Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

Nautilus with Glass Stones (10 x 11 watercolor) $150.00

My husband and I spent last weekend on the Oregon Coast. The weather was so fine we hardly even went inside at all.  So on our last day having not set foot in a shop all weekend,  it occurred to us we had bought nothing for our daughters.  So we stopped in a shell shoppe. We did find some lovey sea urchins for the girls. But we also found something for us, a bisected nautilus shell. Stephen wanted it to display it, but I wanted to paint it. I’ve just finished painting it and it now lives on our mantle together with fossil shells and a free form hand made basket. But it will visit the studio again.

I took great liberties with the color of the nautilus which is really is really a dull orange in the outer chambers fading to blue green at the center. The color shift in my painting was driven by the decision to heavily under-paint the shell in phthalo blue to emphasize the depth of the shell.  I over-painted with various mixtures of new gamgee yellow, quinacridone madder rose, and phthalo blue.

In Progress

The left most of the glass stones resting in the shell is actually stone marble. But the green and rust of the actual marble would have clashed horribly with the rest of the painting, so I changed it to a blue glass marble.

The background is a wash of burnt sienna grayed down with phthalo blue.

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The Magic Bowl II (watercolor 9 x 9)

I wasn’t entirely satisfied with Magic Bowl I. One on the things I thought lacking was textural contrast and I found the paperweight that formed the center of interest to be a weak point in the painting. The daffodil provides both color and textural contrast. I also gave the background more texture and contrast. I like the result much better. And it keeps the abstract design feel I was aiming for in the first painting.

I painted the bowl conventionally working from light to dark beginning with the daffodil and moving on to it’s myriad of reflections. I used hansa yellow light, winsor orange, cadmium yellow and cobalt blue for the flower. For the bowl I used phthalo blue, cobalt blue, cadmuim red, winsor orange and burnt sienna.

For the background concrete I applied several layers of burnt sienna and phhtalo blue. I salted each layer separately. Salting which is exaction what it sounds like (you sprinkle salt on wet paint) cause irregular lighter areas where the salt sat.

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The Magic Bowl (12 x12 inch watercolor) $175.00

In many ways this was really a challenge painting. It took me some trial and error to get just the right amount of detail in. The metal marbles show a myriad of tiny highlights, not just the major one on top the few side highlights I have shown. The color in the marbles showed considerably more graduations than I have included in the this painting. In fact the marbles had no hard lines at all. But with more detail, the marbles ceased to look three dimensional. So simplified and simplified and simplified.

The palette was: cobalt blue, phthalo blue, cadmium red, burnt sienna, hansa yellow light, and hansa orange.   I used hot-pressed paper.

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Short Story II (11 x 11 watercolor) $225.00

Same song,

Second verse,

Should get better,

But it’s gonna get . . . .

Actually I like the second verse better.  The dark background gives Short Story II a punch that Short Story I lacked.  And I admit that painting the pine cone magnified by the paperweight was just plain fun.

The palette for Short Story II is the same as Short Story I.  I used more transparent glazes in building up the forms.  And I mixed the paint on the paper rather than the palette.

The deep background began as a burgundy mixture of burnt sienna and quinacridarone deep red rose, but the didn’t provide the depth I was aiming for.  So I followed it with several dark  washes of phthalo blue.  Afterwords I had to correct the glass reflections to match the background.

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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.