Hard working husband

Today I stayed around home and decided I had time to do a quick oil sketch. My husband was busy placing gravel and rocks back into the pond; preparing it to fill again. Over the wheelbarrow he was "sifting" the gravel through a screen. Because he was working, I wasn't able to get him to stop and pose for me for more than a few seconds. I enjoy the challenge of trying to capture figures that are moving. You need to make a lot of quick observations and use your memory in order to try and accurately suggest a figure.

I'm reasonably happy with this quick portrait. I much prefer portraits of people in action; they are so much more natural and realistic looking rather than a posed, stiff portrait. This portrait was done on canvas board which was first stained with transparent red oxide.

Labarriere Park - No sheep but lovely trees!

This Tuesday was sunny and warm with just a few clouds in the sky. We headed out after my morning piano student. Our initial thought was to go back and see if we could paint the sheep that we had seen on our way to Labarrier Park. The sheep were in yet a different pasture area and too far away for a good viewpoint. Angela suggested we talk to the owner and find out when they were moving the sheep to the front pasture which would be a perfect vantage point. This was an interesting stop as we appeared to have interrupted a "sheep dog" training event. There were several people with dogs waiting their turn to go through the course set up in a paddock. The owner is Faye and she took Angela's phone number and said she would call when the sheep got moved to the front.

We went on to the park and this time we chose to set up right in front of our car on a shady grassy boulevard. The row of trees that interested both of us included a nice variety of trees but what was of most interest was the trees that were dead or dying. They provided a nice contrast of rusty, pinky colors against the primarily green backdrop. I chose to use a very small wide and narrow support today which was perfect for this subject. Following completion of the first painting, I chose to do a quick cloud study on one of my small carton supports. I found the color of the support provided a nice hint through the cloud and also the use of "turpy" washes of white seemed to work well to render the clouds.

When we first set up, a group of several people arrived and spent the lunch hour playing baseball nearby. Just as we finished painting, one of the women dropped by and looked at our paintings. She asked what we charged for them but neither Angela and I had thought about what we might want to charge so Angela gave her one of her cards. I guess we had better think about pricing for these little sketches. People might continue to be interested in buying one of these on the spot!

Our next idea for an outing is to capture a sunset ... hopefully this Thursday evening.

Cloud study

Labarrier Park

Pears Still Life

Our planned outing on Friday to Labarrier Park will have to wait. At 7:30am, the rain was starting to fall and we made the decision to paint a still life indoors. Angela had purchased some particularly lovely shaped pears with a strong red color on them. She nicely set them up on her kitchen counter.

My experience with these pears started the same way as the onions we had painted; not well! I made the smart decision to wipe off the board and lo and behold, I had a beautiful soft underpainting of the still life. I then took a flat bristle brush and dabbed the paint on; using the side of the brush. I thought this worked particularly well for blending the colors in a way that also suggested the freckling of the pear. After finishing this painting, I became attracted by the spotlight itself that she used to light our still life. I chose to do a really fast oil sketch of our still life scene taking in the light and a suggestion of the dining room behind. This painting took me no more than 30 minutes and other than the fact that the light itself is out of scale to the scene, I was pleased with this effort. Because the light was what interested me in the first place, I was not bothered by the fact that I got it too large in relation to the rest of the scene.

Pear Still Life

Interior Oil Sketch - Pear Still Life Setup

Open door - morning light patterns

It's a lovely sunny day outside and I still have lots of paint on my palette left from yesterday's painting outing. My piano student cancelled this morning so I took advantage of the free window of time to get outdoors and do some painting. I started reading my new book on oil painting with David Curtis so I thought I would try and incorporate some of the lessons from David that I just read. He observes that people tend to use too much solvent and mediums when painting. He also suggested avoiding white initially and don't include it in your color mixes until later in the painting. These are some of the things I was thinking about as I painted. My digital version of my plein-air magazine also came and there's a profile of Marc Hanson who is the painter I'm going to be studying with in July on Madeline Island. Detail from one of Marc Hanson's paintings is also featured on the cover.

I started with a board that was gessoed with Daniel Smith Venetian Red. This is a very intense color but I decided to work with it for this scene. I call this painting "Open Door" as this is what interested me in the scene. There were very interesting light patterns on the dormer of the building to the right which I think I gave too much interest to. It does take away from the focus of the painting which is the open door of the shed. I had a lot of fun doing this ... not worrying about what a mess it looked like when I started. I kept thinking about keeping it simple and to use big brushes to put the color on.

Open Door - morning light on my backyard shed

Dandelions can be beautiful!

We decided to go back to Labarrier Park today ... I was driving and because I was on automatic pilot, I started out the wrong direction so we went on a long roundabout drive to get there. The road was still closed so we had to go out hwy 59 and right on 247 again to get there. We both had our rubber boots on as we expected the grass to be quite wet given all the rain we had recently.

When we arrived, we first headed down towards this gulley which looked appealing with trees still submerged up to their ankles with some lovely reflections on the water. We kept walking and this beautiful scene opened up in front of us. At the park the bank is long and sweeping down towards the river. The undulating curves of this grassy area was covered in a blanket of bright yellow dandelions. Normally, we are never happy to see so many dandelions in the city but out here on this hill, they were spectacular. We both agreed that this is the scene we wanted to paint.

On our way back to the car to get our gear, we noticed a helicopter that kept crisscrossing over the area. Angela suggested that it might be spraying and she was right; all of sudden we got a whiff of some very chemically smelling spray. I expected to always experience some minor hazards with plein-air painting but did not expect to get "gassed". It was also a reminder that this might also be the first time we have to deal with mosquitoes. We got our gear and headed down to our waiting scene.

I again vowed I was going to take more time so I started with an ink and water sketch. The full scene would have required a very wide and narrow landscape format which neither of us had. I made the decision to not crowd the scene into something smaller but choose a more narrow view. What was of most interest was the curves and shapes of the small sloping hills and of course the color; brilliant yellow dandelions against the many greens of the grass. The myriad of greens to mix was the most challenging to me plus the waiting to put the dandelions in.  This was another good painting day ... it's hard to put into words how great it feels to be out where all you hear are the birds singing and the squirrels chattering at us.

A carpet of dandelions - our subject

Setting up and getting ready to paint

Today`s finished painting

When it rains, paint still life indoors

The weather wasn't cooperating for our plein-air painting day this week so Angela suggested that we could paint still life at her house. She set up a really nicely composed still life of onions and shallots. I thought that onions shouldn't be such a hard subject to paint ... I have since changed my mind. I thought that I was taking my time and not rushing but I got through doing two paintings and Angela didn't finish one. The results certainly showed that I was rushing as neither of my efforts were great and Angela came up with quite a nice painting. She worked on a board that was prepared with pastel ground so her surface was quite textured. I was working on a board that had been gessoed with Daniel Smith Venetian Red which is really intense. For  my first painting, I chose to put out a naples yellow instead of a cad yellow which was probably a mistake. What I learned from this session is that I need a lot more practice mixing colors. Below are a few photos; one with me painting and a good view of the still life setup. The second photo is of Angela's painting.

Shirley painting the onion still life

Angela's still life