I never had a problem with Thomas Kinkade’s paintings, although much of the “art world” did. If you love his work, fine with me. Art has always been judged in the eyes of the beholder. Technically, he was a good traditional painter and loved by a wide swath of Americans.

I never knew him personally, but a number of my friends have and all said he was quite a nice guy. I did have problems with some of his companies business practices and sales techniques (aka pressure), but as John Lennon famously said “whatever gets you through the night” (Yoko Ono quoted that phrase when asked if Lennon would be bothered by the “hucksters” profiting from his death).

I made the above graphic of two pieces of “art”. On the left is a piece attributed to Marcel Duchamp, a urinal, some consider a landmark in 20th century art. On the right is a Thomas Kinkade painting. You decide which one, both, or neither are “art”.

BTW, here is another weblog entry from a fellow artist, Kevin Courter about Thomas…

DAY 1
Today was the first day of class with Marc Hanson at Scottsdale Artists’ School. There are only 6 in the class, from all over including Alaska and Canada.

In the morning, Marc went through a slide show of his paintings, both plein air and studio works to give us an idea of what it takes to do small plein air pieces then a large studio work from the plein air. Marc then did a black and white value sketch derived from a plain air piece he had just done in Sedona, AZ a few days before. I have never done a value sketch like this, but can see the advantages if you need to work out certain ideas and values without color getting in the way.

In the afternoon, he did a large color painting of the same scene, Courthouse Rock in Sedona, Arizona.

DAY 2
The next day we went to a nearby city park, Papago Park, to gather some small field studies. One late student arrival showed, which made the total class size seven. The object of this one week workshop is to gather field studies the first couple days, then take those into the studio and produce large paintings from the field studies.

Papago Park has some nice desert scenes with large jutting rocks, cacti, palm trees, ponds, and other formations. It was a nice place to work, and also during this time of year it is warm, but not terribly hot! I decided to first sketch a group of rocks in a black and white study (using only Ivory Black and White paint) as Marc suggested.

Below is the scene. The rocks are in the distance, although they were actually closer than what appears in this photo…

The park was nice with picnic tables set up with a roof. Just right for getting out of the Phoenix sun…

Below is a quick snapshot of the value study on my easel…

I then did the exact same scene in color. Good practice! I actually like the black and white just as good or better!!

DAY 3
We met again at Papago Park, this time by some ponds just a short distance from where we were the day before. I decided to do a piece concentrating on the water. Below is a picture near where I painted, but I forgot to get a shot of the exact scene…

Some pictures of the group painting around the pond…

DAY 4 & 5
We met back at Scottsdale Art School for two days of studio painting from what we gathered in the field. I had painted 7 small pieces, 6×8 & 8×10, including both black and white value studies, and color studies.

Below are a few shots of the classroom the two days…

I finished two ‘large’ pieces the two studio days, both 16×20 shown below. These are snapshots from my iPhone, so maybe not the best quality. I had to leave the large wet paintings with my nephew in Phoenix as I had no way to carry them home on the airplane.

After spending the weekend with my nephew Jeff, I flew home late Sunday night.

All in all, it was a great week. It was my first time at the school, as I have always wanted to attend a workshop there. Marc is also such a good and helpful instructor. Hopefully our paths will cross again soon!

First off, that is not my painting.

I have always admired Marc Hanson’s work from afar. I have never met him, nor seen any of his paintings in real life and have only seen his work on the Internet. What draws me to his art is his magical ability to make a seemingly mundane, common, ordinary place into … well … a great piece of art… and with subtle elegance. You can see it above with a simple scene which just draws me (maybe you) in, and then looking around, such simple elegance.

It is often said, don’t buy a piece of art unless it “speaks to you”. Well, as an artist, Marc’s work speaks to me.

So, I am in Scottsdale, Arizona on a Sunday tonight, after flying in to Pheonix to attend an all week workshop by Marc. For you baseball fans, the SF Giants spring training just ended today at Scottsdale Stadium, just two blocks away from my hotel. Glad I’m not paying yesterday’s hotel rates!!

I’ll try to post some developments along the way….stay tuned…

Just added a mobile feature for this weblog so it can easily be viewed on most smartphones. If you use wordpress, I would highly recommend using the WPTouch plugin. It’s free and actually only took a few minutes to load and install. Not sure why I didn’t do it before!

You can find info about WPTouch here– http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/

I bring a small acrylic paint set on international trips as they are so much easier to travel with. The downside is I don’t paint in acrylics much anymore, so it takes a bit of practice to get back into the ‘acrylics mode’ of working.

We flew overnight to Santiago, Chile from Miami, spent several days there and then flew down to Puerto Montt, about 600 miles south of Santiago. This area has the climate of Seattle, and everything was much greener. It was a clear day, which they say is not that common! With snowcapped volcano cones dotting the horizon, it looked very much like central Oregon and Washington.

I did my first painting of the trip at Puerto Varas. The painting is of Mt. Osorno, which looks very much like Mt. Fuji.

The next day, we bussed over a pass in the Andes to San Carlos de Bariloche. The pass was only about 4200 feet high. Due to recent and continuing volcanic activity, the entire area was covered in ash, and piled along the road. It almost looked like gray snow, and in some places a moonscape. The sky was overcast, but they said it was mainly the volcanic ash still spewing out of a local volcano.

Once over the pass, we entered Argentina. The scenery changed. It was almost like being in Glacier National Park, and if the Spanish signage wasn’t everywhere, it would have been just like being at Lake McDonald, or St Mary’s lake in Montana. It also reminded me of the Merced River Canyon as you come into Yosemite Valley. On to San Carlos de Bariloche, which is reminiscent of a Swiss village. It is at the edge of a beautiful lake and equals or rivals Lake Tahoe in beauty. The town itself is very touristy with lots of shops and good restaurants.

That night, we ate at a recommended ‘steak house’ as we wanted to try Argentinian beef…it was wonderful…I ordered the Filet Mignon and they brought me three full size delicious tender filets…for only about $18.00! About the tastiest beef I have ever eaten.

The next day in the morning we had a short walking tour of the town, around the town square a couple blocks away from the hotel. That afternoon, I did a couple paintings. The first painting was of the town square clock tower, which turned out fairly well. I didn’t paint the actual clock faces on the tower as I would have been difficult to paint under the conditions.

Later, I wanted to do a painting of the lake with the Andes in the background, but the ash cloud engulfed everything, so I painted a small study of the clouds themselves.

After flying to Buenos Aires and doing some touring around the city, we spent a day at a ranch on the Argentine Pampas. I did a one hour study of a hay barn on the ranch. The Pampas reminded me of California’s central valley, except there are no hills or mountains in the distance. I didn’t take a snapshot of the barn, but below is a picture of some Argentine Gauchos, along with the painting.

I had one free morning in Buenos Aires to paint. I don’t usually do buildings and architecture, but wanted to capture Caminito Street, the birthplace of the Tango. The old buildings there are painted very colorfully…

We then flew from Buenos Aires to Iguassu Falls, one of the natural wonders of the world. The border of Argentina and Brazil runs right down the middle of the falls so we proceeded to visit the Argentinian side of the falls. Even though we could only see this side of the falls in a ‘side channel’ from the top, it was absolutely spectacular! A walkway/bridge ran across the top of the many falls (there are about 250+ individual falls).

We then crossed the border to our hotel in Brazil, Mabu Resort. The next day we visited the Brazil side of Iguassu Falls. This was the main view, and you could see the main falls area called the “Devil’s Throat”. The walkway/bridge actually went down right at the bottom of the main falls.

A walking tour took up the morning, and the others returned to the hotel, but I stayed the entire day and painted in the afternoon. For decades, I have wished to visit and paint the falls, and today it came true. I did two paintings shown at the bottom of this series of photos (BTW, you can click on each photo for a larger version). Also are a few pictures of the falls, and my paint kit spread out over the benches…

We then spent a few days in Rio de Janeiro. I hadn’t really planned on painting there, but the Sheraton where we stayed had such a view, it was hard to resist! The hotel is situated by a rocky cliff, and from our room on the 16th floor we could see past a rocky point with Ipanema beach and the city in the background. It was cloudy and a little rainy, but decided to do a painting from the pool area. As soon as I started, it began pouring, so retreated to our room to finish the painting. Our room had basically the same view, but a little different angle, so was easy to finish.

After a long trip home, we arrived tired and ready for a rest!!

I expect to do some larger paintings in oil of some of these travels, particularly Iguassu Falls. I don’t know if there is a market for them, but I certainly won’t mind a large painting of the ‘Devils Throat” hanging in my living room!

On this cruise, I managed to do two paintings in the early morning in two ports before the activities of the day. The first was early morning in Aruba. A rain squall had just cleared and the early sun splashed a pink glow throughout the sky. The scene is the harbor just off the main boulevard. You can’t see it, but the Island Princess ship is just to the right. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a snapshot of the entire scene, but included one of the buildings to the left.

The next was in Limon, Costa Rica. I painted an old yellow boat anchored in the harbor all alone. Below is a snapshot of the scene, and the painting.

After I viewed this painting online, I definitely have to take the black doorknob off the front white cabin door. Looks sort of like a Disney character, doesn’t it?

Each painting took about an hour. Whenever I go on a trip, these are the best souvenirs I bring back…remembrances of sitting for an hour or so and soaking up the local atmosphere while putting it to canvas!!

I previously referenced Warhol’s Campbell Soup Cans exhibit of 1962 when he painted 32 ‘paintings’ of all the Campbell Soup Can flavors mainly because my series are all the same size and orientation.

I won’t reveal the subject matter yet, as people are still guessing. Legend has it that some of the rock formations I am painting helped inspire Walt Disney when they designed the “Big Thunder Mountain Railroad” roller coaster. A little research seems to dispel this myth, but you never know. Below is a quick snapshot (using my iPhone) of another partially completed work which is somewhere in the middle of the series…

Below is a view of Pinecrest Lake. It is sometimes referred to as ‘Little Tahoe’…

Yours Truly painting…

Below are a couple quick snapshots on site of the two paintings I finished. Each one took about an hour…

Thanks Dennis for the photos!