Willow in back-light

This week is bringing us some gorgeous weather here in central Virginia, so on the way home from the farmer's market last night, I took a detour and decided to keep a recent promise that I made to myself. I returned to Young's Pond to paint the evening scene I'd scouted out when I was there the prior week for a morning painting session:

Willow in Back-light" Oil on Canvas, 12x16" ©Jennifer Young

Having already conceptualized what I was going to paint in advance, I set up quickly and dove right into the painting. It was a good thing, too. Even though I started relatively early in the evening (5 PM) all of that beautiful back-lighting did not last. After about an hour and a half, the sun sank quickly behind the trees on the distant hill, and took all of that beautiful back-lighting with him!

Luckily I got the painting about 90% complete. As I later told my husband, "I had the essence but not the poetry". This is what I hoped for as I worked on the final 10% immediately after I returned home to the studio (while everything was still fresh in my mind). Mainly it was just a matter of softening some edges and adjusting a value here and there, (and trying not to do too much for fear of losing the essence!)

12x16" is not a huge painting, but it's the largest I've done in plein air in a while. One of my goals (goal number 274!) is to increase my plein air sizes beyond 12x16" or even 16x20". With more canvas to cover, it may require multiple visits to the same site at the same time of day, but it would be interesting to see how far I could push it. We'll see...I have the whole summer ahead of me yet.

Alla prima outdoors; plein air at the park

Keeping to the topic of alla prima painting, here is a morning plein air landscape I did this week on a visit to Bryan Park:

"A Bend in the Pond" Oil on Board, 9x12" ©Jennifer Young

Young's Pond is actually the name of this pond (though there's no relation to yours truly, and that's not what drew me to the location to paint it!) It wasn't until I was researching online that I even knew this pond's name or history (part of a former 18th century gristmill).

Bryan Park is a neighborhood park with lovely old azaleas that put on a great show earlier in the spring. It's a good "go to" spot for me when I need an easy-access opportunity to paint outdoors, as it's very close to my home (a hefty walk with all my plein air gear, but definitely within cycling distance). Even so, it's taken me a little while to warm up to it as a painting site. I find that sometimes with certain locations I need to visit them several times before I can hit it at the right time/place/day to inspire a painting. I've gone there a couple of times already in the early spring when the azaleas were in bloom, and even though the flowers were pretty, I just could not find anything I wanted to compose. I must have looked like a strange and suspicious character, just walking around with a big floppy hat and shabby backpack, staring at trees and bushes in a half-trance, (except for the times when I'd peer through the square formed with my hands)--All to no apparent end. The things we do for art!

This time since the season is over, I wasn't lured to the azelea gardens and instead went directly to the pond. I got there early enough so that the light in the distance was still soft, though the shadows and highlights of the middle distance held enough contrast to interest me. I also liked the little pond "islands", the flowering shrubs growing wild on the bank, and the curved retaining walls. Now that I know how the sun travels over this spot, I've also noted an adjacent site that I think will provide a nice back-lit scene in the later afternoon/early evening. I will return again soon when the time is right, and have another go at Young's Pond. Who knows, maybe it will become a favorite plein air location after all?

p.p.s. For those who may be unfamiliar with the term "alla prima" that I've bandied about in these last few posts, it's an Italian phrase that literally means "at first". In art terms it refers to a painting done with a direct approach, usually completed in one sitting (wet-into-wet).

Back from the ethers with a new WIP/painting demo

My lapse in posting has probably made it seem like I fell off the face of the Earth or something. In fact, I was in Texas last week (which actually did feel a bit like another world to me --just kidding Texans!) I had to slip away unexpectedly to assist my mom, who was just released from the hospital after major surgery. The good news is that she's been doing great, and I'm back home now and back to painting. It's been far too windy and rainy this week to do any plein air work, so I've decided to continue my French landscape series with nice big 40x30" linen canvas in the studio--a vertical painting of an ancient church in ruins among a field of irises.

I started with a monochromatic tonal wash in transparent red oxide:

While this is a representational painting, my approach to the work is in the abstract. My aim at this stage is to express the pattern of lights and darks in a fluid and interesting manner. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember a plein air painting I did of this same site last summer. Even though this larger painting will be of a different view from that location, I will use my plein air painting and my experience from that work to inform this piece.

The finished painting will have a lot of irises in the foreground, but I don't bother drawing them in at this point. My main concern early on is to connect my darks in such a way as to create an interesting underlying armature that will provide a structure for any detail, and also hopefully provide enough interest so as to lead the eye around the canvas.

Painting in this monochromatic, thin wash helps me to develop my overall composition without great commitment. Transparent red oxide is not a highly staining color, so if corrections or changes are desired, any marks I make at this stage can easily be wiped away with a paper towel dipped in solvent (I use Gamsol).

Incidental staining is not really a concern any way, since I usually like a toned canvas. It's sort of like I'm making a grisaille painting and toning my canvas at once. In this instance, I decide to leave the lightest lights (in the sky) mostly completely white, as I will next use the white of the canvas to develop the shape of my clouds:

Basically I'm painting the negative space of the sky with the blue paint mixture. Working on linen is a real pleasure. It makes it really easy to use my paper towels to smudge and wipe away paint so as to refine shapes and create those soft, wispy edges.

After I established the basic cloud pattern, I start to add paint, color and shadow to the white of the clouds. I also begin to develop my darks, and give some definition to my area of interest; the ruins of the old abbey.

Further developments are under way and forthcoming soon....Stay tuned!

Hiking along the James River (and painting there too!)

Happy first day of Spring, everybody! I'll celebrate by posting my latest plein air painting done earlier this week while walking the trails of the James River's North Bank Park.

"Downstream" Oil on Linen, 12x12"  ©Jennifer Young

Funny thing about this excursion- I had gone out the week prior on an initial exploration, but it turned out to be a bust. The weather forecast had called for warmer temperatures, but had really gotten the projected temperatures wrong. Unfortunately, I also had gotten my wardrobe wrong! I've written before about my difficulty with plein air painting in the cold. This particular morning wasn't an icy cold but it was that damp, penetrating cold that just chills to the bone.

So even though I'd found a great spot on "Texas Beach" right the river's edge, I was so uncomfortable that I had to jump ship that morning. Big bummer, because I have only just begun to discover this beautiful part of the river, and I was excited to have found such a great spot that was easily accessible with a few rock-hops, even with all my gear on my back. As it was, I packed up after only about an hour, not having made much progress beyond some murky marks. I probably should have just saved my panel and wiped the whole thing down at that point, but I thought, well, maybe I can just come back later and finish what I've started.

It rained nonstop over the weekend, so I couldn't get back out there until this week. The good thing was, I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I also had a basic composition under way, so I was ahead of the game. Or so I thought.

Being the seasoned outdoor adventurer that I am, it hadn't even occurred to me that the trails would be a little muddy. Maneuvering them with about 15 lbs of art gear on my back was....interesting. And graceful. ;-) The other thing I hadn't accounted for is that the rocks that I'd so easily hopped to get out to my awesome view were now completely under water. In fact, the terrain had so changed that I couldn't recognize one familiar thing. So after sliding around looking for "my spot" for a while (and coming face to face with a huge, magnificent heron along the way) I finally gave up and settled on another view.  It's probably just as well. I liked this painting spot even better than the last.

Plein air painting in the snow

There's a first time for everything. I actually got outside this morning in the freezing temperatures and painted in the snow. I know, I know. It's done all the time. But I'm from the South, so doing anything....willingly...in frigid temperatures is a real milestone for me. And any way, I can't remember the last time we had a snow storm with any kind of accumulation, so I was determined:

"Snowed Under" 10x8" Oil on Multimedia ArtBoard ©Jennifer Young

This is our little crepe myrtle in our back yard. A small, up-close study was about all I could handle this morning. Even staying close to home, this was a challenging experience for me. First off, I didn't consider just how reflective all that snow would be. Initially I set up near my red studio door, but that red bounced all over the place so I had to move. Second, I wasn't prepared for how stiff the paint would get, or how quickly. My quinacridone red froze up so fast--I had to really coax it with some Gamsol just to get it to budge. And third (and I WAS expecting this one) it was damn cold. I did take a few studio breaks because my right hand (the painting hand) became one big painful throb and revolted periodically by losing its grip and dropping brushes.

Any way, I got it done in a little less than 2 hours. I can't say that I'm a convert to painting in freezing weather, but at least I like the little painting. I did find myself wondering why the heck I didn't just paint something from the warmth of my studio, looking out the window. But no.  I HAD to paint that tree from that angle. Well, maybe it's a good thing. As I'm typing this during my lunchtime break, huge chunks of the white stuff are falling off of our little crepe in mini avalanches.