Women in the Surf (watercolor 11 x 15) $175.00

This is a little painting I started just before we left on vacation and finished while we were en-route.   Kinda fun putting the finishing touches on a beach painting while staying at a motel in West Yellowstone, Idaho.  How much more land locked could I have been?

As with many of my beach paintings, I was trying to catch the immediacy of confronting the wall of water.  It is an all consuming moment.  In this case that all consuming moment was in the late afternoon, facing a back-lit ocean.  People were almost silhouetted against it and the spray shown white.

Or purchase a print from my website at Fineartamerica.com.

At the Water's Edge (watercolor 10 x 15) $225

Here is another vacation watercolor.  This one is from Yellowstone National Park on the north side of the lake.  We picnicked here on our last day in the park.

Like my previous painting of Fort Robinson, I simplified the image by masking heavily and then getting out the big brushes.  I began by painting in the sky and the light blue of the lake.  Then I masked the sky and all of the water except the dark ripples.   I painted the trees and hills in used a one inch brush and moving diagonally in wet juicy strips of cobalt blue, raw sienna, and phthalo blue.   I blotted the rocky edge in with burnt sienna.  The lake ripples are cobalt and phthalo blue grayed down with burnt sienna.   After the paint dried I picked out the grass and the highlights on the rocks with mask and  added more paint to the rocks and foreground.

Or purchase a print from my Fine Art America website.

Through the Wind Break (watercolor 11 x 15) $200.00

I’m just back from an extended vacation that took  me across eastern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, The Black Hills of South Dakota, Montana, and  the northwest corner of Nebraska.  These paintings come from that northwest corner of Nebraska,  at Fort Robinson State Park, where my Mother’s family held its family reunion this June.

The cavalry fort was once known as the country-club of the army because of the polo field, golf course, swimming pool, gymnasium and horse trails in and around the camp.  The swimming pool and the horse trails remain for the use of  park visitors.  My paintings depict what was once the polo field and is now pasture for both horses and long-horns.  We hiked into the bluffs and I may do some more detailed painting of them this summer.

I made my first sketch of the field from the shade of our house (0nce the officers’ club and lodging for 65).  I made a short job of it as the wind wanted to carry not only the paper, but also my palette, brushes, and everything else away.  My main objective to was to capture the hills as reference for later paintings.   I removed a number of trees from my line of vision.

Sketch of Nebraska Bluffs at Fort Robinson (watercolor 10 x14) $50.00

Back at home, I decided I liked the trees and set about recording them as the main subject.  They reminded me of the view from numerous parks and rest-stops across the plains states where the view is pleasantly interrupted by a wind break.   Here is my first attempt:

The View From Fort Robinson (watercolor 11 x 16) $150

I wasn’t entirely happy with it although various people visiting the gallery while I painted it liked it.  I have trouble with trees.  Either I put in too much detail, or I put in so little they become bland.  The painting also suffers from lack of punch.  There isn’t enough value contrast and the fence interrupts the view without adding to it.  It is unclear whether the trees or the view are the subject.

For my second attempt I let go of realism and tried to paint the feeling of the cool trees with the dry view beyond.  To do this I placed most of the attention on the trees.  I began by masking everything expect the tree shapes.  Then I got out the large brushes and began adding wet juicy areas of raw sienna and new gamge to the tree tops.  I brushed the trunks with burnt sienna.  Then I washed over the damp yellows with cobalt blue, phthalo blue, and French blue (much like cobalt only darker and not as transparent).  I took the blue down the trunks too.  I allowed back washes and other water marks to form.

The resulting trees are less real, but much more interesting, and though they have a flat feeling to them, they convey the sense of light passing between the leaves and branches.

After removing the mask, I added a light cobalt blue sky.  I added some darker patches of blue around the edges of the leaves too.
Then I used the same palette to add the bluffs and grass working carefully to keep the distant hills blue, pale and receded.   FInally, I added a few small touches of orange mixed from burnt and raw sienna to the edges of the trees to bring out the green of the leaves.

I like the results.

I will do the bluffs again later, closer and in more detail.  They were beautiful to hike in.

I may do the Fort itself eventually too.  It is steeped in history beginning in 1873 when Camp Robinson was established to  to protect the Red Cloud Agency.  The agency was then home to some 13,00 Lakota Sioux most of whom were unhappy with the accommodations and the treaty which led to them.    Crazy Horse died during a rebellion there.  About ten years later, the 9th Calvary, an all black unit known as the Buffalo Soldiers were stationed there.  Eventually the Fort became a remount station in WWII, a prisoner of war camp, and a K-9 training camp.  Pieces of all these permutations remain on the site.

Fort Robinson Paintings

Sketch of Nebraska Bluffs $50.00 The View From Fort Robinson $150.00 Through the Wind Break $200.00

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My Kind of Beach Boys ( 10 x 19 watercolor) $175.00

Believe it or not,  this is February in Oregon.  Where is the rain?  I don’t know, it took a vacation for our vacation.  I took a number of photos of these boys who were obviously enjoying the unseasonable weather.  They seemed immune to the 62 degree water, and quite happy to get wet.

I painted this watercolor very traditionally starting which the sky which I painted wet into wet with ceruleum blue.  I dropped in a mixture of cobalt blue and burnt sienna  to give the clouds some depth.

Then I masked the foam and the boys.  The ocean is a combination of phthalo blue, cobalt blue and burnt sienna. I used the phthalo blue mostly for the green cresting waving.  After removing the maske, I spent much time scrubbing the hard edges left by the maske and lifting highlights from the waves.

I added the boys using burnt sienna, raw sienna, and quinacridarone rose form there skin.  Their trunks are quinacridone rose, colbalt blue, and phthalo blue.

Or purchase a print from my print shop at Fine Art America.

Assorted Gulls (watercolor 14 x 19) $225.00

I began working out a drawing for a long horizontal painting of Agate beach at sunset.  The light was punctuated by silhouetted sea gulls.  While working with my reference photos, I became fascinated by the way the sunset colored the white birds.  So I gave up the sunset painting and sketched out larger, versions of the seagulls instead. I like them and I may do some more seagull groups later. I may get back to that sunset too.

I painted the birds in first. I blended the colors on the birds primarily rather than mixing them on my palette.  The colors are cobalt blue, phthalo blue, quinacridone deep red rose, hansa yellow, and new gamgee.

Or purchase a print at from my gallery at Fine Art America.com.

My first attempt show the full height of the falls.  like the sense of scale and the horizontal lines of the upper rocks, but I thought it lacked visual punch.  After looking at it a while, I decided that part of the problem was that the amount of area covered by  medium value rock and the amount of high key fall are almost equal.  Also the falls are almost dead center in the painting.

For my second attempt I came in closer and worked darker for greater contrast with the white water.  I also reversed the image right to left, thereby clarifying the entrance to the painting.  Finally I moved the falls to one side of the painting.

Ring Side Seats (watercolor 14 x 20) reserved for La Salles Show

To create the falls themselves I used a lot of liquid mask.  I began flipping tiny drops of mask onto the falls.  Then I washed the area with highly diluted phthalo blue.  When I removed the mask the area looked white, but the even whiter dots gave it some sparkle.  Then I masked the white areas of the upper falls and began painting in the water and the rock behind it.  I used burnt umber, burnt siena, raw sienna, cerulean blue, cobalt blue, and phthalo blue.  I let the blues predominate.  I worked much darker on Ring Side Seats II than I did on Ring Side Seats I.

After removing the mask, I continued working softening edges and adding paler washes.

I used the same palette for the rocks but emphasizing burnt sienna and raw sienna.

Ring Side Seats I (watercolor 16 x 21) $450.00

Or purchase prints through my print shop at  Fine Art America.

Breakers Below Yaquina Head (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

I did this little painting at the gallery last Wednesday.  It is another view of rocks below Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Newport, Oregon.

I painted it  loosely without using mask reserving the white paper in the clouds, waves and foreground by painting around them.  I added the spray on the rocks with opaque chinese white.  I used phthalo blue, cobalt blue, raw sienna, burnt sienna, and a hint of quinacridone deep red rose.

Through the Bamboo Grove (watercolor 17 x 23) on reserve for La Salles show

As promised, here is a larger more finished version of the Bamboo Grove.  I left the composition pretty much as it was in my little postcard painting, but I greatly increased the contrast by darkening the shadows and underbrush.

This time I poured the painting.  Pouring watercolor is a process much like batik.

I began by making a value sketch of the painting in graphite.  I transferred my sketch to the watercolor paper with graphite paper.  Then I used liquid mask to save all of the white highlights.  In this case highlights were thin strips of light on the edge of the bamboo, and the ridges where the sections of bamboo meet.

Once the painting was masked, I mixed three colors of paint very thinly in cups: cadmium yellow, new gamgee, and phthalo blue.  I wet the painting and then poured the paint out of the cups across the paper working from left to right and sloping downward.  I poured the yellows first then the blue.

After the painting was dry I masked all of the pastel values, mostly sky and unshadowed path and poured again.  This time I used hansa light and new gamgee for the yellows and both phthalo and cobalt  for the blues.  I added quinacridone deep red rose too.  I mixed all of the colors more thickly than on the previous pour.  I used very little red and tried to isolate it on the bottom on the picture.

I repeated the mask and pouring process two more times masking two sets of medium values.  The last time I poured only shadows and underbrush.

After the painting had dried completely, I removed the mask and assessed the results.  I had beautiful varied greens in the bamboo and nice dark shadows, but bamboos were mostly one value and looked flat.  I darkened the rear bamboo, and shadowed the sides of the bamboo to round it.  I dropped some color into the highlights on the path and added some blue to the sky. I soften the skyline foliage and varied the greens a little there.  I had left a roadway from my reference photo running across  the painting  just below the skyline foliage.  I decided that that was a distraction and painted it out.

Prints available from my gallery at Fine Art America.com.

Headland at Sunset (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

Sunset at Agate Beach (watercolor 5 x 7) $25.00

Two more postcard sized paintings from Agate Beach, Newport.