Shadows, doors and floors

Here is a little progress on my painting of the Tuscan street scene I posted a sketch of in my last entry. Now that I have my design, I am ready to start laying in some color. My palette is fairly expansive, which I tend to do in the studio when I am more pressed for time. Here I'm using a few convenience colors in addition to my basic primary palette of red/yellow/blue. My colors for this piece are Titanium White, Cad Yellow light, Cadmium Red Light and Medium, Alizarin Permanent, Ultramarine Blue, Sevres Blue, (Rembrandt- kind of like Cerulean but a bit brighter with more tinting strength),  Gold Ochre (also Rembrandt brand- like Raw Sienna but warmer and more golden; yum) and Burnt Sienna (tonal sketch only). I start by laying in more concretely the pattern of shadow and light. I really love the way the shadows from the potted flowers spill onto the stone wall and red door:

Painting in progress of Tuscan village street scene by Jennifer Young

 I use lots of the Gold Ochre for the wall, mixed with both blues and Alizarin in varying degrees, as the stone has lots of warmth but lots of variation in it too. For the door I started out with pure Cadmium Reds in the sunlit area, but whoa! I then decided to mute this a bit with touches of white and a tiny bit of yellow plus Sevres Blue to give it a more authentic sun-washed look. The door in shadow is a mix of Cad Red Medium, plus Ultramarine and Alizarin.  Next I start to lay in some of stone bench:

Work in progress of Pienza village in Tuscany by Jennifer Young

As you can see, I use violets in the shadows (Ultramarine Blue and Alizarin, plus touches of  white and yellow) to contrast with the bright warmth of the sunlit stone.

Tuscan village street scene in progress by Jennifer E. Young

The bench established, I add a little more texture to the stone wall and then begin to lay some pavers. Even though they are terra cotta- colored pavers, they are still very light in value in relation to the wall. I've cooled them off with a bit of  Sevres Blue as they recede, to send them back and lay them down where they belong. Next I'll start working on the potted plants and add some more color to the scene. Stay tuned!

Ancient Hills, Golden Valley

My latest sunflower landscape painting (the start of which I posted here) has actually been finished for a while. But once again I have been delinquent in posting. To make up for that fact, I offer you a slideshow of this painting, start-to-finish:

This painting measuring 20x24" is entitled "Ancient Hills, Golden Valley". For more information and/or to purchase, click here or contact me!

Feed problems? RSS readers take note!

It  appears that my last post on my recent wine label commission isn't appearing in my RSS feed, and thus, didn't get disseminated to my email subscribers either. As I am really excited to share this project, and I'd like to get to the bottom of this problem I am having with my blog feed, I hope you will forgive me if I send out this test post. I'm trying to see if there was just some sort of formatting issue with the last post or if indeed it is true that Google is no longer supporting Feedburner (which is where my blog feed gets redirected and disseminated.) Either way, I think the writing is on the wall and it is time to find a new solution to manage my blog subscriptions.

So change is in the air. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do this, but my plan is to leave Feedburner altogether and just start using my original feed. If you currently subscribe to my blog using RSS, please change your feed subscription to link directly to my original feed:

http://www.jenniferyoung.com/blog/feed

If you subscribe to my blog by email, there should be nothing you need to do at present with your subscription (so long as I do this right!) But if there is any change, I will be sure to notify you in advance. I don't have an enormous subscriber list, but I will do what I can to keep every one of you!

In the meantime, if you would like to see the Tuscany paintings I did for Frances Mayes' Tuscan Sun Winesfollow this link!