I finished my second alley painting today.  I worked primarily from a black and white photo but knew that the background buildings were white and red and that the trash cans were blue. I used the liberty of the B&W photo to supply the colors to the buildings on the left and the snow colors.  I also gave serious consideration to the greenery–something not expected in a February picture with snow!  I decided that these must be magnolias, or other evergreens.  The colors in the photo were warmer but I chose to use dark blues and cool greens to keep them in more of a winter palette.  This alley is a continuation of the first one I painted. It’s on the other side of East Capitol Street.  I found it interesting that the alley in the color photo of the first appeared to be more greenish, while this one was definitely red!  It doesn’t really matter.  I liked using the cool red in the alley and added red in the right foreground.  The green in the building on the left is one color added over a green underpainting.  I found that it worked perfectly with the other colors in the painting and chose not to add anything else to it. I had the most fun with the trash cans–putting them where I wanted, and removing a few to let the alley move off to the left in the distance.  I used a royal blue, which is a color I love!

In beginning this second series of DC paintings, I realized that I’m on to something that is quite different from my regular work. I’ve decided to set up an overarching series called “The Insider’s Washington” that will consist of various series of paintings.  With the Georgetown Canal series and this new alley series, I think I have a growing body of work that is good for reproduction. So I plan to make giclee reproductions for these and market them differently than I do my regular paintings.  I’m really excited about this. I’ve always loved Washington and this gives me the chance to continue exploring it with a new eye to possibilies!

Alley with Blue Trash Cans, 24 x 20, Pastel Premiere 400

Just completed this spring painting of a house in Rockville with tulips and a few azaleas in the background. I am not a springtime painter!  While I love the beauty of the cherry blossoms, dogwoods, and azaleas that the Washington area is blessed with every April and May, they don’t inspire me to paint them.  I much prefer the color of the early buds on the trees, perhaps a sprig of dogwood amid woods, and that sort of thing. The blaze of azaleas is just too much and the cherry blossoms are primarily white!  I kept coming back to this picture because I liked the shape of the simple bungalow house, the angle of the tree, and the shape of road and angle of street sign.  The stones in the garden also added a nice curve, leading the eye into the background.  These are the things that excite me!  I changed the color of the house. It was a light blue and I didn’t think it would add much to the picture, so I changed it to a grayed orange. My students think this looks more like Bermuda than Rockville, but I like it the way it is!  I did an underpainting with some of the local color and some warm browns in the foreground.

House with Tulips, 16 x 20, Pastelbord

Today I completed the first painting in a new series of DC-based paintings.  I’ve decided to create an ongoing series called “The Insider’s Washington” in which I will do series of paintings on a particular topic, such as the canal in Georgetown, and now alleys.  I’m quite excited about this!  I will make reproductions of these paintings as well and hope to market them to a more commercial market.  We’ll see!

Anyway, for this painting, I had only a vertical shot that covered very little of the right side! But I decided that I wanted to stay with the 20 x 24 format and figured I could expand what I was seeing.  The shape of the shadow on the right was really important to me.  I decided early on, based on the color in the photo, that this would be a red and green painting. For the underpainting, I used red under green and green under red.  I did not use an underpainting for the sky or top of the painting. I went directly into painting it with a light green and a very light Ludwig pink over that. The white of the snow is also a very light pink, keeping with the color scheme.

This was not an easy picture!  The windows on the left were probably the most difficult part and, interestingly, this is the house that belongs to my old colleague and good friend from the Library of Congress, Regina Reynolds!  We ran into her when we (Sunny Alsup and I) were filming the alley. She seemed amazed that anyone would want to film this.  Fortunately, Sunny and I both have a love of gritty subjects that can be made beautiful!

The grittiness of the paper really helped with this painting. I used my Ludwig “vibrants” set for the reds and other Ludwigs in most of the greens.  They aren’t quite as soft and didn’t fill in all the holes, letting some of the green show through, which tempers the reds.  This is a good paper for this kind of urban setting, I think.  Some other notes on the final painting. The building at right abutting the fence was brown. I started out with that color, then added some red into it, feeling the need to balance all the reds on the left.  The light was hitting the part in the back that I’ve made orange more strongly than anything else. However, oddly, there was light on the both sides of the buildings facing the alley. It was about 1:00, sun directly overhead, and it was like the sun was streaming down the alley!  I’ve started working on another and you can expect to see more alleys in the future, along with pretty pictures, of course!

Snow-covered Alley, Capitol Hill, 20 x 24, Pastel Premiere 400

Underpainting using opposing colors

I completed another painting from the cranberry bog today, this time a bigger one–16 x 20. I didn’t take a photo of the underpainting but I’m including the photograph that I worked from.  My one big change is to add a road that leads into the picture and towards the background. Looking at the two, I can also see that the trees don’t seem quite as large. I was trying hard not to divide the painting in two!  For the underpainting, I used primarily local color–dark blue, blue greens and greens, with aqua under the road area. I used  dark greens in the foreground, which made it easy to work on top.  The sky and flowers were done with Schminckes and other soft pastels. Everything else is Girault.  I found it very easy to do the grasses in the foreground with various Giraults, then add the softer pieces of yellow on top.  This might not have been so easy with a softer pastel used in the greens.  This time I also chose to include the trees in the underpainting and liked the effect.  It’s so nice to paint spring/summer!  Low 60s here today and it’s feeling like spring at last.  I think I may do more paintings from this group of photos.

June Yellows, 16 x 20 Pastelbord

Reference photo

Another snow storm is hitting here and going to Eastern Massachusetts as well.  I did a demo for my Wednesday class yesterday and decided that a picture from my June walk in Mattapoisett would be appropriate! This is the old Decas Bros. cranberry bog, which is now part of the Mattapoisett Land Trust. It’s a wonderful area to walk and film.  I wanted to include the original photo but I can’t find it in my file!  And, I forgot to film the underpainting, but I’ll explain what I did.  First, the composition. I left out a large evergreen tree on the right side that didn’t add to the composition, and also omitted background trees on the left side. I also made the foreground bushes larger.  There were flowers at back left, but very few in the foreground, so I new I would add more.

I was doing a first time underpainting demo for one of my new students, as well as reacquainting my other students with the reasons why I do an underpainting. For me, it becomes a road map, and is essential to the creative process.  Underpaintings create value shapes that define the composition and they can provide interesting color to work against.  For this one, I chose two values of orange hard pastel for the sky and an aqua for the foreground path.  I chose not to do any underpainting for the trees, leaving them as just charcoal.  I then used a dark blue, a blue green, and a warm green to lay in the bushes and a sienna for the foreground grasses.  (In the photo, the foreground grasses are a very light green with light red violet grass heads.)  The colors in this painting are an analogous palette with green in the middle, extending to blue green and blue on one side, and yellow greens, yellows, and some orange on the other. I found it pleasing to work with.

The trees were the biggest challenge.  I wanted to keep them relatively light, but until I added some dark blue, they didn’t come alive. I did  a lot of going back and forth with sky and trees and was just as happy that I hadn’t done an underpainting of the trees. The underpainting in the road, however, really was helpful.  I left a number of pieces of aqua showing and liked the effect. I also left a little of the orange peaking through in the sky.  The small flowers in the foreground were added with very soft small pieces of Schmincke.  I really enjoyed doing this demo and reliving my lovely walks there last June.  Now for some tulips while the snow is falling very heavily!

Bog Flowers, 11 x 14, UART 400

Charcoal lay-in

Iris and Tulips, 12 x 12

Charcoal lay-in

Underpainting before alcohol

Underpainting with alcohol

It’s another lousy day and there will be snow on Thursday. So I went out and bought flowers this morning–this bunch of iris with large parrot tulips and pink tulips that I hope will open up.  It’s nice to have the excuse to surround yourself with flowers in such dreary, cold weather!  These were tall and in a tall vase, and I thought about doing an 18 x 24, but I just couldn’t see doing such a large flower painting!  So I decided to stick with the 12 x 12 boards and just do the top.  I liked the way the tulips draped down over the vase, giving a more interesting composition.  I started with charcoal and used a brush and water to set it. Then I used my Holbeins alone for the underpainting. These go on nicely and they aren’t too soft, so they work very nicely with the alcohol. Plus, there is a nice array of colors. For the shadows of the tulips, I used a combination of a warm green, cool green, dark orange, and some violet.  The light part is a number of different yellow Schminckes.  The Giraults don’t do much on this surface (Art Spectrum liquid primer).  So I stuck to pretty soft pastels throughout, occasionally using a Girault to smooth out the color. For the iris, I started out with various red violets, then added magentas, pinks, and oranges to liven them up.  Painting flowers doesn’t come naturally to me!  More detail and fuss than I normally like to deal with–I like big shapes and flowers have lots of little shapes!  However, it IS fun to do them from time to time, particularly now.  Hope to get a third one done during our Thursday snowstorm then have them for the opening at the studio on Friday night.

This is the third Sunday in a row with miserable weather and a cancelled class.  So I decided to have fun and work with some color!  I have a small bouquet of flowers that I decided to paint. I brushed Art Spectrum liquid primer (clear) onto a 12 x 12 piece of 8-ply mat board, then did a charcoal lay-in.  For the underpainting I used a combination of Holbeins, which I’ve had since 2003 but haven’t used much lately, and some Caran d’ache hard sticks (very hard!).  The Holbeins worked nicely for the underpainting. I’m showing it here before and after the alcohol so you can see the colors.  I really wanted to keep this painting loose. I don’t like painting flowers highly realistically.  (I love the abstracted floral paintings of Deborah Stewart and would love to do something more like what she does!)  For this small painting, I tried to gesturally express the darker and lighter colors.  My biggest problem was the shape of the cast shadow, which changed many times. (Still not particularly happy with it, now that I look at it!)  I used a combination of cool greens and magentas to express the color. Also used a mix of cool greens and pinks/oranges in the background.  Used my Terry Ludwig “vibrants” set a lot in this one.  I’ve always had a hard time working with cool reds.  Where the light hits them, the color is quite vibrant, but if you use a lighter cool red, it looks dull. You have to go to a warmer orange, but then it doesn’t look like the color!  So I had to give up and just use my instinct and knowledge of color theory to try to make it work.  I LOVED doing this little painting! It was good to work from life and use a mix of both observed and intuitive color.  I also loved working on my textured surface again and being able to brush color over color.  This surface doesn’t hold as much pastel as the sanded surfaces, but it’s great to work with and helps loosen me up.  I have 2 more boards prepared. Not sure what I’ll do next.  Hope you are enjoying your weekend.  Looking forward to 63 degrees on Wednesday, even if it is to rain!

Flower Painting 1 (no title yet!), 12 x 12

Underpainting without alcohol

Underpainting with alcohol

I’ve just spent several hours in my studio completing this painting that I began on Monday. It’s from my photo shoot at Great Falls on the 17th.  I loved the position of the tavern and the tire tracks and shadows leading to the building. But the photograph was really dull: blue sky and gray snow. So I decided to work from the black and white photo. My original thinking was to make it be later in the day with yellow in the sky, playing against the violets in the snow.  I wasn’t sure where to go with the underpainting, so I decided to begin by toning the board with burnt sienna watercolor. It faded very quickly!  You can see it in the building in the underpainting. I decided I couldn’t proceed without an underpainting, so I used hard pastels and alcohol. I went warm under the trees, and used three values of blue greens under the sky.  My thinking for the color scheme was that it would be blue violet, blue green, and yellow orange.  I wanted the center of interest to be the wall of the tavern where the light is hitting it. I quickly realized that if the light was behind the building, there was no way that it could be hitting the front of it, nor would the shadows work.   After observing several sunsets out of my dining room window, I saw a lot of green in the sky further from the sun and and also noted that the snow was still relatively light. So I decided to use various greens in the sky and use warm yellow oranges in the trees to indicate the light hitting them from the left.  I made several changes to the composition–increasing the size of the building, removing a number of trees, and the benches and light posts. I did include several people walking on the path, in between the two central trees.  I tried to integrate color by adding some cool blues in the shadows of the building and some warm brown in the shadows in the tire tracks. I used a combination of blue violet and blue green for the snow. The only yellows are in the edge of the track and in the building. I used one of the Art Spectrum tinted whites to do the paw prints in the lower right. I worked a lot on this picture, continually tweaking it until I finally decided it was OK.

Reference photo

Great Falls Tavern in Winter, 16 x 20, Pastelbord

Underpainting done with hard pastel and alcohol

Lock and Snow, Great Falls, 16 x 20, Pastelbord

  Very cold and windy today and spent the entire day in my home studio working on this painting, that I plan to enter into the IAPS Master Circle show.  I did the preparation yesterday, including charcoal lines added lightly and then hard pastels.  I decided to try something different and used Turpenoid to melt the pastel. I loved the way it spread the pigment, particularly in the background where I had used multiple colors. Couldn’t wait to begin painting it.  HOWEVER, I soon discovered that what I had created was a fairly slick surface. I lost the tooth of the Pastelbord and had a really hard time with anything other than really soft pastels.  I tried to start with Giraults, and did the entire background with them, but found that they felt like hard pastels. I ended up using primarily Schminckes, Great Americans, and Senneliers. Even the Ludwigs were too hard!  Various people have mentioned using Turpenoid (I thought) so I was really surprised at this.  The dark blue was the worst area and I’m wondering if it wasn’t a pastel!  (I have only a small box of hard pastels here at home now.) Anyway, I was able to complete the painting and just hope that the pastel won’t fall off!!!  I really enjoyed the process, but next time I’ll do a test run!!!  Hope you are all staying warm.

C & O Canal, Georgetown, #6, 24 x 20, Pastel Premiere 400

Underpainting

 This is my final painting in the series of canal paintings. I used two different photos for this one. One was horizontal and closer up, featuring the light on the water, but also a whole lot of wall on the left that had little interest. The second was vertical with the building on right. I did two charcoal studies, horizontal and vertical and decided quickly on the vertical, but used the horizontal photo for the area of light on the water. The composition in this painting is unlike anything I’ve ever done, I must say!  The color was another challenge. The photos were very dark and spoke to me of red violet. But I really liked the varying colors in the windows from blue, to yellow green, to orange.  I did an underpainting using primarily greens with some red violets. It looked awful!  But it proved to be fine. When I started putting in the buildings, I began with a light magenta, but found it to be too bright. So I used red and blue violets on over it and it was much better. I used the complementary warm greens in the grass strip of the two path, and in the light on the water. I also added dark greens into the wall on the right.

Yesterday I gave a discussion on choosing a color palette to my Wednesday class in the studio. The unfinished painting was on the easel. We looked at the standard color wheel and the red violet/yellow green complementary palette. But there is more color here. Then we looked at the Analogous Color Wheel. Choosing purple as the primary color, I had a palette of red and blue violets, with a complement of green, and discords of yellow orange (windows and path) and blue green (sky, water, windows)!  Very interesting. It proves once again the usefulness of this color wheel.

This series has been a real challenge and it’s been fun. I’ve been creating unusual compositions and painting more industrial scenes. I’ve always liked this kind of subject matter but until now hadn’t found something I really wanted to paint.  I have to say that at this point I’m ready to return to a “pretty” landscape!  But I look forward to exploring more areas of DC and painting them.