Painting lavender

Here is an exerpt of a recent email I received from a student of painting, inquiring about painting lavender:  "I just cannot get the lavender/periwinkle  color  figured out. How did you make it? Do you recall? Thanks again. I've much enjoyed reading your blog and your artist's  tips.

 Cheers,  T. J."

Dear T.J.,

Well, color mixing is a very ingrained habit that happens when I'm "in the zone" so to speak. Typically for lavender what I'll most often use is Ultramarine Blue (deep) mixed with Permanent Rose (W&N) and white. Distant lavender looks cooler, so I might use a bit more blue Cerulean or ultramarine, and less rose. It just takes a lot of experimenting, but after a while color mixing becomes pretty intuitive. -Jennifer *** 

Painting lavender is so much fun, and I feel so fortunate to have traveled to Provence during lavender season. One thing that struck me was the way that lavender changes color temperature. Sometimes it looked like a deep blue jewel, other times a violent purple, and still other times the red tones would come out so that it looked more heather.

"First Light", oil on canvas, 16x20" Price:$1175.00 framed

As with anything in landscape painting, the color temperature of your subject is very much dependant on the light. Morning light appears warm until you compare it to light in the evenings. At high noon, the light is directly overhead, so your subject looks flatter and devoid of shadow areas. To get the best understanding of the effects of light on a subject, it is imperative (for me) to go out in nature and paint what I see. I paint from photos all of the time, but only after I have done a considerable amount of painting, sketching and observing of the subject at hand on location. Photographs are a great resource, but they can lie! It is fine to paint from photographs and study them and the work of others while you are learning. But painting from nature can be the best teacher of all.

A Corner of Giverny

Today's painting is of a corner full of flowers in the village of Giverny, where Claude Monet made his home. It measures 8x8" and is oil on gallery wrapped canvas. The edges of this painting are finished off with a complimentary green color, so no other framing is needed:

I think it was probably Monet who started the trend of pink stucco houses with green shutters, but there are several buildings in this little town with this color combination. While I'm sure the plantings are intentional and well-planned, hollyhocks, roses, lilies, and other flowers seemed to just grow out of any available stone crevice in this town. I sure wish I could say the same for my own garden!

For more information please click on the image or contact me.

New giclee print offerings

Here are two paintings I completed recently that I am having reproduced as limited edition giclee prints:

"Off The Beaten Path II"

"Along the Route to Dieulefit"

 

My giclee prints are offered in limited editions in a selection of sizes from small to quite large. They are perfect for home decor as well as corporate art, art for hospitals and art for hotels. I expect the prints to be released in January 2007. Please contact me if you would like to be notified when they become available, or if you would like any additional information about the prints. To see my current print offerings, please visit this link.  For more information about the original oils shown here, please click on the images above.

New Gallery Photos

I thought I'd post some photos of the new gallery space, which officialy opened last Friday night. We were swamped the entire night so I did not get ONE picture of the actual event! It turned out well--hectic but fun. We're both still recovering from total exhaustion, but at least we made it through "phase one". Phase two is still to come--moving my art studio part into the building. We hope to have that accomplished by mid January at the latest. Front room:

This is the wall to the right as you walk in the front door. The flowers on the table are from our new landlord!

This is the left wall of the same room--A great spot for the paintings in my mini collection:

This is a view of the right hand wall as you continue on into the middle room.

Here's a shot of the same wall looking back into the front room:

Here is the opposite wall in the second room. The picture to the far left is an original oil painting of Tuscany. The pictures to the right are canvas prints on the walls, and paper prints in the rack. People were amazed at the quality of the canvas prints, which looked so much like paintings that I had to tell them they were prints and not originals.

   

Heading out from the 2nd room and into the third room. This is where the band played opening night:

Rounding the corner into this third room, here is my wall of Key West paintings:

   

   I had these paintings framed differently from the usual gold because I felt like the solid gold was too formal for this subject matter. I like the linen liner and the platinum colored frame with the bamboo motif for these sunny Key West pieces.

   This last room will undergo some changes. The front two rooms with the hardwood floors will remain gallery space, but we'll use this area more for work space (to be determined), though we'll still hang some art here. Down that hallway is a fourth small room and a bathroom with a utility sink.

   Jennifer Young Studio & Gallery is located at 16 E. Main Street, Richmond, VA, 23219. Currently we are open from 6 to 9 p.m. during the First Fridays Art walks, and other times by appointment. Please call 804-254-1008 (1-877-DIAL-ART toll free) to visit the gallery or to inquire about the paintings you see on the website.

Large format prints

This morning I am off to the printer's to do my final round of proofing for my new series of large format giclee prints. I am excited to be launching this new print series. The proofing has been a rather involved process. Apparently according to the printer I use an extraordinary range of greens in my paintings that are difficult to replicate. I will take this as a compliment, especially since I just recently posted about the difficulty of mixing greens ;-). In any event, my last round of proofs were looking really great. Just a tweak here and there one last time and I expect to sign off on them today. So hopefully I will have some new offerings sooner than I thought! I'm offering a pre-order special of 10% off the regular print price on my website for anyone who would like to purchase one of these prints prior to the official release on 11/1. The release date will allow me some extra time to get the canvas prints stretched and secure packaging for the paper ones.

I hope to post some more artwork to my blog soon. In the midst of running back and forth for the print proofing, I am working on a large commission of three 30x40" paintings. I'm 2/3 of the way there though, so that should open the way for more image posting here.

Tags: art prints landscape prints artist French landscapes Tuscany landscapes