Day 693 "Late Light" gouache on ink

A friend was visiting from North Carolina this week.  I was invited to a small gathering of women on the porch of her host. We had a lovely time catching up on each other's lives.  It was a pleasure to sit in the company of these smart, interesting women in a beautiful setting.   While we visited, the sun got lower and lower in the sky behind the trees, and eventually set behind the river.  I wanted to recreate the feeling of the evening with the trees silhouetted against that vibrant sky.  I painted a rectangle of ink.  When it dried, I used gouache, almost without water, to paint the negative spaces between the branches.  I like the feel of the chunky gouache, and without thinning it, the paint builds upon itself to enhance the feel of the glow.  I chose each stroke very carefully in this extractive exercise, because my goal was not to reapply any of the black below.  I like the effect. I certainly conveys the feeling of the evening for me.
As always, thank you for looking.  I enjoy your comments as well.

Day 488 "Westward a la Klimt" acrylic 10 x 8

The Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for January was "paint like Klimt".  My initial thoughts of Klimt are the beautiful and romantic figures entwined by their posture and also entwined with Klimt's decorative swirls, pattern, and vibrant color harmonies.  But, in my Klimt research, I saw a number of paintings where Klimt used geometric repetition and color shifts for landscapes.  Very appealing.  Recently, I sat and watched the sunset over our North River.  It was, as it often is, glorious.  The sun was reflecting its last light up into the clouds where it bounced back and forth until it was almost fluorescent.   Breathtaking.  

The light was so fascinating, I thought it would be interesting to interpret a la Klimt.  You can see my ink and colored pencil interpretation of the scene in a prior blog post here.  I began by blocking in the scene in acrylic in very muted color with the values dropped down.  Then I used circles of color, in varied intensities to move up through the sky.  I made some of the circles very warm, then gradually mixed them as warm/cool, then all cool as they moved away from the sun.  I added rectangles in the river to show the reflected light.  
This is my four hundred eighty-eighth daily drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest.  You know I love your comments.  

Day 481 "Westward" and the beautiful North River

 We live by a beautiful river.  Its personality changes from day to day and season to season. I have painted it a number of times (you can see below), even once just using paper.  The marsh changes color over the months, bringing the promise of spring when the first green tips show on the grass.  Initially, the green is so subtle, you aren't quite sure you are seeing the evidence of spring.  Is it a shadow, a mirage, a shift in the sunlight through the clouds? Within a day, the new green fronds reveal themselves without any doubt.  Last week, we had sheets of ice on top of the marsh.  It is a daily wonder. Tonight we pulled in at sunset and saw the sun lighting up the river and the clouds above.  Stunning.  How blessed are we.  
This is my four hundred eighty-first daily drawing.  Thank you for looking.  

"September Glory" oil 12 x 16

The Girls Just Wanna Paint Theme for September was "local".  I painted late in the day out by our local scenic river, the North River.  It was a gorgeous afternoon, and I shifted the sky from the blue when I began to the more muted, warm clouds that settled in as dusk approached.  I have not been out behind my easel for awhile, and I loved it!  There was a breeze, and boats navigating the water as they enjoyed a few last days of warmth.  Tomorrow is October!  I love this spot. 

Day 365 "September Dusk" ink, watercolor, pencil 6 x 9

It's day 365!!  I have completed a drawing each day for a year.  It's a reminder how fast a year passes, and I have enjoyed looking back through the 365 days this afternoon.  As a review, last October 1st, I committed to participating in Inktober, a drawing using ink every day of October.  Thank you to my friend Sally Dean for suggesting the endeavor.  I completed a drawing every day of October, and knew right away on November 1st, that I was not finished... so I continued on.  Each of my drawings was completed that day, including the two days in May I spent in the hospital having my knee replaced.  Each drawing took between 1/2 hour to about 3 hours to complete.  There were a few days when it was a stretch to get the drawing completed. I have drawn waiting for trains, planes, appointments, at restaurants, coffee shops, school meetings, movie theaters.  I carry a sketchbook with me everywhere I go, and have set up a "cave" of easily-reached supplies next to my seat in the living room.  Many of the drawings include watercolor, pastel, markers, pencils, watercolor pencils, or a combination of them.  
I have enjoyed the year, and will continue tomorrow with day 366.  
Thank you so much for following along!   
This is  drawing of our beautiful North River late in the day.  

Day 282 "Humarock" pen&ink 8 x 9 - deserted beach, and a little history

If you walk our local beach, you may find this view familiar.  Our local beach is separated from the mainland by the South River which you can see below in the map.  The South River joins the North River and the ocean in a very turbulent mash of currents and tides.  A little history:  The Portland Gale of 1989 shifted the mouth of the North River, separating Humarock and Scituate's "Fourth Cliff" from the rest of Scituate, and eventually the mouth of the South River moved there as well.  This drawing is from the location of the "old mouth" of the South River, now beach.  You can see the old and new below, a familiar contour to those familiar with the local landscape.  The seawall and beachside homes come to an end at the old mouth.  I wonder if someday the old mouth will open again to the sea.  

  This is my two hundred eighty-second daily drawing.  Thank you for your continued interest.                                                               

"September Dusk" oil 8 x 6

Have you ever had an urge as you are walking or driving along... an insistent urge to stop, mid-thought, or mid-sentence, or mid-stride, to pause and look because the beauty of the moment takes your breath away?  I feel these moments in the city, out here in the suburbs, when traveling, and sometimes stepping out my front door to begin the day.  They come with a sense of peace and inner quiet and thankfulness for being alive. "September Dusk" captures one of those moments, the moments just after the sun has set but before dark settles, along the river near my home.  These moments are especially important for me these days because the world feels even more unsettled to me.  I pray that we can each help our world to move in a constructive, rather than destructive direction.  "Peace" is the November theme for Girls Just Wanna Paint. You can all our paintings here.    As always, thank you for looking.

"Rainy Driftway" 9 x 6 oil

We are fortunate to live by the North River, a scenic waterway that meanders inland for miles and miles from its turbulent intersection with the South River and the sea. Its tributaries, marsh, canals, wildlife, and shipbuilding past intersect our lives at every turn.  We see the river daily, smell its various tides, conserve it, recreate in it, around it, taste its salt in our air, hear its quiet and its clamor.  
I cross this river each day en route to work, and pause for a few seconds to marvel at the beauty of our world.  The river provides unlimited painting subject matter.  Yesterday, I learned that one lone evergreen, perched on the marsh, was a casualty of the blizzard last weekend.   The tree, which I have often called the South Shore's "Motif Number 1", stood vigil on a point near the Driftway Park, providing a lovely vertical note in the world of horizontals.  This painting is from one gray day on the river.  
My lesson was about painting on a low key day.  I instructed my students to note the lightest and darkest passages in the paintings, then to check each mixture to make sure it was between the two; always a good strategy, but essential on a low key day.  We painted for while, watched the sky darken, then darken more.  Eventually, it rained, and we continued painting.  Hooray for oil paints.  As I recall, we fled when the downpour began.  I take my painting students to this park almost every spring. We will return, but the little lone tree will be missed.

"September Dusk" 8x8 cut paper

 
I like to cut paper.   Let me elaborate.  I like to cut paper with scissors to make interesting shapes and forms without drawing them first.  I use it in my math classes to demonstrate symmetry to my students.  I cut paper shapes iconic of certain holidays that our church youth group then uses to make one-of-a-kind note cards which they sell to fund their mission trips. I like to cut paper.  

 "September Dusk" image stretched to square proportions

So, when North River Arts Society kicked off this year's Outside the Box fundraiser, inviting artists and non-artists alike to create an 8" x 8" work, different from their norm, I decided to paint with paper.  

I chose one of my favorite paintings of our local river and stretched its image into a square for the proportions.  I bought a number of sheets of patterned paper, no solids,  considering only the colors and values, not the patterns, then proceeded to cut shapes, and to use them like paint.  It was very interesting to decide how to layer up, how to soften edges, how to build in atmospheric perspective and texture.  I used the paper much like I would use paint, blocking in with large shapes, then continually subdividing those shapes.

original "September Dusk" 7 x 5

The result is a "paper painting" filled with paisley, polka dots, peacock feathers,  floral images, toile, and stripes that comprise "September Dusk". When I compare the original oil and the paper version, I'll admit, I am drawn to the oil more than the paper. However, I love the paper painting, the thinking and the process. My goal was not to recreate the original oil painting.  My goal was to create a piece of art that stands on its own, using the oil painting as reference, much like my oil paintings are intended to stand on their own, using life as reference. 

 I'm planning to explore this idea again, and am considering skipping the middle step altogether, bringing my paper, scissors, and Modge Podge outside to paint with paper en plein air. 

As always, interested in your thoughts.  Thanks for looking.

"Overcast" 14" x 11" oil

I love painting by the river on this type of day.  It's overcast, which keeps the heat down, and there's just enough air moving.  I painted this as a quick block in with my class, very washy, intending to add more definition in the sky later.  As often happens when students are scattered about, I don't spend much time at my own easel. The painting was tucked away in my "Look at this again later" pile.  

By the way I highly recommend several piles of work aside from "Finished" and "Unfinished" in your studio. I have "Just off the easel, look objectively over the next couple of days", "Use as a study for something larger", and "Not a complete success,  why?", among others.  Looking at "Overcast" recently, I decided to leave it alone.  I can feel the air that day when I look at painting.  That works for me.

$225 & $10 S&H
 

"Dappled Birch" 12" x 12" oil

My painting class spent a glorious day outside a few weeks ago at a garden center.  The plan was to be outside, focusing on bare trees in the landscape.  The day was very overcast, so we headed for the garden center with some color among the grays.  Turns out, the sun broke through and we had a glorious day of very uncharacteristic 70 degree weather in mid-March.  That was then, this is now... back to typical New England spring, lovely pale greens, yellows, pinks, and the temperatures hovering in the 48 - 54 degree range... right on the cusp of taking a group outside, who are unaccustomed to painting while chilly.  I'm on the hunt for sheltered sun this week, ideally, protected from the wind, sun warming the location. Oh, and cue the sinewy shadows cast by as yet leafless branches.  Friday promises to be a lovely, albeit chilly day, and we will be outside. "Dappled Birch" is from a friend's back yard in a different spring.  Think I'll give her a call this morning to see if her yard is available later this week!

"Spring Reflections" in stages 24" x 12"

Four times each year I have a passing thought that the equinox or solstice is several weeks misaligned from the actual onset of that season's weather.  It's only a passing thought, appended to the quarterly recognition that the current day IS the equinox or solstice.  This year in New England, however, equinox and weather have missed one another by months, not weeks.  

"Spring Reflections" is a painting from a more traditional spring.  Many of my landscapes are vertical, although we live along a beautiful tidal river, adjacent to the ocean and layer upon layer of  gorgeous horizontal vistas.  I see these expanses in vertical slices.  My thumbnail sketches are both vertical and horizontal, as I contemplate design.  Most often, I choose the vertical.  My goal with this painting was to show the solitary existence of this iconic house along our tidal marshes.  A horizontal painting would not have captured its isolation both in foreground and in the distance.  It really is an outpost.

 The house was reflected beautifully in the calm marsh tributary, and I blocked it in quickly, along with the rectangular marsh shapes.  Those are simply washed in, and stayed that way into the finished painting except for the addition of a bit more color.  Good thing I blocked in rapidly , because within half hour a breeze had picked up - no more reflection.   About 40 minutes after that, tide was in, no more marsh!  

    I made a few changes to the geometry of the marsh in my next visit to the site, creating more diagonals as a scaffold to climb into the painting.   I also bumped up the greens, appropriate to the marshes two weeks later into spring.  The house had NOT grown a new room in those two weeks.  It was an early omission - no explanation. The painting is much more successful with the extra room, more interesting silhouette, and small ticks of sunlight to draw the eye into the painting.

 Proportion and distance can be challenging to some students.  It is important to measure the size of the distant houses against the solitary cottage to see how small they are, usually much more diminutive than students see them.  There is some wiggle room in the size range because the distance can be as far as you want it to be but when the distant structures are too large, it breaks the perspective, and, as with other perspective errors, is obvious. Other late changes to the painting:  I warmed the shadow directly below the cottage, and cooled it as it crept out under the sky, and adjusted the color of the reflected light on the shadow side of the house appropriate to the addition of blue and green in the marsh.   Looking forward to heading out to the marsh this week.

Gray Days

We live close to a scenic waterway that meets the ocean.  The North River is beautiful, broad, tidal, treacherous in parts, and alluring, even on its grayest of gray days.  This is a study I painted with my class during a gray spring morning.  I believe it rained eventually.  Our lesson was to discern the highest chroma/highest intensity passage in the painting, understanding that it would be far down the scale of intensity.  I suggested the students imagine a thermometer, visualizing the bottom third as the realm of color intensity for this subject.  Place that note down early, if not first, in the painting.  Every other mixture needs to be less intense than that note, easy to lose sight of when your eyes are wide open and you are hunting for slight distinctions in hue between similarly valued passages.  

  I am using this idea with the cityscape I began the other day in Boston Public Garden. The subject is much more complex, but I believe I am close to finished with my tweaking here in the studio.  Gray day, gray and bare trees, gray buildings, gray sky... lovely, subtle variety of grays.. almost there.