View from Libby Hill

Today I joined up with local members of the Mid Atlantic Plein  Air Painters Association (MAPAPA) for an urban paint out.  Not being able to paint lately has driven me a bit batty, so I was really looking forward to today. The paint site was Libby Hill Park, which has a nice panoramic view of the James River and some of the Richmond skyline. It was apparently this view that gave the City of Richmond its name. The story goes that William Byrd II is said to have thought that this view resembled the view of Richmond upon Thames in England.

View from Libby Hill, Richmond Oil on panel, 8x8" To purchase, please contact me!

It has been brilliantly sunny all week, but this morning we woke up to clouds and haze. I grumbled about it (which always does worlds of good in situations over which you have no control) but I went any way. I'm glad I did. The  haze did eventually burn off and now we have nice blue skies and sunshine. I had to leave around lunchtime so I could pick up my daughter from school, but I'm happy that at least I got one painting in today.

"Winter Sunset" recognized in FAV15 at FASO!

I'm taking a break from packing to post a quick update. I am very excited to learn that my painting "Winter Sunset, North Run Creek", was selected as part of the FAV15% (jury's favorite 15% of the entries) in the March 2015 BoldBrush Painting competition! This is only the 2nd time I have entered one of these online contests, so I feel pretty happy to have been recognized.

Thank you FASO and Fine Art Views!!! http://faso.com/boldbrush/fav15/160

Big change ahead

So this is a bit of a personal announcement, but since it's definitely going to affect my art making ability this spring and summer, it seems worth announcing. We're moving.  The new house is not too far from where we are, but it's out of the city and into the county, to a small college town of Ashland, VA. It's a very cute walkable town with a lot going on, (for a small town) only about 20 minutes from the City of Richmond. This is going to be different for me as I have lived all of my adult life in the city and pretty much have loved it. But it will be a good move, and the new digs will have more space for our family, a bigger yard, good schools, and the kiddo will actually have a place to ride a bike.

What it won't have is a studio, and leaving my current one is kind of breaking my heart. If you've read this blog for any length of time, you will recall my chronicles of building my current studio from the ground-up. I thought it would be my forever studio and I very much doubt we will be able to undertake that kind of elaborate project again any time soon. But the new house does have a garage that I think will be serviceable to convert. No doubt I will be consulting my own blog archives when fixing up the new site for a work space!

Any way, this is all happening pretty fast. What this means for this blog is that if there are some large gaps between posting, I will likely be packing 10 years worth of accumulated "stuff", fixing up the old house for the market, and fixing up the new house for living.  I will have my portable easel at the ready, so I still hope to do a little painting, and even some posting here and there too. Wish me luck!

Daffodil Season

I'm back to work from spring break, and since it was such a beautiful day yesterday I decided to kick off the week with a little plein air painting at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. It is a great place to visit and paint! Tulips are everywhere right now, but there were a ton of people visiting yesterday. And since I had gotten a late start and needed to set up quickly,  I wanted to avoid setting up in high traffic  spots and those completely devoid of shade. So no tulips. However,  I found a lovely spot (with shade) in a quieter area of the gardens near the Bloomenthal House profuse with daffodils and pansies:

"Daffodil Season" Oil on panel, 8x10" Click here for more info. To purchase, please contact me!

It's pretty gray and rainy this morning, so I may need to re-photograph this when I have a bit more natural light. I had about an hour and a half to work on this painting, and then it was time to close up shop and pick up my daughter from preschool. But  was such a beautiful day in the gardens, that I returned with my daughter to share with her my enjoyment of this beautiful place.

Pear Squared!

Change is in the air. Nothing seems to change as fast in spring as the appearance of blooms on fruit trees. One minute they are ablaze with blooms, and the next they are leafing out. Here's a little ditty I did yesterday morning right from my own garden. Mine is largely a late spring/summer garden, but my neighbor shares a little early spring splendor from across the street:

"Pear, Squared" Oil on Panel, 8x8" Contact me to purchase!

It used to be really spectacular, almost cotton-ball like. Then a year or two ago a huge chunk either blew off in a  storm or it got struck by lightening. The top was split in two and I was so sad because I had always meant to paint it at this time of year and something always seemed to pop up to prevent me from getting to it before it leafed out. Any way, thankfully, it survived. And in spite of yet another very windy morning, I managed to get it down.

Spring Break

Yesterday I woke up to sunshine and blue skies. I had a sitter lined up to watch my daughter so it looked like a plein air painting kind of day. I was stoked. Fast forward to 9 a.m.ish at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, and me freezing my tuccus off trying to paint in gale-force winds. My first plein air of the season did not go well. Not only was it looking pretty dark and muddied, but at one point it landed face down in the dirt. In all honesty, it wasn't even worth it to pick off the debris. In fact the mulch may have improved it a little bit! "Well," I thought, "there's always this afternoon". Except there wasn't. My sitter called to cancel which meant I needed to close up shop. I felt pretty dejected. I arrived at preschool ready to assume Mommy duty as per usual. But as luck would have it my daughter and her BFF had conspired to arrange a play date at said BFF's house.

What a lucky break! I'd been granted a 2 hour reprieve, and I was not going to waste it. After dropping my daughter at her friend's house, I peeled away, tires screeching (kidding) and headed for home to get my gear. As I was pulling up to park, these forsythia caught my eye:

"3 o'Clock Glow Oil on panel, 8x8" To purchase, please contact me!

Though the wind whipped up around me and  I was still pretty chilled, the forsythia were beginning to take on a warm glow as the sun prepared itself for its inevitable descent behind the rooftops.

Come on Spring!

Okay, enough of winter already. I don't know about you but my winter was totally nuts. Not that spring will be less nuts but at least they will be warm ;-). Family matters have kept me from doing much painting, but here and there I have worked on this 14x18" piece, revisiting a familiar theme and experimenting with brushwork and soft edges:

"Papaveri, Val d'Orcia" Oil on linen, 14x18" Click here for more info. To purchase, please contact me!

All is Quiet

Two more  days out of school this week due to snow, so I've had more wintry reference material at my disposal. I think after this much time indoors we are all going a little stir crazy, and things can be, well, crazy with an active preschooler,  from the time when my little angel wakes in the morning, until she lays her exhausted little head on the pillow once more at night. But since I am almost always the first person awake in the house in the mornings,  there are a few moments in the wee hours where I get to contemplate just how peaceful and beautiful the snow fall really is. There are no plows or tracks anywhere yet and the whole street is blanketed with pristine snow.

"All is Quiet" Oil on linen, 8x8" Contact me to purchase.

This is the view from our upstairs window, looking down our street and out over the rooftops. I've noted it a few times after it has snowed, and I always say to myself, "I really need to try painting that".  So I finally did. There was no brillian sunshine yet so the value range is not great, which made me enjoy the shapes and angles of the composition even more.

Winter Sunset complete

This morning I finished up my snow painting, the start of which I blogged about in my last post. Here is the final:

"Winter Sunset, North Run Creek" Oil on linen, 16x20" Click here for more info. To purchase, please contact me.

This was one of those paintings that I was excited about from concept to finish. It had the feeling of a sunset, a snow painting, and a nocturne, all in one. I actually didn't want it to end.

I experimented with a new blue on my palette, which I am really enjoying--Indathrone Blue (Grumbacher). It's really a versatile and beautiful color.  It's along the lines of a Pthalo Blue, though not nearly as highly staining. I find that both Pthalo blue and green can easily take over a paint mixture with anything beyond the tiniest touch. (They also seem to have a way of getting all over me very easily!) Indathrone is different. It's transparent, less intense than Pthalo but "cleaner " than Prussian Blue, and very versatile to work with. I used it in various mixtures throughout the painting, but you can see a good bit of it in its purest form (tinted with white), in the frozen section of the creek on the lower left.  I doubt it will take the place of my tried and true Ultramarine, but it's a nice addition to have on the palette, and I can see a lot of potential for its use in still life and nocturnes.

Let it snow

Here in Richmond, VA, we aren't used to getting around in the snow and ice. At the first hint of snow in the forecast, people storm the stores, and stock up on bread, milk, eggs, water,  booze, etc. (you know, all the staples) . In fact, many times the shelves are picked clean.  As for the schools, even a dusting seems to shut them down. In fact, I joke that the whole city shuts down if someone has dandruff. Last week we had about 6 inches, and school closed for the entire week. Granted, there were a few days of below freezing temperatures as well. Everything melted nicely away (finally!) and then this week we had another two days out from snow. Well, the snow might not bother Elsa, (or at least that's what I have heard many, MANY times during our little break) but as much as I love building snowmen, it sure puts a wrench in our routine after a while.

It is pretty though, I'll give it that.  So today I decided to embrace what is instead of wishing for what isn't. And here's the outcome of that shift in mindset. For this 16x20" canvas, I am referencing  photos I took right about sunset during our first round of snow as we were on our way for dinner out (because the roads were totally FINE).

I  apologize for not getting better blow by blow photos of the progress, but I  was on a roll. I almost made this a completely alla prima piece, which felt soooo great,  but (cut to the sound of a needle scraping across a record)  I ran out of time. I think I had a very good start though, so one more session before it sets up too much ought to do me.

Bellagio Promenade

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a large(ish) painting of the Bellagio promenade that leads to the Villa Melzi. It took me a little longer to bring this painting to a conclusion and, because I painted at night, my progress shots were too bad to post. So what I am sharing today is the final piece:

"Bellagio Promenade" Oil on Linen, 24x30" For more info, click here. To purchase, please contact me!

 Because I had to work on this over a succession of days, I worked pretty lean until the last couple of sessions. In the end though, this bad boy has a lot of paint! Of all of the places I have visited so far in Italy, Lake Como in general, and Bellagio in particular, hovers near the top of my list for achieving that dazzling combination of natural and manmade beauty. The trifecta of pre-Alpine mountains, deep blue waters and classic Italian architecture dripping with flowers is pretty hard to beat.

New Lake Como painting in progress

School's out this week due to snow, so my painting time is catch as catch can. Nevertheless, we have been conspiring with other desperate parents to arrange play dates here and there, which allows a little painting and blogging time. So I thought I'd share the Bellagio painting I have my easel this week. This is a promenade on the outskirts of bella Bellagio, leading to the stunning grounds of the Villa Melzi.  This view however, looks back towards the town. Apologies in advance for the poor quality photos and the cast shadow of part of my easel on the painting. I don't have a lot of time to photo edit anything but the final these days, so I hope you will bear with me. I start in the usual fashion, with a loose sketch of my composition in Burnt Sienna:

Next I lay in the shadow family and darkest notes.

At this point I'm laying in some general blocks of color. Still no highlights yet...

And here's my starting point this morning:

Next I will continue blocking in, including the water and distant village. I'm still working up the nerve to paint outside while there's snow on the ground, but we will see. Not much of a fan of the cold, but that snow sure is pretty.

Primrose and Irises

Here's a little celebration of the color violet :-) . I scaled up a bit for this still life. It's still not that big, but given I'm not yet painting these florals at a very fast clip, I felt the difference and it took me a little while to bring it to a conclusion.

"Primrose and Irises" Oil on Canvas, 20x16" Click here for more info!

I am learning to tackle the cut flowers first. Those babies shift and turn and then have the nerve to shrivel up on you long before you're ready to see them go! The irises are now things of the past, but the potted primrose is still going strong.

Still life shadow box

I mentioned in my last post that it's helpful to have some contol over the lighting environment when painting the still life. A simple solution is to create a shadow box. This is not a new idea. If you google "still life shadow box", you can find lots of examples. I looked at a number of them, but given my tendency for being definitively un-handy when it comes to building things, I went for the low tech option as described by Lee A. Brown on his blog A Day Not Wasted. The only difference was that I didn't bother with the plastic corner moulding he mentions. Instead I found one of my favorite "building" supplies, some duct tape, (in black- SCORE!) when I was shopping for the foam core. Made this way, the box isn't indestructible, but it's sturdy enough since I don't really foresee needing to move it around all that much. The other difference in my box is that I made two windows for the light, one on top and one on the left side, which I can cover or uncover with the leftover scrap foam core, depending on which direction I want the light.  Here's what mine looks like:

All of this is sitting on this Ikea kitchen cart on wheels, which I found on Craigslist for $10 (SCORE! again.) I'm only 5'4", so at my height, this cart brings my objects about as close to eye level as I can manage given the space I have to work with. I've gathered various boxes (gift boxes, jewelry boxes, etc. to help elevate my objects even further, and to provide some variety in the height I can achieve with various objects.  Here's a slightly different angle, with my last still life setup inside:

A simple large cardboard box, open on one end, and a shop light from Home Depot, is an even lower-tech version that would also work perfectly fine.

Still life...trying again

The last time I attempted a floral still life painting, it all went south. But, since I have been wanting to build a more regular practice of painting and drawing from life, and since it is nothing but brown and gray outside right now in Virginia (not to mention that I don't tolerate the cold too well) I decided not to let a little past  failure hold me back. And as they say, it's in the failures where we have great opportunity to learn and grow. It sounds a bit cliché but it's also actually true, especially if you don't let the failures wig you out. I have to admit, at first I did duke it out with the old psyche a bit, but upon reflection I realized that I really did learn a few lessons from my last effort. For one thing I learned that I didn't really set myself up for success to begin with. I basically walked in, put some flowers in a vase, set them on a table and went to it. How hard could it be? Wellll....

The first problem was that there is actually quite a lot that goes into setting up a nice still life. I figured since it had been a very long time I would keep it simple by focusing on just the flowers and a vase, and no other extraneous objects. Only extraneous objects were all around my prior "setup" (if you could call it that.) The utility sink was in the background, as well as pictures hanging on a wall, art supply bins nearby, etc.  It's not impossible to paint that stuff out, but it is pretty distracting.

Secondly, in my previous attempt, the lighting was completely flat and non directional. That's great for studio lighting in general, but it makes it harder to create form and good color without that definitive light and shadow. I felt like it was kind of akin to painting outside on a gray day.

So the first order of business was to remedy these issues, and create an environment where I would be "set up" for success.  Once I found a solution to my setup issues (which I will share in my next post) I felt like I had more control.

Here's how it went down, in various stages:

Initial design in a wash of cobalt blue, burnt sienna, and chromatic black:

Blocking in; shadows first, then midtones:

Fleshing it out:

And the final:

"Tulips and Mandarins" Oil on Linen, 14x11" Click here for more info!

Illuminated

This was a bit of an experiment for me. I pushed the color and moved things about quite a bit, and worked in a much more impressionistic style. I played with layering color and working more with broken color to achieve the shimmering effect I was after. It's definitely more about expression than about straight on  realism.

"Illuminated" Oil on Linen, 24x30" Click here for more info. Contact me to purchase!

This was in part because my photo reference was very washed out, yet I remember this time and place so much more vividly and with much more richness in color and brilliance.  I had painted a small study on site during a summer trip to Nelson County, Virginia, but couldn't finish it because the light of the setting sun changed so fast and quickly disappeared behind the trees and mountains.

I'm not sure if I will continue in this vein, but I feel as if I have learned something. Here it is in grayscale, which I actually might like a little better (LOL.)

It makes me want to experiment with it again, with a different color palette, to see what happens.

My studio featured on Houzz

A few weeks ago Houzz posted a discussion asking artists to share their hardworking studios. I participated in the forum with a few pics of my own studio space. A couple of weeks later an editor followed up with me directly and asked if I'd be interested in being included in another article. I was pretty flattered, and of course I said yes! If you are an artist looking for ideas for your own space, or even if you just enjoy looking at others' creative spaces, check out this article!

14 Home Studios That Nurture Creativity and Art

Varenna Sparkle

I'm calling this one complete. Maybe a tweak or two to come, but I feel like I have been looking at this painting so intently that I need to take step back from it for a while and start something new.

"Varenna Sparkle" Oil on Linen, 20x24" Click here for more info. Contact me to purchase!

This is a painting of the harbor of Varenna in beautiful Lake Como. It's a theme I have explored a few times now in different compositions. The complement of warm and cool colors really attract me. This one took me a while, but it got me through a number of cold, wintery days filled with bitter wind and ice. Maybe it was a complicated piece, or maybe I just enjoyed all that sparkle and warmth and wanted to linger a bit ;-).

A new year, a new painting

Welcome to 2015! I will spare you the laundry list of lofty goals or resolutions, mainly because I don't have one! Seriously though, my one overarching goal for this year is to paint more often and more consistently. That shouldn't be too hard to obtain, right? I've had some obstacles lately but they are not insurmountable, and to prove it, here is a new studio piece I've been blocking in:

This composition might look familiar to you. And there's a reason for that! It's based on a little gouache study I did not too long ago, only scaled up considerably (from 4x5" to 20x24") and in oils. Much more to go on this, but it's a decent start, and the year is young.  ;-)

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year (almost)! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and looks forward to a great 2015. I took a little time off over the holidays to be with my family. Now that my daughter is 4 1/2 years old, Christmas time is really so much fun and I wanted to enjoy and cherish every minute of it. Even so, I did manage to "sneak in" one more painting before ringing in a brand new year.

"Mist in the Valley" Oil on Canvas, 12x16" Click here for more info, or  contact me to purchase!

This painting is based on a combination of photos and a plein air study I did while I was in the Lot Valley a few years ago. If you have been reading my blog a while, you may recall that I tackled similar subject matter before, and will likely explore compositional variations again. I have a lot of reference photos from that morning and it was probably one of the most memorable plein air sessions from the trip. It's also both fun and challenging painting such a close range of values and all of those soft edges.

P.S. Did you know 2015 is the year of the sheep in the Chinese astrology? I'm not really superstitious or into astrology and didn't realize it when I started working on this piece. But it's pretty coincidental, don't you think?