Childe Hassam silhouette - Nocturne, Railway Crossing

My classroom has no windows, although I can see light from across the hall through my doorway.... small consolation some days.  I have filled my classroom with visual interest, posters the students have made, art posters, a word wall, etc, etc... and my Smartboard which arrived this year.  Everyday, I choose an image or two to grace the Smartboard when I am not using it for academics.  It has great resolution.  I have displayed Calder wire faces, Eric Carle's joy, Homer, Sargent, Sorolla, today a Paul Rand, illustration... vivid, powerful, deceptively simple genius.   

Seems this winter, now spring, we have seldom seen the sun, and in fact, this mid-week of April, it was dreary and cold and drizzly, and enough is enough.  So, I called on Childe Hassam for a "wow the rain is beautiful" image, and here's what I got.  "Nocturne, Railway Crossing Chicago" from 1892.  Suddenly, the gray day that merges into a gray night, is not so dreary...  I am mesmerized by the silhouettes and tonalism in this quiet watercolor, and spent a little bit of time studying its gracious lines... what a masterpiece.   And, hey, the sun is coming out tomorrow!!

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.