Pop Up page on my website. New original 8 x 10 drawings.

Announcing the new Pop Up page on my website, Jody Regan Paints.  You'll find 8 x 10 original drawings based on some of the daily drawings I have been making since October 1, 2017.  These are the first five Pop Ups, more are on their way.  Hope you take a look; thanks in advance.  

"Quiet Cove" oil 12" x 9"

 $125 + $10 S&H  

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 Painting destinations.  Where to go?  Lately I find myself traveling the nearby roads and byways as a quiet meditation in preparation for the next outing.  It's an interesting visual exercise, thinking about light, wind, surf, tide, access, all from the quiet of an armchair. 

When I began painting on site a number of years ago, I would head out to explore with a few uninterrupted hours ahead of me, looking for an alluring spot from which to paint.  As often as not, I'd spend the time driving, and exploring, and never settle anywhere.  Now, I have a mental catalog of places and subjects, coastal interstices, woods, glades, architecture, cityscapes, etc.  Each visual in my cranial catalog is filed with footnotes about parking, seasonal availability, class access vs. solo access, shelter, etc.  I try to make space for a few minutes in this visual meditation each day - quiet, intentional, brain-clearing. 


This week, I added a new destination when I went painting with my friend Nancy Sargent Howell.  We clambered the rocks, and settled into this surprisingly sheltered, glorious spot on the coast during mid-April in New England.  We were both prepared for penetrating wind, and happily found the layers unnecessary.  Lovely day, with lovely company.                                                

"One Truck, Two Truck" start oil 12 x 9"

 My class and I met in our local Scituate Harbor today.  It was gorgeous!  I researched weather, tides, wind direction, and determined that this piece of the harbor would be interesting, sheltered, warm (enough). Okay, some research, and lots of luck.  We moved 25 yards closer to the harbor and the temperature dropped several degrees as the wind picked up.  Some of my students are new to outside, or rusty after a winter indoors.  It can be overly stimulating and my experience is that newer painters will often retreat into the safety of one iconic boat, sitting in profile, or perhaps one building, not that interesting, but "accessible" to the overly stimulated brain looking at a world without edge.   

I encourage the practice of making several thumbnail sketches looking at shapes, and their linking darks, remembering to leave room at the bottom of the painting for the viewer to enter.  As usual, my class amazed me with their intentionality, good humor, intense thinking, and results.  We spread out along the wall and down among the rocks, and were suddenly a part of the local scenery.  I told them all that part of their training is to chat with "their public".  We met moms with babies, grand moms with babies, walkers, bikers, joggers,  a man with a dented canvas at home asking advice on fixing, a man with a lobster who asked if we had a quick sketch artist who might want to draw it.  (Might want to draw a DEAD lobster, by the looks of it).  We gracefully declined.  A few friends stopped by.  We made some new friends, and  a bird on a wire dropped a gift on one painter's hand.  I reveled in that wonderful call gulls make near the water, the sun and salt on my face, and the rich smell of clam dirt at low tide.  Great day, great results.  


This is the beginning of my painting, working title, "One Truck, Two Truck.." I was interested in the boat ramp leading up to the beautiful dory sitting in the lot, and the truck behind.  Several of us painted the truck(s).  Turns out there were several parked adjacent to one another. Their slow exodus was akin to peeling a multi-colored onion.  As a result, each painting with truck had a different color, including silver, red, white, black.  And, just an aside...  when you stand next to the water painting a boat on the land it can be very disorienting.  Each time I looked up for reference on the boat, I looked at the water and couldn't find my boat among those tethered to the pier.   The disorientation was short-lived, but noteworthy.

Great day. Joyful day.  Great day.

Colored Pencils oil 5 x 7

$150 & $10 s&h

I have been playing with color in my studio; trying out some new ideas for the next session of my painting class beginning later this week at North River Arts Society in Marshfield.  I've been having a great time doing a series of small paintings; ideas I'll work on with my students.

I love color; juicy, bold, exciting, joyful color.

Whether high chroma; like "Colored Pencils", or more subtle, or a range of low to high chroma; I enjoy thinking about the color, its relationship to the other passages in the painting; the overall harmony - the entire process.

When I began to paint years ago in my mother's studio; I remember looking at a still life she had set up with lovely ironstone cups,  a sugar bowl and some other neutrals.  Where to begin?  I looked at my limited palette; most of which I still use today - a cool and warm yellow, cool and warm red, cool blue, perhaps a warmer blue, cad orange, cool green and white.  Much like a writer facing a blank page; you have to start somewhere.  You have to do something... so I began mixing and discovered the sheer joy of creating the desired color from the paints on my palette.  There's something about making color that activates the senses; it's obviously visual; but tactile as well.  Very satisfying.  Very. 
 

"Snow Shadows"

Enjoying a quiet week between the holidays before heading back to school in the new year.  We haven't seen more than a token flake or two, happily, on Christmas Day, but it's coming.

I'm working on something larger in the studio; but thought I'd post the view out the front window from a winter past. There is so much warmth in the snowy landscape.  I'll hold that good thought when snow is a reality here this year. 

"Cool" vs "Cold"

Temperature is a challenging concept for some students to grasp.  Initially, or instinctively, warm is red or yellow or orange and cool is blue or green or purple. When you are painting the shadow side of a lemon, or the distant yellow hillside; this simplistic interpretation of warm and cool handcuffs you.  The rest of the time, a lack of understanding of cool vs. cold limits your results and leaves your painting with a lack of sophistication and subtlety as the planes shift.


Take a look at this landscape by Edgar Payne.  I saw it recently on FB posted by Brian Neher in his series of photos "Painters of the Past".  The painting took my breath away.  It is the epitome of "Cool vs. Cold".  The landscape recedes beautifully; yet the range in temperature is very narrow.  The entire painting could be considered warm; with a wonderful variety of "cooled warms".  He cooled the distant hillside showing the atmospheric perspective; and the yellow on the near trees where they are in light and touched by sky is cooler than the yellow inside the same trees.  Wow!  The overall result is a shimmering, hot long view.  Look at the detail  above from the painting.  In the larger painting it reads as the cool distance, but without the closer warms; this is a lovely, warm landscape in its own right.   There are no "cold" cools; just cool warms.  By the way, I love this type of puzzle.

One of the problems I pose my  hard-working students is to paint a still-life composed of all yellow, or all red, or all blue elements. (See the yellow example to the right.) The exercise forces each student into exploring the cools and warms within one color family.  False notes; or unsophisticated notes jump out. We  have a conversation about the color wheel.  When you begin with yellow - cool is everywhere you go.  Sort of freeing, don't you think?

 

Shelf Life 6 x 8 oil

I love my studio; compact, yet mine.  It is filled with things I love to look at, to touch, and just to be around.  I find it visually stimulating; some may find it visually exhausting.  To each his own. I can rationalize any small purchase (see "compact" above) as a still life prop.  

A few years ago; I had a milestone birthday and threw myself a party, ("no gifts, please") to which I invited about 65 people I love, and don't see often enough.  Who can see that many people very often? Do the math....

During the weeks prior, I gathered things from around the house and wrapped them up as my gifts to my friends; sort of a grown up goody bag. Everyone took home something I'd loved for while; and chose to move along.  Bottom line, I like things.  Some, I keep; some I keep for a while.

  "Shelf Life" is the first in a series of small paintings using vignettes of my things as subject matter.  I have enjoyed these two small wooden blocks, sitting jauntily on my shelf, but never painted them.  They are sort of nautical and nostalgic, and have that special patina and warmth that well-used items can have.    The Norman Rockwell postcard, and blocks, and little architectural detail are sitting on the narrow chair rail in my studio. I love the contrast of movement amid stationary objects. My goal was to say as little as possible, while conveying the intimacy of a peacefully perched collection.

More to come.