Coneflowers

I've gotten stuck working on a larger painting that is just not going too well, so have not posted here lately. But last night I decided I needed to take a break from the larger work and go with something smaller and more accessible. So this one is from a photo I took in my garden, done on my usual Art Spectrum 9x12.

It seemed like a perfect painting to be part of my friend Michelle's 'Nature Notes' this week. This one was fun to do, and a change from my recent landscapes. Macro close-ups of things are also fun challenges.

Canadian Hayrolls

There just seems to be no end to my fascination with my Canadian pictures. Up where we have our summer place in New Brunswick there are still many working farms that face right on the bay, and I love the look of the hayrolls in the fields with the sparkling water behind them. The reference photo for this was taken along South Shore Rd. with the hayfield right on the edge of Baie Verte, and Nova Scotia across the way, on the other side of the bay.

Bridge over the Tantramar

I love the wide-open spaces of the Tantramar Marshes near Sackville, New Brunswick. Route 2, the Trans-Canada Highway, runs through the marsh and along the edge of Sackville, paralleled by large electric wires cutting across the landscape. But not far off the beaten path you run into a network of dirt roads that run through the marsh, connecting Upper Sackville to small towns like Jolicure and Point de Bute. 

It always amazes me that there is a real covered bridge still in use along the High Marsh Rd. from Upper Sackville, and it is still used daily primarily by the farmers in the area. I just enjoyed this view with the juxtaposition between an old-fashioned structure like a covered bridge, and the modern one of the high tension transmission lines that run through the area. 

Canadian Rocks 2009

I always loved the photo I took of the rocks on our beach up in New Brunswick, Canada several years ago. In fact, back in 2005 when I first began to learn about using pastels, it was one of the first pictures I wanted to paint. So I tried and tried, and I was so frustrated as I *knew* in my mind what I wanted to create, but just could not seem to get it down on paper. I just didn't have the skill or the learning or the experience to be able to create on paper what I could see in my mind's eye. 

But after four years of working with pastels I decided the time was ripe to try it again! I still wanted to do that rock scene! And this time it seemed to flow so much more easily. I felt happier with what I was doing, and more confident that I could achieve a result that pleased me. 

So I created the above on a 9x12 sheet of Art Spectrum Colourfix, and I'm much happier with the result than I was with my original 2005 attempt. To show you the differences, here is the 2005 attempt below, back when I was a fledgling artist, rather than one who is slowly coming to be happy with my own style.

The Beach at Barachois

Now that I'm back in the painting mode I had to do another one! I keep returning to Atlantic Canada, and this one is from a photo I took on a gray and moody day at Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula, when some friends and I went for a stroll on the beach at Barachois. This is my new usual of a 9x12 sheet of Art Spectrum, and this is also a quickie, about 40 minutes. 

We were so chilled afterwards that we stopped at a small café to get some warming drinks, and that was when I learned that ordering a "bowl of coffee" produced a drink that was actually served in a large bowl like a soup bowl!

Shades of Gray

I really thought I'd get to paint a picture or two last week while visiting my dad in NC, but it just never happened, alas. So it's been a while since I've posted here. But finally I got back to Art Class tonight.

Christina had an interesting still life set up which was quite monochromatic, primarily shades of gray, black and white. Some of the students were doing it just with charcoal, but I'm just too much of a colorist to enjoy that, LOL.

So my challenge to myself was to try to achieve the muted tones of the actual setup, but without using a single white, gray or black pastel! So that's what I did here - no white, gray or black was actually harmed in the creation of this picture. :-)

Canadian Sunset

This is from a photo taken behind our barn up in Canada, of a sunset over the fields. Sunset paintings are a dime a dozen of course. But this photo was so dramatic I just felt an urge to give it a try. I failed miserably alas. Glorious sunsets are just so hard to capture. But at least I don't hate this quite as much as I did during about 95% of the time that I was working on it. Most of the time it looked just a horrible, jarring mish-mosh of weird and unconnected colors that were totally meaningless.  But at the very last minute it finally came together and gave me at least a little hint of what I hoped to capture. 

Baie des Chaleurs Take 2

It was in 2005 that I visited with friends in Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula. I drove up from our farm in New Brunswick, a long 400-mile journey. I was getting tired as I approached Campbellton, and yet still had a long way to go, but pulled over to the side of the road to catch a glimpse of the Bay of Chaleur, which separates New Brunswick from the Gaspe. The vista was so stunning I had to take several pictures. 

Ever since I've wanted to paint a picture of that scene. I made my first attempt at it, using my photos as reference, with this rendition back in March. 

And I just was not happy with it. It didn't capture the scene the way I wanted to.  I rarely paint a scene over again, but I so *wanted* this one to be wonderful,  and I just didn't like it. So last night I decided to try again, on a sheet of 9x12 Art Spectrum,  and if it "felt" better from the Canson of the first version. 

But, , I'm not sure I'm any happier with this picture than I was with the first. There are some things I like in that one, and some in this one. But overall neither do justice to the my memory of the scene. Maybe it's just not for me to capture except in my mind's eye.

Beachkirk

I  can't get away from my "Atlantic Canada" kick! Today I chose to work from a photo, and went back, as I seem to do a lot, to Atlantic Canada. This is from a photo I took on the beach of our summer farm up in New Brunswick. I'm facing sort of northwards, and off in the distance you can see "Beachkirk" a lovely little old church that was at one time converted into a textile museum, and a charming one too. But alas the woman who owned and ran it became too ill and elderly to keep it up, and she sold it into private hands. It's no longer open to the public but it's still a l0vely local landmark.

Birthday Tea Two

I still have the photos I took from the birthday tea that my two friends took me on - though not as many as I would like. Alas I'm rather a dismal photographer, and the photos often come up looking not too useful as reference photos. But I decided I would give one more a try. This was done on my new usual support of 9x12 Art Spectrum.

It was a bit of a pain in the neck as everything was rather *small* on a sheet that size. I hate fiddling with tiny details like that, so this took a couple hours or better, much more time than I really like to spend on one single painting. But now there are two paintings. I guess if I can do a third it will really be a bit of a "series". LOL.

Birthday Tea One

My birthday is March 30. Last Saturday two friends took me out to lunch to this wonderful restaurant/tea room called Teaberry's in Flemington, NJ. It's a darling converted Victorian home, very cute. We had a lovely meal and tea there. I had brought my camera, and my friends kept arranging things on the table, and getting me to arrange things too, into still lifes and telling me to take photos, which I did.

So then they said they expected to see a series of paintings from these photos! :-) Well as usually happens the photos were not as wonderful as I had hoped, but some were not too bad. So I decided to try one today and see if I might do a "tea series".

Greek Philosophy

Tonight was the last night of winter art class. Christina didn't bother bringing in anything for a still life but figured she would just grab things sitting around the classroom. Her first grab was the same small bust that she had me work on as a second painting last week, but then she chose to add something to it that would probably not have been my own choice. I didn't think a skull was something terribly appealing. Yet it actually turned out to be rather fun to do, and it was interesting to see how many colors could be found in two essentially monochrome objects. In the end I actually enjoyed this one.

Greek Bust

Last night in class the Vase and Shadows painting was another one of those that just went very quickly. I was done with it by 8:30 PM, and still had an hour left of class. Christina challenged me to try a painting of this small bust which happened to be sitting in the classroom. I was not thrilled with the idea as it just served to remind me of why I don't enjoy drawing people, or have no interest in portraiture.

But she placed it up on the cabinet where the vase of flowers was sitting, so that the spotlight hit it with interesting lights and shadows, and that made it more appealing. So I spent the last 45 minutes of class working in this. At least he didn't need a break every 20 minutes to get up and stretch, and can't complain that I made him a bit wonky looking. :-)

Vase and Shadows

Spring certainly felt like it was coming today. But just because it was mild and sunny it does not mean things are blooming, mostly just starting to bud. Therefore no real flowers available from Christina's garden, but she brought in very nice silk ones for us to try to paint. They certainly gave a great illusion of spring. :-)

But it this case it was the wonderful cast shadow of the vase that really caught my eye, even more than the flowers themselves, so I just had to made the shadow the star of the show in this painting.

Ruthie's Lobster House

I can't seem to get away from Atlantic Canada, can I? Pretty soon I'll have an entire book's worth of paintings from Atlantic Canada. Tonight in class Christina proposed to talk about perspective, at the request of one of the other students. I sort of listened in with half an ear though most of it was not new to me. But I always enjoy Christina's lectures. 

However I painted as I listened! This is a picture I've long been wanting to paint, one I took of Ruthie's Lobster House in the darling little town of Victoria-by-the-Sea on Canada's Prince Edward Island. I kept putting it off and putting it off though, as I hated fiddling with drawing and painting buildings. But in honor of the class on perspective I decided to just bite the bullet and go for it. 

I took so long on the building I barely got done by the time class ended! However I did manage to finish, so spent about 2 hours on this painting, a long time for me. :-) This is done on my new paper of choice, 9x12 Art Spectrum Colourfix. 

Baie des Chaleurs

Tonight was a slow night for my pifflechat group, with one friend out celebrating Purim, and another running errands, soI decided to paint a picture. I choose this fromt a photo I took during my trip to Quebec's Gaspe Peninsula in 2oo5, I stopped alongside the road in New Brunswick, as I neared the border I pulled over and took a photo of the Bay of Chaleur, looking across to the Gaspe on the far side. I thought it was an awesome view.

Although I don't think this is an awesome painting, LOL. I could not find my Art Spectrum paper, and did this on a sheet of 12x16 orange Canson, all I could find. Gee, I used to love Canson, but after using Art Spectrum most of the time lately the Canson seemed horrible, and I had to really fight with it. I also found I was sadly lacking in greens in the little set of pastels I had here in the house (most of my pastels are already in the car to go to art class tomorrow).

But just doing something, anything, is good - no matter the result. Because I hated the orange paper I had, and had no idea how it would turn out, I took a few photos along the way - so I'll show you some of the stages this picture went through before I called it quits.

1) A very simple and basic drawing, and just filling in some underlayer colors using the Pan Pasels.

2) A very simple Pan Pastel undercoat on the entire painting.
3) Worked on the sky, clouds, and the distance hills of the Gaspe. Some deeper color to the water. 
4) More work on the water, the building roof, and some of the vegetation. 
So there you go. I have more photos of the stages this went through, but this is enough to give you an idea .I don't know if it's truly "done" but it's done for the night at least.  A shame in some ways - I do *love* this size so much more than the smaller 9x12 Art Spectrum. But I don't like using the larger sheets of Art Spectrum as I have so much wastage. And I've never had much luck using the Art Spectrum ground that you can apply to a surface of your own - it never comes out like the "real thing".

Maybe I just need to start working on Canson more again until I get used to it. I don't like the orange color either - but it was all that was left in the multi-color Canson pad - naturally since I left the icky color until last. :-) 

Cape Jourimain

Well, it looks like it's back to Atlantic Canada again for me! This is just a "quickie" done in class last night from a photo of mine. Cape Jourimain is in New Brunswick, Canada, just at the approach to the bridge to Prince Edward Island. It's a nature sanctuary and a major birding hotspot, and also boasts a restaurant that serves wonderful food - mostly all locally produced and organic, and supports its entire visitor's center with "green" technologies. 

The lighthouse there is no longer operational, and in past years ospreys have nested atop it. I have seen at least a couple of my "life birds" at Cape Jourimain.

I finished my onion painting quickly last night. Christina was doing some demos after that, but I have taken her classes before and seen the same demos, so I took advantage of the last 50-60 minutes I had available to work on a quick additional picture, which is this one here - also a 9x12 on Art Spectrum Colourfix.

Onion Basket

It was back to still lifes tonight with a basket of onions. Not too much to say about this one, except that I liked the contrasts of the complementary colors of the onions and basket, and the mostly purples of the background. This one went pretty quickly, about 75 minutes total. Done on a 9x12 sheet of Art Spectrum Colourfix paper.

Crystal Coast

I'm still trying to work on water, so Christina said I could try a water picture in class tonight. I guess the more you do it the easier it gets or something, LOL. But true with many things. I had a lot of water reference photos, but decided to do this one. I took the photo down in Morehead City, NC where my dad lives. He has a lovely house facing Bogue Sound, and there is a nice little public beach just a couple blocks from his house. I took this photo at the public beach, and that was what I used for my reference tonight. This was hard work, and I took the entire class session on it.

But when I find myself thinking how hard it is, it's also nice to reflect on how far I have come since I took up pastels four years ago. In those early days I had no idea what I was doing. In May of 2005, only 2 months after I had first tried using pastels, I went down to visit my dad for a week. I decided to try to work on a couple pictures en plain aire while I was down there. And as it happened I chose this very same setting as one of my pictures to try.

So after I got home from class tonight I managed to track down the photo (and a poorly taken photo at that) of that original painting of this same scene and I'm actually giving a public airing down below! But this is one of the reasons I keep everything I've ever done. It's nice to step back in time to see where you came from sometimes on the days when you don't feel you are making any progress. :-)

Happy Birthday Dear Blog

Wow, hard to believe it was three years ago today I started my blog. I was going to celebrate by spending the day working on a lovely painting of some sort. But my day started shortly after 6 AM with a call from work. By the time I was done it was 8:30 AM and too late to get back to bed. I have to be in the office at 7 AM tomorrow morning for a big system upgrade, so Sunday is mostly shot too. So I decided I was going to do my *taxes* today since the weekend was mostly shot anyway. I thought it would go pretty fast using TaxCut software, but it ended up taking me 12 hours! 

The good news: Well, the taxes are all done. I owe the state of New Jersey a mere $4, and I'll be getting a nice refund from Federal.

The bad news: I finished up so late it left little time for the grand painting I wanted to work on, but I had to do something to mark this blog's occasion. So I did take the time to do this quick little portrait of my house, only about 45 minutes of work on a 9x12 sheet of Art Spectrum, but I just needed to get something done, and my own house seemed like a good way to mark my own blog. 

Canadian Inlet

I guess this one can be included in my Atlantic Canada series of paintings. I finished up my still life in class last night with over an hour to spare before class ended, so I decided to noodle around with one of the photos I had in my bag for potential landscapes. This is from a photo taken up in New Brunswick, Canada  - just down the road from where my dad owns our summer home.  So I spent about an hour on this one - done on 9x12 Art Spectrum, as all my stuff has been recently. I do prefer a slightly larger size, like the 12x16 Canson I have long used. But the wonderful texture of the Art Spectrum is so seductive. I just love it, even though I have achieved nice effects on the Canson as well.

I told Christina that I really yearned to be able to do better with water,  so she suggested I find some nice water pictures to bring to class next week and we could work on that. So I need to start looking through my photo files and see what  I can come up with. 

Fiery Fruit

This is just a still life Christina set up in class tonight. I loved the bright, vibrant red of the fabric that she used, and the wonderful reflections in the shiny black vase. Nothing "heavy" to post about tonight, just a pleasant art class, and fun painting in the company of others.

Gerry Niewood

I've known Gerry Niewood for over 20 years. Not well - he traveled a lot, and seemed to be always on the road, the story of a musician's life. But I knew his family better. His wife Gurly and I sang together as fellow altos in the church choir for many years. She has a lovely voice and I've always hoped she would consider returning to the choir. Son Adam was in high school with my own son. Later on daughter Elizabeth took voice lessons from the same voice teacher I take lessons from. We had a recital at the Niewood's house one time, a lovely old Victorian filled with books and old furniture and worn rugs. That last part may not sound flattering, but I mean it to be! The Niewoods had a *home*, well loved and well lived in, full of charm. It was a real home where real people lived, not a showplace.

So when I heard that Gerry was one of the victims who perished in the dreadful crash of Continental flight 3407 in Buffalo, NY I was overwhelmed with shock and grief. How could such a dreadful thing happen? I saw Gerry just two weeks ago. Our church has an annual antique show every year, and the opening night there is a lovely reception with appetizers and music, and this year the music was provided by Gerry and Gurly. He on flute, she on piano. The whole family is musical, but Gerry was outstanding. As Gerry's MySpace page says "Gerry Niewood is an instrumentalist (soprano, alto, tenor, baritone saxophones; flute, alto flute, bass flute, piccolo, clarinet) who has lent his melodic invention to artists as diverse as: Chuck Mangione, Peggy Lee, Simon and Garfunkel, Sinead O'Connor, Anne Murray, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, Mark Murphy, Gil Evans, Astrid Gilbeto, Judy Collins, Frank Sinatra and Gerry Mulligan to name only a few. Gerry is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music."

In fact it was a gig with Chuck Mangione what was taking him to Buffalo. If you go to his MySpace page you can also hear some of music. I'm still so sad, and sorry for the whole Niewood family. Today I could not settle after church and choir, and finally decided that painting a picture would be cathartic. I could not follow my usual practice of only painting from life, or using my own photos. I have no photos of Gerry. And if I had they would have been snapshots of Gerry the man, not Gerry the musician.

But I was much taken by the photo posted of him at the nj.com website. Not only did it incorporate Gerry with his sax, but was taken in the town where we both live, in the local train station where I have many times waited for trains when I had job assignments or training that took me into New York. So that was what I felt I needed to use. I would not call this a good likeness of Gerry. I'm not a portrait artist. If you want to see what Gerry really looked like there are plenty of images you can Google, like this one.

But doing this today helped *me*. I'm so sorry for all the lost victims of Flight 3407, but Gerry was the one that I knew.

Meadowlands

I think I've mentioned here before that birding is another of my hobbies. I'm not obsessive about it, and most of my birding is done just watching birds from my own home, counting birds at the feeders in my yard for Cornell University's "Project Feeder Watch". But I do enjoy seeing other birds when I can, and adding to my Life List, such as it is! When I saw that Snowy Owls had been seen wintering in New Jersey's Meadowlands I had a buring desire to go see them. 

So last weekend my sister accompanied me to go on the quest of the Snowy Owls. With the help of other birders we did spot the owl - quite tricky as his camoflage was wonderful, and after watching him a while we decided to go a little further down the road to the marvelous Meadowlands Environment Center to see if we could also spot the rare Eurasian Teal who was said to be wintering there as well. 

With that goal accomplished we strolled back along the waterfront path, and happened to catch sight of a most glorious sunset. I had to snap several photos of it. And then I decided I needed to turn the photos into a painting, so that is the subject of my painting above, done my my new favorite of 9x12 Art Spectrum Colourfix paper, the rose grey color. 

And as a special added bonus, here is a photo below that I took of the Snowy Owl. When I went home to add him to my list I found that he was actually bird number 100 on my Life List, so that made him even more special.

Mac on the Beach

Art class was canceled last night due to bad weather, so I just took it easy instead. But I hate to miss an chance to create something, and going to class makes me get out and do it! But no meetings tonight, so I decided I could paint something right here at home.

Since it's cold and snowy out I decided to paint something warm and inviting. This is from a reference photo of my cousin Amanda's little boy Mac at the beach. Either Amanda or her husband Tom, who is a professional photographer, took the initial photo, so if there is any merit at all in the composition I owe it to them, and not to me at all.

But I loved the photo and when I saw it I asked Amanda if I could have a copy. I knew I wanted to paint it some day. And now, 2 1/2 years later, I'm finally doing it!