Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

Winter Morning on Campus (11 x 14) $150

This is another painting from my winter morning walk on Oregon State University. Weatherford Hall is probably the photographed building on campus and with reason. That morning the sun lit up just the top eastern half of the building.

I decided to focus on the the central archway and so I cropped out the wings before I began to paint.

The palette is ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, quinacridone deep red rose, and hansa yellow. I kept the use on hansa to a minimum. I used only for the trees, lawn and the very darkest darks.

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Craftsmen Lantern (11 x 14) $150.00

Last week’s art show was on OSU campus in Corvallis.  Early Friday morning it was dry and clear and the morning light was stunning, but I had no time to do anything but rush inside the Memorial Building to finish setting up.  Sunday was dry, clear and cold too, so I went early and wandered the campus taking photos on the sunlit buildings.  Not only was the light dramatic, but since all the leaves have fallen much more of the buildings were visible than last time I was on campus.

The reflected trees in the arch above the main entrance to the Womens Building caught my eye.  Closer up I noticed the sun on the craftsmen lantern.

The palate is mostly cobalt blue, dioxin purple and burnt sienna. The extreme highlights are raw sienna and the deepest shadows contain phthalo blue.

I began by painting in the windows in cobalt. I added the reflected trees with a mixture on cobalt and burnt sienna. The metal mullions are layers of cobalt, violet, and burnt sienna built up one over another. I painted the lantern and its reflection next to establish the darkest values. I saved the raw sienna for the sunlit portion of the lamp and echoed it it the sunlit side of the arch.

I showed to my painting friend when I had finished. She introduced me to a new word, “tenebrism.” It means the use of extreme contrasts of light and dark with small amounts of light shining out of vast darkness. I love extreme contrast, and I’m happy to have a word to describe it. I’m not sure that this painting as a whole is an tenebristic, but the lantern and its shadow certainly are, and they make the painting.

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Shadows Glass and Leaves (12 x 14) $100.00

Driving down Commercial last summer, I was struck by the shadows of leaves on a stucco building.  I reached for my camera and discovered I’d left it at home.  I drove home hurriedly to get it.  My daughters in the back seat were remarkable patient with me as I drove round the block twice looking for a parking space.  Only eight or nine pictures later did it dawn on me what I was photographing.  It’s a local mortuary.  Never mind,  the shadows and the glass bricks were beautiful.

The shapes were so simple that I drew them freehand onto the watercolor paper.

Most of the painting was done in what I think of as controlled wet-into-wet painting. First I moistened the the small area I wanted to paint and then I dropped the wet color in. I created each glass brick this way.  After the paint dried I went back with a wet brush and  added the darker shadows to each brick. I used phthallo blue, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and yellow ocher.

The shadows on the wall are two separate layers of controlled wet into wet.  The first layer was phthallo blue, deep red rose quinacridone, dull a hair with cadmium yellow.  The second layer was cobalt blue and deep red rose.

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Sweet Shoppe (10 x 13) $100.00

This is another Central City Painting.  I started it this summer at the Artisan Village at the Oregon State Fair.  But I felt it lacked something and set it aside.   Yesterday when looking for something to paint at the gallery I picked it up again.

What got me started on the painting in the first place is the Victorian decoration.    I brightened the colors to go with the sweet shoppe theme.   The result was interesting, but lacked something.

Yesterday I decided what it needed was more omph, or in other words more contrast.  So I darkened up both the sky and the shadows and here it is.

The palate is cobalt and phthalo blue, quinacridone deep red rose, and cadmium yellow.

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Grass in the Window (10 x 14) $225.00

Most of Central City is so well maintained that period-town would be a better description than ghost-town.   But some of the buildings  have been left to nature for some time.    Grass grows out of a low window in one such wall were two building used to abut each other.

If the wall ever had any mortar, it’s not visible now. The quality of the dry wall construction obviously varied greatly between the two buildings is backed.  On the right hand side the wall is neatly constructed and looks purposeful and solid. On the left hand side the stones are hardly squared at all are stacked more and more erratically the higher the wall gets.   Some stones near the window have fallen away, revealing the depth of the wall.

I began the stones by making an under-painting of phthalo blue.   The under-painting showed the shadows between the stones and some of the stronger shadows in the stones.  Phthalo blue is a great choice for under-painting because it is strongly staining and won’t wash up with successive layers of paint.  After the under-painting dried, I washed the stones wetly with burnt sienna and burnt sienna mixed with rose madder quinacridone. Washes of cerulean blue and phthalo blue mixed with burnt sienna followed. I built up the shadows slowly using the under-painting as a guide. Finally I splattered the rocks with various combination of cerulean blue, burnt sienna and burnt umber using a toothbrush. I smudged the splatters with a paper towel.

The window casing is burnt sienna, cerulean blue, new gamgee, and burnt umber. I applied the paint wet first and then in dry brushed layers.

The grass I masked before beginning the painting. I finished it with greens mixed from new gamgee and phthalo blue. I added the shadows over the window sill last.

I’ve always shied away from building detailed rock and wood like this because I was afraid I couldn’t get the textures right.  But I”m pleased with this and may do some more like it.

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The Newport Bay Bridge I (13 x 19) $200

The Yaquina Bay Bridge, better and more informally known as the Newport Bridge, is one of the most photographed and painted objects on the Oregon coast.  It’s a little daunting to add yet another painting to the stack.  But it’s such a beautiful bridge that I just couldn’t resist.

This is the view of the bridge from the south side of bay standing on the ground looking up.  Anyone who knows the area well will see immediately that I took major liberties with the landscape.  I’ve placed tree covered hills in the foreground, where there is really a grassy flat area often used as an impromptu parking lot.  My reference photo throws the parking lot and the bridge into silhouette against the late afternoon sky.  Trees broke up the flat horizon.  I expanded the treeline into undulating hills.

What I did not remove from the photo was the scaffolding.  Somehow whenever I visit the bridge there is scaffolding somewhere in the picture.  And with the light behind it, I found the scaffolding as beautiful as the bridge.

After transferring my sketch of the bridge to the paper, I began by painting the sky.  I worked wet into wet beginning at the top with a combination of cobalt blue and cerulean Blue.  Moving down the paper I added burnt sienna to the two blues to create the grays of the upper cloud masses.  Then I dropped in dioxzine purple on the undersides and the dark areas of the clouds.  I grayed the violet a hair and added some cobalt to it and washed in the lower cloud bank.  Grayed cobalt brought the clouds to the horizon.  The bay itself is grayed down cerulean.

The bridge is various dark combinations of burnt sienna, cobalt blue, french ultramarine, and dioxazine purple.  The hills are are wet into wet layers of various mixes of the bridge colors plus cerulean blue and raw sienna.

When I finished the painting I was puzzeled about where to sign it.  In the end, I signed the painting in removable liquid mask.  The mask has a tendency to lift paint thus leaving a quiet signature behind when I removed it.

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Queen Anne Nods to Shirley Jackson (11 x 15) $150

I set a challenge for myself this week.  The idea was to paint a single subject in a variety of moods.  The subject I choose was Deepwoods Estate, here in Salem.  I took all of the photos for the painting in the same light and although the various aspects of the building gave me different ideas, the photos don’t convey much feeling to me.

Its Greener on the Other Side

Porch reference photo

I began with the front porch. I aimed to emphasize the softness of the light and the romance of the building.  I also wanted to draw the viewer into the painting.

As you can see from my reference photo, my depiction is a little fanciful.  I limited my palate to yellows and blues to mimic the soft shadowy light under the porch and the golden sunlight beyond it.

I think the painting works.  The most common comment about it is that the viewer would like to step through the porch into the garden on the other side.

Turret and Cupola

Turret Reference Photo

Next I painted a detail of the roof-line from in back. This time I tried to contrast the harsh glittering light with the shaded parts of the building.

Because I intended to include many hard lines and less subtle variation in tone I looked for a place where the contrast between light and shade was particularly striking. But I didn’t want it to look like graphic art, so I poured this painting to ensure that the solid expanses of color were lively rather than flat. Once again I exaggerated, the light in the reference photo is not nearly as stark as the light I painted.

I like this painting, but it turned out rather softer than I had intended.  I may try it again with an orange and blue palate.

House Reference Photo

The latest painting in this series is of the whole house.  I’ve always found Victorian and Queen Anne houses a little creepy.  Like wrought iron, they can be both sinister and charming all at once.  On a bright sunny day there is nothing really creepy about the Deepwood House, but it does have a swallowed by the woods feel to it.  Despite a generous lawn, there are few places where you can see the whole house.  Instead what you see is patches of house through the trees.

So in order to bring out the sinister feel of Queen Anne archetecture, I pulled the trees in closer to the house and darkened the edges where the trees and house meet visually.  I also distorted the shape of the house stretching it upwards to about fifteen percent more than it’s real height.  Finally I chose a very earthy palate for such a pristine white house:  burnt sienna, raw sienna, yellow ocher, phthalo blue and cobalt blue.

I poured this painting too because I wanted a lot of variation in tone. But pouring produces hard lines at the edges of the mask. The result had too many hard lines for the shadowy woods.  I did so much scrubbing of the edges, washing over, and detail work that painting doesn’t feel poured to me.  But the more I painted the darker it got.  I finally had to stop for fear the house would no longer read as white.

I showed the finished painting to my husband yesterday.  He said he really liked it, but then added tentatively, “Isn’t it a little eerie?”  Yes, yes it is.  But I don’t think it’s so eerie that it’s a caricature of the house.

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Turret and Copula (11 x 14) $150

Back to the Deepwood Estate but with a very different feel.  This is the west or backside of the house looking up at the turret and the tallest roof peak.  The afternoon sun brought the architectural details into graphic relief. I decided to play with the posterized nature of the light by pouring this painting.

Pouring watercolors is much like batik dyeing.  First I mask all the white areas of the painting.  Then I literally pour cups of paint across the paper.  After the first pour dries, I mask all the pastels and pour darker paint.  Then I mask the medium values and pour again with yet darker paint.   Once the painting is dry, I lift the mask and add the darkest values and the details.

In this case I used phthalo blue, deep red rose, and new gamgee for the first pout.  I tried to keep the yellow on the cupola.  In later pours I used only the deep red rose and two blues Phthalo and French ultramarine.  I saved the french ultramarine for the final pour.

I masked the sky after the first pour and overlaid it with cobalt blue when the mask was removed.  The details are all heavy purple and magenta mixtures of phthalo blue and deep red rose.

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Its Greener on the Other Side (10 x 13) $125.00

Built in 1894, The Deepwood Estate is a lovely example of Queen Anne architecture.  But to my mind, the gardens are even better.  There are four acres of these and they get better every year.  The indoor and outdoor Deepwood Estate meet on the front porch.  Steps from the porch lead to both the front and back gardens as well as the house and separate glassed-in porch.

Looking up at the porch from the front, I was struck by how the trees on the other side glowed in sun.

After cropping my reference photo to emphasize the the view of the backyard, I spent sometime correcting the photo’s perspective.  After transferring my sketch to the watercolor paper I built up from light to dark reserving the white paper where the sun hit the porch wall.

The palate was phthalo blue, a little cobalt blue, hansa yellow light, hansa yellow medium, and burnt sienna.  I tried to keep the porch shadows as blue as possible to emphasize the green and yellow of the view on the other side of the porch. And I exaggerated the porch shadows to increase the sense of depth and to show off the green and gold trees. I used the sienna very sparingly and only to gray down the blues and greens.

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The Mill Reflects Upon Itself (13 x 16) $200

I love the way old glass distorts reflections. This is the second painting of reflections in old glass I’ve done at the Mission Mill Museum.

The old woolen mill is well worth the visit. Most of the original equipment remains inside the mill house and the mill wheel and machinery remains operable. One of these days I’ll have to paint the whole building. It’s bright red and looks like a stack of buildings piled up like crates rather than a single structure. The effect is charming and oddly reminiscent of a child’s toy.

In the meantime I remain fascinated by the glass. Here, a dye house window reflects the mill itself. I love the abstract designs created in the window panes.

I created the siding with multiple washes of paint. I began by painting the shadows in french ultramarine blue. Then I washed all of the siding with with a mixture of deep red rose grayed down a little with phthalo green. Next came Da Vinci’s burnt sienna, followed by HWC’s burnt sienna. The first is really very orange and the second verges on red. I didn’t wash the highlights with the redder sienna. Then I washed the shadowed siding in burnt umber followed by cobalt blue. I like the resulting glow from all of those translucent layers of paint.

I used much the same process for the reflected mill, except that I didn’t use any burnt umber and the final layer of deep red rose.

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