"Sunny Day" 8 x 8 oil on board

The Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for April is "festive". This is my interpretation.  Throughout the months, especially during winter, I will often bring a bundle of sunflowers home from the local grocery and put them in the window.  Each time I pass through the room, I get a little festive zing from their angles, the sun bouncing off the petals, and the reflected light inside and/or beneath them.  Each flower has its own personality.  

I used a photo reference of sunflowers on my porch for this painting; taking what I needed for the design.  Here are some process photos:

Reference photo: you can see how I adjusted the design for this square

Blocking in, laying down the lightest and darkest notes

Added in the background, a cooler, neutralized green; good time to carve out the edges of each sunflower; making sure nothing was too symmetrical

More modeling in the darks, the leaves.  I softened a bunch of edges, added dappled sunlight onto the flower below and the leaves, implying depth.  Looked for areas to push elements behind other elements to create depth, and vibrated color into the center of the top right flower.

As always, thanks for looking. You know I love your comments.  

"Three Cities in Three Days" ink & watercolor 8 x 9 - randomly chosen palette

 

The Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge for January was "3 random colors".  I used watercolor, and blindly pointed at three corners of my watercolor palette, which is arranged by color/temperature.  By aiming at three different areas of the palette, I knew I was getting a bit of variety.  I chose vermilion, sap green, and cerulean (see picture).  My first instinct was to pick again, but I wanted to maintain the integrity of the challenge and learn something.  Here are a few thoughts from this challenge

• None of these colors is very cool, so I needed to adjust my temperature scale
• The most yellow I could achieve was with sap green with a little vermiliion.
• I could make beautiful neutrals, browns, grays, using these three colors. 
• The darkest I could get was a charcoal-ish blue gray but if I pushed it a tiny bit beyond its neutral balance, I was into an orange or green or blue (not really neutral anymore, and not as dark as I wanted.)
• I adjusted my buildings to look a little terracotta colored, so maybe Italy or Spain, based on the colors I could achieve.  
• When I used vermilion on its own, as a color option, it was much too strong and overpowered the other options.  There is nothing in this composition that I wanted drawing your eye that much, so I neutralized all the vermilion I used.
• I enjoyed the challenge, and will randomly choose three colors again to see what happens  

Take a look at all the Girls Just Wanna Paint interpretations of the theme by clicking the link. 

"Garden Painters" oil 8 x 10

I met up with some friends to paint today, maintaining social distance.  It was a treat to paint with some friends, to have conversation and create.  This spot has a building behind it with beds of lilies.  I was most interested in the gathering of women, so painted them.  As you can see in the process photos, I was undecided about the background; leave the building in, take the building out and use a building or two from down the street, take all the structures out.  I opted for the latter.  Thank you for looking, as always.  You know I love your comments.

"Down and Away Below" oil 11 x 14 - and using a wipeout method for block in

The Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for February was "shadow". This is my take on the theme, and image of the New England Aquarium's Myrtle, grande dame of the big tank.  She cast a beautiful shadow on the rocks and plants below. 
You can see my process photos below.  I mixed a ground of neutralized Prussian Blue, Ultramarine an some Cad Red Light, covered the board, evened out with a paper towel.  Then I used a clean brush and clean solvent to wipe away all the light areas. So, I did my initial drawing by wiping away the ground.  If I make an error in drawing, I could just brush over with the ground color and make the needed correction in drawing. Before any painting beyond the ground was done, the painting was in place as you can see here in the first process photo. Most of my work then went into the dark areas, where I adjusted
the temperature and hue. The benefit of this approach is that the values in the darks are already matched.  Each passage of color I put down was designed to match the values already in place.  I did not touch any of the light areas until the very end.  
Thanks for looking.  Feel free to ask me any questions about this block-in method.  
You can see a recent video post on my Instagram which shows the beginning stages of this process in a still life.
A always, thank you for looking.  I appreciate your thoughts. 
By the way, I named this painting after one of my favorite books as a child "Down and Away Below" by Edwin Rols.  Great story about a child, and his ability to dig deep, find bravery, and save his community.

"Jam Jar" oil 8 x 8

The Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for this month was vintage.  Our vintage home is filled with vintage pieces... art, dishes, books, furnishings, etc.  Interestingly, I had a very hard time figuring out where to direct my vintage attentions.  I have always loved faceted silver, and chose this silver pitcher with beaded rim and the crystal jam jar with faceted silver top and spoon.  I picked up some non-vintage raspberry jam as a good complement to the cool silver hues.  The aqua cloth is a remnant from the home where I grew up.  My mother had her mother's loveseat recovered in this beautifully textured fabric.  Mom had the piece in her studio and used it as a backdrop for her own still life setups.  When I hold it, I feel the generations.  It was the right choice for a vintage-themed painting. 

Here are some process photos.  I tinted the canvas with a cad red light/cad orange mix, knowing that most of the still life was cool, leaving the opportunity for some warm to peek through.  I then began with the large shapes, adding the highlight early on, knowing I would need to back all other values down at least a half value to let the highlight glow.  I warmed the jam under the light, and cooled it in shadow.  Then, made a late pass, remembering that the glass needs to show what is in it, on it, and through it.  
As always, thank you for looking, and you know I love your comments.   

 

"Longfellow in October" oil 16 x 12

The Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge topic for last month was "October Sky".  Sitting in traffic the other day, along Storrow Drive, I looked left and saw the iconic Longfellow Bridge late in the day framed by the Storrow Drive overpass and the autumn trees.  Beautiful.  You can see some process photos here as well.  I laid in an orange ground to add some glow through the painting. It was interesting to consider skyholes both in the trees and through the bridge itself.  I liked the combination of vertical shapes in the trees and the skyline, along with the sense of "up" conveyed by the overpass.  Boston is a lovely town, elegance in many directions.
As always, thank you for looking.  

Day 720 "Bare Trees" 9 x 11 ink with pastel

Exploring shapes from the local trees at night.  I painted a rectangle of ink, then applied pastel on top leaving the tree shapes behind.  I added the moon, and some moonlight in the sky radiating out; then softened the edge of the trees.
I am interested in these beautiful shapes.  As always, thank you for looking. You know I love your comments.

Day 608 "Royal Escort" - remembering a beautiful day

The theme for this month's Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge is "fashion".  As soon as I began to ponder, last year's royal wedding jumped into my head.  I remember the morning, setting the alarm to watch all the pageantry, and to listen to all the commentary about the thoughtfulness that went in to the ceremony, including honoring Diana. I remember that Meghan Markle walked half way down the cathedral alone, followed by a cadre of adorable children, and then was met by Prince Charles for the remainder of the walk, a couple of meaningful statements.  Bottom line, I loved it. This is my value study for a painting I am putting together.  I took the photo from my television during the festivities.  This is my six hundred eighth daily drawing. Thank you, as always, for looking.

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 455 "Safe Passage" gouache on paper 12 x 12

The Girls Just Wanna Paint Challenge for this month is the theme "passage".  Usually, I think about the theme, and I wind up with several ideas and mental pictures from which to choose.  But, "passage" had me a bit flummoxed.  I thought about Bible passages (I'm no expert, and didn't want to illustrate a narrative), then about passages to other places as in the "The Secret Garden", then about "rites of passage" in life... but still, no interesting visuals came to mind.  Then, I began searching for images of "safe passage". I discovered an organization called Safe Passage, originating in the Chicago area. It involves Chicago Police-trained volunteers providing a safe passage for students to and from school in neighborhoods where violence is the norm.  This model has expanded to other cities as well.  I explored several design ideas for presenting the Safe Passage volunteer as a barrier to violence.  You can see the designs below.  

From the beginning, my idea was not to present the guard completely, but as an obstruction between any violence and the stream of children behind.  As a teacher, this research was a good reminder for me, how much many children deal with before they even arrive in a classroom seat.   The Safe Passage model has expanded to a number of cities.  Glad to see it. 
Thank you for looking. 

Day 379 "Arts Walk" 5 x 9 pen&ink

Today was the Hingham Arts Walk, a beautiful fall event during which artists are  on the street, and in many of the businesses and galleries, showing and/or creating their art.  My Girls Just Wanna Paint group gathered to paint in the round at the community center.  Though we paint to a theme each month, we rarely paint together as a group.  It was lots of fun, with tons of visitors.  We painted around a still life in the center of the table, lit almost from the top.  Each of us has a 
 different style so the paintings each have a different feel.  I began by washing in the shadow areas, then painted into the shadows, holding back on the light areas until the last half hour or so.  My finished painting will be posted later, after I tweak it a little bit.  
This is my three hundred seventy-ninth daily drawing. I enjoyed doing a quick sketch of today's event, and enjoyed the event immensely.  Thanks for your continued interest. 


 

"Incoming Tide" watercolor & ink 9 x 9

One of my favorite spots on Monhegan Island is Christmas Cove.  It is on the southern tip of the island.  You can walk past Lobster Cove, where the trail then begins to ascend along the coast.  Rather than heading up the cliff on the way to Gull and Burnt Rocks, I head away from the trail and sit out on the rocks overlooking Christmas Cove.  There is a spot where the tide comes in around both sides of a rock formation, creating a tide pool.  I love to sit in this space.  The island is behind me.  In front is only these rocks, the waves, and the sea.  I love sitting in this spot, all senses activated, surrounded by salt, the sea, and my thoughts.  
One year, as I sat and painted, two young-ish (younger than I but not young young) men walked past me to the tide pool and jumped in to swim.  One of them was obviously familiar with the spot, and had done it before.  It is a very active pool, with waves coming in from both sides, but if you catch it right, I supposed on an incoming tide so the water is slightly warmed by the recently exposed rocks, it would be refreshing.  The pool has rocks on its south side which keep the incoming tide at bay for a while.  These rocks always remind me of a book I loved as a child called "Down and Away Below" about a young boy who saved his South Pacific village when the rocks providing a barrier for their lagoon from predatory fish  broke away. 
So, this is my painting for the Girls Just Wanna Paint July theme of "anxiety".  I have not been able to visit my favorite spot on the island since 2016.  Last summer I was diagnosed with bone on bone knee arthritis and walking was very hard, let alone climbing out onto the rocks.  I could hear the wave crashing down there, and longed to sit and watch.  This summer, I have a new knee in training.  I was determined to make the walk out among my favorite rocks, and very anxious that my new knee wouldn't make the trek, or would make it and not want to climb back up the rocks and hill to the village and our rented home.  All worked out, I sat in my favorite spot, absorbed the atmosphere... and plan to get there again this week before we go.  

Day 239 "Morning Color" mixed 8 x 9

Each morning I sit on our porch with my coffee and fill my senses with the sounds, smells, and sights of our yard.  The sun pours through the trees from the east, birds are busy among the flowers, and our gold fish pond bubbles away.  This week, these small iris popped open.  They last briefly, but are so beautiful.  In the morning, they are backlit by the sun, and they sparkle against the green blue of the shaded trees.  That was a challenge to capture, but I laid in the yellow and green in watercolor, then the purple/pink of the iris.  Then I ramped up the darkness of the green blue with a series of colored pencil layers, darkened the yellow with pencil and added some yellow pastel in and among the greens.  
This is my two hundred thirty-ninth daily drawing.  It is my take on the theme "home" for our Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge for the month of May.  Click through the link to see all our takes on the theme "home".  Thank you for looking at the world through my eyes. 

"Luxury of Time" oil 8 x 16

The Girls Just Wanna Paint theme for December was "luxury".  I painted the heirlooms I keep gathered atop my inherited grandmother's desk.  It is my vacation week, so I have the luxury of the time to paint, and the luxury of examining these beautiful items one by one.  The blown glass lamp was my mother's dresser lamp.  I have always loved it.  There are three photographs, the first is my mother sitting atop her dad's shoulders at the beach when she was about eight years old.  Next is a small oval photo of my Dad's mother and my Dad when he was about a year old.  She is wearing a jaunty straw hat and is beaming with love at this little boy.  Then, there is a photo of our daughter as an infant, in an antique silver frame.  The larger clock is a french china clock I inherited from Mom. She had it on a special shelf in our living room, and told me that she had admired it as a young girl in a great aunt's home. The great aunt told her it would someday be hers.  When the great aunt died, my understanding is that my grandmother met with her cousin and told her that the great aunt intended Joanne to own the clock.  A disagreement began, but when they opened the back of the clock, there was a note saying it was to be Joanne's.  It now lives on my desk, and I love it.  The last item is a cherub clock from my other grandmother's in Scranton, PA.  I always loved it... and my mother didn't.  But, I am a firm believer (as I've said here before) that many thing are so tchotchke that they cross over into elegant and beautiful.  Hanging behind the desktop is an oil painting my mother painted through the windows of the villa where she lived in Florence, Italy for a year while earning her Masters of Fine Arts in painting.  The frame of the Florence painting behind the objects provides a strong design element.
I am thrilled to have the time to paint.  And, interestingly, I used my drawing from Day 88 as my reference for the painting, and the colors I retained in my head from when I drew them.  I did not look at the items themselves.  Read my blog post from yesterday for an explanation of how I used turpentine to block in the painting by wiping away the light areas.  

Block in using wiping out method

Thank you for taking the time to look at my work.  I appreciate your comments.

"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.

"Zinnias" oil 12 x 12

Was thrilled to join my Girls Just Wanna Paint group at the Hingham Arts Walk.  We set up a still life in the middle of the room, top lit so no one had light in their eyes.  We formed a circle around the center and each painted our take on some beautiful zinnias.  Lots of visitors came through the door to watch our demo, and hang out.  It was a great day.

"Daisy Patch" oil 12 x 9

The theme for this month's Girls Just Wanna Paint challenge was "daisy".  I found a cool little patch of daisies nearby, and was just as interested in the depth of blue greens between and around the flowers themselves.  I decided to paint over an old still life study from years ago, thinking the underlying reds and oranges would work well with harmony of the daisies in the patch.

Here's the still life, to the left, placed vertically in my easel.  I began by blocking in the flowers in an arrangement that looked appealing, asymmetrical, yet balanced.  I added some stems, some stems to nowhere, and a few buds for balance.  After the stems and leaves were added, I completed the background with a variety of blues and greens, leaving some of the warmth of the original painting, which implies the warm dark spaces beneath the flowers where the sky can't reach.  

Check out the rest of the Girls Just Wanna Paint images for the month here.  Thanks for looking.

Thayer Skyline and Current Exhibition

What a wonderful show opening tonight at Thayer Academy in Braintree.  Lots of friends (and new friends) came out to say hello. Lots of laughs and good conversation.  The show is hanging through December 18th; hope you'll come by to the Gallery in the first floor of the Southworth building.

And, here is my completed "Thayer Skyline"  11 x 14; hanging in the show.