Day By Day

Cloud Close Up!

A One Day Studio Landscape Workshop

Yesterday I went to a one day landscape painting workshop and even with the compressed schedule, I felt this was a valuable exercise for me! Every once in awhile we artists need these marathon paint challenges.

What does a one day workshop look like? Our instructor quickly showed us his landscape and plein air items - (value viewer, brushes, books, gesso boards etc.) and then did a quick value demo. Next we the students used our reference photos to create value studies on canva paper. Our value studies were created using only black and white paint. I was amazed at how well each of our value studies came out. We created the value studies in a very short time period, in about an hour.

B&W Value Study 

Limited Palette Painting

Next we posted our value studies next to our reference photos to create color studies - using limited palette. The limited palette I used was White, Cad Yellow Light, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Black. I felt very confident in my color mixing skills - which really helped me adapt to the limited palette.

I was very pleased with my trees, a quick timeline helped me to create them and leave them alone (no overworking). Also, I thought the front of my barn house, that nice orangy color was perfect. Overall, I like the composition and feel of this painting.

My challenge was clouds which I have not painted before. For clouds, I put in the darks in a nice purple/blue ish first. I understand that clouds have the light top, mid-color  and then dark under --but it was still complex and a bit of a struggle. The time constraint of 1.5 hours was also an added challenge. I was very close to done when time was up! The last item of the day was a side by side review where we each showed our value study and color study (no one was completely finished). I was very impressed with how the compositions and values matched between the black and white and color studies for each artist! Amazing and obviously we were all good students! :)

At home I completed my painting by adding the orange foreground and the white around the barn windows. I also added a tiny bit of orangypurple to the dark area of the cloud which I think helps the overall painting.

If you get the paintportunity, I recommend a one day workshop challenge! Go for it!

Sweet & Sunny in High Key

En Plein Air

I've been wanting to find a plein air place that had not only trees but also a building or two. I recently found a park that fits the bill. I love the look of this historic house from the early 1900s. The sides and roof were dappled with sunlight-- since the painting is dominated with light this is considered a high key painting. The top of the roof line was a row of bright orange tiles and copper eave pipes had turned to an almost teal light blue-ish. The shadows were a purple-ish and I loved the shadows cast on the house by the trees. The house was surrounded by trees and flowers, a lovely and inviting summer composition.


With the light yellow-ish house color, the light flowers and greenery, and the expressive brushwork I feel that the house has a fresh and sweet sensibility - delicious!

My house is not straight lines because perfect lines were not my concern on this day. This day I am looking for value and pattern, the light and the way the light hits the form. The emphasis here is on the experience and the vibrancy of sunlight, the capturing of the moment. And, when working quickly painting outside, I wanted to cover the canvas and capture a lush imperfect fun little moment.

Art Meditation - En Plein Air

All set up and ready to go.

Sitting in the Shade Listening to Birds Sing

The Full Setup! 

Seventies and Sunny sounds like an opportunity to plein air paint! I emailed my art friends and invited them to plein air paint with me at a local farm. No one could join me, but  being an artist often equates to solitude and painting. What a beautiful day! 

Throughout the painting process, I would stop and enjoy the view. The cool breeze and sunshine felt great. I heard the birds singing and even watched a few geese families go by with their little fluffy goslings! Just the experience of taking time to paint outside made me feel calm and happy - an art meditation.

Adding darks, a good start.

Full sun would have been too much, so I enjoyed the view from the shade. Here is my setup -- I painted a small 8x10 canvas panel and used a fairly limited palette. 

Getting it all on the canvas -midway.

I started with my darks, getting everything placed on the panel, I love this part of the process. I was painting a pond that had water and lots of green. The small delight is found in the purple iris which I painted in toward the end. The rocks edge the small pond that feeds into the large pond (which is what you see behind the fence). The fence was wooden and deliciously crooked and imperfect.

Soon I was mixing colors and working on composition and light. The hardest part was finding and painting the pond blue--the sky reflection was so very light on this warm day. There was quite a bit of sun so this is a high key (light) painting.

The finished painting, fun bright colors!

Sunny Days! "Won't You Tell Me How to Get to..." Plein Air Street

Embrace The Sunshine

My painting setup - sunny & wonderful!

Living up north means cold winters and snow and lots of dreary grey days - I really start missing my sunshine. Last week the weather finally turned around and I found myself emailing friends asking if they wanted to plein air paint in the 60s Sunshine. One friend and I were able to meet up, and it was glorious & inspiring!

Red Reflection 8x10 Greenfield Village

My friend had passes to the historical Greenfield Village and I could not pass up the opportunity to see what it was all about. We walked around for two hours, she was a fabulous tour-guide as we explored the working farm, the animal areas, the industrial areas (my fave) and all of the historical buildings (so many!). Of course, she also knew that we had to stop for a lemonade at the Tavern, what a fun experience.

After seeing all of the acreage, we had to decide on a place to paint. Did I want to paint the Cotswold cottage, the train station, the carousel, the Red farmhouse, the Robert Frost house, the schoolhouse, the church, the tavern --well yes! But I had to chose one, there was almost too much to chose from, one could go there every day of the week for the summer and still not run out of material to paint! Of course, perfect sunny weather helped tremendously.


Early on I decided that I liked the Industrial Area-- there were many facades and buildings located around a pond and that appealed to me. I think I ended up painting a sawmill -- I will have to look at the map (acres and acres of goodness here). I chose this barn-like subject because I loved the color reflection in the pond - a bright lovely pink reflection. I loved the shape of the red building and the purple-ish shadow patterns that the bright sun created. I chose to not have much sky and to have the building fill up most of the canvas. I loved the vertical streetlight in front of the building and the pattern of the log fence around the pond. The entire experience was wonderful and I am happy with my light, form and color painting.

I started setting up to paint at about 1 pm and had to leave by 330 pm. Unfortunately, this painting is not finished, it is about 75% done. I wanted to go back and add the sunlit highlights to the building and to lighten the sky and work a bit on the roof. Overall, I am happy with this little painting, maybe because of the day and surroundings when the painting was created!

Supposed to be nice weather again this week, I will email friends and go out and plein air paint tomorrow!

Get Busy

Improving As an Artist

A maybe-potential Urban Landscape reference pic...

I want to become a better artist and I think this means that I have to get busy (busier). I recently heard an established artist say "You can only compete with yourself, making your next painting better than your last." I agree with that statement although I feel there is much work ahead for me. So what will I do about that?

I have signed up for an Urban Landscape painting class. This takes me out of my comfort zone as I have focused mainly on portraiture these last few years. I also want to work with an instructor as I have many landscape questions. I do not have much material (reference photographs) for this class, but I really want to challenge myself creatively and learn something that is not portrait related/outside my comfort zone.

I have also signed up for a one day portrait workshop. I do not know the instructor but I just want to see if there is some new information or inspiration that I can glean about portraiture. Particularly important to me as I continue to paint from life twice a week.

Three hours a week on Urban Landscape plus the 6 hours a week in life portrait (no instruction) seems a good fit. It is important to emphasize that my painting time is not limited to the studio and class times. I have to work from home to improve as an artist. Too often I hear (in class and at the studio) artists complaining about weaknesses and unfinished works - more often than not these are the people who do not work at home. "Work" is a key word and improvement will never come if you do not work and challenge yourself at home, it is a must!

So, I work at home, take classes, work at studio AND belong to a great community art group. If there is an art group in your community I highly encourage you to join - I love seeing what other artists are working on and the newsletter is informative about art happenings and shows!

Yes, I will be busy, and it has to be that way, making art and improving is a full time job!

SPRING: A Time For Inspiration

These days I am doing fairly well with art motivation, I have a stack of finished works and an even larger stack of "in-progress" or "need some final touches" works. I have been working toward a goal of getting a work or two into a prestigious May/Sept Show but I am always looking for art inspiration.

You may have heard this before and I will say it again, go to your art museum! I always find inspiration at the museum.

These days my favorite work of art  at the museum is this beauty by Robert Henri - The Beach Hat. I love the expressive thick background and the simple strokes used to create the features and sweater. My favorite aspects of this painting are the brushstrokes. I continue to struggle with paint application and need to learn the deliberate placement (then leaving the paint/stroke alone). Look at the red stroke on her neck against the white of the shirt, look at the dark Alizarin paint stroke from the shoulder down to create form on the sweater - amazing! The colors are lovely and the model (Henri's wife) is gazing out at the viewer -a beautiful painting all around, I find it inspiring! Doesn't Henri make it all look so simple? What I would give to complete a portrait work like this!

My advice is to go to the museum and find a work that speaks to you. Then ask yourself why the work is interesting to you and how you can apply it toward your work. I love Robert Henri's backgrounds and think I will incorporate thicker multi-colored backgrounds with expressive strokes into my works, not copies just take-away inspirations and ideas! Instant Inspiration!

The Art of the Selfie

Self Portrait Painting 

I took a selfie with my phone the other day and I was pleased with the photo (not pictured here). I pixelated the image in Photoscape and then created a small painting from the image.  I then took the painting to Art Critique where it was a colossal failure - there was not a positive word to be said about it, a disappointment to be sure. I strongly wanted self portrait advice other than "Use a mirror and paint yourself." These days, with photo selfies, I want more advice on painting the self portrait, there has to be a new normal! And if there is not, why not? What are the new art norms for Self Portraits? If there aren't any there should be - I do not want a self portrait of me with a frowny mouth (which is how I think many mirror self portraits turn out). Meh! So a new Journey begins...

My first "new" Self Portrait

 I have been thinking about creating self portrait for awhile. Would you believe there is not much online/searchable for self portrait artistry? I was hoping to find some self portrait ideas online. I didn't find much, but I did find one bit of inspiration at art critique. A fellow artist at Critique said, "I am gathering all my old paints and using them, that led to this painting." And that led to me gathering up my old paints (not in my current palette) and starting my self portrait journey.

My 2nd and 3rd self portrait

I laid out my "old" paints (not my usual palette), with lots of orange and purples and found an old photo and started working on a self portrait. In a few hours, I had a rather nice result. I kept putting out wild colors and kept mixing them to reasonable skin tone! Yes, you can get bright orange and punky purple to mix with whites, reds and yellows to get accurate skin tone. Some colors in this "old" paint palette included: Cadmium Orange, Manganese Purple, Indian Red and Sap Green - all colors that I have at home but don't take out each week for art! This was good in that I was fearless with paint application.

My 4th & most accurate self portrait

And, I painted the self portrait again And again ( using different photos; 5 Self Portraits thus far) each time trying new things. I did try to use a minty green - I wanted to create a wildly colored "Fun" portrait -- but I wiped it out as the minty green was too white and cool, it really  bothered me! Bright orange and pink, bring it, but that cool blue-green just did not speak to me - even though my intention was to be wild and against the grain!

Hey, I can mix accurate colors and skin tones - from some wild colors. I feel strong in this area!
You can surprise yourself, I love color but I am not wildly creative with color! In my mind I wanted a purple, red, orange wild self-portrait and yet when I laid out all those colors, I fell in love with Phthalo Turquoise! I proceeded to create an entire portrait painting Phthalo Turquoise & white--a Monotone Portrait painting! I pulled the extra colors off the palette and saved them for later.

My 5th and Phthalo Monotone

I am soliciting for self portrait ideas and links. Let me know where and if you see any modern Self Portrait articles and inspiration! Thank you!