Backyard Treasures II

The previous pastel, "Backyard Treasures", was done in order to enter into a prestigious art show the Art Guild of Orange Park was having at the Thrasher-Horne Gallery. I was not crazy about it however, and didn't think it was show quality, so I decided to try it again, this time in acrylic, and see what I thought of that. This is the result, also 11x14. I was not crazy about this one either, but like it better than the pastel.

So in the end I entered them both in the show. Surprise! This one was juried out and the pastel was accepted into the show. You just never know.

Backyard Treasures

 I have a large orange tree in my back yard. Alas it's a bitter orange, so no good for juice, but it is good for making marmalade! The oranges begin to ripen in late October, and do through January or so. I love it when the oranges are ripe though, and the sun shines on them. This is my first cut at a painting - done on an 11x14 piece of cream-colored Art Spectrum paper - a mixture of pastels but mostly NuPastel and Terry Ludwigs.

Breakfast Time

More and more lately I'm having fun playing with my oil pastels - most of the benefits of the regular dry pastels but not all the mess and dust. They are a great medium to use with my grandkids! Turpenoid works great for blending them. I've been coating them with varnish and so far it seems to create a hard surface with no mess and stickiness - and could easily be framed without glass, or so it seems. The best of all possible worlds.

We'll see, so far so good. I saw this pelican just a couple miles from my house, picking up a fish at a local boat ramp on Doctors Lake and I had to take a few photos. I guess my biggest issue with the oil pastels is that they don't layer very well, unlike the regular dry pastels. The oily surface seems to prevent it, so some of my brights are not as bright here as I wanted, but could not add any more layers on top of the darker colors. Still, I'm having fun and it's all a learning experience. This was done on an 8x10 plain Ampersand board which I coated with a couple coats of the pre-mixed Art Spectrum ground, using a mixture of both my Holbein and Caran d'Ache oilies.

Working smaller

I'm really having fun using my oil pastels and turpenoid and creating small works. These two which I just did today are both 5x7 on Pastelmat boards I primed with Art Spectrum primer. I seemed to be working backwords. Many artists do small paintings first as studies for larger works. Me? I did larger works and then did these small ones afterwards. These are small versions of the paintings seen here and here.

Sketch Club - Spring Park

Lately I've been enjoying my friend Leslie's "Sketch Club". We meet every other week and the idea is *not* to paint, but to practice our drawing skills. However today was a *gorgeous* day - sunny and upper 60s and a light breeze, so we decided to meet outdoors at Spring Park, a wonderful park on the banks of the St. Johns River. However I threw some pastels into the bag and decided to give them a try too. So when we first arrived I spent about 40 minutes on the above - an 8x12 masonite board which I primed myself with three coats of the Art Spectrum pre-mixed primer that you can buy - a jar I have had for years of the stuff, sort of a slate bluish color. I never like anything I do plein air, but it's always fun to give it a try.

After that I did break out my charcoal pencil and my colored pencils and spent another 15-20 minutes just trying a simple drawing while I chatted with friends. What a perfect day.

at Walter Jones

There were six of us who met this morning at Walter Jones Historical Park in Mandarin for the First Coast Pastel Society's plein air day. It was overcast and raw, but it was fun to be together anyway. I did this on an 8x10 Ampersand pastel board, a nice plein air surface. I used my Holbein oil pastels again, and they worked on this surface far better than they had on the Richeson surface, no extensive finger blending required. The Holbein set does not have very good colors for realistic plein air, so that allowed me to be a little crazy. Most of the actual colors were pretty flat and gray, so it was fun to use some of the more vibrant Holbein colors instead.

To see what other folks did this morning you can check out our blog at:
http://www.firstcoastpastelsociety.com/2016/02/hardy-souls-at-walter-jones-historical.html

Willet and Waves - preliminary

I had a little free time this morning and I decided I wanted to paint a *big*  painting this morning, big and bright and colorful. I found (can't even imagine where they came from!) several 16x20 heavyduty Canson cardboard sheets, all in dark colors - three dark brown and one black. How odd. But I figured I could cover the surface with pastel. WRONG. It turned out the paper mounted on the board was the standard bumpy (meaning ugly) side of Canson. When I tried to apply any pastel you got all the classic ugly Canson dimpling showing through, in DARK BROWN. I tried to blend to get rid of the dimples, and it did blend a bit, but the colors were still dark and muddy. Any layer I tried to put on still had the dimples, which I HATE. It just went from bad to worse and I finally decided it was not going to get any better and gave up. I loved this photo I had taken on a bird walk at Fort Matanzas a couple weeks ago, and the pastel was not doing it justice.

So I got out a 16x20 canvas I had, covered it with gesso toned with a little burnt siena and decided to try an acrylic. Never having taken any lessons in acrylic I still feel like I'm just futzing around with it, but even so I was happier with what I was getting than I was on the Canson board with pastel.

I've reached this logical stopping point with it right now, and tomorrow I have my monthly art critique so I'll be brave and bring it to that and see what advice I get on where to go next.

Meanwhile, here for fun, is what my Canson board with pastel on it looks like. Quite a sow's ear. I doubt there is a silk purse hiding in there anywhere. So are these boards good for anything? I can't even recall why I have them. I might still try this in pastel again though, on sanded paper!

Sunrise

The Art Guild of Orange Park has a current show hanging which was supposed to be anything but standard 2D artwork. Well bummer for me, I'm a 2D artist and my mind really does not think outside the box for anything beyond 2D. I thought about it for months but really had no ideas of interest to me. We have so many 2D artists though that I was afraid there might not be enough artwork for the show, so finally the night before receiving for the show I sat down and painted this! Pretty crummy I know. Thirty minutes worth of acrylic which is not my forte, and then I glued a few small shells and rock onto it to give it a bit more than standard 2D. LOL. Clearly no award winner but at least I produced a piece for the show, even if only at the last minute.

Alpine Groves

I did this painting last month at our First Coast Pastel Society plein air paint-out. We went to Alpine Groves Park along the banks of the St. Johns River. It was a cool, overcast, misty day. No sunlight, no shadows, no reflections, no lights and darks. The lake water looked dark and foreboding, the sky was light solid gray. Hard for me to paint without interesting lights and shadows. I did this from out on the long fishing pier looking back to the shoreline.

I took it to the monthly art critique I go to which always helps, lots of good advice. I always struggle in my artwork to add things that were not actually there. I was told I need to make the sky darker, and that I should add some orange reflections of the trees in the water even though there was none there. And also the fact that the three elements of my composition (water, trees, sky) divide the painting almost into even thirds, a very uninteresting composition! LOL, I was so careful to make sure I didn't put my waterline smack dab in the middle of the painting, such a big no-no. I didn't think about the thirds business. Guess I'll have to raise my treeline higher since I can't really change the water.

Gold Head Branch Two

Pastels are still and always will be my first love, but they have a couple related drawbacks that make me think about other mediums from time to time.
1) They never "dry" like oil or acrylic - good in that you can always go back to them to touch up or make changes, but bad in that they must always be protected
2) Which means they have to be framed under glass ,which adds to the cost, the weight, and the pain of framing.

And I have no interest in oils which don't suit my impatient painting style - but I keep *toying* with the idea of using acrylics. The problem is that I love the idea of being able to use acrylics, but I never feel happy while I'm actually doing it, and usually not happy with results which I always feel look like kindergarten works.

But today I decided to try again using the same reference photo I did in pastel back at the end of May. While oils dry far too slowly for me the acrylics often dry far too fast, so I used some Golden Retarder in the paints for this painting, and that actually seemed rather helpful.

Though I'm still not happy with this, but not as unhappy as I sometimes am, LOL. This is done on an 8x10 gallery-wrapped canvas.

Castaway

Here's another tiny one, just 5x7, done on Ampersand Pastel Board. I did this on Saturday with the First Coast Pastel Society at their June paint-out. It was a hot and muggy day, not my type of day to be outdoors, so I found a shady spot to set up without worrying about what I would paint, and then just painted what I saw for the sake of doing something.

So not crazy about this, but still enjoy working small, and it was fun to be with a few other die-hard pastelists, and to share a picnic lunch with them afterwards.

Gold Head Branch

This is another one of my small paintings, again just a 6x9, done on Art Spectrum Colourfix with NuPastels. Again I spent a little less than 30 minutes on it. I'm enjoying working in this small size in smaller amounts of time, as it's less daunting to find the time in my schedule to do it.

This is taken from a photo of my that I took at Gold Head Branch State Park early one morning, when I went out there to do some bird watching. I was completely smitten by the *intense* orange of the landscape that the angle of the sun gave everything. The light was so beautiful I just had to take some photos. I enjoyed doing this in small format which I'm finding really so much fun.

In many of my art classes and workshops I was constantly urged to work "Bigger! bigger!" I've been told that "big art" is what sells. But I feel that surely there must be a place in the world for smaller pieces as well. Surely I'm not the only person who lives in a small house and has no wall space for anything but small intimate works of art? I've seen "big art" pieces that I love and that are very striking, but since:
1) I have no possible wall space for anything like that, and
2) "Big art" is generally priced way beyond my means
I just look and pass them by. But I *have* bought a few small pieces of original art done by friends - size and price just right.

So for the time being I'll continue to work small. 

My Back Yard

I'm still trying to get into the groove of working small and working more often, as I seem to keep finding things that keep me away from the easel. If I only need 30 minutes for a small painting I'm likely to do it more often!

So that's what I did today - 30 minutes sitting in my sunroom and looking out over my back yard and pond. This was again done on a small 6x9 piece of Wallis paper that I had sitting around, NuPastels. A size like 6x9 means I can spend a mere 30 minutes or so and actually get something done. Not that I'm very crazy about this painting, but at least I did something! Trying to get back into the groove. I started losing the light since I started latish, so had to stop. Will have to see if I think I can salvage it tomorrow perhaps.

Misty Morning Pond with Heron

This painting has been sitting on my easel for over a month now. I kept thinking it needed something else. I finally got it into my head that what it needed was a heron standing on the edge of the pond near the tree, so this was what did this evening. Now I see that the heron appears to be close to dead center. Oh well, now it's sitting on my easel again to stare at and thing about - 11x14 Richeson paper and various pastels, mostly my Mount Vision "thunderstorm grays" set.

Misty morning pond

At the September meeting of the First Coast Pastel Society we had a presentation by Karl Kelly of Mount Vision Pastels, from Tampa, FL. Karl had a mouth-watering array of over 400 colors of pastels available, as well as various boxed sets of pastels. The one I loved was the "Thunderstorm Gray" set, so I had to buy that one - as well as about  different open stock colors that appealed to me.

I just needed a subject to try out all the wonderful colors in that set! I finally pulled out a photo today that was taken right in my own back yard on a very gray and misty morning with a hint of fog rising from the pond.

So this was done entirely with the colors from the Thunderstorm Gray set as well as one open stock dark green. Mount Vision pastels are all hand-made by Karl, and are big and chunky, so no way to get any serious details with them. They also are fairly fragile as I found when one rolled off the table and shattered into 100 pieces!

This is done on a 11x14 sheet of Richeson sanded paper, sort of an ocher color.

Minis at the Arboretum

Yesterday the First Coast Pastel Society had our first plein air outing of the fall season at the Jacksonville Arboretum. We had about 14-15 folks turn out to paint, and the weather was glorious - our first sunny day in weeks I think.

I still don't feel very comfortable with plein air though I go because I love the fun and camaraderie with the group. I bought a 3-pack of Ampersand pastelmat 5x7 boards and thought they were just a perfect size to use for plein air, so I did the two pictures above.

I don't care for either one of them, LOL. but I still had a lovely day chatting with fellow pastelists, and a nice picnic lunch together.

In other news both of my 16x20 acrylics survived the jurying process and are in the "16x20" show at Reddi-Arts. Opening reception this Sunday, should be fun.

Floridian Fall

This is the second 16x20 acrylic I did for the "16x20" show at Reddi-Arts. Acrylics are still a huge struggle but I'm having more fun with them than I expected. Water, as always, is a killer for me regardless of medium. LOL.

However this scene is right here in the local shopping center in Fleming Island, a largish retention pond just behind and a little to the west of the local Wal-Mart - not exactly out in the pristine wilderness. But I have loved these trees ever since I loved to Florida in 2011 as their pretty colors give me a taste of fall arriving.

And it really does seem to be arriving now. Lovely cool and breezy when I walked my dog an hour ago, and supposed to drop down into the 40s tonight. Woo hoo, I love it.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

We had receiving for an art show this morning where every piece had to be 16x20. That is the image size, not counting mat, not counting frame, etc. The actual image had to be exactly 16x20. I never paint that large with my pastels. I work 9x12 or 11x14, and I buy frames in bulk in only those sizes. I didn't *want* to have to go out and buy a large sheet to work on and a large frame, . 

So I decided to try acrylics once again. Michael's had gallery-wrapped 16x20 frames on sale for about $8.60 each so the price was certainly right and no frame required! I was allowed to enter two in the show so I decided to go for it. This is the first one I completed.

[sigh] I still feel like a kindergarten kid when it comes to trying to use acrylics.

Ravine Gardens

On Saturday I went to Ravine Gardens State Park with the First Coast Pastel Society. Ravine Gardens is a small gem in the state park system, noted for it's beautiful azaleas and an annual azalea festival. This was our regular bi-monthly plein air paint-out, and for the last couple years we've been pretty lucky with our weather, but not so much so on Saturday. The azaleas had only just begun to bloom, but a light splash here r there. But the main problem was that it was chilly, raw and rainy the whole morning. Oh well, as one woman said, "At least we don't have to worry about constantly shifting light and shadows". :-)

Most of us set up under a big covered picnic pavilion and were able to look out at the rain, drizzle, mist, and the foggy views. But it was fun all being together as a group, about 12 of us. The lighting was definitely flat, but it was still fun. Above is the painting I did  - on 9x12 Richeson paper, a sort of light blue-gray color.

Curious Cows

After painting the elephant and flamingos for the Jacksonville Zoo Project I still had the acrylics all over the dining room table. At the monthly art critique on Wednesday several of the women there told me I should try working in acrylics more. So I decided to give it a try, and painted this picture. It's 11x14 on canvas.

I'm still an acrylic newbie, but for fun I submitted it to the Fin, Feather and Fur competition at the Great Hang Ups Gallery.  All the paintings must be of animals, birds or fish, and some of the proceeds from the show will go to support the Safe Animal Shelter.

And if it doesn't get into the show, or does but fails to sell, I'll probably try to enter it in the Clay County Fair, whose theme this year is "Country Roots and Cowboy Boots". What could be more "country" than cows in a field? :-)