Rooftops and Lupines (Stonington, ME), 20″ x 16″, UART 320

Underpainting, stage 1

Underpainting, stage 2

Partially completed

It’s been over a month since I last posted on this blog!  It’s been a really busy time.  I gave the Cloud Workshop in August at the same time as dealing with a family issue that will continue for some time (not my immediately family, fortunately).  After the workshop, I began working on my fall classes. I now have 7 Powerpoint presentations done and 2 of the 7 demos I’ll be doing!  This will all be done on Zoom.  SO–anyone in my time zone can take it!  I’m teaching 3 days a week–Wed., Fri. and Sat. 10-1.  The zoom sessions will last 2 hours with critiques, powerpoint lectures, live exercises, pre-recorded demos and discussion. The last hour will be for one-on-one assistance.  I’m limiting classes to 10 people but still have room in all of them. The classes will consist of 7 color projects dealing with theory and relationships and should be fun.  $275 for the 8 week session beginning the week of Oct. 5th.  If interested, let me know!

Now–for a real painting!  I started this painting last Monday as a demo for a private student and finished it today.  It’s early morning in Stonington, ME on a visit in June 2017. There were no lupines in the photo, but they were blooming everywhere else.

I love the composition–the large shape that reaches up on the right and way back into the distance.  That was what drew me to it.  I also liked the shapes of the roofs and the shadows on them.  My initial thought was to do a green and orange color scheme, as I saw a lot of oranges in the photo.  But then I thought about including lupines and realized that adding violets would give me a triad that would be more balanced and I’m very glad I did it!  The violets made all the difference in this picture.

I decided to start out the underpainting with a lot of warm colors–my typical yellow green in the sky and water, pinks for the roofs, and orange-browns under the foliage. I mixed some dark green in with it and it gave me a lovely deep, warm background for the greens.

For the sky and water, I started with a light blue green, then brushed a very white orange over both.  I added a light violet to the right side of the sky and some to the water as well.  The one challenge I had was the roof colors.  As you can see in the partically completed painting, I started with the idea of an orange roof on the house in the foreground.  It had a light green roof in the photo.  I ended up using a peach and I knew that it wasn’t right.  It just didn’t look like any roof you’d see in Maine!  So the first thing I did today was to brush it off and go with lighter greens, ending with a light yellow green Schmincke that made it really stand out.  For the large roof on the left, I put green on it initially.  Today, I brushed a yellow orange lightly over it and it worked really nicely!  It’s got the same quality of color as the other roofs but more light and orange in it.

The foreground greenery was started with some Ludwig “eggplant”, then some dark greens and a couple values of warm green.  I left out a staircase on the far right that was blocking the sunlit grass and was glad I took it out as it would have added nothing.  I used the light yellow green on the right, then added smaller pieces in front of the house behind the greenery .

For the windows I used combinations of light violets, orange, and greens and loved the combinations they made.

I’m happy with this picture. It speaks to a happy trip that my friend Sarah Miquelle and I took to deliver paintings to a gallery in Blue Hill. I love Maine and miss being able to get to New England.  Hopefully next year.