Plein Air - Miamiville OH

 

I finally got outdoors with my weekly plein air group, the Brush & Palette Painters, on Tues Apr 23. Because I was hosting 8 for dinner, I knew I only had 30 minutes in which to paint. And I wondered how much I could accomplish in that amount of time.

I've learned that if I spend one hour each day, what I can accomplish in those 60 minutes varies greatly from day to day. So I recognized that I actually got quite a lot done here in a short time.

It was worth it to get out for the first time regardless of results. Kind of like my first golf game of the year. After so much time off, I forgot what I needed to take with me. And how fast acrylics dry up, even on a wet palette, in half an hour.

Here I was "drawing in paint," just trying to roughly capture shapes and values. The flowers and foliage that usually inspire us at this location hadn't bloomed yet (or bloomed weeks ago), so most of the artists were painting buildings.

I liked the way the sun was shining on this home. But I quickly remembered how fast things can change outdoors when the wind below and the sun kept hiding behind clouds.

But the feel of the sun and the breeze, the sound of the birds, and just being outdoors were inspiring and I can't wait to paint out again next week.

I've been experimenting a lot lately with watercolors and oils, so I decided to prepare for next week in 2 ways: 1) scout out my location ahead of time, so I'll have more time to paint, 2) try a different medium (oils or watercolor).

Irises in Watercolors (24" x 30")

Here's the work in progress as of Monday, March 4, 2024. I have had to get used to not being able to keep the entire large sheet at the same level of detail, as it's taking me much longer to paint this larger size.

Here's where we came from February 26, 2024. The paint is drying quickly enough but this surface dulls down its hue and intensity so I anticipate having to layer over many times to get the effect I want before finishing.

I was bound and determined to get the composition down on the entire sheet in my first session painting these irises on a large sheet of watercolor paper on February 15, 2024.

I so enjoyed painting the colorful peppers in three different media that I decided to do that again with this photograph of irises that inspired me.

Once again, it's going to be a challenge for me, with very few straight lines but this is an image I'll enjoy looking at for a long time as I attempt to paint it in acrylics, watercolors, and oils (with painting knives).

 

Using Watercolors En Plein Air

I like painting en plein air (outdoors) but have mostly used acrylics since I started painting with the Cincinnati Brush & Palette Painters. We go on an annual fall trip and last autumn's was in Hillsboro, OH.

 

This year I want to go to the trip location early and scout out some subjects to paint in advance because I wasted a lot of time doing that in Hillsboro; the sunny weather was pretty and the fall color spectacular so I was just having fun looking at potential painting sites. I liked how the downtown area was decorated with these pumpkins and cabbages, so I decided to see how well I would do outdoors with watercolors.

Enough that I want to take them out with me every week this summer and on our trip to Madison, Indiana in the fall. When I first started painting with this group, I guess I assumed that I needed to finish the work I started that day on site. And I have done a few successful alla prima paintings from our weekly outings.

But even with watercolors, I see that if I can get the basics down on-site, there's plenty of room to go back and work on these paintings later in the studio. I need to keep this in mind when I paint!

It feels sort of like it does when I'm singing in the Sycamore Community Singers or with the Sycamore Presbyterian Church Choir: I find that I sing a lot better once I've memorized the music. I think if I can get "the bones" of a plein air painting down while we're outside, then I'll be free to really paint it once I get back home, with the memory of being on location coloring everything I do with it later.

In business, we used to talk about the Conscious Competent, Conscious Incompetent, Unconscious Competent, and Unconscious Incompetent. As an artist, I think I work best as an "Unconscious Competent" because when it's really happening for me, I'm not even thinking about why I'm doing what I'm doing; in fact I'm hardly even aware of it. And of course, I've certainly been an "Unconscious Incompetent" because one has to be brave and risk failure to be an artist! As one of my old bosses used to say "You can tell how good an artist is by the quality of work thrown into his or her wastebasket (or painted over)."

Right now I'm having a lot of fun being a "Conscious Incompetent" by trying all kinds of things I haven't done for a long time in order to practice, learn, and get better at them. Watercolor painting for example: I started a large one yesterday inspired by a photo of irises that I love. And I may try painting that same subject tomorrow in acrylics. Or even with knives in oils.

Westward Ho! Sculpture at Yeatman's Cove in Cincinnati

Ever since I moved to Cincinnati, I've loved this statue downtown along Yeatman's Cove titled "Westward Ho!" Here's the latest on 12" x 12" canvas painted in oils with knives. I've ordered a dark brown floater frame to try with this. Once the paint dries, I have just a few more things I want to do with it before putting it out for sale at Final Friday March 29 at the Pendleton Art Center in Cincinnati. I'm also going to see what it looks like as a 20" x 20" giclee print.

I had to stop for a while after starting this on Feb 12 because the paint was so wet I needed to give it some time to dry before working on it more.

The photographs I took of it never inspired me like the real thing did. But when I saw it during a recent walk, I decided to work on it as a knife painting.

Rather than crop my horizontal photo, I just squeezed it in my mind to fit onto a 12" x 12" square canvas. Not displeased but still need to work on this some more as I continue to paint with knives and "traditional" (not water-missable) oils. 

Having painted in acrylics for so long, I've forgotten how much more time and patience it takes to paint with other media: watercolors, water-missable oil paints or traditional oils. The first day I started on this,  it took me half an hour just to get the caps off tubes that are still full of good paint, even though I haven't used them in years. Then I had to go and buy gloves to wear, because these paints were not going to clean up with water. And since I didn't have a palette handy, I painted over one of my acrylic paintings in neutral gray so I could use it as one.

I have an unfinished small acrylic painting of impatiens started during the Montgomery Garden Tour last summer. Think I may use it to play with some more knife painting. When I complimented one of our Brush & Palette Painters on her work that won a prize in the Women's Art Club of Cincinnati's Signature Show this year, she told me "the "quest" of experimenting while painting with knives is exhilarating and sometimes a disaster but, happily, sometimes not."

Florida Home Portrait - Winter 2021 before my surgery

This small acrylic home portrait of a house on St. George's Island was a gift from my customer to her friends that hosted them in Florida. Painted in acrylics from the photograph she provided, in my studio, this kept me sane and energized while awaiting knee replacement surgery (TKR).

After I got this photo via email from my client....

I did acrylic sketches on 2 different background colors before painting the finished work

Emailed my customer some progress photos along the way, including show I planned to matte and frame the painting.

That let her give me feedback and we made some changes, such as adding the house number (address).

 

Hometown on the Loveland Bike Trail

Yes, those are my paintings you see decorating the walls at Hometown on the Loveland Bike Trail. This is the perfect time of year to walk or bicycle there and you can enjoy breakfast or lunch at Hometown between 8A and 3P. Here's a look at their menu: yum! The actual address is 111 Railroad Ave. Loveland, OH 45150 and phone number is (513) 677-2600. 

Hometown's web site

There's a back door and an upstairs too!

$1 stickers support Ukraine war relief

Call me and I'll meet you for coffee or a bite to eat while my work is there on display, through the month of September 2022. I'm honor to exhibit here as I know and like the owners and the food is good!

 

3D canvas

 I didn't expect to work on this today, much less finish it, but I think I did! My friend gave me this "3D canvas," which I guess is just another word for "gallery wrapped" and it was the right size and format to paint a portrait of her home so that's what I did.

Her gift actually did a lot for me in that I have never intentionally painted 3D before, although I have gallery-wrapped flat canvases and then had to paint the sides after the fact. The blessing of this experience is figuring out how to handle gallery-wrapping for canvas prints of my Happy Cincinnati paintings. I have lots of options -- crop in on the original and wrap part of it, paint the sides after the print has been wrapped.

Here are the reference photos I started with

The small acrylic sketch I did incorporated a lot of magenta and showed me some changes I wanted to make in the full-size painting.

I'd covered the 3D canvas with interference gold (Golden acrylics) as a base

Maybe I should have left it alone here ... what do you think?

See the original in my studio at the Pendleton Art Center this Final Friday August 30th, 2019 from 6-10p at 1310 Pendleton St. Cincinnati OH 45202. I re-learned a couple more things today ... I think I paint better without music (just quiet) and standing up vs. sitting down.