re-do

"The Driveway" is a painting that I thought I had finished a few months ago. Every time I looked at it, though, I did not have a heartsong. That is my key to knowing when a painting is done.
I had the photo reference out, and while I felt that I had been true to the colors of the photo and even more, to the colors that I saw that day, the painting didn't work.
Put it back up on my easel a few days ago and started some, um, exaggeration. Maybe imagination is a better word. I let the painting itself tell me what it needed.

Sometimes it is very liberating to work on a failure - you can't mess it up any worse, so the freedom to let the muse do her work is right there, by your shoulder whispering in your ear.

It's not winter in this painting. It could be summer, it could be fall, it could be late spring. I know where the path leads, but in true reality, it could lead anywhere.

quick study

For my birthday, my husband bought me a small, aluminum outdoor easel. It's not the latest Soltech easel (pricey, but with a box attached for palette), but it is so lightweight and portable and quick to set up that I will now not think twice about packing up supplies and hiking around the property. Yesterday, first time this year, I did just that.

I worked quickly and finished in 45 minutes. This painting is 8 x 10 inches, not a show stopper, but a nice little study and an encouragement to do this several times a week.

student project

An interesting project that I assigned to my adult drawing class and also to my advanced teen art class - I set up a simple still life (3 objects) and had them lightly sketch it as accurately and simply as possible. Then they were instructed to change their position and draw the same still life from another perspective on top of the first drawing. Then, move again, and draw a third sketch on top of the previous two. This was challenging to keep the drawings "separate" and not become confused.

Next part - extend some lines from the drawing to edges of the paper to break up the background and break through positive and negative spaces. Another challenge to sort of keep the still life yet abstract the subject as well as the rectangular space of the paper. After extending the lines to get a pleasing composition, I gave the adult class options to add color outside of class, but had the teens darken lines with a sharpie marker. They had to be careful when adding the black to keep everything balanced. This meant not going over some lines as well as thickening other lines. The first photo shows the overall composition of one student's work. The second photo shows his color scheme.

I used this assignment to move into some color theory for these students. I wanted them to work with only five tones, limiting their palette. I gave them 3 choices:

a. choose a secondary color (a mixture of two primaries) and add white and black to this color to make 5 values.
b. choose 5 analogous colors on the color wheel (the color wheel set up with primary, secondary, and tertiary colors). Example - red, red-purple, purple, purple-blue, blue.
c. choose any two complementary colors for two of the five hues, and mixtures of both for the other three. The student's work shown here has a color choice of blue and orange, with mixtures of predominantly orange with some blue, predominantly blue with some orange, and then a mixture of orange and blue that makes a lovely brown.

Limitations - they used acrylic paint, and work in hour sessions only. This means they can't mix five nice batches of paint to work from for an extended session, so they are constantly mixing their hues and not always repeating the exact same color each time. But, actually, that works in a serendipitous way - all colors are in the same "family" no matter, and the paintings are holding together tonally.

This is definitely a lesson I will keep and use again!

The Glade

This is from another photo I took during that loooongg bike ride last summer along the Greenbrier River in West Virginia (22 miles). When we came to this place, we were close to the finish point and we were utterly exhausted and one person was crabby (that would be me). Still, the beauty of this particular spot along the river drove cranky thoughts from my mind for more than a few minutes. It was like a place in one of my favorite but rare dreams - a forest with places of lush green lawn where I wander around in delight. Some people have dreams where they fly, not me, except once, and it was in a place like this. I took lots of photos but they can't capture the alive but calm greens and deep quietness.

This painting is the largest I've ever done: 24 x 36 inches. Took a lot of sap green and ultramarine blue, my favorite pigments for mixing my base green. I add alizarin for the darkest areas, and various yellows (lemon, cadmium, and indian) for the different warm greens. A touch of white either lightens a hue to a lovely cool bright highlight on leaves or else neutralizes some hues to dull grays which are necessary to bring out more intense color. Still, working within this color range is challenging to keep it interesting. I hope I succeeded for the viewer. For me, this painting takes me back.

autumn in January

On a roll with painting - this is my fourth in four days. The sunlight wasn't great this morning so all fruit in the kitchen did not inspire. I looked through old resource photos and found this one that I took last fall. I'm not sure where - possibly Rappahanock County in early November. I don't think it is our farm - I can't place those trees.

I know swirling paint around with a palette knife can be hack work. But. You do have to be careful not to end up with a muddy mess. I think some colors in the foreground grass may need to be dulled down a bit, then again, I don't know. The middle tree, the focal point, may also need some tweaking. Or, I'll leave it for now. I'm enjoying the time travel in my mind to not so long ago. I love watching trees change through the seasons, knowing that they will bloom again in spring, grow green in summer, and dazzle in the fall, leaving their true shapely forms to be seen in winter, stark and bare against the grey sky. Barring a sudden windstorm or blight, we can count on trees to be there.

Wishing

Lots of titles suggested themselves to me for this painting (8 x 10) of a tangerine and two lemons. I set up the still life this morning wanting to portray human feelings by the arrangement of the fruit, the relationships of each to the others by proximity and protuberances. Stems and blossom attachments have always made me think of eyes and mouths.

I had only two lemons and one tangerine and their colors looked lovely in early morning light. That's why they were the chosen ones over apples for today's painting. Thinking of choices, people chosen for friendships and love affairs, gave me the idea of having the lemons as a club, the tangerine looking on, wishing to be a part of the group.

I have many thoughts and emotions while painting. Memories are dredged up while I'm in right brain mode. Of course, I'm also thinking of shape and space and color and light and dark and palette strokes, but painting provides space for meditation and remembering. Wistful scenes from childhood came up repeatedly - times when I was excluded from games and cliques and birthday parties. I wanted to tell the tangerine that it would be ok, that there were other friends to find and other parties that would welcome a lovely orange fruit. Ah well. Sadness has its purpose just like shadows and muddy hues. These all make the bright happy times stand out in contrast. All is used in life for good purpose.

Left Out. Excluded. Sad titles, so I settled on Wishing. If some wishes aren't granted, others are! I ended up feeling old and wise at the end of this painting session, and most of all, happy with the paint working together. Emotions and memories aside, I'm glad that I seem to have produced lemons in oils - a challenging subject for me.

the driveway

Finally back to painting after several weeks. The sunlight was glinting off the grass, giving it a silvery blue sheen in places. I changed the tree line a bit to make the composition stronger. I'm learning that I don't have to make a map of where I was and copy actual shapes, but that in landscape it is quite ok to edit or change features to make a painting. I don't know why that hasn't sunk in before now - it's not a new idea!