Just Lazy

I have been busy. Not so busy that I couldn't blog. That was lazy. I do tend to get lazy but I have been busy. April 1 was that Art Expo, then I entered a couple of pieces in different shows, a week at the beach was supposed to get me all rested up and back on track. Didn't work. However, in spite of all that, I have been painting.


Green River
Matted
$75

I took a one-day workshop with Ken Hobson, a big-brush watercolorist from North Carolina. I like his flamboyant style and I learned a few things but lately I've been too trifling to apply them.  Trifling. That's a good word.  Does anyone other than those born in the South use it?  It has lots of  meanings.  Trifle: a desert of layers of cake dowsed with liqueur, fruit and custard or cream: to toy with: something of little value. So I suppose the latter definition is what serves me: I have been of little value for a while now.  Not worth a plugged nickel, as they also say in that part of the country I call home. 

Morning Flight
Framed
$125

Both these pieces were painted in a single day in Ken Hobson's class. I love the fog in the background and his way of painting birds in flight, both great techniques to have in my repertoire. 

This workshop was last April at the Art Expo.  I have painted a lot since then, sold a few, given a few away, traded a couple.  All in all, 2017 was eventful and happy but there was some sadness, too. I won't dwell on that.  I need to get back to my blog.  My brain has gotten as foggy as the background of this picture.  Ken Hobson must be bumping around in my head. 

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A Peak at The Peaks

A fellow artist

once told me that paintings of the Peaks of Otter will always sell.  I can't think how many times I've tried to paint this landmark, so iconic of Central Virginia, and failed. 

The painting above, on a half-sheet of 140lb cold-press paper,

is my first attempt.  Now, I am not totally to blame for the wonkiness shown here.  I was in a class and the exercise was "Painting a Vibrant Sunset."  When the instructor told us to sketch a mountain range, I decided to sketch, from memory, an outline of our beautiful Peaks of Otter.  What I forgot to include is the rest of the mountain range to the right of Flat Top, The range to the left of Sharp Top is obscured by the trees, but the right side just wanders off to nowhere.  I painted the mountains in with a deep blue, a mixture of Maimeri blu Green-Blue and Violet  to get the dark line of the ridge. As per instructions, I allowed this to dry and then proceeded to paint the sky. 

Beginning with the same dark mixture of blue at the top, blending with magenta mid-way to the horizon, and finishing with yellow at the bottom, the vibrant sunset came into view.  I was elated!  But, remembering the sunset on the Peaks I had often viewed from home, I knew the sun  stretched itself  between those glorious piles of stone, like a cat draping over the arm of a chair, spilling across the valley, caressing the pasture at the foot of the mountains, before slowly retracting into the distance and disappearing behind the next hill.

I had my vision.

I didn't think I had the skills. 

I was so pleased with my rendition of "my mountains" however, that I became intimidated and was afraid I would mess up what I had done by trying to turn it into my vision of the "cat-sun" retreating into the distance..  I went to the instructor for help.  I told him I had the yellow where I wanted it, but was in fear of losing my mountain ridge, whereupon, he picked up a brush and redrew the top line of the horizon!  My Peaks! They were gone!  In their place were two matching cones.  I had worked so hard to get the shapes right, the sharp tip of Sharp Top, the soft undulations of Flat Top! Gone with the stroke of a master's brush! This artist, whose work I had admired for so long, had obviously never seen the Peaks of Otter.  Being so new to watercolor, I had no idea how to fix it.  With several years of painting under my belt, I'm still not sure I can fix it. 

Perhaps I'll just rename it "Sunset on the Boobs of Otter" and stash it in my Failed File.

It seems that that experience created a "painter's block." Whenever I try to paint the Peaks, I choke.  Oh, I've painted them lots of times, but always as a Squiggle, or a way to use up paint left on my palette from something else.  I've added them here. 
This one is oil on board 8x10. I couldn't get the tops right so I just obscured them with clouds.  Clouds come in very handy when doing landscapes.  And the little building started out as a barn, but it seems someone moved in and renovated it and it became a little cabin.  This little painting makes me happy. 

And here is another oil on board, 5x7, using paint left over from a snow scene.  I like the mountains, and the snowy feel of the sky.  The fence gives it a sense of depth.  It's from a photo taken from a friend's yard.  And finally,

this little one, again 5x7 oil on board, was painted using what was left over from painting the one above.  All I had was a little ultramarine blue, a pinch of cad red, a small blob of cad yellow and a smear of white. It's fun to see how many colors I can make with whatever smudges of pigment are left after a painting session.

I don't know that I will ever make a "real" painting of the Peaks of Otter that will please me. I have seen so many of them, by such wonderful artists, I feel I can't compere or maybe it's just  been overdone.  I may frame these small ones and use them as gifts for friends who have lived away for so long that they have forgotten what these majesties really look like, or will be happy with something that is just reminiscent of the Blue Ridge.  I don't know yet.  I will put them away, upstairs, in my old painting repository, and resurrect them from time to time to see if I've improved. 

It's a way of looking back, to see how far I've come, not just painting, but living.  We all need to do that.  Look back to see how we've progressed.  It has a way of making us appreciate where we are now. 

Carole

An Apple for the Teacher

"Three Apples"

Oil on paper

Matted to 11x14

$50

 I have had a lot of teachers in my life. 

I like to think I learned something from all of them, but there are a few who stood out because of things they said.  I had a ninth grade English teacher who, at the beginning of every school year,  wrote on the board "Procrastination is the thief of time."  I think he hoped that would encourage us to work, but how many ninth graders knew what 'procrastination' meant?  It wasn't until I was a senior and had that same teacher again for English, that I was wise and learned enough to understand what he was saying.  By that time, it was too late for me. Procrastination had become a way of life. 

I started reading "Daily Painting" by Carol Marine some time ago.

Actually, when I started this blog, my intention was to paint every day and post weekly about my adventures in the studio.  That didn't happen. 

Procrastination. 

It really is the thief of time. 

My husband is one of those wonderful men who clean house. 
I am NOT a housekeeper.  I'm not saying I'm not a GOOD housekeeper. I'm just not a housekeeper AT ALL.  I don't see dust. Or cat hair. Or clutter until it starts interfering with me.  However, laundry and dishes and bill paying and all that stuff sit around calling my name and keeping me from being able to relax and paint.  I will clear the clutter, but I still don't see the dirt.  It's a trait I inherited from my mother.  I can, although, clean the kitchen, change linens, do laundry, keep accounts balanced and cook. So this weekend, between the two of us, the house was cleaned, bills were paid, dishes washed   and 2 pots of soup made.  Therefore, other than a couple of loads of laundry to run, I had nothing getting in the way of picking up a brush.  Except not knowing what to paint.  I had a basket of apples, so I decided to paint a few  and you see the result above. 

I set myself a challenge. 

I decided what to paint, laid out my choice of colors: Cad Yellow Light, Cad Yellow Medium, Cad Red, Alizarin Crimson, Cobalt Blue, Ultra Marine Blue, Raw Umber, Burnt Seinna and Titanium White, selected my brushes, taped down my paper and threw in a load of laundry.

I had 54 minutes. I painted furiously.

Voila! Three Apples.

"Apples and Bananas"

Watercolor

Framed
$160

"Apples and Bananas" is another piece quickly executed in watercolor.  I painted this one a couple of years ago, again as a timed challenge.  I enjoy doing this and really think some of my best work has been the result of working under pressure. 

"Apple and Pear with Blue Cup"

Oil on board 4x6

NFS

 

My daughter made me a cigar box pochade that I used when I painted this little piece.  You can see the finished board sitting in the lid of the pochade.  The box holds a tiny palette, a few short-handled brushes, and some small tubes of paint.  I love the way direct-from-the-tube painting results in such jewel-like colors. The little pochade is fun for plein air small works. I painted this sitting on my porch. Then I ate my subject.


And this last is just a page from my sketchbook.  I was attempting, trying, venturing into painting without drawing.  It's great fun to just let the paint go where it wants to go. You never know what you'll get. 

Sketchbook apples

I like working under time constraints.  There's no time for over-thinking.  There's just time to paint, making every stroke count. If you've never tried it, you should.  Decide on a subject. Lay out your colors. Set a timer and paint.  I have another load of laundry to do in the morning.  I can't wait to see what I can produce in 54 minutes.  However, that old devil, Procrastination, seems to rear his ugly head from time to time.  I will try to keep him at bay, at least for 54 minutes!

Carole

The Doldrums!

 Along about mid-January

and on through most of February, I usually find myself in the doldrums.  Doldrums. That's a great word.  It's an old maritime expression that I remember finding in a pirate story when I was quite young.

         *  Doldrums: an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds *

The stock market hijacked the word to mean "a period of inactivity" but I prefer the old version used by sailors.  At any rate, I think I'm in the Doldrums, the calm between the storms of inspiration.  And so, I let my thoughts run to the sea, where I'm always renewed.

We go to the beach a couple times a year,

and one of my favorite things to do is

"Beach Squiggles." 

Squiggle! Now there's another good word.  I commandeered the word and the activity from a Kindergarten teacher who used to give her charges a sheet of paper with a line, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, straight or curved, and tell them to make a picture incorporating that line.  You could almost hear those 5-year-old wheels turning as imaginations fired.  What wonderful creations! 

Part of my travel accoutrements,

paraphernalia, 

trappings

odds and ends,

 is a small travel palette with pan colors, a few brushes and a 4x6 watercolor block.  First, I make a squiggle and then I paint, quickly, almost automatically, just having fun,

  I think, often, the hardest part of a painting is making that first mark on the paper or canvas.  It's almost like how when you get a new car, it always seems to run better after it gets that first ding. After I make that first mark it's easier to paint. 

"Beach Chairs" above is one such Squiggle.  Just after I drew a pencil line (look closely, you can see it) across the upper third of the paper, people came and put two chairs down in the sand in front of me.  I painted them in with a small brush, and when I got inside, I drew around them with a fine point pen. I like this simple little picture.  It makes me happy.

And there was a little boy wrestling with a float that kept trying to get away from him. It dashed and danced on the surf like it was a living thing and he held on like a character from Hemmingway.

A small girl shaking sand off a towel that threatens to wrap itself around her as if to protect her from the elements, far, far away from the midwinter doldrums.

Beach Squiggles!

Hope you enjoy them!

Carole

Out of the Box! (Week 2)

"Blue Barn"

9x12 oil on paper

$60 unframed

 Oil painting class, week 2! 

This is harder than I remember.  I mean, I never thought oil was that easy anyway, but I don't remember it being this hard.  Of course, that's my fault.  I'm impatient.  I want what I want when I want it, kinda like a cat.  I want it now and I want it exactly like I want it. 

Oil painting does not work that way. 

The most difficult part of anything for me is practice.  I don't want to practice.  I just want to do it.  I expect to be able to do anything perfectly the first time I try and if that doesn't happen, I run away and find something else to do.  I suppose I'm somewhat of an egotist, if I think I can always do it right the first time.  But that contradicts my own philosophy of arts and crafts, my mantra, my personal catch-phrase: Not Too Crooked!  As Vinnie Barbarino would say, "I'm so confused!" 

What I need to do is to rethink my thinks.

If I want it to be perfect, how can I accept it if it's Not Too Crooked?  Well, I can't.  Is it possible I have my own Not Too Crooked definition of "perfect?'  That must be it.  What may be perfect by my standards is Not Too Crooked by the rest of the world's. But, wait!  If the rest of the world thinks it's even A Little Bit Crooked, am I going to be happy to present it as my own?  Oh, Lord! I'm more confused than ever!

Anyway, oil painting class

  One thing I need to learn is not to put colors out on my palette that I'm probably not going to use.  When I first started oils, I was taught to lay out my palette with warm and cool versions of red, yellow and blue, plus yellow ochre, raw and burnt sienna, raw and burnt umber, black, white, and the ubiquitous Viridian. ("Ubiquitous' is a great word that perfectly describes the character of Viridian. It means "existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time."  Once Viridian comes into your life, you will pay hell to get it out, like ants in the kitchen.  But that's a conversation for another day.)  Getting back to my palette, I would lay out 14 colors, sometimes more, before I even started to paint, adding maybe an orange, another yellow, violet, couple shades of green, and never use half of them. Now, I have seen people scrape up little bits of pigment and actually get it back into the tube, but, really?!  I've known one who would lay a piece of plastic wrap over the surface and put her whole palette in the freezer right next to the pot pies and the popsicles.  Doesn't sound very appetizing to me!  I just try to use up as much pigment as I can within a couple of days.  I hate to waste it.  Paint is expensive. If I was selling paintings for a ton of money, I probably wouldn't worry about it, but I'm not, so I do. Seemingly, this would encourage me to paint every day, but sometimes life and laundry get in the way. 

This last class, good old Viridian stayed in the tube and I made all my greens

. I had Cobalt and Ultramarine, Cad Yellow and Cad Yellow Light, and was able to make some passable winter greens.  A touch of Cad Red or Burnt Sienna to gray them down if needed, and of course, white. I use a lot of white in oil painting.  And more yellow than blue. The next morning, I touched up a few bits on my little barn, and realized the only colors left that were still malleable were Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine Blue, and a little smear of Cobalt.  The result of that combination, slathered on a 5x7 canvas board, is below, a dark blue pear on a pink background. Interesting. Different. Fun to do. But that's what painting should be. Interesting, different and fun to do. And Not Too Crooked.  Don't forget Not Too Crooked!   

Carole 

"Midnight Snack"

5x7 oil

$20 unframed

ps. If by chance you'd like to own one of my paintings, my contact info is in my bio and I don't expect anyone to purchase anything before seeing it "in person." Photos are never the same as the real life version. If you like my work, that's wonderful, but if you don't, no problem.  We'll still be friends. Promise. One can't be an artist and be thin-skinned.  C. 

Out of the Box!

"Sunflowers Bouquet"

9x12 oil on paper

$60 unframed

"Faded Glory"

5x7 oil on board

$20 unframed

My friend and I decided climb out of our respective boxes and  take an oil painting class. 

It being the dead of winter and inspiration, seemingly, at an all time low, we figured it would get us our of our rut and expand our horizons.

                                          Now, I have painted oils in the past.  I took several plein aire workshops with Heiner Hertling at Germanton Gallery in Germanton, NC a few years ago and produced a fair number of mediocre to half-way decent paintings.  I enjoyed the process and the way the paint moved and it really helped me get over my fear of white paper.  While I like the medium, I don't like the mess.  Some days I only have a small amount of time to spend painting and with oil, the clean-up takes longer than that.

                                         When we arrived at class, there were 2 different areas already set up for painting.  One was a still life of a yellow pitcher with sunflowers and the other was a landscape projected onto a screen.  Two-thirds of the class was already in place to paint the landscape.  Those were the folks who looked like they knew what they were doing. 

                                        My friend and I chose the still life because we didn't know what we were doing. Or at least, I didn't feel like I did, since it had been years ago I had painted this way.  I discovered that, even though I remembered most of the mechanics of oil painting, I had lost my touch in handling the paint.  I used too much thinner.  I couldn't get the hang of laying wet paint over wet paint.  In my efforts to get the shape right, the subject kept getting bigger and bigger until I ran out of ground.  I wiped it off and started over.  I wiped it off and started again.  I whined (to my self in my head.  I learned a long, long time ago that people don't like it when old women whine aloud.)  I wanted to quit and go home.  In spite of all that septuagenarian angst, I was finally able to produce the little piece above at the top.  Not too bad for a first attempt after a long hiatus. 

             The next morning, I still had paint on my palette,

and being the self-proclaimed Queen of Left-overs, I had to do something with it.  A small palette knife and a piece of 5x7 Masonite that had been previously toned with burnt sienna came to the rescue and in a few minutes, the small painting on the right appeared.  I ran out of yellow before I ran out of flowers, but, like any left-over queen, I improvised. 

               Each could have been better, each could have been worse. But they're not too crooked.

Yep, they will do. 

It's good to get out of your box.  We never know what we can do until we try, 'til we dare to take that leap, no matter how small. 

Carole

"Sunflowers and Pears"

Watercolor

16 x 20 matted unframed $175

Midwinter Blues (and Greens) Part 2

 It seems whenever I have a few minutes to paint,

I tend to paint evergreens.  These pages from my sketchbook are just that, moments when I only had 15 minutes to paint and decided to try something different. and what better subject to practice on than trees. Besides, evergreens teach us a good lesson: Never give up!  No matter how old, or tired or broken, tattered or torn, they always look towards heaven.  They are always pointing upward, as though they are trying to reach for the stars.

I had several blank pages at the end of a well-used watercolor journal. One of them, I spattered with a toothbrush full of masking fluid. The other two, I stamped with white acrylic snowflakes. 

The one to the left, with the splattered masking fluid is the more spontaneous of the three.  Trees painted quickly, passionately, then, wetting the background around the still-wet trees and dropping in all the colors used to make the greens and cleaning my brush in the foreground snow.  I love this little painting.  It's as exuberant as I felt when I painted it! 



This second one, had a bit more acrylic snowflake than I had wanted but I still like it.  I sprinkled it with a mix of kosher and fine sea salt to get the blooms in the sky.  I like the way I don't know what I've got until I get it.  It's great fun to see what will happen.  White acrylic or mask doesn't show up very well on white paper, so it's always a surprise when color is applied.  And the same with salt.  Kosher salt leaves big blossoms and sea salt makes tiny white sparkles, depending upon how wet the paint is when it's sprinkled.  It's all a crap-shoot!  What you see is not always what you get! 

This third one, a little more studied than the others, has hardly any snowflakes at all, and no salt.  I was just sort of cleaning the stamp on this page, so not much paint transferred, but there's still a little, just a whisper of a large snowflake in the upper right sky. It's simple, it came together quickly and easily. No effort. It has it's faults, but the little trees reach toward heaven like all evergreens.

When I am looking through magazines and books for inspiration I'm always drawn to the scenes with grand expanses of white snow, clear blue skies and deep, dark pines.  To me they embody the clean, purity of winter more-so than anything else. 

Winter is a time of wonder, time for the Earth and all her creatures to rest, to hibernate, to snuggle down, dream, ponder, renew.  There is nothing more cleansing to the soul than breathing the clean, frost-laden air of a winter's day. 

I hear folks say they don't like winter.  I used to be one of them. No more.  I cherish these days to contemplate, to imagine, to plan, to revive, to watch, to appreciate the difference. Spring, Summer and Fall run together seamlessly. I hardly notice when one changes to the other, but Winter, oh, Winter charges in and settles in and waits, and then, one day, just as suddenly, leaves. And we are refurbished. And we begin again. But the evergreens, the pines, the firs and cedars, the hemlocks and hollies, they remain, unchanged, eternal, the Sentinels of the Forest, quietly, with great dignity, bringing their message.

Carole