View from my back door, painted ‘live’. Oil on Arches Oil Paper.
I’m kind of a housebody (take after my grandmother Ceci), so I don’t often paint ‘plein air’. While my art buddies were out painting in the hot summer sun, I decided to paint what I see out of my back door window daily.
I’m thinking that lovely blue sky is too cheerful for the mood of the painting. What do you think??
Here’s another of my paintings to be featured at the Writers Center exhibit, opening in late June. A ‘plein air’ painting (done in the great outdoors) painted along S Street, NW, DC, in a workshop offered by Carol Rubin, another wonderful artist.
S Street Lollipops. Oil on Linen Panel.
I’m honored to have been selected again for inclusion in the second annual Hill Center Regional Juried Exhibition. The judge this year is Philip Kennicott, Art and Architecture Critic for The Washington Post. Here’s my painting, one of 65 works selected from over 450 works submitted by almost 100 artists. I must admit – I was surprised!
Blazing Canal. Gouache on Paper.
Beautiful Memorial Day weekend, leisurely breakfast at the kitchen table, spotting a bird flitting away from the weeping cherry next door. Just had to do a quick celebratory iPad painting of the tree — now decked out in its full greens, beautifully offset by the juicy dark shadows under the flowing branches. Have a good, peaceful and remembering weekend.
Weeping Cherry. original iPad painting.
Yesterday I read an interesting post by Daniel Gerhartz about the hubris of ‘needing’ to paint a grandiose image, while neglecting the “profound, staggering elegance of the subject right before my eyes”.
matching trees and white clouds outside my window on a drowsy spring morning. original iPad painting.
He’s talking my walk. I love looking at everything in my path. Right before seeing Dan’s post I had been mentally composing an image based on the condiment bottles before me on the kitchen table.
The sunlight was falling ‘just so’ on the tops of their caps, making stair-steps of light down through the bottles shaded by the window will. It would make the perfect line drawing or a juicy value painting.
salt and pepper shakers, meeting their match in the napkin holder. original iPad painting.
And looking up and out the window I noticed that distant treetops were the same yellow-brown-green as my neighbor’s weeping cherry, now that its flowers had fallen. And gorgeous clouds were slowly sweeping across a strong blue sky.
In honor of Dan and the daily, I decided to grab my iPad and make a few sketches of the loveliness at my fingertips. I also took some pix of the stair stepping bottle tops — they deserve a painting on canvas!
stairs on my table.
This is based on a photo of our front yard after our wonderful Japanese maple has done its Fall drop. It only lasts a day or so, but what a show!!
Maple Leave Fall. iPad.
I was conjuring a warm, sunny day with this one, too. Every time I visit Los Angeles I fixate on the palms. I’ve got a thing for them. This one took a lot less time than the C&O Canal painting, but it also had its challenges. Wispy fronds and barely-there cloud fringes . . . .
Palms of LA. iPad.
I hauled out my iPad quite a bit over the last month. Thought I’d share a few, bit by bit. As our days grew shorter and chillier, I started conjuring a scene from our C&O Canal walks last Summer. This was a real challenge, with all the different elements and reflections.
C & O Canal in Summer. iPad.
What was under the water’s calm surface was just as interesting as the shadows falling across the surface and the contrasting views posed by the two banks. It’s time to clean this baby up again!
Here’s a new painting I made in gouache a few weeks ago — thinking it would appeal to people who love the C & O Canal as much as Pat and I do. It’s based (loosely) on a photo I made last Fall on one of our walks. Pat can’t get much exercise when I’m constantly ‘braking’ to take shots like these!
I decided to hang mostly gouaches this time, with only singles of oil paintings and iPad giclees. (There will be many more matted & backed in the bins, though, along with lots of greeting cards printed with some of my favorite paintings.) Remember: Saturday & Sunday noon to 5, with reception from 6 to 8pm on Saturday. Yellow Barn Studio, at Glen Echo Park.
Now, here’s a look at the other pieces that will be framed and available to bring home at show’s end:
I’ve done a few iPad images lately — good fun while sitting around at night. I just finished a drawing with the ArtRage pencil tool of a sprinkle of fairy lilies against a background clump of ornamental grasses.
Fairy Lilies, original iPad painting, 2013, 1:1 aspect ratio
And I also had fun doing a more stylized rendition of Pat’s scarecrow standing in our garden, stopping passersby with its cuteness, but doing nothing to deter the critters from eating our veggies. Pat actually built this wooden adjustable man, based on one our son Sam had seen in a magazine and really wanted. Sam enjoyed it for years and then Will inherited it. Pat has now re-clothed it in his old duds for scarecrow duty.
And I did a quick wild fun sketch of the ballpark when Pat and I went to an Oriole’s game in Baltimore last weekend.
