A spring commission

With the spring shows hung and the winter commission complete, I was thinking I would be able to turn next to some plein air painting, or perhaps to develop a couple of my James River plein air paintings into larger studio works. But that will have to wait, as I have gotten another commission! :-) But first, a couple of shots of the garden, which, when last photographed was in a state of sad dishevelment! The gardens around the studio really come into greater color in the summer. But with the rubbish cleared and weeds pulled, things are coming alive in the side garden with Creeping Jenny on the path, flanked by Mountian Bluets (Bachelor's Buttons) and creeping phlox. A flowering Dogwood makes a nice canopy, and the lilac in the fore is just starting to put off its heady scent.

Here's another shot below of the garden opposite the studio. In summer there are lilies, cone flowers, tall phlox and a butterfly bush. But my big thing lately is succulents. I love that they are water-wise and so marvelously sculptural. In the center is a succulent topiary I made last year. I will need to replenish a few of the tender plants that didn't survive our winter, but it hasn't been quite warm enough here to see much variety in the garden centers yet.

Now that my daughter is a toddler, I can usually patch together enough time to noodle in the garden while she plays nearby. Working in the studio is a different story. At just 2 1/2 years old, her attention span is still pretty limited. So while she loves being in the studio, (and I love having her there,) I do have to shoo her out when it comes time to work, amidst howls of protest (and a certain amount of Mommy guilt as well).

...Which leads me to the commission! If you have been a reader for some time, this image might be familiar to you. In fact, I have painted variations of this scene a few times, beginning with the small painting done en plein air in the Blue Ridge mountains, and following with two larger 30x40 versions.

The commission came about as the result of my April show currently taking placein New Jersey. The client loved the painting "Morning Meadow" (click here to read my blog about this painting in the making) but it was much too large for her space. So my task is to recreate this scene in a 16x20 format.

Since a 30x40" painting doesn't exactly scale down to 16x20", we thought it best to start with a sketch of the new painting so that the client could have a visual idea of how it would look compositionally.

While on the one hand, it may seem easier to recreate something I have basically already done a number of times, it can sometimes be a challenge to meet client expectations. Sometimes, though not always, a client may, for instance, expect the new painting to be exactly like the first, only smaller. So an effort always has to be made to explain in advance that as an original work of art, a painting can't be recreated stroke-for-stroke like the last.

The client does understand this, though she would like the color of the new piece to be as close as possible to the last. It was, after all, the combination of colors in Morning Meadow that she fell in love with.

Luckily, my prior blog post listed the exact color palette I used to create the larger piece! :) (I can't tell you how often I have referenced my own blog to get this kind of historical information.) So while I won't be able to remember exactly the combinations of color mixtures, I will be able to take some of the guesswork out of the process and use the same palette for this piece.

Above is the sketch, reinterpreted onto canvas. At this point in sketch stage, I want to make sure I get an accurate placement for the various elements in the composition, so I've marked off in pencil the horizontal and vertical mid-points in the pencil sketch as well as on the painting to guide me. More to come in an upcoming post, where I will get into some color!

Sogno Rosso

We have been back from Thanksgiving travels for a week now, and we all received an awesome airline door prize in the form of the virus-of-the-day.  It's on the way out now, but I guess I should not be surprised to have contracted something, travelling with a toddler (who, especially since she has been in preschool has become the human petri dish!) Well, I guess as they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Any way, I am back to painting now, and I have really missed my studio time.  As I mentioned before, I am sticking to some smaller paintings for a while. The holiday schedule seems to just get fuller and crazier with each passing year. So, for sanity's sake, I think I am finally learning to just be kind to myself at the outset and not even attempt anything overly ambitious during this time.

So December is officially small painting month for me! And here, to prove my point, is a 12x16" painting of the Val d'Orcia, in Tuscany:

The compositional sketch:

"Sogno Rosso" Oil on Canvas, 12"x16" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

The Tuscan landscape just seems to roll on forever. It is a painter's dream. That idea is the inspiration for the title. "Sogno" (= dream), and "Rosso" (= the red field of poppies). I am painting from photos, memory, and imagination. The photos are the touchstone, but through memory I hope to convey my feelings for this place, which, from the very first time I laid eyes on it, has pulled at my heartstrings.

I rarely paint anything exactly as it is, (whether painting from photographs or life) so that's where the "imagination" comes in. I compose, rearrange, and edit until I acheive a composition and a statement that is pleasing to me. I want to stay true to the place, but really, it's just a moment in time, and an impression of the natural world that I'm after.

Though I am temporarily committed to keeping my painting sizes small, I think this composition cries out to be reincarnated as a larger piece at some future point. What do you think?

Revisions, revisions...and finally the final!

Well is this the slowest moving demo ever, or what?  Sorry about that, and thanks for sticking with me! I  haveenjoyed this painting, but  I struggled with the foreground boats I had planned to include.  I took them out and put them back in several times. I felt like I wanted something there to lead the eye into the picture, but the boats as I had them seemed to block my entrance  rather than aid it. So I finally settled on a single rowboat to lead the eye in while still allowing some breathing room.

After that was all hashed out (whew! ) I set about laying in the background boats against the retaining wall, half of which are in shadow, and half in light.

Next came the masts, sails, and water. The reflections in this scene were very soft and shimmery. Light reflections tend to cast a wee bit darker than what is being reflected, and dark ones are a tad lighter. I tried to keep the whites on the warm side, as they take on a lovely golden glow as they glimmer in the low angle of the sun.

"Pescallo Glow" Oil on Linen, 24x30" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

So, did I keep with my grayscale plan I mapped out at the beginning of this demo?  You tell me:

grayscale sketch by Jennifer Young

I must say that I liked having the grayscale notan and I actually did reference it often during the entire process of my painting. While I think it is a valuable tool, I think I would still have benefitted from doing a compositional line drawing in addition, especially with such a complicated scene. I probably reference the notan sketch more throughout the painting, but a strong compositional line plan may very well have eliminated the foreground boat dilemma I struggled with midway through the painting.  Live and learn!

Moving forward (Lake Como W.I.P., continued)

At this point in the process I feel that I have sufficiently addressed the nearest hillside to the point that I can now move forward and focus on the middle distance boats and water.

lake como painting in progress by Jennifer Young

I also realise that there is still a lot of white canvas around this painting and I really want to at least block the rest of it in so that I can better gauge my color and value relationships. Ideally I probably should have done this earlier, but as you might have noticed I have been short on easel time in the last week, and I want to address the water in as close to an alla prima fashion as I can, because otherwise I end up having to scrape off a lot of dried paint from my palette and remix everything to try and get back to where I had previously left off.

Pescallo painting Italian landscape

Ah, that's better!  I've painted in the little stone wall/pier to the left, and have at least suggested that there is a lake here somewhere! The paint layer on the water is still a very thin block-in here, but at least I have some color down and have indicated approximately where the boats are going and where the water highlights will be. This last picture shows where I had to leave off this morning. No matter how early I try to get out to the studio, I seem to always feel that I have one hour too little. But that's the way it goes, right now. Depending on how much painting time I will get this weekend, I hope to finish this piece up in another session or two.

painting-in-progress of Pescallo Italy

Lake Como W.I.P./Demo (continued)

Well I promised color in my last post, so let's get started! I don't know if I mentioned it lately, but I have been experimenting with expanded palettes for my latest paintings, and that exploration continues with this one. Regular readers may remember that I have for a long while used a limited palette of red, yellow, and blue, plus white (like this one). For this painting, my palette is (as I lay it out from left to right) Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow Light, Golden Ochre (Rembrandt), Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Permanent (Gamblin), Cobalt Blue, and Ultramarine Blue. (I've specified brands where color names are specific to a particular brand.)   I haven't used any pre-mixed greens, as you can really mix a zillion different greens with this palette. I have used most of these colors off and on, with the exception of Cobalt Blue. To be honest, I was really hoping that I wouldn't like it, because it is a terribly expensive tube of paint. Of course, I love it!  It is a cooler blue than Ultramarine, which has more red in it. I still love Ultramarine, but Cobalt has some really wonderful possibilities. Any way, back to the painting...I start by painting in the sky, which contains the light source and is also the farthest in distance. The sky is Cobalt blue plus white, with cad yellow lt. added as it nears the horizon. For the clouds I've mixed a combination of blues and cads red and orange + white for the shadows, and Cad orange and red + white for the highlights.

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Working from back to front, I next paint in the distant cliffs, which have a beautiful shadow casting down over them from low-lying clouds. The photo is a bit dark here (apologies) but I will try to get some more accurate photos in subsequent blog posts so you can get a better idea of the colors.

The distant mountains complete, I block in the buildings that jut out into the harbor, as they will serve as my area of interest in the painting, and everything will kind of flow to lead the eye towards them. I also decide to lay down my pattern of darks, to restate the plan I made in my notan sketch. Again, this photo just blackens everything out, but I had to make a choice between using my time blogging or photo editing, and at this point, I've chosen blogging.

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Next, I work on the terraced hillside in the middle distance. What a joy it is to paint...all of those shadows and varied greens! A nice round bristle brush is great for painting in those cypress trees, which have always struck me as distinctive punctuation marks in the Italian landscape. .

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 A mahl stick (shown in the next photo  on my easel below the painting) is a handy tool to have to steady the hand without smudging the painting, when painting details like architecture and tall skinny cypress trees.

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I have yet to paint in the highlights on the cypresses, but once I've done that I will be ready to move on to the middle distant water and boats, and finally the boats in the foreground. All that will be left after that point will be fine tuning  wherever's needed.