Wmb Hoyt: The Process

Renoir once said in response to an observation that he didn't seem to be working very much: " To build a fire you must gather wood."

When my daughter Caitlin was about seven, she was in my studio watching me paint one day and she observed that I always seemed to color things I was looking at, whereas she liked to color out of her head.

So far it has been my experience that nothing I can imagine is as beautiful as that which already exists. As a result, it's my custom to range around sketching, painting, and making photographs on location, to finish works in the studio.

Doing watercolors, I developed the habit of making a fairly detailed drawing in pencil and painting over it. This works well on location, it's simple and allows me to record information quickly that I can finish later if conditions change or time is short. With oil paint I found it to be inhibiting however, since it is not transparent, it obscures the lines, and I didn't like spending all that time doing a nice drawing only to lose it in the process of painting. So with oil paintings I draw more general information, basic masses and shapes with charcoal or dilute paint, and do the more specific information directly in paint.

Wmb working in his Hartland, Vermont studio on a new painting.

The recently finished "Three Schooners in Dark Harbor ." Click on the painting to see the image as it evolved on the canvas. See our Marine section if you're intersted in a print.

Wmb and Kathy checking digital proofs at Hunter Editions.

Making a print

To make a Giclée print the painting, or a photograph of it, must be scanned to create a digital file for the printer. Understandably, the quality of the print depends on the quality of the scan, its resolution, faithfulness to original colors etc. To this end I have had the good fortune of using H/O Photographers, John Sherman and John Sheldon. They make three or four exposures with a large format camera, producing 4 by 5 inch transparencies under highly controlled lighting conditions using polarizing filters to eliminate reflections. These are then scanned at Hunter Editions, creating digital files of very high quality and resolution, hundreds of megabytes in size. From there the image is printed onto canvas or paper with a Roland printer. I am sent proofs to correct and approve and then the final prints are made. For specifics on the Roland giclée process, see Hunter Editions' web page.