Overcast Brant Rock Dawn

I got an early start this morning pulling into a small parking area overlooking Brant Rock by 6:30 am.   It was a mild morning - about 40 degrees with thick cloud cover.   I've come to appreciate the beauty of a cloudy day.  The water and sky hinted at shades of green, blue and pink.   It takes very little chroma to prepare the paint needed to capture the day accurately.  The tide was especially low revealing a lot of dark rocks, a nice contrast to the pale, gray day.

Stepping back I could focus back and forth between the scene and my canvas to compare values and color.   The painting came together quickly, which was good because it was damp and cold.  It's February so it could have been a lot colder, but with no sunshine and standing still, I became too cold to stay long....pretty lame, huh?

Cloudy February Morning at Brant Rock

I'm satisfied that the result shows the experience.  I saw a grayish mist over everything.  It felt good to be outside painting in the chill.   I thought about the extra low tide timing working out well to produce a painting with good contrast.   If it had been high tide, I would certainly have framed a different scene. 

It was one unique morning never to be repeated in exactly the same way ever again - and a painting to prove it.

Valentine Roses

My wonderful husband sends me red roses every Valentine's Day.   There is no obstacle too great that roses will not reach me on this special day.   One year, I was in Japan on business on Valentine's Day and did not expect any roses.   I was wrong.   I returned to my room to find roses, some red and some pink.   I later found out that my husband had called a Tokyo florist to order them, and amid language difficulties, ordered all the remaining red roses they had (eight), along with the remainder in pink.   Yes, I know how lucky I am!

I have enjoyed this year's roses for several days now, and decided to create a still life with some of them before they finally drooped and shriveled.   I mixed up some bright piles of red, greens and gold, a welcome sight after working on snowscapes for almost four weeks.

I cut three roses to size for my set up and grabbed a fat old water pitcher.   I played around with the set up deciding on the arrangement to the left.   I placed my spotlight in front of the set up which I think created a more dramatic light.   I grabbed a canvas that had been a painting of pink roses in a previous life.  Even after toning, the previous painting's rose shapes and bumps were still ghosting through.  I liked that.

The initial sketch revealed that this would be a larger than life painting.   I struggled throughout, but it was a good learning process.   Part of my problem was that the underpainting was not dry enough and my bright beautiful piles of red, green and gold were getting muddied by the dark underpainting.   The size of this painting is 18 x 24 inches, and I worked on it for about four hours.



Gold Pitcher Red Roses - 10 Minutes



Once you have painted something, you know it well, so I decided to grab a smaller canvas and repeat the painting and only spend a few minutes on it.  I love the look of loose, messy florals - I just don't paint that way right now....well, that is, until this one...  



Paintings of Epic Proportions - Part 4

It's part four, but not the final chapter. 

It is the third week of February and still no snow.  Moreover, there is none in sight, specifically it will be mid fifties for the next 3 days.  

I worked on the Newfane Common tree shadows as planned.  The shadows are a warm, middle value blue.  The shadows are darker and crisper closer to the source of the shadow, the trees, and they get fuzzier and lighter the further it is from the source.   I know this; I observe it in my photos;  I worked to execute them that way.   I'm not completely satisfied because the shadows do not seem dark enough.

Two VT Snowscapes - 90% Complete

Its time to let them cure.   As I stated before, if it snows this year, I will resurrect the project.   If not, I will just wait until next winter.   I always enjoy coming back to an initial effort for the second round of updates, and when the time is right, these mega canvases will be calling to me.

Paintings of Epic Proportions - Part Three

For the last two days, I worked on the Newfane, VT town common painting.  If you have read the prior posts on this project, you know that I have two large canvases in my studio side by side.  They are becoming what I hope will be a compatible pair of winterscapes.  One painting has morning sun and one features late afternoon sun.

In my last post I described the one on the left which is me hiking up Mount Putney in Vermont on a beautiful January morning a couple of years ago.   I noted that the color temperature scheme was warm light, cool shadows.  This post is about its companion painting, Newfane, VT town common.

The painting on the right is late afternoon, and the color temperature scheme is cool light, and warm, blue shadows.   Information on the topic of color temperature is not plentiful on the web. I have not been able to find enough reference information from experienced artists about this scheme, so I am forced to trust my own eyes.   I know many of us in New England are almost giddy about the fact that we have escaped winter's fury this year, however, I need some snow to verify my color scheme!  I suppose I could load the 30x48 inch canvas into my backseat and start driving north until I see some snow.  I'd rather take a chance and wait around here to see what Mother Nature can do.   She never usually fails to send a mighty Nor'easter at some point during our winters.

Putting the snow issues aside, I added the Newfane Common trees this week.  I had already had added the shadows of the trees early in the painting without the actual trees.   I think this was a mistake.   I have been struggling to retain these disconcerting shadows in the common snow for some strange reason.   I typically rough in shadows early, but in the case of this painting and the delayed addition of the trees, it has not been a good idea.

Adding the trees took some courage because it meant painting over the finished sky with bold, dark branches. I began with the tree that splits the sun in half.   I saw that the sun is so bright that it washes out the branches that pass right in front of it, so I painted it that way.   This sunny tree is the furthest tree from me on the common, so I use very little color and basically trace in the varied branches.   The next closest tree is the one on the sunny tree's left.   I warm up my tree bark color slightly.  I continued working each tree moving left, adding more and more burnt sienna and more contrast.   The closest tree on the left foreground is darker and more colorful.   Additionally, I added the blue light cast up onto the shadowed side of this foreground tree.  I went back to the sunny tree and applied highlights that depict how the sun is lighting up selected branches.  
The next phase will be to repaint the shadows for the trees.   I've been working on my two winterscapes for three weeks, and it seems much longer.  My goal is to complete both to an acceptable level by the end of this week.   I will then put them out of sight until I see real snow.   The question is, will the sight of real snow be this winter or next?

Paintings of Epic Proportion - Part Two

And the beat goes on...

I continue to work on my two 30x48 inch winterscapes.   My self challenge is to keep working the two paintings simultaneously such that they continue to evolve at the same pace.  

The painting on the left of me hiking up Mount Putney in Vermont has been much more enjoyable and I tend to work on it more.  

What I like about it is - no, not that I am the focal point - but the fact that the morning light is warm and the shadows are cool.   The sunlit snow is a cadmium red/yellow light tinged titanium contrasted with pale pthallo blue, a reflection of the morning sky.   The shadows are cerulean blue/purple cool gradations.   I'm still working on making the shadow colors and values consistent.   The reflecting property of snow results in diffused shadows all the way down the hill.

 I also like that there are three distinct areas of interest, which it good - I think - because this is a very large canvas.   1) The uphill, eastern area to the left has the most contrast, the dark pines, the brightest shine on virgin snow and the many saplings casting shadows down the hill.  2) the tall and thin hiker, leaving footprints behind, but taking her shadow with her, walking up the long snowy path, following skiing tracks to the summit, 3) the downsloped southwestern area to the right, less bright and more wooded with large trees and interesting branch patterns.

In my next post I'll describe my progress and challenges on the other snowscape, which is the Newfane, VT town common.

Painting of Epic Proportions

I have been itching to start a large painting.   Within the last few months, I have painted dozens of canvases, mostly small except for two paintings that were 24"x36.”  The same day I visited the Gardner Museum for its re-opening, I swung up the street and drove by the Boston Dick Blick store, the proverbial candy shop for artists of all kinds.  I told myself that if I could get a parking spot at a meter, I would stop.   As I turned the corner from the Fenway onto Boylston, a car pulled out right in front of me and directly across the street from the Blick Store entrance.  It was meant to be.

Among the items I purchased were two 30x48 inch canvases...wow.   They are 1 3/8 inches deep, triple gesso, on medium weight canvas.   I don’t know if these “heavy duty” parameters matter much, but it sure is exciting to think that they might.   It is probably analogous to the woodworker who goes for the 6x6 post instead of the 4x4 post.  Heavy duty feels better - special.

One week later and the canvases are shouting out to me.   Big canvases mean big decisions, bigger chunks of time and commitment.  Painters are encouraged to create a body of work that has a theme or a recognizable style.   I am just not interested in producing the same subject over and over.  I produced the cranberry series, which was fun and successful, but I'm done with that for now.   I hope that my thick, bumpy trademark texture is recognizable style enough.  Hmmm...what to paint?? 

Finally I decide to start a winterscape since we finally have snow cover after an unseasonably mild November, December and January.      I looked through an old picture folder from a trip to beautiful Newfane, Vermont a couple of years ago.   I found four beautiful shots that my husband took.   The compositions are all are exceptional without any cropping, but I need to convert these images to the dimensions of these 30x48 inch canvases.  

If you want to be bored, continue reading this paragraph.   If a golden rectangle interests you, look it up online and continue with the paragraph.  Thirty by forty-eight inches are Golden Rectangles so I open a Golden Rectangle converter tool on the web.  I use the pixel counts in my picture editor to crop the pictures proportionate to the Golden Rectangle and hopefully creating an exciting design.  As I sized the images, it looked like the four pictures really comprised two very nice complimentary pairs.   I would paint both canvases at the same time.   Wow.  Twenty square feet of blank canvas.  

I used the photos to rough in the compositions.   The left canvas is a morning photo of me walking up Mount Putney.   The snow was so brilliant under a soft yellow and pink winter sun.    The right hand canvas is the Newfane common in front of the columned courthouse late in the afternoon.  The shadows are much deeper and the sky much cooler and bluer.  

This is a project of epic proportion for me.   I am forced to use a step stool to comfortably work the tops of the canvases. Meanwhile, over the past few days a the snowy scene that I had planned on using outside my slider for my value and color reference, is gone.   I continue to work on the structural elements to keep the project moving forward.   I look forward to snow to get a real color reference scheme.   Stay tuned...this will take a while.