slow going

                               9x13

Almost every time I add something I think, That was a mistake ... but I keep going, slowly, as none of the mistakes have yet proven fatal. 

low tide sunset

                                  7x10

Striving for letting the colors be wet enough to move and bleed but not so wet that the individual colors lose their own characteristics and beauty: I find this very hard to control! And I am now thinking that it's a thing that just happens, or doesn't!

landscape composition class

               

                     4x6 value study

Taking another 4-week Zoom class at the Chesapeake Fine Arts Studio. This one with Susan Lynn on composing landscapes.

We take one photo, make 2 or 3 1.5x2" value sketches using a very soft pencil; then translate those into watercolor value studies.

I am enjoying the process, and hope to use it in my plein air painting--where, traditionally, I just jump in and paint what's in front of me! With, not surprisingly, very mixed results!

Below, the two watercolor value studies I did: one emphasizing the foreground, the other the barn.

This is my value study from last week: everything gets darker as it comes forward. Kind of blows my mind that I'm only "learning" (in a methodical way) this stuff now. I excuse myself by saying I was having too much just watching the paint move to learn anything. I guess in some way I knew it, I had observed it ... but turning it into a principle that can be used to help me paint better paintings? That's new. 

sketches

                               7x10

             Delaware Breakwater light

                                 7x10
Couple of sketches ... Not much time to paint this week. ☹

landscape class

                              11x15

More atmospheric perspective.

Hope to paint a lot of marshes this summer.

                             4x6

cumberland county house

                               7x10

A sketchbook page.

Painted from a photo I took somewhere in Cumberland County in south Jersey.

It's fun to explore CC, parts of which are on the Maurice River: there's natural beauty and a lot of history.

On this day we saw, among others, an AME church dating to the 1790s that was a stop on the Underground RR.

Another sketchbook page. Arya and Melo.

irises, cont.

                                12x12

Finally got up the courage to finish this. I like the way the top right turned out, dont like the bottom right--too dark and muddy. But I hope I learned something: dont go back in! Paint it and leave it alone.

The iris paintings I did this past week.

The start of another try!

continuing w iris ...

                               12x12

This is for a class in which, last week, we looked at the paintings of Nell Blaine. Her early work was mostly abstract, but, after she was paralyzed by polio, her work became more representational (what's the cause-and-effect? idk, except maybe being, at least initially, more confined, she chose to paint what she could see?) and she painted more watercolors, which, the paper lying flat, were easier for her to paint.

I love her landscapes and still lifes, and her wondercfgul view-through-a-window paintings.

I chose to paint from a photo of dwarf iris in my yard.

Finding ot hard to "fill in" the negative shapes...

Best bet is probably to think it over for a day!

iris study

                              10x6

From a photo of dwarf Dutch irises in my yard earlier this spring.

Planning a larger painting, maybe 12x16?, of a group of these irises, and did this one to try out how I would approach it.

I decided on colors I would use ahead of time (so unlike me): blue violet, red violet, yellow green ... and pretty much stuck to it. So, okay.

Messed up in my paint handling skills: 1) I got bleeding where I didn't want it; 2) mixed ugly neutrals in the bottom ( values might be stronger there too).

I think I need to get a better plan-- for the pattern of the leaves, and for letting sections dry before painting next to them.

blues

                                  16x18

10-minute sketches. I set out to explore some blues ... but dipped into the same ones I always use.

painting by lamplight

                                 11x15

I painted these both sitting on the sofa, after dark, by the light of a 60 watt bulb!

Can't decide if that's good or bad.

On one hand the colors are more pure and intense; on the other hand the color are more pure and intense.

                                  4x6