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Three Dog Afternoon (5 x 7) SOLD
This little painting is of three dogs we watched playing on the beach last February. As far as I could tell they all belonged to different groups of people, but they were very happy to meet each other. I took a number of photos of them and will probably make a larger painting from one of those photos later. This little painting is just the right size for a postcard.
My favorite palette again: burnt sienna, cobalt blue and yellow ocher.
I have difficulty painting in public. I never paint my best or even close to my best with an audience. Even at the gallery where people wander in and out infrequently, I have a hard time with painting in company. I don’t blush or drop my brush. But I don’t concentrate as well as I do in private. And I make fundamental errors more frequently.
But I must learn to paint in public and soon. And what is more I must be able to talk about it while I do it, because this coming August I have agreed to demonstrate painting and sculpture at the Artisan’s Village in the Oregon State Fair.
It’s sculpture that got me into this. I’ve sculpted for seven years now and I’m quite comfortable doing it with an audience. For the last four years I have sculpted all day at just about every art fair I’ve been in. Only heat and fancy carpets stop me.
Last Christmas a representative from the Artisan Village saw me demonstrating at the Salem Saturday Market Christmas Show and asked if I would be willing to take a booth at the fair. This is plum. Commercial booths at the fair rent for several thousand dollars. Booths in the Atrisan Village rent for $75.00. The difference? The Village is a juried venue. The catch? —artists in the Village must demonstrate from 11:00 am to 9:00 pm.
Most artist share a booth and share demonstrating hours. But I know no one else who sculpts polymer clay. And besides, it’s an outdoor venue and the hotter it gets the hotter polymer clay gets until it becomes much to soft to sculpt. What to do?
Well, I was looking for a way to display my new watercolors so I talked myself and the director into both sculpture and painting. I am to sculpt in the cooler mornings and paint in the heat of the day. Switching mediums halfway through the day should help me keep my brain active too.
Now all I have to do is learn to paint in public. I spent this weekend learning. Saturday and Sunday I sold sculpture while painting watercolors. I tried to stick to easy subjects and to leave the detail work for later.
I will try my hand at painting in public again at The Salem Art Festival in July, and the Silverton Fine Arts Festival in mid August. At the end of August it’s show time.
Here are my three half finished paintings. With luck I’ll be posting the finished paintings later this week:
Dances with Fountains (in progress)
This is the beginning of another painting in my Splash series of the children playing at Town Center Park. I began by masking the boy and the fountains and painting the water in cobalt blue and burnt sienna. After lifting the first mask I masked the splashes on the boy and the high lights in the fountains. Then I added raw sienna to the palette and began painting the boy. I think I am going to need a real red to complete his skin. Then I will lift the mask and complete the detail work.
Boy with Umbrella (in progress)
This is a full size painting of the boy with the umbrella. The boy is mostly finished, but I want to add a second umbrella on the lower right. I didn’t have a reference photo for that at the show. But I have plenty of pictures of umbrellas in the same light to choose from here.
The painting is on hot pressed paper. The palate is cobalt blue, phthalo green, quinacridone deep red rose, yellow ocher and ceruleum blue.
Pumice Seekers II (in progress)
This is a much smaller version of a painting I did a few months ago of my husband and the girls looking for pumice stones at Crater Lake. Stephen loves the original and won’t let me sell it. But it’s too large for his office. I’m hoping to have this smaller office sized version finished in time for his birthday.
So far I’m using just three pigments: cobalt blue, yellow ocher and burnt sienna. The painting still needs a great deal more contrast.
In the meantime I’ll be preparing to sell sculpture and paint at the Salem Art Fair. I will be at the State Fair August 28th through September 1st in Booth 414 on the south side of the village next to the floral gardens. Wish me luck.
About a month or so ago the Titanic exhibit, or at least a small piece of it came to Salem. Stephen and I took the girls. It was a hot day and we were grateful to the sponsoring bank bank for providing us all with sunshades. And all of those great green and white umbrellas made the crowd rather picturesque. I puzzled the volunteers by photographing the crowd rather than the outside of the exhibit.
I think I will eventually do a back-lit painting of the line. But right now I have an upcoming art fair in Seattle (for my sculpture not my paintings) that’s taking up most of my time. Nevertheless I want to keep my brush hand in. These three little sketches are of a toddler ridding on his daddy’s shoulders and playing with one of those umbrellas.
Boy with Umbrella I (5 x 7) $20.00
He was having so much fun twirling that umbrella around and so happily oblivious to everything else that I was afraid he was going to bean his father with it. Come to think of it the father has slid of the paintings. None of the angles I liked showed the man’s head. When I included too much of his back and shoulders it looked like the boy was ridding the headless horseman.
Boy with Umbrella II (5 x 7) $20.00
I began the sketches because I liked the umbrella. I ended up doing three of them because I got carried away with the infinite variety of color in the boy’s hair and skin. Blue, yellow, red, brown, purple and orange. It’s all there.
Now that I look at the sketches I may make a full size painting out of one of these.
Boy with Umbrella III (5 x 7) SOLD
The palette was phthalo green, ceruleum blue, cadmium red, quinacridone deep red rose, yellow ocher.
These three sketches may be framed or used as postcards. Purchase all three for $50.00.
Because they are so small, I’ll mail these little sketches flat rather than in a tube. As always prices include postage within the continental United States.
Twixt Wind and Water
Elizabeth Edwards of 1stAngel Arts Magazine has put together a beautiful side show of her favorite artists from First Angel’s Art Network the magazine’s FaceBook group. I’m honored to be among the fourteen artists she chose to include.
You can view the whole side-show here. Or you can go straight to my page of the show here. The slide-show is set to classical music. If you object to sound emanating from your computer, turn your sound off before entering.
Georgia in the Morning
I am now offering many of my paintings as greeting cards through Fine Art America. The cards are 5 x 7 inches and can be printed blank or with a custom message inside. A single card costs $5.45. In packs of ten they are $2.95 each or $29.50 per pack. In packs of 25 they are $2.25 each or $56.25 per pack.
Her Own Little Fountain (12 x 15) $75.00
Yes, it’s yet another painting of the children playing in the water feature at Town Center Park, Wilsonville, Oregon. What can I say? I love hot sun on skin. And the children were cute. This little girl in particular was adorable. She was all over that stream and happily oblivious to the camera.
This is my second painting on hot-pressed paper. The last was a rocky seascape and I used hot-press to get more luminous darks. That worked well.
I wanted to test the wipe-out properties of hot-pressed paper. Wiping-out means to paint solid color and then to lift the high lights. Hot-pressed paper wipes easier than cold-pressed or rough paper. It thought it would be a good technique for skin on a hot summer’s day. What I discovered is that it works well except for highly staining colors. Quinacridone deep red rose is highly staining. Actually I haven’t found a red I like that isn’t highly staining. The closest I’ve found is burnt sienna which is really an orange. I think I’ll wait for a less sunburn scene where I can use the raw sienna before trying wipe-out with hot-pressed paper again.
The palette was burnt sienna, colbalt blue, quinarindone deep red rose and yellow ocher. I reclaimed some whites with titanium white.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
The Whale Watchers at Elephant Rock (14 x 20) $125
This is the head at Seal Rock Wayside park. A long ridge of basalt runs across the coast line. It creates tidal pools and spectacular waves along the beaches. At the the head it is wall defending the land from the sea. This is the view as you crest the last hill and look down on the wall barricading the head. The ridge is easy to climb and it really is a great place for whale watching.
This is my second attempt both at painting this view and at painting on hot-pressed paper. My first is in the entry below. My primary problem to begin with was poor compositional planning. The foreground came to a point almost dead center in the middle of the foreground. Last night I intended to correct the painting by sliding the point over. I found that impossible and so began the painting anew.
This time I established my darks first beginning with the outer ridge. The hot pressed-paper really does aid the creation of luminous darks. I will use it again for low key paintings.
The palate is cobalt blue, cerulean blue, phthalo blue, burnt sienna and yellow ocher. The Ridge is almost entirely grays made of of burnt sienna and the blues. Each of the blues produces a variety of interest grays and browns when mixed with sienna. I used a little yellow in the foreground cliff. I used Chinese white, cobalt blue and yellow ocher for the grass.
The Oregon coast is littered with spiny gray-black volcanic rocks. I love them, but it’s hard to get watercolor that dark without losing the vibrancy that drew me to the paint the first place. Last time I attempted this subject I painted on canvas because watercolor can be laid on canvas much more thickly than on paper. There are things I like about this approach to the problem.
High Tide and Seal Rock (12 x 16) $200
As you can see above, canvas does allow for very dark values. But there are problems with this approach. For one thing, watercolor lifts extremely easily from canvas and so I lost some of my ability to layer washes effectively. Also wipe-out techniques tend to return the canvas to white rather than merely lightening the paint.
This is the beginning of my experiment with hot-pressed paper.
Elephant Rock (14 x 20) In Progress
Like canvas, hot-pressed paper will take higher value darks than my favorite cold-pressed paper. The reason is much the same– more paint sits on the slick surface of hot-pressed paper. Paint has a tendency to lift from the surface of hot-pressed paper too, but not as easily as from canvas.
As you can see hot-pressed paper, does allow me to layer translucent paint effectively provided I make sure each layer is completely dry before I add the next one. All of the lighter colors are in now and I’m working on the darks. Things are just beginning to look three dimensional.
I’m going to prop this painting up on the dining room buffet so I can ponder it during dinner. There are some compositional issues I need to resolve before I go further. For on thing I don’t like the rock pile dead center in the painting. I need to move it to one side of the other. I may lighten the sand and grass up to echo the sea and sky too.
Blond Indians (8 x 10) $50.00
This painting began as my first attempt at Ladder to the Past. As you can see I began the idea with two figures not one. Midway through I decided that a single figure would be more eye catching. So I gave this painting up and began again. The results are Ladder to the Past shown in the entry below.
But I liked Ladder to the Past so much I thought I’d finish this little painting too. And I’m glad I did. The two girls are my daughters and the ladder is of course still at Bandelier National Monument.
The palette for Blond Indians is a little larger than Ladder to the Past: quinacridone deep red rose, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, yellow ocher and dioxazine purple.
Ladder to the Past (10 x 15) $75
After painting four very wet paintings working mostly wet on dry, I just completed a very dry painting working mostly wet on wet.
This is Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico. For those of you who don’t know of it, Bandelier is a kind of pocket sized Mesa Verde located not far from Santa Fe. The major cliff dwellings can be seen in a half day self guided walking tour.
I took the photos for this painting a couple summers ago while visiting my father. The slender young women reaching the top of the ladder is my niece. She and my daughters climbed every ladder and explored every dwelling. Besides the fun of climbing the dwellings interiors are a cool contrast to the hot dry trail.
The palette is burnt sienna, cobalt blue, phthalo blue and yellow ocher.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
Splash Dance (8 x 11) $150.00
I started painting this young man on Saturday. Unfortunately the tummy bug that swept our family earlier in the week caught me just as I was starting to mask the whites. But I thought about him off and on all Saturday and Sunday. This morning I went right to work and here he is, the fourth in my Town Center Park series–one more happy extrovert getting wet.
I used tons of splattered masking fluid to keep the splashed water. I find flicking a damp flat brush produces a lovely semi-controllable spray of mask. The faster you flick the smaller the dots.
I’m particularly pleased with his shirt. To make it look wet and stuck to him I added a little cobalt blue to his skin tone and applied it very lightly to his shirt. Where the shirt is stuck to his pants instead of his chest I applied a grayed down pastel version of the same colors that went into his pants.
The palette is a raw sienna, burnt sienna, quinacridone deep red rose, phthalo blue, and cobalt blue. His skin is raw sienna and quinacridone darkened with cobalt blue. I washed him with burnt sienna at the end.
Memorial Day Waterworks (17 x 19) $275
Yes, this is yet another painting of the Town Center Park water feature. This one is rather more ambitious than the previous two. I backed up to take in the feel of the whole stream bed. And I included not one but seven figures.
As you can see from the reference photo, I took some liberties with the geometry of stream bed. I narrowed the center wall of concrete and removed a trash can among other less major changes. I also slide the boys around a little so that they wouldn’t be directly above each other. Finally I eliminated the blond boy half hidden on the left hand side.
Refrence Photo
After the Mask Came Off
Once I was satisfied with the sketch I masked the boys and concentrated on the water feature itself. Masking an object against water or sky makes it easier to get the water to flow evenly to the edge of the foreground object.
Masking the boys also served as a final composition check as it made them stand out as the centers of interest. People always attract the eye and I expected the boys to so doubly because their skin provides the only warm tones in an otherwise cool picture and because their clothing and toys are the brightest colors in the painting. I liked the way the placement of the boys echoes the “S” curve of the concrete wall. Now that the painting is finished, I still like it.
But I’m probably still not done with this water feature. I like this subject and I’m learning the value of working in a series.
Pigment notes: The background is all burn sienna, phthalo blue and cobalt blue. To do the boys I added yellow ocher, cadmium yellow, and quinacridone deep red rose.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
Wading In On All Fours (8 x 11) $75.00
Another painting based on the the photos I took at the Town Center Park in Wilsonville last weekend.
This young man didn’t think just wading was enough. He had to really get down into the water. I think he had the right idea.
This is another limited palette painting. I used burnt sienna, phthalo blue, cobalt blue and yellow ocher. This time I reserved all the whites with mask. Notice how much sparklier they are than the Chinese white I used in Waterfall in Her Lap.
I’m going to put in a plug for the park too while I’m at it. Town Center Park has the most wonderful made made stream running up the middle with little two foot high waterfalls and lot and lots of little bubblers. It’s designed for toddlers and even babies to wade in and on hot days it’s a lively place.
If you’re taking I5 just south of Portland on a hot day take the Korean War Memorial exit to find the park. You’ll be glad you did. The Memorial is in the back of the park well away from the fountain. It’s worth a visit too.
