I found time to paint in my studio on Sunday and Monday and decided to work on a picture from Mattapoisett, after just returning from a visit to my mother. My friend Sarah Brown Miquelle and I painted “this” scene last Wednesday. It’s in quotes, because it didn’t look like this!  It was all green and the resulting photograph was really boring. The trees were all a uniform dark, dull green, and the marshes all the same lighter green. I really liked the composition and I need fall pictures for my galleries, so I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to work from a black and white photo.  The underpainting was all warm colors. I used warm pinky-reds in the sky and let a little of it show through. There are pieces of red in the foreground bushes, which represent the red poisin ivy that was actually there!  And I followed Sarah’s lead and made the sail red, instead of blue.  It was fun to explore fall colors again, even though now, the temperature is hotter than it’s been all summer!

For my friends on the Cape and that area, I’ve been invited to give a one day “winter blahs” workshop in early April for the Pastel Painters Society of Cape Cod. It’s going to be a workshop on working from black and white photos.  It will be a good opportunity to test out the one day workshop I’ll be giving at IAPS.  (I did one before on the Cape using B&W, but that time I supplied the same photo to everyone. This time it will be up to the participants to chose a good photo.)  I’ve added the color photo so you an see the difference.

Color photo, Town Landing, Mattapoisett

Quiet Cove, 16 x 20 Pastelbord

This is the first painting from our recent trip to the Pacific Northwest. We came across this farm just after getting through the coastal mountains on a little-used road. I loved the green door and the reddish roof. Changed the foliage in foreground to lead the eye into the picture using a dirt path. This was done with a hard pastel underpainting and alcohol, my preferred method of working these days. I love painting subjects things like this! Beautiful, but not sentimental (I hope!).

Farm Building Near the Coastal Range, 12 x 16, UART 400

On Tuesday, I emailed the picture of the painting to the person who bought it and I realized that we had had a misconception of ideas. She really wanted to have one of her white pond lilies showing in the picture. I was much more interested in the orange day lilies!  But I realized that filling her wish would not be difficult. I brushed out the bright yellow that was there and put in one bright lily with a few pads, and another not so bright behind the reeds to the right. Then I redid the foliage in front of it to make it fit in. I added a little bright yellow there and also further left to highten the sense of light coming through.  I also lightened and softened the shadow on the grass going off the left, as I thought it was too strong and not a good shape. When you do commissions, you have to expect some changes–hopefully minor, like this one. Of course, I”m not getting paid for this, so I wouldn’t make too many changes!  (This is why I don’t do portraits!!!).  She seemed very happy with the picture otherwise, and hopefully now, will be completely satisfied.

Now to play with some black and white photos in advance of next week’s abstracting the landscape workshop.  It’s a follow up from the one done in April and this time, I’m going to make it a little more difficult!  Stay tuned.

I also want to extend an invitation to you–my readers–to contribute to this blog!  If you have a picture that worked for a particular reason or created an “aha” moment that you’d like to share with the others, please send a good jpg image (s) to me along with a brief writeup in Word.  It can be about the combination of materials, color usage, or whatever you think would be of interest.  Send as attachments in an email to: jeanhirons48@gmail.com  I hope you’ll take advantage of this as I think we would all benefit!  Your name will be in the title of the post. You can remain anonymous if you want, but I hope you will feel comfortable sharing your work with others. I don’t plan to give a critique but others should feel free to make comments.  My guidelines are to be kind, positive, honest and constructive!  The comments on Facebook are worthless–but still nice to get!

Geiser backyard, 16 x 20, pastelbord

Here is the picture that I mentioned yesterday. This is a house in Mattapoisett that I drove by almost every day and finally stopped to film the last day I was there. The front of the house was more complicated with multiple sides and gables and I simplified it. Otherwise, it’s pretty much what was in the photo. I used a mix of violets, grayed browns, and some grayed green Giraults in the house and roof. Worked really well. Actually, much of the picture, other than the sky and light highlights are Girault.  I started with a hard pastel underpainting  with a fairly dark brown in the house.  I didn’t think I was going to like working on the sanded surface, but it really worked and I was happy with it. ( This image looks a little dark to me right now; hopefully will look better in the post.) The composition is all about triangles, including the shape of the sweet peas massing about the fence.

House with Sweet Peas, 20 x 16, UART 500

For the past three years, I have donated a painting from a “photo of your choice” to our church’s spring auction. On Sunday I saw the woman who bid this year and we looked at her garden and photos. I chose one that had a great composition and yesterday I spent most of the day painting it. I took pictures at various stages and thought I would share them with you.  You can see how abstract the initial hard pastel layers are. (I guess if I wanted to be an abstract painting, I’d stop there!) I next work with nothing but Giraults, adding the greens and some violets. Then moved to softer pastels for the highlights on the trees and the flowers.  I told my studio neighbor, Cathy Abramson, that years ago I would have had no idea how to start a painting like this. But by learning to see shapes, it’s made complex subject matter much more doable.  In the final picture, the structure in the background is a tree house that her husband built for the kids. I was happy to get as much into the picture as I could. When I saw the garden on Sunday it was all green and all the same value and temperature!!!  Today I did another painting in the studio that isn’t finished yet, but I’m liking it a lot. Will share when it’s done.

Initial layin with hard pastel before alcohol

Giraults added to underpainting

Final painting–16 x 20, Pastelbord

I’m back from two wonderful weeks in Oregon and Washington State. We were in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast for 5 nights in a house that accommodated 16 members of John’s family, from ages 1 to 89! It was predictably very cold, windy, and sometimes foggy. But I did get some great beach photos one calm morning that I will be using in upcoming paintings. A highlight was a day spent painting with Margaret Bradburn, who lives in Medford, OR. She and her husband Larry came up and we painted all day. I found a place on the Salmon River that was more protected, but even so, there was a lot of wind, blowing over easels and making life difficult!  I’m sharing these 3 plein air paintings with you, untouched since I did them and unsigned.  I brought 2 small plastic boxes of pastels with me. Since I was working on Belgian mist, I began with a dry underpainting using hard pastels in blues, red violets, orangey browns and aquas. I had some Blue Earth blues for the sky and a whole box of Giraults for everything else.  By starting out what was a pretty green landscape with no greens, I found I was able to focus on shapes and values and forget the color.  Then I tried to be a little more realistic with the softer pastels. The second, horizontal painting has nothing but hard pastel in the sky and background. I rather liked the abstract shape and colors and decided to leave it. I began each painting with a dark blue hard pastel, identifying the darks and the flow of shapes and worked very quickly. Even so, our husbands showed up before I’d really had time to finish the second one and the third one was a challenge due to the increasing afternoon wind. In the third one, the upper right represents fog on a mountain and a white cloud; not sure this is very clear.  After Oregon, we were in Washington State on our own, exploring the Olympic Penninsula along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, then spending 1.5 days in Seattle–one of my favorite cities. Chihuly Museum, Panama Hotel, and Smith tower were highlights. Now home in Maryland where it is remarkably cool and pleasant! Hope you are all enjoying your summer.

Salmon river #1, 9 x 12, Wallis Belgian mist

Approaching Fog, 9 x 12, Belgian Mist

Margaret Bradburn

I went to my studio today with a black and white version of a picture I took on the way home in June. This is the same farm I painted three times last winter. I decided I wanted to do it again with summer foliage. And there is a lot of it!  This painting has a completely different feel from the winter scene that I did. And it’s on UART, not the BFK Rives, so the look of it is quite different as well.  Working with B&W allowed me to create a red and green composition, that I often find very pleasing. I think it worked with this. One challenge was the lightness of the roofs and the dark underneath. I tried to soften the edges of the buildings on the left, to keep the eye going up to the right where the silos and barn (for me) are the focal point. The tree in the middle was a challenge as it splits the picture in two. I changed the shape of it, adding the dip in it, which I think makes it more interesting. Then I added bushes with pink flowers in front of it, which helps tie the two groupings of buildings together. I’ve just uploaded the original color photo, so you can see the difference!  I got brave (or foolish) and entered this and 4 other images to the Pastel 100. I fully expect to be rejected yet again!  But, it’s Doug Dawson, and one never knows!

I just completed my three day July workshop. I’ve been doing this every year as a chance to get together with the people I normally work with during the year. I do a demo then work with people for the rest of the time. My demo was of a familiar scene–the two little cedar trees in Mattapoisett that I’ve painted many times. On this recent trip, I saw them for the first time with high tide and reflections, which I loved. So the demo gave me a chance to talk about a lot of things.  I had 12 people, with 3 brand new, so I discussed trees, backgrounds, water and reflections, and grasses.  I did a hard pastel underpainting using oranges in the sky and water and other warm colors under the trees and grass. Used aqua under the sand and the warm stuff on the water.  (I told them I was becoming an expert in scum!!!)  I loved the graduation of colors in the water, particularly the aqua to the left. This morning before filming it, I added darker blues to the bottom to help balance the dark of the trees. I kept the grasses pretty gestural and was happy with that.  It was great to see people again, including some who work and can’t regularly attend classes.  Next Friday I head to Oregon and Washington and hope to do some plein air paintings on the Oregon coast.  Hope you are enjoying your summer and surviving droughts and thunderstorms.

Beach Trees in Summer, 14 x 11, UART 400

I was not completely happy with the first painting I did of the bog. So I decided to do it again, this time on the Rives with liquid primer. I felt that the texture of the Rives would give a better impression of the bog, and I wasn’t happy with the first composition.  This time I practiced what I preached and did a sketch first. Then I went to my studio and worked only from my sketch and memory.  Looking at the two of them, I am not sure that the second is an improvement!  But I’d like your opinion. The sky is darker in the second and made to look more like dusk. I did more with the clouds as well.  One big difference is the dark edge of the bog, which I brought down to the bottom in the second. This time, I also kept the background lighter and less detailed, brushing soft color over it to push it back. I added a dip in the trees to keep it from being straight across and to let more sky show. I don’t really like the stuff growing on the bog, but in both cases, it’s a lot of space to fill in. There were small trees, which I left out of the first, but decided to put  in the second. Perhaps it would be better to just play with color in this area? There are significant differences in the two pictures. Would love to hear which you like best, or what aspect of each you prefer. It was interesting working from just a sketch and memory. I could play with the composition and colors much more freely (whether or not for the good!).

Evening Light on the Bog #1, UART

Evening Light on the Bog #2, Rives

Yesterday I went to my studio and spent the afternoon doing this painting. I grew up with cranberry bogs  down the street. We used to pick wild blueberries in summer and skate on them in winter when they were flooded. Now they are no longer farmed and belong to the Mattapoisett Land Trust. It’s a great area for walking and I took many pictures in early morning and evening. I thought about painting there but was concerned for ticks and other annoying insects!  But I loved this scene that I filmed early on. What I love is the hint of red still in the bogs that I enhanced. I did the entire underpainting in deep reds and browns, except the sky. Worked with both soft pastels and Giraults. I rather like putting on swatches of soft pastel and working them into the surface with the Giraults.  I expanded the flowers in the foreground and added another clump in the distance. I’m not sure what they are!  They aren’t roses, as I originally thought as the flower heads are too large.

I will be working on sanded surfaces for some time, I think. I have a sad story to tell you! After 10+ years of using Art Spectrum liquid primer and washing the brushes in my sink, the pipes to the studio sink and guest shower are completely clogged. We will be having a very expensive and disruptive plumbing job to replace the pipes and the shower!  Oh dear.

But I also think that people like the look of the sanded surfaces better. It seems to be what I sell anyway.  I really love the feel of the homemade surfaces and may go back to them, using a bucket of water to clean my brushes, but will stick to UART and Pastelbord for the time being.

Evening Light on the Bog, 20 x 16, UART 500