Tag: landscape

Lavender #2 – Stage 1

Hurricane Hilary is supposedly barreling toward SoCal, so after battening down the hatches and getting a virus and sleeping for more hours during the day and night than normal, running a fever, I finally emerged with some sense of clarity today and accomplishment insofar and I am awake-ish and my mind may be capable of functioning. And, I am bored with being so uncreative and dedicated to duty and chores that need to be done despite the desire to crawl back into bed.

So, more lavender. Let’s just call it Lavender #2 for now, as I am sure there will be other versions sometime in the future. Stage One is below.

I am using the Golden Fluid Acrylics again, and really do like them the more I use them. The paper is some badly sized watercolor paper which is fine for acrylics and dreadful for watercolors. It is 15×20. I mounted it on a piece of coroplast with some tape and went to work. Because of its size I put it on my easel.

I have my paints to the right, with the window facing east. Lots of LEDs with variable lighting – I hate overheads! Anyway, I adjusted the easel to my height and find I rather like this set up. The easel is lightweight aluminum and folds flat. The esposo is kind enough to fetch it when asked as it resides on a shelf in the garage, up high and out of the way.

Colors, at this point, are limited. So far I have used yellow ochre, chrome green, carbazole violet, titanium white, cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, and a drop or two of cadmium yellow medium. My palette is a mess. I just cannot create a tidy one like other artists . . .

For today, I am done. I am getting tired, but painting is refreshing! That is definitely good for the soul.

Harvesting

Harvesting

Another photo from the visit to a friend’s family farm. Here you can see the empty field from yesterday beyond the small cultivated area. Tom is gathering lettuce, basil, carrots, chard, cebollas and other delicious goodies while Judy and I wandered around shooting pictures, trying to get some good shots. At heart, I am a farm / country girl, and being out here was (pardon the pun) food for the soul.

Waiting

Waiting

Yesterday afternoon a friend invited me out to a family member’s small farm – ranch – to enjoy it, harvest some food, and take some photos. We got out there about 4:45 pm and stayed an easy 3 hours.

To the south, seen here, is a vast plowed field, ready for the next crop. We plant year-round here, varying crops with the season and the need. My friend’s family farm is just a few acres of organically grown vegetables and herbs, but surrounding it are larger commercial fields.

The flatness of the earth and the small hillocks and gouges made the lowering sun cast shadows in the dirt. I pushed the photo in contrast to see the extremes to show off textures not just in the soil, but also in the hills beyond.

More to come!

Lavender Field #2

Today just got away from me!! Where it went is up for the imagination. I had plans to paint – but time to focus on another larger painting in acrylic was not there. Instead, I thought it would be a good time for me to get reacquainted with my sketch book, and what better way than ink and color? My lavender field from yesterday seemed to be the perfect subject.

So, back to the sketch book. Micron pens for a simple outline. Then color and I used water brushes, but sprayed a bit of water into the foreground and into the sky to get better effects – ones that water brushes and no cup of water cannot achieve. I did some painting, then I inked more detail in, did some more painting, paused to let things dry, and so on. Nothing exciting, but it was a definitely pleasant way to spend an hour or so on the patio in very pleasant weather.

Fun!

Lavender Field

Pixabay provides such a wonderful range of photos for free! This is based on one, a lavender below a village in France, which I think may be Bonnieux.

Yesterday I bought a number of fresh bottles of Golden Fluid Acrylic Paints. These are thinner than traditional heavy body acrylics, and unfortunately their color range is not equal to that of the tube paints. However, I have a number of small bottles, but my fresh ones are 4 oz. in size, and that will give me a lot of paint for some time. After playing a bit yesterday with the colors, mixing some, and then finding the ones I had did not meet my color needs, I ordered a few more from Amazon. This allowed me to get brighter spring greens and a good color for the lavender.

Yesterday I taped 1″ wide tape along the borders of a pieces of Canson XL watercolor paper in block format – 16×20 I believe. Then, I sketched in with pencil and laid down a foundation of values which gave me a sort of road map as to what I was going to do.

This is my second layer – colors this time with some values. The idea I had when I started out is I did not want to do a bunch of dabbing, which is my normal style, but instead make large swaths of flat color in the foreground lavender with some detail, and lead the eye to the village on the hill. To do this I used the lines of the lavender to lead the eye to the middle ground, but then chose brighter and warmer greens to sort of point to the village – lookie here!

I am not too sure how successful this is as a painting per se, but I am quite pleased with it. This is my first attempt at a big painting with the fluid acrylic paints, and as with all acrylics, I had to work with the quick drying time of the medium. The fluid acrylics were easier to use in a lot of ways than were the regular tube paints just because I didn’t need to work at diluting them. Straight out of the bottle, they work quite well. Shaking them a bit before use is a good idea, too. I will be ordering more titanium white as I have used a lot of it to just make this painting.

I hope you like this! More to come!