A few announcements

Being heavily immersed in summer activities I'm afraid I've kind of fallen off the blog wagon lately. But things have been happening behind the scenes, and I'd thought I'd share a few interesting tidbits of what's coming down the pike.

• France in 2009! I've just gotten the word that my dates for a 10 day plein air painting workshop at Le Vieux Couvent have been confirmed! If you've been reading my blog, you've already heard my raves about this beautiful, enchanting part of Southern France.

I'm excited to have the opportunity to take a group there myself, for 10 days of painting, touring, eating, and just soaking in the atmosphere. Dates are June 3-13, 2009. This year during that time period I had word from the workshop host that the poppies were in full bloom and the roses were going crazy in the garden. I'm preparing my brochure now and should have it up on my website by next week. If you have an interest in joining me for this wonderful creative adventure, please check back, or just contact me and I'll send you a brochure with all the details as soon it's done

•  Moving ahead. Well it just seemed like yesterday that I moved into my beautiful gallery space, but the time has come for me to make another move. I don't have a lot of details to share yet, but come fall I will be letting go of the downtown gallery location. I'm sure I'll be writing on that in the weeks ahead but a lot of details need to be ironed out before I really have anything solid to share.
•  Warm up to Plein Air! Since the time of my last workshop this past spring, I've received a number of inquiries asking when I'd be having another class. Due to the aforementioned upcoming move, I had to wait a bit to schedule anything solid. But here's what I'd like to do: In September I'd like to offer some one-day plein air modules in the Richmond area that I'm calling "Warm up to Plein Air."  If you are a painter who has always wanted to try plein air painting, this will be a fun opportunity to give it a shot. Experienced plein air painters can benefit as well, as this day-long module will include a demo and time for painting. We'll talk about the tools of the trade that I've found useful, plus tips to make the most of your time outdoors. I'm limiting these modules to a very small size so we can make the most of our time together. Dates and details will be posted on my website, hopefully also by next week. Meantime, feel free to contact me if you're interested.

Poppies en plein air- "Dusk in the Lot Valley"

I've been taking some time off to deal with matters at home these last few, but I still have a few paintings to share from my France trip. If you've spent any time on my website, you might have noticed that this little plein air is a subject that is a familiar to me--poppies!  In the south of France they are seen profusely in springtime. But, as with sunflowers and lavender, there is no precise way of knowing just when they will be in bloom. Sometimes the sunflowers come "early", or the lavender "late". Or sometimes any one of these flowers can be plowed over (in the case of poppies) or harvested by some farmer. (The nerve!) 

Our group got lucky. It had been an unusually cold, wet spring up until just before we had arrived, and there were few to no poppy fields in sight. I was pretty okay with it, having painted them quite often (not to mention that we had no shortage of beautiful scenes to paint!) But most of the group seemed to have their heart set on it, and I was a little worried that they might be disappointed.

But we were lucky, not only because nature, at last, decided to cooperate, but also because the folks at Le Vieux Couvent remained on the lookout for our perfect field of poppies. And boy, did they find it--complete with two charming little cabins (cabineaux) set against a mountain backdrop. It may have been one of the prettiest poppy fields I've seen to date....or maybe the thrill of the others was just very catching.  Here's my little plein air from that afternoon, painted around 5 PM or so.

"Dusk in the Lot Valley" Oil on Multimedia ArtBoard, 6x12" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

And a couple of gratuitous shots of us in the poppy fields:

Plein air in a French country garden

Now that we're really getting into the summer weather here, I'm starting to see my gardens taking shape. For the beds alongside my house, I'm slowly building an herb and butterfly garden. Budget restraints required that I experiment with starting from seed for a few things, but mostly I just started from very tiny plants and mixed in a few summer bulbs. Gardening is a pretty new pastime for me, so  believe me, every new growth or flower is a triumph.

In Virginia, if you dig deep enough, you will soon hit clay, which makes building any kind of new bed a bit of a chore, as you really have to work in a lot of good loose topsoil, soil conditioner, and fertilizer to make the plants take to it kindly. It kind of makes me shake my head a little when I visit places like the south of France. Roses practically grow out of the cracks of the sidewalks there! Okay, the gardeners there do have to deal with the rocks (and a lot of them) so I guess we all have our gardening challenges.

The old French country convent where I stayed had a labyrinth of beautiful gardens. I believe the current owners have had the place for a little over 10 years, and while they started with a property that had "good bones", all of the gardens were as a result of their own sweat and muscle. The gardens were set out like little outdoor sanctuaries, and there was something to discover in every nook and cranny of the property.

To the painter's eye, there were a thousand possibilities just within the confines of Le Vieux Couvent itself. But I was drawn particularly to the little goldfish pond out back.So apparently was one of the resident cats, "Portia". With so much touring, I didn't really have much time to paint on the grounds of the property, but I did do this little watercolor sketch of Portia by the pond one morning before we set off on another excursion:

My layout was such that I couldn't quite get in the pond itself. But I came back one morning after the group from the "artist retreat" left, and painteda more close-up view again in oils:

"Bassin  Â Poisson Rouge" (The Goldfish Pond) Oil on Linen, 11x14" ©Jennifer Young

Oil painting substrates; Multimedia Artboard

The last few paintings I've featured from my recent France travels are done on Multimedia Artboard. I posted about this surface before when I was getting ready for my trip, and I thought I'd write a little more about it as a follow up. I really enjoyed this surface, especially for traveling and painting en plein air. For one thing, it is very thin, so you can pack a good number of these boards and not take up a ton of room in your suitcase. You can also cut the board to size very easily with either a guillotine-type paper cutter or an exacto knife.

In fact, it is so lightweight that when I first ordered this material I thought I had been sent the wrong product. I was expecting a board, and what I got was something that seemed more like a rigid watercolor paper. I even called the manufacturer to ask about it. I will say that the manufacturer was extremely helpful, and was almost at a point where he was willing to ship me some board from his own stock so that I'd have some for my trip, even though I hadn't originally purchased it from him. But he told me, "If it's my board it should be very rigid. In fact, it will shatter if you try to bend it." Sure enough, when I put it to the test, it did.

That's the one thing to be careful of with this product--but protect the corners in travel and don't drop it from a balcony, and you should be fine. It has a rough side and a smoother side to it, so you have a choice on which side to paint, depending on your needs. I also like that it accepts a variety of media--watercolor, acrylic AND oil. It can accept oils either as is, or primed, if you wish, with gesso. I double primed mine, but it was a little slick, so I think next go around I'll try it unprimed to see what that's like.

While the board is rigid, because it is thinner than a "board", I taped mine to a larger board (gatorboard or coroplast) to give me a stronger work surface.  For framing, I can simply pop it in a frame backed by a sturdier board and it's ready to go.

I am finding the Multimedia Artboard much easier to mount and frame after the fact than the other surface I took with me, a fine-weave primed linen. And while linen has luxurious qualities all its own, I can easily and happily see myself going back and forth between these two surfaces for my plein air painting travels.

Le Pigeonnier, en plein air!

In this area of southern France, we noticed small tower-like structures that sat alone, apart from the other buildings on the farmland. These were the "pigeonniers", or pigeon houses. Apparently the tower formation is a feudal symbol of nobility, and at one time, only the nobles could have pigeonniers on their land. It seemed a little odd to have such a beautifully made and permanent stone structure just to house some pigeons, but the birds were quite important in this society. Their eggs and young are prized for the meat, their droppings used for excellent fertilizer on the farm, and of course, they were used as messenger birds since antiquity, and even up until World War II. There are also tons of stones and rocks in the earth, so it makes sense to use themtowards these structures and clear the land for farming.

This pigeonnier was just down the street from Le Vieux Couvent, and I found it to be most beautiful in the early light of morning or in the golden light of dusk. I painted this one late in the afternoon just as the sky was starting to take on that warm glow:

"Le Pigeonnier" Oil on Multimedia Artboard, 6x12" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young