Commission complete

Next week marks the end of preschool until the fall for my little girl, so in addition to a number of other things happening on the art biz end,  I've been scrambling to make some summer arrangements so that I can continue to paint, at least on a part time basis. But I did manage to finish the commission last week and wanted to pop in briefly to share the final. With the bones pretty well laid out in my last post, it was a matter of addressing the foreground field of flowers and grasses, and softening an edge here and there in the distance. The sky is still looking more washed out in the photo than in the original, but it's pretty close. The painting is complete and the final approved by the client, so now I am just waiting for it to dry to the touch so that I can put a retouch varnish on it prior to sending it off to its new home!

Morning Meadow II Oil on linen, 16x20" (SOLD) ©Jennifer Young

Blue Ridge Mountains Commission- WIP, cont'd

This week I continued work on the mountain meadow commission painting I began blogging about in my last post. My approach for this piece seems to be that I am working more or less from back to front, as edges are softer farther away and come into greater focus in the foreground. The sky is painted together with the distant mountains, since there is such an interplay of clouds and mist back there. The distant trees are addressed rather uniformly at this point, as I tweak their values and placement in the composition.

Next I decide to address the darkest value in the painting, which is the focal tree, so that I can better assess the value relationships as a whole. I am not getting into the tree edges yet, as I need some of the meadow colors laid down first in order to create the soft edges of a misty morning.

Next I mass in very generally the flowers in the field. There will be a lot more color variation but I just want to get the generalized color and pattern down on the canvas first.

Soft greens of the grasses follow the blue, and merge to soften the edges further.

With the field of the meadow laid in, I can now start to give the focal tree a nicer shape, with soft lacy edges and a few subtle tree holes. I may need to tease out those holes a little further, perhaps darken them a bit, so that they aren't so "holey", but now I can see the  painting really start to take shape.

The sky has gotten washed out in the photo above, but I will try to get a better shot with different lighting conditions. It's been raining and cloudy a lot lately, so I am relying on indoor lighting (which isn't all that reliable!) What comes next will be more work on that field. Both grasses and flowers are cooler and softer as they recede, and show more detail, warmth,  color intensity and contrast as they come forward.

A spring commission

With the spring shows hung and the winter commission complete, I was thinking I would be able to turn next to some plein air painting, or perhaps to develop a couple of my James River plein air paintings into larger studio works. But that will have to wait, as I have gotten another commission! :-) But first, a couple of shots of the garden, which, when last photographed was in a state of sad dishevelment! The gardens around the studio really come into greater color in the summer. But with the rubbish cleared and weeds pulled, things are coming alive in the side garden with Creeping Jenny on the path, flanked by Mountian Bluets (Bachelor's Buttons) and creeping phlox. A flowering Dogwood makes a nice canopy, and the lilac in the fore is just starting to put off its heady scent.

Here's another shot below of the garden opposite the studio. In summer there are lilies, cone flowers, tall phlox and a butterfly bush. But my big thing lately is succulents. I love that they are water-wise and so marvelously sculptural. In the center is a succulent topiary I made last year. I will need to replenish a few of the tender plants that didn't survive our winter, but it hasn't been quite warm enough here to see much variety in the garden centers yet.

Now that my daughter is a toddler, I can usually patch together enough time to noodle in the garden while she plays nearby. Working in the studio is a different story. At just 2 1/2 years old, her attention span is still pretty limited. So while she loves being in the studio, (and I love having her there,) I do have to shoo her out when it comes time to work, amidst howls of protest (and a certain amount of Mommy guilt as well).

...Which leads me to the commission! If you have been a reader for some time, this image might be familiar to you. In fact, I have painted variations of this scene a few times, beginning with the small painting done en plein air in the Blue Ridge mountains, and following with two larger 30x40 versions.

The commission came about as the result of my April show currently taking placein New Jersey. The client loved the painting "Morning Meadow" (click here to read my blog about this painting in the making) but it was much too large for her space. So my task is to recreate this scene in a 16x20 format.

Since a 30x40" painting doesn't exactly scale down to 16x20", we thought it best to start with a sketch of the new painting so that the client could have a visual idea of how it would look compositionally.

While on the one hand, it may seem easier to recreate something I have basically already done a number of times, it can sometimes be a challenge to meet client expectations. Sometimes, though not always, a client may, for instance, expect the new painting to be exactly like the first, only smaller. So an effort always has to be made to explain in advance that as an original work of art, a painting can't be recreated stroke-for-stroke like the last.

The client does understand this, though she would like the color of the new piece to be as close as possible to the last. It was, after all, the combination of colors in Morning Meadow that she fell in love with.

Luckily, my prior blog post listed the exact color palette I used to create the larger piece! :) (I can't tell you how often I have referenced my own blog to get this kind of historical information.) So while I won't be able to remember exactly the combinations of color mixtures, I will be able to take some of the guesswork out of the process and use the same palette for this piece.

Above is the sketch, reinterpreted onto canvas. At this point in sketch stage, I want to make sure I get an accurate placement for the various elements in the composition, so I've marked off in pencil the horizontal and vertical mid-points in the pencil sketch as well as on the painting to guide me. More to come in an upcoming post, where I will get into some color!

Artist talk and reception this Tuesday

Just a quick post to announce an artist talk I will be giving this Tuesday, April 23rd, at 10 a.m., at Westminster Canterbury's Sarah Belle November Theatre in Richmond, VA. This will be an interview styled talk illustrated with a slide show, with questions opening up to the audience afterwards. The talk is in conjunction with the exhibition of my work hanging in the neighboring galleries. Reception immediately follows in the exhibit space located in the H. Scott November Gallery. Please call the cultural art center at 264-6268 for more information. Both the talk and the reception are open to the public, so if you are in Richmond, I hope you will consider coming out!

Two feature shows opening this month

Happy April everyone! Even though its still pretty chilly around here in Richmond, the birds are back and early spring blooms are everywhere. My garden, however, is still pretty much a mess. Old growth covers new, and even though it's driving me crazy to have it look like that, I haven't had time to deal with it.

That's my cat Olive in the background, looking at me with mild disdain.

My studio is looking like it is following suit as well.

This is my framing table. I'm too embarrassed to show you what the rest of the studio looks like right now!

Not exactly "Martha Stewart Living".   But I have an excuse.  I have been busy framing and shipping paintings for two feature shows in April. First, in Bernardsville, New Jersey, I am April's featured artist at Design Domaine Gallery. On view are a collection of my paintings from Europe and the American South. If you are up that way, stop in tonight, April 5th, for a wine and cheese reception from 6 to 9 PM.

Another sizable exhibit of my work has just been installed at the H. Scott November Gallery at Westminster Canterbury here good ole RVA. This beatuiful exhibition space features rotating quarterly shows of artists from throughout Virginia. On view from now until June are my paintings of the French and Italian countryside. There will be a reception and artist Q&A later in the month on April 23rd. I am so happy and honored to have the opportunity to exhibit at these wonderful venues.