Winter Watercolor Blues

Mother nature often arranges her world in such a tidy manner. As an artist I eliminate large amounts of what is visible so that the viewer has the pleasure of imagining more than they see with the naked eye.

Often I imagine more than what is in front of me and sometimes I have a hard time deciding if I should, or should not, add my mental wanderings. I'm thinking I should enjoy tackling this scene again and include the imaginary house way up the hill. It only exists in my mind but then again there just may be a lovely cabin up there just over the top? Was it man or beast who made the tracks going into, or out of, the woods?

Using masking fluid, I was able to preserve the white of the paper and avoided using white paint. It is time consuming but I enjoy it never the less. I worked from a photo but the scene was also visible from my window. Near the completion of the painting I decided to add sparkle paint to emphasize what I saw and felt. I don't know if it made any difference to any viewers but it sure did brighten up my winter blues! Does anything else really matter when all is done?

Watercolor - Commissioned Works

I had been accepted into The Artisans Gallery for a year or two when the owner of the building saw my work and wanted to have an arrangement of 4 pieces. She came to me with her vision of what she wanted and told me she had picked out 2 paintings in the shop and wanted 2 more to go with them.

She had the Village along RT 100 and a side view of The Waitsfield Covered Bridge.

At first she asked me to do another of the bridge and include a big tree on the left. I told her I could give it a try but there was a good reason I hadn't included that tree in all the paintings I had done of that bridge. She accepted that and explained she wanted a painting of the view from the face of the bridge looking towards RT 100 that included her green building on the left. The other view she wanted was looking down the alley between her building and The Spotted Cow restaurant next door. Her vision included warm summer night with people eating outside while others were walking by just enjoying the evening. I told her I was confident about painting the view from the bridge but couldn't guarantee the other one. Putting people in my images is something I rarely do. I also couldn't see this image fitting in with the others she chose.

The quad shows the view from the bridge in the upper left with The Village on RT 100 on the right. After completing the view of the alley I decided to bring along a painting I took off my wall hoping to show her that the alley painting didn't belong in the quad. I never intended to sell "The 1833 Covered Bridge" but it was the perfect piece to finish the quad, so I let it go.

In the end the painting of the night time alley scene ended up on another wall. She was very happy with it by itself. It had been a difficult painting for me to create but I enjoyed the challenge and the final outcome.

It is coming up on 4 years this coming summer since I created these works. It was a fabulous experience and a great boost to my creative self worth at a time when I really needed a boost. I have done other commissioned work but this is the one I will never forget.

Watercolors - Happy New Year's Eve

Another year under my belt. Literally! I don't own belts anymore. Painting isn't aerobic.Wouldn't it be great if every time I picked up a brush I burned off 100 calories! We'd have many more artists if that would be the case.

This is a nude watercolor I did a few years ago. I went to a class in Montpelier being given by Billy Brauer. More about him later. I was the only artist using watercolors. I'd notice other artists taking peeks at my work as the time passed. Seems they don't see many people using watercolor in life drawing classes.

Billy is an accomplished oil painter and his name known in many art circles.We've known one another since I took my first life drawing class from him back in the mid 70's. So it was fun being in one of his classes again. I wish Montpelier wasn't over 30 miles away, and I was comfortable driving that far in winter and at night, because I would love to go to classes all the time.

Notice all the different colors needed to create skin tones. There is a lot of painting wet into wet in order to soften edges creating roundness. The background is pure imagination on my part. Laying on a blanket looking out at water and sky?

Watercolor and Winter

It doesn't look like this up here yet. But it will. Skiers paradise. Big challenge for watercolor artists.

I painted this from a photo during the winter of 2001. I was border- line insane anyway, so why not? This painting was a lesson in patience. There is absolutely no way anyone should attempt to do this outdoors. I know people do set up and paint watercolors outside in the winter up here. But this winter scene uses the white of the paper for all the whites and I doubt anyone could stay outside long enough to pull this off before freezing to death.

There are a minimum of 4 layers of color applied over 2 layers of masking. I added my German Shepard Dog, Sadie, at the end in order to give the viewer something to measure the whole scene by. This painting is also large by my standards. It is 22 X 30 inches, known as a full sheet.

Of course, once I put my dog in the painting, I couldn't put a price on it and so the painting now belongs to my son.

Watercolors_ to paint or not to paint

There are so many moments when I would just love to have nothing else to do but paint. Then there are plenty of moments when I have nothing else to do but I also don't have the slightest desire to do anything.

More often than not, life just gets in the way of having large chunks of time to spend uninterrupted making art. I wish I could arrange the time, and myself, so that I would know in advance that I have a minimum of four hours that will be just for me to set my butt down and feel like painting.

This is one of many reference photos that I have told myself I will do a painting from. I was walking with my friend taking our dogs out to the end of her field behind her house in Waitsfield. It was one of those rare days of perfection. The tree jumped out at me as if I were wearing 3D glasses. But it was the fence that convinced me to take the photo. I love old fences and without the fence this wasn't all that interesting an image to me. You agree?

2008 was a lousy year for trying to get outside to paint. Spring and Summer were non stop months of rain. I drove around with my supplies in my Jeep but never took them out. Mother nature decided to bless us with a glorious Fall and it lasted for a wonderfully long space of time. Seeing the beautiful, outrageous, colors is one thing. Painting them is another thing altogether. Sometimes it seems impossible that what I am seeing is real and if I painted what I am seeing somebody might want to have me locked up for being insane.

Those leaves have been replaced with snowflakes and that is another story.

Watercolors - Early Years

I thought it might be interesting to look at some early examples of works from the workshops I took. For reasons unknown to me I don't have the common fear of painting the sky. However, like many newbies I didn't have a clue how to paint the greens. Each one of these paintings has one color in it that does not exist in nature, Thalo green. This is a staining dye and must be combined with another color for it to be believable as a color in nature. For me this was lesson #1 and I have struggled with painting greens ever since.

In this painting I got very involved with the foreground and without thinking zapped those trees with thalo once again. I even managed to put thalo in the distant mountains!

This was painted before the other two examples. I did get the hang of mixing greens eventually. In this image I handled the tones/values correctly but my, oh my, look at those ugly green lollipop trees. I guess I was really impressed with the clay pot in the right foreground too. Not only does it stick out like a sore thumb it is also holding an impossible tree.





One other thing you should know about these staining dye paints, not only do they stain the paper, they will stain just about any porous surface/material. I have a friend who was not paying attention to the fact that her long necklace was dangling into her palette and when she stood up straight she ended up creating a permanent abstract painting across the chest of the pale yellow blouse she was wearing.

Watercolors-watermark test

I painted this as a result of reading about using Art as a way of healing the soul. Since I was trying to find my way out of a bad turn in my life, I figured it was worth a try.

These eyes have been doodled by me for years beyond count. I decided to paint them and just let myself go. I haven't shown the piece outside of friends and family before now because it seemed too personal and strange. While I still see it as strange, it doesn't bother me to share it any longer. Maybe someone else will identify with it.

The question is: Did I put a watermark on the piece or not?