drying wall

Just a fraction of the wall in my studio/sunporch - I am preparing for the August 21 &22 open studio tour. I was feeling increasing pressure by the amount of stuff I had to organize and decided I had to take everything off the wall and restore some order. Two days later and numerous trips to the hardware store I am beginning to feel like I am getting there (at least I feel less vicious). I have signed, varnished and framed tons of things and am going to paint tommorrow without giving one thought to organizing, pricing and business.

day 2 - beach day - 22" square

I worked most of the day on this while doing my shift at the Central Village Art Gallery in Westport - I like the looseness and am really getting into manipulating thick paint. It was an interesting day since there were quite a few customers (no one bought anything) who had questions and it was nice to hear their thoughts.

beach day - early view - 22" square

I wanted to do a large beach figure scene and this is today's start. It certainly takes a lot more paint! I have been working on the gestures of the figures and the values and have expanded my limited palette to one warm and cool of each color in addition to white. I really love the synthetic pigments: pthalo blue and quinacridone red. I also added zinc yellow as my cool yellow because I had it on hand.

high on a hill - 10x8"

Wow was this place awesome! I was taken by the height of the scene and the challenge of the huge green yard (the house was pretty cool too). This house overlooks the Westport River.

ruffles - 9" square (^ a better photo of Olneyville)

This little girl is one of my favorite kids in the neighborhood. I also managed to get a better photo of the night scene. Taking pictures of dark paintings is quite hard.

waiting for rain & update

Despite air so thick you could cut it and grey skies, it was impossible to get a non-glary photo of this. The humidity is also making it difficult to apply successive layers of very light colors since the deep orangey-reds are not setting up at all. I love heat and humidity but today has been kind of icky. So, I will have to put it aside this afternoon and wait for rain (which is forecasted thank goodness).

honorable mention and plein air study at Westport Point (11x14" & 12x9" respectively)

The green awning won an honorable mention at the Little Compton summer show and I did the plein air study from a sandbar in the middle of the harbor at Westport Point this morning. I love the view one gets from the middle of the water - my friend Phyllis has a Boston Whaler and we have been going out to these sandbars and setting up to paint. Today she figured the tides out just right and we had well over two hours!

night in Olneyville - 12" square (underpainting and 1st steps)

We had the most amazing thunderstorm this morning and I am showing a photo of one of the weirdest looking clouds I have ever seen. I began a new picture with a deep cool background today - it is a nocturne and I wanted the darkness and coldness underneath because hot city nights are really very rosy and orange. I am still using the limited palette but might have to supplement this one if it beomes necessary.

teddy - 9" square

I just had to take a picture of this dog. He actually came to visit while I was painting outside; then went home, got his teddy and brought it back to me. I loved the pattern of his shadow and the monochromatic way the scene let me play with the 3 colors I have been using (and of course white).

second story view - 10" square

I like the idea that you can only see the top floors of these houses when you look at them from across the park - once again I used the limited palette. I also created a multiple triangular grid as a structural under painting and think it worked out well for the composition. I went out with friends to a sandbar in Westport Harbor on Monday evening - we had a great time but I had two "wipers" that day! The tide nearly submerged the sand before we realized and had to make a run for the boat before we had to swim back with all of our art supplies! Oh, and I found out I won an honorable mention at the juried Little Compton Summer Show.

beach parking - 14x11" (completed)

I ended up having to use a bit of cadmium red to finish this- the tailights just wouldn't work without it! Otherwise the limited color scheme is working.

from Pardon Gray - 14x11"

I tried my new "limited palette" plein air today and it worked! I decided to do something simple so I could really tell. I am amazed that I was able to get every color I desired and have things hold together better. Not a great picture but not a wiper either. It started raining (which doesn't really bother me) but these awful bugs came out so I had to leave.  

beach parking - 14x11"

You are probably wondering why I bothered to post this since it is obviously undone............but I have been experimenting this past week and made sort of a breakthrough this morning. I have experimented with a limited pallet for a long time but have never really felt like it was very successful. Recently I found I was using way too many colors and, as a result, I found that pictures were not holding together the way I wanted them to. This morning I tried again and (instead of using cadmium red) I used a deep madder, cad. yellow light, ultrmarine blue and white - voila! Everything worked. I found that I could mix virtually anything I wanted to.....the substitution of the madder rather than the cad red made all the difference. So........I think I am done experimenting for a bit and am going to see how far I can go with this. It will also be a lot simpler shopping at Utrecht.

summer experimentation - 8" square

I have been doing quite a bit of experimentation during the past week and have not really felt like posting much of anything. I am trying to avoid ruts and add new insight (especially color) to already learned skills. I did this yesterday morning before it got too hot and when the light was new - at about 6am. Also, my daughter moved in and a new cat adopted us by coming in through my studio window! I will show a photo of both - you can see some of the piles of books she brought with her in the background - she will be leaving again in August for grad school in Austin, TX.