"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.

"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.