Trying Other Methods

For the most part I'm an alla prima painter. I like to work wet in wet and finish quickly, blending as I go. I had some time on my hands recently and decided to try an older method where an underpainting is applied using a greenish tone and lead white is mixed with the green to paint the lights and halftones. It's important to identify the darks early and try to maintain them. I suppose you can use a drying agent like Liquin to speed up the process but I didn't.

I ended up painting some of the warm colors into the lead white mixture when it was wet, which is  not what I was supposed to do. If I try it again I'll use a drying solvent.

Here are a few progress images and the final, which I was pretty happy with. Why did I attempt this? Because I visited a museum a couple weeks ago and noticed that all the paintings I really liked had the red-green complimentary color scheme going on, and the green was very visible in the shadows.

I used a photo for my painting but this method was used extensively in the 16th and 17th centuries from life. Yeah- they didn't have camera back then. :)

Fall Painting

FALL COLOR

9x12 oil on canvas

This piece is a demo for a class I did in September. We all used the same photo reference but it's amazing how differently everyone's paintings looked when we were finished. A common error, even when I point out easy ways to judge proportion, is to make the focal point too large. About half of the barns ended up in the center of the painting, even though I was careful to point out that the barn rests on the left side of the canvas.

What I really like about this piece is the brilliant fall color in the background which manages to remain cool and unobtrusive because of the ultramarine underpainting and lack of detail.

Seasonal Stuff

This is a painting of tomatoes and peppers given to me by my neighbor. I kept the piece very warm and used a lot of cadmium red to achieve this. Even the background is quite warm, but it's still red, which really keeps the focus on the peppers, because they are a complimentary green.

Maumee River Plein Air

Another great spring day in Northwest Ohio. A somewhat less than inspired painting but when the goal is just to relax and enjoy the day the result is always a success.

9" x 12"

oil on canvas

Plein Air in Arizona

There's a trick to painting the desert en plein air and I haven't totally figured it out yet. It involves condensing multiples subjects --like shrubs and cactus and rocks-- into solid shapes. Matt Smith does it extremely well, but this Ohio painter always runs into a few difficulties.

Still, this year's efforts were better than many of my others. My friend and I painted in a conservation area near the Sonoran Desert and the fresh dry air was welcome, especially when I knew that fiends and family back in Ohio were experiencing record quantities of rain.

I think I did a passable job on the saguaros. They are challenging. What I really love about this area are the misty purple mountains. Whenever possible I set up my easel so I am facing then so I can include them in my painting.

9" x 12" oil on linen

San Antonio Riverwalk

I've been wanting to paint this scene for a few years. My son lives in San Antonio and we visit the Riverwalk when I fly down, so I have a number of good pictures. In this view I wanted to keep the focus on the bridge and have the tree in the middle ground as my secondary area of interest. I love the shape of the tree.

9" x 12" 

oil on canvas

Traditional Syrian

Another fine model from our weekly portrait group. The handsome young man is Syrian and is dressed in a ceremonial Syrian style of dress. The scarf was his grandfather's. Youssef is thankful to be living in the United States. He has many family members whose lives have been destroyed by the warring factions in Syria.

This is that rare portrait that I an happy with after one pose and feel nothing else needs to be done to it.

Youssef 

9" x 12" oil on panel

Impressionism in the Still Life

A small piece forces the artist to condense her thinking and her brush strokes. I love how this turned out.

6" x 8"

oil on panel

Prize Winner

You never know what a juror will pick. That's for sure. A painting that I entered in a portrait show only because I knew my friend would be attending, won the top prize in the show. It's a painting of her, viewing a painting at Art Prize in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I couldn't attend the opening of the show so she accepted the award for me. This is a picture of Char in a gallery viewing a painting of Char viewing a painting. That's a bit confusing and it reminds me of Alice in Wonderland, which is probably what Char felt like when they announced she (I) had won!

Photo courtesy of Jim White 

Plein Air on a Cloudy Day in Ohio

I enjoy painting outside on cloudy days for two reasons. First of all, the light is consistent. Or I should say it's more consistent than it is on sunny days, when shadows move more quickly and it's more difficult to capture them accurately. Secondly, the light is beautiful and pure on an overcast day, and there is little, if any, glare. My eyes have become more sensitive lately and glare makes it impossible for me to paint. Wearing polarized sunglasses is one option but not the best when you're trying to pick up the delicate value changes in a landscape.

This is a scene from Licking County, painted last Saturday. I was drawn to the scene when the sun was shining and I pulled over and set up my easel only to have the sun hide behind clouds just as I was ready to paint, Rather than move, I accepted the scene as it was--it was still very beautiful to me, just in a different way. Soybean fields attract me every year at this time.

12" x 16" oil on linen

Angel in Her Wedding Dress

Angel is from Taiwan. She moved to the U.S. recently after marrying her fiancee. She was the model at our portrait group last week and everyone was inspired by her beauty.

I hope to do a larger painting of her. This one is 12" x 16".

Peruvian Girl with Puppy

Many thanks to Navin Sarma for allowing me to use her photograph as a basis for this painting. She is a wonderful photographer based in the Washington DC area.

We have been working on home projects and preparing for our daughter's graduation so I haven't painted much of anything lately. This is a small painting to help get me back into the mode. Very soon I will be traveling to France, where I hope to paint in cafes and in vineyards on a regular basis.

Peruvian Girl with Puppy

12x9 oil on canvas

Sand Engineers 6" x 6"

SOLD

A small 6"x6" painting of four kids playing on the beach. I used a lot of paint and kept the entire painting very wet while I worked on it, blending the edges vertically. I was trying to give it a feeling of action. Not sure if I succeeded but it was fun to experiment.

Copper Reflections

I purchased this copper incense burner and the antique medicine bottle on eBay a few weeks ago with the intention to use them in my still life setups. The first time I paint an object I am learning its shape, and it takes longer. I have discovered that the more times I paint the object the more accurate I become. The same goes for fruit. The first time I painted pears I struggled with the anatomy and now I paint them quickly, while keeping in mind the variations in shape and form from variety to variety as well as from specimen to specimen. These are Bartletts, I believe. When I purchased them they were quite green and they seem to be moving toward a more delicious if not as attractive yellow. It end to reply on my instincts when it comes to composition. If it looks good and fills up the space and there are interesting angles when I look through my viewfinder I am good to go.

Copper Reflections 11" x 14"

Chromium-- It's Not Silver But It Sure Looks Like It

The area I live in had a "snow day" yesterday. In case you've been out of school too long to recall what that is I will refresh your memory. A snow day happens when there is so much snow the road crews can't keep up with the salting and plowing. I think we have about 20 inches total now and the wind chill is -44 degrees so the salt is not melting the ice on the roads. We are effectively trapped in our homes until it warms up a bit. I would be trapped here for a week if I didn't have a husband who was willing to go outside and shovel the drifts that are accumulating in our driveway.

I know I could have cleaned the house yesterday but I really felt more like painting, so I set up an eclectic still life using some of my favorite colors. I bought a chromium teapot, sugar bowl and creamer set off eBay a few months ago for the express purpose of using them for my still life set ups. I did a little research before I made my purchase. Whatever did people do before the internet? I'll tell you what they did, because I am old enough to remember! We used our encyclopedias or we went to the library, looked through the card catalogs, wrote down the reference number and found our reference material. Sometimes the reference material was in the library's basement and the librarian would purse her lips and glare at me before she tromped down the stairs thirty minutes later to locate it. Today I type the word into Google and get eight million hits in less than a second. Is it just me, or is the world speeding up exponentially?

Chromium, unlike silver, never needs polishing, and I immediately decided this was the kind of tea service I wanted  (since I couldn't afford silver and didn't really want to polish silver anyway). My research yielded some fascinating facts about chromium: Chromium oxide was used by the Chinese in the Qin dynasty over 2,000 years ago to coat metal weapons found with the Terracotta Army. Chromium was discovered as an element after it came to the attention of the western world in the red crystalline mineral crocoite (lead(II) chromate), discovered in 1761 and initially used as a pigment. Louis Nicolas Vauquelin first isolated chromium metal from this mineral in 1797. Since Vauquelin's first production of metallic chromium, small amounts of native (free) chromium metal have been discovered in rare minerals, but these are not used commercially. Instead, nearly all chromium is commercially extracted from the single commercially viable ore chromite, which is iron chromium oxide (FeCr2O4). Chromite is also now the chief source of chromium for chromium pigments.

Chromium metal and ferrochromium alloy are commercially produced from chromite by silicothermic or aluminothermic reactions, or by roasting and leaching processes. Chromium metal has proven of high value due to its high corrosion resistance and hardness. A major development was the discovery that steel could be made highly resistant to corrosion and discoloration by adding metallic chromium to form stainless steel. This application, along with chrome plating (electroplating with chromium) currently comprise 85% of the commercial use for the element, with applications for chromium compounds forming the remainder. In other words, the chromium steel coating on this tea set requires little care and will look good indefinitely. My kind of appliance.

Another interesting tidbit I gleaned from my searching: Chromium is the open source web browser project from which Google Chrome draws its source code. Hmmm...I love Chrome- it is my browser of choice unless I am using my iPad.

It's a wonder I ever get anything done. I am unnaturally curious and enjoy researching and learning new things. I could easily spend all day looking for more information about the curious magnetic properties of Chromium.

Back to the painting: I wanted it to be colorful and I wanted a general loose feeling, so I used big brushes for everything. I did not want too many sharp edges. I tried to manufacture a soft and dreamy feel. There is an interesting occurrence in the reflections on the teapot, with a beautiful juxtaposition of color reflecting from the fruit and the teal colored pot. The roundness of the teapot allows it to reflect more objects. The glass bottle in the background adds another dimension  and makes the orange clementines that much brighter. Accidental complementary colors resonate in the orange/aqua and violet/green of the subjects.

I'm happier with this painting than I am with the one I did last week of the silver creamer.  I know it's chromium plated but silver just sounds richer. I think every time we paint something it opens up new possibilities of seeing, no matter how many times we paint it. That's why I keep returning to the same landscapes. They are always a bit different and I know a little more each time I attempt it.

12" x 16" Oil on linen   Silver Teapot No. 1

Still Life Painting with Pears and Grapes

I love painting still life: the way the light falls over the forms is always interesting and when you throw a reflective object into the mix, like this silver sugar bowl, it really takes the painting up to another level.

Silver with Pears

11" x 14"

Not Going As Planned

This painting started out as a routine plein air. Not that plein air painting is EVER routine. It's not. It is difficult and demanding and that's why sometimes I fail. This painting was one of those. I got it home and I started scraping it off. That's when I realized that I truly liked what the scraped image looked like. I decided to add a horse. I scraped the horse. Pretty soon I had a painting that looked like it had been done int he pouring rain or else when the artist was in the middle of a migraine.

I do like it though.

9" x 12" oil on linen

Toledo Botanical Gardens

Saturday I painted at Toledo Botanical Gardens after I left Inside Angles. It was a great day to be out painting, with temps in the high seventies and a light breeze. This is a statue near the back of the park in the perennial garden.

Just Beachy

I am having a show at Studio 14 in Tipp City, Ohio from July 12-September 8, 2013. The theme is SOLAR ENERGY, or paintings featuring sunny things or inspired by the sun. Many of the paintings I take to the show are not painted yet so I hope the rain stops soon and I will get outside and get busy. I painted this one last week when it seemed to be raining every day. I used a picture I took of some beach chairs and a photograph of the ocean that I found on line-- together they seemed to make a nice painting.

I call it Just Beachy.... 12" x 16" oil on linen