Rainy Winter Morning

I can’t bear another gray morning …. so I invent a bit of brightness in the landscape.  My front porch protects me from getting soaked to the bone.

Rainy Winter Morning ... in my dreams

Still the same palette I’ve used all week: Scarlet Lake, Cadmium Lemon, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White.  I omitted the Sap Green.  My focus was on value, not color.  I enhanced the color for my own sanity. Perhaps by the end of winter I’ll figure out how to paint the clusters of thin, bare branches on the outer perimeter of trees without getting fussy.  I’m open to suggestions!  My trees end up looking like they are still wearing leaves.  I’m going for blocking in shapes rather than detail, but I would like to create a more bare branch illusion.

Oil Sketch: oil on prepared birch wood panel 5″ x 5″.  Complementary color scheme … purple / yellow, yellow dominant.

 

Coming Alive With Color

My sketchbook permits me to play.  Ink and watercolor, like children, are most expressive and creative when handled without restraint, when allowed to move and flow where they will, exploring new possibilities.

Eight minute ink sketch

Wednesday is my night to cook dinner.  A trip to Trader Joe’s resulted in a collection of great shapes, bottles, vegetables and fruit.  I couldn’t resist a quick (very quick)  ink sketch before chopping, slicing and pouring.  No time to fuss.  Capture the moment and move on.  Later, I returned to the sketch and added color, bright, juicy color, to the ink sketch.  I used Waterman black ink which runs, even after it’s totally dry. The running ink invites loose strokes of color.

Colorful table of bottles and veggies

No longer having the items in front of me, I added color playfully, mixing for value more than hue.  The result is a split-complementary color scheme, fresh and vibrant.  No, I did not drink the whole bottle of wine before I started cooking dinner.  Had I painted the deep burgundy color of wine in the bottle, the dark shape would have blocked the movement from the foreground to the background as well as camouflage and compete with the bright red shape of the table top.

Sketch: drawn first with Waterman Phileas fountain pen filled with black Waterman Ink, followed by watercolor washes.

 

Allowing it to be something else

I’ve been thinking a lot about reality being only a reference point for paintings.  Yesterday’s early morning landscape sketches challenged that thought.

Omitting the trees and fence

After my first thirty minute sketch (see yesterday’s post on Third Time Around) I moved on to my second with the intent of focusing on the shadows cast by a large walnut tree.  I was enjoying the variations of color I was getting with my limited palette of Scarlet Lake, Cadmium Yellow, Cobalt Blue, Sap Green and Titanium White.  It seemed a pity to interrupt the movement and flow of shapes by painting in the trees and fence.

Having had far too much fun, I promised myself I would behave myself and focus on a more realistic expression of the shadows on the lawn in my next quick sketch.

Shadows a la Dr. Seuss

So much for that plan….. I might try this on a larger canvas.

Oil sketches: 5″ x 5″ on prepared birch wood panels.

 

Morning Fog, three different color schemes

The fog refused to lift….. I just kept painting.  The first oil sketch leans toward a complementary color scheme, the second toward an analogous color scheme. The last two are more monochromatic.

Complementary Color Scheme

I used the same limited palette for all four paintings:  Scarlet Lake, Cadmium Lemon, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White.

Analogous Color Scheme

Monochromatic Color Scheme

I suppose one might call this analogous, too.  I need to stretch the definition of monochromatic or I would never use that color scheme.  It can be extremely moody and evocative, so I bend the rules.

Monochromatic Color Scheme

There’s a lot to be gained by doing several thirty minute oil sketches.  I begin to truly simplify, dropping details that get in the way of strong shapes and compositions.  This is my favorite of the four.

Oil sketches, 5″ x 5″, on prepared birch panels.  Painted yesterday morning, January 23, 2012

 

A wide spot in the road

I am on the lookout for wide spots in the road where I can park my car and paint during the upcoming months of winter.

From a wide spot in the road

I am desperate for good spots to park from the front seat of my K-car.  What I really want is a good panoramic view of hedgerows slicing through hilly expanses of fields.  I want that crazy quilt aspect of the landscape.  I have a week to go before I am let loose again to capture the abstract beauty of the landscape I travel through, whether in New Jersey or in Spain or France or Peru.  I sense that roads will continue to play a major role in my paintings.  It is from the line of a road that the kaleidoscope of landscape comes into focus and thrills me to the core.

My little CD case Peerless Watercolor Paper palettes of paint force me to paint by value rather than color.  I am testing out a few more of the water brushes made by Kuretake.  I discovered that my first water brush was a mini brush.  The regular brushes that come in a variety of sizes have longer handles, holding more water, but too long to fit a snack size zip lock bag.

The colors of the Peerless Watercolor Papers are always a bit shocking to me.  They are a bit psychedelic.  It was only while cross country skiing down a mountain in Colorado with my brother in 1983 I remember seeing the landscape in such vivid colors.  I adore these little bits of saturated paper; they force me out of my mold and into another world of limitless possibilities.

Sketch:  Drawn first with my burgundy fountain pen marked Riona (I think it was the name of the original owner) filled with Noodler’s Nikita red ink, followed by washes of Peerless Watercolor Papers using a Kuretake size 9mm water brush.

 

Pine Tree, 10 am, January 8, 2012

Clean color and correct values allows me to complete a small oil sketch, en plein air, within forty five minutes. Color Wheel Five helps to keep my colors clean, especially the neutrals.

Pine Tree 10am oil sketch

Painting en plein air forces simplicity of shapes and quick color choices.  The light changes rapidly, shadows move.  Sometimes it feels as if I’m painting inside a kaleidoscope.   I like that sense of movement.  It forces me to look to my painting for strong patterns rather than attempt to capture the ever-changing reality in front of me.  Nothing is perfect.  There is only the opportunity to paint it better next time.

Oil sketch on gessoed birch panel.

 

Four Hues, Analogous Color Scheme with One Complement

My brush dipped into only four colors on Monday night at The Grisly Pear.

Josh, Marge and Spiros, The Grisly Pear

Using only Winsor Orange, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Alizaring Crimson and French Ultramarine Blue I ended up with a pile of paintings, most of which fell into the color scheme Analogous with One Complement.   The transitions from alizarin to Ultramarine are a delightful passage of purple variations.  The brilliant yellow-orange is toned with a bit of crimson by the bleed of the ink I used.  I find myself using Noodler’s Black Swan in English Rose for the initial drawing done with a dip pen.  The bleed of the ink works well with my palette.

A couple more examples of the January 2, 2012 ink and watercolor sketches of the musicians can be seen on my other blog, Third Time Around or on my Grisly Pear album on Facebook.

Sketch:  drawn first with dip pen using Black Swan in English Rose Noodler’s Ink followed by watercolor washes.

 

Warm Weather and Celebration

As of January 21st I will again be a full-time artist!

The zig-zag of the road

A year and a half ago I sketched the zig-zag of the road and have wanted to do a simple, little oil sketch, en plein air, of the pattern created by the two driveways meeting the road in front of my house.  The first thing I did after sending my notice of leaving my job at the prop shop as of January 20th was to celebrate my return to full-time painting by painting the long overdue oil sketch of sky, land and roads. The pattern of the road, the pattern of clouds in the sky and the pattern of value shapes were my primary concerns.

Color Wheel Five, en plein air

What a great way to begin 2012!

Painting:  oil sketch on stretched canvas

 

Ink and Watercolor neutrals, another sketch using Color Wheel Five

Without viridian on my palette, my greens become instantly neutralized.  Perhaps I need to clean my palette wells.

Burning the candle at both ends

Or maybe it’s simply Holiday-Wind-Down lack of attention to keeping colors clean.  The Noodler’s Nikita Red ink is festive, perfect for this holiday season.  I like the softer edges it gives to the Nespera Plant, the drafting table and the shadows cast upon the tablecloth.  When the candle became lost as a shape against the leaves, I went back into the line work with another fountain pen filled with black ink. The fabulous patterns on the candlestick holder distracted me from making good decisions for a strong pattern based on value shapes of the entire composition.

Drawn first with fountain pen followed by washes of watercolor.

 

Using Color Wheel Five for Watercolor Sketches

Knowing what colors I don’t want to mix is useful information. Having Color Wheel Five at hand quickly clarifies my wants and not-wants, saving me both time and paint.

Coffee Time - sketchbook drawing

It is not always convenient to pull out my watercolors while having a nice meal with someone.  Most often, it’s acceptable to pull out my sketchbook and fountain pen while drinking coffee at the end of a nice meal.  Not only does it satisfy my desire to draw everything in front of me, it allows conversation to continue leisurely rather than ending abruptly when the coffee is gone and the refill pot hasn’t made its rounds.

When I am back in my studio I’ll often add a few washes of color on top of one of the sketchbook ink drawings.  I’ll use whatever colors are still available in the small, portable palette that I take with me when I paint during the Blues Jams.  Looking back and forth between palette and Color Wheel Five I come up with recipes for my washes.  In the case of the drawing above, I started first with the table color by mixing orange and red/violet for a neutralized wood-like color that would play nicely against the green of the book on the table.  The only color I cared about being true to was the color of my father’s poetry notebook.  Everything else worked off of the green book and the table top.

For the silverware I mixed French Ultramarine Blue and a touch of cadmium red, very diluted.  I could see from my color wheel that almost all my other mixes would give me a green-tinted gray, a purple-tinted gray or a boring dead gray.  For the water glass I went to the other near complement of Ultramarine Blue and mixed in a touch of yellow/orange.

The straw is pure cadmium red.  The straw is the star and everything else works as supporting actors, the neutrals supporting the fully saturated color.

Sketch: drawn first with fountain pen filled with black ink, followed by watercolor washes.