Paintings Thoughts and Process ©Jennifer E Young
My latest sunflower landscape painting (the start of which I posted here) has actually been finished for a while. But once again I have been delinquent in posting. Here is the final:
"Ancient Hills, Golden Valley", Oil on linen 20x24" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young
I've needed some cheering up lately, so yesterday I started a new painting of Tuscan sunflowers. It's nearly impossible to frown while beholding a sea of sunflowers, right?
Feeling better already :-)
We have had a bout of sickness at our house (first me, then my daughter) but I finally had a chance to get back to my Pescallo painting over the holiday weekend. Let's wrap this up! Picking up from my last installment, I am ready to paint in the flowers. Bougainvillea spills over the arbor with mixtures of alizarin crimson, permanent rose and a touch of cadmium red to warm things up. Normally I would block those colors in sooner but I was still trying to decide about the placement of that arbor structure and reds are such high staining colors that I didn't want to put them in until I had the composition pretty well established. Now I guess I am committed! ;)
Geraniums in shades of red fill out the planters using the same colors as the bougainvillea (but in much different ratios). I also flesh out the columns on the terrace and I am nearly done with the pier.
Now it's time to move down to finish the foreground water and reflections. There is a lot of movement in this water, and with much of this water in semi-shadow, reflections are subtle and broken by waves rather than the strong, mirror-like reflections seen in still water. For the darkest shades I mix Ultramarine and Gold Ochre, warmed or cooled by touches of Cadmium Orange or Sevres blue as the situation allows. Water highlights are deeper shades of the sky color.
My finale is to include the rest of my vertical lines- the mast on the boat and the railing along the pier. These verticals act as a strong counter-balance to the horizontals of the mountains, boat and pier. I think the railing also serves to further push the background more firmly in the distance.
"Alfresco in Pescallo" Oil on Linen, 24x30" ©Jennifer Young
This piece was a challenge to me, largely because of all of the interruptions I had, which caused the painting to set up quite a bit more in between sessions. I much prefer painting wet-into-wet, to avoid the extra work of opening the painting back up and scraping the dry paint down off of my palette. But sometimes it just can't be helped. In any event, I hope you like the final piece!
No babysitting this week, so there will be lots of trips to playgrounds and possibly the zoo, and I likely won't have much in the way of new work to post until after my daughter is back in preschool on the 9th.
Before I could really tackle the foreground on my Pescallo painting-in-progress, I needed to establish the background water. It shimmers with a pale sparkling light in the distance, the color becoming deeper and more varied in contrast as it moves in waves toward the viewer.
Lest I got too caught up in the romance of Italy or the gentle waves of Lake Como, my husband brings me back to reality with a screeching halt and a critique of my painting. His opinion is to flip the direction of the boat so that it leads into the painting rather than out. I have to agree with him here, so being the always obedient wife (ha ha) I do as I'm told.
Next, I really need to address what is happening on the pier so that I can paint the reflections in the foreground water. I paint the tires that hang along the pier and serve as a rustic contrast to the elegant beauty of the backdrop. This epitomizes Pescallo to me; it is rustic but beautiful, quaint but elegant, sleepy but exciting, all at the same time. The tires are in higher contrast on the sunny side and in low contrast in the shadows.
Black is not black and white is never white. By this I mean that I don't use a tube black to paint black-colored objects, or a straight out of the tube white for most white-colored objects. This would create very flat, dead color. Instead, I mix my "blacks" with my darkest translucent colors on my palette, ultramarine blue and alizarin crimson, and just the tiniest bit of cad. orange or yellow to neutralize some of that purple undertone.
Flowers and flowering vines grow out of every crack and cranny around these parts, and I paint those in delicately so as not to overpower. The showy flowers will be the geraniums and bougainvillea to come.
School is back in session, which means that our babysitter has become a lot less available now that she's returned to college classes. It also means I will have less time to paint over the next two weeks until my daughter returns to preschool. I didn't get the time to paint outside last week, but my goal is to finish this studio piece with one more session tomorrow, so that I can still fit in a plein air session by week's end. I'm close...wish me luck!
Ever tried painting on four hours of sleep? It ain't pretty! In fact, doing anything on "sleep fumes" (as I call it) is a bit like running through wet cement. That's how it's been lately for me as my insomnia issue has again reared its ugly head. And it's why I typically have avoided doing a full-fledged painting demonstration recently. Nevertheless, I have progressed a bit with the Pescallo painting, and I'll continue to share my process for it despite the break in continuity. When I last left off, I had a good deal of the background mapped out. Now I am tackling the foreground.
Even though I felt as if I had a pretty good compositional plan going in, I continue to tweak elements of the composition as I go along. For instance, I decided to extend the tip of the closest mountain off further to the right, so that it wasn't in danger of butting up against the foreground verticals. I also wondered if the boat was too large in the original drawing for where I had placed it in the picture plane. So I've experimented with reducing it slightly below.
Mainly though I've been working out the shadows and highlights of the foreground café and the pier. I need to get those pier elements in place before I can address the foreground water and any reflections down there.
I hope I can wrap this up in another session or two, depending on how much time I can carve out to do it. I'll continue to post my updates and painting notes as I go. Thanks for tuning in!
Art gallery of European and American landscape and still life oil paintings by Virginia artist Jennifer E. Young. Jennifer's plein air and studio paintings celebrate her love of color and the natural world. Her work has been exhibited and collected internationally.
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