The Potted Garden, Pienza (painting complete)

With school out for the Thanksgiving holiday, my studio time has been a little dicey. But now that we are back in session I have managed to wrap up my posting about the Pienza painting from earlier last week. Before I dive into painting the potted plants, I finish up the main architectural features of the painting-- the final touches on the windows and doors, and completing the distant bench.

 Now let's move onto the flowers!

Here is the final:

"The Potted Garden, Pienza" Oil on panel, 12x12" Click here for more info!

The hill town of Pienza is lovely for a number of reasons. First, it overlooks the gorgeous Tuscan valley called the Val d'Orcia. Second, like so many of these small towns,  the whole village is oozing with charm and dripping with flowers, just like the scene I have painted. Third, it is the home of Pecorino cheese! Need I say more?

Shadows, doors and floors

Here is a little progress on my painting of the Tuscan street scene I posted a sketch of in my last entry. Now that I have my design, I am ready to start laying in some color. My palette is fairly expansive, which I tend to do in the studio when I am more pressed for time. Here I'm using a few convenience colors in addition to my basic primary palette of red/yellow/blue. My colors for this piece are Titanium White, Cad Yellow light, Cadmium Red Light and Medium, Alizarin Permanent, Ultramarine Blue, Sevres Blue, (Rembrandt- kind of like Cerulean but a bit brighter with more tinting strength),  Gold Ochre (also Rembrandt brand- like Raw Sienna but warmer and more golden; yum) and Burnt Sienna (tonal sketch only). I start by laying in more concretely the pattern of shadow and light. I really love the way the shadows from the potted flowers spill onto the stone wall and red door:

 I use lots of the Gold Ochre for the wall, mixed with both blues and Alizarin in varying degrees, as the stone has lots of warmth but lots of variation in it too. For the door I started out with pure Cadmium Reds in the sunlit area, but whoa! I then decided to mute this a bit with touches of white and a tiny bit of yellow plus Sevres Blue to give it a more authentic sun-washed look. The door in shadow is a mix of Cad Red Medium, plus Ultramarine and Alizarin.  Next I start to lay in some of stone bench:

As you can see, I use violets in the shadows (Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin, plus touches of  white and yellow) to contrast with the bright warmth of the sunlit stone.

The bench established, I add a little more texture to the stone wall and then begin to lay some pavers. Even though they are terra cotta- colored pavers, they are still very light in value in relation to the wall. I've cooled them off with a bit of  Sevres Blue as they recede, to send them back and lay them down where they belong. Next I'll start working on the potted plants and add some more color to the scene. Stay tuned!

New Italian village painting

I really enjoyed the square format of my last painting, so I thought I'd experiment with another one--this time set in the rustic hill town of Pienza in Tuscany, Italy. Here's the compositional sketch so far. I threw a  lot of angles and right edges in there to make it interesting. ;-)

Pienza Hillside (WIP complete)

Well this painting has actually been completed for a little while now, but thanks to Hurricane Irene, we had been without power for over a week up until yesterday. Here is the final version of the Italian landscape work-in-progress I shared in my prior post:

"Pienza Hillside" Oil on Linen, 24x30"

I will keep this post brief today so that I can do a bit of clean up. From the looks of it you would think the eye of the hurricane passed right through the middle of my studio!

This week on the easel: Val d'Orcia W.I.P.

Just a quick post to share what is in progress on the easel this week: My studio time (which includes painting, but also varnishing and framing, website updates, emails, blogging, photography, sales/marketing, office work, etc.) is now limited to a few hours every other weekday. Painting takes precidence, but every now and then I really must play catch-up with "everything else". So it was with Monday, and I only had time to do the layout in sepia:

Upon my return to the easel, I tackeled the block-in (first pass) which is still mainly shadows and midtones:

Time ran out before I was able to get to the hilltop buildings, but I was happy to have covered the rest of this 24x30" canvas in about 3 1/2 hours. Because I can't always get back to an "open" painting, I at least want to return to a canvas that is brought to the same level of completion in all areas.

This is a view I have painted before (a number of years ago) and I am returning to it now to see if I can use a looser approach. There is quite a bit of information in this scene, and my aim is to relay a feeling of the variety in the landscape of Tuscany, but in a more unified, simplified manner, without articulating everything in minute detail.

Tuscan Vineyard (remaining progress pics & final)

Here are the final images for the Tuscan Vineyard W.I.P. I have been posting about. Again, the progress images are not color corrected, though the final is. The linen canvas I used originally had a clear primer on it (as opposed to a white gesso). While it is an archival product, the surface seemed more absorbant, so I applied a couple of additional layers of my own white gesso (and sanded in between) to get the paint to sit better on the top. Even so, it still ended up with more of a surface texture, which compelled me to use a lot of thick paint. As a result, I had a really hard time photographing this painting because I kept getting glare in some spot or another.

Okay, now that I'm done with my disclaimers, I'll wrap this up! Having worked out my compositional problems, I next spent a good deal of time developing the treeline in the middle distance.

My aim is to keep the edges soft but defined. I want to lead the eye to the out-building, and not distract from it, so I put slightly more definition in the pale sivery trees directly behind the building.

Next I work my way forward again, to resolve the farmland around the building.

And finally, I put the finishing touches on the vineyard.

"La Vigna Privata" (The Private Vineyard) Oil on Linen, 24x30"

A small commission, with just weeks away...

Given how long it has been since I've posted anything new here at all, I am almost embarrassed to write another "yes I'm still here" post. But here goes! The baby is now less than a month away from her due date and I am finally feeling as if I have gotten our household in some kind of order to prepare for her arrival. Unfortunately, now that I'm getting a little respite from the baby books, the shower, the classes, and prepping the nursery, I am, in this final trimester, also feeling my least energetic and creative. In truth, I don't think I was prepared for just how exhausted I'd feel throughout the pregnancy. But now that I'm getting really big, I can't really seem to do any one thing for very long before I start to feel quite uncomfortable. So needless to say, painting has pretty much taken a back seat during most of my pregnancy, and it's hard to say when that will change to any great extent after the baby comes. However, I do have one new little piece to share. It's a small watercolor/pen and ink painting  (8x10" on 11x14" paper) that a client commissioned to commemorate her daughter's upcoming wedding:

"Flavor of Fagiolari" Watercolor and Pen & Ink on Paper

The scene is of a B&B in the Chianti region, not far from where I myself have traveled a number of times. It's a special place to the betrothed because they met in Italy and stayed at Fagiolari during their travels through Tuscany together.

When I paint from photos, I prefer to work from my own references. I just have a much better feeling for the place if I, myself, have traveled and painted there, and my photos serve as a trigger to call forth those experiences. I also take several different viewpoints of a given scene, plus a number of details, so that I can have as much information as possible when I get to work. So it's always with a bit of reservation when I consider working from a client's photo, which is normally more of a one-off tourist snapshot.

But this commission was actually quite a joy for me. Not only was it great to be doing something in the painting realm again, but the photos provided were excellent. Having also traveled the area fairly extensively myself helped a good deal as well.  Plus I was given much leeway as to how I wanted to interpret them (the photos) and what I wanted to include, rather than being tied to making an exact, literal interpretation  (a.k.a. an illustration) of a scene.

What was most important to the client was that I caputre the "flavor" of the place (hence the painting's title). Luckily, the client was delighted with the finished piece, and I had a good time getting my hands back in some art-making to boot. I tend to feel somewhat more intimidated by watercolors (as opposed to oils) but given its manageable size and the properties of the medium, I was able to stop and start more easily than I can with oils. It's not without reason to think that maybe I can even attempt a few more before "D-day" (or make that B-day) but we'll see. The one thing I can say about my life this past year is that it is anything but predictable!

Time and process

Well, for the most part, my resolve last week to get "back to painting" crumbled, as I found myself distracted by a number of other issues. I haven't been in the best command of the schedule I'd set up for myself, setting aside my painting time to do a million different errands and tend to personal issues as well. The tendinitis continues to bother me, too, which isn't helping my stick-to-itiveness.  In hindsight, in spite of my injuries, I  probably should have made myself stick as much as possible to the same schedule regardless of whether I'm actually "painting"-- filling the gaps with new art-related activities (like reading one of my gazillion art books!) In any event, I am starting again--finally-- with a color block-in which I'm including below:

Because of the shoulder/arm thing, I've had to make a few changes to the way I work so that I'm not in a huge amount of pain by the end of the day.  I've lowered my entire painting setup, paint for shorter intervals, and also set a timer when I am painting to go off every 30 minutes. It reminds me to stop and stretch and give my muscles a chance to release the locked position I tend to take when I'm hyper-focusing during painting.

Coincidentally, artist Robert Genn wrote an interesting little article last week in his twice-weekly newsltetter about the timed exercises he uses for  attention and focus, (which naturally caught my attention!)  In the article, Genn suggests that by imposing shorter time limits on a work session (in his example 37 minutes), one is required to come into sharp focus, thereby energizing mind and spirit (and often one's painting as well.) I don't think Genn is suggesting that one should always commit only 37 minutes to complete a painting! Rather, these are exercises to 'shake things up' and breathe new life and energy into old, comfy work habits.

It's a good idea. And it's one I've implemented myself (though  I used a kitchen timer rather than an elusive 37-minute hourglass.) While Genn required his students to complete small paintings in his timed exercises, I've also found that the practice works great for plein air and larger studio paintings when you want to track how long you spend working on each stage of the process.

For instance, in plein air painting, where the shifting light already imposes a certain time limitation, the amount of time you spend establishing your composition is important not only to the painting as a whole, but also because it will dictate how much time you have left for the block-in and finishing. So for a smallish painting, I might wish to limit myself to 15-20 minutes to lay in my composition- DING! And 40 minutes for a block-in-DING! That leaves another 30 minutes to (possibly) an hour to make changes, refine shapes and edges and finish before the light changes too drastically (DING! Brushes down.)

You can play around with division of time if you wish, but the result, as Genn suggests, is often that you learn to hone your focus and think better on your feet, without giving yourself the chance to "noodle around" endlessly or jump into detail  too early in the game. It helps in more ways too, than just keeping you on track. For some reason, the timer helps to address all of the canvas during each of the timed stages, thereby avoiding the tendency to  get lost in only working (or overworking) one section of the painting to the sacrifice of the others. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's just that using the timer stage-by-stage causes you to take a more deliberate, conscious approach at each stage, making the approach more methodical by breaking things down into digestible chunks.

While the timed-stages works particularly well for plein air painting (when time is truly of the essence,) I've found the same principal can also be worthwhile when applied in the studio, either by similarly timing myself at different stages in larger pieces, or, as Genn suggests, by (attempting to) finish an entire smaller piece in a short interval, as an exercise drill or a warm-up. So I thought I'd try it for the painting above, timing the initial compositional sketch and the color block-in at 15 and 40 minutes, respectively. I don't intend to finish this piece in just an additional hour. It's a 24x30" canvas and I certainly don't want it to look completely slapdash. On the other hand, I do hope to keep it as fresh as possible to re-energize myself now that I'm getting back to work.

Of course, anything can be annoying if taken to the extreme, but I can see how using the timer periodically can serve a useful purpose. It also provides good insight for me about my process, and just how much time I am spending therein.

Art for Food Auction- "Golden Days" Tuscany painting

Today I have a new offering up for auction to benefit the Central Virginia Foodbank. This is another watercolor/pen and ink painting of the golden sunflowers of Tuscany:

"Golden Days" Watercolor/Pen & Ink on Arches Paper 7x10" (Image size 5x7") This painting has sold, but you can see the current auction by clicking here.

A week of breakdowns

Last week was like the black hole of productivity for me. Let's see...

1. Our plumbing conked out, which meant we had to get our pipes replaced by way of a now huge hole in our guest bedroom where the ceiling used to be.
2. We discovered the starter on our car died after we came out of the grocery store with arms full of groceries.
3. My internet connection has been refusing to cooperate (fingers crossed for this post.)
4. I have what I *hope* is not turning into bronchitis!

Still I did manage to eek out this painting, which brings to mind the lovingly tended gardens of Tuscany. Ah, la dolce vita. Life is, after all, on the whole very sweet.

"Wall Flowers, Pienza" Oil on Canvas, 24"x20"