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Garlic on Blue (7 x 10) $35.00
I’ve been doing framing and back to back art shows rather than painting lately. And lucky for me the shows have been too busy for much painting, but here is a little still life I snuck in.
Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage
Paintings Fresh From the Brush
Category: prints available
Clouds over Boot Hill
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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Grass in the Window
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.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
The Dynamite Dome
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
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.
The Fossil Shell
The Fossil Shell (6 x 9) $75.00
My girls like to hunt for fossil shells on the beach. Once a middle aged fossil hunter with a German Sheppard stopped to to talk with them. It was a brief conference between enthusiasts. He was looking for fossilized fish and other rarer things. The four shared the boulder strewn beach under the cliffs while I watched the waves. Then the girls and I headed back up the beach for the warm hotel room. He caught up quickly and thrust a stone into my youngest’s hand and was gone before she could say thank you or even see what it was. It was the find of the day, a fossilized shell perfectly preserved on one side and rough rock on the other.
Joy! I popped it right down on the sand and photographed it. It lives on our mantle piece now.
After the Mask Came Off
I began the painting by masking the shell. Then I washed the background lightly first with yellow ochre, then with burnt sienna. I painted in the shadow of the shell with phthalo blue. After that I used an old toothbrush to splatter it with layer upon layer of burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cerulean blue, and Prussian blue.
Next I removed the mask and painted the shell in burnt sienna, and cerulean blue. I added a few gouache white touches.
When I stepped back to look at it, I decided that the sand was too busy and had taken away from the picture. So I took the painting to the sink and scrubbed paint off it with a stiff brush under the tap. Washing a painting is a scary process, but sometimes it’s the only good fix. The result is softer, but still shows the effects of the splattering.
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Before the Afternoon Rain
Before the Afternoon Rain (9 x 12) $100.00
This is the Catholic side of Boot Hill above Central City, Colorado. The grave yard is in a park, a geological park that is, i.e. a high mountain flat open meadow. Most of the graves are old and overgrown and the plots appear to be spotted haphazardly across the field. Here and there are tended plots and even occasionally a new grave. But most of the graves date from the 1800s. Wild roses, daffodils, and onions mingle (the mountain ghost-town survivors) mingle with wildflowers and grasses.
I liked the way the coming afternoon storm lit up some parts of the graveyard but left others in shadow. I also loved the sky itself.
I planned the painting to be three quarters sky. I painted the sky first wet on wet mostly in Prussian blue grayed down with burn sienna. Prussian blue is perfect for storm clouds the color is almost perfect and it spreads out nicely into water. After I finished the sky, I began the hills and the mountain ridge in yellow ochre mixed with phthalo blue, cobalt blue and Prussian blue. But I got carried away with trees and painted them higher up into the sky than I’d intended. I thought briefly about cutting off the bottom part of the grass but decided against because the gravestones so clearly belong in the mid and background. I like it, but I’m tempted to do it over again and really emphasize the sky this time.
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Playing With the Newport Bridge
The Newport Bay Bridge I (13 x 19) on reserve for the La Salles show
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.
Prints available from Fine Art America.com.
Wall Flowers
Wall Flowers (6 x 9) $35.00
When my mother was a little girl, she and a little friend spent one summer making dancing ladies out of hollyhocks. An upside down open bloom formed the voluminous dancing skirt. A bud for the head attached to the skirt with a toothpick completed the dancing lady.
When we visited her house this summer, she taught my daughters to make the pretty dancing ladies. She had plenty of hollyhocks and other flowers for the girls to play with. At first their flower dolls were all like grandma’s. But soon they added bits of asters and daisies to the heads and bodies. Finally they made a little prince made out of pea pods and pea stems.
The girls spent several afternoons playing with the flower doll on the back porch. But alas there was only one prince. So most of the dancing flower ladies had to wait their turn at the ball. Here are two of them waiting now.
I have many photos of the girls playing with the hollyhock ladies, and one of these days soon, I’m going to paint the girls playing with the flower dolls. It the meantime, I thought I’d start small with a couple studies of the flower dolls.
Because I wanted very soft edges I did these two without mask, saving the whites with careful paint strokes. The flowers themselves are a mixture of opera pink (PR22) and deep red rose (PV 19), both quinacridone reds. I added hansa yellow to make the oranges and cobalt blue to make the greens.
The flag stone is many layered mixes of the same colors toned with burnt sienna. The mortar is burnt sienna and cobalt blue.
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Challenging Myself: One Subject, Three Moods
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 Cupola
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.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
It’s Greener on the Other Side of the Porch
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
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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Breakers Below Yaquina Head I
The Breakers Below Yaquina Head I (12 x 16) $175.00
When the tide comes in, the tide pools below Yaquina Head disappear under white foam and the fireworks begin. From the gravely beach you can see the breakers at eye level. Add sunshine through the clouds and the beautiful view becomes spectacular. I wish I could paint the sound because that’s pretty spectacular too.
My palate was cerulean blue, cobalt blue, raw sienna, burnt sienna, burnt umber and a hint of quinacridone deep red rose. I scrubbed and used some gouache chinese white where the spray hits the rocks. Otherwise the whites are reserved paper.
The rocks are multiple layers of raw sienna, burnt sienna, phthalo blue and cobalt blue.
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The Fisherman’s Wharf
The Helen McColl at Rest (10 x 15) $175.00
One of our beach side pleasures is wondering the Newport’s history bay. Art galleries, fish packing plants, and novelty shops, private museums, restaurants and taverns mix indiscriminately along the bay front. But the best part of the bay is the fisherman’s wharf.
There is marina space for pleasure craft further down the road and across the bay. But I prefer the fishing boats. The yachts are are elegant under sail, but with their sails furled at port they look sad to me, like furniture under sheets. And few people tour the boats. The yachts are expensive and while not actually prohibited, visitors feel unwelcome.
The wharf remains full of life. Maintaining a fishing boat is an endless task and someone, usually several someones are always busy there. Tourists are smiled upon. Some these outfits sell fish and crab right off the boat. The sea lions chose the wharf piers for sunning too. They know where to fish scraps are.
The shape of the fishing boats may be elegant, but the boats themselves are not. Machinery, ropes, crates, boxes, tarps, crab pots, nets, buckets, barrels and other paraphernalia clutter the decks. Unlike the yachts the boats are often brightly colored. Fishing is a dangerous game and these men want to be visible.
We visit often enough that we remember many of the names. The Miss Law, The Sandra Fey, The Suki, The Destiny, The Golden Dolphin, The Orca, and many others. This is The Helen McColl. She was at the end of the pier guarded by sea lions. I took her picture because I liked her reflection and the rust on her side, an unusual sight on the wharf. She must have had a hard year.
I used primarily phthalo blue, cobalt blue, and burnt sienna. I used a hair of yellow ocher and made a couple high lights in white gouache. I painted the water and sky first, then alternated between the boat and her reflection making sure to use the same paint mix for each reflected part.
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Twixt Wind and Water II
Twixt Wind and Water II (12 x 16) $225
Twixt Wind and Water
We spent last weekend on the beach. I took enough photographs to have seacape material for some time to come. While I was there I reworked Twixt Wind and Water. Here is the result. As you can see, I gave the painting considerably more sea-room to the left, so that she has something more to look into.
I began her hair with an under-painting of colbalt blue. Then I used layers of yellow ochre, burnt sienna, and cobalt blue to complete it. Quidacrone deep red rose provides the accent color in the hair band.
Her jacket is cobalt blue and prussian blue mixed on the palate.
The sea began as phthalo blue and burnt sienna with reserved whites. Then I changed my mind about much of the wave action and began experimenting with white gouache. To cover strong colors, gouache must be laid on fairly heavily. And even though I don’t use ultra white paper, gouache white is still bluer that the paper. Also, as I discovered gouache will washback into transparent watercolor and vice versa. Work a little gouache onto the paper and nothing painted there will ever be entirely transparent again.
The effect is interesting, but I think next time I’ll stick to transparent watercolors, unyielding to change though they may be. I like the translucency better.
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Breakers at Seal Rock or Using all the White Techniques
The Breakers at Seal Rock II (12 x 16) $125
This is the second painting I’ve done of the tide coming in at Seal Rock Wayside. The first was a little postcard sized painting I did while demonstrating at the fair. That little painting sold immediately. I liked it too, so when expanding it to a full sized painting I didn’t mess around with the composition much. But I did want to get some more variety into the rocks and spray.
Like the previous painting, I began by reserving the whites with liquid mask while painting in the ocean and rocks. I used phthalo blue and burnt sienna for the ocean.
I used the same basic technique to lay down the rocks as I did with the first little painting. I started with raw sienna and quinacridone gold. Then I added burnt sienna and quinacridone deep red rose. While the burnt sienna and deep red rose were still wet, I dropped in cobalt blue and phthalo blue. Finally I added some heavy burnt sienna and some French Ultramarine.
Once the painting was dry, I scrubbed the edges of the rock where the spay hit them with a stiff filbert brush to show how the waves obscured them. Then I broke out the white gouache (an semi opaque white) and added more spray. Over the dark painted rocks the gouache white looks gray. I used the gouache primarily for the shelf of the biggest rock and the bases of the rocks on the shore side. Finally I pulled out the razor and scratched in fine white lines where the water spilled over the rocks and little cuts for droplets of spray. All four techniques work very differently, and each has a character of it’s own. I like the variety that resulted from using them all.
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Breakers
Breakers
Dances With Fountains
I expected to sell prints, but not necessarily paintings at the Oregon State Fair. It isn’t exactly a traditional art venue. So I wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t sold a painting over the weekend. But surprise, surprise, I sold two framed originals today. “Fountain Dance” I blogged about when I painted it. It’s part of my Town Center Park “Splash” Series. Breakers is a little painting I did before beginning this blog.
You can purchase a print of either painting at Fine Art America.com
The Best Hot Pink or Playing Chicken with the Waves
Retreat (9 x 12) $100
I haven’t been able to paint much recently, so I brought some things to play with at my mother’s. I started with another winter wave painting because they are becoming easy and familiar. This is my youngest daughter playing chicken with the surf. I think in the end she got her feet wet. My reference photo included both girls, but for composition reasons I left my eldest out.
The palette is cobalt blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna and opera rose. I rarely want anything as bright as hot pink, but when I do, Winsor and Newton’s Opera is a good choice. It’s hotter than anything I can mix by diluting my reds. It’s another quinacridone red, PR 122. And like most of the quinacridones it’s light-fastness is rated II, very good but not excellent. Also like the rest of the quinacridones its a very warm red.
The paint came to me by serendipity. Dick Blick’s sent me a sample on the same day I saw it used to effect in small touches in a large foresty landscape. I was painting a picture of a young woman with a hot pink plastic bucket. I grabed the new paint and discovered I liked it.
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New Dawn in the Late Afternoon
New Dawn in the Late Afternoon (8 x 10) $100
I painted this little picture while vacationing in Colorado. Obviously I didn’t work plein air. I used a photo I took last summer. We love to walk along the Newport fishing docks in the afternoon when the boats are all in and the fishermen are cleaning up.
This is the New Dawn in dock. I painted her because of the lovely reflections in the water. But while I began it because of the reflections, I found I enjoyed the subtle shades of gray necessary to give the boat volume too, especially where the floats colored the shadows.
I painted the reflection and the parts of the boat reflected first beginning with the red boat side and the gold float. Then I added first the lighter water background and than the darker reflections and waves in it. The lighter water is cobalt blue in the foreground and cerulean blue in the distance. I used burnt sienna to gray and darken and gray the blues. I used a little raw sienna to make the greens.
Then I painted in the dark rail, the lifesaver and the the floats to help me “see” the rest of the boats. The rails are phthalo blue mixed with burnt sienna. I used burn sienna and raw sienna for the floats and lifesaver. The background came next to define the masts.
With that road map in hand, I set about adding all the various shades of gray. For those I used all three blues grayed down with burn sienna.
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Visiting the Civilized Engineer
The Civilized Engineer
My step-father jokes that civil engineers aren’t very civil. But he is a civil engineer and he is both civil and civilized. Here is a painting I did of him last year. The poise is characteristic and setting his own home. It isn’t a portrait, but everyone who sees it recognizes him immediately.
We will be visiting him and my mother for a few days. I just finished showing the house sitter around. She’s very helpful, about watering the garden and feeding the dog, but she won’t ship paintings for me. Any paintings purchased before I get back will have to be shipped after I return.
The Annex Bar
The Annex Bar (11 x 14) $125
Between art fairs and getting prints ready for my first painting fair I haven’t had time to actually paint nearly as often as I’d like. Today I decided to paint whether I had the time or not.
And I returned to a subject I had attempted to paint without success about six or seven months again, the Annex Building in downtown Portland. Like many downtown Portland buildings it’s wedge shaped to take advantage of the oddly shaped blocks created where diagonals run through the city grid. I photographed the Annex in the late afternoon when sun lit up all of the brick-a-brack.
My first attempts at painting the building ended in frustration because I included much too much detail. This time I simplified both the brick-a-brack and the colors. I also eliminated an upper story with a flat wall used as a a bill board facing out over the bar. This is one case where KISS (“keep it simple stupid”) worked.
Besides eliminating detail, I also simplified the colors and reduced my palette to phthalo blue, burnt sienna, and yellow ocher. At the very end I dropped cobalt blue into the sky.
It sure felt good to paint again, and better yet to paint something I’d failed to paint before.
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Dances With Fountains
I don’t think I’ve ever taken anywhere near as many photos I’d like to paint as I did the day of the Wilsonville Festival of the Arts. Hot sun on skin and lots of water is turning out to be one of my favorite combinations.
This one took a little more teasing out to make it a good image. The photo itself shows not only the boy but also his father and sister and sub machine gun style water pistol too, all cluttering up the background and obscuring the larger fountain. It was easy enough to remove the figures and the shadows they cast. To restore the fountain I need to use other reference material.
I have have been using much the same method for all of the paintings in my Splash series. First I mask the fountains, waterfalls, and water drops. Then I can paint the water without worrying about saving the whites as the masking protects them for me.
After the Mask Came Off
Dances with Fountains (in progress)
Once the paint is really dry I remove the mask from the water features and the figures but leave the water drops over water masked. Then I mask the highlights in the water-features and the splashes obscuring the figures. After I’ve painted the figures and roughed in the water I remove all the mask and add shadows to some of the water drops.
Should you like to try using removable liquid mask yourself, I have two tips. First, use cheap synthetic brushes to apply the mask and soap them before and during the process. Second, never use a hair dryer to speed the drying of a masked painting because sometimes it causes the mask to stick to firmly to the paper.
I painted the water in cobalt blue grayed with burnt sienna. The boy’s hair is yellow ocher, burnt sienna and cobalt blue as is his skin. I added some quinacridone deep red rose to key places in his skin such as his ears. His shirt is cobalt blue and burnt sienna again.
This painting has sold, but you may still purchase a print through Fine Art America.com.
Greeting Cards
Georgia in the Morning
I am now offering many of my paintings as greeting cards through Fine Art America. The cards are 5 x 7 inches and can be printed blank or with a custom message inside. A single card costs $5.45. In packs of ten they are $2.95 each or $29.50 per pack. In packs of 25 they are $2.25 each or $56.25 per pack.
Ladder to the Past
Ladder to the Past (10 x 15) $75
After painting four very wet paintings working mostly wet on dry, I just completed a very dry painting working mostly wet on wet.
This is Bandelier National Monument, New Mexico. For those of you who don’t know of it, Bandelier is a kind of pocket sized Mesa Verde located not far from Santa Fe. The major cliff dwellings can be seen in a half day self guided walking tour.
I took the photos for this painting a couple summers ago while visiting my father. The slender young women reaching the top of the ladder is my niece. She and my daughters climbed every ladder and explored every dwelling. Besides the fun of climbing the dwellings interiors are a cool contrast to the hot dry trail.
The palette is burnt sienna, cobalt blue, phthalo blue and yellow ocher.
Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
Waterfall in Her Lap
Waterfall in Her Lap (8 x 11) $75
Whether because it was hot or because of the economy or both, the art fair was slow this weekend. I had time on my hands. So on Saturday I asked a fair buddy to watch my booth and took photos of children playing in the long combination fountain and man-made stream running down the middle of the park. I got nice and wet doing it too. That evening I downloaded the photos and Sunday I painted this one at the fair.
I had fun painting her, but I think she had even more fun sitting under the waterfall.
The palette is quinacridone deep red rose, burnt sienna, yellow ocher, cobalt blue, and phthalo blue. I reclaimed some white with Chinese white gouache.
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Ed Turns Forty
Ed Turns Forty (9 x 12) Sold
This one was fun. After all the children I’ve done lately it was lovely to get to play around with a strong featured man. And Ed is a great subject, a kind of modern day Henry VIII only better looking.
I had him in the sun for the reference photo which bothered his eyes, so I didn’t get the smile I wanted.
Reference Photo for Ed
I’d like to catch him smiling and do him again. He’s all cheeks and twinkly eyes when he smiles.
I used the same palette as I did for the last couple paintings: burnt sienna, quinacridone deep red rose, quinacridone gold, phthalo blue and cobalt blue. I used a pinprick of Chinese white for the catch-lights in his eyes.
The original has sold but you may purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.
Morning Changeling
Morning Changeling (8 x 11) $125
This is my eldest daughter in the dark end of the family room with the morning sun lighting up half her face. I ended up printing my reference photo three times in various stages of overexposure to get the feeling I wanted for the sketch. I used all three prints when painting.
I’m still working on painting loose and free. I worked quickly wet into wet, taking care to make the sunlight’s edges the only hard edges in the painting.
The palette was simple: quinacridone gold, quinacridone deep red rose (which I only used for accents in her skin) burnt sienna, and phthalo blue. I emphasized the yellows and oranges to keep the feeling of sunlight.
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Winter Sun or Hat With Girl
Winter Sun I (9 x 12) $75
Arne Westerman has a little chapter in his book, How to Become a Famous Artist Through Pain and Suffering, in which an artist complains to his psychiatrist that he just can’t do lost edges because he has a compulsion to paint in the lines. I can relate. I have a hard time painting loose and yet the paintings I most admire are often painted that way.
This painting was an exercise in staying loose. I had to throw away two tighter versions to get it. But I’m glad I kept at it. And yes is does have a lost edge or two.
The palette is my trusty favorite four, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cobalt blue and phthalo blue. It’s a good palette for painting loose. The burnt sienna and the blues flow together in the most interesting and unexpected ways. I washed just a hair of quinacridone deep red rose into her lips.
But however much I may like the painting, my eleven year old daughter, does not. As she complains, you can’t even see my eyes. And you can’t But if she will wear oversize hats, what else can she expect?
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Sisters on the Rocks I
Sisters on the Rocks I (12 x 16) $100
“A solitary rock is always attractive. All right-minded people feel an overwhelming desire to scale and sit upon it.” Dorothy Sayers, Have His Carcase.
Sayers was right. And my children are certainly right-minded. Given a rock they will climb. And the volcanic rocks found on our beaches are just meant for climbing. They’re tall and the have plenty of hand and footholds. And what a view there is when you reach the top.
This is once again a three pigment painting: burnt sienna, yellow ocher, and French ultramarine. The earth colors are perfect for our cold gray coast. I used granulation medium for the rocks. Given that extra bit of texture in the paint, they practically painted themselves. I did the sky wet into wet and the sand in layered washes.
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Daddy’s Magnifying Glass
Daddy's Magnifying Glass (11 x 14) $200
We’ve been watching a lot of old Survivor Man episodes here. I think that’s why Stephen and the girls decided to start a fire with the magnifying glass. Survivor man often has poor luck with fires. We didn’t do much better. Dry tinder is hard to find in Oregon and the wind kept blowing out the sparks. I gave them a little fire anyway.
I may have exaggerated the fire, but I didn’t have to exaggerate the light. In the late afternoon sun they were perfectly beautiful just as was.
For this painting I went back to my favorite earthy palette of burnt sienna, yellow ocher, cobalt blue and phthalo blue. I used a little quinacridone magenta and cadmium yellow in the skin.
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Floating on the Lawn
Floating on the Lawn (11 x 15) $125
This is one of my daughters’ friends luxuriating in the lawn. Sinking into soft grass and staring up at the sky is one of the best feelings there is.
I had fun with this one.
The biggest problem I had was forcing myself to make the grass dark enough. Consequently it went down in many layers beginning with cadmium yellow and cobalt blue and progressing through ultramarine blue and ocher yellow. I washed dioxazine purple over it to dull the color and dropped French ultramarine into the shadows. In the end the background took longer than the figure. [In fact I uploaded another version of this painting thinking I was done. After looking at it a while I strengthened the shadows and reposted it. ]
before the darker shadow.
The girl herself was purple pink in the light and I exaggerated that effect. I used rose madder quinacridone and cadmium yellow for her skin and dioxazine purple for the shadows in her face.
Much of the pink in her face was reflected light from her shirt. I used quinacridone magenta, more rose madder quinacridone and dioxozine purple for the shadows in her shirt. Then I washed her shirt with Winsor and Newton’s Opera—yet another quinacridone.
In keeping with the pink and purple theme I used dioxazine purple to under-paint the shadows in her hair before washing it with yellow ocher and burnt umber. I love under-painting for hair. It produces the most natural looking shadows.
purple underpainting
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Cello Practice IV
Cello Practice IV (11 x 14) $150
I like this second attempt at my niece much better. As usual it’s the painting that happened the fastest that I like the best. I simplified her face and exaggerated the light which improved the picture. I also broke the background up to create interest and center more attention on her face.
Once again I did all of my mixing on the paper. I expanded my palette to include four blues: cerulean, cobalt, phthalo, and Prussian. Prussian and phthalo blue are quite similar in color but Prussian blue lifts easier and isn’t such a tiger in mixes. In addition I used yellow ochre and burnt sienna.
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Pub Talk II: Half Poured and Half Painted
Pub Talk II (9 x 13) $200
In this version of Pub Talk I tightened up the composition a little by moving everyone closer together and tying the couples at the far table together with the painting on the back wall. I reduced the number of archways to simplify the pouring process.
I began the picture by painting the people tables and the picture at the far end of the room. This was really the whole lower half of the painting. I used cerulean blue for the older men’s hair and the shadows in the faces. Cerulean blue was much more satisfactory for this purpose than phthalo blue was in Pub Talk I. I dropped cerulean blue and phthalo blue into damp burnt sienna for the darker hair.
For the rest of the direct painting I used the same colors as before. I used layered washes of raw and burnt sienna for the skin again. The clothes are all various combinations of phthalo blue, burnt sienna and raw sienna. The tables are burnt sienna washed over cobalt blue.
direct paint
Then I masked the lower half on the picture and poured.
It’s important when pouring to decide what colors need to predominate where and which direction to tip the board after the pour. I tried to place the yellows and reds along the left hand (sunlit) side of the arches. I placed the blues to the outside. I tipped up rather than at a diagonal because I wanted a peaceful cozy feeling.
I used raw sienna, burnt sienna, and phtalo blue for the first two pours. On the third pour I substituted dioxazine purple for the phthalo blue. On the final pour I used burn sienna, cobalt blue and dioxazine purple.
After the Third Pour
Removing the mask lifted a fair amount of raw and burn sienna as well was cerulean blue. I rewashed the peoples skin with these two colors. Then I darkened the ceiling fixtures and the archway walls.
Mask Off
Finished. And I do prefer it to the direct paint only version, although I think that may be in part because I got better at the people with each version.
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High Tide at Seal Rock Beach or Experimenting with Canvas
High Tide at Seal Rock (12 x 16) $200
I took the working photos for this one on a cold wet winter day on Seal Rock Beach just south of Newport, Oregon. At low tide it’s a fantastic place for poking in tide pools. At high tide it’s a wave watcher’s heaven.
This is the fourth watercolor I’ve done on canvas. Watercolor is a whole different animal on canvas. It even sounds different, like painting on a drum.
Canvas is just a hair smoother than cold-pressed paper, but the texture is very different. Cotton has a grain whereas paper does not. Greater detail is possible on cotton than on cold-pressed paper. But that’s just the beginning.
Canvas absorbs more water, so it takes much longer to dry; and drying is crucial because unless a wash is bone dry it will lift from canvas in a heart beat. In fact it’s extremely easy to lift watercolor from canvas. All but the most staining pigments will wipe back to white with one swipe of the sponge. It’s great for correcting mistakes but lifting just a little color for highlight is next to impossible. Mask will also lift paint back to white making it easy to add white details.
On the other hand, canvas accepts much thicker darker paint without getting muddy and dead looking. I’m coming to the conclusion that this last is the primary advantage of canvas for me. And that is why I painted this particular painting on canvas. I wanted to make the dark rocks just as dark and cold as they really were without worrying about dead chalky looking paint.
Since it is framed without glass the last step in a watercolor on canvas is to spray it with a clear protective finish. I use a matte finish. I don’t want shine.
This is essentially a two color painting: French ultramarine and burnt Sienna. There is a hair of raw sienna here and there but not much.
Gallery wrapped (painting continues around the edges of the stretcher bars) on cotton canvas so no frame is necessary. Shipped flat.
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Skipping Stones and Body Paint
Skipping Stones (11 x 14) SOLD
Skipping stones is like testing an echo, faced with a smooth body of water and rocks at hand, all right minded people want to do it. This is my husband and girls skipping stones into the Williamettee River. Georgia learned to do two or three skips that day and Paula found some fresh water shells.
Because the painting is really all about basic body shapes and afternoon sun I began it painting by pouring. I wanted bodies washed in color. But I did so much direct painting afterwords that it hardly feels like a poured painting to me. Whatever I did, it wouldn’t come right and I almost gave up on it. I finally decided that for design purposes I should have made Stephen’s hat white like the girls’ hats. But with watercolor white is reserved paper not paint and there was no way I could lift enough paint to make his hat white again, certainly not white in comparison to the girls’ hats.
So I pulled out the white body paint. Body paint or gouache is opaque watercolor. Dark colors are lightened with white. Transparent watercolor dilutes gouache and it won’t cover it. Consequently, gauche must be added last. So I painted the shadow of the hat with transparent colors first and then I painted around the shadow with permanent white gouache. I had to apply it fairly thickly because opaque is one thing but covering is another. While I was at it I reclaimed a little white in Paula’s left shoe too.
The gouache white is bluer that the page, so Stephen’s hat is bluer than the girls. That’s fine because he’s farther away. If he had been close I might have had to paint the girls’s hats too just to even things up.
I’m not tempted to work in gouache. I like the look a transparent watercolor too much. But every once in a while a little gouache is a life saver.
Other than white, I used ceruleum blue, phthalo blue, raw sienna and burnt sienna for the first pour. For the next two pours I substituted cobalt blue for the ceruleum. Ceruleum is an opaque color (but not gouache). I used the same palette for the direct painting with the addition of raw umber.
Prints available through Fine Art America.com.
High Noon at the Gravel Spit II
High Noon the the Gravel Spit II (9 x 12) $100
This is the same basic painting as yesterday writ larger. The method and pigments are the same, except that I didn’t do any direct painting on this one. I didn’t think any further definition of the boys was necessary.
I like it, but I think this one looks more like an ordinary crowd. I think the smaller numbers in the first painting focused the eye on the interactions between the young men. That part of the drama gets lost in a crowd.
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High Noon at the Gravel Spit I
High Noon at the Gravel Spit (8 x 10) $100
Under the West Salem bridge there is a little sand bar, really a gravel bar. At any given time on the weekend there are likely to be three or four families there and at least one father teaching his son to skip stones. It is an ideal place for skipping stones into the river. It’s a good place for wadding toddlers too.
But looking down from the bridge a couple weeks ago I saw a very different scene. Five or six young men roamed the sandbar, jostling against one another and skipping stones from first one side than the other. There was no real violence, but the boys radiated suppressed anger and extreme restlessness.
This painting is a composite of figures from several of the photos I took of the restless young men. I arranged them to keep the feeling of tension I felt looking down at them from the bridge.
The painting is almost entirely poured. The first pour was hansa yellow light, quinacridone deep red rose, and phthalo blue. In the next pour I substituted new gamboge for the hansa yellow and added quincaridone magenta. The third pour I used just the two reds and phthalo blue. For the fourth pour I used quincaridone magenta, dioxzine purple, and phthalo blue.
After the fourth pour I washed the boy’s jeans with phthalo blue and added dioxzine purple and phthalo blue wet into wet into the shadows on their shirts. The little dots are dioxzine purple splattered off the brush.
I think I captured the tension and the pours produced beautiful colors. I’m going to paint a larger more complex version of this painting tomorrow. I like the colors and will probably use them again.
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Windswept
Windswept (8 x 10) $100
This is Paula with the wind spilling her hair from it’s braid.
I took the creative approach to color with this one. But I think I caught the feeling of her cold wind-burned face. I like the feeling of movement in her face too.
The main colors are dioxzine purple, alizarin crimson, and yellow ochre. I used these colors for her skin after laying down a wash of deep red rose and cadmium yellow. I washed her eye sockets with cerulean blue. Her hair is entirely yellow ochre and dioxzine purple (the two make a lovely cool browns and beiges). Her eyes are cobalt blue and yellow ochre. Her shirt is cobalt blue and her jacket cobalt blue and dioxzine purple. The sky is cobalt blue and ultramarine blue.
I found this painting a relief to paint after the last two. Almost life size portraits are fun. Distant figures are fun too. But I have difficulty getting a two or three inch face right–it’s putting in the right amount of detail that gives me fits–that and that an eight of an inch mistake changes the face enormously.
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Sneakers I: More Pouring
Sneakers I (11 x 17) $100
This is my youngest daughter in a characteristic pose. I love the way she has clasped her hands in tight but spread her legs out with her feet pidgin toed.
I poured all of this painting except for her hands and feet and an under painting of the carpet. I painted her hands and feet first, and then masked them to protect them from the pour. I left the under-painting of the carpet pattern unmasked.
face and hand
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I masked and poured three times. When the mask came off: I adjusted the values, added shadows and shoe details; and touched up her face.
first pour
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mask off
I used Winsor red, alizarin crimson, and cadmium yellow for her face and hands. I used hansa yellow medium, burnt sienna and phthalo blue for the first pour. I substituted raw sienna for hansa yellow in the second and third pours. I direct painted with the pouring palette.
What would I do differently? Well I like this painting a lot as is. I would mask the hands and face before painting them and paint them after the pour next time. I think I would also leave the sunshine streaks across the carpet out.
I like the painting enough that I’m going to do it again without pouring.
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