wind and tide painting update

That water sux. I was there for a few hours mixing my colors and trying to paint the water with my palette knife. oops. I h8 it.

I’m just posting it so you can see how hard it is to represent water. I can fix it but not until next week because of the weather coming in and also the times of low tides don’t work for me but they change every day and in a few days it will work again.

Next time I can mix these colors at home. I had a big blob of the light blue gray and it wasn’t enough. It’s a pain when that happens.

The problem with art is you can spend hours on it and not like what you did. It’s ok to rework what you don’t like with oil paint. I’m not worried an art critic will call my paintings “overworked”. That’s a term that makes artists afraid to keep working on a painting until it’s finished. Once and done, fast and loose, that’s what they want to see. Like my mono prints. hahah

winds and tides / underpainting

Yesterday when I got to First Landing the tide pool wasn’t there at all but it was there the day before yesterday. I wondered if it was because I was early. The tides are a half hour or so later every day but I’m not sure, so I checked to see if I was in the same spot. I was there for a couple hours, enough to make up for getting there earlier, working on sketching the scene on this piece of canvas paper and mixing paint colors trying to match the colors of nature.

It was really nice, almost calm so the water was smooth with very tiny waves and the sky was a little cloudy but there was still sun. It was very relaxing to be there. I took a few breaks and still wondered why the tide pool wasn’t there but I could almost see a sand bar as it got later. Maybe my sketch is from low tide and I thought it was high tide. I have to check the chart because I want to catch it low. The day I did my charcoal sketch it was windy and yesterday no wind. Could the wind push the water out and show the tide pool? Tomorrow it might be windy again. It’s more difficult to work on a painting in plein air when it’s windy but I have a good spot on the lee side of a clump of dune grass. And I had my drawing board propped up on my beach cart so it would be easy to paint while sitting on the edge of the beach erosion. I hope I can paint the tide pool and if it doesn’t come back I don’t know, I might fake it or I might let it sit and decide later, but I put it in the underpainting using my sketch as a reference. If I change my mind I can always paint over it, no problem with oils.

Bay Side Tide Pool w. Ship Coming In / charcoal and chalk

This spot is close to where I painted the last beach scene but today the tide was high. It was over 60F. (not hot or cold, my Celsius friends) and I wore a sweatshirt and jeans but when I got to First Landing there was a brisk Westerly wind that made it feel much cooler. I sat on the edge of a little beach erosion next to a clump of dune grass and it blocked the wind nicely. It was cloudy. Sand flies were all around but not biting. So, it was great to get out there and sketch.

I went over to the VA. Tech Arboretum and they have a lot of blooming bushes, camellias and some trees I don’t know the names of, and daffodils. They only have a few parking places but the apt. complex next to it might not tow my car if I go there to paint daffodils and hang around for a couple hours while most of the residents are at work.

I guess a lot of people who would normally go to the botanical garden will show up at the arboretum since the botanical has a small parking lot due to construction. Norfolk Botanical is building the “Garden of the Future” and the plans look amazing but if you want to go there the bar code on your membership card won’t get you in. Now you have to make a reservation for a parking spot, which I would do except there’s a catch. They send a bar code to your email for every day you want to go and that gets scanned at the entrance. It’s a bummer for an old baby boomer that doesn’t use their phone for email because now I’d have to do what? take my lap top to an office supply store and get them to print off the bar codes for me? nah. I don’t feel like it. There are flowers at the arboretum.

I have more inspiration than time or energy.

Rain Moving Out to Sea / oils

I waited all week for good clouds and it looked like Fri. would be the best day to go out on the beach to finish this. One rain system was going off the coast with another following behind it. When I got over to First Landing I realized I forgot my terpenoid. That’s one problem of painting in plain air, sometimes I forget something I need. For a minute I tried to decide, should I go back home to get it or is the art supply store closer, I decided to hang around and mix the colors I wanted to use and paint at home. It’s a simple scene so I took an hour or so and mixed my colors as accurately as I could for the clouds and sand, and I also tried to memorize cloud shapes. If I ran home to get my terpenoid the clouds would be all different when I got back. It was clearing up and the clouds directly overhead were like layers of moving white gauze with some fluff coming though and some jet trails breaking up. Freakin beautiful, but the sky overhead is never the same as on the horizon.

I had some fun painting the sky at home with my palette knife. This close up shows some of the texture. After I painted the sand and sky I propped it up against the wall where its been for a year already unfinished, and I liked the sky. From where I was sitting on my sofa the high spots in the paint catch the light in the living room and show sparkles in the sky like sunlight on the clouds. And to think I almost threw the painting away when I realized it wasn’t a good composition to put people in the scene. Now I’m glad I finished it after looking at it for that long undecided.

This close up shows a focal point. White against dark, different textures meeting, lines next to solid areas. I painted the water with brushes and the sand with a palette knife.

I tried to decide, does the painting need the pilings or not. I decided to paint them but I had to wait for the sky to dry. They could be a focal point for the art viewer who likes detail.

I think I’ll finish this painting. / oils

I started it about a year ago and wanted to add people on the beach so I started sketching them and found out that from the place I was sitting on the sand the people close to me would block too much of the scene and totally block the people in the background. If I want to paint the bright colors of beach umbrellas and a lot of people I should sit up higher on the side of the sand dunes. So I stopped working on this. Now, I’d just like to finish it and if I can work in a couple people far away I might do that but maybe I’ll paint the beach with no people and try again with another composition for the colorful people having fun later this summer.

In unrelated art news, I was looking at the blog posts on WordPress with the # Virginia Beach and saw a call to enter from the library. There is no charge to enter so I’m considering going for it. I never see another local artist blogging and using #Virginia Beach. The posts are mainly news stories so I was wondering if they put the call to enter on WordPress just for me. hahaha I guess all the other Virginia Beach artists are using other social media sites. Some years back I got my paintings hung in the main library in Richmond.

For the past 3 years most of the paintings I’ve done are on paper because I can save space in my apartment painting on paper instead of on a stretched canvas. I have a lot of paintings stashed under my sofa and chair. I know I have enough to fill the walls at the library but framing the ones on paper would be a big job and could be expensive too. I have a lot of empty frames but I’d have to buy good framing glass for the pastels and boards to spray glue them down onto so I could frame them. Then there’s the problem of my not having anyone who would help me with the job.

Should I go for the library? A lot of people would see my paintings but not be able to afford to buy them. I wonder if anyone would be interested in ordering a print. I could write a rant for people to pick up talking about how much I h8 the art world. That would be fun and not boring like the normal artist statements you see at art shows. I have until March 5 to enter. The jury meets in April.

Still life subjects

I guess the two new big ones are Pampas Grass and the wild Sea Oat is in the middle, but I’m not sure if I have the right names for these grasses.

I was out scouting for a good place to paint and walked a couple miles looking down the side trails at First Landing State Park, got a sketch started of a pretty dead tree in the marsh but didn’t finish it because I was tired already. Not every expedition out in Plein air to sketch is a success but the walk was nice.

I have a painting planned from a scene at Back Bay but there’s construction on the Sandbridge Rd and I picked up another screw in a tire. That’s two screws in my tires in only six months. I can go for 20 years without getting a screw in a tire then get two in less than a year?! Fortunately, I paid for an extended warranty on my new tires a couple months ago and they gave me a new tire, and at least I didn’t have a flat out on the highway but the tire pressure light came on close to home. This is a little concerning.

The road construction is everywhere. I don’t know if I’ll go back to Back Bay or Sandbridge. And how is it that so many screws fall out of trucks in construction zones, or is that just my luck?! weird.

We have nice weather again tomorrow then cloudy on Sun. and then a chance of rain four days in a row if the forecast is right.

Behind Dunes @ Back Bay / oils

I took these pix on my balcony in the shade but the colors are better in the sun, warmer.

Close up of sedge, reflections and water

Every time I go there the water is different so I decided that when I was ready to paint water I’d paint it however it looked that day. When I got there today it was almost calm then a little breeze came up but it only broke the water a little.

Water, sedge and reflections.

You can see grass stuck on the wet paint in these photos. It’ll come off when it’s dry.

Water with reflections, sedge, background trees.

I think the smoother textures of the reflections and water look good next to the heavy textures of the sedge and trees.

This was fun to paint and not too difficult. It used up a lot of paint, though.

Back of the Dunes painting update

The sky, background dunes and trees are finished. The water has one coat of paint on top of the underpainting but still needs another layer. The sedge is still in the underpainting stage. I need to work on the sedge before I finish the water.

It took a while to mix the colors I wanted for the gray and brown dunes. The greens were easier to mix but still took some time. When I get the right color I still take more time to work the paint by adding drops of Terpenoid and mixing it in until the paint is evenly runny. Mixing and working the paint is half the job.

A piece of cut grass is sticking to the wet paint but it will come off when it dries.

The real fun part is blobbing down the paint with my palette knife then smearing and scratching through it with the palette knife.

I’m excited about how this is going. I think it will work out!

The first 3 times I was there getting started on this, it was cloudy but the sun finally came out and really brightened the scene. I like the bleak look of the cloudy days, but the sedge is freakin’ gold with the sun on it. Maybe I can finish the painting this week. Tomorrow is supposed to be cloudy then we get more sunny weather for a couple days before it rains again, if the forecast is right.

Back Bay underpainting and wild sea oats

It was a little windy when I got out of my car and this canvas paper flipped out of the tape. The clamps kept it from flying down the parking lot. I got some fingerprints and a few pieces of grass in the sky when I added more tape. That’s ok. I need to go over it again anyway. When it’s windy I don’t stand up my easel, I sit on beach towels and prop it up on my beach cart.

A Great Blue Heron is hanging around in there every time I’m there. I saw him catch some fish. I was thinking of painting a heron in the scene since I have a few sketches of them. All I need to do is match the grays when I’m there in Plein air.

The whole scene is mostly gray and brown and blue but I’ll be able to brighten it up a little more than it is at this step. I don’t want to force color into it, though. Nature is elegant in its true colors even in the winter, as I see it.

I did this underpainting with brushes and some of the paint that was left over from my trip to Maine in Oct. was still wet enough to rework for this. The little blobs of left over paint were under squares of plastic wrap. I want to paint the next layers with a palette knife. I like the palette knife because I don’t have to clean brushes.

These are wild sea oats. Most of the fuzz is gone but they still look pretty by the road in the sun. I see a different variety in yards that still have the fuzz and they are shaped more like long ovals than these narrower wild ones. If I can pick one of the cultivated type without getting in trouble I’ll post it. I’m not sure if I can keep these long enough to sketch them. We’ve had a lot of cloudy weather and not too cold and not much rain. Wind is coming in soon with rain.

Canoe Launch Frozen / charcoal and chalk

It was a perfect day to draw or paint the water at Back Bay. It’s frozen! That makes it so easy! We had some big arctic wind and cold but not as bad as a lot of the country and now it’s back to normal for winter chill with highs in the mid 40s today and warming up more tomorrow.

A lot of people were there today. I sat in my car to sketch but if I do a painting I can use a bench right there.

This might be something I could paint in watercolor because it looks simple. I don’t know what I’ll do if the water gets wavy when it warms up.

It’s a monochromatic scene at this time of year, mostly gray.

I heard a big flock honking far away and couldn’t see them. I’ll try to remember to take my camera in case I can get a pic of them flying. I don’t know what they were, geese, I guess.