Still, Still Sunday

about 7x7 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper

The challenges were the same. First challenge:greens. Second challenge, show the light through the reflection in the water. Can you feel the light?

Lush Green River

8x 12 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
Another green one, done off the Chain bridge (that wonderful construction zone/sans the snapping turtle.) Now they have even added cement barricades for a landscape painter's safety! How wonderful!
The green challenge continues.

Now to 4th of July festivities.

Soft Greens

8x8 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper

This was a double challenge. First, there is the "green" challenge (see yesterday's post) and second, initiated by Donna's question, to leave the sky out and let the water tell the story. The overlying desire was to keep it abstract, but yet real.
So where else would I go?????.....of course, the reservoir in summer.

Green All Over

about 9x11 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
Riverbend, yesterday. I am now obsessed with greens. Pulled out the box of Terry Ludwig greens (the 90 green set). What a wonderful selection of neutral greens! Check them out, order and enjoy! There is also a nice set of Maggie Price neutral grays...so yummy. I will have to get them soon.
I finally received my new computer with photoshop cs3; so now I just need to set up everything. How exciting! The new Photoshop is easy to use, just like my old Photoshop 7. Hopefully the photos will show that.

Flat Field

This weekend I left the Shenandoah to zip off to the Delaware Beaches. I was teaching a workshop there for a number of young creative artists. It's always so cool to me to see how fresh eyes view the landscape.
The landscape was beautiful, albeit a complete opposite of the Shenandoah. Flat, flat, flat, which makes the light fall so differently!

Shenandoah Glass

Another one of my crazy moments...I painted this one on a tiny bridge over the Shenandoah River. Truck and cars whizzed by me. There was no sidewalk, but the view was awesome.

Out of my comfort zone/Glazed Morning Field

10 x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart
I have declared many times that I do not like painting structures. But...then again it is always good to get out of your comfort zone and PUSH. Off to the snake river tower........ (my reward for doing a structure.) I love it out here. Did you know they have towns named "Endless" and "Opal"? Talk about evoking images!

Bull-less Field or Melon Moment

10x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart
It's really hard to make the feeling of softness in the grasses. Layers and layers of color with a very warm underpainting was my plan. hmmmmmm.

This field is down at the end of a road that ends at the river. Lowell sent me out there to go to his sister Kay's farm. I met them on Thursday. When I went to the farm I was instructed to walk through the fields to the river. Her husband said not to worry about the bull in the fields. He will just look. Then when I asked, "What if he gets curious?" He replied, "Good, you have running shoes on. Go to the river, bulls don't swim." Now, knowing my recent luck with wild animal sightings I decided I might do better in a Bull-less field.
Everyone here is so nice and helpful. It really is a great place to paint; nice people, beautiful fields and rivers!

Asters and Clover, Over and Over

about 10x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
my set-up by the side of Route 33
The challenge with fields is in creating space, depth without structures. The indicators for this: temperature and color, size (larger mass in front), and stroke size. I love wild, untended fields.
After I finished this painting I left to get something to eat. Upon my return I noticed half of the field was missing! Even in the country the mowers are out working! Arrrrrgh. I guess I have to look for a new field.

Summertime, When the Livin' Is Easy

about 10x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper

I have been traveling a lot this past week, thus the erratic posting. Today I am staying at my friend Domi's place in the Massanutten Mountains. It's quite beautiful. On my way here I stopped to paint in an area off Skyline Drive (Shenandoah Mountains). I just set up my easel and then I had another visit. Not a deer or snapping turtle this time, instead it was ...... an adult black bear (huge). I decided to sing (I'm totally tone deaf). It has worked before as a bear repellent. The bear left, but I decided it might be better to find a new spot. This painting was created down by the Shenandoah River. The heat and humidity are both high, it's a full summer day. I tried to make that feeling- lazy, hot...like that song, "Summertime, when the livin' is easy. Fish are jumpin' and the water is high....." You know. I won't sing it for you.

Thanks Domi for the wonderful stay!

an artist's job/Chincoteague Morning

When looking at a landscape the artist needs to look carefully, take what is hinted at and make it grow into something more beautiful (and imbued with emotion). More importantly, you need to reject whatever does not fit the vision. Sounds easy, eh? Painting is not for the weak.

Color Harmony/Secondary Triad/Riverbend

Recently I have been very involved in my Deer Grazing painting (still unfinished). For it I chose a triad of secondary colors: green, orange, violet. My dominant hue was the orangey gold, but it was a very low chroma palette. Today I decided to employ the same triad but instead of orange, the dominant color was to be violet and I wanted to heighten the chroma as would be natural for the light of the morning. Intention is half the battle. or the battle plan. Next comes the hard work of the soldiers moving according to what the opponent does/or doesn't do.. Without the plan...you can never win.

I am posting 2 different paintings today because I will be traveling tomorrow. See ya on Sunday.

Deer Heaven and Dominant Hue

Yesterday at noon it became obvious that it would rain again soon so I dashed out to a nearby field. It was a slightly muted light..cool but not yet dark. Next I selected my dominant hue then my dominant value. The dominant hue is green and its variations and the dominant value is about a four/five.The earth on an overcast day appears lighter and I had to choose where to ground the viewer in foreground.
I must say the brief experience I had at my field was magical. Not only was it amazingly fragrant, but a young fawn visited me at the easel. Nice.
I am always amazed that is my job!

Color Harmony/Deer Grazing at Sunset in progress

36x36 pastel and watercolor on marble dust gator board
Color harmony is what it is all about, isn't it?. Pre-selecting the palette helps because when you pre-select you are consciously checking the relationships of all those beautiful little pastels or pools of paint. But, it's hard to predict which colors are necessary to make the light. This explains why I must admit to "dipping." Dipping is when I stray from my color selections and visit the full monty (over 2000 pastels) of my drawers. It can also be done by mixing new colors, not in the "plan." Those things happen all the time because, as artists, our true master is the painting, so we only answer it it.
In this painting I strayed, then I needed to return to checking the shadows and lights throughout the painting and make certain they are appropriately warm and cool. My light in this one is warm, so the shadows are cool...but with warmth. Therefore I can't use blue without warming it up with red..or yellow. At one point I had blue in and it had a neon like vibration-yipes and yuck.
A golden orange is my dominant hue and all else bows to it...note all the neutrals. While I have placed greens they have been greyed or it creates a kind of chaos.
What's funny about creating color harmony is it's not what you think.....you look and look and the colors it takes to make come from hard work.

Sorry for the bad jpeg..tilt the screen and it gets a little better. :-l Computer nightmares recently...lost my photoshop 7, lost my website..... long story...new computer on order.

Deer Grazing at Sunset/unfinished

"As painter....we must always remember that our precious poetic visions and spiritual insight will remain forever locked within us until we can boil them down to a complex arrangement of a few hundred strokes or possibly even thousands of brushstrokes." Richard Schmid

Inch by inch this one has been creeping out of the marble dust board. Plein air painting has the vision before you. From that image you make your own. In this painting I am working more like the way George Inness did. I saw the vision, but now it is just me and the board with nothing but the vision to guide me (unlike plein air). It's hard. Poetic visions,...hmmmmm, are supposed to appear easy, like they just slid off you like water on a duck's back ....... This one has been scrubbed, sprayed, scratched, painted, and hundreds of layers of pastel... It still has more to go. Let's see who wins.....or finds peace.
I swear it's the best job in the world.

Looking for Rain and Plein Air War Stories

about 12 x16
They have closed one lane (the one closest to the edge/east side) of Chain Bridge for construction.....they might as well sent me an fancy invitation. Yipee! I arrived early so it was just me and the morning traffic. Talk about being on display...yipes! Well one unexpected guest all of a sudden appeared. Who, you ask? A snapping turtle! The construction crew hadn't appeared yet and the turtle was heading straight for me. (Ever see the neck on one of those prehistoric beasts?) Needless to say it was hard to concentrate and I was worried that the turtle would head out into traffic or take a chomp out of me. So I took one of those big orange and white plastic barrels that they use to stop traffic and tricked the turtle into going inside. Once he was inside...voilah! I scooped him up and transported him to a safe place under the bridge.
Now, I could finally concentrate. Back to trying to paly my "A game"..I had an audience after all!

Light through the Chute

6x6 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
Today I decided I would purposefully play my "a game." This means I would stick with my small painting no matter what until all the issues I could see were completed to satisfaction. I chose a hard view, one that would be confusing. Keeping a consistent readable light was my goal. Hmmm...back to the studio.

Swimming with George

8x8 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper

I have been reading George Inness Writings and Reflections on Art And Philosophy. WOW!
I feel as if I have been swimming in his words.Here is a most potent quote. He says it best.
In an interview George Inness was asked, "What is it that the painter tries to do?"

His reply: "Simply to reproduce in others minds the impression which a scene made upon him. A work of art does not appeal to the intellect. It does not appeal to the moral sense. Its aim is not to instruct, not to edify, but to awaken an emotion. the emotion make be one of love, of pity, of veneration, of hate, of pleasure, or of pain; but it must be a single emotion, if the work has unity, as every work should have, and the true beauty of the work consists in the beauty of the sentiment or emotion which it inspires. Its real greatness consists in the quality and the force of this emotion. Details in the picture must be elaborated only enough fully to reproduce the impressions that the artist wishes to reproduce. When more than that is done, the impression is weakened or lost, and we see simply an array of external things which may be cleverly painted, and may look very real, but which do not make a artistic painting. The effort and the difficulty of an artist (sic) is to combine the two, namely. to always make his thoughts clear........

These thoughts are helping me as I struggle through a new big painting. Even though the idea stated last September, I began with this small version in May and then moved to a 36x36 marble dust board. Little by little the scene is revealing itself. I will post it this week.

Painting and Poetry

8x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
After chatting with other artist friends (nearby and blogger) I have been reflecting on the act of painting and how it relates to poetry. In another post this month I said that I wished I could compose sonnets. Many people wrote back that the painting was a sonnet. Hmmmmmmmm. I guess they are all right. Painting is very much like a sonnet, we painters simply have different tools. Instead of words and meter we have color and mark (stroke). Using our tools we create beautiful escapes and evoke feeling.

This morning the river was awesome. I stood and gaped for so long that a curious squirrel crawled right up to me and sat in my bag! Oh...I really do love my job, my vocation.

Morning Near Riverbend

about 8x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
Before I say anything else I want to thank all my subscribers, followers, commentors and browsers for taking the time to check in on my art. It means a lot to me. Daily we artists create in a vacuum of sorts. Just to know someone likes to look is a comfort. THANKS!
Next, a couple of days ago Brian E. had asked me a question like,"do I feel more inspired after a competition?" I said I would get back to him. Well, after thinking, I know the answer.It goes like this...... Last night I watched the Red Sox/Yankees game. I have been an avid Sox fan since childhood and one thing I know about these particular games is, because of the long held rivalry between the teams, the game is intense and both teams play their" A game." Well, it's just like painting. When it's a competition I paint my "A game." What that means is I pay attention to each component (value, color, edge, composition, temperature, mood, etc.) that I know I should, just like I do in a studio piece. I realized that en plein air I can sometimes not "finish" a painting to its best possible end. I will reason with myself..."well, it's just one of my vitamins (one a day.)" What an awful confession! I guess the moral to the story is I need to be on my "A game" as much as possible.

River Lace

6x6 pastel and watercolor on marble dust board

AH....the river, my love. If I could write sonnets I would.

Rose Colored River

8x8 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper

Another one from Riverbend. It's funny how the river appears pinkish when the when the light hits the muddy river. This view was soooooo confusing which actually made it easier. No drawing just shapes.

If you are a plein air painter or collector please take a moment to take this survey from the old Plein Air magazine- www.pleinairmagazine.com
Hopefully it will resurface.

Daybreak thru Fog

8x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
This morning was the Riverbend Plein Air event . It finally stopped raining after 3 days of rain. The river was full and muddy. The light was quiet. I began about 6:00 am and after much deliberation headed out to one of my favorite spots. It was actually so muddy beside the river that it was slippery.
I made tiny strokes of warm and cool colors sparkle together at the tip of the island, while large swaths of color stretch acroos the mass of trees and water. One area holds all the mystery. I liked it .....the judge didn't.....oh well. Next time.
This is the best photo I could get on the spot...sorry.

Tip of the Island

8x10 pastel and watercolor on Uart paper
It's raining outside...which is one of my favorite weather conditions to paint. I parked myself under a dense tree with my humongous umbrella. First question : why did you choose this spot? Answer, I loved the place where the warmer, close mass of trees (the island) meets the far away land. Make certain that area has the detail. Refrain from uniformity of detail. The chant still is warm/ cool, dark /light. It took forever for the watercolor to dry, so I dove in a little early. It taught me a new way of utilizing slightly damp pastel:-)

Riverbend B&W Sketches

the path near adjoining trails
view 2
field to the river/glow of river in distance

The Riverbend Plein Air Paintout is this weekend. Riverbend is one of my favorite places to paint. Quiet, birds singing, field and river....what more could a girl want? I feel so lucky that it is the location for a paint-out. This year I have decided to approach it differently. I know the landscape at Riverbend intimately. But when it is a competition I become very nervous. So this time I have been not only doing my warm up color studies, but also black and white sketches so that I can establish a strong composition in my head, before even arriving on site. Having your painting in you head is soooo important. Here are a few sketches. Which do you prefer?