Painting Instruction and Mountain Goats

I recently completed a 6 week painting class taught by Bozeman artist Howard Friedland (http://www.howardfriedland.com/). Howard is a Signature Member of Oil Painters of America and was recently elected to their Board of Directors. There’s no doubt he’s a very well-respected painter at the national level and I’ve always enjoyed his work, so I jumped at the chance to receive some instruction from him. The objective of the course was to learn to effectively take a small painting or study and use it as reference to create a larger, more significant piece. Since I’ve recently started painting some larger pieces I felt this class would be particularly beneficial to me, but I knew the opportunity to work closely with a painter like Howard would also really help me to refine the fundamentals. The class ended up being fairly small in size which gave me a lot of one-on- one time with the instructor and I was able to really learn a lot about his painting methods.

We began the class by evaluating several ideas (concepts, sketches, studies) each student had for creating a larger piece. Since visiting Glacier National Park last fall, I’ve been toying around with several ideas for a larger painting of some mountain goats I observed there. I thought this class would be a great time to start this piece so with the approval of the instructor and other students, I decided to go with an idea that included a nanny and kid mountain goat in an alpine setting near Logan Pass.

One thing that Howard stressed in the class is the importance of doing sketches and painting studies on a smaller scale before diving into a larger piece - this helps the artist to work out many of the major problems beforehand. I first did a small pencil sketch of the overall composition of my painting idea, which enabled me to easily make some adjustment to strengthen the design. Then, I also did an 8X10 landscape study to help me make some decision about how I wanted to approach the overall color harmony and value relationships in the piece. After doing those, I still didn’t feel quite confident enough to begin the piece. I knew the mountain goats were going to be particularly challenging to paint, so I decided to do an additional 11X14 study that would focus more on just the mountain goats. Here’s an image of how that study turned out:

Study for Logan Pass Natives – 11X14

I’m really glad I spent a couple of weeks doing studies before starting the “real” painting because it helped me make a lot of decisions and solve several major problems with my original idea. Since I solved most of the issues beforehand, the larger piece came together really quickly. Here’s an image of the finished painting:
Logan Pass Natives – 20X30

I’m happy with the final result and I feel I was able to capture the light and emotion that was present on that beautiful September morning in Glacier. I feel the painting class was a great success and I can’t put into words how much I learned. It was also great to become acquainted with Howard and his wife Susan Blackwood (also an accomplished artist) and I look forward to painting with them in the future. I’m excited to see how my future work will improve and I’m motivated to get some new paintings started. There’s no doubt I will continue to seek out opportunities like this in the future so I can continue to grow as an artist.