Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

Storm Off Trail Ridge (12 x 15 pastel) $150

My husband and I took a drive over Trial Ridge Road above Rocky Mountain National.  It’s a drive I remember fondly from my childhood.  But that late June day a storm was brewing.  I should have known.  Foul weather is perfectly normal in June, at 10,000 feet and even lower.  I have been snowed on backpacking in July at 7,000 feet.

But Stephen and I drove happily on.   We enjoyed the brisk cool weather and admired the clouds, ignoring their warning.  The later half of the drive was white knuckles all the way.  The coming storm brought so much snow and wind that we couldn’t see enough to turn around.  Road construction in progress but temporarily abandoned for the snow, added to the tension. We stopped with relief at would have been the half way point of the drive, the Visitor’s Center.   The Center has a lovely wall of windows for panoramic views.  But that day they showed white, white and white.   So we drove back down the way we had come, slowly carefully, tensely.  Twenty minutes later we were below the clouds and our experience was already becoming funny.

The I took photos for this painting at the last overlook before we should have turned back.  Shortly after that, all was white.

I used the rough side  Canson Mi-Teins gray paper for this painting. Mi-Tieins paper has a chicken wire looking texture on the rough side which I intended to use for texture in the foreground.  Like detail and warm colors, texture advances.

I began by blocking in the mountains, big and small in hard pastels.   I lowered  back range a little to emphasize  the looming foreground mountain.  In retrospect I could have brought it down even further.

Then I worked down and from left to right.  Once again I worked the sky in PanPastels:  phthalo blue tint, white, ultramarine, and magenta.  I added some blue and purple soft pastels as well. The back range of mountains came next beginning with dark blue shade and lightening it up until  it look far enough back.  The darker background hills came next.

Finally I added the mountain in dark blues and greens.  I used burnt sienna tint to add the lighter areas, but color contrasted oddly with the sky, so I added light violets and greens as well.  When I  got the mountain modeled to my satisfaction I added the trees with a final layer of dark green soft pastels which I applied lightly to allow the texture of the paper to show through.  Lower down some of the gray paper itself shows through.

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Dusk Falls on the Pumice Field (11 x 18) $175

This is my second pastel.  The subject is the pumice field on the west side of Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.  The light was beautiful and I loved the way it lit up the wildflowers in the foreground, which are visually insignificant at mid day.

The support is once again Canson Mi-Teiten paper.  This time I used the rough side.

I began at the top with PanPastels’ ultramarine blue, ultramarine blue tint, burnt sienna tint and white.  The rosy hills are mostly PanPastel too.   I used magenta, violet tint, burnt sienna, burnt sienna pint, and finally a stick of purple pink soft pastel.

The tree lines are soft pastels in various combinations of an ultramarine shade, a phthalo blue, a iron oxide stick and a dark green.  The grass and pumice fields are various combinations of burnt umber, red oxide, burnt sienna in PanPastel and soft pastel sticks.  I added the gold light last soft pastel.

I added the shadowy path leading out  the foreground with purples and blue soft pastel smudged over the pumice field.

I began the red flowers by using a soft  purple pastel stick  to make dark bases for them.  I smudged the bases in and them added PanPastel red plus a little PanPastel yellow and smudged again.  I accented  them with hard yellow pastel.

For the blue flowers I made a darker purple base and drew thin marks over it in light turqouse blue which I half smudged.  Then I added blue squiggles again and again half smudged.

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Fall Poplars (12 x 18) $125.00

I have admired pastels and mixed media with pastels for some time now.  There is a sparkly quality about pastels that no other medium can match.  Pastels over watercolors can create both spectacular and subtle effects.

My husband bought me pastels for Christmas, and I have been playing with them this last week.   Pastels are if  anything less forgiving than watercolor.  All color mixing must be done on the paper either optically or by smearing.  Pastel smears easily.  The paper holds only so much pastel before it suddenly won’t take anymore.   This last can be fixed somewhat, by using a workable fixative.  Some lifting is possible with a kneadable eraser.

The method is very different from watercolor too.  Working with them is a kind of cross between drawing and painting. Pastels are an opaque medium and therefore work best if the dark tones are blocked in first and the lights laid over them.  Highlight go on last. Nothing runs.  The chalk stays right where you put it until you smudge it.

I started this image on the rough side of a rose colored sheet of  Canson Mi-Tietens paper.   I laid in the sky with PanPastels.  PanPastels come in pots rather than sticks and they are highly pigmented and almost dustless.  Applying them is reminiscent of applying dry eyeshadow or rouge.  The top of the sky is phthalo blue. Further down I switched to ultramarine blue. Then I worked back up the sky from the horizon, overlaying the deep blue with ultramarine and phthalo tints (both of which are almost white).  I used white, and more of the blue tints to lay in the clouds.  Then I got out a violet soft pastel stick and added the deeper shadows smudging them in as I went.

I roughed in the far tree line with a dark blue shade of soft pastel.  I added a dark green shade lower down and smudged.  I pushed the pastel up into the sky with a sponge applicator.

Returning to PanPastels, I added the hills with turquoise blue shade and bright yellow green shade.  Burnt sienna came next.  Then I went back over the hills with a variety of green and brown soft pastels to create texture.  I smudged these in with my fingers.

Continuing with soft pastels, I drew in the poplar trunks first with a dark green gray and a red brown.  I added a lighter gray and then an almost white gray.   Then I added the leaves beginning with a dull orange, continuing with a brighter orange and finally a yellow orange.  I smudged the leaves on the farther tree to suggest a little distance.

With soft pastels I put in blue and purple shadows under the foreground trees to indicate the rough grass line.  I drew in the grass over the shadows with a variety of  hard pastels starting with the darker colors and continuing with the lighter ones.  I softened the lines with a finger.

After years of reserving or painting around the lighter colors, laying in the trees over the sky and grass felt like magic.

I enjoyed this.  Watercolor will remain my primary medium, but pastel has a rough sparkly quality I’d like.  Some images just seem to demand it.  I may also do some mixed media, painting a watercolor first before accenting it with pastel.

I ship my watercolors rolled in a tube or, if they or very small flat.  I provide free shipping for watercolors within the continental United States. Pastels cannot be safely rolled since they would smudge and they should be both matted and covered with a protective sheet.  Therefore, the shipping cost of my pastels will vary depending upon size.  All pastels will will include an acid free neutral colored mat and backing.

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Submerged I (9 x 12) $75.00

I’ve been experimenting with a couple of new methods.  These two paintings are the result.  Both are based on  some photos of trees half drowned by the swollen Willamette River I took  this weekend.  I wanted to catch the cold grayness of of the scene and the mystery of the half hidden trees.

Blowing:

I blew the trees.  I placed puddles of paint on the paper and blew them into trees with a straw.  The line of paint running out from the puddle  looks surprisingly like a tree limb.  And the direction the paint goes in is quite controllable.  But once the paint has started in one direction it’s hard to make it turn.  The paint follows the wet path as if it were a stream bed.  The solution is to drag a little paint in the direction you want to take it and thus start a new path.  Where the trees over-lap it’s important to let the first tree dry completely before starting the next, otherwise the paint form the new tree will run up the first tree.

There are several ways to vary the color in the tree.   Leaving the supply puddle partially unmixed is one. New colors can be blown into the wet tree from the base.  Accents and be directly painted onto the dry trees. I used all three methods on these paintings.

Layered Masking:

The second method is painting grass and bracken with multiple layers of mask.  Thin lines of mask establish the highlights.  Then color is applied.  Then more lines are applied. Then more mask for multiple layers.  When the mask is removed a complex texture is revealed.  I was less successful with this method.  It’s hard to see what you are doing or to guess the result.  More practice is needed.

I used layered mask in Submerged I.  But I didn’t like the results immediately.  The foreground was too busy and detracted from my trees, which then looked much like the trees in Submerged II.  After some thought, I painted over the trees in dark tones to match the foreground.  The result is an evening picture.

Submerged II (9 x 12) $75.00

For the second painting I added the foreground wet into wet.  The result is simpler and gives the feeling of the gray afternoon on the river.

The palette for both paintings is:  burnt sienna, phtholo blue and dioxion purple,  plus a dab of hansa yellow.

Original Paintings

Submerged I $75.00 Submerged II $75.00 Submerged I and II $140.00

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Reeds at Sunset (11 x 15) $75.00

This is the Willamette again, but it could really be anywhere.  I was struck by the way the reeds look like they are growing out of a sunset.

Like the Broken Dock I painted a couple days ago, I began this painting by masking everything except the water.  After the mask on the reeds dried, I painting the sky’s refection on the still water wet into wet beginning with an overall wash of very diluted burnt sienna.   When the shine left the paper, I added various mixes of quinacridone deep red rose and new gamgee (yellow).  I used cobalt blue and burnt sienna to ad the darker clouds and phthalo blue for the water.

Once the  sky had dried, I removed the mask and painted the reeds in new gamgee, colalt blue, phthalo blue and burnt sienna.

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Brown Minto Park is one of our local haunts. The park boarders the Willamette on one side and a truck farm on the other. Bicycle trials, bark dust trails, and a dog park lie within it’s boarders. The park has forest, field, and playground. A rather civilized asphalt trail runs along the Willamette. A shorter trail from the playground once led to this dock. The dock was falling down even when I first saw it. Now it has gone the way of all things. But I miss it.

My photo showed real sunset with only a silhouette of the trees and dock left. I turned back the clock about a quarter of an hour to show the island trees and more of the decrepit dock.

The palette is cobalt blue, phthalo blue, dioxazine purple, quinacridone deep red rose, burnt sienna, and new gamgee.

I masked the dock before painting. Then I began with the sky and water working wet into wet. When the sky and water dried I added the far bank and it’s reflection working wet on dry but, still doing much of the mixing on the paper rather than on the palette. To give the foreground bank it’s texture, I salted the paint while it was still damp. The effect was a little stronger than I wanted so I gave it a final wash of phthalo blue. Finally I removed the mask and painted in the dock and it’s reflection.

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Clouds Over I5 (5 x 7) $20.00

This little postcard sized painting is home. The view is looking west at the Coastal Range off I5 just north of Salem. I took the photo for it coming back from the airport this summer. But I could have painted it from memory. It is yet another painting done at the art fair in Tigard.

Clouds Over Boot Hill (9 x 12) $75.00

This is one more painting of the storm clouds gathering above Boot Hill in Central City. In this view the graves are not visible. Like the Dynamite Dome, I painted this one at Art in the Burbs in Tigard, Oregon. The palette and the method are the same.

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The Dynamite Dome (9 x 12) $75.00

This is another view of Central City’s Boot Hill. According to a gift shop owner in town, the odd brick dome was used to store dynamite. The storage dome was built in the graveyard because of the dangerS of storing explosives in town. Nothing about the dome proclaims it’s purpose, and it would be an odd mausoleum so I’m glad the gift shop owner was chatty. Otherwise, we would have gone away wondering.

She went on to tell us that the dome is on the Catholic side of the graveyard because the powers that be in the city were Protestant. The may be, but the Catholic side of the grave yard is both better tended and more populous than the Protestant side. Judging from the names on the stones, the Catholics in the 1800s were primarily Irish with a sprinkling of Slavs and Spanish miners. The other Boot Hill views I have have posted here have also been from the Catholic side. The monument I painted in Victorian Deadwood is from the Protestant side, but there are many more like it on the Catholic side.

I did this painting at a craft fair in Tigard last weekend along with a few more landscapes which I’ll post over the next few days.

The palette is cerulean blue, Prussian blue, cobalt blue, phthalo blue, new gamgee (yellow) and burnt sienna. I used cerulean for the sky and Prussian blue grayed with burnt sienna to define the clouds. I mixed all of the blues with new gamgee to create the greens for cemetery and hills. The dome itself is burnt sienna.

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Victorian Deadwood (8 x 10) $75.00

This is another painting from the cemetery above Central City, Colorado.  Most of the graves there date from the Victorian era.  This is typical of the monuments.  They were cast concrete rather than stone and carved to look like wood and stone.  The “wood” portions sometimes look like rustic logs and sometimes more like vines creeping on the stone.  Could they have had rose or grape covered bowers in mind?

But whatever the intent, to my mind the monuments are so ugly as to be strangely compelling.  The are overly complex and intricate yet striving for rusticness.  The more I look at them, the more I wonder what they were thinking and what if anything the fake wood roofs and beams meant to them.

The palatte here is cerlulean blue and burnt sienna for the sky.  The monunent is raw sienna and cerulean blue on the lighted portions and burnt sienna and Prussian blue on the shadowed sides.  The foliage is cerulean, cobalt and Prussian blues mixed in various combinations with raw sienna, new gamgee, and burt sienna.

Prints may be purchased from my BubbleSite.