Big Sable Light House - Michigan

This is Big Sable Lighthouse, a landmark in the state of Michigan. It was the subject of a recent painting class.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Michigan Barn with Herefords

This is a barn in Lenawee County, Michigan, that I photographed the last time we painted in the area. Michigan is full of old picturesque and unique buildings and barns, many of them constructed of stone. This barn seems to have been abandoned and the Herefords weren't actually there. I added them because I like to see a little bit of life in paintings and I think animals add interest. I'll often throw in a cat or someone walking their dog if the picture is too static.

9" x 12" Michigan Barn

Randy's Roadhouse Bar-B-Cue in the Irish Hills Old Pickup

We saw this rustic truck on Route 12 when we were headed back to the lake house on Thursday and decided to return and paint it the next day. Randy allowed us to set up our easels in the shade of a large maple tree. There were three of us painting today and we all focused on the truck and we all came up with very different paintings. My painting was all about the truck. I really worked hard on minimizing the importance of the painted pig on top of the truck but I couldn't remove it. It adds a lot of character to the scene and the sign supports the reason it is there. The grass was actually mowed and weeded right up to the truck tires but I added a few weeds to give it character.

Randy told us that his family used to own the Wild West attraction on Route 12 but they sold it a few years ago. Apparently Route 12 was a major tourist attraction in the 50's and early 60's, with Mystery Hill, a Dinosaur Adventure, a Go-Cart track and more. Now this area has become known for its picturesque lakes and rolling hills. The tourist traps remain but they are in a sad state of disrepair.

Randy's Roadhouse Barbecue

9" x 12"

Irish Hills Vista 10" x 20" oil painting

10" x 20" oil on canvas

Irish Hills Vista

The second day we drove east on Route 12 and ended up stopping at a fruit and vegetable stand. Strawberries were in season so we bought some and I was eyeing the hilly farm to the north, while my friend was enchanted by the produce stand. I painted this bucolic vista of rolling hills and baled straw, while she concentrated on the truck and stand. A glorious day in the low seventies, sunshine after the fog lifted and NO MOSQUITOES! A great day to paint outdoors.

Summer Plein Air Painting

Last week I traveled to the Irish Hills area of Michigan with four artist friends to do some plein air painting. We rented a house on Vineyard Lake and painted the countryside. We visited Hidden Lake Gardens the first day and painted a gazebo.

Hidden Lake Gazebo 11" x 14"

Cityscapes

Someone asked me to bid on a couple paintings of downtown cities. They didn't want detail, just something suggestive of the city. It's for a gift for their boss, who is expanding the company's market to Ann Arbor. I had never done anything like that before but I am willing to try anything.

Needless to say, this took a lot longer than I imagined it would and I was doing it at the same time I was painting a lot of other commissions.

One thing I learned: You can't just suggest buildings very well if they are close the viewing angle. Ipainted the Toledo version first because there is a lot more detail in it and I wanted to get it out of the way. I was happy with it in the end but after painting so many angles and perspectives that change and curve, I am not looking forward to the Ann Arbor scene.I started it last night and I'm showing the underpainting here so you can get an idea of how little I think about where things are until I actually begin to paint them. It's a matter of putting something in and then correcting it until it is right. I would never be a watercolorist.

Yes, these are a rush- they are a Christmas gift and need to be dry by next Wednesday.

16x20 oil on canvas 

Downtown Toledo

The Beginning of MSU Stadium 16x20

Sunrise, Sunset ... more plein air paintings

I don't typically paint sunsets. There's a good reason for this and that is that the moment they live in is so brief it's hard to get the paint down before it passes. I wanted to give it a try though because it was so striking on our evening walks near Lake Ocqueoc. I chose a small canvas (6" x 8") and started at 8:30 pm. I finished by 9:15 pm but during that 45 minute time frame I mixed more colors and observed more changes in light than I ever had before. The final painting is a culmination of those minutes and probably represents the image the way it appeared to me around 9:00 pm. After that I was painting from memory. I couldn't look directly at the sun of course, so I was just glancing in the general direction of where it was slowly sinking behind the horizon.

A lot of artists will tell you they don't "do" sunsets. Their reasoning is that a camera can capture that brilliant color more accurately than paint can and in just a fraction of a second. I used to think like that, but I learned some things from painting this sunset. I discovered that the water can change from a cool blue to a tangerine orange in less than a minute.Ultramarine blues mix nicely with cadmium reds when you don't have a lot of time to be choosy. Violet clouds look more violet when they reside next to pink. In other words, I learned a lot about color and how it affects other color. Valuable information to an artist who is concerned very deeply with color effects.

There will always be artists who take a picture of a sunset and then proceed to try to reproduce the brilliance of their photograph in a painting. I will not be among them. I will be the painter who puts on her polarized sunglasses, sets up her easel in front of what God created, and tries to capture that moment as it actually happens. It's just a lot more exciting for me. And it's more fun. At this stage in my life I've resolved not to paint anything I don't enjoy painting. Why? Because life is short!

6" x 8" oil on canvas over panel (Pintura ™)

A sunrise gives you a bit more time to experiment. This is the same lake viewed in the morning with the sun behind me. Notice how the long  horizontal canvas emphasizes the size of the lake. This is why I love painting outside. It's the same view, but a different time of day and a different format and a completely different viewpoint. Nature is always the best teacher.

6"x12" oil on canvas

Hammond Bay, on Lake Huron plein air

Wednesday we drove to Lake Huron, a short ten minute drive from our cabins. We were thinking about painting the closest lighthouse but when we arrived at the park no one wanted to paint it. The lighthouse was a smaller, square kind and not too interesting. It was also really windy and the best view of the lighthouse  was down on the beach. I did not want to be on the beach with no protection from the sun. It was really too windy for an umbrella.

I did like the arrangement of fir trees in front of the beach so I painted that and I was pretty happy with the piece when I was done. Quite a few visitors stopped to chat and one couple remarked that the turquoise water and whitecaps reminded them of the Fort Lauderdale beaches near their home in Florida. Instead of palms the beach here was lined with evergreens and I'm sure the temperature was a bit cooler too.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Hammond Bay

More Plein Air Paintings to Post

This week I will be posting some of the better paintings I did on my painting trip to Michigan last week. I completed nine paintings in five days and I was exhausted by the end of the week. What these kind of trips do is really allow the artist to immerse herself in the landscape and geography of a place. I was surprised by how white the Michigan beaches are and the fine quality of the sand. The temperatures are quite cool in the evening even when they reach 90 during the day. A breeze can blow up alarmingly fast and turn into a gale, accompanied by thunderous clouds and developing into gusts that can easily carry away your easel. The birch trees where I stayed were much larger than I'm used to so I focused on one growing near the beach where we stayed. I had not painted many birches before and they are lovely trees.

14" x 11" oil on canvas

Ocquoc Lake Birch

Annual Painting Trip

Three years ago a few of my artist friends, along with myself, decided to travel to a "painting destination". The plan was to share the costs of lodging and find an interesting and picturesque place to paint. The first year I found a wonderful place in North Carolina near Franklin. Painting the Smokey Mountains was an eye opening experience to this flat-lander. Last year we stayed a bit closer to home and we ended up in Penn Valley, PA. This was hilly Amish country and there were plenty of farms and rustic scenes to paint. This past week we traveled to Northern Michigan for a week at Lake Ocqueoc, which is near Lake Huron. Lake Huron has miles and miles of unspoiled white beaches! Who knew?

Our group was a bit larger this time so we rented two small cabins and traveled to a different place each day. This is the painting I did on Monday, when we drove over to Lake Huron and found the place where the mouth of the Ocqueoc River formed.

16" x 16" oil on canvas
Ocqueoc River

Bo Schembechler

Side-tracked from my painting of "The Oval" once again.... Jean, who owns the frame shop where I teach a class, told me someoen was looking for a Bo Schembechler print to hang on the wall of his restaurant (sports bar). So I finished this watercolor this morning. I don't know why but guys usually like watercolor sports paintings better than oils-0 at least my husband does, and he is into sports more than most people I know. Nascar, baseball, football, basketball... you name it- he watches it on TV. OK... he doesn't watch hockey. Since I have the watercolors out I will probablly get to the oval painting today.