2019 Workshops

Hello, Spring is FINALLY here! It is my favorite time of year, there are so many nice days ahead of us! I am getting ready for a workshop at my farm in June.  Painting outdoors is a great and worthwhile activity. There are so many reasons that artists love to work directly from nature, en plein air. Nothing beats setting up your easel in front of nature, mixing colors on your palette and working on a canvas. The birds sing to you while you mix and paint the vivid colors of the landscape. As you make brushstrokes on your canvas the country air refreshes you, and at some point you realize that you are truly living in the moment. I teach classes that will give you the skills that you need to confidently get outdoors and paint. I have worked with so many amazing students over the years, and have seen them create striking paintings. I have had people come to my chicken coop studio who have not painted since their school days, that left with tears of joy because they never thought that they could paint. It just took a class to show them that they could. I want you to succeed. I have put together a curriculum that shows you what you need to pay attention to, and allows you to forget about everything else and immerse yourself in your artwork. My workshops are perfect for the absolute beginner, who wants to try out plein air painting for the first time because the concepts are easy to grasp. The classes are also perfect for advanced painters, because the concepts can be infinitely built upon. If you are an beginner, and do not have supplies, I am offering a supplies package to use one of my easels and all the supplies you need for the weekend class for only $25. This is a great opportunity to give it a try! I want to check in, about some calendar dates, with those of you who are thinking about taking a class. If you have any interest in taking one of my workshops, at my farm in Rock Springs, could you please send me an email to kylemartinfineart@gmail.com with which weekend works for your schedule?  June 15 and 16 Or June 22 and 23 I will also be teaching classes at the Peninsula School of Art. These dates are set, and the June 3 and 4 class is FULL. June 3, 4  https://public.peninsulaschoolofart.org/public/WorkshopSelect.faces September 13, 14 https://public.peninsulaschoolofart.org/public/WorkshopSelect.faces Thank you for allowing me to share my paintings and my classes with you. I look forward to seeing you soon.

New Paintings

I got a new camera, and used it to shoot images of a bunch of new work that I created over the winter. Some of them were created in the studio, but most of them were painted directly from nature.

One challenge that I had this winter, was not being able to use my umbrella. The umbrella that I use has to stake into the ground, and because the ground was frozen, I couldn't use it. In the past couple of weeks, we have had too much wind to paint with an umbrella, so I still have not had a chance to use it. 

The best days are yet to come. Spring is always my favorite time to paint. If you are interested in any of the work posted, would like to see more images of a certain peice, please email me at kylemartinfineart@gmail.com The prices that are shown include framing and shipping. 

Thanks for checking in with me!

Kyle

P.S. The settings that I used to get a good exposure for these shots were ISO 100, APERTURE at f/8 and compensating for shutter. I had the paintings on an easel, and the camera on a tripod. It was a sunny day, and the paintings and the camera were both in the shade when I took the shots. 

The photographs were then cropped and color corrected in photoshop, but they needed very little color correcting with those camera settings. When I zoom in on the images, I can see individual brushwork. It's been a journey to learn how to get good photo's of paintings, but this seems to work for me. 

Winter Forrest 16x20" $500

Autumn Bales - 11x14" $350

Door County Farm - 24x30" $800

Early Winter Sunset 9x12" $200

The First Day of Spring 12x16" $400

Winter Hoarfrost 5x7" Sold

Winter Morning 6x9" $125

The Last Day of Winter 12x16" Sold

Doty Street 20x24" Sold

Winter Farm 9x12" $200

Springtime in the Studio - 14x18" Sold

Sunflower Still Life - Pastel - 24x18" $550

Sunflower Still Life - oil - 24x20" $700

Oranges - 24x18" $600

Devils Lake Studebaker 9x12" $200

Winter Bales 9x12" - $200

Winter Farm 9x12" - $200

Schneider Road Moonrise 9x12" - $200

The Neighbors Place 9x12" $200

Hoarfrost - 9x12" $200

Hoarfrost Effect 9x12" - $200

Winter in the Spring Green Hills 9x12" - $200

Dark Skies 9x12" - $200

Dusk 9x12" - $200

Snowpile 9x12" $200

Sunset over the Eagles Nest 9x12" - $200

February Sunset 11x14" - $300

Dusk in February 11x14" - $300

The Neighbor's Tractor 9x12" - $200

Tractor Shadows 9x12" - $200

Winter Woods 9x12" - $200

Winter Forrest 12x12" - Sold

April

Terrytown Barns

It's a new month and a new beginning. April is my favorite month of the year. The painting above was created last April. I can remember painting that morning. The grass was green, but the air was still cool. Today it snowed all morning, and it is very muddy outside. By the end of this month, spring will be beautiful and I will be outside enjoying the nice weather.

After The Flood

In my last post, I was getting ready for a flood. The water did get high, but my house or my studio did not flood. I am feeling fortunate, but I know that some other people's homes probably did flood, and I also know that flooding on the Baraboo river is just the way that it is now.

I have been filming my experiences painting over the past couple of weeks. I'm putting the video's up on youtube. Here is one of the first, I'm looking forward to some nice painting weather to film my video's because this day was cold and windy. The light was nice though.

Flood Warning for the Baraboo River in Rock Springs

I am getting ready for another flood. The Baraboo river borders my farm. In 2008, we got a huge flood, which at the time was dubbed a 100 year flood. That meant, it was a flood that was supposed to come only every 100 years. Well, the floods are becoming more frequent.

In 2008, the flood water was inside the farm house, on the main level of the house. Last August, the flood water touched the bottom of the floor, and soaked the whole thing. The floors and furnace had to be replaced. 

Last year, I moved all of my paintings into the hay mow in the barn. They were safe and dry. However, I had a trunk of older paintings, stored in a shed, that I did not remember to move. These were paintings from 2008-2013. They all got ruined. 

Tonight, I am going to start preparing for the high water. I'll go into my chicken coop studio, and move everything into the hay mow. Then I'll make sure that there is nothing important in the milk house or the basement. I don't think I'll have to move much on the main level of the farmhouse, because I don't predict that the water will reach that height, and also, there's no place to put most of it upstairs. 

Who knows, maybe this will make for some good painting?

The Baraboo River is predicted to crest at 25.7 feet, which is a major flood.

On 6/11/2008 the river crested at 28.73 feet. On 8/31/2018 it crested at 27.60 feet. This Saturday, the Baraboo river flood is predicted to be two feet lower than last August.

This is the neighbors farm, in September 2018, after the flood already started to recede.

Here is my neighbor, Tim Harms, coming to pick me up in a canoe.

Tim Harms and I grabbed some paintings from my studio, that I took to Chicago during the flood.

I painted the flood last august. If you look closely, in the background, you can see the intersection of HWY 154 and 136 under water. This is downtown Rock Springs, which is pretty much vacant these days as it has been hit with floods several times in the past 10 years.

IT still looks like this outside, there is still snow and ice everywhere. However, the sky's are dark and it's pouring rain. I guess we will see what happens!

Plein Air Painting at Memorial Union in Madison Wisconsin

Here is a video from 2011, of a day spent painting at the memorial union. A film crew from the University saw me painting, and got a few shots of me. I was in town to see a show of paintings from my friend Marla Brenner. She was showing at the UW hospital. Her website is https://marlabrenner.com/
I was working at the Boys and Girls club that day, so I can remember being late to work that day. I painted two paintings, and then saw the show with Marla, and then got yelled at for being late to work.

Here is a painting that I did at the Union around the time that the video was shot. These are the little boats that the Hoofers Sailing club uses to teach sailing. "Grapefruit Boats at the Union" 2011

Another painting from the same timeframe. "Late Summer Farm" 2011

"Terrytown Sunset" 2011

Peninsula School of Art Workshops!

Door County is one of my Favorite Locations to paint. Door County is the 'thumb' of Wisconsin, the Peninsula of land that is surrounded by Green Bay to the west and Lake Michigan to the East. The light in Door County is prismatic, and the weather is very dramatic. Those conditions make for some memorable painting experiences!

I have two adult workshops scheduled at the Peninsula School of Art in 2019. I have been teaching painting workshops in Door County, at the Peninsula School, since 2012. Both of my classes offered this year will be two days, which is the perfect amount of time to learn the concepts that I will teach.

I will supply some special tools for the class, that will help you to compose the landscape in it's simplest forms, and then build on top of the simple structure with striking outdoor color. Everything that I teach is easy concepts, one skill leads to the next. Learning to paint does not have to be a huge ordeal, I think that you will see that I have a lot of fun when I paint, and that I keep it simple.

No matter what stage of painter you are, it is always the best idea to constantly practice the fundamentals. In this class we will have some great lessons that will help you with your drawing skills. We will make thumbnail marker sketches, so that you can learn to compose your paintings according to the values that you perceive. And finally, you will learn how to mix your colors, according to specific values using my special 'value palette'.

The Painting Light Indoor and out will start out in the studio on the first day. We will make thumbnail sketches and create paintings of a lamp-lit still life. On the second day, we will take our paints outdoors, and create some paintings en plein air. We will work the same way as in the studio, taking time to create greyscale marker sketches, and matching our paint mixtures to specific values.

In the Barns Workshop, we will spend our time outdoors painting the historic Barns of Door County! In this class, we will focus on the fundamentals of good drawing skills, and composing with marker sketches. The best part of this class is that you will learn to paint the light illuminating the landscape.

I hope to see you this summer at the Peninsula School of Art!

A Greyscale Marker Values Sketch, and the still life painting that it informed. We will create marker sketches before we paint, which will help us to get the light into our paintings.

This is the Uncropped Painting for the promotional image above. This is a very graphic painting, it is nature simplified to it's basic elements. The trees are simply shapes of shadows and light, and the ground is only some swatches of colors. The more that I paint, the more that I am interested in keeping it simple and graphic. 

This is the other uncropped image, from the promotional materials above. In this piece, I underpainted the fields with a warm orange color, and then put the greens of the field on top, leaving much of the orange showing. This broken color technique gives the feeling of outdoor color.