"Summer Lake Cruise" (watercolor on paper; 14" x 10") sold

sold

The scene is a lake in the New York state, which I visited on way to Niagara Falls many years ago.  The vacationers were getting on board of a cruise ship festooned with patriotic flags; you can see the captain on the bench watching them.  I left the foreground and the sunlit parts of the figures and boat untouched, since nothing beats the pure white of the paper for imitating the sunlight!

"Iwo Jima Memorial" (oil on linen, 11" x 14")

A friend of mine wanted to paint Iwo Jima Memorial.  She went there twice just to draw and several more times to paint it in the course of two weeks.  Impressive!  Tuesday last week I was supposed to meet her there, but somehow missed the exit off Arlington Boulevard and ended up in Washington, DC.  Oops.  Yesterday I followed another friend's car not to get lost again.  I don't know what the story says about me: my stubbornness or poor driving skills.

Anyhow I made it this time and was impressed by the memorial.  I have seen it many times driving by, but never actually visited it to pay my respect to the people who died during the terrible battle fought on Iwo Jima in 1945 during World War Two--20,000 Japanese and many American soldiers as well.  The weather could not have been better after the last several steamy summer days of Washington.  Four of us settled in a shade to paint the view undistrupted.

The biggest challenge of painting "Iwo Jima Memorial", of course, was drawing, since it involved the sculpture of five men.  You don't have much margin of error in drawing human anatomy.  The sculture doesn't move, but the shadows do.  When I started the drawing, the memorial was backlit; by the time I started painting it was sidelit.  This worked in my favor, but the shadow/light shapes had to be adjusted accordingly.

I used to have a tendency of getting into a slight panic mode whenever I painted outside.  The pressure of limited time, the sun's movement, clouds moving in and out, and so on made me hurry and do a sloppy drawing to get going with painting.  Now I usually sit down to paint, which is less tiring to my lower back and somehow inducive to a more calm attitude.  If I nail the drawing at the outset, the painting takes less time and becomes less belabored.  Each brushstroke is deliberate and there isn't much blending going on (or, at least, that is the goal).  Richard Schmid is my saint patron; I read his book, Alla Prima, in rapture.  These days I try to channel his spirit whenever I paint.  I cheated, however, with one thing.  The flag was painted at home from a photo.  Am I bad?

The painting was juried into The Art League show in Alexandria, VA in June, 2011.

"Victorian House" (oil on linen, 11" x 14") sold

sold

Bobbi Pratte's workshop was coming to an end.  On Sunday afternoon, we went to Solomons Island Road--downtown, so to speak--to paint.  I have spotted this charming Victorian house on the previous day and was determined to paint it.  The clouds were gathering, however.  It got so breezy for my friends who were painting a tackle shop across the bay that they had to quit early.  Some workshop participants had already left for home.  Not me!

I was only aware of the clear shadow patterns disappearing and the thunderous noise of bikers who zipped by.  When you are focused on painting, the world around you disappear.  Friendly neighbors stopped by and talked about the house owners.  A bicyclist pulled over to watch me paint.  None of these bothered me.

Bobbi stopped by twice to check upon me.  She had a note pad to draw the designs of students' paintings to discuss the main compositional problems.  I was impressed.  She said that the left side of the house (it was painted as in the shade at that time) needed more interest--too big a shape to just sit there doing nothing of interest.  Following her suggestions, I moved an azalea bush, replacing a much smaller hosta, and made it spread over the stoop.  Two links of fancy ironwork fence were introduced at the bottom left of the picture, so that it would have a definite foreground.

One idea of hers I decided not to follow is flipping the flag to face the other way.  When I came home and printed out the above photo, I noticed the interesting diagonal shadow patterns on the sidings.  They weren't there when I was painting because it had become overcast.  Much of the happy, sunny look, which was the subject in the first place, I was painting from the memory.  So I painted in those shadows and that seemed to suffice to make the troubled area interesting.