Super cheap wet panel holder

This week as I am plodding through the daunting task of packing up my studio, I have storage on my mind (as in, where the heck am I going to put all of this stuff?!) Granted, a number of these boxes are my office supplies and files, but let's face it; artists have a lot of stuff.

And so we painters are always trying to come up with nifty and cheap storage ideas that will protect our paintings when they are wet and keep them organized when they are dry. With that introduction, meet my cd storage racks turned painting panel holders:

Wet Panel Storage

This is about as low tech as you can get. Two CD holders are tied together with twist-ties on either side.

Wet panel storage

These are also great to have in the car for plein air paitning trips. I put the whole setup inside of a box lid sized to hold them for added stability and reduced mess. It will hold painting panels up to 12" and keep them neatly separated from each other so that they don't touch.

Granted, CD holders are becoming a little harder to find as we move further into the digital age, but they are still around. If push comes to shove, a letter sorter from an office supply store will do.

art storage tips

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year (almost)! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season and looks forward to a great 2015. I took a little time off over the holidays to be with my family. Now that my daughter is 4 1/2 years old, Christmas time is really so much fun and I wanted to enjoy and cherish every minute of it. Even so, I did manage to "sneak in" one more painting before ringing in a brand new year.

"Mist in the Valley" Oil on Canvas, 12x16" ©Jennifer E Young

This painting is based on a combination of photos and a plein air study I did while I was in the Lot Valley a few years ago. If you have been reading my blog a while, you may recall that I tackled similar subject matter before, and will likely explore compositional variations again. I have a lot of reference photos from that morning and it was probably one of the most memorable plein air sessions from the trip. It's also both fun and challenging painting such a close range of values and all of those soft edges.

P.S. Did you know 2015 is the year of the sheep in the Chinese astrology? I'm not really superstitious or into astrology and didn't realize it when I started working on this piece. But it's pretty coincidental, don't you think?

Week-long study with Kevin Macpherson

Jennifer with Kevin Macpherson

Last week I did something I haven't done in a very long time...devote myself to the art mistress from morning to night for an entire week. And it was a week studying with the talented Kevin Macpherson at that! As you may have read from my previous blog posts,  I am a big fan of his paintings and his books. He is truly one of the best teachers I have encountered so far. Not only is he a highly skilled painter, but he has a way of honing in on and distilling essential information that actually penetrates my rock-hard noggin.

The workshop took place in a beautiful new space called Chesapeake Fine Art Studio, run by artist Hai-Ou Hou in Stevensville, MD (great location- about 20 mins. away from Annapolis). If you are an artist on the east coast,  it would behoove you to check out her site. Hai-Ou is quite the painter herself, and also appears to be drawing some of the best and brightest painter/instructors in the plein air and traditional/representational painting movements.

I really wish I had time to delve into all I learned during my workshop experience, but life is slamming me pretty hard right now. This week marked a return to the "real world" (insert the sound of needle scraping across a record here) with kitchen renovation, school activities, and doctor's appointments commanding most of my time and energy.

But my biggest takeaways from Kevin's instruction had to do with value and composition. He spoke a lot about light and shadow, and how one can create much stronger paintings by clearly indicating which elements belong in the light family and which belong in the shadow family. (This sounds simple in theory but it isn't always so easy in practice.) He stressed seeing and painting "shapes, not things", with the idea that if we are too wrapped up in painting a "thing" we lose the ability to really see it accurately and how it relates to the rest of the painting as a whole. We spent a good deal of time really learning how to see the true value of things (er, shapes, that is!) He stressed using a color isolator in the field to identify true value and color, determining and laying down your darkest note of color first, followed by the rest of the shadow family, and finally the values in the light family, keying everything up from that very darkest note, so that you really can get a handle on color and value relationships.

In essence, how dark you key your darks will determine how light you key your lights. I use the analogy of playing "Chopsticks" on the piano. You can play low on the scale or high on the scale, but the arrangement of notes and their relationship to each other are the same no matter how high or low you move along the keyboard.

Kevin Macpherson's workshop

His demos didn't disappoint. In addition to demos in the field, mid-week during his opening he did a remarkable demonstration in the studio (from a photo) on a canvas sized at about 20x24" . During that opening he also presented an inspiring and highly entertaining lecture. This lecture, I understand, was very similar to the one he presented at the Plein Air Convention. Not being able to travel as much as I used to, I really appreciated having the opportunity to see this presentation, in a much more intimate setting.

Though we were meant to work largely out of doors, we had our share of rain and wind. When the weather didn't cooperate, it gave us the opportunity to study (in the gorgeous and spacious studio) some of the more pertinent points Kevin was trying to drive home. We spent a good deal of time studying value relationships among the "light family and shadow family". On another occasion we delved into "The Golden Mean" or "Golden Section" (the informal subdivision of space) and he presented a fascinating slide lecture with many, many inspiring examples of  how it has been used by painters throughout history.

Kevin Macpherson's painting demo

Here are a couple of my plein air paintings done during the workshop that actually reached a level of finish:

"Silo Shadows" Oil on panel, 10x8" ©Jennifer Young

"Docked on a Gray Day", Oil on canvas, 10x12" © Jennifer E. Young

At the week's end, I left feeling completely exhausted and totally exhilarated at the same time. I didn't leave with many "finished" pieces, but that wasn't my goal at all any how. What I did leave with was a wealth of knowledge and insight, as well as a good deal of creative spark. Whether that spark ignites a fire, is now totally up to me.

Morning Wash, Venice

We have been prepping for a kitchen remodel these last few weeks, so this little studio piece of Venice has been patiently waiting on the "back burner" (pun intended.) Today I got so tired of seeing its mournful state of incompleteness on my easel that I attacked it with the brush. Here is the result:

"Morning Wash", Venice Oil on Linen, 16x12" (SOLD) ©Jennifer E Young

  I remember the day I and my traveling companion were taking photos of this little neighborhood. It was our first morning in Venice and we had spent it pretty much as nearly every American tourist does, snapping away with our cameras and ooh-ing and ahh-ing over every nook and cranny of the place. Then we turned the corner and, almost against my will, I blurted out, "Oooh, laundry!" My friend laughed, and of course, I realized immediately how silly that sounded. But to an artist, it has the potential to add both visual interest and an element of the human presence, even on an otherwise empty street. It's a mystery to me how the Italians can make even clothes hanging on a line an intrigue. But I guess it doesn't hurt that those clotheslines are surrounded by beautiful ochre stone, magnificent architecture and, I suspect, a little bit of magic too.

P.S. If you're wondering what happened to the still life I had started  in my last post, I gave it the 86. I will try again at some point, but I think I was a little overly ambitious with the size given my limited time. The flowers croaked before I could get them down, so I had to just chalk it up to one of the ones that got away.

Large Hatteras Island Painting -complete!

Here is the final version of the painting I have been working on for the past week or so:

"Path to the Sea" Oil on Gallery Wrapped Canvas, 30x40" ©Jennifer Young

I had such a good time painting this piece I didn't want it to end. The  several prior studies I did of this subject (most of them on location) really helped to inform me about color choices and brushwork, and also, more importantly, they brought back the strong emotional connection I have with the subject. I felt like I was on vacation all over again. Don't get me wrong, this was work, too, but it is this kind of view that I see on summer vacations to the Outer Banks  when I step out on the deck in the morning to sip my first cup of coffee. For me it recalls a time to let all the cares go and just relax!