Oregon Art Beat; #208; Steve Allely

I'm doing here is just kind of throwing in some tones of color getting rid of that white canvas so I can get more of the some of the values and some of the colors a little closer to what they'll actually be. It's nice to try to get most of this white out of here. Get your get your canvas covered up with the tones and washes that are actually going to make up the piece and the quicker you do that I think cleaner and the better you can pull it off. It's really the only light colored portions on this particular painting are going to be where the brilliant early morning sunlight is hitting this these these points that they're in the snow and the rest will actually be quite dark and valued. So the quicker I can get that the whole piece to start looking a bit more like the color study and then I can refine

it of course you know a bit more the better. Some people will make the mistake I think of trying to pick a favorite little area of the painting and rendering that real tight and having fun with it and trying to get it all painted and practically finished and then they've got unfinished areas all around it. I think it works better in context if you get it all covered and try to work on the thing that the piece is a whole that way I think you're going to have a true feeling because things change as you work on stuff you might something might look really nice but then you've got an unfinished area and by the time you go and paint that the color and the values aren't maybe going to balance as much as when it was unfinished. So you always have to kind of be thinking ahead and there's a lot of spontaneity but there's a lot of thinking that goes into it. I think it was I can't think of the name of the artist very well

known landscape artist whose name escapes my mind right now but he once said the art of painting is thinking and there's a lot to that because you're always thinking about how you're going to put it together. There's this constant thought process that's going on. You're just constantly making decisions and decisions and decisions. After a long day of painting I may be I'm not that tired physically but from the shoulders up I'm just mush because you're just then you know burning the brain cells all day trying to solve problems and get things figured out but I think that's really true there's a lot of thought that goes into it decisions about the composition and color and just a myriad of things and it does it just takes a lot of constant thought process to get it to get it right. Oh

not really I tend to get a little more burnt out if I'm doing real meticulous illustration work. I think a lot of times paintings tend to be fun when you first start them at this stage they're a lot of fun and then they get a little bit tedious as you're filling in all the detail but then as you start getting towards the end of it it starts getting fun because it starts coming together and everything's beginning to fall into place and it's getting more and more exciting to look at and then you're kind of on the home stretch and that's a real fun time too. He's an artist I know in Eugene who said that's that's how it is with his work they're fun to start but the middle section is the long dry stretch for him and then then they're fun when he's putting the into it. That's that's kind of true for me too that's like that I should have a bigger brush for this I guess primarily

I'm a painter an artist but then all the flint napping and the other work kind of reads into it too it's like artists I know who they do sculpture work and to me the flint napping is sort of my version of doing sculpture is a little bit of a diversion from the painting if I'm getting a little bit tired of it. I think essentially the first thing I tell people that the thing I'm known for or one unbeknown for I hope is that I'm an artist and painter but all the other stuff tags along pretty close behind that but it all kind of goes together I think it takes a lot of the same thought processes to do all of it and whether I'm chipping a stone point or making a bow you're still sort of creating in a meticulous kind of way and I actually enjoy all of it like my trouble is I enjoy too many different things I tend to

one artist put it he said you're trying to wear too many hats and to a degree I think he's right although I I really do where enjoy wearing some of those hats I think you just have to know what your limitations are you know I have a realistic understanding what your time constraints are what you can and can't do can't do it all but focus on a few things that you can do well and do I think is what I want to try to do but I really like painting I I was drawing pictures when I was a little kid of yeah I'd play with my toys and I'd draw pictures of them so it's always kind of been in me to do drawings and all the artwork has just been there from an early early age and uh and so that's that's kind of my main theme and life I guess is in terms of what what I do so that's what I do yeah okay I

don't know why you know we've got the three sisters right out here and they're dramatic but something about broken top it's kind of stretched out in long and it looks different from different angles it's less recognizable than the three sisters I almost enjoy painting it more than you know the other the other usual mountains they've been painted by so many people so many times it's kind of nice to try finding an angle they're really fun and exciting with it to me the whole thing was the way the light was hitting this so that's what excites me is really you're when you're doing a painting you're you are essentially trying to capture how light looks when it's hitting a subject and if you can do that well get your values right and catch that feeling of how that light is hitting things um then I think you hit on what you're trying to do it's one thing to render a tree real tight and paint every pine needle and pine cone and all the bark is right that you can get a you do a loose painting and have

the this strong light hitting the tree and making it look like that's how a tree looks when it's hit by bright sunlight early in the morning I think that's more of what you want to try to strive for because that's that's how we see things as a how light is hitting objects is how our eye perceives it yeah you're starting to get in on what looks really there I kind of

jumped over to a different spot on you last time without I'm actually going to be a bit of pinkish cloud tinge up in

there so that's why that's things sort of like whitish blank yeah I would say you know just go ahead and say this

is a special painting because okay tell me what is the special about painting you're holding your hands well what this is it's actually photo of the original piece that's my copy of it it's a submarine on the surface in World War 2 in a night scene and my father -in -law was a submarine in World War 2 and he described a night scene one time when they were on their way back to Brisbane in Australia from a patrol where the phosphorescence was glowing in the water and he was on watch that night and described this magical wonderful feeling and mood that that whole scene invoked it was like the war was miles away and they were in some tropical paradise and something clicked and I thought I've got to try to capture that and so what I did is I got a hold of the US Navy and I got some photos of what that submarine that particular submarine looked like and I got all the details right but then I had to kind of let the cat out of the bag and ask him okay was the deck gun for after the conning

tower and all this kind of stuff so he knew he was going to get this for Christmas present and so we did it and painted it and got all our details figured out and then I also got a hold of a constellation chart and then put the southern cross in the night sky because they were down near Australia and then we put the submarineers dolphins on the original painting and then gave it to him for Christmas present and it's real special to him it's real real special because they went on a number of different patrols and they tell about being death charged by the Japanese cruisers about six different times and they always wanted to get out and walk and it was pretty narrowing experience so it was really fun to do this piece and had a lot of meaning and the name of this is the name of the painting was Brisbane bound 1944 I believe it's what we call it it's either 44 or 45

I don't remember now but this was the USS sturgeon that he was aboard actually tilt it back just a little man right there that's good about him just to hold really still for a minute yeah don't breathe Steve I'll tilt it back yeah right there I think it's okay let

me get my shadow out of the way ask me about that yeah okay okay describe to me what we're looking at what is this picture and tell me the story of the three pieces that we have there okay well what this is it's a scene that I wanted to try to capture I dread accounts of the French Canadian voyagers that work for the Hudson Bay Company up and down the Columbia River and all through Canada when they would come off of the river after hauling goods and gear up and down the river they would clean themselves up and come into the fort and grand style wearing all their best clothing and all their finery and the feathers and their halves and their finger woven sashes and the whole nine yards and then start around the fort and kind of show everybody how fancy they were and stretch their stuff before they had to go out and do all this grunt work again in the field and one of the things they would do I'm sure is just while they're sitting around catching up on news and showing everybody how great they were was I don't know somehow this idea sort of came into my mind of what would it look like if you know an Indian

maiden who has just traded for say a brass kettle at the fort is walking through the gate and some of these French Canadian voyagers are sweeping their hats off they're not being lured but they're just just being themselves I guess and so that's kind of what this is and I had some people pose when I was up there at the fort some friends of mine and this is one friend of mine here he kind of dropped out on one knee and just took to the part very rattling he actually is French Canadians so he really looks right you can see where this is him and the color study here I tried to work out all the details here and get everybody arranged this is just a piece that was sort of fun to do I got inspired one night and started working on that got done about two o 'clock in the morning but this is what the actual painting will look like you can see it's sort of laid out in black or in sepia tones and I've got the the original fort buildings as they will once would have looked in the background so it's it's kind of a historical piece of something that probably happened

where you know these these sorts of things happen like this through history and it's it's fun to try to do all the research on it and get it right and try to try to capture a moment in time it's different than doing a landscape there's a lot more involved an awful lot of composition and and historic alacracy that has to be read into it so you have to know the subject well but it'll be a fun piece I have a friend that already wants his painting so it's already spoken for you so tell me about the other two small studies there's a native American up there at the top okay this is this is a friend of mine who was Native American and I had an idea to do I've seen Native people doing a lot of different things but I've never seen one of anybody actually pounding brass tacks into a gun stock and I thought this would really be a fun little piece to do for cover of say muzzle loader magazine or something so that's kind of the

color study of that I actually had the the rest of it you know the larger piece sort of laid out but it's not nearly as refined so so this again that's a color study for an illustration piece this is another friend of mine it's kind of a buckskinter type and and I caught him at a jovial kind of a happy comical moment doing something on camera and so I did that little study of him so you kind of pick that up yeah just in place yeah yeah this is a friend of mine who goes out and horseback and rides around in the mountains and hunts with muzzle loaders and uh he looks the part you know he's he's about a hundred years too late in time you know I should have been born a hundred years ago but he's quite a character could you put your hand in and pick that up

okay and set it down so just tell me about the Fort Vancouver piece and use the trip or van over okay what this is it's a scene at Old Fort Vancouver in van Cooper, Washington and it's the recreation of the Hudson Bay post that was up there major trading post for the whole area and what I wanted to try doing was just to capture what some of the French Canadian voyagers probably look like when they came to the fort after they would come out of the field they'd hang around and put on all their finery and show everybody how pretty they were and stretch their stuff and I thought well what would happen if they were all sitting around the gates of Fort Vancouver up there and uh and an Indian

plateau Indian made and walked out who had just traded for something in the company store and they would all sweep their hats off and admire without not really being looted or anything quite like that but just uh just being pretty boys on the street corner you know I suppose and so that's what I wanted to try to capture was kind of a lighter moment of uh of what life might have been like in the days of the fur trade so I had some friends of mine posed for me for that and some of them took to the parts very naturally and it's a fun piece to do yeah and then you kind of pointed to it okay okay go ahead can you tell me about your friend well this one friend of mine uh who was part of this whole crew that was up there um he is French Canadian uh that's where his ancestry lies so he's kind of one of the short robust little guys and uh when he was posing for this and we were

kind of getting this scene set up he just suddenly had a flash of inspiration and got down on one knee and you know put his hands out in this real dramatic style and and I said hold that pose right there and uh and he did and I snapped off some shots of him and so that's how I've posed him in the painting is uh down on one knee and uh he was quite the ham but I'm sure a lot of those guys were back on the days of the fur trade too so did you want him to actually take a picture that's what he had done yeah if you could reach forward and just kind of no symptoms tell me about him again because is he in the shot okay and actually I think before you actually kind of put your your finger in tap to the picture yeah okay somewhere which hand it was I was on his right hand okay okay okay well this this is a friend of mine that uh was part of the crew up there of the reenactors up at Fort Bend Cougar and he was posing uh with this scene at the Fortgate and suddenly he had a flash of

inspiration and he got down on one knee and uh it was just it looked great so uh I told him yeah just let's let's use that that's better than the idea I had so he got down on one knee and uh and uh struck a pose and it was just perfect so he'll be kind of the centerpiece uh that's why he's wearing the white shirt and everybody else has got darker shirts on him he'll stand out a little bit more it's one of the people that you read a bit more so uh it'll be a fun fun piece to get done just meant to real quick that you can see him in the other piece you can see where he is yeah um well you can see he's got he's got a white shirt on and he's kind of one of the main people in the front end of this group of people that's posing but I did a color study of him too one night just here in the studio late and had fun with that so uh he'll be one of the focal points of the piece I'm just going to look at the

table okay look around yeah for me in line with the video stuff yeah I spent a few days okay I found a poster yeah yeah and this is just be a role oh okay just that one piece uh down over there oh yeah kind of sitting out there that was uh painted in a lantern in brownie regardless you're talking about he was going to do a tom brown tom brown he was going to do a workshop with another askeapologist it was going to come out here and they're going to hold a three day oh yeah I don't know if that would have been Jim or not uh tom name sounds from the head I've got nothing yeah

they're they're kind of part of the same artist group I think but um that was a piece that was just done on site I mean in a one in the afternoon yeah applying air peeing like up there you can set up on these nice afternoons and early mornings and uh slap it all on so that was actually done on site you know I like how that went turned out it's I just to me it's a study piece I it'd be nice to go in there kind of refined let's get say it looked to me notice when I would okay look not as refined yeah it's much lesser yeah but I know some people that paint incredibly loose and you get back away from their paintings and I just think you're looking at photograph of the real strong light then you walk up and you see there's not that much detail it's just it's just that the values of the paint is just exactly right and they're again they're capturing how the light is working the detail almost isn't that important you see some people that do these really highly detailed

paintings and they almost look kind of frozen a little bit there needs to almost be blurred edges and you know I tend to kind of I think as time goes on I tend to get a little bit looser in a lot of respects and I think most people do go through that they tend to paint really tight and they kind of loosen up sometimes over your career yeah yeah I used to almost be worried if some little tiny thing was out of place now it's not important it's the overall composition and color and how lightest striking things get those colors and values in the composition right about it that bothers you and the laying it out right the first time it's really important is that something that you have to come by naturally or can be trained or is it a combination it can be a combination some people take to it really naturally I think everybody still

has to learn it though to some degree or other so people pick it up they almost have a instinct to feel for others really have to labor with it but um I think everybody has to lean towards learning that and figuring that out and it just comes by doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it doing it over and over and over and over like chipping arrowheads that people say how do you do that so fast and I say well do it for 33 years and you can sail right through it too you know a lot of artists will say that about it's common for people to ask artists how long to take you to do that pain or and people ask me about that about bow making how long to take you to make a bone so the standard stock answer is how long to take to do this painting to go only five years to do this paint and that's kind of the way it is maybe it took a week maybe it took a month but it took all the years of experience to get to that point where you can do it so

yeah this this scene was kind of uh I was trying to catch that