When the light fades on a city street or a

painting demonstration Jason Sacran on Painting Nocturnes Night paintings have become popular at plein air festivals, with some events now including ...
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painting demonstration

Jason Sacran on Painting Nocturnes Night paintings have become popular at plein air festivals, with some events now including an evening during which all the participating artists work after dark. The challenges are many, but Arkansas artist Jason Sacran has found ways of dealing with those challenges, and has won major awards in the process.

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hen the light fades on a city street or a country farmhouse, what might have been a boring scene under daylight conditions can suddenly become a mysterious, intriguing landscape. But there are some obvious challenges to painting those images, when there may not be enough light on a canvas or palette to allow the artists to distinguish individual colors and relative values. And if an artist uses a headlamp or spotlight that is too strong, the canvas and palette will be just as difficult to see. Street lamps, interior lights, and clip-on lamps may not be much better if they distort the temperature of the colors and the relative value of color mixtures. There are a number of ways to approach these challenges, and Arkansas artist Jason Sacran has tried most of them — with excellent results. He has won top awards in painting competitions sponsored by the International Society of Acrylic Painters, Plein Air Rockies (2013 quick draw, gold medal, and People’s Choice awards), Oil Painters of America, and Easels in Frederick, among others. As with most potential painting locations, it helps to scout out places that will be most interesting in the morning, later in the afternoon, at dusk, or in the dead of night. The important consideration for a good nocturnal scene is the combination of artificial lights from automobiles, road signs, store interiors, streetlights, or porch lights, as well as interior lights within residences. It is also worth noting whether any of those artificial lights might be sufficient to illuminate a canvas and palette for several hours. “Instead of calculating how the sun might shift the pattern of shadows, I have to consider an entirely different set of changes that might occur,” Sacran explains. “For example, if a park closes at dusk and the lights on a ball field, over the streets, and against the buildings will be turned off, that limits the amount of time I can spend painting. Conversely, if the scene is 36

defined by security lights inside a business and the traffic lights along the road, I can count on those glowing throughout the night. “Darkness distorts my perception of almost everything — spatial relationships, colors, values, and textures — so it helps to check out a potential location during daylight hours. The good news is that a few lights shining through the darkness are often enough to make the incidental seem magical. For example, a car parked on a wet street could be enough for a terrific painting

December-January 2014 / www.pleinairmagazine.com

Corner Lights 2013, oil, 12 x 12 in. Collection the artist Plein air

about reflections, strange colors, and indeterminate spaces. It is actually better to pick a simple scene rather than one that is complicated by overlapping lights and shapes.” The supplies and equipment needed for nocturnal painting are not significantly different from

Full Moon Night 2013, oil, 12 x 16 in. Collection the artist Plein air

those required for daytime painting outdoors, with the exception of the artificial lights that might be needed to illuminate the palette and painting surface. Sacran works at either a Soltek or a French easel on Centurion linen panels or, for paintings larger than 16 x 20 inches, Centurion linen stretched over wooden stretcher bars. He uses an assortment of bristle hair brushes, and his palette is a sheet of tempered glass. As for Sacran’s selection of tube colors, those include titanium white, cadmium yellow light, cadmium medium, cadmium orange, cadmium red medium, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, viridian green, and ivory black, and he’s currently considering the addition of mauve blue shade, yellow ochre, and burnt umber. In addition to the colors arranged on his palette, Sacran saves leftover oil colors in two piles of gray — one that is predominantly cool in temperature and another that is warm. He often adds drops of oil of cloves (purchased at a pharmacy) to keep the oil colors wet throughout the painting process so he can soften edges where lights radiate into the dark areas of a scene. The only medium he uses is Gamsol.

ARTIST DATA Although some artists like to paint nocturnal scenes on panels toned with a dark-valued color, Sacran prefers to have a mid-value tone on his painting surfaces. “About 80 percent of the time I use a toned canvas,” he says, “and the other 20 percent of the time I work on a white surface. I block in three to five big shapes and then break those up into smaller shapes of dark and light values. The bright spots indicating a headlight, lamp, or traffic signal are added as thick spots of high-key color toward the end of the painting process.” When Sacran started doing plein air painting, he always stood at his easel because he thought he needed to constantly step back to evaluate the progress of his oil paintings. “I then tried sitting when I painted to see if that would be more comfortable, especially when I worked for up to six hours on the nocturnes,” he says. “I found that I could just as easily get up to judge the progress of the paintings as when I was standing, so from then on I decided to be comfortable in a folding seat.” Although he prefers to paint on location, there are some subjects that can be depicted at night only through Sacran’s memory of the scene. “If I want to paint a barn or cows at night, for example, my eyes wouldn’t adjust well

NAME: J. Jason Sacran BIRTHDATE: 1980 LOCATION: Lavca, AR WEBSITE: www.jasonsacran.com

Street Lights 2013, oil, 12 x 12 in. Collection the artist Plein air



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painting demonstration

Demonstration: Revisited

STEP 1: Jason Sacran applies a mid-value tone to the canvas against which he can judge the hue, value, chroma, and temperature of applied colors. He brushes on a semi-opaque wash of thinned color and then wipe that down with a tissue.

STEP 2: The artist makes brush marks to indicate the placement of the largest and most important shapes and information.

STEP 3: Sacran blocks in the color masses while making an effort not to have the painting surface become too saturated, too dark, or too light.

STEP 4: After covering the entire canvas with an initial block-in, Sacran adjusts the large masses in terms of their size and relationship to one another.

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STEP 5: In an effort to bring the painting “out of the dark,” the artist increases the contrast between in the values and colors.

STEP 6: The painting process now becomes one of refining the colors, contrasts, edges, and shapes, continuing to establish correct color and tweak shapes.

STEP 7: Now Sacran begins to add details, such as the fence posts, telephone pole, and light at the end of the road.

STEP 8: The artist adds more brightly lit details, breaks up some of the edges and shapes, and lightens the value of the sky color to make the horizon line more apparent.





THE COMPLETED PAINTING: Revisited 2013, oil 12 x 16 in. Collection the artist

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Crossroads 2012, oil, 12 x 16 in. Collection the artist Plein air

Moraine Valley, 11PM 2013, oil, 16 x 20 in. Collection the artist Plein air

enough to see both the dark subject and a brightly lit painting surface,” he says. “I form a kind of photograph of the subject in my mind and rely on the understanding about night scenes that I’ve gained from having done them for a couple of years.” Sacran was encouraged to participate in his first plein air competition in 2010 by his friend Todd Williams. He enjoyed the First Brush of Spring event in New Harmony, Indiana, so much that he entered other festival competitions, then helped organize one himself. “The first time I tried doing a nocturne was at the plein air event at Big Cedar Lodge in Ridgedale, Missouri,” Sacran recalls. “I tried using a headlamp to illuminate the palette and painting surface, but that proved to be much too bright, so I positioned myself under an outdoor lamp. I really enjoyed the results, so I made a point of doing more night paintings on my own and during other events.” He goes on, “I particularly liked the dramatic contrasts between dark and light shapes, as well as the subtle transitions and small blasts of light. It was also great to have the opportunity to take my time and paint a scene that changed very little over a four- to six-hour period. During daylight hours, I am constantly adjusting to changing patterns of light and atmosphere, and while I feel challenged by that, I can get into a panic as I try to hit a moving target. Conversely, I can sit on a darkened sidewalk for six hours without the effects of the lights from stores, traffic signals, and cars changing very much. “Most of the locations I paint are in rural towns and villages. Those scenes are familiar to me because I grew up in a small Southern town and I appreciate the beauty in those places. My interest is in documenting things of today, especially the familiar scenes we pass by every day or the people we know so well that we rarely take the time to fully consider them. In the chaos of daily life, we all take the simple and familiar for granted, yet sometimes those are the very things we come to remember and miss when they are gone.” 40

December-January 2014 / www.pleinairmagazine.com

Midnight Light 2013, oil, 11 x 14 in. Collection the artist Plein air

When Sacran first exhibited nocturnes in plein air events, collectors were curious about the night paintings but hesitant to buy such unusual views of their towns. Before long, however, more artists began painting nocturnes and buyers came to appreciate the fact that these plein air paintings are distinctly different from what they ordinarily see at outdoor painting events. “The first buyers to respond to the paintings were those who already had a number of traditional landscape paintings and liked the idea of acquiring something different,” Sacran says. “After a while, new collectors began to appreciate the unexpected but intriguing aspects of nocturnes.” M. Stephen Doherty is editor-in-chief of PleinAir magazine. See more of Jason Sacran’s paintings in the expanded digital edition of PleinAir.

Misting 2012, acrylic, 17 x 28 in. Collection the artist Studio

Full Orange 2012, acrylic, 24 x 24 in. Private collection Studio



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