Two more from "Public Gardens Week" at Lewis Ginter

Today I am continuing my last post’s theme by sharing a bit about the two additional paintings I created during the “National Public Gardens Week” event at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. I will be submitting all three of the pieces I created during that week to a jury for an exhibit that will be held throughout the summer at Lewis Ginter. If I should get a piece (or pieces) accepted into the show, I will post an update here and also add it to my calendar. Here’s hoping!

This first piece was done in the Rose Garden, which I was so happy to have finally been able to capture at its peak, even while under the full onslaught of the Virginia sun.

“Rose Regalia, Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens”, Oil on linen, 12x16” ©Jennifer E Young

I own two painting umbrellas, and whenever possible, I do my level best to avoid having to set them up. Not only does it interrupt my process by having to stop and attach it and adjust the angle, it also can easily take on the “Mary Poppins” effect, lifting my entire setup with one inopportune gust of wind. But at this location and at this time of day (and with this skin of mine) an umbrella was an absolute must. Not only does it shade my palette and my painting to eliminate the blinding glare, but it (kind of) shades me too. Here I am with my umbrella set up, working out my composition about midway through the process. I use a stone bag on my tripod to help weigh down the base of my setup. In this case, I’m using my pouch full of paints as the “stones.”

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The next painting was done on another blazing hot morning down at the lily pond near the Children’s Garden. I thought I was being quite smart by tucking myself back in a shady corner on a dead-end path pond-side. Sadly that lovely shade burned away in less than an hour, and again I had to extract the dreaded umbrella apparatus.

“The Magical Treehouse, Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens”, Oil on linen 12x12” ©Jennifer E Young

Though I definitely struggled with the heat of the morning, I ultimately got lost in the joy of painting this piece. It holds so many special memories for me, having ascended the ramp that leads to the tree house many times with my young daughter. I attempted to paint this structure once before many years ago when I was newer to plein air painting and before I had a child. It ended up looking like an out of place alien space ship devoid of all charm, and I was scared away from painting it until now. I’m not sure if it was the additional experience as a painter or as a mother that helped me so much more this time. Maybe it was a little bit of both. In any case, this might be my favorite of the bunch.

Plein air in the garden

As I mentioned in my last post, I participated last week in a “call for artists” from Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens to celebrate National Public Gardens week. You may know from reading previous blogs that I have painted in these gardens many times as a resident of Central Virginia. But somehow, painting in this context, constructed around an “official event,” helped me to see this place with new eyes and renewed excitement.

I decided to challenge myself by painting some gardens that I hadn’t tackled before. The first day I went it was AWASH with tours and school groups. There were so many kids there stopping to give their input. All of it was actually very positive, but also a bit distracting. Now, I love kids quite a lot, (and even have one those cuties myself) but on this day they were messing with my mojo and I had a hard time concentrating on what I was doing😅.

The architectural elements were minimal, but even so, required some concentrated drawing, some sense of proportion and placement to get right, especially since I was fairly close up to my subject and didn’t have a lot of room to manuver. I moved my entire setup several times and wiped it all down, before finally settling on a view that satisfied. It left me less time than I had planned to get everything down before I had to head back to my house in Ashland, but I did a pretty decent job, with only the need for a few final touches in the studio.

“Illuminated Courtyard, Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens”, Oil on linen, 12x16” ©Jennifer E Young

When I was (finally) in a pretty good place with my painting, a kid came by to examine my progress. I estimate he was around my daughter’s age (3rd or 4th grade) . He studied my effort with seriousness, alternately looking at my painting and the scene, my painting and the scene. Finally he gave me a decisive and approving nod. “You’ve done your homework,” he said.

And that, my friends, is the beauty of painting outdoors. It’s filled with its share of frustrations to be sure, but the moments of spontaneity are pure gold.

Time struggles, plein air, and new calendar of events

This week has been a little crazy; two openings and a plein air event for me, theater rehearsals and school and sports for my daughter, and all of the regular stuff of life in between. But some version of crazy seems to be the norm for my schedule every week, and I am not alone.

While I was painting this week at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden (more on that in a minute) I ran into an artist friend and we started talking about how disorganized we can sometimes feel and how guilty we feel about not being better at marketing to social media, to our newsletters, and yes, to our blogs. When time is crunched, the choice of whether to do any of the above or to paint always seems to result in painting as the clear winner.

It’s a frustration that I know a lot of other artists share, many of whom, like me, aren’t always masters of time management or organization. “I need a calendar of events on my website,” I said to my friend, “a quick and simple way for people to check in and see my upcoming shows and events. Maybe it would help me stay more organized too.” When I got home that afternoon, I checked out my site and lo and behold it does have that functionality. So viola! I now have a calendar!😃

If you check out the aforementioned calendar you can see that I have been spending the week painting at the botanical gardens as part of a promotion for National Public Gardens Week. Local artists who applied to paint during this week will submit their completed works for a chance to be juried in to an exhibit at Lewis Ginter that opens June 22nd.

Work in progress, 12x16”, painted during National Public Garden Week at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens

I really like these kind of events because even though I regularly paint outside on my own, they get me out and focused and inspired. I enjoy seeing what other artists are doing and collecting new ideas on various artists setups and tools of the trade. It’s a very different vibe from the more formal events that are organized around competition. I have some friends who thrive on competition and use it as a means to drive themselves onward to bigger heights. For myself, it’s a little more stressful. I do the competitions from time to time and haven’t yet regretted it, but I am not that competitive by nature. So the more relaxed festivals that are really just a celebration of art and plein air painting are truly my jam.

Escape to Provence! A Step by Step Demo

Over Christmas break as everything was pretty brown and exceedingly soggy outside, I decided to mine my many photos of sunnier times from my trips abroad. I will never forget my trip to Lourmarin, painting and eating my way through this beautiful part of Provence. I still long to go back, and am determined to do so, hopefully this time sharing it’s magic with my daughter. In the meantime I can always revisit the experience through paintings. So let’s get started, shall we?

The Design

I draw out my design in a number of ways, usually with a warm tone like burnt sienna. I had been doing this with paint, but I’m enjoying these little oil sticks by Sennelier that I bought on a whim. I like them because they are quicker and can be thinned in the same manner as the paint for washes or adjustments. I also like them because they don’t seem to stain as much as the paint, which means after adjustments and corrections, the drawing and toning are easier to read.

The Shadows

Next I want to lay in the shadows, as this will give my painting the structure it needs. Most of the shadows are concentrated around the horizon where the building, (the area of interest) is.

Color all around

Here I am starting to flesh out the color in the fields and mountains, still leaving my lightest lights untouched.

Painting the sky

To work out the sky, I paint a blue sky color around the areas where I think the clouds are going to go, trying to keep the edges soft and feathery. Right now the white of the clouds is just the white of the canvas.

Head in the Clouds

As I decide on the cloud placement, I start to add pigment. This is a sunny breezy mid day scene so the clouds are pretty bright and high. Keeping the value light, I mix a tiny dab of Gamblin Cadmium Orange deep with a much larger ratio of Titanium White for the lighter side. The shadow areas are made up of Ultramarine Blue, Napthol Red, Titanium White, and maybe a teensy dab of Cadmium Orange. Working wet-into-wet allows me to tease out soft edges. Here I also lay in the color of the light side of my building and the dirt road. The building and the road leading to it have the greatest contrast to lead the eye.

Poppies!

I keep the poppies and other wildflowers to the last, laying them on pretty thick. I used to use Cadmium Red light for the poppy color but I have since replaced this on my palette with Napthol Red. It is a highly staining, cooler red than the Cadmium but can acheive cleaner pinks when desired so I find it both less expensive and more versatile. I mix the Napthol with Cadmium Orange to get that distinctive, sunny “poppy color” I’m after.

“Le Printemps, Temple de Lourmarin”, Oil on linen, 24x30” ©Jennifer E Young

Above is the completed work, photographed outside for correct color and no glare! This Protestant Church, Le Temple de Lourmarin, is simple and austere on the inside but it has a wonderful exterior and adds a sense of history and tradition as it sits like a sentry at the edge of town. Click through on the final image to read more or purchase this piece.

Edges, mark-making and tools

Happy New Year!🎉 Okay, granted I am a little late to the party, but I’ve had a busy couple of weeks moving into a new exhibit space for 2019. More on that soon, but today I wanted to share a bit about mark making, and neat little tool that I stumbled upon along the way.

I didn’t have tons of time over Christmas break to paint, but it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been on my mind. I have been thinking a lot about how I can loosen up, to create pieces that are truthful but not quite so literal. One of the things I struggle with is varying not only color but brushwork, so that there is not so much sameness everywhere. I vary brush sizes and shapes, but it still can leave me feeling a little bit like there must be something more. Sometimes I want to push a bunch of paint around and brushes alone don’t always do that.

Then one day, I purchased a Color Shaper. I actually bought this to spread gesso, because I have some pre-gessoed canvases that I bought that have been sitting around in my studio unused because are still a bit too rough and absorbent for my liking.

Before I even used it for gesso, I got curious. I had heard of other artists using these tools fairly extensively for applying paint in their work and I got to wondering whether it might be a useful tool for varying my edges and textures in my painting.

It didn’t really do what I was hoping for. These shapers come in varying degrees of firmness and the tool I ordered was an extra firm. Good for gesso spreading, but not for my painting. Still, I saw the potential so I went back online to see if I could get another one with more flexibility. But before I got that far, I stumbled upon these do-hickeys and fell in love.

These guys, officially called Princeton Catalyst Wedges, are made of some kind of silicone or rubber and come in a variety of shapes . They are more flexible than my prior purchase but still firm enough to move the paint. They don’t have handles, but frankly I prefer this handle- less variety because it allows for more control.

What does it do? Well, for starters it pushes a heck of a lot of paint around, creating the ability to make bold, impasto passages or thinner, more ethereal ones.

I can use it to make a fairly straight edge with the straight, thin side of the tool, or use it t scrape down passage to create softer edges.

I can use it as a blending tool, or a tool to separate out colors and make them stand out. In short, I can use it to exploit the properties of the paint in a way that is a nice variation from straight-on brushwork .

I first ordered the white tool, pictured above, left. Then then I discovered the black, which I like even better because you have greater versatility with both a long and a short edge. “Why not just use a palette knife,” you might ask? Well, I do love palette knife paintings but I always just end up switching back to brushes and reworking them because I have never been quite able to achieve that combination of softness and boldness I aim for. These little tools act like palette knives with more of a brush feel, if that makes sense.

“Coral Reflections, Late Summer”, Oil on linen, 24x36” ©Jennifer E. Young

I’m still not ditching my paint brushes; they are the work horses in my studio. But I’m having fun playing around with these new tools and exploring what I can do with them in my paintings.