Category Archives: Garden paintings

The Path to the Pink House

Posted on September 30, 2011 by jennifereyoung| Leave a comment

Finally  (maybe?)  this painting is complete. I am taking it off of the easel at any rate and giving it a rest, as I feel like I have been looking at it for so long  that I can’t see it properly any more.

Monet's Garden painting by Jennifer Young

“Path to the Pink House”
Oil on Canvas, 18×24″
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This is one of the many wildly colorful garden paths leading up to “The Pink House” (Monet’s).  I softened the house and left out some of the finer detail because I wanted it to sit back more in the painting. The scene is set in the diffused light that was so typical of the humid atmosphere we experienced during our visit to Giverny.





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Posted in French Landscapes, Garden paintings

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Monet’s Garden Painting W.I.P.

Posted on September 26, 2011 by jennifereyoung| Comments Off

While it may appear that my poor blog is suffering from benign neglect, I actually have been working on it, albeit on the back end. Recently my blog has been attacked and completely overrun by comment spammers. Hopefully the issue hasn’t  been too evident to readers, but it completely overtook my blog (and my email) for a while . After a few attempts at a “quick fix,” I decided I really had to take the time to do a Wordpress upgrade.

It’s something I should have done a long time ago, but have been loathe to do because it involved a good deal of time that I dearly need in order to attempt any kind of painting these days.  Unfortunately, upgrading has caused me to lose my sitemap and all of my prior post tags, so I am very bummed that I have yet to spend more time trying to figure out what happened to them. Hopefully I can recover them, but otherwise I guess I am looking at manually creating new tags for each post that has been added to my site since the dawn of man. Arrrgh!

Well, thanks for letting me get that off my chest!  I actually do have a painting under way, of Monet’s Garden. Still quite a bit of work yet to do on this 18×24″ canvas, but at least I’ve mapped out the main elements:

Monet's Garden painting work in progress by Jennifer Young

When I have free time in the evenings (which lately isn’t that often) I have been watching a fascinating series of educational videos on the Impressionists produced by the University of Texas at Austin. It’s basically a lecture format, which at first, kind of made me feel like I was back in art history class. But after a while it did draw me in, and it is probably the most through and in-depth investigation on this incredible group of artists that I have seen on DVD. It is so inspiring to go back in time and visit with these incredibly innovative masters (Manet, Monet, Pisarro, Renoir, Degas, Morisot, etc.)

So this was the spark that made me want to revisit my photos of Monet’s garden. It has been a while since I painted this subject matter. What an amazing place ! Hopefully I can finish this painting soon. However, if the weather cooperates and I can find a chance to paint outside, I may do like the Impressionists and forgo the studio to grab the opportunity. We will see….





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Posted in Art books, French Landscapes, Garden paintings, Jennifer's Art Library, The artist's life

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Top ten reasons to paint your back yard garden

Posted on June 2, 2011 by jennifereyoung| 2 Comments
  1. You can paint it better than it actually looks (a few more roses here, a few less weeds there…)
  2. Unlike a public garden, you likely won’t get taken unawares by the sprinkler system.
  3. You are intimately familiar with how the light travels through the garden at different times of the day.
  4. You are intimately familiar with the location of the latrine (and more than likely it will be free and fairly clean.)
  5. You can leave all of your gear set up during breaks (and probably won’t need to get someone to watch your stuff as you break for the above mentioned latrine.)
  6. You can do your part to reduce the carbon footprint (no need to drive anywhere.)
  7. Forgetting to pack an important supply is easily remedied.
  8. Plenty of opportunity to take weeding and pruning breaks (okay, this might not be such a good thing for your painting, but your garden will love it.)
  9. You won’t look like a crazy lady wandering through the park staring at trees, with luggage, a big floppy hat, and a compass. (You’ll just look like a crazy neighbor wandering around her yard with luggage, a big floppy hat, and a compass.)
  10. The reception to the wireless baby monitor extends just to the edge of your yard!

plein air garden painting by Jennifer Young

“Under the Limelight”
Oil on board, 8×6″
Contact me to purchase.

This little painting is kind of a cross between a still life and a plein air painting. The Japanese lantern sits at the corner of my garden under the limelight hydrangea (hence the title.) Since the hydrangea isn’t yet in bloom, I’ve punched up the corner with some potted geraniums.





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Posted in Art of the American South, Garden paintings, Plein Air Painting, Southern Landscapes, Still Life, The artist's life

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Rooftops, St. Cirq Lapopie (final)

Posted on May 23, 2011 by jennifereyoung| 2 Comments

I’ve been struggling with a killer cold or allergy or something for over a week now, so it’s really thrown me for a loop in the studio. But I have now finished the French village painting I have been blogging about in my last couple of posts (here and here). I did not have a chance to take any more progression shots due to the amount of time I lost, so my apologies to those who were following the progression of the work-in-progress.

French village landscape painting St Cirq Lapopie

“Rooftops, St. Cirq Lapopie”
Oil on Linen, 30×24″
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There was a certain quality of light I was after in this painting…a slight haziness that comes on a warm day when the sun begins to filter through the clouds after a soft rain (the weather when I visited there could best be described as “changeable”!) So there are a soft edges and  close values to tackle, especially in the middle and far distance.

St. Cirq Lapopie is a fortressed village dating back to the Middle Ages. Sitting high above the Lot River, it is, as I mentioned in my prior post,  dripping with so much charm that it really does invoke fairy tales of knights and damsels in distress!Narrow cobbled streets wind their way through cliffsides, leading up to a fortressed peak that allows stunning views of the steep tiled rooftops and the Lot valley.





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Posted in Art Travels, French Landscapes, Garden paintings, Painting Demonstrations, The artist's life

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St. Cirq Rooftops WIP (cont’d)

Posted on May 16, 2011 by jennifereyoung| 3 Comments

As it turned out, there was too much weather and too little opportunity to do any plein air painting last week. But I have been plugging away at my studio painting of St. Cirq La Popie. The images below show my continued progress thus far.

Laying in my lightest passages, I worked on the sky and distant cliffs and ruins first. Next, I started on my rooftops. In this region, I noticed that there were a lot of gray-blue undertones along with the terra cotta-tiled rooftops, so I experimented with laying in a gray base to start. I am not really sure if doing so helped me or hindered me, but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

France landscape painting in progress by Jennifer Young

St. Cirq Lapopie

France landscape painting in progress by Jennifer Young

France landscape oil painting by Jennifer Young

At this point, I need to refine, work on the garden, and bring out my highlights, so this is what I’ll be working on today. This painting is all angles and not much actual landscape, so my progress has been a little slow going at times. Nevertheless, the composition and the concept interest me. I do miss plein air painting, but I have decided I need to make the most of being studio-bound by experimenting, working on new challenges,  and working out some new ideas. 





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Posted in French Landscapes, Garden paintings, Painting Demonstrations, Painting Technique

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