SNOW

It's been a beautiful snow day, though I'm glad I'm not out driving on the roads right now. These days are best for making a huge pot of veggie soup and kicking back, which is what I've done.

Here's another barn painting created as a demo in December, using a large, floppy squirrel brush. The idea was to allow a loosey juicy, more carefree look with the watercolor. The paint on the hill was poured on spritzed paper, rather than painted, to help create that wonderful, fresh watercolor look. A rigger brush was used to put in the grasses poking above the snow, as well as the fence wire. Let it snow...

"WIND DRIFTS" Transparent Watercolor on 140# Rough Arches 20 x 15"

ANOTHER TWENTY MINUTES

Here's another '20 minute' challenge painting, showing the finished painting, along with the actual scene in front of me, as well as how my painting area was set up. The apple by my painting supplies is my timer. Before Setting the timer for 20 minutes, I make sure that everything is ready to go and that I am focused and intent on the subject at hand.

The paper was a 5x7" piece of Strathmore Aquarius II that had previously been 'textured' using another process. The existing textures seemed to lend themselves to a snowy scene, but there was no pure white left on the 5x7" paper. Therefore, some white watercolor paint was touched into some snowy areas to help push the contrasts of values a bit. Using it in several small places helped it look like it was meant to be and not just a correction.

My inspiration was the effect of warm golden brown leaves hanging on the oak tree, surrounded by the cold of a February winter day. After finishing it, my thoughts were that just the tree and a couple of birds would have made a much more interesting painting. It's such a challenge to leave out what's not important. Seems like whatever we see, we often feel the need to put in the painting. A wise person said --- don't let what you see dictate what you paint! Great advice.

WISHES

All of us here in the Ohio River Valley have a zillion photos now of our record snowfalls. One snowfall was beautiful, the second one was gorgeous, the third was enough but they kept falling, almost daily. This lovely hula snow honey greeted all the artists yesterday who made it to classes. It's wishful thinking that it could be warm enough to wear flip flops.

It's supposed to snow Saturday so I'm heading north, out of here. There's a Watercolor Society of Indiana meeting on Sunday in Indianapolis with artist Rena Bouwer painting to live music provided by guitarist Joe Peters. Before that, I get to do some serious 'Grandmothering.' I'm packing lots of paint and paper for them to use up when I'm at their house.

Yesterday Dawn let me know how wonderful the weather is in her neck of the woods --- in the mountains. SIXTY DEGREES!!! Makes me think about moving, but I do love it here.

Have a great weekend, and I promise - no more snow pictures. Thinking spring:-) By the way, the hula snow honey has a REAL belly BUTTON, but it didn't show up in the photo since it was white, too.

HAPPY DAY!

Finally, a couple days without snowfall. We're happy, all of us, even our blanketed deer seen outside the studio walkway. She was waiting and wondering where all the artists are. They've returned to paint. YEAH!

Two nights ago after my honey cleaned everything off again, it snowed again....of course. We should be used to it by now but most of us are whining.

He really does enjoy that John Deere snowblower, but it was a bear to clear all the snow from our up hill drive and the parking area. What were we thinking when we sold our snow plow 20 years ago? Global warming, maybe.
It's so good to paint with friends again. Class yesterday was perfect even though several in the class couldn't make it.

Some like to paint alone but I'm definitely a paint-with-people-person most of the time, unless I'm getting a painting ready. When I'm planning, I need solitude and quiet. When I'm painting, I so enjoy the creative energy of other artists. We're all different. How about you?

TWENTY

Here's the latest of my twenty minute paintings. The inspiration comes from all the snow we've had - a record for sure. This black glove has seen it's share of digging out snow, and painting it was pretty challenging, too.
While looking for paper to paint on, I came across some 'textured' papers I'd created several years ago at a workshop with Peggy Brown. Twenty minute paintings would be a perfect way to use these watercolor-painted textured papers. The first photo shows the finished painting, then each successive photo shows the work in progress going backwards. Also a reference photo taken after the painting was finished is at the end of this post.

This shows the painting with only 2 minutes left to paint. The edges must still be softened here and there (the darks are too harsh,) and some adjustments need to be made to the lighter areas. A few light hard edges must be softened, but keeping hard edges near the focal area is crucial.

I'm pleased with the fresh look of the glove at this point and must be be cautious now with each brush stroke. Overdoing it is so easy to do. Every stroke counts, especially with watercolor at this point. The pressure is on!

When 15 minutes showed on the timer, this was where the painting was. Almost all the main shapes are in, except for that big shadow shape yet to come and the rest of the wrist of the glove. Focusing on painting just the shapes in the correct value takes intense concentration. My inclination was to paint the fingers of the gloves instead of the shadow shapes on them. I wanted to paint the glove like I would pull it on my hand. THINK shadows and shapes.

To make the dark black of the glove, I dipped into the darkest colors in my palette, using controlled moisture, and let them mix pretty much on the paper. There's some Quinacridone Violet, Indanthrone, Ultramarine Turquoise, and Quin Burnt Orange, plus some Cobalt Blue and Cerulean. No black paint, though. The colors make the blacks seem livelier to me than black paint out of a tube.

This shows ten minutes worth of painting time. I remember wondering if I could get the painting done in another 10 minutes or not. Since I had no drawing to start with, I had to rely on painting connecting shapes. The proportions were close enough to be believable so far, at least. There's a lot to do before this will look like a glove, though. It was hard to stay focused on values and shapes, yet the folds in the glove made such neat shapes to paint - see photo below.

It sure seemed like a great idea to start with the darkest shapes, connecting those shapes as much as possible. With no pre-drawing, it was a challenge to make the correct angles and curves in the correct relationship to each other. I started with the buckle, a most fascinating shape and near what I hoped would be the focal area, at the lower left, and worked my way around the finger shapes. Using just one value at this point helped simplify the process a little. My eyes looked for the darkest darks, and that's what I focused on painting. This photo was taken exactly five minutes after the painting began.

Here is how the paper looked before the painting began. Subtle textures of muted colors would make a perfect background for the winter gloves. The paper is 80# Strathmore Aquarius II, a synthetic blend that doesn't stretch and is quite soft. Paint shapes, paint shadows, forget about the THINGS you see and paint those shapes and shadows. Then fix the edges of the shapes to be either hard, soft or lost edges. Use whatever colors you love and get the values correct. It'll work every time! Have fun:-)

< Reference used of my husband's two gloves. He's spent lots of time outside that last two days clearing snow. I really hope to have class in the morning, first class in two weeks' time, due to the weather! It's been beautiful, though.

Blogging this took about ten times longer than painting it. It's sure faster and easier to paint with a one inch flat Daniel Smith synthetic brush than use a computer and keyboard to tell about it.

REALLY DIFFERENT

Over the holidays, one of my sister-in-laws took on the challenge of painting with watercolor, and she did very well. Hopefully, she now has her painting hanging in her office in Colorado.

This first painting shows the little demo I did to help her get started, and it's quite small, maybe 5x7." The second painting is also mine, painted more than a dozen years ago and is about 28x40." Both were painted without any visual references, but what a difference there is in the two.
The paintings were done years apart.
They are vastly different in size.
Each was painted for a totally different purpose.
The smaller one took less than 20 minutes to create.
The larger one took over 20 hours.
Different color choices are evident - lots of Indanthrone in the smaller one and too much French Ultramarine in the big one.
The looser style of painting contrasts sharply with the tight, controlled look.
The smaller painting, even though it's fairly simple, shows a brush which has had more experience.

It's not in me anymore to create a painting like the big sycamore and creek. But if I did paint it now, it would be simplified, quieter, less grassy stuff and fewer branches, with more emphasis on what was important to say, etc. If it were painted again, it would have a totally different outcome.

Here's the biggest difference. The sycamore painting was about accurate recording of all the THINGS shown in the painting, while the quick study painting was about paint application, value differences, and shape making. Recording things on paper just doesn't interest me as much anymore. Hope that makes sense.

We talked in classes this week about developing our own style of painting. Although there's a vast difference in time, size, colors, style, etc, of these two paintings, is it likely that the same artist painted both of them?

Compare painting styles to handwriting. Each of us has a distinct signature that we sign our name with. My stance is that each artist also has a distinct style within that naturally shows up in every painting. The longer we paint, the more obvious the style is. We don't have to develop it because it's already there, ready to show up when we learn how to paint.

That unique style can be camouflaged at times, like when a student artist is learning the style of a particular artist or trying new techniques. But even then, the way the brush hits the paper is different for everyone, and that unique 'painting' signature is evident.

One last comment - - - the big sycamore was painted as a graduation gift for our son, who requested a painting of a creek, snow and sycamore. He likes realism so that was the big focus when it was painted. At least that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! Have a great weekend.

CHRISTMAS 2009

My Mother-in-Law, who turned 90 in September, is a fantastic and diverse woman who has lived through many, many changes throughout her lifetime. She tells about her childhood Christmases and the memories of her dad always waiting until Christmas eve to cut down an evergreen. None of the kids would see the decorated tree until Christmas morning, and she recalls that each holiday the tree was tied to the ceiling fan so that the cats wouldn't knock it over!

This year our Daughter-in-Law is making a very special dinner for Grandma GeeGee (my Mother-in-Law) the day after Christmas when we'll all gather to celebrate. My husband has the car packed with gifts to take, but the best part will be being with the whole family.

This painting was done as a commission almost two decades ago and certainly has the sentimental overtones for this time of year. May your holidays be blessed with peace, joy, and love. See you after the new year.....

OLD PAINTING - NEW SNOW

What a beautiful morning it's been! The snow outside is soft and deep, curling up and around each obstacle it fell on. The birds have been frantically digging for their food.

This painting was a quick class demo that turned out alright ... from many years ago ... and reminds me of today. The key word here is 'QUICK.'

Because of the natural spontaneity of watercolor, it's a great thing to splash some paint on the paper with an idea in mind and see what happens. The key is leaving it alone, touching it only a bit where it matters, and not working it to death to make it 'better.'

Some artists can naturally and intuitively do this, but for me it's a struggle. I love when it happens, though.

Now I'm off to PLAN another painting .... or change my plans and just paint by the seat of my pants. We'll see.

"SOLITUDE" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 12 x 17" COLLECTED

WINTER

This painting was done in the early '90's and reminds me of today's weather. A friend and I were headed to an art walk this afternoon but never made it out of Indiana due to snow '''flurries.'''

Evidently no one expected the snow to be a problem on the highways, so the roads were quite nasty to drive on for a couple of hours. Sure makes me appreciate all that the highway people do to keep our roads normally clear. And we can hope that Spring will be early this year (smile.)

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Rhonda's birthday is Monday, and if you can, pop on over to her blog at http://rhcarpenter.blogspot.com/ to wish her a happy birthday. Have a Happy Birthday, Rhonda. And thanks so much for pushing me to start a blog.

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"KOKOMO CREEK SENTINEL" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 30 x 22" COLLECTED

YUPO - SOUP'S ON

They say if you don't like the weather around here, stick around. It'll change in an hour or so. Very true, too. We had no class this morning because of icy roads, and now our Greater Cincinnati Watercolor Society meeting is cancelled for tomorrow morning, too. Whine.

Painting with friends can be very inspiring, even though many say that making art is a solitary venture. The artistic energy in a class can create synergy, making each artist even better at what they do. At least, that's been my observation.

Today has been a day of quiet along with cleaning the studio. I manage to put that off as long as possible but had to make my way there to clean today. Even the holiday things still needed to be stored away.

This winter scene is from the archives, created from several of my photos combined together, and painted on my favorite surface, YUPO. Thank goodness we don't have that much snow right now.

"SOUP'S ON" Transparent Watercolor on YUPO 26 x 18" COLLECTED

HOMETOWN

Recent posts have been from my archives of paintings from the last 20 years, and here's another one. In my hometown there's a city park with a creek running through it which is lined with huge Sycamore trees. An old covered bridge was moved from somewhere in the county and rebuilt across the creek, creating a scene often painted by local artists.

This painting was done with a traditional watercolor approach, background first, then middle ground, then foreground, working on the largest areas before smaller ones. Miskit was applied to the Sycamore branches and lightest part of the trunk, as well as the bridge roof and snow covered rocks in the stream, before painting anything. A limited palette of colors was also used to help create a sense of unity and simplicity in all the tangle of branches.

"WILDCAT CREEK" Transparent Watercolor on 140#CP Arches 110 x 22" COLLECTED

BARN-a-MANIA!

Buck County, Pennsylvania Barn to left & Ohio Mail Pouch Barn below

My specialty --- "Maudlin" sunsets.... meaning '''overly sentimental!''' Enough said.

A couple of weeks ago, I threatened to post a bazillion old barn paintings I'd done over the last 20 years. Fortunately for us blog-aholics, I only found a few of them.

The barns at the top are the most recent, probably done within the last eight years as something I taught in an intermediate class lesson. The farther down this

post you look, the older the paintings are.

The gray barn with the two white silos and fence posts was done as a result of reading an excellent, inspiring book by Valfred Thelin regarding pouring on paint and letting it run. Somone's since borrowed my book... the price I pay for loaning them out..... I still have hopes of seeing it again.

There's an old mail pouch barn near us that HAD to be painted, of course, (see 2nd painting.) The late evening sunset was done before they moved the barn and put it on a concrete block base - looks ugly now, but it surely is a relic from the past.

Some of the barns came out of my imagination while some are from photos I took. The weird (and profitable) thing is that all barn pictures sell well here in the midwest. And there are lots of them, some much better than others.

Talk to an artist who's been painting a while, and they will roll their eyes about painting barns. I will too, probably, because I realize now that it's not the barn that should be painted, but the feelings we have about 'old' things like barns that need to be expressed in our paintings. I've done a couple of more modern, abstracted barn paintings that were fun to do. They took the longest to sell.

Fortunately, I'm not counting on sales to survive, so I no longer care to paint the things that I think might sell the best. I can paint what I want to paint, what interests and challenges me. And seldom is it barns anymore.

Back when I got excited about getting commissions to paint, a woman asked me to paint her grandparent's old homestead, the one here with the big white house, oak tree, garish green pines, and two distant barns. After it was done, her siblings all wanted a copy.

Now days, with the giclee' process, that would've been easy to do. But seventeen years ago, I had to repaint the same picture, with a few minor 'memory' adjustments, for all four of her siblings. GROAN... or so I thought. I found out the value of challenging myself to make it a better painting every time. Each painting was a full 22x30" sheet of paper, and I charged $129 each. YIKES. What was I thinking? But, maybe I got the best end of the deal, too, considering the lack of mature composition, garish green trees, awkward oaks...

Enough about barns. And thank goodness, they're are all sold.

Big barn above with mountains was done when I attended my first workshop in Estes Park, Colorado with Tony Couch. What a great week with gorgeous surroundings. And as he explained, we can't really paint barns. We can only paint shapes, textures, colors, lines, values, sizes, and direction.

Left barn is a scene I usually teach in my beginner's classes.

This was painted about 8 weeks after I started a beginners class with Suzanne Mayes Wentzell in Kokomo, Indiana. Nice fog but what pathetic trees:-(

THE END! (Transparent Watercolor used in all these barn paintings.)

TRADITIONAL WATERCOLOR

Birch trees were always one of the most asked for trees during the twenty plus years that we owned our nursery business. Painting them is certainly easier than growing them.

This is another older work done for a class demo, this time without use of any reference photos. It's more romantic than I would choose to paint now, but I'm posting it today since it goes with what I see outside. If the grandkids were here, we would make at least one snowman.

The first real 'date' that my husband and I ever had was ice skating on Wildcat Creek in late December, and it looked a lot like this. That was a 'fer piece ago,' too, as my grandpa would've said. (We were a mere 15!) Keep warm.

"WINTER BLANKET" Transparent Watercolor on Arches 140# CP, 22 x 15"

LET IT SNOW

We had our first tiny bit of snow early yesterday, but I missed it 'cause I was asleep ... exhausted from a week of painting and learning. But the week has been chock full of excitement and experimenting.

Nicholas Simmons, a MASTER artist, is here at the studio sharing with us so much of what he's discovered about watercolor and the world of art. The workshop has far surpassed our expectations. If you can get into one of his workshops, you will not regret it. He's a musician first, he says, but his paintings, his skill at handling the medium, and his diversity an amazing part of this artist's brilliance.

I can't wait for this morning to begin. It's our last day of the workshop, and we will have him return for another session in the near future. Check out his website (see side bar) if you haven't already. I have the highest respect for Nick. Getting to know him and learn from him this week is a special treasure that I will always cherish.

I'll post some goodies from the workshop soon. This post is from last week's demo at the Cincinnati Watercolor meeting, the third card of the demo (see previous posts.)
"LET IT SNOW" on Arches 140# CP about 6 x 9"