Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

The Breakers at Seal Rock III (5 x 7) SOLD

The Breakers at Seal Rock IV (Sold)

Art in the Vally’s December feature will be a group show of mini paintings.  So yesterday during my gallery shift I painted another couple of postcard sized watercolors. (Update: One of these paintings did sell at the Art in the Valley show and the other sold the following day.)

These are the view north from Seal Rock Wayside, looking downs on the beach.  Seal Rock is a great place for wave watching because the beach drops sharply into the ocean and the beach is ringed by rocks for the waves to crash against.  If the tide is coming in, we can always happily waste an hour or two just wave watching there.

The palette for both paintings is cobalt blue, phthalo blue, cerulean blue, and burnt sienna.  The cerulean is all in the sky.

Update: One of these paintings did sell at the Art in the Valley show and the other sold the following day.

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.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

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.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.com.

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.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com

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.

Or purchase a print at Fine Art America.

The Brothers and the Sea (5 x 7) SOLD

This is another little painting I did at the state fair. I used yet another photo of the two brothers who were trying to give a log back the the sea. No sign of the log here, just companionship and beautiful afternoon light.

The palate is once again phthalo blue, raw sienna, and burnt sienna. Burnt sienna is more orange than it is red; so the paintings that I do with this trio tend to be earthy in feel with blue-grays and brown-oranges where one might expect there to be purples. Obviously there are no bright reds either. I find this a useful pallet for the Oregon coast as it makes very easy to reproduce the actual colors of the beach and ocean. On bright days the addition of cobalt blue helps to get the water as blue as it really is.

A Gift For the Sea (5 x 7) $20.00

This is another postcard sized painting I did while demonstrating at the fair. This particular one is yet another view of the two boys I had so much fun watching. They were trying to return a log to the sea. As the tide was coming in, it kept spitting it out. They were having a marvelous time.

The palette was my usual ocean foursome: cobalt blue, phthalo blue, raw sienna, and burnt sienna. The Northwest beaches here rarely show the ocean in bright colors. It’s a earth tone world on the Oregon beaches.

I reserved the figures and the whites with liquid mask before painting the ocean and beach. Notice that the crested waves in the foreground are greener than the waves in the background. When a wave crests you can see into the water from the side and here isn’t much sky reflected into it. Consequently it tends to look green rather than blue, like the edge of a glass pane. I used cobalt blue for the background waves and the greener phthalo blue mixed with a little raw sienna for the crested waves. I like the effect.

After the paint dried, I lifted the mask and added the figures. I was very careful to preserve the whites on the front of their swim trunks. The light was strong that afternoon and I wanted to keep it in the painting.

I added the reflections as I added the figures. I didn’t reserve space for them with mask, because painting them over the beach and water colors mimics the way they really look.

Mommy and the Waves (5 x 7) $20.00

Before demonstrating watercolor at the fair, I asked various other painters for advice. The message I heard loud and clear was never try to start or put the finishing touches on a painting while talking to the public. That’s good advice and I took it. But I found spending five days painting the middles of paintings unsatisfying and vaguely unsettling. So I also painted some little postcard sized paintings from start to finish too. Yesterday’s postcard sized painting was one of those. Here’s another one.

I think I took the reference photos on Lincoln City Beach, but it could be anywhere. What matters about this image is sun and sparkle contrasting with cool water. Also, I just love the way both mommy and daughter appear just a hair afraid of the waves, but they are right at the edge anyway.

I used phthalo blue, burnt sienna, yellow ochre and added little quinacridone deep red rose for the figures. The “sparkle” is reserved white created by splattering the page with liquid mask. I didn’t have a toothbrush to splatter with so I used a stiff filbert brush.

Seal Rock Park is one of our favorite waysides on Highway 101. This little painting shows a small part of the view north from the headland looking down at a string of volcanic rocks ringing the shore.
Last winter I took a series of photos of the waves crashing against the rocks as the tide came in. The photos look good in black and white but strangely lifeless in color. The contrast between the black rocks and the white waves is almost too much for color. So I left the photos on the back burner. But earlier this week I decided to try a small close-up view just to get me started.

To solve the overly black rock problem, I decided to make the rocks a chocolate brown. I began with raw sienna, and layered burnt sienna over the top. Then, while the burnt sienna was still wet or in some cases damp, I dropped in phthalo blue and let it interact with the sienna on the page. The result is almost as dark as the black in my photos but much more alive.

As usual I saved the white paper for foam and breakers with rubber mask. But I had a hard time getting the mask fine enough to show the run off down the base of the rocks. So when I tore the paper a little removing it from the pad (left of signature), I decided it was a good time to experiment with sgrafutto. After all, what did I have to lose?

Sgrafutto is an Italian term. It means to scratch the surface of multiple layers of color to reveal the lower layers. It’s a good technique for fine detail. In this case I used a razor blade to scratch through the brown rock to reveal the white paper below. Dragging the tip of the razor perpendicular to the cutting edge worked best. Dragging it toward the cutting edge produced a line so fine it didn’t show.

Now that I’ve tried it, I like this technique and I’ll use it to show more water against rocks in the future. I might also use it to show highlights in brick and stone.

The other technique I used to detail the spray is lifting. I moistened the edges of the rocks where they met the masked spray and scrubbed them a little with the brush. Then I took a dry thirsty brush and lifted as much of the paint as I could along the edges of the rock. You can see the results in along the left hand side of the largest rock and at the base of the far right rock.

I like this little painting and I’ll use the same techniques to make some larger versions of it later. I have plenty of rocks and breakers to play with.

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