On River Road

 Michelle and I painted at Patty's house this afternoon en plein air - this is a painting of the farm next door to Patty.  It was a perfect day to paint outside!  Patty and Rose were wimps - they stayed in the house! ;-)

A Painting for Ginny...

My painting friend, Ginny Stiles,  in the northwoods of Wisconsin, attended a John Lovett workshop this summer.  I have fallen in love with his work and have asked her to sort of pass on some of the  knowledge that she gained during the workshop - in other words she is allowing me to "pick her brain!"  Using the information she has given me so far, I did a painting today using some of his techniques.  It is obvious that I have a lot to learn about his painting style, but I really enjoyed doing this today and look forward to painting more in this style.  Thank you so much, Ginny!

Collage With Black Shapes

I have been experimenting with some collage techniques from a book my friend Rosie brought to our Thursday afternoon painting session last week.  This particular project uses torn black paper shapes, torn white tissue, and torn shapes from the inner lining of a sheet of Bounty paper towels all collaged to a piece of mat board with acrylic matte medium.  After it dried, I painted with watercolors - yellow ochre and burnt sienna with accents of white gesso.  I found this to be an interesting process.

Forget Me Not!

Since I was gone this weekend attending my niece's wedding in Cleveland, I have not had a lot of time to paint...so...I did this little piece this afternoon - 5" x 6".  It is painted on 140 lb. cold-pressed Canson 100 watercolor paper.  The background of the flowers was done wet into wet and you can see that the colors of the flowers are not confined to the flower shapes themselves.  The area between the flowers was done as negative painting and the shadows and leaves were added last.

Cornflower

I continued doing some flowers for greeting cards today.  This painting of a cornflower is approximately 6" x 4 1/2" and is painted on 140 lb. cold-pressed Canson watercolor paper.

I painted a few small watercolors today to use in greeting cards.  This one was a poured background and finished with negative painting.  It is 5" x 7" and is painted on Canson 140 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper.

Outbuildings on Washington Pike

This is my painting for the 3rd day of the Chris Leeper Plein Air Workshop in Wapakoneta.  This scene is located on Washington Pike in Auglaize County and I was sitting in the Sommerville's garage.  I added the parts of the fence today because I thought it needed some interest in the corner.

This workshop was so much fun!  I learned so much and I am so glad I took it!  If you ever have the chance to take a Christopher Leeper workshop, do it!!!

Along the Auglaize

This was the first painting I did in the Chris Leeper Plein Air workshop at the Riverside Art Center.  This was painted on Friday afternoon in a backyard along the river.  The painting is 9" x 12" and is painted on a canvas panel.  We were lucky and had good weather over the weekend - it was very hot and humid, though!  Lots of fun and learning there that day!

Angles Reflected in the Auglaize

I have been participating in a 3 day plein air workshop in Wapakoneta, Ohio, at the Riverside Art Center.  It is being led by Chris Leeper, a wonderful artist from the Youngstown, Ohio area.  I have been learning so much about painting in plein air.  We started yesterday morning and after a wonderful Christopher Leeper demonstration of trees and reflections in the river, we painted on the banks of the Auglaize River. I will post that painting tomorrow.  Today, we watched Chris do a demo painting of the "Farmer's Market" beside the river.  Afterwards, Chris took some pictures and because bad weather was threatening, he projected one of the pictures he had just taken on the wall inside Riverside Art Center and we all painted from the same scene - in the dry, air-conditioned arts center.  Tomorrow we go out in the country to paint.

This is the painting I did this afternoon - it is 8"x8" and is painted on a canvas panel.

Balancing A Wide Mouth Jar Lid

This was today's creative effort.  It is  a painting on a canvas panel.  The size of the painting is 5" x 7" and it is an oil painting.

Afternoon at Zoar

Michelle and I went to Zoar in eastern Ohio on Saturday for the Ohio Plein Air Society paintout.  I located on the porch of the old hotel, which is currently being restored and looked across the street at this beautiful old bed and breakfast.  When I finished painting this, I was not happy with it - it didn't have enough color...so this afternoon I added COLOR!  I spent an hour adding brighter colors and in my opinion improved it 100%!  The painting is done on an 10" x 8" stretched canvas in oils.  It was a lovely day - beautiful weather.  We thought rain might decend on us, but, although it rained on the way over, it did not rain on our parade!!!

Birthday Celebrations

No painting today!  It was a family day!  We celebrated birthdays - my husband, Rock's, and my son Rick's which will be next week.  In this picture Rock and I are pictured with our grandson, Ryan, who was assisting Rock in blowing out his candles!

The Indian Mill on the Sandusky River

This afternoon I finished the plein air painting I did yesterday at the Indian Mill at Upper Sandusky, Ohio.  This painting is 12"x 9" and is painted on a canvas panel in oil paint.  What a wonderful experience it is painting out doors and listening to the falling water and the birds... spiritual!

Painting the Indian Mill in Plein Air

Today the Muses and I painted the Indian Mill on the Sandusky River in Upper Sandusky, Ohio.  A beautiful place on a scenic river.  My painting is not completed - I find it difficult to complete an oil painting in 2 hours (at 2:00 p.m. it began to rain,) but this will not take too much more tweaking to finish.  This painting is 12" x 9" and is oil on a canvas panel.  Below is a picture of the scene I was painting.  Beautiful scene - hope I can do it justice.

Intricacies

I have been experimenting with a new technique in painting foliage which involves splattering and splashing watercolor on the paper with a brush - letting the spatters fall where they may and splattering colors into colors.  For foliage they suggest 3 pools of paint - light yellow, quinacridone gold and Pthalo blue.  For the above painting I also added quinacridone rose violet, and then detailed the painting with a thin line Sharpie marker. 

The painting below is the first I did using just the 3 suggested colors.  The result is a very loose, impressionistic painting, very unlike my style, but it works in it's own way.

The Anchor Chain

This painting, like the previous one,  was also done in response to a Watercolor Workshop June project challenge.  The project was to paint something to do with the seashore, ocean, coast, etc.  It did not necessarily have to include the shore, water, etc.  I happened to run across the source photograph on the Paint My Picture website and was fascinated by it - voila!  My mind ran with it and this is the result...it is something connected with the seashore...right?

This is painted on Canson's 140 lb. cold-pressed watercolor paper is is basically a limited palette painting - I used blue-violet, ultramarine blue, indian red with a small amount of payne's gray  and van dyke brown in the rocks.  The underpainting was wet-in-wet wash with salt texture using the three main colors.

Pairs

This painting is my creation for yesterday and today - yesterday I did the drawing and today the painting.  This is painted from the source photo provided by Watercolor Workshop - it is  the "all paint from one photo" project for June.  This painting is 9" x 12" and is painted on 140 lb. Canson cold-pressed watercolor paper.

The Secret Garden

This is a small fantasy piece I did this afternoon on YUPO paper.  I call it "The Secret Garden!"  It is approximately 4" x 5" and will probably become a greeting card.  It is amazing how many colors you can get from the three primaries - I used pthalo blue, cadmium yellow medium and quinacridone red - and all these colors are mixtures of those three.  Although I know that you can get all colors from the primaries, I still find these many colors totally amazing when it happens!

Decorative Rooster in Watercolor and Ink

Today I finished a painting of a rooster that I started while teaching a class this last session at Riverside Arts Center.  I always paint along with my students.  I decided that I would use a decorative approach to finish this painting and used an extra-thin black Sharpie marker to add the detailing textural effects.  This painting is 9" x 12" and is on 140 lb. cold-pressed Fabriano-Artistico watercolor paper.  I had originally posted a painting of the same rooster, but in a different style.

At the Seashore

I revisited the Mary Todd Beam book this afternoon and created this mixed media piece.  The book challenge for this painting was to abstractly depict the seashore (shells, sand, etc.) using gesso, watercolor, acrylics and salt.  This piece is 6" x 12" and is created on a piece of mat board.