Be Careful where you take photos!

New law in Utah might make taking those landscape reference shots difficulthttp://www.myzionpark.com/2012/03/trail-side-photos-including-livestock-and-farms-potentially-illegal-in-utah/#comment-759

Red Pears

Red Pears

Opps, I did it again.

No, not broke your heart, but bought fruit by how it looks, for its color. As subjects for a still life. It just captured my heart.

This week the produce was especially colorful. Maybe it is the fact that winter has finally broke here. The weather is cloudy and rainy but warming up. Things are starting to bloom. 

These absolutely gorgeous red pears, the red/green mangos, the acorn squash with it shiny dark green and a splash of yellow, how could I resist? And those red onions that are really a deep purple? How can you say no to them? And don’t get me started on peppers! More and more the regular grocery store is stocking more than just the green. Now we get the golden yellow and the bright orange.

 

The influence of the Spanish culture is really being felt in peppers. Where once you might only find a few jalapenos, we now have at least 6 different little hot peppers, each with their own fire, and color. It is enough to make an artist go broke! 

But at least once the painting is done you can eat them! 

And Now for Something Different

Not all landscape drawings and paintings need to be totally realistic. Many of the best are far from it. They give only the impression of the landscape. Or the idea or are simply inspired by and area. The idea takes on a life of its own.

In drawing, this is more than true. You are representing a landscape, but of necessity, editing and changing it. With pencils things are reduced to grayscale. With pen and ink, literally black and white, or simply tinted and stylized.

Greenbottom and Lotus Painting as of March 3

  

Painting the misty colors and feel of Greenbottom in mid summer haze it a challenge. I don’t want it to look foggy. It was hazy but hot and wet. So humid just walking through the air left you wet.

I am finally beginning to get some of the color and feel I want. The background was still too vivid and bright. I did paint a thin glaze of red over the background hills, which is beginning to take them down a bit.

 

Most efforts to “gray” them out left them looking rather rainy and cold not at all what is needed here.

The smaller canvas of the lotus is beginning to look like the flower and leaf, with the leaf half under the water.

For such shallow water it was remarkably dark. Totally shaded by the immense field of lotus.

One More Night With Greenbottom

One more night painting on the large canvas of Greenbottom. While it is coming along very well, I think it is time to let it rest a while. It is getting to the point where further work will result in mud. So tomorrow I will not work on either canvas.

Greenbottom Painting at the beginning
of the painting session tonight

This is the painting as it was when I came down stairs to the dungeon tonight. I did not do a lot to it. While the small touches I was adding made sense, I kept working on it, but once I starting looking to things to do and add I knew it was time to let it rest a while.

Should I make it more detailed/realistic or leave it more of an impressionist painting?



Lotus, beginning tonight



Lotus, end of evening



And for the blooming lotus, that too I will let rest. The lotus does need to be brightened, but that can wait. The paint needs to set up a bit more before I can get that glow of the original flower.

The pen and ink drawing can use some more development. I am torn between leaving it simple outlines and working texture into the background. The idea of adding a bit of color ink is inviting too.



Greenbottom, as it stands now.



I want to do at least 2 more drawings and perhaps another painting. Maybe of a lotus that has bloomed and is pushing up the seed cone.

But whatever I decide to do with these paintings, they do need a bit of a rest right now. Tomorrow is class day. I will have classes late, so I will not have time to work on them anyways.

Maybe a few days rest will give my eyes a refresh look at these paintings.

Working on the Greenbottom Project

(Note: Sunday, February 26, 2012)

Watched the academy awards tonight. Did my exercises, all 30 minutes of them. Washed a load of towels and folded did not spindle or mutilate laundry.

Then got out the paint and brushes. Worked for 2 hours trying to get the shades and feelings right on both the detail painting of the water lotus and the larger overview of Greenbottom.

A bit frustrating, but over all, I think it is starting to straighten up.

Speaking of straightening up, I have to adjust my lines of lotus to straighten them up. Water is flat, and they float on the top, At least the bottom edges of each group needs to be fairly level.

Then I will start on bringing on the background, the higher ground in this case. The small rise with the live trees on it, and then add a couple of drowned trees to the mid ground among the lotus plants. I have thought about adding a few birds in the sky, but all in all it sounds a bit hokey.

One of the tools I am loving is a scrapper I got at my fall workshop. Makes correcting mistakes so much easier. No more wiping with paper towels, now the paint lifts off pretty cleanly. It does help that in glazing the paint on the previous layer is fairly well set up. Still, it is nice to be able to correct so quickly and cleanly.

It is so exciting to be making progress on this. The first pen and ink drawing is coming along. Not anywhere finished, but I think shaping up into something that might work.

Updates On The Greenbottom Work

I know I promised you lots of updates on the Greenbottom/ West Virginia wetlands series I want to do, but the work has been going slowly. Yes, oils take a longer time to set up between sessions, but I have also been doing a lot of procrastinations.

Finding time has been a problem, or rather the energy when I have time. Finally, this week I broke down and saw the doctor (now I really am broke! Boy was it expensive!) She gave me some new meds to reduce the inflammation and reduce pain. Now, this is strong stuff, and she made it clear I am not staying on it.

But boy, what a difference a day makes! I had not realized how much strength was being sapped by pain until I realized last night, after 3 hours of catching up on laundry, sorting through and putting away bags of books and art supplies, etc that I still felt like painting a bit.

Although I only worked for a little over and hour, I worked. Progress on both paintings, laid out two more pieces I will be doing in pen and ink and sorted through references for a couple of pencil drawings. There is a lot of work to do, but it no longer seems impossible.