Tag: woodland

Morning Walk

I don’t know if I have published this image before . . . . I have a feeling I did, but cannot find it. Of course, with all the stuff I have here on IY&B, it makes sense.

I painted this a few years ago. I worked really hard to get soft tones and paints. I had been working mostly in acrylics when I picked up the oils and was used to the hardness I seem to produce with acrylics. So, with the blendability of oils, that was my focus of the exercise.

The results here have been sitting around for ages with the thought the painting could use a bit of work. Looking at it now, it seems finished enough. I am pleased with the moodiness and sense of a damp woodland as well as how you can tell it is a misty day by the colors of the sky through the trees.

Oils, 10×14 canvas panel.

Old Trees in Winter

If you have been reading this blog awhile, you know I live where there is fire and not snow. Still, winter does come to my warm (ish) part of the world, and with it memories of tromping through the snow under spreading trees along a lake shore.

I use two software programs these days to scan my paintings – and I rather like the way they end up, similar but different. Above is the one using VueScan. Below is the one using Epson V600 and its software.

Epson software is more inclined to push colors, but in this case it does a decent job and pulls out more of the colors I put into the tree. Both scans are pretty much straight out of the scanner. Your choice as to preference!

Watercolor, Arches Rough 140#. Colors primarily burnt umber, ultramarine blue, Hooker’s green. 10×14.

Autumn Trees, with Apologies to Wolf Kahn

Color always fascinates me, and two modern painters, Richard Mayhew and Wolf Kahn, are masters of it. They pay tribute to the natural world with their colors and whether or not the landscape is based on reality doesn’t matter. The subject matter and the colors are the point, just as the squares and rectangles of color are of such importance in the work of Mark Rothko.

For this study, I looked at several of Kahn’s pastels of trees and woodlands. His color choices range from contrasting and bright to subdued. Sometimes the trees are distinct from the background, other times almost camouflaged into the surrounding foliage. I decided to continue using linseed oil here and soft colors to see what I could do with blending and creating lines for tree trunks within the the woodland while keeping the visuals of Kahn’s woodlands in mind.

This was painted in one sitting, and as the paint was damp and pliable, it was fun to move it around, wipe some off, add more, and then use the brush to create lines and dots to suggest trees and leaves and open field before entering the woodland. As I painted, I realized that I could place lighter colors in vertical strokes between darker areas to create tree trunks. I used short horizontal strokes to suggest foliage.

Again, I painted on the linen-textured Canson XL Oil-Acrylic paper. Linseed oil allowed for easy movement of the paint. And, again, this painting has been taking forever to dry out in my chilly garage, but I scanned it anyway, and cleaned up the glass afterward.

I really like Kahn’s work, especially in his later years. I also want to explore color as Mayhew and Rothko have used it. Besides exploring colors, exploring the subtleties of one color and its variants within a given area will be fun. Mayhew and Rothko will be fun to emulate, as has Kahn, because the experience of copying is a form of exploration that adds to knowledge by doing, and that, to me, is the best part of all.

Wood & Wetland

I have been spending the better part of the day watching the videos in a class in which I have enrolled before starting any of the projects. There are a lot of short videos in it pointing out this and that, but sitting still to watch the longer ones makes me restless. I need something to do with my hands rather than just sit on my butt! Knitting is out as I have a few projects at a point which need some focus, but oil pastels did the trick. I can draw / paint and watch at the same time. I may not get all of the video, but I do get a lot of it – just as I am now as I write this post.

I picked up a few brands of oil pastels and a 6-pack each of soft white and greys. These include Sennelier, Mungyo, and Caran d’Ache. The white and grey pack are labeled “Anders” I think. I also have been playing on various papers, but decided to check out the Sennelier oil pastel paper. It seems to do a pretty good job despite all the rubbing in of layers of pastels.

Oil pastels, at this point, are more like playing with crayons for me. I blur the colors using my fingers and tortillons. Harder oil pastels make up the underlayers with the softer, oilier ones going on top. This adheres to the adage of “fat over lean” in oil painting, so it makes sense that it would apply to the oil pastels as well.

Oil pastel on Sennelier paper; about 5×7 finished. Scanned on Epson V600.

A Winter’s Creek

We have had rain – yay! – and thunderstorms, and threats of tornadoes (which never came) – and puddles of water, and a back yard lake. More to come, perhaps, but gentle and warmer, with a promise of a relatively sunny Christmas. I love the briskness this weather brings, but am also very happy not to have to shovel snow or drive in it. In fact, I was flying through water at intersections the other day, but luckily I am in an area without low lying ground which floods, unlike other areas of the county where people woke up to flooded bedrooms.

So, winter! Winter solstice is come and gone, and in many ways I wish we marked it more with bonfires and merriment, as in the olden days. I paint winter, partly from photos, partly from memory and imagination. 

Probably most of my memories come from upstate New York. No place that I have visited does winter quite like the mixed hardwood and pine forests. Bright green, dark green, barren branches, tall trees. Skies can be sunny and fierce, dull and overcast, and everything in between. Water, whether lake or stream, takes on its own life when frozen, thawed or in between. It still amazes me that fish swim under the ice and amphibians bury themselves in the mud until spring comes.

Happy Solstice!