A new look and a new painting!

There were times this week when I really doubted that this announcement would come, but I finally have my new website up. Hurray! There were a few glitches along the way (and there still may be some kinks to work out yet) but overall I am pretty happy with the fresh new look.

Speaking of fresh and new, I'll also share a newly finished painting.

"Daytrippers, Lake Como, Cobra Oils on linen,  20x24" ©Jennifer E Young

I actually blogged about the start of this piece a while ago but I got to a point where I just had to take it off of the easel for a while and let it marinate. Sometimes the best way to approach a problem is to do something completely different for a while , so that's exactly what I did. When I was ready to return I could look at it with new eyes (albeit bloodshot ones from staying up late trying to get my website up and running) and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

Little Mermaids

Sometimes a study acts as a jumping off point for a larger painting. And sometimes, as in this new piece, it's the other way around. If this painting looks familiar to you it is because it was inspired by another painting I posted a few weeks ago. I had such enjoyment in painting those two little girls basking in the sun and waves, that I knew I would want to revisit the subject again.

"Little Mermaids", Oil on linen, 12x9" ©Jennifer Young

To me they epitomize what childhood is all about--frolicking, free, but fully focused on the present moment at the same time. 

Plein air at the Botanical Gardens (and the importance of planning)

It has been so dark and rainy the last week it’s been impossible to photograph any artwork, but soon I will post an update on my latest studio painting. Meanwhile, finally, we are seeing the sun! Yay! To celebrate the occasion, I did a little plein air painting at the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens.

There is so much to paint at these beautiful gardens that it is really hard to narrow the choices down sometimes. But with limited time before the school bell rang,  I motored straight over to the Grace Arents Victorian Gardens in front of the Bloemendaal House. I had eyed these gardens a couple of weeks prior when I took my daughter and niece to see the butterfly exhibit and play in the Children’s Garden, and I was hoping and praying it still looked as beautiful as it had then and that the rain hadn’t washed all of the flowers off.

I was in luck. It was still gorgeous. Summer blooms lingered but the foliage in the trees was tinged with autumn. Here is my setup, with my new Coulter paint box:

You might notice I have a little notebook propped up that I’m going to reference as I work. This is a VERY quick notan sketch that doesn’t look like much to anyone but me. But it’s basically a short hand way to map out my design and quickly separate my lights from darks:

 The very fine painter (and terrific teacher) Kevin Macpherson more correctly identifies these broadly defined values as the ”light family” and the “shadow family”.  The idea is to lay down in broad strokes (I used a fat sharpie) everything in the shadow family with the dark value, and leaving everything in the light family as the white of the paper. It is so, so easy to succumb to the desire to jump into a painting without much prior planning, especially out in the field when the light is changing and the pressure’s on. But when I take the time to do these notans,  I find that the approach helps me to solidify in my mind no only how the painting will hold together conceptually, but also how I can stick with my plan to the end, even when the light changes.

Now that I have my plans, I sketch in a crude design in a very quick and general way again, but this time on my canvas using burnt sienna:

Once this quick sketch is down, I set about blocking in, starting with the shadow family:

I steer away from local color at this point. At the early stage I lay in the dark values focusing on the color temperatures I see in the shadows. Generally (but not always) the shadow colors are on the cool side on a bright sunny day, especially as the scene recedes.

And here, above, I’ve fleshed out the shadows a bit more and I begin addressing the light family. At this stage to two families are coming together a bit like puzzle pieces.  I keep things fairly broad for as long as I can, and restrain myself from getting bogged down in detail and refinements until the end stages of the game.

At this point I pause and take a snapshot of my palette. I needed a scrape down to make some more room for fresh paint, but I took this shot around the time of the stage above, for the purpose of showing the “two families” as I mixed.

 I am working hard at paying better attention to the way I organize my mixtures on my palette. While I’m still not perfect at this, (you can see a couple of stray darks sneaking in around the lower edges), organizing my palette by separating the mixtures in the shadow family from those in the light family helps me to organize those same families on the canvas. Again I must credit Kevin Macpherson for this concept.   Note, this is a very broad range of color for me, as for a very long time I stuck with a limited palette of red, yellow, and blue (plus white). But I am having a good time experimenting with color and some of the tertiary colors, while not imperative, serve as “convenience colors” for me when I know I am not going to have much plein air time. (Which is pretty much all the time these days.)

Okay, this is a far as I got with my step-by-step. At this point in the process I recall looking at the time and realizing that I needed to “bring it home” if I had any hope of finishing before I had to pick up my daughter from school. So without further ado, here is the final painting:

“A Change of Season”, Oil on linen, 8×10″ ©Jennifer Young

A new thing-a-majig and a new painting

In the wake of the plein air weekend I wrote of in my last post, last week was mostly a recovery week for me. I did manage to get a new studio painting started, however. This is the initial tonal sketch on a 20x24" linen canvas.

Tonal sketch

This painting  may prove to be a challenge for me because much of this scene is in shadow. But there are a few pops of light that I am arranging in strategic places that I hope will carry the painting. Hey, you never know unless you try, right?

As with the other recent studio oils, I'm working with water miscible paints. One thing I'm noticing with these paints is that the paint blobs on my palette tend to gum up a little quicker once they are laid out, especially when I can't get back to the studio within a day. The manufacturer, Royal Talens recommends in their product info to mist the unused paints with a little water and cover  with foil to keep them moist and reduce the exposure to air. I have never liked putting plastic or foil directly on my paints though, because I feel that it wastes too much in the removal (yes I realize there is a bit of faulty logic in there but we all have our pet peeves).  So I'm experimenting with this:

What you are seeing is a basic 9x13" cake pan covered with a silicone doo-jobby that I found on Amazon. It is supposed to create an airtight seal, and the cake pan is deep enough that this cover-thing doesn't actually touch the paint. Whether it will be sufficient to keep the paint from oxidizing remains to be seen. I haven't been back at the easel since Saturday so I guess I will find out this morning when I go to work. I will report back with my findings, as well as an update on my progress with the painting, in an upcoming post.

Plein Air Crush

This week I am coming down off of an exciting weekend in Floyd County, Virginia, where I participated in the inaugural plein air event called Plein Air Crush. In total there were about 19 artists participating over the course of the weekend, with judging and awards taking place on Sunday. This year the event centered around Chateau Morrisette Winery, which has some interesting architectural features, lovely gardens and vineyards, not to mention a fine restaurant and some pretty tasty wine. It sounds luxurious doesn't it? But keep in mind I was not doing much sipping. Instead I was schlepping; schlepping a bunch of art gear and standing for hours, out in the elements. It was hard on the body but rewarding for the spirit, and I had a good time painting the new-to-me scenery and meeting other artists.

We converged on Friday evening for a little meet and greet, but the painting portion of the event kicked off on Saturday, where we faced the threat of rain and some pretty dark skies. Painting in these conditions is really challenging because the value range is very limited and the light fairly flat. So I decided to set up in the vineyard where I found opportunities for some strong linear elements and soft edges that provided interesting compositional options:

"Vineyard in Gray Light", oil on panel, 9x12" ©Jennifer E Young. To purchase, contact me!

In the afternoon I decided to venture a little further afield to paint a view of Buffalo Mountain: 

"Buffalo Mountain View" , oil on linen, 8x8"  ©Jennifer E Young

Sunday was the quick draw. It was incredibly windy. Worse than clouds and rain, wind conditions are a nearly impossible situation for the plein air painter because of the danger of having your entire setup topple and/or take flight.  The wind at the winery required that most painters seek a shelterd place unless they had a good way of weighting their setup (which I didn't).

Down at the vineyard though it was much warmer and virtually windless. I hadn't really planned on doing another vineyard piece but I figured it was my best option for success when we had a time limit.

"Sunlit Vines, Oil on linen, 9x12"©Jennifer E Young. Contact me to purchase!

Jennifer painting the vineyard at Chateau Morrisette during the Quick Draw.

We had three hours for the quick draw (which is actually pretty generous). At the alotted time we had to deliver our quick draw painting and the other works we had completed during the event and set up for judging. Steve Doherty, artist and editor of Plein Air Magazine was the judge. I didn't win any awards but it was cool to meet him and I learned a lot about my painting, and even a bit about myself as well.

Setting up for the judgement back up at the winery

Here I am happy and tired. The wind blew up a bunch of dirt on my paintings. I have managed to get most of it off of the two vineyard pieces, but the Buffalo Mountain one was painted really thickly and I don't think that stuff is going to budge. Oh well...that's plein air for you! It was good winery soil at least.

I came home to a messy house and a bunch of dirty laundry, but it was a fair trade for having had time off from mommy duties to do my thing for a whole weekend. (Thanks honey!) :-)