Musical Reflections (11 x 14 watercolor on clay board) $300

This is the first in what I hope will be a series.  It all began a couple weekends ago when I was taking pictures in Corvallis.  The instruments in the window of Gracewind Music caught my eye and I snapped a few pictures inside.  All of that shiny brass made me want to paint.  After wondering around admiring a little, it occurred to me that the bread and butter of many music stores is student rentals and that I might not have to buy the instruments to paint them.

After some negotiation I left the shop with three instruments of dubious music merit, a trombone, a flute and a trumpet which had been marked “for display only.”   None of the instruments is is great condition, but they are all pretty and shiny.  And a month’s rental of all three cost me less than what a single month’s rental of just one playable instrument might come to.

I have since borrowed a clarinet and a bells from a friend’s daughter.

Last week I took a whole series of photos of the instruments on a 42 x 64 inch mirror we had down for a remodeling project.  Spread out across the floor it added an intriguing double take on the instruments. I got out some of my blown glassware, a couple of silver vases, some fabric from my quilting collection, and mat boards for background a and began shooting.  The guys doing the remodeling must have thought I was losing my mind, but I had fun.

I painted this first one looking down at the  instruments from above.  However, the white ceiling reflected in the mirror did not provide the best background, so I painted in a dark reddish brown to set off the lighter instrument.

Mounted on a black wooden cradle and ready to hang.

Prints available through Fine Art America.com. See more clarinet artwork here: clarinet art

Albany Painted Lady (watercolor 11 x 14) $175

Passing through old downtown Albany, Oregon, I was struck by the bright morning light on the Victorian houses.  I stopped to photograph them.   Some of the houses are the National Register of Historic places.   This one is the Ralston House, 1889.   But it’s not the history, its the beautiful shadows cast by the brickenbrack that caught my eye.

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The Ranch Below Fetterman's Masacure (watercolor) 9 x 16 SOLD

I began painting it at the Oregon State Fair this summer. When the light got bad in the evening I switched to clay and propped the painting up behind me. It caught the attention of a lovely woman and her teenage daughter. It reminds them of a ranch they know. After much discussion she bought another two big sky paintings and asked to purchase this one on completion. Last week she saw the completed painting for the first time and bought it. I’ve never been quite so pleased with a sale.Visiting the mountain west this summer, my husband and I toured two American Indian War Battle sites.  The first was that of the Fetterman Massacre which happened about ten years before Custer’s Last Stand.  The view is from but not of the site of the Fetterman Massacre in Northern Wyoming near Fort Kearney.

Fort Phil Kearney was set up in the northern Rockies to guard the Bozeman Trail. The Bozeman Trail (northwest from the Oregon Trail), passed through Wyoming, and on to the gold diggings in Virginia City, Montana. Unfortunately the trail crossed traditional Sioux hunting grounds. Sioux war chief,  Red Cloud, vowed to defend the territory. Washington, however, ordered the trail kept open at all costs.

In 1866, Colonel Henry Carrington, in command of the 18th Infantry Regiment, was sent to build and garrison a series of posts along the trail. Captain William Fetterman joined the regiment.

The Sioux harassed the fort and posts, particularly parties detailed to work outside the fort and those traveling between the forts.  Red Cloud and Roman Nose of the Cheyenne assembled several thousand warriors to remove the U.S. Army from the trail. Red Cloud’s plan was to send small parties of warriors to attack the wood trains and lure the soldiers off to meet the main band of warriors.

On December 6th, a wood train was attacked by a large party of warriors. When Carrington came out to retaliate he was met by an imposing force of Cheyenne warriors including Red Cloud and Roman Nose. He retreated to the fort, leaving too dead and five wounded. Carrington forbade any of his men to pursue fleeing Indians in the future.

Two weeks later, Red Cloud staged another strike on the wood train. But this time, Carrington was not sucked in. There was just one day of wood cutting left for the winter. Carrington prepared to send out a Captain Powell to reinforce the wood train, but Fetterman demanded the right to lead the rescue. Carrington yielded. Fettreman rounded up 79 men and – with the exact number he had bragged that he could wipe out the whole Sioux nation – set off to meet the foe. Carrington’s orders to him were, “Relieve the wood train. Under no circumstances pursue the enemy beyond Lodge Trail Ridge!”

As Fetterman’s men approached the the wood train, the warriors began to break off from the assault and flee from Fetterman’s approach. The soldiers chased them up the side of Lodge Trail Ridge. As they reached the crest of the ridge a second party of warriors, swung around on Fetterman’s rear. Fetternan and his men were surrounded by nearly 2000 men.

Fetterman attempted to ascend the ridge he had just come over and hide behind the cover of some rocks. But Indians were massing up that side of the ridge too. Within minutes all 80 of Fetterman’s men were dead.

Lodge Trail Ridge is now Wyoming State Historical Site.  (More information about the massacre, Fort Kearny, and the Bozeman Trail can be found at the official site for The Fort Kearny State Historical Site.)  A hiking trail leads along the ridge, and despite the markers and other information about the massacre remains beautiful. This is the view west from the lower end of the ridge.

Through the Bamboo Grove (watercolor 17 x 23) $300

As promised, here is a larger more finished version of the Bamboo Grove.  I left the composition pretty much as it was in my little postcard painting, but I greatly increased the contrast by darkening the shadows and underbrush.

This time I poured the painting.  Pouring watercolor is a process much like batik.

I began by making a value sketch of the painting in graphite.  I transferred my sketch to the watercolor paper with graphite paper.  Then I used liquid mask to save all of the white highlights.  In this case highlights were thin strips of light on the edge of the bamboo, and the ridges where the sections of bamboo meet.

Once the painting was masked, I mixed three colors of paint very thinly in cups: cadmium yellow, new gamgee, and phthalo blue.  I wet the painting and then poured the paint out of the cups across the paper working from left to right and sloping downward.  I poured the yellows first then the blue.

After the painting was dry I masked all of the pastel values, mostly sky and unshadowed path and poured again.  This time I used hansa light and new gamgee for the yellows and both phthalo and cobalt  for the blues.  I added quinacridone deep red rose too.  I mixed all of the colors more thickly than on the previous pour.  I used very little red and tried to isolate it on the bottom on the picture.

I repeated the mask and pouring process two more times masking two sets of medium values.  The last time I poured only shadows and underbrush.

After the painting had dried completely, I removed the mask and assessed the results.  I had beautiful varied greens in the bamboo and nice dark shadows, but bamboos were mostly one value and looked flat.  I darkened the rear bamboo, and shadowed the sides of the bamboo to round it.  I dropped some color into the highlights on the path and added some blue to the sky. I soften the skyline foliage and varied the greens a little there.  I had left a roadway from my reference photo running across  the painting  just below the skyline foliage.  I decided that that was a distraction and painted it out.

Beach Breakers I (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about the beach at Brookings is just how big and how close the waves break on the beach.  I’m used to looking for larger waves three or even six or seven waves out from the beach.  At Brookings the leading wave appears to be the largest crest.

Wave watching is always a very direct immediate feeling.   At Brooks that feeling is multiplied many times by the size of the leading waves.

I tried to catch the feeling of immediacy in photos, but I don’t think I managed it.  Here are my first little attempts at catching it in paint.  In both paintings I used my daughters as scale.  Beach Breakers I is my eldest and Beach Breakers II is my youngest.

I use the same technique for both paintings begining with mask and painting sand and water before removing the mask to paint the white water and figures.  For Beach Breakers One I used my usual beach palette: burnt sienna, raw sienna, cobalt blue and  phthalo blue.  For Beach Breakers II I added quinacridone red red rose for the figure.

Tomorrow I may try the waves in pastel.

Beach Breakers II (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

These paintings are currently for sale on-line at my Etsy shop.

Sundown on the Broken Dock (watercolor 12 x 16)

I have five admit-two-free tickets to the March 27-28th, Spring Best of the Northwest Art and Fine Craft at theWarren G Magnuson Park.  Admission is ordinarily $7.00 per person so the tickets are worth $14.00 each.   I’ll mail one ticket each to the first five people to send me their Washington mailing address at jennyarmitage@dancingfeatherstudio.com.

Update:  just three tickets left at noon PST.

Lily with Carnations (watercolor 9x12) $175.00

Yes there are red carnations in the painting. You just haven’t looked closely enough.

Both the carnations and the lily come from the Valentine’s Day bouquet my husband gave me this year. The Danish silverware vase was my Mother’s.  So the painting is a family affair.

The fact that the lily inevitably points out of the picture presented a compositional problem. I used the window frame to create a boundary to contain the eye within the painting.  Theoretically the window frame with lead the eye back around to the vase and into the painting once more.

I began the painting by masking the white edges of the lily, the stamen, and the smallest white highlights. Then I laid the window frame and background in with multiple transparent washes. I began the window frame with a mixture of cobalt blue and burnt sienna. I followed that with phthalo blue, and finally added a very thin wash of burnt sienna to tone it down. The window began with phthalo green and burnt sienna. While the wash was still damp I lifted it with tissue to create a mottled look. I followed that with successive layers of cobalt blue, phthalo blue, and burnt sienna laid wet into wet.  I made the background darker around the lily and lighter by the dark vase to add drama.

Next I under painted the lily with phthalo blue. I added the shadowed fuchsia with quinacrione deep red rose sometimes mixed with cobalt blue. The sunlight fuchsia is a combination of quinacridone red and cadmium red. I added the spots last in darker versions of the fuchsia under them. I painted the colored highlights in the vase in tandem with the lily. The carnations are cadmium red.

The leaves and stamen began with new gamgee (yellow). I laid a green made of new gamgee and colbalt blue over the top. The tips of the stamen are burnt sienna and phthalo blue.

This painting is currently for sale on-line through my Etsy shop.
Or purchase a print on Fine Art America.com.

Short Story (10 x 14 watercolor) $175.00

It’s Spring here and my first daffodils are blooming. I’ve painted them here together with some of my favorite glass from the sun room. The box is an old cigar box I bought on Ebay.   I like the look and smell of cedar cigar boxes though I neither smoke nor like the smell of smoking.

This is the first traditional still life I’ve ever done. Placing and lighting the objects increased my respect for the art of still life. And I’m tempted to play with glass and flowers again soon.

I enjoyed painting the contrasts in texture between the wood, glass, and flowers. But if I try this again, I’d like to do something with a more dynamic composition.

The techniques I used were very straight forward. I reserved the highlights in the glass and then painted wet on dry, from light to dark. I used three blues, cobalt, phthalo, and cerulean. I used two reds burnt sienna and quinacridone deep red rose. I also used three yellows, hansa light which has a greenish cast, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange. I also used burnt umber to help darken the cigar box.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

Washroom Gears (8 x 10) $75.00

Yes, this is another painting of the machinery at the Mission Mill Museum. The barrel and gears are part of the fleece washing machine. It not only washed the fleeces but also pulled them apart and removed the debris. There was a lot of debris. Wool is a magnet for sticks, and bark, and other messy things.

The washroom is a dark place. Only the machinery is lit which casts dramatic shadows over the metal. In keeping with the dark room, I used a very limited palette: phthalo blue, burnt sienna, and quinacridone deep red rose. I mixed little or nothing on the palette. The color is mixed either with multiple washes or by dropping one color into another.

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Sundown on the Broken Dock (12 x 16) $150

Brown Minto Park is one of our local haunts. The park boarders the Willamette on one side and a truck farm on the other. Bicycle trials, bark dust trails, and a dog park lie within it’s boarders. The park has forest, field, and playground. A rather civilized asphalt trail runs along the Willamette. A shorter trail from the playground once led to this dock. The dock was falling down even when I first saw it. Now it has gone the way of all things. But I miss it.

My photo showed real sunset with only a silhouette of the trees and dock left. I turned back the clock about a quarter of an hour to show the island trees and more of the decrepit dock.

The palette is cobalt blue, phthalo blue, dioxazine purple, quinacridone deep red rose, burnt sienna, and new gamgee.

I masked the dock before painting. Then I began with the sky and water working wet into wet. When the sky and water dried I added the far bank and it’s reflection working wet on dry but, still doing much of the mixing on the paper rather than on the palette. To give the foreground bank it’s texture, I salted the paint while it was still damp. The effect was a little stronger than I wanted so I gave it a final wash of phthalo blue. Finally I removed the mask and painted in the dock and it’s reflection.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.