"Georgetown Key Bridge Afternoon" (oil on linen; 8" x 10") sold

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This is the view of Georgetown and the Key Bridge from the tiny Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River. The undersides of the bridge arches glow in the afternoon light. I used a modified pointillist method to simulate the shimmering light.

"Georgetown Key Bridge Afternoon" (oil on linen; 6" x 8") sold

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This is the view of Georgetown and the Key Bridge from the tiny Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River.  The undersides of the bridge arches glow in the afternoon light.  Can you believe this lovely cityscape is only 6" x 8"?  I am becoming a miniaturist!

"Riverbend Bluebells" (oil on stretched canvas; 16" x 20")

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There is a place in Great Falls,VA, called Riverbend Park.  It is a pretty park where kids go for school outings to see American-Indian artifacts and practice archery.  When Virginia bluebells are in season in the spring, it turns into an enchanted forest by the river.  Imagine acres and acres of delicate blue flowers on long stems catching light or in deep shadows.  I tried to capture that sense of joy and wonder in my dotted painting.

"Shady Cove" (watercolor; matted, 12" x 10") sold

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I thought I would play around with watercolors for a change of pace, starting with this small landscape.  It depicts a lovely shady cove along the Potomac River.

"Autumn Morning along the Potomac" (oil on stretched canvas; 8" x 10")

English Teaching Forum features my painting!

My painting, "Autumn Morning along the Potomac", made the cover of a State Department publication!  The design company that worked on the project found many images and my painting, I am told, was a unanimous favorite.  Does this mean that I am becoming famous?

The uncropped painting; click here to buy

"Autumn Morning along the Potomac" (oil on stretched canvas; 8" x 10")

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On a beautiful Saturday morning last September, we took a drive to East Potomac Park, which is a small peninsula jutting into the Potomac River on the south side of the Tidal Basin.  The park is a popular place for biking, running, fishing, and picnicking.  There are also a public golf course, a swimming pool, and a miniature golf course.  Unless you know it's there, it is a place easy to miss, but once you are there, you are glad.

While my daughter's school golf team was practicing, my husband and I took a walk about. Many crew teams rowing on the river probably didn't pay any attention to the excellent view of the Washington Monument, but what a view it was!

"After Independence Day" (oil on stretched canvas; 12" x 16") sold

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The day after the Independence Day in 2002, I visited a marina along the Potomac River and saw the scene.  The contrast between the brilliant sun-lit boats and those in the shadow made an indelible impression.  Full of enthusiasm, I painted a full-sheet watercolor painting, also titled "After Independence Day."

The painting won the Potomac Valley Watercolorists Award (something like the second-place award) in the prestigious American Landscape Show at the Art League Gallery in August 2002!  It was before the age of the digital camera; I wasn't much of a photographer either.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to get the painting photographed properly in slides before the show.

When the painting got sold on the last day of the show, I didn't know whether I should be happy or sad.  Dang!  All I have left of the entire exhilarating experience is a snapshot.  I took a picture of the picture to prove that I didn't make up the story!

"After Independence Day" (watercolor, 22" x 30"; sold)

I cropped the scene for the new, much smaller, oil painting.  Unlike the original watercolor version, for which I did a lot of careful pencil drawing, the new version was done with a minimal pre-drawing.  The background is barely suggested in the watercolor painting; in the new painting the background is treated more boldly.  The result is that the sun-lit boats are highlighted between the darker values of the background landscape and the foreground boats.  So, which painting do you prefer?

"Key Bridge at Sunset" (oil on linen; 11" x 14") sold

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I don't believe in multi-tasking.  One thing at a time is my motto.  Having a dinner while conversing, or painting and listening to music at the same time, are some of the few things I would do with profit and pleasure.  Try doing something that requires concentration and simultaneously listening to your teenage daughter's angst.  You may be able to, but I can't.  These days many drivers put their and other people's lives in danger by texting while driving.  One thing at a time, man.

Sometimes, however, I end up multi-tasking.  Here is the story.  Thursday was a very busy day.  It started with a photography session with a client for a commission painting, followed by ice-skating practice, grocery shopping, a visit to my daughter's doctor's office for her flu shot, cooking dinner, and a fundraiser holiday concert at a bookstore where I also got half of Christmas shopping done!

I had started "Key Bridge at Sunset" the day before, but didn't get to finish it.  It was going well.  This was the second time that I tried the same subject; I wanted it to be better than the first painting ("Georgetown at Sunset"), which I felt looked belabored.

Paints were becoming sticky, and I had little time to do finishing touches during the day.  Painting in the kayakers was particularly nerve-wracking.  I didn't want the painting to be about the health benefits of kayaking.  Kayakers, especially the big one at the bottom left, were supposed to balance the painting and add a visual interest to the large expanse of the river.

"Georgetown at Sunset" (oil, 9" x 12")
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I finished the painting while grilling rosemary lamb chops and boiling new potato.  My studio, formerly known as the dining room, is right next to the kitchen, so I could pull it off.  Nevertheless, I felt like Daniel Craig playing James Bond, or Jason Statham as the Transporter!

"Georgetown at Sunset" (oil on linen; 9" x 12") sold

sold

Reference photo I

Reference photo II

"Georgetown at Sunset" (oil, 9 x 12") is a view of Key Bridge and Georgetown from the pedestrian bridge to Roosevelt Island in the Potomac. I was captivated by the glows in the underside of the arches of the bridge. Wow!  The sunset sky was equally beautiful, but the reference photo's sky came out all bleached.  So for the sky, I used the second photo. 

I wish I could have painted the scene on location to really see the colors of the trees, reflections, and so on.  The island that houses the statue of President Teddy Roosevelt is not heavily trafficked, so it would have been possible.  My only excuse is that the golden hour of the sunset lasts only for a little while.

"Washington Monuments on Autumn Day" (oil on linen; 8" x 13") sold

After
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Before

Early this summer, I went to the National Gallery of Arts with a couple of friends.  We were in the French Impressionism section, visiting with each other and admiring the artwork--multi-tasking at its best!  That's when I saw Claude Monet's "The Bridge at Argenteuil."  I stopped talking.  My friends also stopped to see what was happening.  I knew I was being rude, but I couldn't tear myself away from the painting.  They kindly left me alone for a few minutes.  I was in awe, in heaven.

I have a poor reproduction of the painting at home.  It absolutely has nothing of the glowing quality of the original.  I fell in love with Monsieur Monet for the first time in my life.  When he painted the scene by the river near the bridge en plein air, things may or may not have been exactly as what he portrayed in "The Bridge at Argenteuil"--the fluffy clouds floating by, the sail boat with a white triangular sail conveniently breaking up the horizon line, and especially the shimmering reflections in the water.  Will I ever be able to paint like him someday?

Which brings us to "Monuments on Autumn Day."  Gravelly Point along George Washington Parkway is located right next to the National Airport.  A great view of the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial is why several of my friends and I were there two years ago.  What you can't tell from the painting, however, is that my nerves were totally shot during the paint-out thanks to the constant noise from the huge jumbo jets coming down to land at the airport!  My stress level was, therefore, higher than usual, which might account for the general drabness of the painting in its original state.  I am quite sure that Monet never had to deal with the jet noise!

The colors of the polluted Potomac river can only be described as dirty-looking.  Peope fish there, but I sincerely hope they don't eat a large quantity of their catch.  I figured that there is no reason why I should stick with the "real" colors.  When I quit my teaching job to become a full-time artist, I assume I was issued the artistic license!  Invoking Monet, I did my best to make "Monuments on Autumn Day" shimmer.  Do you think I measure up to the master?

"By the River" (oil on linen; 11" x 14") sold

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Last month was probably the wettest September ever!  Day after day, week after week, we were drenched.  Good for the lawn, but bad for the morale.  It felt like I moved to Seattle, WA.  So when the forecast promised a break of one sunny day, a friend of mine and I arranged a small paintout and kept our fingers crossed.  Last Friday finally arrived, and boy, we were lucky!  Just for several hours in the morning, it was a beautiful, autumn day.  Then, by the time we packed up, the clouds rolled in; the rest of the weekend was the usual washout.

We went to a place called Widewater along the historic C & O Canal along the Potomac River.  We could have painted the canal itself, but nearby we saw this spectacular view from a small sandy beach.  We were on the Maryland side, looking out the Virginian bank of the river.  Look at those magnificent rocks!  Yes, the river was muddy thanks to all the rain, but we could still see colors of the rocks and trees reflected in the water.  Goody!  I painted fearlessly, not worrying about getting all the cracks and trees right.  Who cares?  We were just glad to be out there.

"Summer Wildflower Meadow" (oil on linen; 12" x 16") sold

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Yesterday several friends and I went to River Farm in Alexandria, VA.  We met each other in Sara Linda Poly and Bobbi Pratte's classes at the Art League School, and as we are passionate about plein air painting, we formed a group.  We paint outside once a week; some of us, more often than that.  Summer in northern Virginia is not an ideal place for plein air painting with the temperature hovering around 90 degrees and about as high a humidity level as that.  We were lucky when we went to the National Cathedral two weeks ago; we got lucky again yesterday.  Painting gods--we appealed to all gods for a good weather (ha ha!)--have been kind to us!

I went down to the meadow, attracted by the sight of Queen's Anne's lace--my favorite wildflowers.  I had about two hours available, so I got to work right away.  After blocking in, I painted back to forward: the sky, Maryland, the Potomac River, a band of trees, the middle-ground wildflowers, then finally Queen Anne's lace.   I took care with the trees to get their shapes right.  Wildflowers, in contrast, were treated loosely as shapes.  If you look at the photo carefully, there are a couple of kids runnning toward where I was sitting.  As I was taking the picture, they suddenly appeared up the path and got captured forever!

"Great Falls Roaring" (oil on linen, 14" x 11") sold

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Last week when I heard the weather forecast for the first three days of the coming week, I knew what I would be doing.  Plein air painting!  I organized a paintout at Great Falls Park in northern Virginia.  Five of us met in the late morning on Monday, congratulating each other on our good fortune of painting outside on such a glorious day, which is rare here during the summer. 

I painted Great Falls three times last summer with unsatisfactory results.  I learned that rocks could move!  Not literally, of course.  But after a couple of hours of staring the same rocks under the intense sun with hearing deafened by the roaring water, rocks did seem to move.  I ended up overpainting.  This year, I came up with a new battle plan.  I decided to cheat.  How?   By framing a good design on the LCD screen of my trusty Leica, and drawing the big, major shapes on the linen, I saved a lot of time at the outset. 

Then I painted the sky, the distant woods, the foreground rocks, and so on.  I painted in, section by section, finishing brushstrokes, meaning I didn't go back later to refine if I could help it.  For the rocks, I focused on the planes, values (lights/darks), and subtle color changes.  As you can see in the above photo, the rocks don't have a lot of detail at this point, but the major shapes, values, etc. were well established. 

The water, or rather, the pattern created by the water falls was the structure under the design, so it was important to get their shapes right.  Wow, you would not have believed how dark and blue green it was in some places.  By the time I went as far as the stage captured in the photo, I was getting tired and hungry.  The sun had moved and, despite the umbrella, the canvas and palette were in the sun, which is no, no.  I quickly finished the rocks on the left in the middle ground and called it quits.  The painting was finished at home today.

"Orange Sail" (oil on stretched linen, 14" x 11") sold

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It is chilly today; the weather forecast is threatening snow tonight.  Time to look at a summery painting to cheer up.  A photo I took years ago became a reference for this studio painting.  It must have been a perfect day for the couple who sailed on the Potomac that day.  The river never looks this blue; its colors are a range of grays, to put it politely.  The sails were really those bright oranges--one of my favorite colors.  Orange and blue are complementary colors, so together they vibrate.

"Cherry Blossom" (watercolor on paper; 18" x 14") sold

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Cherry Blossom is the name of a tour boat that goes up and down the Potomac River.  On the day when I took the reference photo, it was glowing with the sunlight.  A perfect subject to try out the  watercolor technique that I learned in Jean Grastorf 's workshop!  She uses only three colors--a red, blue, and yellow--in large tubes, which she dilutes to a creamy consistency in small separate cups.  On a stretched paper, the whites on the drawing have to be protected with masking fluid. 

Then the messy and fun part begins--you pour the colors, letting them mix and mingle.  As the paper dries, you have to do this in several stages for darker values, at each stage protecting the areas of lighter tones with more masking fluid.  Tedious, yes.  But you just cannot get the same glowing effect with brushes.  The painting was juried into the Art League show in Alexandria, VA in 2005.

"Autumn Meadow" (oil on linen, 8" x 10") sold

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A freezing rain last night--not a good weather to paint outside.  The wildflower meadow field at River Farm along the Potomac River was in full bloom with fall flowers when I painted this piece in Sara Linda Poly's plein air class.  I just hinted at them with yellows and violets.  The bank of land in the background is Maryland.  There is a running joke among my painting friends: the Marylanders paint their home state bigger than the Virginians.  Can you tell I am a Virginian?