Missoula Market Walk

Click Here to Bid - 8x8in. - oil on panel

Missoula has a series of markets downtown on Saturdays during the summer. You can make a morning of it - walking from one end of downtown to the other, hitting all the markets. I did this a few weeks ago, with a friend, and my camera. This is a scene from said trip.

Missoula Morning

Click Here to Bid - 6x6in. - oil on panel

On my walk around local neighborhoods recently, this was the view every time I looked east down a wide street. I believe these are called the Sapphire Mountains, and they have distinctive horizontal lines that are left over from the different levels of Lake Missoula, which was a thing near the end of the last ice age. I was out in the morning, and the clouds were just peeking over like this, which I always think is so cool.

Overcast Florence

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This is a scene from Florence, Italy. A large proportion of the days I was there were overcast. At first I was really disappointed, because I love light and shadow, but then I realized there is a lovely subtlety to gray days. That subtlety is hard to paint - don't get me wrong! But if you work at it, it can be captured. : ) I'm really happy with this one.

Here's a close-up of the texture in the sky. ->

Canyon de Florence

 

Click Here to Bid (8x10in. - OIL on gessobord - starts at $100)

This is a scene from Florence, Italy. I painted it in two sessions because after the first one ... I wasn't quite satisfied. So I took a picture of it with my ipad, opened that in Procreate, and played around with a few options for how I might change it, digitally. Once I landed on something I was happy with, I used that to make the changes for real, in paint. What a handy dandy tool!

Shade in Mexico

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As I slowly process what I learned from the online tutorials I recently watched (by John Burton and Nathan Fowkes) I find myself wanting to pull out old reference material and look with fresh eyes for potential paintings. This one is from a trip to San Miguel (Mexico) I took with some buddies a couple of years ago. The "thing" to the right of the skirted lady is a big bunch of balloons and toys being held by a guy who (I'm guessing here) was trying to sell as many as possible to us tourists. But the thing that really grabbed me about this scene was the split between light and shadow. It was tricky to get all the value relationships just right, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Florence From a Bike

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Here's one from my trip to Florence last year. I've been sort of avoiding painting anything from that trip, only because I know they will soon run out of reference photos and then I will be bereft. This happens every year, but I will be especially sad, one, because that trip was especially awesome, and two, I won't be able to photograph more people scenes for a while yet, probably. Not until all this crazy-virus-ness is done. But aside from that, what do I miss the MOST? Hugs.

Authentic Florence

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This is a scene from Italy that I photographed last spring during my Florence workshop. This spot is right down the street from where we stayed, in the "authentic" part of the city, where the regular people live. And shop. And park.

I experimented a bit with the texture, as you can see in these close-up shots. Some parts are thicker than others, which I was shooting for, because, you know, variety. : )

I was REALLY happy with this one, but I'm starting it at $1 again (even though it's 12x24 inches!) because of the move. My studio is almost empty of paintings now! Just a handful left scattered around that I will make decisions about soon.

After Shopping

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Here's another one from France, a little ways away from the market.

Tree Shadow

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PAINTING ON BLACK GESSO, some thoughts
This is my second success on black gesso, and I thought I'd write down a few things I've learned so far. First of all, compared to painting on white, it is much easier to judge dark values, since I'm putting them all straight on the darkest dark, black. Also, it is much more fun to put on bright colors, because they really pop against the black, especially if I leave little bits of black showing through.

I do have to be careful to go light enough with my values! Because the colors look so bright against the black, it's easy to misjudge them. I had to alter this one after it was dry because I realized I didn't go light enough with the orange wall. Also I had to find a different color to draw my scene with first. Normally I use burnt umber, which doesn't really show up on black. It worked to mix a little bit of yellow and red in with the umber.

I HIGHLY recommend trying it! If nothing else, it gives one a different perspective on values. I will definitely do more.

Getting Around

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Of the three days I was in San Francisco last week, one was almost completely sunless. I often have trouble finding scenes I like with no light/shadow, but I tried to look with an open mind this time, and found a few I thought might work. I looked for: interesting value patterns, and color wherever I could find it. So these orange pants definitely caught my eye!

Colorful Street

sold.

This was not only a colorful street, but a colorful town in general! It is in France, right next to some hills made of very beautiful dirt, and I guess they use that to make pigment, and use that to make paint to color the houses. Pretty cool. Can I remember the name of the town? Nope. Why am I so bad at that? (retorical)

A Tight Squeeze

Click Here to Buy ($200 - 12x6in. - click image to enlarge)

We go back to France for this one. And speaking of France, I am happy to announce that I will be teaching another workshop there next summer! We are not yet ready to open it up for registration, but you'll be the first to know.

Shady Avenue

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On my recent wander through Eugene I tried to keep my eyes peeled for ... well, just about anything at all that made a cool design. Hence - these shadows. And by the way, that's MY new car sitting there at the end of the line. Can you tell what kind it is? ; )

Dapples on Silver

sold. (6x8in.)

This is yet another little scene from Portland. It's an unusual composition, yes, but I like it. I find I'm drawn to shadows, especially dappl-y ones like this.

Slanty Bits of Light 1 & 2

sold. (5x7in.)

sold. (5x7in.)

I'm going out on a limb here and showing you some experiments. I did two of this same Portland neighborhood scene in order to try out some things. On both I tried blocking in the whole thing first and then refining, which I don't usually do. BUT, I'm finding that works really well with landscapes, and specifically, foliage. I also used my new round brush on a lot of it. I'm not jumping up and down with joy about either, but my husband liked them, so I thought I'd put them out there.

I'd love to start a conversation about blocking in vs. not and process in general. As I try new things I have mixed results, and I'd love to hear what works for you, IF you feel like sharing. Thanks.

Sunset in the City

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I took the photo reference(s) for this when I was teaching in San Francisco last year. My class had been taking pictures in the downtown area and I decided to walk back to my airbnb apartment rather than catch a ride. Along the way the sun went down and I got a whole series of wonderful shots. I could never capture the nice light on the buildings and the sky in the same shot, so I used several photos to create this scene. My goal is to do this one again bigger, at some point.

Something Old and Blue

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This is another scene from around my town (Eugene). The big tree and background trees were quite a challenge, but I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. For the background I basically just squinted and painted what I saw as simply as possible. But then I guess that's sort of how I paint in general. : )

And speaking of Eugene, I'm giving a talk at the local art supply store next Thursday. If you're in the area, and you have $5, come see me! Here's all the deets.

Sunny Patches

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This is why I love the city - the shadows the buildings make on each other! And the bits of sun in between.This is a scene from San Francisco.

Who Needs a Taxi!?

Click Here to Buy (8x8in. - $350 - includes a free book, my 6th collection of 100 small paintings, from the year 2014!)

So, ok. I tried something new for this one, but it's actually something very old too. And I'm embarrassed to admit it, because it's something I specifically do (and teach) kind of the opposite of. But humility is good for us, right?! So here goes.

For this one I put down the darks first. Crikey! Actually I made a pretty thorough value study with just one dark (a mix of red, blue and yellow), painting in the darks and wiping out the lights. Then I painted on top of that. I think it worked well because 1. it's a dark dominant painting, and 2. there aren't any super saturated colors that I needed to keep "clean." I don't think I would try this method for many of my still lifes, but I will definitely try it again for this kind of scene. I'll explain the benefits in my next post.

View From the Train

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When I was in NYC last spring, I stayed with my good friend, Lois, and every morning we took the train into the city from her house. Along with views of the NYC skyline, we had lots of peeks into neighborhoods and more industrial areas, like this. It was morning, so the shadows were long and blue and poifect. No, it wasn't very social of me to take pictures rather than talk to my friend, but as a fellow artist, she understood.