Butler Park

This is from Day Two of the workshop with Kathleen Galligan - a wild, cool and windy day! So different from the hot day before at Anastasia. It was the sort of day to send easels and pastels flying if you were not careful - but a pretty little park and boat ramp along the intracoastel waterway. This was done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum paper using a variety of pastels.

Anastasia

More catching up, but back at the end of February I took a 3-day plein air workshop with Kathleen Galligan here in St. Augustine. Plein air is still a struggle, but it's also fun to try out. The first day of our workshop was hot and sunny, and our location was Anastasia State Park, one of my favorite places in St. Augustine located on Anastasia Island. The painting opportunities there are endless, as are the birding opportunities!

But I *hate* being out in the hot sun, especially in mid-day, so I chose to set up underneath the roof of a picnic pavillion, as did several others. So it became less a matter of "what vistas do I want to try to paint?" and more a matter of "what can I see from this picnic pavillion that I can turn into a painting of sorts?"  :-)

So the above is my work from the day. I'm not crazy about it - the shadows need some muting and the greens need a hint of variations with other colors. On the other hand I do like the sky, LOL. But since I'm not crazy about it I've just set it aside at this point. We'll see if I decide to do anything with it in the future, but more likely it will be just onward and forward.

Done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum, cream color.

At the Arboretum

The first weekend in February we had our FCPS paint-out day at the Jacksonville Arboretum. This was February after all, and the temperatures were in the 30s when we first arrived there early in the morning, and people had on their hats and coats and gloves, and even long johns! But it's Florida as well and by late morning it had warmed up to the low 60s and was a glorious day for painting out of doors.

I had never been to the arboretum before, but it's certainly a true gem in the area. Most of us set up our easels at spots along the walking trail that surrounds the small central lake. Normally I'm drawn to water as a subject, despite my inadequacies with painting it!

But I was on a tight time schedule on this day. As soon as the paint-out ended I was heading up to Hilton Head to spend a few days visiting with friends. And I struggle so with water. So I decided on a slightly different scene, and chose to do these trees, not that that was not a struggle as well, LOL.

This is a little bit smaller than I usually work, and was done on an 8x10 Ampersand pastel board. Various pastels as usual.

For Maggie Price - RIP

My poor blog. It's been neglected lately. Of course my art has been neglected a lot too, but I *have* done some art work - just struggling to get it posted. But I figured I would finally make a start. We had a paint-out yesterday with the First Coast Pastel Society, at the Nature Preserve at the University of North Florida.

We were all saddened to have learned of the death of Maggie Price the day before. Maggie was a huge luminary in the pastel world, and a warm and lovely woman. I took a workshop with Maggie a few years ago and it was one of the best workshops ever. I recall one day Maggie did a demo painting of a rushing stream coursing over a bunch of boulders. She wanted us all to work on rocks, and claimed most people wound up making their rocks look like potatoes. So throughout the day she kept saying, "No potatoes! No potatoes!"

So when I found this big rock on the island I decided I had to make it my subject, and to do my best to avoid the potato look. Maggie, I hope I succeeded.

Since this is my first post in so long I decided to show sort of a progression of the growth of the painting.

Preliminary sketch and laying in some of the darks - to catch the shadows in plein air before the light shifted too much.

Filling in more shading on the objects, and the background.

More in the water and the foreground, and the objects.

Working more on the rock.

Working on the ground in the forest,

Mostly finished.

And the final painting again. Now that I've posted again I'll have to go back and start adding the pieces I've done in the last couple months - not all of them pastel!

Club Continental Waterfront

This is the third painting I did for the Club Continental show this afternoon. There were 60 paintings in the show, of which about 10 were chosen to remain on display at the club for about a month - none of them being mine, LOL.

This was done on an 11x14 sheet of Richeson paper, the first time I had ever tried that surface. It's a sanded surface but a bit rougher in texture than I prefer. But since I bought a pad of it I'm sure I'll try it out again. :-)

The show itself was a lot of fun and we had a good turnout of folks from the Art Guild, both show participants and others who just showed up to enjoy the show. The Club is beautiful and the appetizers were yummy.

Club Continental - The Blue Window

Grrr, I was so stupid. I *always* take pictures of my paintings when I finish them. But in the case of this one I totally forgot and didn't even think of it until the painting was already framed. Naturally that made it darned difficult to photograph as there is always reflective light from the glass, but I wasn't about to unframe it either. So I just moved it to a dark corner which didn't get much light, and did the best I could.

This is a second one for the Club Continental show tomorrow, where all paintings in the show must be of the Club or its grounds. This was done on 12-16 piece of Art Spectrum.

Club Continental Fountain

This Sunday I'll be participating in an Art Show at the Club Continental in Orange Park, FL. All of the paintings have to be of the Club itself or in and around its grounds. With the deadline looming over me I decided I'd better get cracking! I worked on this this morning, a view of the fountain on the grounds, and reached a point where I decided to step away from it, so it may not be done yet. I'm not quite ready to put it in the frame. But I did reach a spot where I  needed to stop for a bit.

This is done on a 12x16 piece of Wallis Belgian Mist. I know lots of people adore Wallis but it's not actually my favorite, Just a tad *too* toothy for my liking. It just about ate up the entire remaining stick of a favorite blue just working on the sky.

But I wanted to fill a 12x16 frame I have, and I had a pad of 12x18 Wallis that I bought years ago, so decided to bring it out and cut off the bottom two inches and use that. It *is* easy to get a lot of layers with Wallis, and that part is really good. But I still prefer my usual Art Spectrum which is also pretty toothy, but a bit less so than Wallis so doesn't eat up your pastels as much. I WISH that Art Spectrum came in a few different sizes. I mostly use the 9x12 , but I wouldn't mind working a tad bigger. The larger sheets are too big, but if I try to cut them up I wind up with just my usual size anyway unless I want a lot of wastage, and I'm not a fan of wastage. :-)

Cardinal in Florida Winter

I painted this picture the other day at the open studio at Leslie's house. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I loved the photo I took of the cardinal sitting among the oranges in my orange tree. I did a little play with special effects with the idea of using it for a Christmas card. Done on 9x12 Art Spectrum. A couple of the special effects examples:

A Pastel Christmas

Today was the last meeting of the year for the First Coast Pastel Society. It would normally be a plein air day but we were not sure what to expect of the weather for the first of December, so we decided to meet at the St. Augustine Art Association for a holiday get-together breakfast, and then work on still lifes we had set up. Since it's heading for Christmas the still lifes all featured Christmas tree ornaments.

The weather was quite lovely in the morning and almost made us sorry not to be out in plein air, but halfway through the morning we had a rain squall pass through, which made the indoors seem pretty good! This is the painting I did, my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum.

View of my Pond

Today was the second day of the Painting Water with Pastels workshop with Richard Lundgren. Our focus today was on painting still water with reflections. Just as yesterday Richard did a fabulous demo painting which made it all look so easy. And yet we all struggled so in class afterwards. LOL. I may need to work on this some more. On the right there are some large branches that are from a tree that is actually out of the picture, but I'm not sure they "read" quite right and I'm not quite sure how to fix them.

At any rate this painting is from a reference photo I took in my own backyard, standing at the edge of the pond I live on and looking towards the west. It was done on my usual, 9x12 Art Spectrum paper. Note to self: I'm almost out of paper, about time to order more!

Matanzas Morning

I'm taking a workshop this weekend with Richard Lundgren, at the St. Augustine Art Association. It's a 2-day workshop, and the subject is Painting Water With Pastel. Today was focused on painting water with movement. Tomorrow the focus will be on still water with reflections. I find water a real struggle at the best of times. Naturally Richard's wave demo painting was fabulous, and he made it seem to effortless.

I used as a reference a photo I took one morning at Fort Matanzas, when I went there with the Audubon Society to post the least tern nesting sites. It was a lovely morning at the beach. But doing this painting was definitely effortFUL and I'm still not sure what I think of it. I don't love it, that's for sure. Water is still a struggle for me. But I have to keep trying if I'm ever going to learn it. As one of the other women in the class said, "well that's what we're here for".

And it was fun. It's only the second time I've ever tried to paint a wave. The first was in a workshop with Maggie Price a couple years ago. 

Done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum paper, various pastels.

Prince Edward Island Autumn

I love the fall. Even here in Florida it's beautiful, though more subtle than in the northeastern areas, but I still get some color variations. But tonight my mind was further north. I pulled out a photo I'd taken two years ago in Prince Edward Island, this exact same time of year. I love the rolling hills in PEI, and the colors were just starting to turn. This was done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum.

Another St. Johns Sunrise

I had such fun doing the painting of a sunrise over the St. Johns River that I decided to do another one from another reference photo I had taken. Sunrises over the river are just spectacular, and I did have fun doing this one, but I'm not sure I'm quite as happy with the outcome as I was with the previous painting. Still, I'll give it time to set a while and then see what I think. But the colors seems a bit bright (which of course could be adjusted) and the sun just a little too dead-center, which would be harder to modify!

Done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum paper, with various pastels.

Sunrise over the St. Johns River

I did a second painting last night as the group art session. The other morning I was taking an early drive to St. Augustine to go on a bird walk, and I was awestruck by the gorgeous sunrise over the St. John River. It was so lovely I stopped at the approach to the Shands Bridge to take a photo. That was the reference I used for this painting, which was done on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

Night Heron

Tonight I went to the open studio hosted by a fellow member of the Art Guild of Orange Park at her house. It's a great opportunity to get out and see fellow artists and work on something at the same time. I went on a great birding walk yesterday with the St. Johns Audubon Society and one of the things we saw was a colony of black-crested night herons, both juveniles and adults. I got a few good photos of them and decided I would try to paint the adult tonight. This was done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

The Salt Marsh

This is the second painting I did at our group plein air paint-out at The Fountain of Youth this past Saturday. I love the salt marshes. So totally gorgeous, lots of birds. The weather was lovely and sunny and breezy with blues skies and puffy white clouds. We're just about at my favorite time of the year right now. This was done on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

Twisted tree

Today was the first plein air paint-out of the First Coast Pastel Society for our fall season. A group of us all went to the Fountain of Youth in St. Augustine for a lovely day of painting. The weather was perfect for an early fall day in Florida. It started out a bit cloudy, but the sun later came out, and there was a wonderful breeze blowing in from the salt marshes. I was attracted  by a gnarled and twisted tree growing alongside the edge of the marsh and decided I had to paint it, so this was my first painting of the day, though I later did a second one as well.

This was done on 9x12 Art Spectrum paper. The twisted tree was such an attraction that two of the other plein air participants painted it also!

Canna Lily

Wow, these beautiful lilies showed up in my yard today as "volunteers". Well I've been watching the plant grow, rather fascinated to see what it was going to turn into, and today I finally got to see it in bloom. The flowers are gorgeous and showy with bold yellows and reds. I had fun photographing the blossoms from several angles. But the only way I could see to do justice to them was to do a macro painting of the blooms, so I did this painting tonight.

For the first time in years I worked on Canson paper, so this was done on a 12x16 sheet from a pad of Canson, working on the smooth side. I had worked exclusively on Canson in my early years as a pastelist, before I discovered sanded papers. It's not a bad surface to work on, and the price is certainly good for it! It does lack the tooth of sanded papers however. I had wanted to added a few brighter highlights to this but there just was no more tooth for it and the pastel would not adhere.

Misty Marsh Morning

Well, I guess this is the last painting I'll be doing here at the farm this summer, but I have plenty of reference photos to keep my busy also. The scenes of Atlantic Canada seem to be my favorite subject matter. Sadly the mosquitoes have gotten amazingly FIERCE and plentiful the last couple weeks, making plein air a less attractive option, but I did get to do some plein air earlier when there was not such a problem, and I still have lots of reference photos. I did this painting this morning in my "studio" (the farm kitchen). It's from a photo I took a few weeks ago when I was taking the back roads through Point de Bute on my way to Sackville. Done on 9x12 Art Spectrum.

Canadian Life Drawing Four

Well tonight was my life drawing session again, the 4th and last one for me, as this Thursday I'll be heading back down to Florida. We had one little glitch though, the model never showed up! No clue what happened to her, but we waited a bit and she never showed and never called. So Bob, our artist facilitator, bravely took off his shirt and posed for us. As usual we did mostly quick things - 30-second gesture drawings, and 4 and 10 minute poses, so those were all just quick pencil sketches.

But he did do this 20-minute pose and I broke out the pastels for that. Again it's very rough as 20 minutes is hardly long enough to do a painting justice! But it was still fun, and this is what I accomplished in that short time on a sheet of 9x12 Art Spectrum.  I hope they are still around and running classes again next summer!

Down to the Bay

It was another wet and rainy day at that farm. I'd had plans to go to an organic farmer's market, and a summer festival at a local winery today. But was feeling a tad on the "blah" side, and the weather just wasn't conducive to going out and about. So I had a nice long Skype with my little grandson and his mommy and daddy, and then mostly just relaxed and read. I love reading, and reading on a gray and wet and rainy day is a special pleasure. But in the afternoon I decided to paint a picture as well. Obviously not a plein air day again, but I did this one from a reference photo I took the other day when I was on my way to Tidnish, NS for my pottery class.The bay in question is Baie Verte, the little arm of the Northumberland Strait that my summer home is on. Done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum.

Baie Verte Clouds

It's a chilly, raw and rainy day here in New Brunswick. I'm not complaining of course. I love chilly, windy, rainy days. And we certainly need the rain here as it's been a very dry summer. But of course it's not a day to attempt any plein air painting. But it's a perfect day to be indoors and doing something fun, so I painted this picture in my "indoor studio" (the farm kitchen) this morning, using a photo I took the other day as a reference. Ah modern technology. I just pulled up the photo on my laptop and then turned my laptop to face where I was sitting at the easel. :-) Done on my usual 9x12 Art Spectrum.

Canadian Life Drawing Three

Tonight I had my third Life Drawing  session at the great art gallery in Tidnish, NS, and we had the same model we had two weeks ago when I went for the first time. It was fun, and great to get out and be doing something, though I also picked blueberries this morning and made blueberry jam in the afternoon! LOL.

As usual it was mostly quick poses, but we had three 20-minute poses so I decided to break out the pastels for a couple of those. Of course 20 minutes is hardly enough to get a lot of detail. It's really barely time for a sketch, so these are hardly "finished" works.  But at least I got to use my colors!

I just used pencil for the second 20-minute pose, but I had enjoyed my colors for the first one, so for the third pose I decided to use the pastels again also.

Also hardly a finished picture! Heck, I could easily spend *thirty minutes* just on the hands alone if I had all the time I needed. But 20 minutes total was all I got.So another down and dirty quick sketch in color. Both done on 9x12 Art Spectrum.

Waiting for the bore - Maccan

Considering I have been coming to this part of Canada every summer for nearly 40 years it's a surprise that I have never before done what I did today. I went to see the Bay of Fundy tidal bore.  Fundy is famous for the world's highest tides, and at many locations the rush of the incoming tide is so strong that it pushes a wall of water upriver against the river's normal flow. As the Wikipedia article says:

Most rivers draining into the upper Bay of Fundy between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick have tidal bores...The bore is fastest and highest on some of the smaller rivers that connect to the bay including the River Hebert and Maccan River on the Cumberland Basin, the St. Croix, Herbert and Kennetcook Rivers in the Minas Basin, and the Salmon River in Truro.

The other day at the Tidnish Art Gallery I picked up a few tourist brochures, and one of them listed the the times of the tidal bores at the Maccan Tidal Wetland Park. I knew that park, having been there to go birding one time a couple years ago, and knew it wasn't too far a ride to get to. Today was supposed to be a "high" bore day at roughly 12:21 PM, though the brochure warned the bore can actually arrive some 20 minutes before or after the posted time.  I had some shopping to do in Amherst, so it seemed a good day to combine both.

After my shopping I headed towards Maccan, not sure how long it would take me to get there, and I actually arrived at 11:15 AM! Hmm, so at best I had at least 45 minutes to wait, and at worst I had a good hour and 20 minutes or so. The day was fine at least, but how to pass my time until the bore arrived?

I then remembered I had my plein air supplies still in the car from my trip to Tidnish a few days ago! It was warm out but there were roofed picnic benches there supplying some shade, which was quite comfortable when combined with the light breeze. Doing a painting would certainly pass the time, and my timing was just about right to complete one! So the above was the painting I did while waiting for the tidal bore to come upriver. As usual on 9x12 Art Spectrum.

As it got closer to the time a couple young heavily tattooed girls from Ottawa showed up with their German shepherd, and a 40ish couple from elsewhere in Ontario with kayaks on their car, and lastly a lovely gentleman of about 80 who lived nearby and said that he came to see the bore every single day, and showed us pictures he had taken of the bore at different times and seasons. He said that he was the one who prepared the Maccan tidal bore chart that we had all seen and which had brought us all there. And they were all interested is watching me paint my picture!

And sure enough, I had just managed to more or less complete the painting when the bore finally came in at about 12:30 PM.  It was certainly an interesting sight to see the steady onward rush of the water as it came upriver, surging past us. And here is a photo of the bore as it came around the bend and past our very excellent viewing location,  and as it came past a bald eagle soared overhead! All in all a very fine day.

Tidnish Dock plein air 2

I had such fun going painting the other day with the group from the Tidnish Art Gallery that when I finished my first painting I decided I would start a second! However I had barely gotten working on it when the other three people all decided to pack up their supplies and call it a day. And suddenly I was left there all alone.

I don't mind working alone in my studio, but I find I don't enjoy doing plein air alone. Once the other three left the joy sort of went out of the day and it wasn't as much fun to paint anymore. But since I had started I decided to slog along and try to finish it. But my heart wasn't really in it very much. Maybe that's why I'm not crazy about this one, but this is my second attempt for the day - usual 9x12 Art Spectrum.