5"x6.5" colored pencil, graphite, acrylic, acrylic medium on Yupo Price $50
Today it is chilly and rainy and really feels like fall. Hurricane Harvey has gently moved up the coast to New England and is giving us a soaking rain. There is a tinge of color in the mountain landscape. Hopefully we will still have some sunny warm weather, but the inevitable is on its way. I don't mind change, and if I could choose anywhere to be in this season change, it would be my backyard. Vermont is so lovely in the fall and hiking and camping are at their best. Today though, I went swimming indoors and am going to a movie later on. My swimming has changed as well. I am having shoulder issues so I am trying to perfect that underwater dolphin kick I noticed when watching the Olympics, not using my arms, but my torso and legs. Change happens all the time. My mom was an optimist and I learned so much from her about how to roll with the punches and accept change, throughout my childhood and even in the process of her death. I chose to focus this September's 30 in 30 painting challenge on the little baby shoes created the year I was born. They represent change for me, and make an interesting subject for still life painting. It is hard to look at my size 10 feet and imagine that once they fit into shoes just like these...maybe, even this pair. Weirder things have happened...Go Figure!
I do very few acrylic paintings; this is one of them. It was such a beautiful day, and although the colors weren't at peak, it was still unbelievably glorious.
Tuesday, November 8, 2016
There is a bit of a glare on the photo. Don't you just love the colors of fall? I snapped a photo of these mums and pumpkins at the Champlain Orchards when I went apple picking with my neighbor, her 4 year old son, and her mother from Romania. I might also say for the record that they are the best neighbors ever and we are all excited about the soon to arrive addition to their family. I painted this loose and it has a a bit of a jigsaw puzzle look that I like.
Orange and Blue are complementary colors. Complements can be a subject for a painting as they tend to create an energy when they vibrate with each other. I loved the look of the Patty Pan squash (also known as white scalloped squash) with the orange vase and pumpkin. A few black eyed Susans confirms the season.
Wrong time of year, but I have been wanting to do this painting for a while. The beauty of painting from photos is that you can capture the image any time you want. Also, there is the advantage of not having to haul an easel, paints, etc., etc., around with you. The disadvantage is in not being there in the changing light with the sounds of nature and wind and breathing in the beauty of the experience. When I paint from photos, I use them as inspiration and almost always change them by adding things or subtracting or rearranging. I am grateful to feel confident to do this now. When I first started oil painting I was a bit nervous about adding or subtracting. Now it part of what I look forward to. It is the exciting part. The setting of this painting is a local sugarhouse. I will let you use your imagination to guess what I changed about it.
Gourd Painting acrylic
I also painted this gourd, which I will now varnish. It is about 15" tall. I did one last year and I really like painting these, so I might make an effort to get more. They are gooseneck gourds which is why I painted it like a weird bird. The design was inspired by my love for my family with symbols which give a nod towards some of the things we love doing together.
The beauty of childhood is that a little girl sees the shape of the apple tree and the abundance of sweet fruit and spontaneously dances with it! True story. It is my granddaughter and we had such a lovely day picking apples and eating lunch on a blanket in the shade. I hope your day is filled with little dances of joy!
This was a commission I did a while back. It was challenging because I was working from numerous photos that each only showed a part of the house and none directly from the front. Also I created the autumn atmosphere because there were lovely deciduous trees around the property. This house has been in their family for generations and they graciously sent me a very early rendition in a folkart style where all the trees had been cut down to build the house and barns.
This is loosely based on a lovely photo by Lowell Klock who is a member of the art group I am in. She graciously offered several photos for our group to interpret with paint. I loved the photo she took, and I also saw in it a way to paint it quite differently from the source photo.
I passed this guy picking apples for the deer and immediately saw a painting. The background was originally a cool blue of a house, but it just didn't work so I warmed it up with yellow and really liked that.
We had a spectacular fall in the NE and then had a huge wind storm. One day I looked out the window and saw the leaves blowing across the back yard and wanted to capture what I saw from memory. I spend a few moments studying the big pieces of composition and note the values and colors. The blue of the sky and water are much less colorful in the painting...more of a whitish gray with a tint of blue.
I tried this for a 3 color challenge for Daily Paintworks. I used blue, yellow and red. It really was a challenge for me and I so wanted to throw in some other colors or even more shades of the three I chose. You could also use white and black and I did use white but not black. I like it better after coming back to it. There is a lot of texture. It is a grouping of barns near where I live A couple of years ago they painted the traditional red barn a deep yellow. Actually it is more of an ochre color but I chose cad. yellow light, so it is a brighter tone than the real barn. I love that you can make up your own world when painting and sincee we can't compete with the real one, we might as well!
Nature plays out her drama in vivid colors in this early fall foliage pageant. I was going to call it "Dressed In Red" but really this is one of those perfectly staged scenes put together by naturally occurring elements plus a few chairs!
First some complaining...I had a really hard time getting good photos today as everything has a glare. I am re-doing, fixing up, or repainting some things I have previously done. Although I don't necessarily solve all the problems, I am learning a ton from the exercise and am much happier with the results. Some artists just stop when it isn't working and start a new painting, but I tend to prefer to work on it until I apply enough of what I know to make it work out satisfactorily, at least to my current standards. Hopefully the bar will go up in my expectations over time. This is from one of our gorgeous lakes in a state park and now I don't think it is all washed up!
This was a challenge for our art group for this month. We are having a meeting later this month and will share our results. It is from the center of the crossroads in Chittendon, VT. Like so many Vermont towns, it is a lovely community made up of crossroads and various roads winding through the mountains. One of the coolest PK-8 community schools is located here. It is an old school built in 1933 that has been added to in an architecturally consistent way, maintaining its charm. It has a fabulous playground that has a premier view of the surrounding mountains. I think the kids must adore playing in this environment.
I called this one "Lost and Found" because it is another resurrected painting from my box of failures. I do think that failures or wipe-outs are good educational tools but it is also fun when I can salvage them. I originally painted this plein air but it didn't have any punch which was so disappointing because it was such a lovely place to paint on a cool, but sunny day. This has a nice play of tight and loose which is nice. I am not very good at painting architectural features accurately and also with a fresh looseness mainly because I can't draw a straight line. Have you ever heard that phrase?
I decided I needed to thin out my loser box. That is where I put paintings that just aren't right and make me uncomfortable. Using a razor blade I scraped off edges of the brushwork that showed. I did this instead of sanding to reduce dust, and breathing toxic chemicals. Then I painted a solid color over them. A few of the paintings I decided had good enough starts to try and resurrect them, and this was one. Originally I painted it plein air (outside on the spot) but I finished it in the studio letting the painting tell me what to do, instead of looking at a reference photo. I am pretty happy actually with the results. It is a small church in a beautiful and picturesque town in southern Vermont. It is for sale by auction on Daily Paintworks. Click to bid on the button under the image.
After
not painting for days, I did a complete wipe-out painting. It may also
have had to do with the fact that I have been doing only watercolors for
the last 5 weeks. So I had to get back on the horse and I did this
little "Panorama" with limited brushwork, to warm up, and I really liked
the muted foreground. Not something I would normally do.
4"x6" oil
Almost
everyday I drive these mountains and am filled with their beauty, but I
am also busy driving, so, although simplified, this is the impression on
a cloudy day of the autumn colors changing the landscape. But beyond
the heavy layer of clouds is a blue sky.
