Paint out with Jim Wodark

Jim started his demonstration by speaking about his creative process.  Most artists will share their ideas about processes but not about their sources of creativity.  The subject that Jim chose to paint was the outcome of one of his ideas; to paint at the same locations of the great California plein air painters.  This is something I will steal from Jim.  I think that studying the great plein air painters and recreating their paintings through my style and their location will be interesting.  Jim came to the location with a preconceived composition.  He works out interesting compositions by using his sketch book.  He came across this method in a reaction to some problems he was having with his eye sight.  As a result of his eye trouble, Jim tried out many different compositions on his sketch pad.  Jim would then find locations that fit the compositions he had worked out or would go to specific locations with the composition already worked out in it's initial stages.

Jim uses the thumb nail not just for composition purposes but also for value and the structure of the painting.  The above sketch was a idea that Jim ended up painting at Irvine Park.  He likes the sycamore trees there and worked up the composition on a canvas and then took it to the park and painted it.

Jim starts by using his memory of scenes and compositions that have interested him in the past.  He tries to remember what initially caught his attention in a landscape and then build upon it through the composition in his thumbnail sketch.  He is working out the structure and the values before he gets to the location to paint in some instances.  Above are two ideas for paintings.  The bluffs at Newport Back Bay and the mission at San Juan Capistrano.