I’m honored to have been selected again for inclusion in the second annual Hill Center Regional Juried Exhibition. The judge this year is Philip Kennicott, Art and Architecture Critic for The Washington Post. Here’s my painting, one of 65 works selected from over 450 works submitted by almost 100 artists. I must admit – I was surprised!
Blazing Canal. Gouache on Paper.
Beautiful Memorial Day weekend, leisurely breakfast at the kitchen table, spotting a bird flitting away from the weeping cherry next door. Just had to do a quick celebratory iPad painting of the tree — now decked out in its full greens, beautifully offset by the juicy dark shadows under the flowing branches. Have a good, peaceful and remembering weekend.
Weeping Cherry. original iPad painting.
Yesterday I read an interesting post by Daniel Gerhartz about the hubris of ‘needing’ to paint a grandiose image, while neglecting the “profound, staggering elegance of the subject right before my eyes”.
matching trees and white clouds outside my window on a drowsy spring morning. original iPad painting.
He’s talking my walk. I love looking at everything in my path. Right before seeing Dan’s post I had been mentally composing an image based on the condiment bottles before me on the kitchen table.
The sunlight was falling ‘just so’ on the tops of their caps, making stair-steps of light down through the bottles shaded by the window will. It would make the perfect line drawing or a juicy value painting.
salt and pepper shakers, meeting their match in the napkin holder. original iPad painting.
And looking up and out the window I noticed that distant treetops were the same yellow-brown-green as my neighbor’s weeping cherry, now that its flowers had fallen. And gorgeous clouds were slowly sweeping across a strong blue sky.
In honor of Dan and the daily, I decided to grab my iPad and make a few sketches of the loveliness at my fingertips. I also took some pix of the stair stepping bottle tops — they deserve a painting on canvas!
stairs on my table.
With some of my 7Palettes friends, I’m studying plein air painting with Carol Rubin this Spring. Last week, it was too chilly to paint outdoors, so we made line drawings of a complex still life Carol had assembled. Here’s a ‘line drawing’ made of oil paints. Our warmup exercises follow.
hat, vases & vegetation. oil on canvas.
Two 30 second drawings.
bottle, pot & dried hydrangea. charcoal pencil on vellum.
hat and more. charcoal pencil on vellum.
A minute-long ‘continuous line’ drawing — made without taking the pencil off of the paper.
hat, pots & plants. charcoal pencil on vellum.
A ‘blind contour’ — made while keeping eyes on the object. NO looking at the paper! (Well, maybe we got to take three short peeks. . . .)
no looking at the scribblings?? only the objects??? charcoal on vellum.
And finally, as depicted above, we made complex line drawings in black paint and then brushed thick white paint over selected areas to ‘erase’ lines as needed to make the ‘drawing’ more accurate or more interesting. A fun day. I did more at home using my own props. Will post those next time.
I recently studied portrait painting with Bill Schneider. After he did a wonderful demo, Bill had us emulate Nicholai Fechin’s gorgeous ‘broken color’ style, by copying (on a larger scale, so we could practice our facial measuring skills) some Fechin portraits.
Fechin’s portrait (L) and my copy. oil on canvas.
First I copied one of Fechin’s beautiful women. And then this precious child.
Fechin’s portrait (L) & my copy. oil on canvas.
The next day we painted from a live model, attempting to apply the broken color method on our own. Quite a difference in beauty, eh? (Just keeping it real!)
Working toward Fechin’s ‘broken color’ in painting from life. oil on Arches oil paper.
I ended the weekend workshop with lots to practice and mull. Thanks, Bill!
This is based on a photo of our front yard after our wonderful Japanese maple has done its Fall drop. It only lasts a day or so, but what a show!!
Maple Leave Fall. iPad.
Hot white walls shimmering in the heat. Gleaming gold dome. Massive foreshortening complementing the bulbous domes. I know the perspective is distorted in my snapshot from our Cuba trip last year. But I like it that way. Had to paint it that way. More fun!
Skewed in Cuba. iPad.
I was conjuring a warm, sunny day with this one, too. Every time I visit Los Angeles I fixate on the palms. I’ve got a thing for them. This one took a lot less time than the C&O Canal painting, but it also had its challenges. Wispy fronds and barely-there cloud fringes . . . .
Palms of LA. iPad.
I hauled out my iPad quite a bit over the last month. Thought I’d share a few, bit by bit. As our days grew shorter and chillier, I started conjuring a scene from our C&O Canal walks last Summer. This was a real challenge, with all the different elements and reflections.
C & O Canal in Summer. iPad.
What was under the water’s calm surface was just as interesting as the shadows falling across the surface and the contrasting views posed by the two banks. It’s time to clean this baby up again!
We have had a peaceful and joyous day. And it isn’t over yet. But while there’s a quiet moment, I want to reach out beyond our home and send love and hugs to you and yours. Here is an iPad image I painted, based on a stone carving on a Capitol Hill church. I had it made into Christmas cards, but since they haven’t gone out yet, I’ll post it here, with my very best wishes for the season and 2014.
