Colouring on Montes de Oca

"Calle Montes de Oca"

12 x 16 ins. oil on panel

I started this one in the street and finished up in the studio today. I've been sacrificing gospel true value relations for greater colour saturation, lately. I like the direction and wish I'd gone that way about 30 years ago! But I suppose I had to do the other thing first - right to the end of the line. I had a very strong, you could say "scientific" desire to understand the phenom of seeing, right from when I was a young child.  This is fun though. And it's tricky, because you can lose control of the light pretty fast, if you're not really, really careful. You've got to still understand, and be very aware of the interaction of the actual tonal values in the scene...and then do some serious tweaking.

Colour on calle Recreo

"Colour on calle Recreo"

12 x 16 ins. oil on panel

There are lots of colourful little scenes like this one in San Miguel de Allende. The trick is to find a safe spot to paint them from! The sidewalk here was about 2 feet wide with lots of pedestrian traffic, and cars parked on the narrow street beside it. I didn't want to block the busy sidewalk so I located on the street, at the edge of the sidewalk, after a car miraculously pulled out.  So, I painted happily for a couple of hours, feeling a little guilty that I was taking up about a fifth of a potential parking spot, struggled a bit with those exact tints; at first erring a little on the saturation as opposed to glare side, - all in all having a very enjoyable afternoon. No one seemed to find me "in their way". In fact most seemed very appreciative, indeed. Just when I'd gotten well used to the idea, this Mexican lady pulled up in her rather nice car, to a dead stop in front of me, put it in park, and started haranguing me at the top of her lungs. It normally takes a lot to get a Mexican upset. This one must have been having a muy malo dia. She repeated half a dozen times over, that the spot I had my easel on was for coches solamente and I had no business being there. I tried to be nice, but as the traffic backed up behind her we were facing an increasingly serious traffic jamb. I finally dismissed her with a "get moving" in Espanol and she just about went ballistic - I thought she was going to exit the car and come after me swinging. The long lineup was honking by this time, so I guess she finally thought a retreat was in order and with some final cussing hanging in the air, wisely fled the scene. I started cleaning up just about then -the spell having been more or less broken.
As I say, there are lots of great pictures to be made, but it's hard to find a good vantage point from which to paint on the street. Dan Rueffert used to park his half ton truck on the street, and paint from the box on the back...not a bad idea. If I was not moving to the coast soon, I would give that solution the consideration it deserves. Of course, that way you'd be taking up a FULL parking spot - ah...the guilt!

HIGH PRESSURE EN CALLE ALDAMA

"Calle Aldama"

14 x 18 ins.

oil on panel

I don't like painting under pressure. I don't like deadlines, don't like competitions – don't even like commissions much.  All the same, there was lots of pressure on calle Aldama Monday afternoon! It was a combined plein air session/photo shoot and the subject was not our choice for a quick study. Galleries West magazine is doing a piece on Canadian artists in San Miguel de Allende, and their excellent photographer, Bob Barros, liked the above scene; as he said, "it tells the whole story, perfectly". He was right, of course, but we were hoping for something a little less challenging... the pressure and all, you understand. On top of it all, we were kindly asked to do larger "canvases" as they would show better in the pics. – maybe 16 x 20 in. We knew we were in trouble as soon as we heard the plan! 

  So, we arrived an hour early and desperately tried to get as accurate a sketch as we could, down, before the shoot would begin at 3 pm. This was "trial by fire" in the worst sense, but to our surprise, once we got into it, it was at least half fun and we were pretty much lost in our work when the crew arrived. I don't have any pics yet of the paintings in process, unfortunately. What you see above is not the state it was in when the shoot finally ended after dark! There was no way I could handle all that information in 3 hours. As the afternoon wore on, the light kept getting better and better and I couldn't resist chasing that around...natch! I think Donna ( her painting below ) did much better at simplifying her composition, right from the start, and holding to that. Anyway, we were both quite exhausted when we finally stumbled to the car and stowed our gear, well after dark.

 Donna Dickson

 untitled (so far)

12 x 16 ins.

oil on panel