Balbianello Gardens (W.I.P complete)

Well, it just hasn't been my couple of weeks. Between family sickness, election day, and bracing for hurricane Sandy (which thankfully turned out to be the hurricane that wasn't for us in Richmond) my daughter missed some preschool, which meant no painting or blogging for me. Finally I am back to it, though, and happily share the completion of the Lake Como painting I blogged about in my last post:

"View From Balbianello Gardens" Oil on linen, 16x20"

This painting places the viewer at the edge of the gardens of the famous Villa Balbianello. A procession of Baroque statuary lines the garden's perimeter and looks out across blue waters to the distant harbor of a neighboring village. When I returned to the easel today,  I decided something was needed in the middle distance to anchor the right side of the painting and create some balance. And so a sailboat was born.

I like this addition very much. It creates some interest for the water and pushes the distant village and mountains back through the use of overlapping form. I also felt like the line of statues led the eye to that spot, and the fact that there was nothing there troubled me. It's funny how one little thing like that can bring a painting to a satisfying resolution.

Balbianello Gardens w.i.p

After the time requirements of my last painting, I thought I would reward myself this week with some smaller pieces for a while. Halloween came early to our house in the form of a nasty virus that has rendered us all coughing, sneezing zombies (the littlest of which apparently doesn't sleep much at night with a cold). Needless to say,  I am really dragging this week. Nevertheless, I've managed a little studio time, and here is my painting in progress ( a 16x20" canvas)  of the beautiful gardens of Villa Balbianello.

I did a painting of the villa itself a while ago, (which you can see here) but this view is from the edge of its magnificent gardens, looking beyond the statuary towards the distant village across the lake .

This is one session worth of work (about 3 hours). I will probably need another session of a couple of hours to finish. The punkin' seems to be dropping her naps more and more these days (say it ain't so!) but if I can squeeze another nap out of her today, I might actually be able to complete it.

Still no  plein air painting this fall, though we are fast approaching the height of color here in Richmond. :( I could give myself lots of excuses for this, but bottom line is,  I  guess I haven't been able to get myself organized enough to have enough time for field work . Mornings are so chaotic, and  I'd really need to be out of the door  when it's still dark outside, and have my location planned out in advance, in order to be back at my daughter's preschool for pick-up  at noon. It's frustrating, but  I'll tell you one thing... I have never been happier to have my studio right in the back yard instead of halfway across town like it used to be!

Revisions, revisions...and finally the final!

Well is this the slowest moving demo ever, or what?  Sorry about that, and thanks for sticking with me! I  have  enjoyed this painting, but  I struggled with the foreground boats I had planned to include.  I took them out and put them back in several times. I felt like I wanted something there to lead the eye into the picture, but the boats as I had them seemed to block my entrance  rather than aid it. So I finally settled on a single rowboat to lead the eye in while still allowing some breathing room.

After that was all hashed out (whew! ) I set about laying in the background boats against the retaining wall, half of which are in shadow, and half in light.

Next came the masts, sails, and water. The reflections in this scene were very soft and shimmery. Light reflections tend to cast a wee bit darker than what is being reflected, and dark ones are a tad lighter. I tried to keep the whites on the warm side, as they take on a lovely golden glow as they glimmer in the low angle of the sun.

"Pescallo Glow" Oil on Linen, 24x30"

So, did I keep with my grayscale plan I mapped out at the beginning of this demo?  You tell me:

I must say that I liked having the grayscale notan and I actually did reference it often during the entire process of my painting. While I think it is a valuable tool, I think I would still have benefitted from doing a compositional line drawing in addition, especially with such a complicated scene. I probably reference the notan sketch more throughout the painting, but a strong compositional line plan may very well have eliminated the foreground boat dilemma I struggled with midway through the painting.  Live and learn!

Moving forward (Lake Como W.I.P., continued)

At this point in the process I feel that I have sufficiently addressed the nearest hillside to the point that I can now move forward and focus on the middle distance boats and water.

I also realise that there is still a lot of white canvas around this painting and I really want to at least block the rest of it in so that I can better gauge my color and value relationships. Ideally I probably should have done this earlier, but as you might have noticed I have been short on easel time in the last week, and I want to address the water in as close to an alla prima fashion as I can, because otherwise I end up having to scrape off a lot of dried paint from my palette and remix everything to try and get back to where I had previously left off.

Ah, that's better!  I've painted in the little stone wall/pier to the left, and have at least suggested that there is a lake here somewhere! The paint layer on the water is still a very thin block-in here, but at least I have some color down and have indicated approximately where the boats are going and where the water highlights will be. This last picture shows where I had to leave off this morning. No matter how early I try to get out to the studio, I seem to always feel that I have one hour too little. But that's the way it goes, right now. Depending on how much painting time I will get this weekend, I hope to finish this piece up in another session or two.

Lake Como W.I.P./Demo (continued)

Well I promised color in my last post, so let's get started! I don't know if I mentioned it lately, but I have been experimenting with expanded palettes for my latest paintings, and that exploration continues with this one. Regular readers may remember that I have for a long while used a limited palette of red, yellow, and blue, plus white (like this one). For this painting, my palette is (as I lay it out from left to right) Titanium White, Cadmium Yellow Light, Golden Ochre (Rembrandt), Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Permanent (Gamblin), Cobalt Blue, and Ultramarine Blue. (I've specified brands where color names are specific to a particular brand.)   I haven't used any pre-mixed greens, as you can really mix a zillion different greens with this palette. I have used most of these colors off and on, with the exception of Cobalt Blue. To be honest, I was really hoping that I wouldn't like it, because it is a terribly expensive tube of paint. Of course, I love it!  It is a cooler blue than Ultramarine, which has more red in it. I still love Ultramarine, but Cobalt has some really wonderful possibilites. Any way, back to the painting...I start by painting in the sky, which contains the light source and is also the farthest in distance. The sky is Cobalt blue plus white, with cad yellow lt. added as it nears the horizon. For the clouds I've mixed a combination of blues and cads red and orange + white for the shadows, and Cad orange and red + white for the highlights.

Working from back to front, I next paint in the distant cliffs, which have a beautiful shadow casting down over them from low-lying clouds. The photo is a bit dark here (apologies) but I will try to get some more accurate photos in subsequent blog posts so you can get a better idea of the colors.

The distant mountains complete, I block in the buildings that jut out into the harbor, as they will serve as my area of interest in the painting, and everything will kind of flow to lead the eye towards them. I also decide to lay down my pattern of darks, to restate the plan I made in my notan sketch. Again, this photo just blackens everything out, but I had to make a choice between using my time blogging or photo editing, and at this point, I've chosen blogging.

Next, I work on the terraced hillside in the middle distance. What a joy it is to paint...all of those shadows and varied greens! A nice round bristle brush is great for painting in those cypress trees, which have always struck me as distinctive punctuation marks in the Italian landscape. .

 A mahl stick (shown in the next photo  on my easel below the painting) is a handy tool to have to steady the hand without smudging the painting, when painting details like architecture and tall skinny cypress trees.

I have yet to paint in the highlights on the cypresses, but once I've done that I will be ready to move on to the middle distant water and boats, and finally the boats in the foreground. All that will be left after that point will be fine tuning  wherever's needed.

Lake Como W.I.P. & Demo

I mentioned in my last post that I had a new painting in the works, and I thought I'd attempt a little demo with this one. I say "attempt" because my laptop finally gave up the ghost, and these days I tend to do a lot of my writing via my mobile. Not only am I "all thumbs" (literally) but I have to sneak it in before my phone gets snatched away by the chubby little hands of my daughter who wants to "see pictures" whenever she sees it emerge from my pocket. This will be a painting of the beautiful fishing village of Pescallo. Pescallo is a tiny, sleepy  little place that sits just down the slope from Bellagio (also very beautiful). In fact, I could see Pescallo from the balcony of my Bellagio hotel, and the drama of the light as it poured over the mountains and harbor beckoned me to take a stroll down there many mornings before we started the day's touring.

I begin by sketching out a compositional plan that is also a value plan for the painting. I do this using light, middle, and dark value gray oil paints in my sketchbook. I often do a similar thing with Tombo pens (the grayscale ones), but mostly when I am painting outdoors as a way to quickly hone in and get a handle on my composition (in an environment that is bombarded with stimuli). But it is a good practice with studio work too. The oils are mentioned in Kevin Macpherson's book, "Landscape Painting Inside and Out," and I have long wanted to buy these paints so I could give it a try. They are Portland Gray Light, Medium, and Deep, by Gamblin. Hey, if it's good enough for "KMac", (as my husband calls him) it's good enough for me!

The point of this is to see if your painting has a strong underlying structure with a unifying value plan without getting bogged down in details. This is really supposed to be more of a notan sketch at this stage, which is a very simplified thing and addresses more of the armature of the painting rather than the pinpoint accuracy of objects and shapes. It's been a while since I've done this kind of study, and I realized at some point that I had not allowed much for the fourth value I was working with, which was the white of the paper. Oops! So I had to amend my sketch a little and add in some white for the lightest areas.

Still, I feel that my plan is solid and I'm ready to move forward by sketching out a line drawing on my 24x30" canvas.

For this I am using burnt sienna (Winsor Newton), thinned with Gamsol mineral spirits. I don't much use this earth color in the rest of my painting stages, and while I could mix up  a good earth for such a job using my standard red, yellow, and blue, it is more of a convenience for me to use a premixed paint at this preliminary stage. I also like it because it lends a nice warm undertone to the canvas as I go along, and it doesn't bleed into my other colors (especially the light ones like the sky) when I move beyond the sketching stage.

Now that I have a plan, I am ready to start painting with color! I'll get into that in the next post .

Montalcino Valley (w.i.p. final)

Well I think I am about ready to call this one finished. This painting was a real joy to work on. I loved painting the rolling hills, the atmospheric perspective and the various patchwork of patterns woven together to make up the beautiful countryside that is Tuscany.

"Montalcino Valley" Oil on linen, 24x30"

This painting is of the valley of Montalcino, a small town set in the heart of Tuscany. My vantage is the top of the hill in a vineyard, which I have painted before, a few years ago:

"Piccolomini Vineyard" (SOLD)

 This current painting, however, omits the foreground vineyard entirely and focuses on the valley. We toured and tasted at this vineyard as well, (Ciacci Piccolomini) and sampled the famous Brunello and Rosso wines of this region.

Well, back to reality....The new schedule is working well. Of course I wish I just had one more hour in the day to myself, but I really can't force myself to get up earlier than 5 a.m., so this will do for now. By the time I get moving, dressed and breakfasted, it gives me between two to two and a half hours to paint before the hubby  goes off to work. That's nothing to sneeze at but I have to be pretty focused to make the most of my time.

But I am learning something about process with these constraints. I am trying to get my whole canvas up to the same level of finish in one session--especially at the start--so that when I return to the easel I don't have to spend so much time figuring out where I was and where I'm going next. I also have to paint in thinner layers and build  more slowly, making sure I don't go too thick too soon, so that I can make needed changes on the way.   So while it's less wet-into-wet, I am trying to appreciate the opportunity I have with a painting that has had a bit of time to  set up. This allows me the time to scumble and dry brush here and there, as long as the paint passage isn't already too thick. I'm still learning how I might take advantage of the time I have and how to make the process work even better for me within those constraints, but I feel (at least today) that I am moving in the right direction.

Progress

The Tuscany painting I've been working on of late is almost finished. I had hoped to wrap things up on it before last Friday, when I was scheduled for a minor surgery. Who knew the recovery would feel so major? Any way, I'll be back at it on Monday. In the meantime, here are a couple of progress shots:

From the ashes a fire shall be woken

Have you ever had a project that illicted a phrase something like, "I can't wait till this  @!% thing is over!" ? Well, that was my thought every time I showed up at the easel over these past few weeks (WEEKS!) to work on the Venice painting I posted about eons ago in my last blog. Awesome way to inspire creativity, eh? For some reason though, I couldn't let it go. I don't quite know why. It was like slowing down to look at an accident when you really didn't want to . Okay, that's a bit melodramatic.  Maybe more like continuing to watch a bad movie because you'd already invested so much time in it. Makes no sense, but  I guess I kept hoping that by overworking an already bad painting I would somehow be vindicated in the end.

Well, as you can imagine, it did not, in fact, end well. The painting was, I felt, dreadfully bad. And to add insult to injury, I had just spent multiple sessions of my precious new painting schedule (more about that in a minute) completely devoted to trying to fix  a mess that I should have trashed after the 2nd session. It was pretty demoralizing and I still don't know why I put myself through it. The only thing I can come up with is that I am incredibly stubborn. And I think when I am tired or stressed, I must be moreso (ask the husband). I think I was out to prove that I could, at long last, finish SOMEthing (the effect of which took me about as far away from creative joy as I care to go.)

So no, I will not be sharing that painting here. It went promptly from the easel  into the trash and I wasn't about to photograph the ghastly thing. But something good has come from it, I think. It taught me more about surrender (a hard lesson I thought I'd "gotten" given the personal challenges of the past couple of years) and it revealed pretty much every one of my artistic weaknesses in a single painting, (now that's an accomplishment! ;) ) so it gave me a very clear picture of what kinds of things I need to seriously work on.

It also made me feel incredibly free, relieved, and happy to be staring at a blank canvas again. And this painting, I will share...as it is it so far after about 2 sessions:

Regarding my new schedule, due to my need for sustained energy to care for a very active toddler at home, I have determined that mornings are by far my best time of day (by nightfall I am pretty much toast). So I have arranged to get up before the rooster crows, and get out in the studio for 2 hours before the husband leaves for work at 8:30 (whereupon I toss off the artist apron, superhero-style, and assume the role of full-on mommy!)

At present, I can only do this 3 days a week due to schedules, etc., but it gives me 6 hours of dedicated painting time, plus maybe a few more (if I play my cards right) on the weekend. Other than the fact that it is very hard  sometimes to be getting up so early, it so far it seems to be working okay. It's nothing like the vast swaths of luxurious time I had before my daughter, but there is a structure in place now, to in the very least, start developing some positive new artistic habits again. Hopefully with regular work habits  it will also mean I can get back to blogging regularly too! But first things first...

Varenna Harbor

This little piece took longer than I expected. There is quite a lot of information so I thought it a good idea to work some things out on a smaller canvas before tackling a larger sized studio piece. I'm glad I did! I do think it will work well on a larger scale (24x36ish) so I now feel like I have a few things figured out for the next version! Any way, let's not jump too far ahead, shall we? Here is the current version, on a linen mounted panel :

"Varenna Harbor" Oil on Linen, 16x12" To purchase, please contact me!

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.

Varenna painting complete

Just a quick post to share the final version of the Lake Como painting I wrote about in my last post:

"La Passarella, Varenna" Oil on Linen, 24"x 20"

This view shows small fishing and leisure boats in front of the arched foot path called "La Passarella"  that winds its way around Varenna.Known  as "the pearl of the lake", Varenna is one of the most beautiful towns on Lake Como. A great place to leisurely wander and get lost!

I also really enjoyed this version of the limited palette I wrote about in my last post. I can see myself using this one again (as soon as I buy more Cad. Red Medium!) One of these days I will find time to update my website. In the meantime, please contact me for additional details about the painting and/or to purchase.

On the easel -Varenna (Lake Como) W.I.P

Just a quick post to share what's been on my easel of late. It's been so blazing hot this week that I have not found an opportunity to get back outside and have pretty much retreated to the studio to work. I'm still keeping things relatively small for the time being, though 20x24" isn't, for me, exactly tiny:

Yet again I thought I'd experiment with another limited palette, using the "big three" primaries of red, yellow blue. In this case the red is Cadmium red medium, the yellow, cad. yellow pale, and my ol' friend ultramarine. The main difference for me is using cad. red medium. I almost never use this red but found some in my bins and thought, why not? At first I felt like I was shooting myself in the foot with this palette on this subject, as it is a bit more muted than when I use my usual gem-like transparent red of alizarin crimson. But having gotten used to it, I am quite liking it. I think I should be finished with this piece in another session or two, which will hopefully be this week, providing I have the studio time.

Little things

My painting (and posting) has been so sporadic lately that there are times when I am tempted to just announce a summer hiatus once and for all. At least this way, (I say to myself) I can engage myself fully in mothering an already active baby (who is soon to be an even more active toddler) and I won't have this anxious, "torn between two worlds" feeling when I can't make it to the easel (or produce anything noteworthy when I do). But the hubby doesn't think this is a good idea, and doubts I'd be happy with not painting at all, if even for a couple of months. He's probably right, but that still leaves me with trying to figure out how to enjoy the time I have in these two seemingly opposing life roles, without the anxiety I sometimes have that I am not doing well enough at either one. So I was taking my baby out for a stroller ride not long ago, and ran into a neighbor, who is also a mother, and happens to be a very fine artist. We have exchanged pleasantries a few times, but this was our first actual introduction and chat. We spent a good deal of time talking about the ups and downs of being both a working artist and a mother . We talked about finding the time and the peace of mind to be fully engaged in both roles, and perhaps most importantly, to enjoy the process along the way. I asked her if she felt that her work had changed as a result of having had a child.

"Oh yes!" she replied, "For quite a while I had to paint a lot smaller. "

This may sound like a punchline, but in fact, it makes a lot of sense. Before the baby, I had become accustomed to painting small in the field and using my studio work to develop my ideas and studies into larger scale works. As a landscape painter, my feeling was, why paint small landscapes inside if I can paint the same small scale from life?

But at present, plein air opportunities have been few and far between, so often it is studio work or no work at all.  While I never really paint HUGE, I have struggled with my studio sessions, as they are both shorter in length and spread farther apart. Often enough I have found myself spending a good deal of a studio session just trying to get the painting opened up enough to start working on it again...just in time to clean up!

So, it makes sense, for the next little while, to try and work on a few small things. They may not all be landscapes, (and who knows? They may not all be oil paintings) but at least I will still be doing something.

So that is my commitment to you, dear reader. I will do something instead of nothing. And furthermore, I will post it here often enough so that you know I am still alive. How's that for an inspirational statement of purpose? Sorry, but this is the best I can do right now. ;-)

Even if it's just a little thing, it will hopefully keep the creative juices flowing, and perhaps make it easier to develop some skills that need brushing up, or to experiment with various designs, compositional choices and different color palettes. In the very least, I will get the satisfaction of having finished something!

"Evening Light, Tuscany" Oil on linen, 6x12" Click here for more info, or just contact me to purchase.

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"

Tuscany vineyard W.I.P.

I spent some time late last week and Monday working on the painting I had sketched out in my last post. I will say before I begin, that these photos are not color corrected due to limited time, but hopefully you can still get an idea of how the painting is developing. Sketch in transparent oxide red, with some shading...

I usually lay in the sky first, but since there is so little of it in this painting, I have decided to start laying in the ground. More or less, I am working front to back.

At this point I had to step back and think about the plane trees I had sketched in on the upper right. As much as I love the plane trees, I was afraid they would be too busy in this painting, when there is already a lot going on. You might even be able to tell that I struggled with those trees from the outset, by all the transparent red oxide rubbed into that side of the canvas. I kept wiping them out and putting them back in, until finally I surrendered and took them out for good. Sometimes you just have to accept that you can't say everything you want to say in a single painting.

I still wanted something in the upper right for balance, so instead I massed in a "less interesting" tree. I also changed the skyline slightly so as not to feel so hemmed in. The sky is pretty washed out here but my sky, while very light and simple, has more color (pale golds and blues).

Up to the point pictured is about 5 or 6 hours' work. I started this late Friday afternoon and came back after dinner (and after the baby went to bed) to work on it some more. I just wanted to get it to a point where the whole canvas was brought up to the same level of "finish" (more or less) so that it would be easier for me to pick up again when I returned to the easel.

Once upon a time I was a total night owl and I'd habitually paint late into the night (this was before I started painting landscapes). I haven't done this in a really long time, and I'm not sure it's such a good thing for me. I only meant to work for a couple of hours but it was close to midnight by the time I cleaned up and I was so wound up I couldn't sleep for a while. Maybe I'll get used to it in time, but as it was, every time I'd go to clean up I'd tell myself, "just five more minutes!" Afterwards, I felt like I had had an entire pot of coffee! I kept telling myself it was time to stop, but now that I feel so often on a time crunch, any studio time is a real treat.

Back to Tuscany; Vineyard W.I.P.

I think I will just make a deal with you readers (and, for that matter, with myself) to stop making lofty statements like, "I'm finally getting a regular schedule!" because something (like a 9 month-old cutting new teeth or reaching new milestones, for instance!) always seems to come up right afterwards. Still, I know I am fortunate to be able to do anything art-related at all, and  I have finally worked out my compositional pencil sketch for the next studio painting that  I thought I'd at least share. (Incidentally, I just want to say thank you to those of you who have sent me such nice, encouraging comments lately. I am glad to know that these W.I.P.s offer some interest. It's a format that works well for me in that it keeps me posting regularly here on the blog, so I will try to stick to it at least for a while.) This is again a scene of the visually dramatic area in Tuscany known as La Crete.

These little sketches are definitely not meant to be any kind of finished drawings, but with all the stops and starts in studio time nowadays, I am finding them really helpful. They help me to determine whether the composition will work , what I need to  edit out and include, how I might create interest with line,  light and shadow, etc. Though more detailed, they serve a similar purpose to the thumbnail sketches I have used from time to time while plein air painting.

Watercolorists know this approach well, but until recently it has typically not been my way with my studio oils. It takes a little bit more time when some days all I want to do is just dive right on into painting and get ON with it already! But with little sleep and even less free time, it's helped me to feel less disjointed and to backtrack less when I am standing in front of the easel, bleary-eyed with a cuppa jo, trying to get my brain to start.

In case you can't tell what this is to be, it's a vineyard in the fore with a small outbuilding in the middle ground and a little Tuscan hamlet in the distance. What interested me most about this scene is the movement of line from front to back. There is a lot of information in this scene, (maybe too much? We'll see...) and not much sky at all to speak of, so I feel that in order to make my present plan work I should use a canvas of at least 24x30". Well, that's a whole lot of writing for such a simple little sketch, but what can I say? Baby girl has napped well this morning. :-)

Shadows of La Crete

I achieved my goal of finishing up this painting last week, but it left no time to post. This is the final product of the resurrected work-in-progress I last wrote about.

 

"Shadows of La Crete" Oil on Linen, 24x30" Contact me for details and purchasing info!

The Tuscan region known as La Crete is known for its dramatic undulating hillsides. I loved the way vineyards and olive groves were cultivated clinging to the slopes. One afternoon while we were staying in southern Tuscany near Montalcino, my husband and I took a drive through the winding roads of this stunning landscape. We spent the day driving, stopping to walk around, lunching and sketching (well I did the last bit). No plein air painting there, but it was still such a great day!

Now that I have the wee one and I'm on a very different (but awesome) journey, I am not sure when I will get back there to La Crete. But I'd really love to go back and dig into some plein air painting one day. Nevertheless, I am grateful to have been able to go at all, and to have taken so many good reference photos for my studio work.

Over the years I have learned how to take better reference photos. When I first started landscape painting I'd really be disappointed by the lack of information I'd gathered from a trip. It seemed like I'd take a ton of photos, but often what I found when I came home was that I'd only have one shot of the most intriguing scenes. I learned from those experiences to take a number of shots of each location, from several angles, at several exposures. I also took close up "detail" shots of foliage, flowers, textures, etc. It still does not compare to the information that becomes seared into my brain whenever I can photograph and actually paint on site at a location, but it helps a great deal. My photos don't really do justice to my memory of this beautiful land, but hopefully through my paintings (if I do enough of them) I will be able to express how I feel about this place.

Resurrection of a W.I.P

I've been doing a little Spring cleaning lately and came across a few unfinished canvases tucked away. Why I never finished them, I don't know (I look back at my former self a little jealously now when I think of all of the time I had to paint!) But at least a couple of these lost souls seem worth the attempt. Except for some paint and a little more time, what have I got to lose? I decided to work on this painting of the Tuscan hillside first, since the whole canvas  was pretty far along and just needed to be fleshed out a little more.

 

Looking back through my blog archives, I actually posted this as a W.I.P. back in October of '09 (!) According to this post, I was suffering from shoulder tendonitis at the time. I guess between that and whatever else I had going on at the time, this canvas fell out of sight, and subsequently out of mind...until now.

When I first worked on this painting, I used an alkyd medium to speed the drying. So I've started in again by using some of the medium to "oil out" the areas that I want to work on. I've altered the composition slightly by elongating the shadows (it's a dusk scene) and also by simplifying the road in the foreground. It seemed to be moving too fast around the bend and leading me right out of the canvas, so I altered that area slightly by extending the shrubs to slow this movement down. I'm also toning down the yellow in the hillside because the foreground shrubs are meant to be yellow broom, and I want a different color behind them to contrast. As a result,  I'm laying in a lot more of that terra cotta earth so prevalent in this region. We will see how this goes...  A lot more work needs to be done to the hillside, the olive trees, and their shadows, and I may need to add some of the greens back. But for the moment I'm liking the predominately warm tones. I'm working more on this painting this afternoon, so  if all goes well, I hope to post a conclusion by  Friday.