PART III: WOGRIN INTERVIEW


Method

My pallette is't all that different. I don't carry a lot of colors. I use two blues--cobalt and ultramarine; viridian; alizarin crimson, cadmium yellow pale, cadmium red, yellow ochre, and white and some black. Those colors enable me to match just about anything I want to match.
Color is a fascinating thing. Sometimes I get in a terrible rut; and I shouldn't, but you do. And I have gotten through periods with lots of peaks all the same color, but I try to get away from that. The mood of the painting, the mood of the area at the time is very important.


When I go outside, I find I am bothered by uncontrolled things--bugs, wind, dust. I can be there for a little bit and do my quick sketches, but I cannot sit there and be a plein-air painter. I just don't have the concentration there. So I take lots and lots of quick sketches, pencil work and photography--not of 'the' subject, but I use photos to say, "What did this rock look like? What did that look like?" So that gives me the detail I am after. Then I can interpret it and put into the painting what I want. Each man has to find his own road, and mine is very comfortable, especially when it's zero outside.


I do a lot of big paintings, eight foot, ten foot. I've had nice commissions and have paintings at Keystone Ski Area and Park Meadows Mall, at corporate headquarters. Anschutz has a large painting of mine. I have been very fortunate in doing that. And I can do big paintings in the studio very easily because the studio is good size

Field Studies
The quickly-done field study is a fine thing because all the study does is a question, "What happens if?" And so you go to see what happens if I do this or that.

And some of them end up to be blind alleys that go nowhere; you learn nothing except you won't do that again. You're putting a foundation under yourself; that's really what you're accomplishing. And I think I have done that.

Sketches
I always do a sketch, either a pencil sketch or a light color sketch of the subject, to get the layout for a painting. Once I am done with that, then I will refine that and put it to canvas.

sketch of barn

 

I have done a tremendous number of large paintings, and for those I go to a graph form and pencil in the sketch on the graph form and then go over that with a light color wash to bring it forward. After I get past that point, when I know I have the color and feeling of the painting that I want to achieve, then I'll go right ahead and work with a palette knife and then refine that with brushes.


The last little detail can be just one poke of the brush, loosely done but it conveys exactly what the bush, the personality of the tree, what the concept of it is. That is what you are really after, the perfection of the painting.

--end of interview--