Archive for

October, 2009

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October 31, 2009 2:21 pm

Grass in the Window

by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,for sale,prints available,watercolors

Grass in the Window (10 x 14) $225.00

Most of Central City is so well maintained that period-town would be a better description than ghost-town. But some of the buildings have been left to nature for some time. Grass grows out of a low window in one such wall were two building used to abut each other.

If the wall ever had any mortar, it’s not visible now. The quality of the dry wall construction obviously varied greatly between the two buildings is backed. On the right hand side the wall is neatly constructed and looks purposeful and solid. On the left hand side the stones are hardly squared at all are stacked more and more erratically the higher the wall gets. Some stones near the window have fallen away, revealing the depth of the wall.

I began the stones by making an under-painting of phthalo blue. The under-painting showed the shadows between the stones and some of the stronger shadows in the stones. Phthalo blue is a great choice for under-painting because it is strongly staining and won’t wash up with successive layers of paint. After the under-painting dried, I washed the stones wetly with burnt sienna and burnt sienna mixed with rose madder quinacridone. Washes of cerulean blue and phthalo blue mixed with burnt sienna followed. I built up the shadows slowly using the under-painting as a guide. Finally I splattered the rocks with various combination of cerulean blue, burnt sienna and burnt umber using a toothbrush. I smudged the splatters with a paper towel.

The window casing is burnt sienna, cerulean blue, new gamgee, and burnt umber. I applied the paint wet first and then in dry brushed layers.

The grass I masked before beginning the painting. I finished it with greens mixed from new gamgee and phthalo blue. I added the shadows over the window sill last.

I’ve always shied away from building detailed rock and wood like this because I was afraid I couldn’t get the textures right. But I”m pleased with this and may do some more like it.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: Central City, Colorado, ghost town, grass, stone, wall, window

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October 30, 2009 3:02 pm

The Dynamite Dome

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by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,prints available,watercolors

The Dynamite Dome (9 x 12) $75.00

This is another view of Central City’s Boot Hill. According to a gift shop owner in town, the odd brick dome was used to store dynamite. The storage dome was built in the graveyard because of the dangerS of storing explosives in town. Nothing about the dome proclaims it’s purpose, and it would be an odd mausoleum so I’m glad the gift shop owner was chatty. Otherwise, we would have gone away wondering.

She went on to tell us that the dome is on the Catholic side of the graveyard because the powers that be in the city were Protestant. The may be, but the Catholic side of the grave yard is both better tended and more populous than the Protestant side. Judging from the names on the stones, the Catholics in the 1800s were primarily Irish with a sprinkling of Slavs and Spanish miners. The other Boot Hill views I have have posted here have also been from the Catholic side. The monument I painted in Victorian Deadwood is from the Protestant side, but there are many more like it on the Catholic side.

I did this painting at a craft fair in Tigard last weekend along with a few more landscapes which I’ll post over the next few days.

The palette is cerulean blue, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, new gamgee (yellow) and burnt sienna. I used cerulean for the sky and Prussian blue grayed with burnt sienna to define the clouds. I mixed all of the blues with new gamgee to create the greens for cemetery and hills. The dome itself is burnt sienna.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: cemetary, Central City, Colorado, dynamite, graveyard

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October 22, 2009 5:36 pm

Victorian Deadwood

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by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,prints available,watercolors

Victorian Deadwood (8 x 10) $75.00

This is another painting from the cemetery above Central City, Colorado. Most of the graves there date from the Victorian era. This is typical of the monuments. They were cast concrete rather than stone and carved to look like wood and stone. The “wood” portions sometimes look like rustic logs and sometimes more like vines creeping on the stone. Could they have had rose or grape covered bowers in mind?

But whatever the intent, to my mind the monuments are so ugly as to be strangely compelling. The are overly complex and intricate yet striving for rusticness. The more I look at them, the more I wonder what they were thinking and what if anything the fake wood roofs and beams meant to them.

The palatte here is cerlulean blue and burnt sienna for the sky. The monunent is raw sienna and cerulean blue on the lighted portions and burnt sienna and Prussian blue on the shadowed sides. The foliage is cerulean, cobalt and Prussian blues mixed in various combinations with raw sienna, new gamgee, and burt sienna.

Prints may be purchased from my BubbleSite.

tags: cemetery, Central City, ghost towns, graves, Victorian

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October 20, 2009 9:58 am

The Fossil Shell

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by Jenny Armitage in for sale,prints available,techniques,watercolors

The Fossil Shell (6 x 9) $75.00

My girls like to hunt for fossil shells on the beach. Once a middle aged fossil hunter with a German Sheppard stopped to to talk with them. It was a brief conference between enthusiasts. He was looking for fossilized fish and other rarer things. The four shared the boulder strewn beach under the cliffs while I watched the waves. Then the girls and I headed back up the beach for the warm hotel room. He caught up quickly and thrust a stone into my youngest’s hand and was gone before she could say thank you or even see what it was. It was the find of the day, a fossilized shell perfectly preserved on one side and rough rock on the other.

Joy! I popped it right down on the sand and photographed it. It lives on our mantle piece now.

After the Mask Came Off

I began the painting by masking the shell. Then I washed the background lightly first with yellow ochre, then with burnt sienna. I painted in the shadow of the shell with phthalo blue. After that I used an old toothbrush to splatter it with layer upon layer of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cerulean blue, and Prussian blue.

Next I removed the mask and painted the shell in burnt sienna, and cerulean blue. I added a few gouache white touches.

When I stepped back to look at it, I decided that the sand was too busy and had taken away from the picture. So I took the painting to the sink and scrubbed paint off it with a stiff brush under the tap. Washing a painting is a scary process, but sometimes it’s the only good fix. The result is softer, but still shows the effects of the splattering.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: fossil, shell, splattering, washing

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October 18, 2009 4:46 pm

Before the Afternoon Rain

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by Jenny Armitage in for sale,landscapes,prints available

Before the Afternoon Rain (9 x 12) $100.00

This is the Catholic side of Boot Hill above Central City, Colorado. The grave yard is in a park, a geological park that is, i.e. a high mountain flat open meadow. Most of the graves are old and overgrown and the plots appear to be spotted haphazardly across the field. Here and there are tended plots and even occasionally a new grave. But most of the graves date from the 1800s. Wild roses, daffodils, and onions mingle (the mountain ghost-town survivors) mingle with wildflowers and grasses.

I liked the way the coming afternoon storm lit up some parts of the graveyard but left others in shadow. I also loved the sky itself.

I planned the painting to be three quarters sky. I painted the sky first wet on wet mostly in Prussian blue grayed down with burn sienna. Prussian blue is perfect for storm clouds the color is almost perfect and it spreads out nicely into water. After I finished the sky, I began the hills and the mountain ridge in yellow ochre mixed with phthalo blue, cobalt blue and Prussian blue. But I got carried away with trees and painted them higher up into the sky than I’d intended. I thought briefly about cutting off the bottom part of the grass but decided against because the gravestones so clearly belong in the mid and background. I like it, but I’m tempted to do it over again and really emphasize the sky this time.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: boot hill, Central City, clouds, Colorado, ghost towns

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October 12, 2009 10:09 am

Taking Ten With My Shadow

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by Jenny Armitage in figures,for sale,techniques

Taking Ten With My Shadow (8 x 10) $125.00

Ordinarily I paint from life or more commonly from my own photographs. But the photo I based these this painting on was taken by charlena of RedBubble. The art groups on RedBubble regularly hold competitions. One of my favorite groups, Just Watercolors, often holds competitions in which each artist paints the same photo. Up until now, none of the photos appealed to me particularly, but this one did.

Just Kickin Back by Charlena

Charlena’s picture is moody and emphases the intimate nature of the space and lighting. I didn’t see any way to do that better with paint than she had already done it with the camera. But I really liked the shadow looming up behind the resting musician, so I changed the format from horizontal to vertical and cut out most of the dark wall to emphasize the man and his shadow.

After Masking

My version of this scene is an almost entirely poured painting. After transferring my sketch to the paper, I masked the musician, his shadow and everything else dark in the sketch. The trick to applying liquid mask is to use synthetic brushes and to soap the brushes before and in between dips into the mask.

The Yellow Pour

When the mask was dry I poured the lights. After wetting the paper (a necessary first step to get the paint to stick) I poured a tea like mix of hansa yellow light over the paper. I waited for the hansa to dry before pouring first new gamgee, then deep red rose. Once again I wet the paper. I poured the area around his feet first. Then I poured upwards from his head to preserve the bright yellow halo effect around his face and hat.

The Second Pour

First Mask Removed

When the lights were completely dry, I removed the mask. I took a moment to renew the pencil lines the mask had lifted. Then I masked all of the areas I has just poured leaving only the darks. I left the mask to dry. Then, after wetting the page, I poured light mixtures of cobalt blue, phthalo blue, magenta and deep red rose. I tried to keep the darker and colder phthalo blue primarily to the shadow and the dark wall leaving the cobalt for the figure in the middle.

After the paint dried, I masked some small highlights in the musician’s face, hat, trousers and shoes. When the mask dried, I wet the paper and poured the same colors in the same places only darker.

When the final mask was removed I felt the picture was too bright. So I added little gray shadow under the chair to set off the vivid colors. Colbalt blue over the orangy pink floor produced a lively gray.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

tags: musicians, poured, shadow

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October 9, 2009 10:24 am

Breakers at Seal Rock III and IV More Postcard Paintings

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by Jenny Armitage in postcard,seascapes,sold

The Breakers at Seal Rock III (5 x 7) SOLD

The Breakers at Seal Rock IV (5 x 7) SOLD

The Breakers at Seal Rock IV (Sold)

Art in the Vally’s December feature will be a group show of mini paintings. So yesterday during my gallery shift I painted another couple of postcard sized watercolors. (Update: One of these paintings did sell at the Art in the Valley show and the other sold the following day.)

These are the view north from Seal Rock Wayside, looking downs on the beach. Seal Rock is a great place for wave watching because the beach drops sharply into the ocean and the beach is ringed by rocks for the waves to crash against. If the tide is coming in, we can always happily waste an hour or two just wave watching there.

The palette for both paintings is cobalt blue, phthalo blue, cerulean blue, and burnt sienna. The cerulean is all in the sky.

Update: One of these paintings did sell at the Art in the Valley show and the other sold the following day.

tags: breakers, coast, Seal Rock, waves

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October 7, 2009 8:39 pm

Playing With the Newport Bridge

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by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,for sale,landscapes,Limited Edition,prints available

The Newport Bay Bridge I (13 x 19) $250

The Yaquina Bay Bridge, better and more informally known as the Newport Bridge, is one of the most photographed and painted objects on the Oregon coast. It’s a little daunting to add yet another painting to the stack. But it’s such a beautiful bridge that I just couldn’t resist.

This is the view of the bridge from the south side of bay standing on the ground looking up. Anyone who knows the area well will see immediately that I took major liberties with the landscape. I’ve placed tree covered hills in the foreground, where there is really a grassy flat area often used as an impromptu parking lot. My reference photo throws the parking lot and the bridge into silhouette against the late afternoon sky. Trees broke up the flat horizon. I expanded the treeline into undulating hills.

What I did not remove from the photo was the scaffolding. Somehow whenever I visit the bridge there is scaffolding somewhere in the picture. And with the light behind it, I found the scaffolding as beautiful as the bridge.

After transferring my sketch of the bridge to the paper, I began by painting the sky. I worked wet into wet beginning at the top with a combination of cobalt blue and cerulean Blue. Moving down the paper I added burnt sienna to the two blues to create the grays of the upper cloud masses. Then I dropped in dioxzine purple on the undersides and the dark areas of the clouds. I grayed the violet a hair and added some cobalt to it and washed in the lower cloud bank. Grayed cobalt brought the clouds to the horizon. The bay itself is grayed down cerulean.

The bridge is various dark combinations of burnt sienna, cobalt blue, french ultramarine, and dioxazine purple. The hills are are wet into wet layers of various mixes of the bridge colors plus cerulean blue and raw sienna.

When I finished the painting I was puzzeled about where to sign it. In the end, I signed the painting in removable liquid mask. The mask has a tendency to lift paint thus leaving a quiet signature behind when I removed it.

This painting is currently available on-line through my Etsy shop. Prints available on inquiry.

tags: Newport, Oregon, Yaquina Bay Bridge

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October 3, 2009 5:31 pm

Wall Flowers

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by Jenny Armitage in Floral,for sale,prints available

Wall Flowers (6 x 9) $35.00

When my mother was a little girl, she and a little friend spent one summer making dancing ladies out of hollyhocks. An upside down open bloom formed the voluminous dancing skirt. A bud for the head attached to the skirt with a toothpick completed the dancing lady.

When we visited her house this summer, she taught my daughters to make the pretty dancing ladies. She had plenty of hollyhocks and other flowers for the girls to play with. At first their flower dolls were all like grandma’s. But soon they added bits of asters and daisies to the heads and bodies. Finally they made a little prince made out of pea pods and pea stems.

The girls spent several afternoons playing with the flower doll on the back porch. But alas there was only one prince. So most of the dancing flower ladies had to wait their turn at the ball. Here are two of them waiting now.

I have many photos of the girls playing with the hollyhock ladies, and one of these days soon, I’m going to paint the girls playing with the flower dolls. It the meantime, I thought I’d start small with a couple studies of the flower dolls.

Because I wanted very soft edges I did these two without mask, saving the whites with careful paint strokes. The flowers themselves are a mixture of opera pink (PR22) and deep red rose (PV 19), both quinacridone reds. I added hansa yellow to make the oranges and cobalt blue to make the greens.

The flag stone is many layered mixes of the same colors toned with burnt sienna. The mortar is burnt sienna and cobalt blue.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com

tags: dolls, hollyhocks

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October 1, 2009 10:08 am

Challenging Myself: One Subject, Three Moods

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by Jenny Armitage in buildings and bridges,composition,for sale,prints available,techniques

Queen Anne Nods to Shirley Jackson (11 x 15) $150

I set a challenge for myself this week. The idea was to paint a single subject in a variety of moods. The subject I choose was Deepwoods Estate, here in Salem. I took all of the photos for the painting in the same light and although the various aspects of the building gave me different ideas, the photos don’t convey much feeling to me.

Its Greener on the Other Side

Porch reference photo

I began with the front porch. I aimed to emphasize the softness of the light and the romance of the building. I also wanted to draw the viewer into the painting.

As you can see from my reference photo, my depiction is a little fanciful. I limited my palate to yellows and blues to mimic the soft shadowy light under the porch and the golden sunlight beyond it.

I think the painting works. The most common comment about it is that the viewer would like to step through the porch into the garden on the other side.

Turret and Cupola

Turret Reference Photo

Next I painted a detail of the roof-line from in back. This time I tried to contrast the harsh glittering light with the shaded parts of the building.

Because I intended to include many hard lines and less subtle variation in tone I looked for a place where the contrast between light and shade was particularly striking. But I didn’t want it to look like graphic art, so I poured this painting to ensure that the solid expanses of color were lively rather than flat. Once again I exaggerated, the light in the reference photo is not nearly as stark as the light I painted.

I like this painting, but it turned out rather softer than I had intended. I may try it again with an orange and blue palate.

House Reference Photo

The latest painting in this series is of the whole house. I’ve always found Victorian and Queen Anne houses a little creepy. Like wrought iron, they can be both sinister and charming all at once. On a bright sunny day there is nothing really creepy about the Deepwood House, but it does have a swallowed by the woods feel to it. Despite a generous lawn, there are few places where you can see the whole house. Instead what you see is patches of house through the trees.

So in order to bring out the sinister feel of Queen Anne archetecture, I pulled the trees in closer to the house and darkened the edges where the trees and house meet visually. I also distorted the shape of the house stretching it upwards to about fifteen percent more than it’s real height. Finally I chose a very earthy palate for such a pristine white house: burnt sienna, raw sienna, yellow ocher, phthalo blue and cobalt blue.

I poured this painting too because I wanted a lot of variation in tone. But pouring produces hard lines at the edges of the mask. The result had too many hard lines for the shadowy woods. I did so much scrubbing of the edges, washing over, and detail work that painting doesn’t feel poured to me. But the more I painted the darker it got. I finally had to stop for fear the house would no longer read as white.

I showed the finished painting to my husband yesterday. He said he really liked it, but then added tentatively, “Isn’t it a little eerie?” Yes, yes it is. But I don’t think it’s so eerie that it’s a caricature of the house.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

tags: Deepwoods, house, mood, Oregon, queen anne, Salem, Victorian

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Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

A Painting Blog

October, 2009

Grass in the Window

The Dynamite Dome

Victorian Deadwood

The Fossil Shell

Before the Afternoon Rain

Taking Ten With My Shadow

Breakers at Seal Rock III and IV More Postcard Paintings

Playing With the Newport Bridge

Wall Flowers

Challenging Myself: One Subject, Three Moods