Bridge

I worked on this yesterday. It's not finished and I'm hoping others' eyes will see the little things that still need doing. It's pastel, 14 x 20", more or less. I know the figure is too small, if you can see it at all.

Nova Scotia

We went to Nova Scotia twice to paint, years ago. I took a gazillion photos and every now and then one inspires me to paint. Or pastel, as the case may be. In Blue Rocks there were a wide variety of these fishing shacks with their reflections. This is pastel on a 7" x 10" scrap of Wallis paper. I find it harder to use pastels on such a small size; it's hard to aim them to exactly the right spot.

Obviously it's been a while since I posted. The top of these three is the finished version of my abstract already posted. Then come versions 2 and 3 from a photo of a barn in Birchrunville, PA, where I used to live. I guess I didn't take a photo of version 1 which is fine; I got better as I practiced. The barns are pastel with the lavender the underpainting done with liquid watercolors.

watercolor and collage

I worked on this yesterday with our studio group. I'm not a fan of crucifixes and it came out a bit too much like that for my taste, so this morning I played more in Photoshop. Of course, I can never duplicate what I do in Photoshop with paint and brushes, but it can give me a direction without changing the painting itself. I'm soliciting any and all critiques.

I applied paint, collaged various white papers, added more paint, etc. It's fun to do a painting this way.

Tulips

I'm really sick of snow and was delighted when another member of my painting group brought in some red tulips. That inspired me. This is all done with liquid watercolors which create wonderful, bright colors. First I scattered some masking fluid over my paper, hence the white spots. Snow?

Here's also a photo of our snow.

Snowy Village

Once upon a time I lived in the white house in this painting. Across the road was the general store and post office. It was a great place to live, to develop community and to raise kids.

new inspiration

A friend sent me this web site: http://www.acquerello-aia.it/home/ for the Italian watercolor society and I've been studying the paintings posted there. Lots of paintings, wonderful loose styles. It's inspired me to fool around with painting as loosely as I can and leave as much white of the paper as possible while still telling my story. It's been fun and the painting goes quickly. For the tree trunk, I used only three colors: ultramarine blue, gold and magenta. They're not the standard red/yellow/blue primary colors but they are a good triad for landscapes. As usual, they paintings will look better if you click on them to see the larger version, and as usual, I always welcome critiques.

I gave Bruce, my son whose license plate is a couple of posts earlier, a print of that painting for Christmas. He laughed, then hung it on the wall. He told me that he's saved that plate.

Drifter

One of the neat things about working with pastels, especially on sanded paper that takes lots of layers, is that I can work and work and work. One of the difficult things about working with pastels is that there's no obvious stopping point. I've been working on this painting for days and days. The water was hard enough to get like water, but the leaf was even harder. I must have wiped off and redone the leaf eight or ten times. I still think it looks like a flower, but I've decided to put the glassine over this for storage and tape it down so I don't keep looking and twiddling and smearing pastel all over my hands and clothes. I have no idea where I took the photo of the water; the leaf was done with a couple of real maple leaves that escaped the raking. As usual, this will look better if you click on the picture for the larger and brighter version.

"Oops"

Browsing through some photos the other day, I was struck with the composition of this. Never mind that it's the bumper of my son's truck after an inattentive driver plowed into it, or that I was driving, or that he was on his honeymoon. No damage to me but the truck was totaled. It's all watercolor and a big change from the autumn woods I've been painting . . . and painting . . . and painting.

Amari under a white blanket

I think this pastel is finished. Amari is our female American Eskimo dog and loves to be under things. I managed to snap a photo some time ago. I love the way the blanket swirls around her. As always, it will look better if you click on the photo here to see the larger, and brighter, version.

color wheel

I've been asked to teach a watercolor class in the winter term at our local art center. I'm a bit adamant about learning to mix colors, maybe because I don't want to spend the money on heaps of tubes of different colors. So yesterday I worked on creating a color wheel using only three colors: rose, cobalt blue and yellow. I used the complementary color (the color opposite on the color wheel) for the shadows on and of the balls. I may do this again, varying the red, blue and yellow, to see which combination I like best.

Dune Fence

We spent last week at the New Jersey shore with friends. For four days we watched 2 nor'easters pounding at the wonderful, huge windows at the place we were staying. We could see lots of huge waves in the distance. There were a couple of nice days when I got out to walk . . . with my camera, of course. Yesterday in my studio group I painted this watercolor from one of my photos.

Here's a photo from the house and my painting:

More autumn in the woods

Back to pastels again. It's easier to carry watercolor supplies to the art center for our Tuesday painting group and easier not to put all the pastels away at home for any other painting, so I may just do watercolors on Tuesdays. Today we had our small painting group here. As I was looking for reference photos, I came upon this one and knew immediately that's what I wanted to paint. It was the purple in the foreground that drew me, and all those red leaves. It wasn't clear in the photo, but I must have been standing on a bridge spanning a creek because it sure looks like water in the left foreground. As usual, any of these have better color if you click on the picture to get the larger size.

water and rocks

I went back to watercolor today, to paint for a project on rocks and woods for the online watercolor group I help moderate. It was fun and I'm reasonably happy with the painting which is a combination of a photograph I took in Scotland several years ago (the top), and a creek mostly from my head. I like rocks and water almost as much as I love woods and have painted them enough that I don't need much of a reference. There are a couple of tweaks to be done but basically it's finished, I think.

more little pastels

I painted these last Thursday when our little painting group met at our house. I love being in the woods where the dogs can run free, without leashes, and I can walk the trails without holding leashes. I love the woods. And so I love to paint woods.