painting makeover!

I liked it on my easel under bright light. I liked the way the photograph looked on my website. But when it was hanging out on my living room wall waiting to ship out, it looked so dull and drab that I decided to repaint it. It can be fun to paint over an existing painting because of unexpected things happening, but it’s also challenging because the entire process is one big AWKWARD stage until it’s done. Thought I’d share the photos I took during the rework of Harmony, a 36x36 oil painting:

painting in progress January 2024

Remember when smoke from the Canadian wildfires came all the way down to the Florida panhandle in July? I was at the beach then and it made for some colorful skies. I have Photoshopped some clouds into a photo I took at the time and will amp up the color shifts for this painting. What I loved about the scene is the intense light reflection in the water. The painting in progress is 30”x40” in oils. The photo of my palette shows how I arranged my gray mixes in the same order as they would be painted on the canvas, just to keep me from getting lost.

Stages of a Painting

Here is my latest marsh painting while it was in progress:

Live Oaks in progress...almost finished

My 36x80 (!!) commissioned oil painting is close to finished. Here are some of the stages from the past few weeks:

Drawing Live Oaks


Afternoon Oaks, a 36x48 oil painting at Hillary Whitaker Gallery

Today I'm in the studio getting started on a VERY large, commissioned painting for a health care facility. It's on a custom-stretched 36x80 canvas that I primed yesterday. So how do I start such a big piece?

Well, since the subject is a row of gnarly live oak trees in all their mossy glory, I've decided to forego my usual toning-the-canvas-and-wiping technique to create the placement. I'm starting by drawing the trees onto the white canvas, and boy am I enjoying it! It's just like all the figure drawing I did when I was in college—these trees even remind me of people with their reaching arms. And just as with drawing the figure, getting the gesture of the tree is what I want to capture. They make graceful shapes but also have great strength in their lines and upward thrust, so making strong, powerful, confident lines is going to best capture them in my painting.

This painting is based on a new, existing painting at Hillary Whitaker Gallery in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL—a 36x48 called Afternoon Oaks. Keep a lookout for updates on this project!


built a new studio!

On January 1st, I moved in to my brand new studio. My husband designed an addition off our kitchen onto what was a section of the deck. It features high ceilings, with more upper windows yet to come, and a below-the-floor storage room with a trap door and stairway down.

Here are some photos of various areas, and for any artists reading this, I’ve shared a few tips about my setup. I’ll also mention any products I’d like to recommend if you’re interested in finding them (no, I’m not being paid).

So, welcome to my studio….

art studio of Rani Garner, Marion County Georgia USA

my Tueller wall easel, great for large works. The two masts slide on the horizontal rails to adjust.

I get paint all over walls, floors and windows so have tried to protect them

This is a rolling taboret with lots of drawers. I don’t like the idea of having to hang up paint tubes in an exact location on the wall, even though it looks pretty in other artists’ studios…I just want to find it fast, squeeze out what I need and throw it back in the drawer! The brands of oil paint I use are mostly Gamblin, some Windsor Newton, and Permailba white for mixing. I love Rosemary Brushes in short brights of all sizes. I use recycled yogurt cups for small amounts of medium. I bought the cans of paint by mistake—I don’t recommend! Messy and a lot of it dried up.

This is my other work easel (I keep lots of paintings going simultaneously). The room divider acts as a paint spatter shield. I would rather have a larger work surface for palette and brushes, but the beauty of this setup is that the palette on the taboret is still on the correct side for a right-handed person. I once saw an artist who used a lazy susan revolving palette, and that’s what I need here!

A cozy corner for sunrise coffee, book breaks, and kitty visits. There is still plastic on the outside of the windows because of continuing exterior painting.

This might not interest most people, but here is where I store framing hardware, tools and solvents. The middle section has doors that close. My speakers for streaming Spotify are on the top.

Painting in Progress

stages of an oil landscape painting: Quiet Garden, 30x40. This is a garden full of blooming azaleas at Christchurch on Saint Simons Island, Georgia.

Tips for Painters: controlling color


In a New Light, 30x30 oil painting by Rani Garner

In a New Light, 30x30 oil painting by Rani Garner

I've been meaning to show you this painting. “In a New Light” is one of my new 30x30 oil paintings for a solo show at Anderson Gallery in October 2021. I thoroughly enjoyed painting it, and it went very well, and the primary reason for this is that I retained control of the color. Consequently, it has good color harmony and didn't take me on the usual roller coaster ride when mixing strong colors for a landscape.

Let me show you how I did this.

Firstly, there is no one way to paint something, and while sometimes it's liberating to just dive into a painting, working instinctively, it's usually a good idea to start by considering how I am going to paint something. Am I going to mix the colors I see and paint directly, or first establish the values and paint in layers? Or I could do more drawing with the paint and build up the lines and brushstrokes slowly, etc. For this painting, my reference photo was nothing special. I liked the early morning light and gold-rimmed clouds, but the color was blah—colorless darks--and there was no focal point. Seeing that the sun was to the left, with the landscape growing increasingly cooler to the right side, I decided I would mix four main colors. I mixed a warm green (based on Sap Green), a cool green (based on Phthalo Green), a warm red (based on Burnt Sienna) and a cool red (based on Quinacridone Magenta). I did do an underpainting first using Burnt Sienna to establish the placement of the landscape's elements.

burnt sienna underpainting before painting the marsh grass

burnt sienna underpainting before painting the marsh grass

Then I mixed each of these colors into its neighbors, as you can see here:

The warm reds were for the left side, closer to the rising sun, and the warm greens were towards the right. The cool red was for the left sky, moving towards the cool green on the right side of the sky.

Why? Because after years of painting water, I have discovered that when you mix magenta with Phthalo Green, a kind of blue is created, because they are both cool colors. HUH? Red + green = BLUE??? Give it a try and you will see for yourself. This is a very useful mix for painting seascapes, and I was really happy that it worked for the sky in this painting.

I paint every day, and I have to confess that most of the time I mix colors as needed. By the middle of the day, my palette is pretty filled up with not much organization. There are a dozen brushes in use with lots of wiping and cleaning to use one for the next color. By controlling and limiting the palette for a painting, I not only achieve better color harmony; I also waste less paint, brush cleaner, palette space and then have fewer brushes to clean at the end of the day's work. You can try this for yourself and discover interesting color mixtures you might not have thought of otherwise.

Tips for Being a More Productive Artist

When artists get to the point where they have steady sales, then a new set of challenges arises. How will you keep up with sales? What if you run out of ideas for paintings?

Here are some thoughts I have about being a productive artist.

It starts with finding a subject that inspires you to paint. The most exciting part of the process, for me, is going exploring with my camera. I think of it as a Light Safari, since the light aspect is most important to my work. I have to be in the right place at the right time, which takes some planning. It is so exciting when I find great light and match it with a good subject, and I can't wait to turn all that gold into paintings. Here is how that process works:

Once back home again, I am pretty much painting every day. I am most productive when I have many pieces in various stages, so there is always something I want to work on. This also allows for dry time between stages. Some days, I might not want to tackle a whole bunch of details, and I might feel more like placing the composition. I also take frequent breaks, not to rest my arm so much as to rest my brain! I find it is mentally exhausting to focus my concentration on painting, as it is really hundreds of small decisions:, like “what is that color? No, I need to adjust it: is it more blue or violet? Should I tone it down with gray?” Etc.

In addition to painting every day, I am also constantly working on developing my ideas and photographs into future paintings. I use Photoshop Elements on my desktop computer and have folders for various subjects under the heading “Art Ideas.” After a trip with my camera, I enjoy looking through the photos and noting which raw photos have potential for paintings. The next stage, days later, will be starting to edit the photos, cropping and composing to various canvas proportions, which I save. I know from experience that no matter how excited I am to begin painting, it is best to wait and go back to look at these ideas with fresh eyes. Something that seemed wonderful before might have lost its luster, or I can more clearly decide whether a square composition is better than vertical for a particular subject, etc.

In summary, to maximize productivity:

-I have as many as six or seven paintings going at once, in different stages

-I have many future painting ideas in development

-I have systems in place for storing, finding and editing my reference photos

There are times when I wish I could explore variations on a theme, but I have to balance that with the priority of keeping my galleries supplied with new work. I don't think I will ever run out of things I want to paint, and I hope these tips will inspire other artists to be more productive.

Four Seasons Quartet project

Hello! It has been a busy and very productive time. I’ve recently had the opportunity to participate in an interesting project for a young couple in the Midwest who have renovated the family’s old home place and barn. I don’t ordinarily work from other people’s photographs, but theirs were stunning. Between Red Bird Gallery, me and the clients, we’ve embarked on a series of paintings of the barn over the four seasons. Here are the paintings, each 20x20.

Tips on Generating a Stronger Subject from Photo References

Where do painting ideas come from? Read on and I will describe how the subject for a new painting typically evolves.

Artists will tell you the painting starts way before you touch paint to canvas. It really begins by looking and really seeing what has struck them with the inspiration to paint. An experienced artist has a well-developed eye for not just looking, but seeing and analyzing what it is they like about their subjects. I know what inspires me—light—and I collect my subjects in a variety of ways. Usually it's when I go on what I call light safaris with my camera in early morning or evening walks. When I'm delivering paintings to an out-of-town gallery, I plan ahead so I can be in my favorite locations based on the time of day and where I am likely to get good light for my photos. I LOVE getting to do this, as I experience something like spiritual ecstasy when I'm fortunate enough to be a witness to God's glorious light, beautifully revealed in nature.

Once I'm home with a camera full, I will go through the images and make notes of the ones with good elements. Some are good enough to develop into paintings as is, but most will get scrutinized over time, cropped, and added to. I like to print my own photos at this stage. Then comes a gestation period where I will look at them in combination with other photos, and often inspiration strikes as I envision combining elements of several of my photos to make a stronger subject. Typically, I will put a different sky above a body of water if it was really just empty sky or to suit the composition. One has to be careful to match the lighting though.

To illustrate this method of arriving at a subject for a new painting, here is the one I'm currently working on. The first step was knowing that a customer had bought a large painting without its frame, and the gallery now has a 48x36 empty frame I wanted to fill. The following photos show:

origin.jpg

1. My initial inspiration for a new painting. I chose this because the shapes and lines in the water flow appeal to my sense of composition. I finally decided I didn’t really like the shape of the sky or its colors for such a large painting and wanted something with more of a balance of warm and cool colors.

DSCN1718.JPG

2. After searching through my reference photos both printed and saved to discs, I chose this sky. This type of backlit cloud goes straight to my soul with its strong contrast, and I especially liked the sweeping shape of the patterns.

3. On Photoshop Elements, which I’ve taught myself to use over the years, though not elegantly, I cropped just the sky and removed the distracting building silhouettes.


48x36 sunrise.jpg

4. I pasted the new sky into my seascape photo, tweaking and resizing/cropping to the same proportions as a 48x36 canvas. This is my working photo, though I wound up moving the horizon and changing the colors as I painted.


new painting.jpg

5. The finished painting

I hope you find this helpful and interesting. Feel free to comment!


The Creation of a Project for a Commercial Space, Part 2

Here is an update on a painting in progress, a gallery commission for a new restaurant being built in South Carolina.

Client to decorator to gallery to artist is the flow of communication, coordinating to work out the details on a project like this. The size for the painting couldn't be decided until more of the wall and window trim work had been installed, but we finally got the decision: it needed to be 55” x 55”. Being a custom size, I had to special order the canvas from a supplier in Houston, TX, who shipped it via freight. Sixteen days later, the canvas was uncrated and placed on my wall easel.

So what's next? How do I begin such a large painting? I am no longer intimidated by a giant-sized blank canvas, and I really love starting large paintings with large paintbrushes and big arm movements. I toned the canvas with my favorite underpainting color: thinned Raw Umber. An underpainting helps me establish some of the future values and gets rid of bright white canvas that might otherwise peek through later stages. While this was wet, I used a small rag to wipe out the lightest light: the sun and its surrounding area (first photo). I allowed it to dry two days. In this way, when drawing/placing the trees, I could wipe off to make changes without disturbing the underpainting.

The second step was to examine my reference photos, which I'd already printed out. I got out my color chart of different recipes for green (second photo) and decided which main colors I was going to use: in this case, Phthalo Blue and Yellow Ochre will give me a range of greens from warm to cool. I will also use some Sap Green mixed with Raw Umber for the warmer dark greens and a little Cadmium Lemon Yellow mixed in for the lightest leaves and grass. Tints and shades made from Burnt Sienna mixtures will later create the red dirt road and hints of warm sunbeams streaming through the branches.

If you look at my reference photos, which are not that great, you will see they are heavily Photoshopped. I've added the road and flipped the tree on the right around to give it a better shape! I do stuff like this all time, taking great liberties with what was really there.

The next stage of the painting (third photo) was to “draw” the trees on the canvas with thinned paint. This was mentally tiring, but I enjoyed it. I don't use a projector or grid lines, I just hold up my photo to sight size to place the lines in approximately the right spot on the canvas. Trees have gestures and I took my time getting all the twists and angles drawn, though I left out some of the branches I thought were distracting. Then I drew, with paint, the horizon line, thinly blocked in the trees, a few shadows, and the tree canopy. I also used a straight edge to place fencing in the background. I laid out the road and finished by starting with the background color, one of my blue/ochre mixes. I love how it's looking already! I'll let this dry a few days before starting with the thicker paint.


The Creation of a Project for a Commercial Space

I have a lot of work to do. I should be painting right now! I’ve just gotten back from an out-of-state trip for an upcoming project and thought I’d share a little of the process. From someone’s initial request, how does the artist get the ball rolling with all the decisions to be made?

I was contacted by my gallery who has clients opening a new restaurant. They’ve actually bought my work in the past and were interested in a large painting of light-filled trees as the centerpiece over the site’s fireplace. I was already planning a trip to the coast, so what’s another few hundred miles to go meet with them—I agreed. I met the owners and their decorator on site, took notes of what they had in mind and photographed the setting, measuring the fireplace width. Then I followed the owner to the location of the trees they wanted in the painting. More notes. I also photographed an idea they liked from a book with a red dirt road, which turned out to be useful later on. I came back in the evening when the light was streaming through the trees to my satisfaction and made the rounds of the area with my camera. I think of these as Light Safaris because I’m trying to be in the right place at the right time to capture the elusive lighting I want in my paintings. I came back early the next morning and did the same thing before heading home.

The gallery had already discussed framing, pricing and sizes in preparation for a contract. My note taking mostly consisted of what they wanted as far as subject matter. Once home, my first step, as always after a photo expedition to a new place, was to look through my raw photos, making a note of which images would work for the project. Next, after waiting a day, I went back to those photos and looked more closely, opening them in Photoshop to begin cropping, resizing, adjusting lighting and color, and placing elements I’ve clipped from other photos. As an example, I actually cropped a section of the red dirt road from the photo I took of the book and pasted it into my photos in a grassy area with the right trees, and it looks amazingly good, though I hadn’t planned on doing this. I saved all these edited photos in a folder for the project, then looked at them the next day, selecting those I thought would look best in the space. I also prepped the image I’d taken of the fireplace in the room of the restaurant where the painting will hang and then pasted each of the painting ideas, to scale, onto the fireplace to show what it would look like in situ. This should give everyone involved in the selection a good idea of the finished piece. Then, I emailed all the photos to the gallery to pass on to the decorator and owners. I will keep you posted on the project.