Watching the Waves

Here is the last plein air painting I did at the beach last week. It was a quickie, started around 4:30 or so and wrapping up around 6PM. Watching the waves is one of my favorite things to do when I'm at the beach.

"Watching the Waves" Water miscible oils on linen, 8x8" ©Jennifer E Young

What is it about the ocean that calls us so? I guess it is the mystery of it. Or maybe it's the rhythm of the tides? Or maybe it's just that it is the place where we all originated, and it's depths are still unknown. My daughter once asked me, "When does the ocean stop waving?" Exactly! It never does, though it never ceases in changing either.

Incidentally, as I was painting this little vignette of our neighbor with her blue striped umbrella, I was photographed by Hidden Outer Banks!

Plein air painting at Nags Head. Image credit Hidden Outer Banks

Check them out. It was perhaps the one time when I actually didn't mind having a picture taken in my bathing suit. ;-)

Morning Surf

Immediately after I wrapped up painting my sunrise painting, I turned to look up the beach toward the pier and noticed how lovely the waves looked lapping up on the curving shoreline. So since I finally felt like I was getting somewhere with these paints, I decided that this would be a back-to-back session, one piece after another. Here' s the beach in early morning, post sunrise, around 8:30 a.m. or so:

"Morning Surf" Oil on Canvas, 9x12" ©Jennifer E. Young, All rights reserved

For this painting and the prior sunrise one I had to lay the paint on pretty thickly to manipulate the edges the way I wanted. Also I found the titanium white and cadmium yellow light were much less intense than what I was used to with my traditional oils, so the highlights were painted very thickly indeed. I hadn't noticed this in my first venture with the Water Soluble oils, but it became much more apparent with these beach paintings because they are pretty high key.  Overall the effect seems to me to be closer to a palette knife painting than one done with a brush, though hog bristle brushes were all that I used.

I really enjoy painting the surf. While I have done it before a number of times  in the studio, these pieces were my first effort done completely from life. What a rush! I feel like I could spend a lifetime studying just this one subject...I should be so lucky.

Back from the beach

Last week my family made our annual trek to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It is a trip I look forward to all year, and it always seems to be over all too soon. For this trip, I brought along my water soluble oils.  Given all of the moving and excitement we had this spring and summer, I thought I would simplify things a bit with the painting gear I chose to bring with me, and eliminate the need for carrying turpentine. The only problem with my little plan was that, unlike my first foray into this medium, I found myself struggling. A lot. I don't know if it was the humidity, the painting surfaces, my overall fatigue or what. But every painting I did all week was a complete wiper, in spite of my most valiant efforts.  The paint seemed to completely lack body and intensity. It also seemed to do nothing but smear all over my surfaces when I applied them.

Finally on the night before the last full day, it dawned on me that I should try a more absorbent surface. When I paint with traditional oils my preferred surface is one that is quite smooth --a fine weave linen or a shellacked birch panel. It was my understanding that shellac wasn't going to fly with water soluble oils, and my linen wasn't doing the job at all. So I dug around in my supply of panels and came up with a couple of gessoed birch panels and a Pintura gessoed canvas panel and decided to throw the old Hail Mary on the final day.

Here is the  first piece I did that last day, at sunrise:

"Sunrise at Nags Head" Water miscible oils on panel, 9x12" ©Jennifer E Young

Finally I painted 3 pieces that I actually felt happy with! The paint was still harder to control than my beloved traditional oils, and I had a harder time mixing the colors I was aiming for, but at least the paintings actually looked like something I could show and/or use for reference when painting larger pieces. I will post the other paintings from that day in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Color isolator

My 5 year old and I have started playing a little color game called, "What color is that exactly?"  I'm trying to show her that colors are not always what they seem. The ocean may seem "blue", but which blue, exactly? And is it all blue? Or is it the same blue, from horizon to shoreline? One way to hone your color discerning skills is by using a color isolator. A color isolator is nothing high tech. It's basically a small hole that one can peer through to "isolate" a particular color from all others in a scene, in order to achieve better color accuracy.

There are little art tools sold to achieve this purpose, or you can peer through the small hole at the end of your palette knife. In a pinch you can concoct a small hole by peering through your curled up fingers. Last night at the restaurant my daughter and I were peering through straws. We even made a hole in a piece of my daughter's pita bread.

This worked really well, actually, though by this time my husband started trying to disassociate himself from the crazy people peeking at things through their appetizers.

The point is, by isolating a tiny portion of an object you eliminate the information overload that can often happen when painting outdoors, and it is easier to see the color and value more accurately.

Last Blush

I spent a really fun week visiting with my sister and her kids, so I've been a little silent here on the blog lately. I also find that I post so frequently to my Facebook page via mobile (and I've just started up with Instagram too) that I may miss an update or two on the blog. Silent no more! I  found myself pretty tired today, but since the hubs offered me a free morning of childcare so that I could paint, I couldn't pass it up. Once again,  I opted for a very short commute to the patio:

"Last Blush" Oil on Linen, 8x10"  © Jennifer E Young, All rights reserved

I never know whether to call paintings like these a still life or a plein air painting. I guess they are both! This potted hydrangea is one I carried over from the old house. It is still hanging onto its blooms, but they are fading now, from a bright pink to more of a dusty rose. I went back to traditional oils for this piece, mainly because I still have quite a supply of them and I may need to save the water miscible variety for when I need to paint indoors.

During this painting session I tried out a new little gizmo I've had my eye on for a while. It is the Tiffen #1 black and white viewing filter.

tiffen1

The vendor product info states:

"Often called the "Director's" filter this hand held filter converts color scenes to shades of black and white. It allows the photographer to "see" the black and white contrast and tone before finalizing the exposure."

It's pretty neat because you can wear the thing around your neck and hold it up to your eye with the little handle so as not to smudge the glass. I found it useful to check my values with it, especially the dark passages. But I'm not sure about the highlights. They seemed to appear a bit duller when peering through the filter. I may justI have to get used to using it for a while. I will report back after I have had a chance to use it a little more, but I think it might be a fairly helpful tool to check the value relationships in my work during my process, especially if they are in question.