The chapel at the local college is a favorite subject of mine. And since today is Christmas, it doesn’t hurt to think and reflect a bit about the holiday, before its commercialism. It is the story of hope – and hope is always something we need, no matter what we believe. It is a day to enjoy our blessings, and a day to reflect and dig deeper than the bottom of your stocking.
After putzing around with attempts to emulate some of Monet’s Impressionistic paintings of Etretat, I muddled around and found the works of Paul Signac, a Neo-Impressionist and Pointillist. These two schools espoused dabbing, using complimentary colors and such to create a sense of light and movement. They are rather delightful to my eye – I am a magpie at heart – and the vibrant colors and energy of these painters fascinates me.
Here, I decided to see what I could do with a detail of Paul Signac’s painting, which you can see below. His rocks, or whatever they are, and their reflections in the sea caught my attention. My reflections are not very good. As a first attempt to try pointillism, I just started with making dots on the unpainted paper. In reality, the best way to start would have been to laid down solid areas of underlying color, and then build upon that with the dots.
If you look at Signac’s painting, you will see the use of orange and blue in the shadows – reflected light in the shadows. What I also found fascinating is his use of different shades of blue – ultramarine, cobalt, and cerulean in particular. Together with varying shades of orange, yellow, and ochre, he created the stone reflections. I found this very hard to do, but think I get the idea!
More to come. The purpose of copying or interpreting Signac’s work (and Monet’s) is to get a better sense of color. With pointillism, the colors are applied individually. Doing this myself, I begin to appreciate the purity of color when juxtaposed with another.
I have done most of the laundry. It is in the dryer. And I am restless as I really don’t feel like sitting still, but I want to accomplish something. I really want to get out of the house. Laundry is my morning’s ball and chain.
Times like this, when I am restless, are always a good time to do little tasks. So, I put away the tripods I had pulled out. For a birthday present, I got a geared head. With Josh’s help, I moved one head from one tripod to another, until the good old Gitzo 1227 was freed up for the geared head.
It is now time to take the tripod and head out to use, testing it out with and without the L-bracket, but that needs to wait as I want to get to the botanical gardens and local parks for that, and load up a couple of different cameras for that. Waiting for laundry to dry is a shorter time period than loading up camera gear and running away from home.
To pass the time, I posted to my other two blogs – my most recent pastel and a picture of ink on my desk. Exciting stuff.
And thus, I am thinking about what I have been doing and not doing this week, and I really cannot complain. It has been a good week in many ways, with a sense of satisfaction and / or accomplishment. What is there to cry about? I have seen family and friends, been creative, and realized that I really do need to schedule all my different interests! That was a good insight, so I have a calendar printed out for my consideration.
Meanwhile, the dryer has 20 minutes to go.
I tried to simplify things more in this painting by using washes and bleeding colors into them. The foreground was tricky as there was a lot of texture from the brush on the lower left. The same brush is on the opposite shore, but, as you can see, with a lot less detail. Also, I decided to try to use a bit of white gouache mixed with watercolor to represent the white brush – baby sycamores? – as well as the branches of the sycamore trees. Sadly, I didn’t really think about the leaves of the sycamores until after I had painted in the mountain in the distance, so I tried to retrieve a bit of lighter leaves in the foreground. Not super successful, but am pleased with the effort of simplifying.
More water and reflections!
Ormond Beach is located on the coastal side of the county in a flat, rural area near two navy bases. The sky is often dank and cloudy and it can seem like another world compared to my hot, dry corner. Here, I wanted to catch the dreary grey sky along with the rows of palm trees on the horizon. I think this one is one of my better ones of late.
Ink, Yarn & Beer 