into a little boat, heading for the Baltic Sea.

See a larger image of the painting in the Landscape section of the site.

Happily, I am back into serious painting, after the exhibition. It feels really good to get dusty and messy again!

It takes time to 'bounce back' after a show. For months, one has been extremely focused and hardworking: painting, framing, preparing info, hanging the paintings, get invitations out, call people, and then the opening. But it is not done by the opening, the show still hangs, and the paintings that are sold have to be delivered with all proper documentation, and when the show is over the paintings come down. There is a lot of work involved in a show.

And when this intense time is over, then one might experience not only joy and relief, but also an exhaustion, a deep tiredness. It can take quite a while to recover. This time, it happened to me, and I've been on a low level of functioning, resting and reading a lot, watching the kind of feelgood tv series I usually avoid.

Am painting, but as I'm painting for contests and challenges, I can't show them just yet. I will, of course, once the deadlines are past. And the paintings that I paint for pure joy, they will come up on the website asap.

Hello again,

I've been remiss regarding blogging, for a good while. So many things happened, so much to do, and nowhere to buy an extra 3 hours per day... :-)

I've been working hard with the Pastel Guild of Europe, as we're test-running a new website, and it is looking great, I'm happy to say.

Ah, the 'limbo' from the title of this blogpost... I must write to an audience, to know what to say. What are you interested in reading, dear reader? How a particular painting was conceived and painted? Ruminations about art history? The trials and tribulations of painting outdoors? What is good representational art? I'd like to present some of my collegues in pastel, would you like that? Anyone waiting for me to finish the breeze through the history of still-life, the one that has been waiting for over a year...? Do tell me what you'd like to read, that would be such a nice conversation and interaction, and it would help me tremendously to not feel like I'm writing for the enraptured audience of myself (that was a bit of irony :-).

What you'll never get from me is "I just walked the dog" (have no dog), nor "today I'm washing laundry", or "having chops for dinner" (really, how fascinating-- not!).

Good news is that I'm carving out time to paint. That is, after all, what my burning desire is.

A volcano on Iceland is throwing ash high up in the atmosphere, forming a cloud, or a 'lid' over the northern half of Europe, cancelling all air traffic. The cloud is 6 to 8 kilometers up, and first I thought it wasn't noticeable on ground level. Wrong -- it is noticeable, in the light.

Now, why is the camera at home every time you stumble on spectacular shots? I can't show what I saw, but I can describe it. Yesterday, there were some really interesting formations of clouds, with gaps between them. Some clouds rained, others did not, and the sun shone brightly on this towering landscape in the sky. I was looking at the clouds, as we drove over a hill, to see how atmospheric perspective affected the colours, when I noticed that the more distant clouds and rains were swept in a glorious golden glow -- three hours before sunset. Ooooo, this is unusual, I thought. Then I noticed a certain greyed character to the light. You know how clouds shine brilliantly white where the sunlight hits them. This time, they didn't, they shone greyish yellows and oranges, and surprisingly enough the light on one cloud was a greyish yellow-green, clearly greenish in cast, which is highly unusual here.

The sunlight filtered through a 2 km thick layer of very fine ash is affected. What differences do you experience, if you're in the affected zone of Europe?

Hi dear reader,

I've had a very nice show/exhibition of my work, which is the reason why blogging got pushed to the backburner for a while. Organizing a DIY show is quite a bit of work, starting with booking the venue, and then rushing to get all paintings framed, invitations sent out, hanging the paintings, etc etc. Then comes the grand opening, and you try to look your nicest in your prettiest and most uncomfortable shoes -- though I actually forgot to change into them.

Can you believe it, I forgot to take pictures when there were people in the place, but here are a few shots from just when I closed the doors on the whole exhibition.



Hanging a show so it looks good is also an art. As I had many different types of frames, I tried to hang paintings with similar frames in groups, but also thought of how the paintings went together. That way, you can hang them pretty close to each other. There was a big red tapestry on the wall -- you can see edges of it in the pictures -- and I put my reddest paintings there, so the tapestry would work to enhance the work and not detract from it or take over totally.

This exhibition has absorbed all my energy for a month and a half, and I did focus on it wholeheartedly, as that is where I meet very nice people and get the means to continue painting. Of course I'll import some more of the special papers and pastels I use, but I'm really looking forward to get a good camera, with RAW and HDR functions. The camera is very important in a representational artist's work. Some scenes can only be captured by the camera. For example you may get a great shot of a brook, balancing on one leg on a rock, holding onto a treebranch for dear life while you lean out to get that perfect angle. Not so wise to try to paint in that position...  Another time you may be out in a lovely landscape, and set up your Plein Air gear, get a painting started, and suddenly rainclouds march over the sky. Then you're really glad you got a shot of the scene before painting, so you can finish the work in the comfort of your studio. And when a painting is finished, it needs to be photographed and put on the website.

A big thank you to my customers and collectors for making it all possible!

And I very much look forward to painting a lot of Plein Air this coming season.

To my English speaking friends: This blogpost is in Swedish, as it is all about the upcoming opening in Stockholm, Sweden. Next blogpost will be in English, I promise!

Charlotte 'Charlie' Herczfeld

ställer ut

impressionistiska målningar!

Nya verk, både stora och små, och några som varit utställda förut.

 

Vernissage  

 

 Linnégatan 79, en halv trappa upp (ingen hiss)

 

Kom och titta, umgås, och kanske fastna för en äkta tavla, alla verk är till salu.

Lokalen ligger nära Historiska muséet.

 

 

Andra chansen!

Måndag 5 april, 2010

kl 13:00 till 17:00

 

Utställning, javisst, men annadag påsk tar vi det lite mer avslappnat med mera roligt att göra:

Prova på pastellmåleri för vuxna. Testa ett fantastiskt målerimaterial.

Barn är mycket välkomna, och kan göra mästerverk i en egen rithörna!

 

 

Utställningen hänger till och med 18 april, ring 08-747 10 32 för att boka tid för visning om du inte kan komma på vernissagen eller på andra chansen.

 

En förhandstitt på flera av målningarna finns på Charlottes hemsida, och det kommer att finnas mycket mer på utställningen, särskilt skisser och studier.

Hjärtligt välkomna!

Taking a walk in the park surrounding a manor, (Tyresö slott near Stockholm, Sweden) during one of the few sunny days in this unusually cold and snowy winter, I came upon this cottage, nestled in comfortably by snow and trees. While not a perfect scene, I saw some potentialities for a painting, and took some pictures.

Reference image:



Now, this is far from a perfect ref, so let's see what can be done with it. I really didn't like the straight dark band of distant land crossing the picture from left to right, the shape is quite boring, and separates the picture in two halves. I started to play with it in the small format of Notan, where I worked out how to place the darks and the lights, finding good relationships and interesting shapes. The first notan in top left is just an exploration of the actual image:



I simplify the Notan progressively, and in the middle row, rightmost picture, I'm starting to find what feels right. I still have to find a way to anchor the darker shapes to either the top or the bottom of the picture. I try bottom first, and that works fine. The notan marked with an arrow is the one I choose as a basis for the painting.

Next the 'cartoon drawing' was made on the artist's quality sandpaper, which was then blocked in with the underpainting. Follow the progress here:


The painting took over, and decided it wanted a stream instead of a road, in stage 2. Evaluating the image, I found the stream lead too quickly to the house in a boring straight line, so before continuing, I changed the shape of the banks, and worked a bit further on the background copse of winterbare trees. In stage 3, I have decided that the foreground trees need a softer approach than bare branches would be, so I add dried and browned clusters of leaves. Only in stage four do I scumble nearly white pastels over the snow, to give the coolness and whiteness of snow.

I've made an effort to keep the simple structure from the Notan, and here is how the finished painting in black and white looks side by side with the Notan:



Quite close, although I instituted a row of lower bushes to the mid left, to provide more depth in the painting.

Now, this is a fairly large painting, and details vanish when shrunk to such a small picture as seen on your computer screen. This detail shows how the blue of the sky is actually woven together with not only blues, but also greens and purples. This weaving is part of why my paintings can be called Impressionist:



When comparing with the largest picture of the painting, can you find from which part of the sky this closeup is taken?

You know that luminously muted glow of light on a nearly still lake, with whisps of mist dancing over the water. In Sweden, we say it is the elves that dance on the water. A very magical feeling.

This one is made with PanPastels (pastels that look and work like 'dry watercolour'). The effect in real life is more luminous and soft, giving the painting a glow and a sense of dreamy mystique. Photographs of paintings often don't do them full justice, and this one was a bit tricky to capture.

See my articles on the PanPastels, if you're curious to know more about them.

A large image of the painting is here.

And here is another of my PanPastel paintings, With a View.