"Blue Canoe" (oil on linen; 8" x 8") sold

sold

I have a soft spot for dappled light.  Almost any subject looks mysterious and enchanting in dappled light.  Not everything is exposed to the full glare of the sun. Light bounces and shimmers.  Things in the background are bound to be in deep shadow.

Look at this ordinary summer scene.  It was a weekday last week.  A friend of mine and I took a walk through the woods to Luce Creek in Annapolis, MD to see boats.  On the way, a blue canoe, resting with kayaks on a canoe stand, stopped us in our tracks. Dappled light turned the scene into a setting for a fairy tale!

"Hydrangea Garden" (oil on linen; 10" x 8") sold

sold

"Hydrangea Garden" in the original state

Hydrangea and astilbe in a summer garden by a white picket fence.  Perfect! Unfortunately, my first try was so chalky that I almost scraped the painting off.  The chalkiness was caused by all the "grays" I used at the block-in stage.  That's the trouble with using too much white paint, because these muted, grayed colors are made with lots of white.

Do you remember my experience during Gregory Packard's workshop in May?  When one mixes primary, secondary and tertiary colors with white, colors become "duller," but also more nuanced.  I am still following his example, mixing big batches of "grays" before starting a painting, which I continue to use for the next painting or two.  As you can see in the above example, I have yet to master the fine line between "sophisticated" and "chalky".

I let "Hydrangea Garden" dry and went back with darks made without white paint.  I painted lighter leaves on top of the dark passage and punched out sun-lit petals and creamy astilbe.  Do you agree that I saved the painting from chalkiness?

"Music from Heart" (oil on stretched canvas; 16" x 20")

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I don't paint figures often.  Why?  Because it is very hard to do a good figure painting! When I do, they seem to get attention, like the little girl's painting I did last year.  "Music from Heart" was featured on a site called "Black Art in America."  It is an honor.

Yesterday I shared the news on my Facebook page, which has at the moment 925 fans, and it went completely viral!  Within a day, the post reached 396; more than half of them were viral.  The curator just emailed me with the news that Facebook is doing a display of my painting.  It has already over 60 likes.  Wow!

"Young Musician" (oil, 12" x 12"; sold)

"Sail Away" (oil on linen; 8" x 8") sold

sold

Reference photo of the sail boat

Fishing Creek

Last Thursday, an artist friend of mine and I went to Annapolis, MD for a day of sketching.  The weather could not have been better--sunny, low humidity, and in the mid-70's!  We visited several sites for my friend's future workshop, had a nice lunch, and did a sketch or two at a park.  At the end of the day, we visited Thomas Point Park, from which one can get a nice view of the Bay Bridge.

On the way to the car, we saw a sail boat returning for the day. I was dying to paint a scene like this, but the background of the reference photo lacked poetry.  So I superimposed the image on another picture of the same place, Fishing Creek, just a few minutes' walk from the first location.  I changed the time of the day to a sunset too. How do you like my artistic license?

"Hydrangea and White Picket Fence" (oil on linen; 8" x 8") sold

sold

Hydrangeas are blooming!  There is something irresistible about hydrangeas AND a white picket fence.  They pull heartstrings as nothing else.  So romantic and nostalgic.  It doesn't matter whether your mother's garden had these.  I do have a white picket fence; I have a small pink hydrangea bush.  But they are separated by a lawn and driveway!

So, during the hydrangea season, I haunt the Green Spring Garden's Park in Alexandria, VA, which is just a stone's throw from my place.  The gazebo, which I have painted a gazillion times, is surrounded by a white picket fence.  When hydrangeas bloom, it looks even prettier.  For the past few weeks I checked the growth of the hydrangeas several times to make sure that I wouldn't miss them at their peak.  My patience was rewarded at last.  You will be seeing more of hydrangea paintings!  

By the way, the winner of the print of "Summer Garden" is Sandra Land. Congratulations!  I would like to thank 50 fans and followers who participated in the drawing.  I will be giving away an original painting in early July.  So stay tuned!

Do you remember this gazebo?

"Doe and Fawn" (oil on linen; 8" x 10")

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A doe and her fawn in an enchanted forest. It is a dreamy, surrealistic painting!

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

sold

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?