Meeting at Elbow Beach

In honor of our family reunion "Beach Week", which starts today (yay!), I am featuring one of my favorite scenes of the beach.  Okay, Bermuda isn't exactly where we go for our family reunion, but it is the right theme :) 

This view is on Elbow Beach in the early evening.  I love the long shafts of light that drape the soft sand and then highlight the ocean foam.  The foam, in turn, seems to point towards the beach walkers, which can make for a romantic story...

Here's the original photo:

And here I have cropped the photo to emphasize the long shadows and to better balance the composition.  Cropping the top of the tallest palm tree was important to stop your eye from following the sky off the canvas and to decrease the attention the palm trees were commanding.

My goal in translating this scene was to capture the glow of the pink coral sand that so often defines the colors of Bermuda.  Add to that a bevy of backlit palm trees and the intrigue of two lovers yet to meet and you have the perfect end to a leisurely beach day.

Meeting at Elbow Beach

18x36 Oil

Available at  The Little Art Gallery

Yes Sir, That's My Baby

I fell in love with this baby Galloway cow on one of my trips to Fearrington Village in North Carolina.  The calf posed perfectly for me ... showing off its spindly-legged silhouette in the shadows and its fluffy juvenile coat in the sunlight while dining on grasses.  I also loved the dynamic "Z" composition of the scene that connects the calf and its proud mother.
This is the original photo:

Since the mother was not quite as cooperative with her posing, I performed a little digital magic to create the story I wanted to tell.  Here's the original photo I took of her:

After "flipping" her photo, I inserted the mother's face into the scene with her baby.  Voila!  I think she'd be much happier with this picture :)   I also cropped the image for a better composition.

My favorite part of painting "Yes Sir, That's My Baby" was capturing the subtle warm and cool colors in the shadowed side of the calf's white fur.  I think that means I'm becoming an art nerd.  
Here's my completed 12x16 painting.  It was juried in to the 2012 North Ridge Country Club Annual Art Gala and won Honorable Mention :)

Yes Sir, That's My Baby,  SOLD
12x16 Oil

Here's the small study I painted first (Available!)

Yes Sir, That's My Baby,  Available
6x8 Oil, framed

A Peachy Market

In 2011, my husband and I visited our son who lives in China (I know, he's too far away!)  Part of our travels were in a very touristy area called Yangshuo, so we decided to explore well away from the trappings of the pervasive hawkers.  

We found an alley filled with the local colors (and smells!) of market day.  Eels and snakes slithered in small buckets, carts of live chickens prepared to cluck their last, and freshly (?) cut meat -- whose origin I did not want to know -- was fanned by languid hands to shoo away the flies.  

In all this gourmet hustle and bustle, my mouth only watered when I saw this basket of glowing peaches.  I lingered and savored the moment.

While I wanted to capture this very typical Chinese scene, my real goal in painting it was to show how enticing the sweet peaches appeared to me.  For my composition I decided to use a square format and cropped the styrofoam cooler at the left edge to lead your eye in to the painting.  I loved the triangular shape created by the cooler, baskets and vendor (echoed by her triangular hat!)

To emphasize my center of mouth-watering interest, I used complementary colors -- a neutral blue backdrop for the pinkish orange peaches.  Then I enhanced the glowing effect by keeping the edges of the peaches much softer than in the photo.  I darkened the white of the styrofoam so that it didn't command so much attention and I also lightened and simplified the area behind the young woman so that the lines of her shape would lead back to the fruit.  Ahh ... sweet, juicy peaches.

A Peachy Market, SOLD

16x16 Oil

Date Night

Our nest has been empty this year, but in just one week one of our chicks will be home (after being gone for nearly a year!)  Then our other two chicks will fly home for an all-too-brief but very happy family reunion.  Date nights have been fun and easy to coordinate, but a full nest will be so lovely!

As I admired the peacefulness of these two Canada Geese on a lake near my house, it wasn't hard for me to imagine that they had left the kids at home and were having a night to themselves. You can never have too many date nights, even if you're a goose :)

I chose to use a long narrow canvas to "zoom" up on my subject, the geese, while still taking advantage of the beautiful water ripples that lead your eye around the scene. 

The ripples lead in to the painting at an angle, helping to give the impression of movement ("Hurry before the babysitter catches us!")   It was autumn at Lake Lynn, so the changing leaf colors gave me a wonderful golden glow to play with.  I emphasized the differences between the foreground/background colors to add the illusion of depth.

Date Night, Available

18x36 oil

Little Bear

Today I am sharing some of the fun action that went on behind the scenes in order to create one of my newest paintings, "Little Bear".   I hope you enjoy this sneak peek!

"Bear" is a precious bundle of energy, fur, and love who won the hearts of his family enough that they requested I paint his portrait.  While it was a challenge to get Bear to sit still long enough for me to take his picture (proven by the outtakes below), he did finally pose for about 15 seconds.  Thank you, Bear! 

And what a sweet pose it was!  I was particularly happy that the sunlight cooperated and gave me some great shadows to work with:

My first step in creating the 36x24 painting was to design a road map of my light, medium, and dark values with a 3x2 "thumbnail" sketch.  If you squint at the photo, you can see that the only place I chose to diverge from the photo was to darken the patio so that it wasn't as light as Bear's fur.

After toning the canvas to soften the harsh white and laying in a simple grid to get the basic placement and proportions correct, I used a warm mix of red and yellow oil paint to sketch the outlines of important shapes.  

With my thumbnail sketch taped to my easel for reference, I began laying in general colors or colors that I wanted to shine through future layers of paint (like the warm orange on Bear's muzzle).  In the image on the right I added a second layer of transparent paint to make the values match my thumbnail road map.  The painting looks sort of wild at this point!

In the next layer I began painting more thickly and using opaque paints.  The image on the left shows my first pass at covering Bear and the one on the right shows my first pass with the chair and background

In the final pass I focused on bringing Bear's soft fur to life with a delicate play of warm and cool colors.  I also added interest to the shapes of the background trees.  At this point, Bear seemed to look back at me in approval.   
Painting his sunlit likeness was a joy :)

Little Bear, SOLD
36x24 Oil 
A big thank you to Bear's people for inviting me in to your home and your lives!

Curb Appeal

In honor of the last few days of Spring, today I am featuring one of the many Spring-inspired scenes that have found their way to my easel.  

"Curb Appeal" celebrates my favorite time of year.  The hope of new life is everywhere, the colors are vibrant, the shadows seem to dance with newly emerged leaves, the thick yellow-green pine pollen coats our patio furniture (oh wait, that's the part I try to forget!)

I love walking through my neighborhood, camera in hand, eyes seeing as if for the first time.  This particular scene caught my eye because of the way the foreground shadow spilled across the street and then the gentle curve of the street drew my eye to the distant sunlit azaleas.

The photo doesn't capture the intensity of the purple-red azaleas in the shadow of the foreground trees.  In fact, the color was so intense that it seemed to reflect right in to the shadowed street!  The fun I had as an artist was remembering those colors and bringing them to life.  I also had fun with the composition, making sure that the dark and light values worked to lead the viewers eye around the scene and back again.

Here's my 8x10 version of "Curb Appeal":

Curb Appeal, SOLD

8x10 oil

And here's a larger, 16x20 version:

Curb Appeal, SOLD

16x20 oil

Role Model

Today I'm featuring a painting that I highlighted in my newsletter last year.  I got so many positive responses on how fun it was to see my "step by step process" that I decided to feature it in my blog too.  Enjoy!

 A couple of years ago I came across this scene at a garden center that cried out, "Paint me!"  It had all of my favorite components:  strong light and show contrasts, stonework, flowers, and great reflected light.  Here's the photo I took:

I chose a square canvas and cropped the scene to emphasize the story I wanted to tell -- the little pot standing in the proverbial shadow of the big one, his "role model".

My Studio Set up
Here's what my studio set up looked like.  I put my ipad (a great tool!) on the right to view the photo and prepared my palette with opaque and transparent primary colors.

Step 1  I toned my Ampersand panel with Transparent Oxide Orange and then sketched basic outlines with that color mixed with a little Cadmium Red Light. Then I wiped out the light areas with a paper towel and a paint brush.  This is the most important step because it tells me if my composition is going to work!

Step 2  I laid in some background greens with transparent pigment.  I've found that transparent paints are great for giving a sense of depth.

Step 3  Then I painted the reflected sky color that I saw, knowing that I would tone this down later on.

Step 4  Worked a little on the mid-ground greenery, keeping it soft so that it didn't draw attention away from my center of interest.

Step 5  Finished covering the background and began with the warmer colors of the stonework...

Step 6  Finally got to paint the flowers!  I wasn't happy with the greenery in the small planter though.

Step 7  In this step I decided to replace the big leaf that was in the smaller planter with a more colorful spray of flowers. I also decided to soften the background so that it would look more distant. 

Here's my completed painting, before framing...

and after framing...

Role Model, Available

6x6 oil

Ready for a good home!  Click here to learn more.