Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

Cherry Blossoms in a Blue Pitcher (watercolor 12 x 19) $250

We planted a two ornamental cherry trees the year we moved into this house.  Five years later the trees put on quite a show each Spring.  The branches I take inside don’t make a dent in the abundance of blooms.

I made two fundamental design decisions in painting this image.  Both help make the blossoms pop.  First, rather than paint the blue gray evergreens in the actual background, I added an abstract green background to compliment the pink blossoms.   Second I painted my white window blue.  I also moved the branches around to improve the composition.

I began by masking the blossoms.  Then I painted the background and window casing.  The blossoms and branches came last.

The palette was raw sienna, new gamgee (yellow), phthalo blue, quinacridone magenta, opera pink, dioxazine purple, and burnt sienna.  The background is raw sienna and phthato blue painted wet into wet.  The casing is phthalo blue and burnt siena.  The blossoms are magenta and opera pink grayed with phthalo blue or diaxazine purple.   The leaves are a wash of new gamgee and magenta washed over with dioxazine purple.

Or purchase of print from Fine Art America.com.

Jade and Tulips II (watercolor 11 x 14) $250

This is much the same composition and color scheme as  Jade and Tulips I.  I lowered the tulips which causes them to stand out more than in the original version, but makes the upper line of the composition less interesting.  Including more of the jewelry box increased it’s three dimensionality as did opening thing lower drawer.

The palette and work methods are the same as Jade and Tulips I.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

Lily with Carnations (watercolor 9x12) $175.00

Yes there are red carnations in the painting. You just haven’t looked closely enough.

Both the carnations and the lily come from the Valentine’s Day bouquet my husband gave me this year. The Danish silverware vase was my Mother’s.  So the painting is a family affair.

The fact that the lily inevitably points out of the picture presented a compositional problem. I used the window frame to create a boundary to contain the eye within the painting.  Theoretically the window frame with lead the eye back around to the vase and into the painting once more.

I began the painting by masking the white edges of the lily, the stamen, and the smallest white highlights. Then I laid the window frame and background in with multiple transparent washes. I began the window frame with a mixture of cobalt blue and burnt sienna. I followed that with phthalo blue, and finally added a very thin wash of burnt sienna to tone it down. The window began with phthalo green and burnt sienna. While the wash was still damp I lifted it with tissue to create a mottled look. I followed that with successive layers of cobalt blue, phthalo blue, and burnt sienna laid wet into wet.  I made the background darker around the lily and lighter by the dark vase to add drama.

Next I under painted the lily with phthalo blue. I added the shadowed fuchsia with quinacrione deep red rose sometimes mixed with cobalt blue. The sunlight fuchsia is a combination of quinacridone red and cadmium red. I added the spots last in darker versions of the fuchsia under them. I painted the colored highlights in the vase in tandem with the lily. The carnations are cadmium red.

The leaves and stamen began with new gamgee (yellow). I laid a green made of new gamgee and colbalt blue over the top. The tips of the stamen are burnt sienna and phthalo blue.

Or purchase a print on Fine Art America.com.

Short Story (10 x 14 watercolor) $175.00

It’s Spring here and my first daffodils are blooming. I’ve painted them here together with some of my favorite glass from the sun room. The box is an old cigar box I bought on Ebay.   I like the look and smell of cedar cigar boxes though I neither smoke nor like the smell of smoking.

This is the first traditional still life I’ve ever done. Placing and lighting the objects increased my respect for the art of still life. And I’m tempted to play with glass and flowers again soon.

I enjoyed painting the contrasts in texture between the wood, glass, and flowers. But if I try this again, I’d like to do something with a more dynamic composition.

The techniques I used were very straight forward. I reserved the highlights in the glass and then painted wet on dry, from light to dark. I used three blues, cobalt, phthalo, and cerulean. I used two reds burnt sienna and quinacridone deep red rose. I also used three yellows, hansa light which has a greenish cast, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange. I also used burnt umber to help darken the cigar box.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

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.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

Washroom Gears (8 x 10) $75.00

Yes, this is another painting of the machinery at the Mission Mill Museum. The barrel and gears are part of the fleece washing machine. It not only washed the fleeces but also pulled them apart and removed the debris. There was a lot of debris. Wool is a magnet for sticks, and bark, and other messy things.

The washroom is a dark place. Only the machinery is lit which casts dramatic shadows over the metal. In keeping with the dark room, I used a very limited palette: phthalo blue, burnt sienna, and quinacridone deep red rose. I mixed little or nothing on the palette. The color is mixed either with multiple washes or by dropping one color into another.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.com.

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.

Or purchase a print from Fine Art America.

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.

Central City Tourists (10.5 x 12) $100.00

The odd part about visiting Central City, Colorado this summer was the empty streets. The Central City of my childhood was packed with tourists. The parking lots were still packed, so I can only surmise that the tourists are all in the new casinos. But the lack of people on the streets, gave me a field day for unobstructed photography on the steep narrow streets.

I chose this particular photo to work from because of the way the light lit up only the upper half of the street. That the scene showed the slant of the street so clearly was a plus.

Because half the charm of the city is the painted Victorian ladies I moved away from my usual earth tone pallete. The pallete here was phthalo blue, cobalt blue, quinacridone red, and quinacridone gold.

Hungry, Vegan, and Broke

Memorial Day Waterworks (17 x 19) $275

I spent yesterday talking with people and watching their reactions to my paintings at the Artisan Village, a part of the Oregon State Fair. Mostly, the paintings I, and my family like are the paintings other people like. Also, many people from Wilsonville were charmed by Memorial Day Waterworks because they recognize Town Center Park. The Annex Pub and the seascapes were also popular. There were some surprises though. One of them was Hungry, Vegan and Broke.

I painted the two young men in Hungry, Vegan, and Broke as a kind of private joke. I saw them in in downtown Portland in front of Powell’s Books. And while they were obviously hot and tired, they looked healthy and able bodied. Certainly they didn’t look like they’d been hungry anytime in the recent past. And the sign was so absurd: “Hungry, Vegan, and Broke.” I could translate that sign two ways: “We Are High Maintenance Choosy Beggars;” or, “Feed Us Because We Are Such Good Moral Young Men.”

I liked my little joke, and I loved the afternoon sun on their skin. But I the reactions of my family and friends to the painting were mixed. I didn’t even consider making a print or greeting card of the painting, and I hesitated to frame it for the fair, but I did.   At the last moment I made some magnets of it too.

Well, the joke is on me.  Almost everyone who sees this painting smiles, and this is the painting everyone wants a print of.  I have sold more Hungry, Vegan, and Broke magnets than magnets of any other painting. Today I’ll place it more prominately in the booth.  Right now it’s down low and half hidden by a table.