Phil Starke Studio Newsletter - February 2024
Phil Starke is a professional fine artist with prestigious gallery representation, participates in national museum exhibitions, and teaches workshops and online fine art courses.
PHIL STARKE STUDIO NEWSLETTER
February 2024
I hope everyone had a good January. February is going to be a busy month because I have to get ready for March, which is really busy.
I have a workshop in St.Louis MO at the Heartland Art Club from February 29 - March 2 which gets my busy month started. The workshop will focus on creating life and drama in your painting. How to push the color and values to create more exciting paintings. We get to that point in painting where we have learned to copy what we see but in this class we will learn to find what is essential in our subject and make it more exciting. For more information click here: https://heartlandartclub.org/workshops-classes/p/creating-life-and-drama-in-your-painting-with-phil-starke
On March 11-15, I will be teaching an outdoor workshop in Tucson, AZ through the Scottsdale Artists School. We will be painting in the Catalina Mountains, old adobes and street scenes ,as well as painting on a ranch backed up against the mountains. Here is the link for more information on that workshop: https://www.scottsdaleartschool.org/artists/143-phil-starke/
If you are in the Tubac, AZ area on March 9 and 10 come out and see me at The Big Horn Gallery. I will be there both days demonstrating and meeting clients. Here are some of the new paintings that I will be bring with me:
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"Greatest Love, Hondo, New Mexico" - oil - 10 x 12
I hope you enjoy the newsletter!
Phil Starke
In This Issue
Show Schedule
Settlers West Gallery
Tucson, AZ
February 10 - March 2, 2024
Big Horn Gallery
Tubac, AZ
March 9 & 10, 2024
Workshop Schedule
Quick Links
February One-Day Online Workshop
Tuesday, February 20, 2024 - 6PM to 8 PM
5 Keys To Painting Water Online LIVE Workshop
Painting objects in a landscape is always about making objects look solid. We want a front and sides to rocks, tree trunks and barns. The goal is to make them look 3-dimensional. But, water is different, especially if it's moving. There isn’t any definite shape, value or color. In this demonstration I will show how to paint moving water, how to think about the values, how to use brushwork to show form and how to determine a local color of the water, as well as color variation. Here's the link where you can find out more information and register:
https://www.paintwithconfidence.com/live-webinar/painting-water/register
ARTIST AT A GLANCE
Oscar Berninghaus - 1874 to 1952
My Great Uncle, Joseph Brooks lived on the farm that my dad was raised on near Kansas City, MO. He tended the checkens and had his own room off the kitchen where he would show me drawings and small watercolors that he would do around the farm. When I was older and serious about art, I found out that he had gone to art school at Washington University in St. Louis after World War 1. He became a commercial artist in St. Louis, doing newspaper ads, labels and brochures mostly in ink and gauche. I inherited a lot of the work he did during those years. One that sticks out is the Clabber Girl Baking Soda label that is still being used today. Sometime in the thirties he moved back to the farm because of family demands.
He had always talked about his Life Drawing teacher in art school, Oscar Berninghaus and told lots of stories of Berninghaus living with and painting Native Americans in New Mexico. He also told of strapping himself to the top of a train riding throughout the West to get a better view and sketch when the train stopped.
Later, in art school, I found out how important the artist Berninghaus was and I studied his work at the St. Louis Museum and the Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. My uncle gave me his life drawings from school saying that Berninghaus would often sit down at his drawing to show him a point and end up doing the whole drawing.
I highly recommend a book I purchased a long time ago and learned a lot from: "Oscar E. Berninghaus, Taos, New Mexico: Master Painter of American Indians and the Frontier West" by Gordon Sanders. Berninghaus composed beautiful paintings of Taos Indians in the midst of their element, surrounded by large cottonwood trees, the Pueblo, working with horses or putting up hay. He had a great sense of color that really caught the light of Northern New Mexico.
Oscar Berninghaus - Indian On Horseback - Click to enlarge
1:1 lIVE CALL WITH PHIL
1:1 Coaching Session
with Phil Starke
Join me in a one-to-one personal coaching session to accelerate your progress with your painting. Gain personalize insights and guidance from me, ensuring your time in the studio becomes more successful and more efficient. If you'd like a critique of your work, or help with a review of your paintings for a show, or just a personal Q & A session, I can get you through tougher issues to help you gain momentum and get to the next level.
The coaching session will provide the benefit of a LIVE ZOOM call with me, and the recording of our session.
Rewatch your session with me again and again so you'll never miss a valuable insight.
WHAT'S PLAYING
My YouTube Channel
There are currently 171 tutorial videos on my YouTube Channel and I try to add a new video every 3 days. If you haven't had a chance to check it out, I'm inviting you to stop by and see if I can help you with some of your stumbling blocks or to increase your knowledge base. Here are two of the latest video tutorials.
There's a lot going on over there, so please stop by, SUBSCRIBE, and leave a comment! Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/@philstarke.artist
ARTIST TIP
Why Spend Time Drawing If You're A Painter?
There are three reasons why I spend time drawing when I have so many paintings I want to work on. First is compositional drawing. These are thumbnail sketches for larger paintings, trying to come up with new ideas. These are usually done with markers or 6B graphite. I like to fill notebooks with these for future ideas for paintings.
The second reason is to sharpen my ability to see, using line or massing darks and lights to render objects or figures. I use an extra fine line pen or a medium or heavy graphite pencil to set a variety of thick or thin line. This could be drawing figures at the mall or spending the day drawing landscapes in the mountains.
The third is drawing just because it's fun; subjects I don't usually paint or by sketching my grandkids. This can be with charcoal, conte cayon or watercolor. Drawing is a chance for me to see things differently, change things up and practice rendering without thinking of color or temperature. Plus, I don't have all that mess to clean up. Two books that I'd recommend are the two volumes of "The Drawings of Rembrandt" by Seymore Slive and published by Dover. The other is "The Language of Drawing From an Artists Point of View" by Sherrie McGraw.
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