The new year started off with a challenge to paint or draw from life every day for the month of January. One of my “New Year’s Resolutions” is to draw and paint from life more often. What better way to start than by drawing or painting every day?
The goal was to deepen my understanding of turning form in space and make it appear dimensional on a flat surface while understanding the complexity of color in that process.
Here is the result from January.
Of course, finding the time isn’t always easy. Many paintings ‘failed’. More than once, I resorted to drawing. Some days the weather cooperated for some wintry scenes. Some subjects proved far more difficult than I imagined.
I also experimented with a new Belgian linen (that I love), an alkyd linen that is highly absorbent (useful in certain situations), a Stillman-Birn sketching journal (Zeta Series – love it!), and prepared for an upcoming semester of figure drawing.
The power of practice can never be underestimated. Thank you to Strada Easel for encouraging us to take on the challenge.
30 Paintings in 30 Days – All From Life for the Strada Easel Challenge
It’s really fun to see all of the paintings together. I look at this montage and I think of the frustration, joy, weather, adventures, hopes and goals of the past month. While they didn’t all ‘turn out’ and some of them aren’t finished, each one presented a learning opportunity.
There were several days when I didn’t want to paint, usually because I was tired and I did it anyway. In doing that, I found that one must “paint like you mean it”. There is no point in pushing paint around, going through the motions or daydreaming. It’s a complete waste of time and resources.
For the final day, I was on the road, returning home from Steamboat Springs. I wasn’t sure I would have time to paint, so I did some quick watercolor sketches at a coffee shop in Walden. Thankfully, I arrived home safely, unpacked and still had time for a monochromatic tree study for the “Drawing and Painting Trees Class” that I am currently taking with Deborah Paris.
While I will continue to paint (almost) every day, I don’t feel compelled to show the world everything I paint. So, it will quiet down a bit on the blog and social media. I’m also finding that after the pace of September, I’m ready to slow down, take my time, observe, listen and more deeply experience nature and painting it.
The Steamboat Plein Air Event brought fog, snow, rain, sun, fun and thankfully very little wind. Thinking back, I realized I have not been to Steamboat in over 15 years! I made a trip up there when I first moved to Colorado. At the time, everything was grandiose, spectacular and breathtaking. And, if I remember correctly, the return trip was seven hours, mostly stuck in traffic on I-70. Since moving to Fort Collins, the trip takes about 3.5 hours even though it covers only 165 miles.
The trip began with a drive through the fog, up the Poudre Canyon. As I crested Cameron Pass, the sky opened into bright blue and puffy clouds. Crossing over to Walden and North Park, the air was brisk, the skies blue and bright and the foliage in peak color. Looking ahead, Rabbit Ears pass was clear and there was a painting at every turn of my head.
Coming over the pass, the sky filled with leaden clouds and rain began to fall. And so the stage was set for the coming week. Several mornings we woke to ice on the windshields, bear pooh on the driveway, fog covering the Yampa River Valley and other days brilliant sunshine lighting up the fall foliage.
If you are interested in any of the paintings, please contact the good folks at the Steamboat Art Museum directly for the two. For any of the others, please contact me.
It was a wonderful, well organized week and I look forward to exploring and painting more of the Yampa Valley in the future.
Today, I was tired. After an early morning hike and drawing, I was tired and didn’t feel like painting. Going home, having lunch and taking a shower sounded like a much better idea. But, I knew I was going to do a painting, so no time like the present. As Preston and Eustace would say, “It won’t get done, if you don’t get started.” (Mountain Men – I love that show.)
I also had some new alkyd primed linen to test out for an upcoming class on drawing and painting trees.
Initially, I started with a large painting. In the first go, I realized that I was going through the motions, and I didn’t ‘have it in me’. What was the point of that? Instead, I refocused, went smaller and asked myself, what can I learn? If I’m going to paint, then paint like you mean it.
The new goal was to see how the paint interacted with the linen, trying out various brush strokes, knife work, wiping back, and adding layers. I’m excited to see how future works go on the linen. It’s very absorbent.
Today, I met up with our Fort Collins Plein Air Artists of Colorado group to paint downtown Fort Collins. While the other artists focused on Lucile’s Creole Cafe, I looked around and saw the fun light and shapes of the post office trucks. I really liked how the postal carrier trucks were lined up, throwing shadows on each other, and how the mail boxes did the same.
I knew the postal carriers could leave at any time, so I worked as quickly as I could, simplifying the background and doing my best to indicate the shapes. It was a really fun painting, and required complete focus during the hour plus I had. Sure enough, they began to load the trucks and drive away.
Next up, Steamboat Art Museum Plein Air Event – a week of painting in Steamboat Springs, CO.
For More Paintings
To see all the paintings for the #stradaeasel challenge, head on over to Instagram or Facebook to see all of my posts together. And, use the hashtag #stradaeasel to see what others are up to in the Strada Easel Challenge. You can also click “previous post” to see the earlier paintings from last week.
Some days are just too beautiful to sit indoors. Today was one of those days. Since I didn’t have enough time to drive to a painting location today, I set up my easel on the back deck. Another scouting trip around the house procured a miniature Kabocha squash. I placed it on a piece of cardboard so that I would get strong shadow shapes. Boy, were they strong!
I really liked the shadows of the leaves. Unfortunately, sitting in the sun, they wilted before my eyes! I did my best to get the shadow shapes and leaf shapes in first. Even though they are too dark, they sure were fun. This was yet another great exercise in green, shadow and turning planes. Still so much to learn…
For More Paintings
To see all the paintings for the #stradaeasel challenge, head on over to Instagram or Facebook to see all of my posts together. And, use the hashtag #stradaeasel to see what others are up to in the Strada Easel Challenge. You can also click “previous post” to see the earlier paintings from last week.
I had my day planned out, and then weather happened. (Ha!) Yesterday, I started a 12×9 painting of flowers in a hanging basket. The window of light is limited to about 2 hours before the flowers are completely shaded. I got a good start on the painting, and I planned to return today. However, the sky was overcast, the light was completely different, and the wind was gusting to 40 mph.
So, on to Plan B. Looking around the house, I decided upon this gourd. I’ve been thinking a lot about trees, especially aspens in color. While most aspens turn yellow, there are many that turn orange. So, this made a great subject to study orange and yellow
I have to say, these mini paintings are getting easier. The first several were very difficult to do. I’m becoming more comfortable with my process, colors, brush, setup, canvas and all the other materials I use, by painting daily. It has been worthwhile to devote my time and energy to daily painting for the month of September.
Day 18 – Flower Basket
Here’s the start I made yesterday. I should be able to return to it tomorrow. We’ll see. I also want to get back outside and paint some trees and rabbit bush in preparation for next week.
This painting was another color study of painting light and dark on a light-colored object. There’s a fair amount of reflected light from the ground here. However, the shadows and trunk shape are perfect for studying. My goal was to better understand how to create transparent shadows on a light object without using white – it’s very difficult! Most white is highly opaque. Although there are several light transparent colors, it’s a challenge to use them on something as light as this. I ended up using white on the tree.
I also experimented with a new surface – lead ground by Rublev. It’s so bright! I love how white it is. I’m not sure it was fully cured…It felt a little ‘sticky’ and at the same time, the hog bristle brushes made a ‘comb’ effect (as you can see in the green area). I’ll try it again, but maybe wait longer for the ground to cure.
For More Paintings
To see all the paintings for the #stradaeasel challenge, head on over to Instagram or Facebook to see all of my posts together. And, use the hashtag #stradaeasel to see what others are up to in the Strada Easel Challenge. You can also click “previous post” to see the earlier paintings from last week.
Yay! We have passed the half-way point of the Strada Easel Challenge to paint from life every day for 30 days.
After a trip up to Wyoming to paint at Vedauwoo and the Snowy Range, I am back home and back in the studio. So, you may have already seen these on Facebook or Instagram, but here’s a quick look at the past two days.
Day 15 – Half-way – Yay!
They day was too beautiful to be indoors. So, I setup on the back deck to paint an ever faithful model. This aspen tree has been shaped to grow away from the deck, which exposes the slender trunk and all the color and shadow.
I used a different surface today, partly to use existing materials and partly out of curiosity. It’s an old Pastelbord by Ampersand that’s supposed to be ok for oil. It’s highly absorbent and felt sticky. Great for knife work, not so great for rubbing back. Maybe with enough gamsol?
The oil soaks right in. Kinda interesting. I have a few more boards around, so I’ll give it another go.
Day 16
For the first time in weeks (months?) we woke to a rainy day. The high today was 67. Although we will still have gorgeous fall days ahead, a drop in temperature generally means the end of summer flowers. I snipped a couple for today’s painting.
One of my goals this summer was to paint a bouquet of dahlias. Unfortunately, the timing never worked. We had too many scorching hot days for the flowers to bloom happily. The buds would wither if it was too hot. Or, I would finally get some blooms, and the timing was off for me.
Hopefully next summer I will have enough blooms for an indoor bouquet. Better yet, great weather to paint outside.
On a side note…
A few weeks ago, I bought a new phone (my previous phone died). Supposedly the camera was improved. However, I’m finding that it wants to ‘blow out’ the lights/whites. If I adjust in photoshop, the image gets too dark…Hopefully I’ll figure out a solution.
To see all of the paintings for the #stradaeasel challenge, head on over to Instagram or Facebook to see all of my posts together. And, use the hashtag #stradaeasel to see what others are up to in the Strada Easel Challenge. You can also click “previous post” to see the earlier paintings from last week.
This past week, I had a wonderful time taking a Wyoming Plein Air Trip to the Med Bow Routt National Forest with friend and plein air painter, Andrea Gabel.
Day 12
We started our trip in Vedauwoo, Wyoming (pronounced vee-da-voo) where the aspens were beginning to turn, the rocks glowed, and the earth seemed lit from within. Over the past 10 years, most of my time at Vedauwoo focused on rock climbing. Now, I look at the landscape with the eyes of a painter. One of the reasons I started to paint was to paint places like this. My first several attempts were absolute failures. This time, I had a breakthrough.
The day was perfect. We setup in Central Vedauwoo and had hours to paint. I chose “Holdout”, a north-facing rock face in the hopes that the light would be slow to change. I was particularly drawn to the light hitting the edges of the rock and the tops of the trees. And, I really liked that in contrast of the deep shadow to the golden foreground.
I picked a 12×16 panel, and although I ran out of time to finish the painting, it felt so good to paint large. My main focus was studying the rock, the cracks, the shape and of course, the color.
From Vedauwoo, we drove up to Centennial and the Snowy Range. We set up camp at the Libby Campground and while Andrea painted, I got to work on drawing leaves and trees for an online drawing and painting trees course.
Day 13
The next morning, we set off for the Snow Range and Lake Marie. Temperatures were only in the 50s and the wind was blowing (no surprise there).
Luckily, I knew a couple of places to seek shelter from the wind with great views. Looking at the lake and mountain range, I can hardly believe that this scene was one of my first attempts at plein air painting. Back in 2014, I carried up my pastel kit, a drawing board, and a large piece of Canson paper. I set up with a view of the lake and mountain and attempted to put every nuance, angle and color change into an 18×24 painting. I can laugh at it now, but I had no clue.
And, in some ways, little has changed. I set up with a view of the lake and the mountain and quickly became enraptured by the angles, colors, and crevices in the rocks, the subtle color change in the water, and the reflections.
With only a short window of time, I placed as many of the elements as I could. This is one I will definitely revisit this fall. Perhaps I’ll start again. Perhaps I’ll finish it.
Of course, once we called it quits, the sun came pouring through the clouds!
Not ready to finish painting, we scouted out some other locations, then headed to lower elevations for some fall color. We had spotted these trees near our campsite. Just as we were about to set-up, it started to rain and hail. Thankfully the storm quickly passed.
I’m guessing we had an hour before the wind picked up, and within another 10 minutes, the sky poured out!
Here is Andrea before it really came down. I wish I’d caught a picture of the deluge!
Andrea Gabel – ready for anything!
Day 14
I think this is the fastest painting I have ever attempted. After breaking down camp, we returned to Lewis Lake Trailhead for a morning of painting. The day started out with a breeze and blue skies. About an hour in, we had clouds and wind!
I knew the water would change quickly, so I attempted to get the base in as quickly as possible. The shadow shapes were next. Then, while the sun was shining, I piled on the color. I wasn’t able to finish the trees and rocks, or fix the shapes, but it sure was a fun time!
If you ever make it up to the Snowy Range, be sure to wear/bring warm clothes, hat, gloves, handwarmers, a raincoat, and a hat. I think we used every item of clothing that we brought. And, be ready for a quick change of weather. At, 10,800 feet, the Snowy Range is exposed, high alpine territory. It’s beautiful and stormy.
I’m running out of time today! Monday’s are always busy and today was no exception. As I was running errands today, I kept thinking, what am I going to paint? I knew I needed something ‘easy’. (Good luck with that!) I started out with a couple of boring ideas, and decided to grab a snack before starting. Viola! There was the answer. Gorgeous deep purple grapes.
Initially, I planned to only paint for an hour. The timer went off and I was close, but not close enough. I managed to minimize my ‘fiddling about’ to about a half hour. Just enough time to photograph the painting, do this quick write-up and now head off to an appointment.
Whew!
If it wasn’t for this 30 day challenge, I would not have painted today. (Of course, I should be working on my drawing and painting trees class – but I can do that while I wait at my appointment…I hope!).
I’m headed off to the mountains for the next couple of days. I will be painting and drawing every day, but I may not have internet access. If not, I’ll post when I return to the world of internet.
Oh, just because I was curious…I converted the image to black and white to see how the values held up. Isn’t it interesting how light the red actually is? It looks so dark in color.
In black and white.
To be continued…
Oh yeah, if you want to see all of my pieces created for the challenge (to date), you can head on over to Instagram or Facebook to see all of my posts together. And, use the hashtag #stradaeasel to see what others are up to in the Strada Easel Challenge. You can also click “previous post” to see the earlier paintings from last week. Enjoy!
It’s really fun to see all of the paintings together. I look at this montage and I think of the frustration, joy, weather, adventures, hopes and goals of the past month. While they didn’t all ‘turn out’ and some of them aren’t finished, each one presented a learning opportunity.
