A Gate of Opportunity, watercolor on paper, 12x9

This week I painted on site at Harvard in Cambridge, MA. I set my tripod easel in a tight corner in front of the tourist information office, about the only spot protected from the rain and from the groups of tourists. I painted directly, without a preliminary sketch or any drawing in pencil.


Many artists and students have concerns about using M Graham and other honey based watercolor brands in plein air work, especially those who have folding palettes with wells on the lid... But I used a folding palette and M Graham colors on this painting and even though it was a warm, very humid day, the paints did not run or spill. I stored my palette vertically in the bag, and kept a wet brush inside it, and it did not cause any problems. The paint was tacky in the wells when I reopened the palette at night in the hotel, but there were no spills. One reason is that the paint had been poured in the pans much earlier; if I had just added fresh paint the night before I may have had problems. At any rate, the only M Graham colors I have tried which have cause spills at all have been cobalt teal and cobalt violet--I no longer carry those colors in my plein air kit for that reason.

 

A snapshot of me with my two pieces at the opening reception of the Plein Air Artists Colorado National Exhibit last night in Boulder. 

The Mary Williams Fine Arts Gallery was packed with artists, guests and collectors. It was exciting to see so many friends and get to meet so many top level artists, whose work I had admired in magazines, books and videos. In fact the whole experience was that of walking through the pages of the Southwest Art magazine. It is such an honor to be included in this show. The exhibit is open until August 30th and is well worth seeing--and prices are very reasonable too!

Crested Butte Revisited

Generation Gap, watercolor on Yupo paper, 14x11

This is my studio piece from my plein air study done in Crested Butte (see my previous post). It was good to revisit this scene while everything was still fresh on my memory.

Crested Butte on the 4th of July

We had a wonderful trip to Crested Butte to visit our friend and great artist Peggy Morgan Stenmark. What a beautiful place, and so many subjects to paint! After the 4th of July parade, I did a couple of sketches and completed this 12 x 9 inch plein air study on Elk Avenue. I set up in the only quiet, shaded spot I could find amidst the buzz of the tourist crowd. The stage with the band and the food court were only a half block away... The shade did not last long, a couple of families congregated on the same spot, and there were many passers-by who stopped to view, ask questions, comment and tell me about their own home towns. And I did not realize I had been painting in front of a gallery until artist Ann Sharkey came out to introduce herself! I did not do any planning and just tried to capture a bit of the scene and ended up overworking it, but it was only meant to be good practice and fun, and so it was.

RRWS National Exhibit Bronze Medal

 

June has been full of nice surprises. The latest was the Bronze Medal at the RRWS National Exhibit in Moorhead, MN. I was not able to attend the opening ceremony last Tuesday, but did have a chance to see the show before it opened and the worker in charge of setting up the lights was kind enough to take this snapshot of me by my painting "No Left."

This piece retires from exhibits with a nice history. Initially, it was not successful and collected several rejections at shows, until I revised it by darkening the building and shadow on the right, and created a lead into the painting with the spatter on the foreground. After the adjustments, it was accepted into a local, a State and two national shows, and won an Honorable Mention and a Third Place Award.

It is a painting I love, not only because it shows one of my favorite places, San Francisco, but because its overall realism is undermined by the abstraction in the shadows and details, and I find the interplay of the two very intriguing.

Shadows of History at the LAG Exhibit

Shadows of History, watercolor on paper, 9x12

Finally back home from a long trip... I was unable to attend the Longmont Artists' Guild 2015 show, but heard it was very successful and learned my painting Shadows of History won the second place award for watercolors. It was great to have a chance to display some of these smaller paintings, as a lot of other shows have size restrictions.

This was one of the first paintings I did without the use of a pencil drawing. I was really pleased a how well the straight lines ended up, and at the positive/negative design of the fence, which prevented it from being too conspicuous and restrictive. I am very glad juror James Whartman saw merit in it as well.

The subject here is a view of a farm setting at the Littleton History Museum during a paint-out. I did a different scene en plein air and captured this view with my camera. Years later, I did this painting from that photo but could still remember a lot of the light and atmosphere of that bright summer day.

Plein Air Artists Colorado National Exhibit

Niwot Farm in Summer, watercolor on paper, 12 x 16

Summer is the time for plein air painting, and for plein air shows. I got great news that Niwot Farm in Summer and another of my paintings got selected for the Plein Air Artists Colorado 19th National Exhibit in July and August at the Mary Williams Fine Arts Gallery in Boulder.

I have sketched and painted at this site a few times in different seasons. It is a beautiful scene at a convenient location, except for the lack of shade, which causes a constant glare on the paper and makes the paint dry too fast. Still a very enjoyable experience and a thrill to face the challenge to capture the subject before light conditions changes too much. The more I paint onsite the more I regret the times when I have to use a photo as reference, as I'm more aware of all the distortions the camera causes. Colors are interpreted by the camera in a way that is very different from how we see the objects, especially the contrast with lit areas and shaded areas. The lens also stretch the field of vision and makes any distant objects appear much smaller and farther than in reality. And of course any close objects will have their perspective skewed.

One of my goals for this plein air season is to increase the ratio of completed paintings done on site, as opposed to only sketches and studies. This means I will have to focus more on technique and speed of execution. Another idea I'm toying with is to try painting on yupo en plein air... At first thought it seems impossible, but they sun and wind usually dry the paint so fast it might be doable with the right approach. Well, we will try and see where it leads.