Tag landscape

Kayak Adventures

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Acrylic, 9 x 12

Our family took up kayaking seven years ago, when looking for an accessible and fun family water sport. We have loved being out on the water, in many varied locations. It is usually very peaceful and restorative.

For a long time I’ve wanted to paint the juxtapositon of the brightly colored kayaks and the peaceful settings. I’ve tried before, but never seemed to hit the right feeling. Using the Princeton Catalyst blades with acrylics on an orange ground seems to get much closer to the feeling I’ve wanted.

This was from a trip this summer to Lake Monroe, Indiana. We had a dear friend visiting from California and we took him kayaking for the first time in his 78 years! He thoroughly enjoyed it.

Really Plein Air

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Acrylic on hardboard, 6x 6 ins

This time I really sat outside–on my deck, looking out at my backyard, early on Saturday morning. I really wanted to paint the sunlight coming through the trees and tried to make this a ‘response painting’ rather than an accurate representation. It became more accurate than I intended, but I like the effect. At least I put something down on the board before the sun moved above the trees!

Plein Air on Campus

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These paintings were all done from the front seat of my van. Is it ‘plein air’ if the window is closed? (I think the window might have been open though! We have had weeks of gloriously clear, sunny, warm weather) It seems the important aspect is to be looking at the real object in its real life setting. The first one is on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington, IN. It took me about 30 minutes.

Acrylic on hardboard, 6 x 6 inchesIMG_0039

The second painting is also on the IU campus, done on a different day. I loved the morning shadows on the building, but feel I didn’t paint them quite how I wanted.

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I tried again the next week, using watercolor in my art journal. I like this one better. I think it was helpful to include the big tree that is casting the shadows on the building. Perhaps I was better at drawing it the second time. Perhaps the vertical format is more suitable? Total absorption for one beautiful hour!

Watercolor on Arches 90lb paper, 3.5 x 4.5 inches

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Plein Air II

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Acrylic on gessoed hardboard, 6 x 6 in

My second attempt! On this occasion our family went to a local park and the other members played disc golf while I painted, from a picnic table.

I was experimenting with using a palette or painting knife. It was fun and rather freeing! It brings different expectations.  I also really enjoyed scraping out with the knife.

At first I tried to capture the sun setting behind the trees, casting lovely shadows and golden patterns on the grass. Then I tried to paint the sunset before it disappeared. It really seemed to be moving fast!

I like the sky painting better. It seems almost abstract and yet I know what it is.

(I should not have left the date setting on on my camera! I know now to remember to remove it for paintings.)

 

Plein Air I

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Acrylic, 6 x 6 in

This is my first attempt at real plein air painting, done in July 2017. We were on a 3 week family camping trip around the northeast and I brought my pochade box along for all 3400 miles! It was surprisingly difficult to find enough solitary, quiet time to concentrate on a painting. Plus maybe I was a little afraid of the process.

At a campground near Philadelphia I got up before everyone else one morning and painted this view from our picnic table. The early sun was lovely on the trees just beyond the pond. It’s pretty rough, but it reminds me of the peace of the moment.

(New) Homemade Pochade Box

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Over this winter my husband built me a new and improved pochade box! We just finished it last week. It is modeled on the shoebox pochade box that I made last summer. The sides are pine, with a plywood base and lid.

IMG_0276The lid has an overhang at the back, which was a happy accident. He made the lid too large on purpose, intending to trim it to the size of the box. While we were trying to decide on a mechanism to hold the lid open at the right angle for painting, I opened it one day and found that the remaining overhang rested on the back of the box and supported it at just the right angle! Like this…IMG_0278

Inside, he put a small ledge on 3 sides, to support a palette (actually I’m resting my Masterson Sta-Wet Handy Palette on it).

The water container is a baby food jar.

Under the palette support I can fit all my supplies!

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I took it on a weekend trip last weekend. Here’s what it looks like in use:

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It rests on my lap very securely (we experimented quite a bit with the size and weight to achieve this). Here’s the first painting I did using it, of the Mississippi River from my hotel room. (I felt too self-conscious just yet to venture out to paint in a busy city, although I did take my watercolor supplies and sit out by a nearby lake and paint).

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I’m hoping for lots more outdoor adventures with the new box this summer!

Lakeside Sunlight

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Acrylic 9 x 12

This painting was from a photo I took last summer on our camping trip. It is on the southern shore of Lake Erie in NY state. We had just arrived and were scouting the site to decide on a tent construction site and the sun was just sinking over the lake. I loved how the sun hit the edge of the tree and cast long shadows over the grass. We later ate dinner at this picnic table.

 

My First Show!

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Thirteen of my paintings are being displayed for the month of September in the Bellvue Gallery in Bloomington, IN. It is a small one-room gallery attached to The Farmer House Museum. We had an opening night on Sept. 2, where I played my harp and my son played his violin. We’ll have a closing evening on Sept. 30, when we will play more ‘family music’. I am thankful for the opportunity to have my paintings displayed publicly for a month!

Courthouse

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Katherine and I sat in the van for 45 minutes one day so that I could paint this. (I felt very fortunate to I find a meter that already had a lot of time left on it!). The canvas I’d taped on the inside lid of my shoebox pochade had fallen off into the paint that I’d set out on the palette, leaving blobs of color all around the canvas! I wiped off the blobs as well as I could and then was happy to find that they incorporated into the painting in just the right places!

Inspired to paint!

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My attempts to paint en plein air on vacation apparently were contagious. One day Elizabeth and William both asked for some paper, brushes and paints and each spent a quiet and satisfying time creating a painting, although neither from their immediate surroundings. (Elizabeth’s was an imaginary camping scene based on our previous stops. We had just a couple of days earlier visited a museum in Bennington, VT, where they had a display of works by Grandma Moses (painted at ages 60-99!) and I think Elizabeth was thinking of those images.  William’s was an abstract).

I’ve given both of them quite a bit of art instruction in the past, so they had a good idea where to start and how to proceed. Maybe it was the quietness of the campsite and my painting that pulled them; maybe the lack of other distractions and activities? I was also satisfied to see them create with paint.