Blue Chair – watercolor

I took a break from oil painting yesterday but I did this little ink and watercolor sketch. I also added a little bit of gouache. I’ve tried to paint this scene in oil with no success.

Gouache is something I think I’d like to try more. I only have a limited number of colors now so am not able to do work in gouache alone.

ink watercolor and gouache in moleskine

I referred once before to some of my feelings about having worked full time as an artist. I came across an excellent blog yesterday by a woman sharing about the process of establishing herself as an artist after having completed her Fine Art degree after the age of 50. It’s very insightful and I recommend it. Her name is
Sue Favinger Smith.

I have occasionally had trouble photographing my oil paintings, particularly when they’re still wet, without a glare. While reading one of my absolute favorite painting blogs by Carol Marine, I found her reference to another blog (that’s why they call it the web), Strobist, with a description of an inexpensive light box.

Here’s my adaptation of it using a simple wooden frame and tracing paper.

After making 3 frames, I attached tracing paper with a stapler and use clamps to hold the 3 frames together. I place a piece of white foam core over the top and clip a lamp on each side pointing them through the paper at the painting.

Oak Island Wildlife area on Sauvie Island plein air

6″ x 8″ oil on canvas

Ink and Watercolor in Moleskine

While the much of the country (and world) suffer in heat and humidity, we’re having a cool and somewhat rainy summer in the Pacific Northwest. I drove to pastoral Sauvie Island for a day of painting. It was very quiet and I only saw a few other people in this more remote part of the island.  The sky was ovecast much of the day but no rain fell.

On the drive out I passed many heavy industrial areas along the river that I’d really like to paint in but it’s all private property. I can’t seem to find a good vantage point to paint the port from. There’s some really cool stuff across the river from the tiny town of Linton but no good vantage point that I could find.

Pear in the Darkness

Another pear.

Yes, it really is that dark, although a little more blue than it ’s showing on my monitor.

6″ x 8″ oil on canvas

Every time I finish a painting I think that the next one will be faster and easier and, of course, better than the one before. But I’m repeatedly humbled.

I wonder if this setup was influenced by the Rembrandt show I just saw (or perhaps it’s a reflection of discouragement with my progress). I thought this would be pretty easy, you know, there are not that many values here. It didn’t come out as I envisioned it, though.

I tried a trick I learned from Ed Terpening’s blog to see the values better. I photographed the setup and then the painting and, using Photoshop, compared the two photos on my computer monitor viewing them in grey scale so that I could see the values without the distraction of color (not that there’s much color here). I was able to tell that I needed to lighten the highlight a bit.

BTW – It was really hard, for my little autofocus camera to focus on this dark image. I had to fool it by setting the focus on a lighter painting first and then pulling the lighter one out of the way before the timer went off on the shutter.

Plum and Japanese Anemone

I forgot to put a pear in this one. Damn.

5 1/2″ x 6″ oil on canvas

This flower was really hard to paint, for some reason, and I don’t like how it turned out. I stopped because it was starting to look tortured and, as our leaders keep insisting, “we don’t torture”.

One thing I have to resist when painting glass is putting in too much detail.

Pear and Japanese Anemone

Here’s the second pear painting.

6″ x 8″ oil on canvas

On the plus side, I like that I’m keeping the brushwork loose.

On the negative side, I’m afraid I overdid the highlight on this one and I’m not getting the illusion of roundness that I’d like. Actually, I think the low light on the bottom left of the larger pear acts to flatten it out instead of making it seem round.

Pear

I decided to do a few paintings of pears to focus on painting one thing well. This is the first one.

6″ x 8″ oil on gessoed paper

Burlington Northern RR Bridge plein air

I went back to a favorite spot of mine to try a plein air version of something I’ve painted before from a photo. The earlier painting can be seen here .

6″ x 8″ oil on canvas

I think this is the most successful plein air painting I’ve done so far. I feel like the brushwork is a bit more confident than my previous work. The colors are still unsophisticated and there’s not much of a sense of space but it’s better than I’ve done in the past.

Every time I visit this spot a family of black tail deer appear at some point during my visit. I look forward to seeing them since they’re smaller and more delicate than the more prevalent Mule Deer. This time I almost witnessed their demise as they jumped out in front of a car right at the end of the road in the painting.

Here they are from a previous visit:

I also saw a man, I assume is living in the brush here, arrive by bicycle and head into the overgrowth. I felt a little like an intruder in his space.

I was hoping to paint the power pole with the brambles at the bottom of it again, as I did on my earlier visit, but I was disappointed to find that they had been sprayed with herbicide.

North Plains plein air

I joined a local group of plein air painters last weekend for a day of painting at a local farm. It was a beautiful day and I found a shady spot to paint. Too shady it turned out. I should have known better but I set up in a spot that didn’t allow enough light on my canvas to see the colors I was mixing.

I moved into the sun later but still had trouble getting down what I was seeing.

I’ve always thought I have an intuitive approach to painting in that I can make a successful work but have difficulty saying why it works or explaining the decisions I made. Lately I’ve been thinking that this may be an impediment to painting alla prima because one doesn’t have the luxury of a lot of time to loll around looking and playing with a piece. It would certainly be an advantage to have a good understanding of the principles of painting to facilitate quicker decision making. Perhaps this can be learned by practice alone. I really don’t enjoy reading technical treatises on painting.

Here’s the painting I did plein air that day:

oil on canvas 6″ x 8″

The next day I did another in the studio working from the earlier painting and a photo.

oil on canvas 6″ x 8″

Nehalem Bay watercolor

My wife and daughter and I spent a few days at the beach. I trekked out onto the beach by Nehalem Bay to paint. I did an oil the first day and my daughter and our dog and I spent a really great few hours lying around playing in the sand and sketching on the second day.

5″ by 16″ ink and watercolor in moleskine watercolor sketchbook

It was a perfect day, low 80s and light breeze with very few people around on the bay.