Tuesday Evening Paintings

Sofie,

I love your palette – and your work is so peaceful – I, like Dale, have a difficult time cutting out and trying to narrow down what I would paint, you seem to have found just the right amount of landscape and detail for your picture to be interesting and complete – very nice and very peaceful… quite serene. Also thank you for sharing the colors.

Enjoy your time at the "Paint Around Town" -- hope you learn lots, meet interestiing people, and just have fun --- I also look forward to hearing how it went and possibly seeing some of your work.

Sofie, my wife also enjoyed seeing what you are doing in your plein air sessions. She asks how you clean your brushes on location.. Do you bring a bucket, or bottled water, soap, etc..

Thanks Dale, Waterguy, and Dana!

For this painting I sketched in the water, horizon lines, and shapes of the trees with green (cad yellow and prussian blue) and then used the umber to put in the trunks and reflections. After that I put in my darker values, and went from there.

For cleaning my brushes while working outdoors, I have a small bottle of water that I rinse them in and a cloth for wiping. I actually walked to this location from my house so I keep everything I take very compact - it all fits into a shoulder bag. I wash the brushes with soap and water when I get home.

Just sold this painting today. I'm going to miss it.

Excellent, good for you!

That's great Sophie,

It sounds like it has been a good week for several of us. Judy

Congratulations on the sale, Sofie!
Dayle

Beautiful painting, Sofie. Congrats on the sale!

Congrats Sophie!!!!

Sofie Congratulations!

I am so happy for your Sofie, I know it is hard to have a painting go, but they loved it and that's why they spent their hard earned money for it....it will be loved!

CONGRATULATION! I am so happy for you,

I missed the last couple of Tuesday nights, so it was good to get out last night and paint. We went to the town of Cumberland where there are a lot of cute old houses. As I was painting this one the owner came out to talk to me. She is lucky enough to know the history of her house and have archival photos. It was built in 1896, which is old here on the west coast, and apparently still has a lot of original features, like the beautiful windows.

Unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me so I didn't get a location photo. This painting is 12x16. I painted over another painting to which I'd added a wash of lemon yellow and zinc white with a bit of odourless solvent to obscure it. I could still see a lot of what was underneath but it wasn't distracting.

It always adds a little something to a painting when you know a little of the history. It was nice of her to share it and I bet she was honored to have you paint it. Maybe she might think about buying it. You never know.
Judy

Great painting Sofie! Very nice painterly style!

Did a bit more work on this - don't know if I improved it or not.

Love the way this is coming out, Sophie!
Dayle

Very nice to get to meet the present owner and learn a little of the history of the home....wouldn't it be fun to put that on the back of the piece.

I have been wanting to paint over some of my older pieces....what solvent were you refering to that you added to obscure it?

I went away for a long weekend, a friend invited me to her riverhouse, near the beaches in Oregon....I did some Plein-Air painting and had a quiet beautiful time-- the weather was perfect and no phone or radio or tv -- all by myself - what a wonderful gift it was.

Last Tuesday my babysitting fell through, but this Tuesday was a go. It was a beautiful evening, but I had to work very fast to catch the light which changed very quickly. Here's the location with the work almost finished in the foreground:



As you can see I took liberties and removed a fence, and cleared out some branches and grass to find a barn that was almost totally obscured. It didn't end up looking much like the actual barn because all I could see was a vague outline of the roof.

This is how the painting looks close up. It's on a 10"x12" canvas. I did the tree first, catching the light and shadow as I drew it on with the paint. In the location shot, the light had moved quite a bit higher up on the tree by the time I was done.

Sofie,

How fun too see though your eyes -- I love what you did with this piece, espcially after seeing what you were painting it from. The light is great -- good capturing it and very nice how you took your focus for this painting.

Beautiful painting Sofie! This one reminds me a lot of favorite style... impressionism. Wonderful loose brushwork.

Thanks Dana and Janet. I've done a few tiny touchups on it since then but I want to keep the loose, spontaneous feel.

Tuesday we painted at the farm again. I managed to paint this little 8x10 canvas in about 45 minutes. By that time the light had changed completely. The sky was amazing with the most incredible complete double rainbow, and then the skies opened up. Luckily everyone had worked quickly (most starting before me) so all the work was packed up before the rain began. I forgot to bring my camera, so no shot of the subject.

The canvas I used was previously painted in acrylic and painted over with a mixture of titanium white, Hansa yellow, and alizarin crimson golden opens. This background colour shows through in many places.

Have you ever tried painting a rainbow? We see so many in Arizona and I have tons of pictures but I've never tried to paint them. I should probably post some of them in the RIL. I love the way you did the mountains.
Judy

Thanks Judy.

I've got two small pictures with rainbows in them - loved the subject but was still hesitant to paint it because a rainbow can be such a cliche.

The season for plein air is over now here on the west coast, but some of you are in great locations to still be doing plein air work. Please don't hesitate to post your plein air work !