LJ and NJ

for the past couple of weeks I’ve been working and reworking the boulders on the hillside and the trees.  The trees, especially, have been painted and repainted several times, to the point where i need a little break from them. I think I’ve finally figured out that one of the hang-ups I’ve had is paying too much attention to branches and trunks and not enough to just trying to get the foliage to work.

Meanwhile, i started this week on the reflections in the water.  I think the hues are ok for a beginning effort.  The shapes need a good bit of re-shaping, which I’ll attempt in the next few days.  

I worked at home this past week doing color mixing to see if i could match the colors the teacher was going to prescribe.  Brought the fruits of this work into class, with notes on what I’d tried.  My mixes for the sky were good; for the barn, pretty good; for the mountains too dark.  So got some assistance “fixing” that effort, and in class began painting, sky and clouds first.  Then moved down to the mountains.  All this represents just a first layer; I’ll be adding to it.  At the beginning of this class i asked Marianne if she was going to suggest i put a dark layer down on which i would then paint all the grasses.  She said yes, and suggested i use a “wash” (thin layer, paint watered down with mineral spirits) of Burnt Sienna.  As you can see, it isn’t all that even, but that won’t matter in the end.  Next week I’ll see about starting on those grasses, unless i decide to work on the barn.

For my next painting in “tracing class”, I’ve selected a photo from a book on villages and town in the Northwest.  This one of a barn was taken in Joseph, OR, which is in the northeastern part of the state.  My thought was it might be good for me to have a building up close and personal to work on.  Before i could begin, though, teacher said not a good idea for barn (see reference photo, below) to be facing out of the picture.  Since she wants us tracing the general outlines (and then some!) and not drawing freehand, i wondered how i was supposed to turn the barn around.  Turns out it’s pretty simple, once you think of it (which i didn’t — had to be told!).  So — traced the whole picture onto acetate, leaving the barn out.  Then, on a separate sheet of the plastic, i traced the barn.  Then, when i transferred the tracings to the canvas, i just turned the “barn” tracing over, and voila! — barn faces in the right direction. Of course this means the lighting and shading will also be different.  I’ve reproduced the tracing below.  You may not be able to see it well.  Apologies.  Stay tuned for when i begin painting next week. Oh — forgot to mention that teacher also suggested i do the painting in landscape, rather than portrait mode.  (Canvas is 9″ x 12″ — so as usual, another small one for this class, as per instructions.)

With my “black canvas” painting, just in the past week, I’ve had 3 experiments with no successes.  That’s the breaks!  I didn’t take photos of the failed experiments, unfortunately, so you can’t see what I’m referring to — you’ll just have to take my word for it!  The upshot is that when i went to class last week and showed Ed (teacher) my efforts, he agreed with me that the wisest course of action would be to paint over the whole upper part of the water area with black — again!  So, that’s where i am with the water.

Meanwhile, with the hillside/boulders, etc.  I’ve still got plenty to do to get the effects i want.  I worked on the trees in the background — now need to mute the background of the trees in the distance.  Have also been working to try to get the top of the boulders/hillside look like the top instead of looking like the side. Not there yet.  The blue paint at the bottom of the painting is going to be part of the reflections — that’s not there yet, either!

This week i worked on several areas of the Norwegian sunrise painting .  I repainted the sky because several areas didn’t quite blend as i wanted them to.  I’m happier with the result.  Then i went back to work on the large rocks in the foreground.  So added shadows in several areas and then some highlights on the tops of rocks, to reflect some of the colors of the sky and the sunrise.  Also added a few of these colors to the reflections in the water.  I reworked some of the rocks on the left side of the painting.  then teacher suggested i add some more grass to break up those rocks some more.  I couldn’t do this in class because the rocks were too wet.  So I’ll do that later this week, and then i think I’ll call this one done.

This is an update on my “black canvas”  painting.  Over the past couple of weeks, mostly at home, I’ve been working on the hillside rocks, trying to get a 3-dimensional feel and get the cracks in the rocks to look sort of real.  In class last week teacher suggested that in order to better do that rock hillside, i take out  the big tree that used to be on the right side of the painting.  So I did — easy come, easy go, i guess. I’ll probably paint it back in later on.  In the meantime i added a couple of small trees to the top right end of the hillside.  Also began working on the background trees.  Also began adding highlights and shadows to the foreground trees.  I had planned yesterday to begin working on the water reflections.  But i forgot that a few days ago i added a layer of black paint to the bottom half of the painting; and it’s not dry yet.  So, later this week…..

I worked in class this week and last on the rocks on the lower half of the painting.  Today i took on the water.  Teacher showed me a neat way to paint a waterfall — first paint the dark rocks underneath and then, using whatever color the water is to be (i used white mixed with a mid-purple hue), paint the water.  This i did with a stiff bristle brush using an upward motion– i.e., from bottom to top of each “fall”.  Then painted the foam, using a small flat brush.  Teacher suggested i try to give the feel of a pool (towards the bottom of the painting) by painting the “water” very dark brown/purple, and then use light-colored thin strokes to indicate movement of the water. (Sorry if that explanation is confusing.).  Added grass in the lower right corner.  

Here’s an update from “Sunrise in Norway” painting, which I’m working on for my “other” class.  Continuing to work from the top down — this week on the rocky slope of the mountainside.  These rocks don’t have to be very detailed.  (When i get to the rocks at the bottom of the painting, in the foreground, those will have much more detail.).  This first layer is just to get the idea down and then I’ll go back over all of it.  

Past couple of days i began working on the boulders and also filled in some of the branches and leaves on the trees.  These rocks are so different from the ones in the painting i just recently finished.  The “old” rocks were pretty easy to paint, as the main challenge was getting the shapes and the values correct.  These rocks – in the current project — are complicated by issues of hue and texture in addition to all the shape and value issues.  So – I’m not even close to having these rocks be as they need to be.  But thought I’d post anyway, and hopefully there will be noticeable progress when i post again.

This is a continuation of post from this evening.  Here I’ll post photo to be reference for my other painting class.  I took this photo while on a hike last fall in Rocky Mountain National Park.  We were hurrying up a mountainside to catch the sunrise-and-moon-set and on the way we passed this lovely little spot.  Teacher said it might be fun to try painting this one on a black canvas, which I’d not only never used before, but had never seen.  He suggested i do a large canvas — maybe 24″ x 32″.  I didn’t want that large as it’s cumbersome to cart around.  As it turned out, i didn’t have much choice re: size, as the only black canvas i could find was around 18″ x 24″.  ‘Drawing had to be with white charcoal instead of the usual black one.  Don’t be shocked — you will probably not recognize my “drawing” as a drawing.  But the idea is just to get placement of major objects and areas.  That’s why i used a grid.