Sant' Antimo on the Easel

We are back from the beach now. It was great but high winds thwarted any further attempts at plein air painting there for the remainder of the week. A near-constant rain has kept me indoors so far this week as well, so I have started a new Tuscan studio painting to console myself ;) .

This is to be a new 24x30" canvas of the Montalcino commune in southern Tuscany, at the site of the Sant' Antimo Abbey.

Happy July 4th, everyone!

Tuscan Sun Wines launch this week in Italy!

I have gotten a number of inquiries about the wine labels I was commissioned to paint for Frances Mayes' Tuscan Sun Wines,  and when the wines would be available for purchase. Well my sources (namely Twitter) tell me that the first big launch will be in Cortona Italy this week on July 4th.  It is exciting for me  to see the art finally realized on the wine bottles for which they were intended.

Source: Uploaded by user via Chef Robin on Pinterest

It will be even more exciting to see (and taste) the wines in person; but we here in the U.S. will have to wait for that. The U.S. launch is slated for some time in the fall.

Touring Venice

There are some times when my habit of waking at 5:30 a.m. (on the dot, and usually no matter what!) comes in pretty handy. With family visiting these last 10 days, early mornings have allowed me a few hours each day to complete this new Venice piece:

"Touring Venice" Oil on linen, 24x20" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

This painting ( the bones of which you can see here) is the same size and format as the other recent Venice painting I posted a couple of weeks ago. They are meant to serve as companions to each other, though I think either would work just as well on its own.

In all the times I have been to Venice, I have still never taken a gondola ride. I wonder if it's possible to paint en plein air while aboard a gondola? A girl can dream...

More Venice, on the easel

I have a new Venice painting in the works this week. Here is the composition sketched in with thinned down burnt sienna. I have a lot of family visiting right now so any painting on this will need to happen in the wee hours of the morning this week before people start stirring. I doubt I will be able to do much blogging about its progress given my time constraints, but you never know. It's another 24"x20", to (hopefully) serve as a companion to the other Venice piece just completed.

Under the Bridge

Well, instead of blogging I have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out why my blog's RSS feed has not been updating. As a result, I did not get to do any progress blogging on this painting. But here it is, a new Venice painting that I managed to complete in between the hours of frustration:

"Under the Bridge, Venice" 24x20", Oil on Linen (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

I was going through my archives of former paintings and found a little painting I had done a while back of a single boat beneath a lovely footbridge. I thought it might be nice to expand on that idea on a 24x20" canvas. I really enjoyed creating this new piece. While the boat is still featured, I was able to add a little more context and show more of the background. I really thought I would hate painting those rails, but once I figured out the design and started painting in the highlights, I rather had a good time.

As for my feed, we are still trying to figure out the best solution (though it will definitely not be feedburner!) If you are an email subscriber and received this post in your email box, then I've made progress, at least. If not, there's probably a bit more hair-pulling in my future.