I’m having a FLASH SALE in my Etsy shop, now through the end of March. I posted a dozen of my value study paintings from the 30 Paintings in 30 Days project. And for the next 10 days they are $122.50 each—that’s 30% off the regular price of $175.
And if you sign up to receive my monthly newsletter by email, you will be notified about sales like this several days sooner than the rest of the world. ;)
Yay, I made it through my month of daily painting! Here are some of the things I will take away from January.
1) PRACTICE is always necessary to establish new habits. This month of breaking down lights and darks every day has me in the habit of breaking down everything I see into value masses. Now I need to practice condensing these studies into 5 minute planning exercises rather than 1 hour completed thoughts. But hooray for teaching an old dog new tricks!
2) I find myself playing more with contrast as as tool for emphasis and consciously manipulating the focal points in paintings.
3) I finally cracked into the “world’s most boring photo album," which is what I call my collection of source photos. It’s a book full of blurry trees, empty fields, and falling down houses. I’m glad to test and evaluate them (rather than simply accumulate them) because not everything makes a good painting. Often the especially bad photos make great paintings. I took a stab at 30 with reasonably good results (and dumped many stinkers that simply did not work out no matter what I tried).
4) Architecture and water are not subjects I’m super comfortable handling, so I made a point of including them in the project with satisfactory results. If there’s subject matter I’m not painting, I want it to be because I choose not to paint it, not because I am unable to do so.
5) Not a lesson learned, but here's a little slideshow of the project set to music. Enjoy!
6) These paintings are preliminary drawings in which I have worked out the value and compositional problems and analyzed strengths and weaknesses. I will use them as stepping stones to new work. And although when I told my husband he responded with shock and horror, I am going to paint over many of them in color. Below is a demonstration I used with a student to show you what I mean:
See, I took the sketch from monochromatic to full color and left little bits of burnt sienna underpainting peeking through. Does that make sense?
7) I'm a bit apprehensive about diving back into color. I went out plein air painting early Sunday morning and, well, ...
...splat. It's all right, but I need to reevaluate my supplies. I simply was not getting the colors I wanted. I have been using more or less the same limited palette (the same 6 tubes of paint) for several years, and those choices need some adjustment as I move into spring, which is prime plein air season.
If my little project has piqued your interest in value studies, monochromatic painting, underpainting, or en grisaille painting, here are a few references to check out:
"Looking Out the Window" - 7 x 5 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (ultramarine blue & titanium white)
We had a dusting of snow this morning, so I painted the scene out my kitchen window before the kids got up. I've made it all the way through my 30 days challenge! I will post some reflections on the month tomorrow. Thanks so much for following along.
"The Few Loves" - 7 x 5 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (burnt umber, ultramarine blue & titanium white)
My mother's house is surrounded by white pines my grandfather planted when he was 12 years old. Hundreds of them. The seedlings were supplied by the University of Maryland's Agriculture Department as an experiment. For years students came out to collect data on the growing grove of pines. This was my childhood view of the sky.
Now they are over-tall, brittle, and shallow rooted in a way that makes my mother fearful in wind storms. I've written about them and painted them before. And whenever my mind turns to them, I am reminded of this poem:
"Unfortunate Location"
by Louis Jenkins
In the front yard there are three big white pines, older
than anything in the neighborhood except the stones.
Magnificent trees that toss their heads in the wind
like the spirited black horses of a troika. It's hard to
know what to do, tall dark trees on the south side of
the house, an unfortunate location, blocking the
winter sun. Dark and damp. Moss grows on the roof,
the porch timbers rot and surely the roots have
reached the old bluestone foundation. At night, in
the wind, a tree could stumble and fall killing us in
our beds. The needles fall year after year making an
acid soil where no grass grows. We rake the fallen
debris, nothing to be done, we stand around with
sticks in our hands. Wonderful trees.
"Orange Trail" - 6 x 6 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (burnt umber & titanium white)
This is the hunter's access parking lot and entry to a hiking trail at Calvert Cliffs State Park. I have painted this scene before but always struggled with trying to do too much. Surprisingly it works here because I asked myself how can I do it with less?
"Near Silence" - 5 x 7 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (burnt umber, ultramarine blue & titanium white)
Another swing at St. Paul's. The angle of my roofline is wrong. But I'm satisfied with a lot of other elements here, specifically the facade and the steeple, so I'm calling it done.
"Postcard" - 5 x 7 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (burnt umber & titanium white)
My husband has been texting me pictures of the scenery on his business trip to the West Coast. This was somewhere along his drive from San Francisco to Klamath, CA.
"Each Night I Grow Young" - 5 x 7 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (burnt sienna & titanium white)
This is one of my favorite farms, on the east side of Rt. 4 between Huntingtown and Prince Frederick (in Maryland, that is). And this past year the owners hung a bright red curtain over an upstairs window. It's like catnip for painters. Must. Paint. It!!!!
"Down the Creek" - 7 x 5 inches, acrylic on canvas panel. (ultramarine blue & titanium white)
I'm very happy with today's sky. I took my time adding and subtracting and building the clouds while watching a PBS documentary called The Mine Wars. (It's free on Amazon Prime.) I had a general awareness of this chapter of American history, but the details are hair-raising.
"Like Old Photographs" - 6" x 6", acrylic on canvas panel. (burnt umber, ultramarine blue & titanium white)
My husband really likes the ones this month with burnt sienna (warm, sepia red-brown). For some reason those have been the easiest paintings. Maybe mid-tones are easier. I really love/hate the black (mixture of ultramarine blue & burnt umber) and white ones because they have been the most challenging. Generally speaking, this project is hard. I'm glad I'm doing it, but it's like brussel sprouts.
