Once Again...

'Passages' 16x16 Oil Plein Air

I Haven't Posted On......

....this blog, my website, FB or Instagram in well over a year.  Nothing.  It has felt good but it may be time to return.  

I needed some time off and some creative privacy, I guess.  I kept painting, studying and even taught a few courses but I was tired of media.  Still am, but decided it was time to share again and see if I could change the terms of engagement.  No, I don't yet know what that means other than not taking it seriously, despite what the online marketers recommend.

In the interim a few changes I hadn't expected crept in.  Being trained mostly by Sergei Bongart's teaching assistants I once used a color palette of up to 18 hues.  Over the years that number shrank slowly until around 2005 it was down to 9 colors, a split primary palette with a couple 'kickers'.   It is interesting and significant that the number kept going down.  I'm now at 3 tubes of color plus white.  I keep a standard primary palette of a red, a yellow and a blue in differing temperatures and saturations.   I will switch out one or more of those hues when I think it's appropriate or when I want a challenge or just to see what happens.  The number still stays at three colors.

Both of these plein air pieces use the same palette except for the blues, one done with Ultramarine Blue and the other Prussian Blue ('Passages', 16x16 PB and 'Morning in the Gardens', 10x20 UB at Battle Point Park).  I'm really rather amazed at the variety of colors that can be achieved and the subsequent color harmony.

A couple of things that sort of happened at the same time in terms of materials also helped re-enthuse me to paint and explore.  I'll talk about those next time.

 'Morning in the Gardens', 10x20, Oil, Plein Air

Thanks for looking.  Come back again.

 

Lilies of the Evening, 12x12

This is my....
.....second attempt to paint this group.  I had tried it a few evenings before and bombed (see below) so came back a few nights later for another shot at it.  I think that if I counted there would be about half the number of lily pads represented here that were actually there.  As it was I was going cross-eyed trying to sort out an interesting view.

Here is the painting from before...sorry about the glare on it....and the resulting panel which was repurposed for this one.  I've found that some panels/canvases have to painfully learn what it is they are supposed to do.  Sometimes it takes multiple attempts for one to begin cooperating.

Of course that's a bad joke, but it feels like truth sometimes.  I have panels with five wiped off paintings leftovers underneath.

Thanks for looking!

Evening Waterlilies, 12x24

As I was leaving the pond....

.....after painting the last one, I noticed a glow start to form across the water as the sun was moving toward night.  With that in mind I began this one a few days later around five o'clock and hoped that if I worked quickly there would be enough light to finish.  

At 6:30 it was difficult to see the darker passages and judge the color balance so I packed up.  Fortunately I found it pretty much finished when I got home and could see it in good light.  There were only a few spots that had to go darker, but they were easy adjustments.  

Three blues (Ultramarine, Pthalo, Cerulean Hue), two yellows (Cad Yel Pale, Alizarin Yellow) Cad Orange, three reds (Cad Red, Indian Red, and Rose Madder deep) and, although I don't usually use it but did selectively and very limited in this one, raw umber.  Three brushes: a nondescript 3/4" flat, a rigger and a very cheap Simply Simmons 1/2" flat watercolor brush I swiped from my gouache kit.  Most of it was with the last one.  Done on a gessoed hardboard, 12x24.

I'll try to get out again this week to do another.  These flowers don't last long and "If not now, when?".

Thanks for looking.

Reflection, 10x15

Last Wednesday....
....I spent a lovely few hours around this small pond with a couple of painter friends.  They were painting over on the other side and the sound of their voices talking softly came across the water mingling with the quacking of ducks and the splash of Canada Geese.  It was mesmerizing to hear that and be able to look at the push and pull of the lily pads on top of the moving reflection of the trees.

This is an oil painting done on birch panel and needed very little in the way of retouching when I got home.  Just some picking out the fluff of the poplar cotton and seeds as they floated down on me and the paint.  I didn't need to do much redesigning of the scene either.  It's nice when things go easily.

Thanks for looking.

I'll be back.

June's Battle at the Point, 12x24

One day last Spring.....
.....two artist friends called to say they were out painting and to show up if I was interested.  I went.  I found them under a tree 'for shade' and next to the restroom 'for the obvious' but with challenging subject matter to paint.  Like, nothing within half a block but fields.  Since I enjoy their company I stayed and did my best to find something, anything, for inspiration.

Well, you are looking at it.  We live in/near a temperate rainforest.  There is a lot of green.  Sixty to one hundred foot walls of the stuff.  So this became my 'Walls of Green' challenge.

No unusual premixed tube colors, just your normal red, yellow and blue in warm and cool versions of each, so the mixing had to be inventively done.  I don't remember doing any pre-drawing on this one.  Seat of the pants all the way.

Here is the first version of this that was headed for the scrape pile but I let it sit for a couple months in the corner of my studio staring at me like our cat in that irritating way when she wants to be fed:

Eventually I thought that it was too much in my face, demanding of attention.  I changed it to make a softer painting with a greater feeling of distance in it.  It still may not have arrived.  I'm actually posting it because when things get posted prematurely I tend to get upset and will arrive at a solution much faster than if I just sit around with it staring at me in the studio.  Besides, now at least you can see the crows.  

I tell my students that some paintings demand a chicken.  Perhaps, like Billy Collins says in one of his poems, it needs

"anything with cows, especially if they are standing

in a stream, their large, vacuous faces

staring into the warm, nineteenth century afternoon."

It's an idea.

Thanks for looking.  Back later...