Wild Roses, 14″ x 11″, UART 320

Rose Hips, 14″ x 11″, UART 320

On Tuesday I spent a day at the studio and it was lovely!  I hadn’t picked up a pastel in some time. I’ve been teaching a workshop on drawing the landscape as preparation for painting and my focus has been on that–and my mother’s service, which was last week.  The workshops are over and were quite successful. So I decided it was time to paint.  First I finished off a painting I had begun in early July, then I did  a new painting. Both are from the same location from pictures taken in June and August.  In June the weather was beautiful and we had just been at my mother’s 99th birthday party.  Things seemed good.  In August, of course, I was there for her service and it was a sadder time.  In June the roses were in bloom and filled the air. What we saw in August was the beautiful rose hips.  So I focused on these two things.  Both paintings are from the Slocum River Preserve in North Dartmouth, Mass. A beautiful place to walk and paint.

Both were done with underpaintings, which for some reason my cell phone is refusing to send to my email account!  I particularly liked the one for Rose Hips. The sky was done with yellow green and the background trees were all violet.  It gave a real mood to the picture.

In the Wild Roses painting, the photo showed the house at the top of the hill. When I went to paint it, I decided that it needed more, so I lowered it a bit and added an extra filed and another layer of foliage.  All of the foliage in the back is done with the same blue green over the underpainting. I purposely kept it flat, a little stylized.  For the foreground, I decided to not get too detailed and put it in fairly quickly.  I did the same thing with the second picture.  I wanted the effect of leaves without too much detail.

I decided to use green in the sky in Rose Hips, influenced by my underpainting and the desire to make this a nostalgic, more moody picture.  I really liked it and used a little darker green in the field. I used mainly Giraults.  I simplified the farm house and liked the effect of the reddish roof, over which I added some green to keep it down.  I worked quickly with the bush in the foreground, adding the orange rose hips last.

I had no printed photo for these. I just propped up my ipad on an easel near my working easel, but didn’t look at it a whole lot as I was diverging so much from the photo!  I find that not having the photo right next to the painting makes it easier for me to focus on the painting and am not as likely to copy the photo.

This fall’s classes will focus on composition and mood, so I’ve been thinking about both lately.  I do think that these two paintings have very different moods, primarily due to the color of the skies.  I’ll start teaching Sept. 22 (Sat.), 24 (Mon.) and 26 (Wed.).  Looking forward to seeing old friends and working with newcomers as well.

Happy Labor Day weekend!  With this heat, I’m not too sad to see summer ending.  A long, cool fall would be most welcome!

Jean