Bellevue charm

Not too long ago I joined up with the Virginia Plein Air Painters group (VPAP)based out of Richmond VA. I paint often on my own, but painting with a group definitely has its advantages. The group meets once a month at a different location to paint outdoors together. Funnily enough, this month's location was my own Bellevue neighborhood. Obviously since this is my home, I've had plenty of opportunities to paint here. But  I really never tire of this area because it is so charming and architecturally interesting, not to mention that it is lush with flowers. Painting with the organization allowed me access to the private  gardens that would otherwise have been off limits. Here's this morning's effort:

"June in Bloom" Oil on Panel 10x8"   

I think the challenge to anyone who attempts to paint in Virginia is the number of different greens one encounters. Today's was no exception! But it was a challenge in a good way, as it really made me try and discern all of the variations and the subtle shifts in color temperature.

My Facebook page, plus two plein airs from the OBX

It's been such a while since I've provided some blog love, but there's been so much going on this summer that it's been hard to keep up. However I do  have two little plein air pieces I'd like to share, having just returned from a fabulous week on Hatteras Island in North Carolina's Outer Banks:

These are both 8x8 studies done on birch panels, painted from the lower and upper decks of the beach house we rented in Salvo. I only painted on a couple of mornings (it was the hubby's vacation too, after all) but I so love painting there that I look forward to doing more and more of these in time. Here you can see me through the picture window, painting on the deck, while the kiddos finished up their breakfast. You might just be able to make out a cup of coffee on the railing. I had my breakfast delivered easel-side, too! Not a bad way to spend the morning. :-)

I didn't get to paint out on the shore due to either the timing or the wind, but hope to do so when we return to the Outer Banks in about a month. Though the legs are starting to go, I'm still lugging my big old Soltek easel around. However I'm finding it more and more cumbersome for travel. I may have to dust off my little Prochade kit for my next trip, though I will need to get used to the much smaller palette size again, and the fact that it does not stand up well at all to any kind of wind.

This is the first time I have painted on shellacked birch panel, but I really like it. I prepared my own panels with Zinsser Bullseye Shellac, two coats per side, and sanding in between. I have heard about this kind of panel before, but it was most recently recommended by Matt Smith in his workshop that I attended in the Spring, so I was eager to try it after that. I was a little afraid that the shellac would make for too slick a surface, but it was the just right amount of smoothness and tooth. It did take a little preparation, but once the panels were sealed, the wood provided a lovely blonde tone on which to paint...no extra toning needed.

One final note, I have finally created a Fan page on Facebook, on which I plan to update with announcements and goings on. You'll find a link to it in this post and also in the right sidebar. I guess I'm not exactly on the bleeding edge, but at least now I can finally say, "Like us on Facebook"!

French landscape painting in progress

School's out for summer today so over the next couple of weeks we will be in transition mode as we settle into a new summer schedule.  I'm painting this French 16x20" landscape IBKT,  (in-between kid time) and I forgot to photograph this as a step by step.

I started this late yesterday and today I'm trying to address the  whole canvas in a general way first,  so that when I return to the easel I can jump right in to the next level of detail. I really hope I can work on this wet into wet the whole time though, as it's so much easier to manipulate edges when the painting remains open. It needs a lot more work, obviously, but I'm enjoying the simplicity of this composition so far.

Shopping local

As the title of my blog might imply, one of my passions is to travel and paint the beautiful places I've been. But home commitments these days often don't allow me the time needed to go farther afield for scouting subjects and painting them. Instead of lamenting this fact (which I admit I did for a while) I have decided that if I don't find some options for painting close by I will not get very far with my work (or my sanity!) So I've started shopping local. I really only have a few mornings to myself so I need to get in and out of a place pretty quickly in order to pick up my daughter on time from preschool. The Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens are close by, and they are a lovely option, as is Bryan Park. But there really are a lot of interesting subjects even closer to my home, in my Bellevue neighborhood and even my very  own gardens.

There are a couple of challenges to my place. First of all, I live in an urban neighborhood. While we have tons of gardeners here and lots of green space we also have small lots and lots of large trees. So you have to get used to painting close in, and you're not going to get many sweeping vistas around here, which is the kind of subject matter that I have been most attracted to since I first took up landscape painting.

Secondly, aside from a very brief (but lovely) appearance of sunlight in the early, early morning, a good part of my back yard in particular remains in shadow until about 10:30 or 11 a.m. That means that the most interesting play of light and shadow only makes a presence for an hour, or at most an hour and a half tops,  before the shadows shrink up and burn off at high noon.

On the other hand, having planted every shrub and flower,  I know my garden intimately and  have had plenty of time to observe how the light comes over each bed. So I can set up my easel where I want it, walk back to the studio to do some work there, and then return to my plein air setup at the optimal time when the light is just right. I can work in this way all they way until the time I need to pick up my daughter from preschool (a 5-minute commute), and then just throw my gear into the studio right before I leave to get her. This was my approach for the little plein air below. It's not a big painting, but I still needed to finish this up in two different sessions due to the lighting situation mentioned above:

"The Curved Bed" Oil on Canvas, 10x10" Contact me to purchase!

At home we call this bed "The Bump Out", but I thought  that would be a weird title for a painting. At present there is still a sense of order, but in summer it's a lot more colorful, but also a lot more chaotic. ( I really tend to crowd my gardens terribly. This is a bad habit but I'm trying to get better, and not be so afraid to pull things out, give plants away, or just toss them if need be.) The summer flowers are beautiful, but  I like it at this time of year too because you can still see the "bones" and underlying form before the wildness ensues.

Lessons from the workshop

I thought I'd share a few of the studies I worked on during the Matt Smith workshop I posted about earlier this week. I will first preface by saying that my haste in preparing for this class came back to haunt me, so while I was well prepared in terms of my art supplies, I misunderstood what I was supposed to bring in the way of reference materials. The support documentation said to bring plein air studies and/or photos, and for some reason I took that to mean that plein air studies were preferred (maybe I was just hooked on the idea of plein air!) I probably should have asked beforehand about this because I did feel a little puzzled when I was packing about referencing a small scale plein air to make another small scale painting. (I usually translate small plein airs to larger works in the studio, but the recommended canvas sizes were all under 12x16"). In any event, I packed a number of my plein air pieces for reference, and then as a total afterthought printed off a few of my photos "just in case."

After seeing one demo and hearing the discussion though, I realized the error of my ways. I talked to Matt about what I should work from and he said he would rather see what I could do with my photo references for this class. Matt did bring a number of his own photo references for people to use, but I really dislike using other people's references. Even though we are composing with light and form, I want references that reflect my real experience of having seen (and felt) a place.  So I did what I could with what I had, but I really wished I had brought a more extensive selection of my hundreds upon hundreds of photos I have in my personal archive.

This  first painting is also the most incomplete:

In all of my paintings the common feedback from Matt was to take my brush and "knock back" some of my brushwork that competed with my statement or focal area. For instance, in this painting, our conversation went something like this:

MS:  "Is this painting about the light or shadows?" JY: "Well, I like the highlights on the edges of the poplar trees the best". And with that he took my brush and blended back the rather boisterous brushwork that was beginning to take shape in the shadow passages. MS: "You're giving equal weight to both." Next he mixed a bold tree highlight and swept it upwards on the edge of one of my poplar trees calligraphically, making the highlight really jump out. JY: "Ah, I see! But...I wouldn't just leave it like that...would I? It looks pretty unfinished." MS: "No, not necessarily. But you may restate and knock back several times before you get it right."

 I have such a love of brushwork, but it probably can work to my disadvantage sometimes. The hard part, I think, is figuring out what, exactly, is "right", and what is too little or too much. It's all about finding that balance, where active areas are juxtaposed with quiet passages. It's the quiet passages that play a supporting role and allow the more active ones to take center stage. To paraphrase something Matt said in one of his talks, it can't all be "important". Filter the noise and find the important elements.

I soon abandoned the first study, deciding to just keep that as an annotated lesson.  The second 8x10" painting below is more complete, and may look familiar to some long time blog readers. That is because I painted this scene before en plein air, and blogged about it here. The photo in the link is too dark overall but even so, I think this second study is much more infused with light. (So this exercise will be very helpful to me when I translate the concept to a larger painting, which I really am excited to do now! ) For the painting below, though,  I thought I'd try it again using just my photo reference and see what kind of feedback I could get, and whether it would look decidedly different as a result.

I really loved the composition as it was, so it remains relatively the same in this second attempt. But in terms of paint application,  I got some helpful hands-on feedback from Matt again. Again he took my brush and knocked back the brushwork of the distant trees to make them sit back more and look less stylized.  Fair enough. He then demonstrated "opening up the shadows, using reflected light cast from nearby objects to cast color into the shadows. He put a touch of blue, for instance, on the shadow side of the tree trunks reflecting the water, and the warmer tones reflecting warmth from the stones or earth. That was awesome. After that he showed me how an assertive hand used to apply just a few intense highlights could suddenly make the painting pop. I reworked some of what he put in but played with those general ideas. But that rim light of his along the trunk and the 3 or 4 dabs of bright green paint on the tree leaves remain just as they were applied. (And don't they just sing?)

I felt I was finally getting somewhere on this final painting (below), though we had some helpful discussion early on about using perspective to direct the viewer to the focal point. He again knocked back the distant mountains with no paint, just several swift blending strokes (sigh.)  I don't consider this painting really finished either but I love the composition and I think I would like to try this again on a larger scale. It's the Dordogne as seen from the top of the Chateau de Beynac.

I think overall his main critique of my work was that he wanted to see both more paint and a more deliberate, assertive handling of paint. And it's really hard to do the latter without the former. As he put it, you need to have enough paint there so that it expresses the character of the medium. Otherwise you need to ask yourself, "Why are you painting in oils?"

The class was listed as an intermediate-advanced class and I felt the instruction and the students lived up to that. I left the class pretty exhausted but with a lot to think about on my 6 hour drive back home. It will be interesting to see how I can apply Matt's feedback and insights to my work, while still making my paintings "mine". Once or twice the feedback was hard, but I soon realized, as with any class, it's important to leave your ego at the door and come with an open mind if you really want to learn.

Matt Smith workshop

Oh yeah, I have a blog! ;-) Actually, I didn't forget; I've been doing a little traveling up north to the New Hope School of Art to take a workshop from the very talented painter Matt Smith. The trip was noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, it was the first time I have been away from my daughter for more than a night. (That part was hard.) But second, it was also the first time I've had in 4 years to do nothing but paint and immerse myself in "art stuff" for four days straight. (And that part, my friends, was luxurious!) I haven't taken a workshop in a very long time. But now that my daughter is getting a little older, I really feel like it's time to amp up my art life in some significant way and infuse my work with new insights. So when I heard Matt was coming east to teach (he's based out West, so that's something I'd not caught wind of before around here) I knew it would be an excellent opportunity to do just that.

Matt hails from Arizona, and is best known as a painter of the Sonoran desert near his home, as well as the snow capped Canadian Rockies and other places out west that epitomize the classic western landscape. What initially attracted  me to his work though was not his subject matter, but the sensitivity in the handling of  his brushwork and edges. They are both bold and delicate at the same time.  But after seeing him demo and talk about his approach, I was equally impressed by the purposeful way he composed his paintings and orchestrated his compositions to create  powerful statements. I won't get into a blow by blow description of day 1-4 of class, but I will share some of the significant things I took away from it personally, most likely in more than one post.

The interesting thing about this workshop was that even though Matt is best known among artists as a plein air painter, the class was held entirely inside, in the studio. I'll be perfectly honest here and say that when I signed up for the class I was mildly disappointed that the format would not include at least part plein air painting, especially since Matt himself is a seasoned field painter and the area where the workshop was located was very scenic. (It was the birthplace, in fact, for an entire movement of landscape painters, known as The New Hope School and Pennsylvania Impressionism.) Largely though, that disappointment was entirely personal. My studio is my workhorse, but plein air painting is more exciting to me. Also with my life situation at present, I just don't get the longer stretches of time needed to trek out in the field as often to paint.

When I asked about the reason for the indoor class, Matt's response was that in his years of teaching, he has seen the same problems pop up again and again, whether in the field or in the studio. Maybe he felt it's better to address these fundamental issues in a controlled environment rather than adding another layer of difficulty with the environmental factors that plein air adds. In any event, the format turned out to be fine. In fact, there was plenty I needed to work on just with my studio work,  the studio environment definitely allowed Matt to get to each student several times a day with valuable feedback. As it turned out, the weather was not great any way, and we probably would have needed to seek shelter for at least two of the four days due to rain and wind.

Matt did several very good demos (using his photo references). He used a Strada easel, which I think was a rather new purchase for him. He talked a lot about equipment and painting gear, which, as any regular reader of my blog may have surmised, is a topic of great interest to me. The Strada is made of metal and looked like a neat little box (I think his was the mini, which is presently sold out.)

But even without the two winged accessory attachments added to provide more workspace, it was a very heavy box for its size. Matt said he liked it because of its compact size (it easily fits into a backpack) and durability for travel, but personally I could not deal with the heft. A Gitzo travel tripod was also part of his setup, which looked great for its ease of use and small size when folded (also easily fitting into a backpack), but a quick Google search soon told me this item was way out of my price range. (Wowsa!)

Matt, by self-definition is not a colorist. In fact, of the fundamentals he sites as essential to a good painting (Drawing, Value, Design, and Color) the most expendable he says, is color. Even so,  I found his palette fairly wide, with four blues, two earths, two yellows, an orange, one red, a violet, and a couple of greens (plus, of course, white.) He used no medium other than his oil paint and a very tiny amount of Gamsol to thin his paints.

His start consists of a very light sketch, soon followed by masses of color, working broadly to get his main elements and shadows down. He then builds from there, thin to thick, dark to light, broad to more detailed. One thing I found interesting is that he almost always left his sky a white canvas until close to the very end of the process. Obviously this is working to his great advantage, but try as I might, I couldn't resist my normal method of putting the sky in early on. This was especially the case if there was any water in the landscape, as I find  I need that sky information to know what's being reflected.

I've a lot more to say on the subject but I should probably try and paint something now! In my next post I'll share of few of my studies done in the workshop, as well as some valuable take-aways that I received from Matt's feedback.

Shadows of Frayssinet (W.I.P. complete)

I've been doing a little plein air painting lately, some of which I will share here soon. But lately it seems like I either have time to paint or post, and I guess I have chosen painting. (Sorry blog!) I do have a completed studio painting to share today though, the beginnings of which I posted right before preschool spring break!

"Shadows of Frayssinet" Oil on linen, 20x16"

This is in the lovely little village of Frayssinet in the oh so lovely Lot Valley of France. I  enjoyed this so much that I plan to do a companion piece to this one of a different cottage from the same town, in the same size and orientation.

Redbuds and Forsythia

The pear and cherry trees are already leafing out now, and sadly I missed the small window last week to paint them in their full glory . But spring marches on, and this week the redbuds are blooming.

"Redbuds and Forsythia" 8x10", oil on linen Contact me for more info.

The location is Bryan Park, which is lovely in an unkempt kind of way. It's very near my home, so it's a good spot when I only have a few hours to myself (which is pretty much always!) This painting is a bit of a frenzy, but it was (again) a windy morning, and I had to hold my umbrella down with one hand to make sure I wouldn't fly away like Mary Poppins. I dunno, maybe some of that mania transferred to the painting in all of those active brush strokes!

Frayssinet shadows W.I.P.

I had a rough time painting last week. Plein air season is upon us and I have been waiting with baited breath for the weather to cooperate so I'd have the  opportunity to get outside again. But there are just some times when the odds seem stacked against me. Some of the prettiest, mildest days turned out to be mommy-duty days for me. My painting days were full of wind and intermittent clouds and showers. I did get myself outside but the wind and weather weren't cooperative and I ended up coming home with a couple of wipers. That's the risk of plein air painting. Just because you put in the time, it doesn't mean you will come home with a keeper. And with such limited time, it can be hard to justify the effort. So why do I do it? Well, it challenges me to think on my feet and  be in the moment. It gets me out of my comfort zone, and when its not frustrating the hell out of me,  it's pretty fun and exciting.

It also gets me jazzed for new paintings in the studio, which is what leads me to my current post. I started this piece after one of those frustrating wipers, and by comparison to my battle with the wind, it felt good to just paint! At this point I am just settling on my composition and laying in some of the shadows and highlights. This will be a painting of a little street in Frayssinet, a tiny village tucked in the Lot Valley of Southern France:

I painted another version of this scene with different light and a different orientation before, but this painting will focus more on the little cottage to the left  in the foreground. The cast shadow across the top of the canvas is from my easel. Sorry about that! I'll try to get better progressive shots as I go along.

A good value

If you have been reading my blog long enough, you may find that I obsess a little over art supplies and gear. A few months back a fellow artist mentioned that a great tool for judging values was a Kodak Wratten 90 filter. So for a few months I was on a mission to find one that was A) big enough to comfortably look through (ideally 4x4) and B) low enough in price so as not to break the bank. After searching online and watching the bidding wars on eBay, I found the combination of the two criteria impossible to meet. Then one day it dawned on me that I used to have a little red value viewer tool that I'd picked up in a sewing store. I don't know what happened to it, but I thought I'd poke around on Amazon to see if I could fine something similar. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon this little number:

Like the Wratten filter, this value finder helps neutralize color so that you can more accurately discern the values in your reference. Not only that but it has 3 view finders of different aspect ratios that will work with a range of canvas sizes. It also has optional guidelines that you can overlay to check composition, AND a couple of value scales to check your paint mixtures.

The drawback is that the filters are red rather than the nice grayish neutral of the Wratten filters. This may not appeal to everyone. But with a $14.95 price tag it is a good option and specifically geared toward the painter. I have been using it with studio work and it does a good job at neutralizing color so that I can judge values with more accuracy.  I haven't used it outdoors yet but I think there it would be even more useful when making on the spot judgements, and I look forward to taking it along with me (hopefully this week) now that the weather is warming.

Hatteras Island study

I once had a painting of the Outer Banks that I loved; but for whatever reason didn't sell. It was in my inventory for a number of years, so instead of confining it to the bins any longer, I decided to embrace the fact that I still had possession of it. In fact, I decorated my bedroom around it, painting the walls a beautiful soft gray color that perfectly picked up some of the muted tones in the painting. Unbelievably, two weeks after I had my beautiful "new bedroom" complete, I received a call from a collector asking if it was still available. Yes, I sold it. I am trying to run a business, after all. I do have one or two pieces that I am trying to keep for myself, but for the most part, I'm just not one to turn down sales. So what does this have to do with the painting below? No, it's not the "one that got away" (you can see that one here). This piece is one of a few studies I'm working on in preparation for  a large new painting I intend to hang (at least for a little while) in my now repainted bedroom. Well,  I had a nice big gallery wrapped 30x40" canvas, and a nice blank wall, so I figured, why not?

"Hatteras Dunes, Study I" 6x8" Oil on Canvas

This study is based on two different plein air paintings I did on Hatteras Island on recent family vacations. I am largely basing my composition on a piece called "Hatteras Island Dunes II". But because that painting was 8x10" (a 4:5 ratio), I have to make a few compositional changes to format the new piece to a 30x40" gallery wrapped canvas (3:4 ratio).

As you can see in this new composition, I have changed the direction of the sandy path that leads to the beach and rearranged some shrubs somewhat. I also felt like I wanted a bit more sky showing than in the plein air, so I have lowered the horizon a touch to allow for that. For the sky I am loosely referencing both the above mentioned plein air, as well as another plein air piece from last summer, which you can see here.

I don't seem to have any actual photos of these scenes to reference, so my sole references are my plein air paintings. This is a bit different for me as I usually use both a photo source and my painting when I work from plein air to studio. So it will be interesting to see if I can make this fly! My plan is to try at least one more study before launching into the big canvas, but this is a good start.

Sunlit Harbor, Varenna (painting complete)

Happy Spring everyone! It's been a looong winter, and I honestly don't think anyone could be much happier about a change of seasons than I am! Any way, to kick off the new season I will wrap up my painting of the Varenna Shoreline. Below you will see I've gotten the buildings of the village fleshed out and am just launching into addressing the water:

Next I work on getting the boats laid in, and adding a little more detail and highlights to the shrubs and trees perched along that wall.

Then the final touches of the masts and buoys are laid down. I use a liner brush to lay in the delicate lines of the masts, starting from bottom to top. A mahl stick really comes in handy here to steady my stroke. At this point I am nearing completion. I may go into it again, but I am going to sit with this a while and start in on something new. If it's not 100% done, it is close.

"Sunlit Harbor, Varenna" Oil on linen, 24x36" Click here for more info!

Light and Edges; Varenna painting progress (W.I.P.)

Here is some progress to report on the Varenna painting  I've been working on.  In my last post I had pretty well laid out the background. But when I came back  to the easel again I decided that before jumping into the foreground I should add a little more contrast to the nearest mountains and soften up some edges to the distance overall.

That done, I address the walled village of Varenna next. I want to establish the village before the water, so that when I get to the water I will be able to properly address the reflections. First, I set about laying in the darkest passages.

Next I start in on the buildings. The direction of the light is upper left. This was close to 11 a.m., so the sun is high but not directly overhead. Even so, I think with the movement of those clouds and the way the trees and shrubs are positioned, there are some interesting shadows being cast on the buildings. I hint at this in my study, but in the larger composition it took some time and concentration to get it to look right.

Here's where I am this morning with the painting. I'll be working on this today and again Wednesday, so assuming nobody gets sick and we don't get more snow  I will have some more progress to report this week!

The old "Nigerian Scam" - still alive and kicking

I'm dealing with a sick child , as well as MORE snow and sleet and school closings, so I can report no progress on my Varenna painting today. Instead I'll share an entry I've been kicking around for a few days about selling art online. Enjoy! ****

Having had an online presence since the early days of Al Gore's notorious invention, I have made a number of direct web sales over the years. I've also seen my share of emails that have come to be known as the "Nigerian Scam". This scam is basically a fake purchase inquiry that, if the bait is taken, results in a  flim-flam for the artist or online seller (a loss of product, profit, or often, both).

It's called the Nigerian scam because in the beginning, many of these inquiries originated out of Nigeria. Now though, they seem to be popping up all over the world.  It's been around a long time, so I hesitate to even write about it. But even though they have been at it for years,  it still surprises me that there are artists (and other folks) who fall prey to them. The content of the emails vary somewhat, but  they follow basically the same formula. I get these bogus emails fairly frequently, and if you are an artist selling from your website, you have probably seen them too. But in case you haven't caught wind of this scam, here are a few red flags to watch for.

1. Sender uses a free email account (like Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.)
2. Often they don't identify a specific painting or are vague about which piece interests them. Other times they may cut and paste the title and other info about the painting in question into the email.
3. The emails often contain grammatical errors, oddly constructed sentences, no capitalizations, etc.
4. They usually want the paintings in a hurry.
5. Price is often inconsequential.
6. They want to use their own "shipping agent".
7. Sometimes they claim to live in the USA but need the artwork for their "new office" "new apartment", etc., located overseas.
8. They often want to send a check for larger than the amount of the painting (this is likely so that you can "pay them back" the difference down the road. The only problem is the check is no good to begin with, so if you fall for it you are out of your money and your art.)
9. They never want to use PayPal.

Now, I've sold quite  a bit of art to clients overseas and I realize that, with the exception of number 8, it is actually possible for a legit buyer to exhibit one or two of the behaviors listed above. But when enough of these red flags appear together in the same email, well, all I can say is, sell at your own risk!

Unfortunately these scams are getting more and more sophisticated, and it is getting harder to determine whether or not an individual is for real. If there is any doubt in my mind, my feeling is it is better to risk a potential loss of business once in a blue moon than suffer a demoralizing loss of my artwork, time and energy. This is of special importance since most of these requests involve shipping the artwork overseas. Once the art leaves my country, it becomes very hard if not impossible to retrieve.

When one of these "red flag" letters comes through my email, I respond politely as I always like to give the fellow the benefit of the doubt. But if there are enough of these flags waving around, I just ask for Paypal. Scammers don't seem to like  Paypal and it usually puts them off fairly quickly.

For legitimate clients who are overseas, a good alternative to Paypal (especially for international clients) is wire transfer. Like Paypal, a wire transfer is  secure and also faster than sending a check and waiting for it to clear.

Varenna's dramatic skies (W.I.P. continued)

When I traveled to Bellagio and Varenna, one of the things that struck me about the landscape was the dramatic cloud formations that settled over these little lake towns. Possibly this is due to the altitude, or the difference in altitude between the lake and the surrounding mountains. OR, it could have just been my timing. In any event, while they were very beautiful and created spectacular displays, they also made  it pretty tricky to sketch/paint en plein air because the daggone light kept changing from minute to minute. In the studio, of course all of that is much easier to control, and I get to celebrate the beauty of the clouds without at the same time cursing the inconvenience of them ;-). After I sketch in my composition, my most common approach to landscape painting is to lay in the sky and the far distance. Since the sky contains my light source, the highlighted sides of the clouds will hold some of the lightest values in the painting. Probably the only other things that approach this high value is the light bouncing off of the white painted boats.

I am not sure if it's evident in this photo, but I have used an array of colors(cad orange, cad red light, alizarin permanent, ultramarine and sevres blue) to tint the clouds. The blue sky is a combo of ultramarine, sevres blue, and white.

Next distant mountains progressively deepen in value, but they are still very cool in temperature, so that they will sit back behind what's to come in the foreground. After evaluating my composition further, I decided to raise the distant horizon line, so as to push those cliffs back a bit more, in relation to the foreground town.

 After I get the painting a little further on, I may come back and tweak what I've done here. But for now  it's time to address  the water and the heart of the matter; the town of Varenna.

Varenna Shoreline W.I.P.

I feel a bit like Punxsutawney Phil, poking my head out into the public for a brief moment, only to run back into obscurity and wait out the rest of winter. It's not really fair to blame a pudgy little rodent for my absence and for all of the crazy snow days we've been dealt this winter. But given he's fictional and defenseless and  I've no one else to point a finger at, Phil it is. Nevertheless, I've started a new painting based on the small study I posted in my last entry. This is the tonal lay-in on a 24x36" canvas. Some of the lighter  areas got a little too "tonal" as I made adjustments to the drawing, (most notably the boats) but as I have my study and photos, I will make those corrections when I get into color.

 There are only slight variations in design at this point-- just a minor reshaping of the distant hills to slow the speed of the downward slope. I also simplified and "skooched" back (sorry for the technical lingo) one building that sat directly behind the villa sitting closest to center to minimize the confusion of these overlapping forms and hopefully  create a more elegant design.

I 'm generally happy with the color plan I used in the study though, so at this point my plan is to follow its lead as I start my next steps of diving into color.

Studies

I'm baaaack. And I'm kicking off my return to blogging with a new Varenna study. I actually hesitate to call this a study, given the amount of time it took. I guess a month away from painting has left me feeling a litle rusty and slow! In any case, this painting will serve as a preliminary study for a larger piece.

Varenna Study Oil on canvas, 6"x9" Contact me for more info.

We have had rounds of winter sickness followed by school closings due to snow, so with my foray back into painting being twarted quite a bit, I had the thought to develop a number of small scale studies of some larger painting ideas that  I've been wanting to tackle. I'll be painting some of these to scale up to my larger sizes. For example this 6x9" piece will scale up to 24x36".

I've painted various views of this harbor a few times now, which you can see here,  here, and here. I guess you can tell I am enamored with this particular view of this  lovely Italian lake town! This composition emphasizes the strong horizontal of the walled town jutting out onto the lake, contrasted by the verticals of the buildings and tall cypresses.

While I almost always sketch out my composition on paper before I tackle a canvas, I usually leave the painted study for when I am out in the field painting from life. In fact, I have painted lots of studies and lots of larger scale studio pieces and quite a bit in between. Not all small paintings warrant a big statement, but I haven't been all that great about developing my viable studies into larger, more fleshed out studio concepts.  My schedule has been so sporadic for such a long time now, and with not much chance of an end in sight, I really feel like I need to have a more methodical  approach to my work habits. I am hoping that by tightening up my studio practices a bit, I might find more equilibrium when I do get a chance to enter the studio, and I will waste less time and feel less at a loss about what I am going to tackle next.

Well, nothing informs like experience, and since these small ones can presumably be completed in a fraction of the time, (ahem!) I thought it was worthwhile to have a go at a few of them, done, specifically with larger paintings in mind. I will also mine some of my other small works, in particular the plein air pieces I've done, as I think a number of them have potential for further development. I have worked from a number of them here and there, but I think there is more potential (especially in my James River series) and it could be something fun to do during these cold winter months when I'm not getting outside.

Finally complete- Tuscan Hay painting

I'm taking a break from chopping my vegetables to finally wrap up the latest Tuscany painting I left flapping in the breeze on New Year's Day. After I had my composition established and my canvas covered, it was time to go back in to further develop the background, middle ground, and foreground. It sounds very systematic, but this was really more of a back and forth dance because the value, scale, edges, etc. all have to relate and are interdependent with the other elements in the painting. For instance, in the image below, I thought I had the background fairly finalized...until I took a step back and decided the buildings were too large and too prominent in relation to my foreground house. As I moved forward to the center of interest it became apparent that these two areas of the painting were battling for attention. So I went back and softened the distant village and reduced the size and contrast of the buildings a bit more, and further softened their edges.

Here's the final:

"Tuscan Hay" Oil on Linen, 20x24"   

Happy 2014! A glance back and a look ahead

Happy New Year everyone! I'll be sharing my final post on the Tuscany painting I've been working on later this week. But since this is the first day of a brand new year, I thought I'd write about my one single solitary goal for this year. It isn't really even art-related, though it affects my art and pretty much everything else in my life. So I hope you bear with me while I meander off the art topic for a moment to tell you what it is:

To feel good.

I have alluded to my health struggles a couple of times on this blog, but since my goal will likely require a period of absence from posting, I feel like an explanation is due. After the birth of my daughter I was challenged with an autoimmune condition. While thankfully it isn't usually life-threatening, it can really diminish the quality of life, and, for the past three years, wellness has eluded me. In fact, I can count on two hands the days when I have woken up in the morning without chronic pain and utter, utter exhaustion. Layer on top of that a high energy tot who deserves time/love/attention from Mama, and the guilt and regret of not being able to give my all, either to her or to my former workhorse standards in my art career, and you have lots of gaps in studio hours and blog posts, and a lot of feeling not so good about myself in general.

In spite of all of that, 2013 was a phenomenal year for me, career-wise (go figure!) Some really neat show opportunities, and a big jump in sales made last year one of my best since the "bottom went out" in 2008. The Tuscan Sun Wine label project kicked off 2013 and came to me completely unexpectedly. It was a really exciting opportunity for which I feel extremely grateful and proud. But it required a tremendous amount of work in a very short window, and during that whole project I basically ran on fumes (and coffee). It was probably not the best thing I could have done for my health, but I just "powered through", waking at 5 am to work before the roosters (and my own little chickadee) rose, regardless of how little sleep I had gotten or how lousy I felt.

It's all worked out and I feel wonderfully blessed in my life. But I'm at a point where I'm really tired of "powering through", and I'm coming to realize that working smarter, not harder is not a "want" but an absolute must. This means taking some REAL time for some self care and really paying attention to managing my stress and health. Otherwise, I am not going to be able to maintain much of an art career or be a very good wife or mother, either.

I've had incremental health improvements in the past year, but I still have many, many days where I will take a nosedive and I can find nothing in particular that I have done to cause it. So starting next week I will be embarking on a month-long elimination diet, designed to identify foods that I may have unwittingly become sensitized to. I've had some "food allergy" suspicions lately and I have, for some, time eliminated gluten. But for the next month I'll add dairy, sugar and alcohol, legumes, and grains to that list of no-no's. If you want to know what's left to eat, you can read more about my game plan here. Now, I am a former vegetarian and I love my dark chocolate, my cheese and my good glass of red wine (hey, what can I say? I'm half French) so this whole concept ain't an easy one to swallow, so to speak. I already consider myself a pretty healthy eater, but this way of eating is going require a whole lot more time and effort. More cooking, a lot more planning, and I won't have all of those starches I relied upon to round out my family's meals (and get it quickly on the table).

So January is going to be all about food logs and meal plans and sourcing grass-fed, pastured what-nots, and less (or maybe none) about painting. It's possible my energy could go through the roof and I'll have so much excess that I won't be able to keep myself away from the easel. (Wouldn't that be nice?) But it's just as likely that things will get worse before they get better, so starting next Monday I'm giving myself a pass, officially, on painting for the next 30 or so days. Hopefully it will take less time than that for things to normalize, but I just don't know. In any event, it's my hope that the effort will be worth it and that I will be at least on the road to becoming a stronger, better, healthier happier person (and thus being a better, more focused artist.) And speaking of health and happiness, here's a gluten, alcohol, sugar-free (and then some) toast to yours in 2014 too!

Progress on the Tuscan Hay painting

As is typical of my working method, I establish my sky and clouds first on my newly sketched canvas. This helps me to key the rest of my light values in the painting. At this point I also  lay in a first pass on the distant mountain.

Next come the hill town and terraced hillside of the background. At this point I am still establishing the compositional elements so there is not much color or value variation. I will go back into these areas again, but I really want to develop the entire canvas to the same level before it sets up too much, as I'm not sure when my next painting session will be.

Now for the middle distance, where my area of interest (the house) resides. I decided to lower the cypress to the right of the house, as I felt there needed to be some height/shape variation in the trees flanking the house.  I'll have to go back into that sky area again where I made this change to clean it up a little more. Good thing I still have plenty of that sky color on my palette! Again, I don't have much in the way of highlights yet...just a few value shifts to give certain objects a little form.

Now I'm ready to start laying in the foreground hill and those groovy hay tracks.

That was fun! Now I have the whole canvas covered more or less to the same level of finish. There's a good deal more to do, but this feels like a pretty good start for around 4 hours of work.