Roadside Barn

Roadside Barn.  Watercolor.
Approximately 10 x 14 inches

In a continuing theme, another barn.  This one is more reality base, which means I used a reference photo taken below on a trip from Columbus, OH back to Cincinnati last year.  I'm using the photo just for the shape of the barn, and a little bit as the suggestion of the landscape.  Once I had the barn organized, I stopped looking at the photo.

I did another painting based on a photo from this same trip, which you can find here.  And, I've been doing lots of barns and buildings lately, just for fun.  I need to take a day trip, and snap some more photos.  

The palette is Quinacridone burnt orange, prussian blue, and nickel azo yellow.  On Kilamanjaro 300 lb cold press paper.

I may still need to dim down the barn.  Will think on that.

I did get called away, mid-painting, so I snapped a pic on my way, you can see that at the bottom.

Seen Between Columbus and Cincinnati

Ohio Roadside.  Watercolor.
10 x 14 ish

Spring, for whatever reason, tips easily over into a frantic pace.  We barely have time to breathe, let alone sit down and relax.  I'm not sure if that's a symptom of our time, the age of our kids, or some undetermined factor.  But, it can be exhausting, and worse, hard to find time to paint.

Winter Pine

Winter Pine.  Watercolor.
Approximately 8 x 7 inches.

This past weekend, my husband and I drove to Chicago for a wedding on Valentine's.  It was bitter cold (they said the coldest Valentine's in quite some time) and there were gray skies and gusting snow the length of Indiana.  (The wedding was fun.  My husband danced, which is rare and awesome!)

I snapped a pic with my phone as we were leaving a gas station (below)--you've probably noticed, the midwest is, ah, flat. Ohio's quite flat too, once you get north of Cincinnati.  I wanted to paint the pine and horizon line, and somehow went kind of askew in the process.  Once again, I haven't seen the reference photo for a couple of days, so I'm riffing on mood.  I'm thinking cold can be a mood.

It's a three color palette--indigo, indian yellow, and permanent yellow deep.  All Daniel Smith. Painted on  Fabriano 300 lb rough paper.  I'm going to need to buy more paper soon.  I'll put it off as long as possible....

Northminster Show and Photographing

Tomorrow (2/7) is the Northminster Fine Arts Fair. It's the tenth anniversary of the fair, and I believe it'll be the 4th time I've participated.  I've got all my work matted, and this morning I need to finish wrapping my unframed work in acetate and get things in frames. If you're in the Cincinnati Metro Area, stop by and say hello.  (It's hosted at the Northminster Presbyterian Church at 703Compton Rd. in Finneytown, OH)

Lake Huron At Dusk

Lake Huron At Dusk.  Watercolor.  9x10 Inches.

My critique group, also known as the Mixed Media Mavens, is hosting a themed show at the Pendelton Arts Center Final Friday Event.  Here's the scoop:

One Hundred!

Blue Barn II.  Watercolor.  Approximately 10x12 inches

This is my 100th post!  Woot.  I posted for the first time on October 4, 2012, which means I'm pretty close to averaging a post a week.  However, if you've been reading this blog, you'll know that I've been post crazy for the last few weeks.  This is my 11th post in January 2015--not to worry, I'll be back to my normal pace at the end of January.

And......Back To Flowers

Iris Abstracted.  Watercolor & Crayon.

Last night, after I painted Iris Abstracted, I bit the bullet and started cleaning my John Pike palettes. The last time I needed to clean out a palette, I just bought a new one!  That was not a great precedent, but it was incredibly easy. To get one of the wells cleaned out required many minutes in the laundry tub, an attack with a toothbrush, and then attention with water, q-tips, brushes and paper towels.  You might understand why I've been putting it off.  I have one palette fully cleaned out, and the other needs work.  You'd think they'd design a palette that doesn't have so many crevices.  (As the mom of two middle school boys, I frequently have the same thoughts about toilets....  if you don't know why I'm thinking that, you don't really want to know, and as a future service, it would probably be a good idea if I made the boys responsible for cleaning their own/guest bathroom....)

Turning World

Turning World.  Watercolor and crayon.
Approximately 11 x 9 inches

If you've been reading this blog, you've probably noticed that my work is tipping more and more abstracted You can see examples, here, here, and here. If you check those links, you'll notice that those are some of the earliest abstracts and that they're laid out in squares and rectangles. Lately, I've been going more and more towards circles and curving shapes, which you can see here, here, and here.  Not always, but often.

Blue and Orange

Gold Trees Orange Shadows.  Watercolor.  6.5 x 11 inches.

For the better part of the last week, I've been limiting my palette to blues and oranges.  I don't know why.  I do like blue, but this time of year (fall) I tend to think more in warm colors, and my recent paintings have tended to turn up disproportionately blue.  It may be my suspicsion that it's going to be a miserable winter.  It's noon on Oct. 4, and it's only just over 40 degrees F.  Jeez.

Plein Air Painting at Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum

Yesterday, I traveled with a group of artists to Spring Grove Cemetary & Arboretum.  If you live in the Cincinnati metropolitan area and haven't been, it is worth a trip.  The cemetery dates to the mid-19th century, and they have fabulous grounds with numerous state champion trees.  

It's open to the public, so we wandered in and painted, sketched, drew, and meditated in an area of the cemetery that had ponds, bridges, and beautiful cypress trees with cypress knees.  

I cleaned out my bag before I went, so I was portable--one of the first posts I wrote for this blog was about plein air painting, where I got stuck at the parking lot because my bag was so overfilled.

An Abstract From a Farm Seen From I-71, SW of Columbus, OH

Over spring break, my family and I drove out to Hocking Hills, a state park located south east of Columbus, OH.  We'll usually camp, but fearing cold temperatures, we rented a cabin.  It turned out to be a good choice, since it started to rain about an hour after we arrived and didn't stop until we were well into the drive home.

I took a lot of pictures from the passenger seat of the car--storm clouds, fallow fields, and distant farm houses.  Between Cincinnati and Columbus(ish), driving I-71, the landscape is flat with big sky.  Closer to Hocking Hills, the landscape borders the northern edge of Appalachia, and it switches to rolling hills and aspiring mountains.  

Back to Indiana and Illinois in November

Every year, we travel through Indiana and Illinois to visit my in-laws in Missouri.  It is very flat, with lots of farms and very few towns.  

The Mill Course at Sunset

My younger son is taking golf lessons at The Mill Course in Winton Woods, which is part of the Hamilton County Park System.  It's very difficult to predict when he'll finish a round of golf, so when I pick up, I frequently have to wait.  Luckily, they have a beautiful patio that overlooks the course.  And, of course, I end up studying the trees and the light.

One of the things I've learned, is that my phone takes terrible pictures.  That turns out to be okay though, since at best, I use the photos as jumping off points for paintings.  So, to the left is a pic I snapped one evening while waiting for golfers.

Then, a week or two went by, and all I remember is that the line of trees looked lit up against the darker tree line, and that there was a golf flag.  I planned my painting around the idea of trees versus dash of red flag, and did a couple of thumbnail sketches to see what I though about different value plans.  The sketches are only about 1.5x1.5 inches.  You can see them to the right.

I like the bottom value sketch better, but ended up loosing the top light portion when I did the painting.  It's interesting--I'm not a big fan of golf, but this course is beautiful.  It's hard not to feel at peace as the light comes by.   You can see the final product at the top. 

Purple Mountain Majesty

When I posted about reference photos, I included a dusky sunset from Idaho.  I took numerous pics throughout our travels, and many had to do with sky and mountains.  Sometimes there were structures (barns, silos, homes) and sometimes not.  

Here's a trial at a landscape, w/o looking a any reference photos.  You can see that I imagined a house at the top of the middle ridge and then painted it out.  The pencil lines are emphasized in the photo, and not as noticeable otherwise.  The bottom photo gives an idea of what I was riffing from.

I really miss big sky.  The sky in Ohio can be beautiful, but the sky out west is, well majestic.

A Hosted Site Experiment

I tried getting fancy.  I though I'd consolidate my work and blog into a Wordpress.org web site.  I went right along to bluehost.com and bought a domain and installed wordpress.  I spent 48 h trying different themes and messing around with things, but I never could get something that I either understood or even liked.  To the left is a screen shot of where I left it when I gave up.  (I should mention that despite my frustration, Bluehost was very agreeable and easy to work with):
 
Right now, I'm using the following sites:

Blogger:  For blogging (which works well and looks great with minimal effort, I have to say).  It was easy to import my posts into wordpress, but I was going to need to go back through and update the media files and links.  I didn't get that far since I never got the wordpress theme to display to my satisfaction.

Flavors.me:  For consolidated easy access to portfolio display.  I like that I can send people to flavors.me/albryce and then they can get directly here or to Etsy.  However, you need a site to integrate with your portfolio (i.e., photos) and for that I use....

Flickr:  Maybe it should have been instagram, but for right now, flickr works fine.  Here's my flickr photostream.

Mailchimp:  For a newsletter.  Although, I have to confess I've never sent one.  I have very few subscribers, and I don't want to hassle them.  Feel free to sign up--there's a link at the top of the page, or you can sign up here.

Etsy:  For selling.  I have to confess the online selling is hypothetical, but it's always nice to dream.  If you're interested you can look at my shop here.

Finally, I just started using my Facbook Page, which you can visit here.  And sometimes I post to google+, but just to my own personal profile.  

Why all these sites?  Consider that to start a hosted wordpress site, was a couple of hundred dollars up front (although it covered 3 years), and I was still spending a ton of time getting things looking right. These site are all FREE.  Love that.  And, they look reasonably professional with minimal effort on my part.  Love that, too.

I'm sure there are better ways.  It's actually hard for me to keep up.  If there's something that you use to get your work up online, tell me what you think, and why you're using it.  I'd love to hear!

Reference Photos & Summertime

When I started painting, I painted from still lifes or outside.  Then, I gradually moved to painting from reference photos.  I found that my paintings from photos were looking stilted and fussy (at least for me) since I prefer a really loose style in my watercolors.  Over the last year, I've been working on getting back to a quick, fresh watercolor style by doing abstracts and painting alla prima. 

Now, I'm going to try using some reference photos as a jumping off point to design some paintings.  Why?  Well, we just returned from a western adventure, where the sky is big and the colors are amazing.  I didn't have my paints, but I had my camera.  Here are three photos that I'm planning on using to design paintings:

This is dusk over ID.  That's Idaho, not identification.  The oreground would be a no.  Sky is a yes. 

I like the line of the reflection here, against the line of the waves and the muted colors.

And this a sculpture by Richard Serra called Wake as a backdrop in the Olympic Sculpture Park, which is part of the Seattle Art Museum.  Aren't the colors gorgeous?

The trick will be getting time to paint, since it's busy in the summer!

Photographing Watercolors

If you ever want to try an exercise in frustration, try photographing watercolors.  The frustration level ramps up if you are stacking the colors in the painting (ie, transparent layers) or using intense colors that are close in value.  Take for example the following painting I tried, which has the following Daniel Smith colors: phthalo Blue, phthalo green, quinacrodone violet, carbazole violet, and permanent yellow deep.  The emphasis was on shape and hue (or color), so I tried to de-emphasize value. 

The picture on the right shows how close the values in the painting are.  There is some variation, but there it is small across the painting.  The picture on the right shows an attempt at getting the color correct.  I really like the painting to look at, but the photograph of the painting?  Not so much.  It should be much more uniformly--teal?  I'll keep trying to work out how to get an image that accurately represents the painting.