Nearly There

These feets is made for walkin', as soon as I paint them in.

Despite the glorious fall weather outside, I spent the day inside working on the curlew painting. It's getting there, slowly but surely. I'm finding this painting to be very rewarding, but also very tiring. I'm pushing myself beyond my comfort zone in so many ways with this piece that it is taking fierce concentration and energy. One of the biggest challenges is to make the curlew's markings accurate enough for a discerning viewer, but not so perfect that the piece becomes photo-realistic. I don't think I've reached that balance yet.

My Play Book

A page from my Play Book. It started with painters tape left over from some paint mixing charts I was working on. It looked so cool that I added them to my Book. Later I noticed the way the paint had transferred onto the opposite page and it reminded me of aspen leaves so I had to go with it.

I have a cheap unlined notebook that I use for artistic play, for times when I only have a few minutes to spare but want to do something creative, for getting the creative flow unstuck, for just having fun rather than making "serious" art. I rarely show the notebook to anyone since these creations are just for my enjoyment at the time. However, I know that many artists (like me) are curious about how other artists live their artistic lives and so I share this in the hopes that you'll share in return. Tell me what fun artsy things you do to clear out the cobwebs or to keep yourself from taking yourself too seriously as an artist!

Ready To Move On. I Think...

Original Background

In the previous post about the new painting I was working on, I was struggling with the background. Since then I scrapped that background completely and started over again. I realized that the rocks in the painting and the fact that you could see the horizon might skew the perspective and scale, making the curlew appear to be a giant species. I checked my hunch in Photoshop:

Isn't Photoshop an artist's best friend?

As much as I liked the background, it wasn't going to work for this painting unless I made the curlew very small, which I really didn't want to do. I spent the weekend repainting the background and then redoing major parts of it to try to get everything to make sense visually. I thought the scale on this version was acceptable, but it just wasn't a terribly dynamic scene:

Background Attempt II

This is what I finally came up with, below. I am hoping that all the foam and multiple layers of water will be interpreted by the viewer as being close in to shore, not breakers viewed from a distance. (What IS the technical term for that final, very shallow foamy part of a wave as it skims the sand, anyway???)

Final Background?

Using Photoshop again, I double-checked how the scene would play out and I didn't see any glaring problems. However, I've been staring at this for a while so I might have missed something. If you see any problems, let me know!!!

Through the wonders of Photoshop, I added my model to check on scale and perspective before committing myself to painting it. Seems pretty good.

Once the curlew is in place in the actual painting, I'll probably add some strips of wet sand and maybe a hint of a reflection, too.I just don't want to make the painting too busy. Funny, I started out with a vision of a very minimalist, abstracted background...

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Could you pick a more beautiful day to paint outside?

On the last day of the art conference, most of the participants opted to paint on location at a historic ranch about 20 miles out of town. Our gracious host allowed us to wander all over this wonderful property that has been in his family for over 100 years. I imagine it must've been a treat for him to see all the different ways everyone interpreted his ranch.

I just love stuff like this.

Scattered all around the main house were outbuildings and relics of ranch life from a different era. I am very thankful for the many modern conveniences we enjoy and especially thankful for the medical and hygienic advances we've made, but at the same time I am drawn to old places. This ranch was almost as good as a time machine.

Many people in the group spent a good part of the day taking reference photos of all of the wonderful buildings and old farm equipment.

There was a beautiful river that flowed through the property and many of the artists decided to paint on the bridge or along the banks of the river. The cottonwoods were stunning in their fall colors.

Looking down at a group of plein air painters (center of photo) from the steep dirt road that led to the ranch in the river bottoms.

Because the dry conditions were not favorable to acrylic painting again, a lot of people brought their oil paints and some, myself included, worked in watercolor instead.

Watercolor sketch of a dead cottonwood tree.

The Wind River area is known for great trout fishing. This seemed like a beautiful spot to cast in. It certainly was a beautiful spot to sketch in.

What a wonderful day this was. I felt a little sad to leave, but since I had 10 miles of dirt road to drive before even reaching the main road back to town, I left a little early so that I would have time to wash off the dust before dinner. However, if I had waited just a little while longer before I left, I could've seen a herd of Rocky Mountain big horn sheep come through! That's the wonderful thing about painting on location - you never know what you'll see.

Background Adventure

Experienced model available. Will work for worms and crickets.

I'm starting on another painting. This one is a 16" x 12", so fairly sizable for me. It will feature a long-billed curlew. It probably comes as no surprise that I'm doing another birding painting. I just can't help it. I mean, check out my model. He's just screaming to be painted. This dapper fellow lives at the Seattle Aquarium and has been my model for other pieces.

Very loose watercolor sketch of my idea for the painting.

Since I am a fan of the Pacific coast and long-billed curlews winter there, this seemed like a good subject to paint.

Background so far, painted in acrylic. Not exactly what I had originally envisioned, but...

I wanted to continue working on abstract backgrounds that just suggest a habitat, but this one got away from me a little. I was just having so much fun with the pallet knife and all the colors in the sand that I got detailed without even realizing it. I'm still on the fence about the sky color (among other things). I think it needs to be more gray, more wintery. We'll see how it all comes together.

Painting and Petroglyphs

The scenery around Dubois was arid but beautiful.

Being surrounded by so many talented plein air painters can be a little intimidating when one is just a newbie, but by Thursday I was itching to get out in the field and give it a go. After another delicious lunch at the conference center, we headed south-east of Dubois to the Torrey Lake area and set up our easels below some interesting boulders and rocks. Painting was a bit challenging, however. The sun was strong and the wind had picked up, so any bit of moisture in my paints (not to mention my skin!) evaporated in record time. I realized that painting in acrylics was going to be nearly impossible so I switched to watercolors and just did some sketches of the area. Not for the first time I wished I worked in oils, but even the experienced oil painters were cursing the conditions.

Watercolor sketch of the boulders above Torrey Lake. I used a lot of dry brush technique on this one without really meaning to!

 In the rocks above our easels, other artists had left their mark hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago. Petroglyphs were scattered on the rocks and boulders around the area we set up in. According to the book "Plains Indian Rock Art" by James D. Keyser and Michael A. Klassen, this ancient rock art is considered part of the "Dinwoody" tradition, found almost exclusively in the Wind River area of Wyoming. I was in awe and wished I knew what the pictures meant.

There was a bird-like figure to the left of this petroglyph. I can't even guess what this one depicts, though.

I spotted these petroglyphs under a rock overhang, sheltering them from the elements.

After sketching for a while, I drove further around Torrey Lake and spotted some immature common mergansers out on the water. Mergansers are diving ducks and have very thin bills with serrated "teeth". They eat fish and other aquatic life. 

An immature common merganser having a nice day at the lake.

It seems like there's always some sort of Murphy's Law of Wildlife Observation at work; if I see some great wildlife, there won't be any place to pull over or safely observe it from. This time however, the birds were kind enough to be near a lake access area so that I could watch them for a while. 

Some pencil sketches of an immature common merganser sunning itself on a rock.

As the afternoon wore on, the angle of the sun just lit up the fall colors around the lake. I took lots of reference photos for future paintings. The trip out to the lake was not particularly successful for plein air painting, but I enjoyed sketching the area and the birds, and the petroglyphs were definitely icing on the cake.

The Fall color was spectacular.

My Brain Is Full

I just got back from one of the most amazing weeks in my artistic life, to date. I attended the 11th annual Susan K. Black Workshop and Art Conference in Dubois, Wyoming. Five days of watching painting demos, sketching and plein air painting in the beautiful Wind River valley, and rubbing shoulders with some very talented artists! I feel like I could sleep for 12 hours straight as my brain tries to absorb everything I learned, but I can't sleep because I'm so energized to paint, paint, paint!

The conference was held at the Headwaters Arts & Conference Center in Dubois, WY.

I found out about the conference when I took that wonderful workshop with John and Suzie Seerey-Lester in 2010. They urged me to look into going to the SKB conference that year but it took a couple more years for the planets to align. It was worth the wait!

I'm a messy plein art painter, but I do clean up after myself.

As promised, a photo of my painting in the miniature show.

I'll be sharing stories and highlights from the conference in a series of posts over the next couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I've got a heap of laundry to tackle before I can do anything else! 

Mushrooming

When you go out and look for birds it's called "birding", so if you go out to look for mushrooms it's called "mushrooming". Right?

Whatever it's called, it's an activity I look forward to. I have noticed that Fall seems to be the time of year with the highest diversity of mushrooms, at least that's the case here in the northern Rockies. One year we visited Glacier National Park in late September and were amazed at the variety of fungi we found in the cedar forests there, including a magnificent purple mushroom! Unfortunately the forest was so dense that I couldn't get a good well-lit photograph of it.

Most of these photos I took a few years ago in the Clearwater National Forest in Idaho. The trail leads to a very popular hot springs, but I was there to enjoy the fungi.

I find mushrooms fascinating, but I'm no expert at identification. The process of identifying a mushroom is much more complex than birding. It's not enough to simply look at a mushroom and figure out what kind it is from the guide book (plus they don't have calls or chip notes).

Creating spore prints is a common form of identification. Some types of mushroom have a certain odor that can aid in identification. But in some cases, the only way to know if a mushroom is of a certain species is to cut it open and check for coloring in the stem!

 

If you'd like to know more about the complexities of mushroom identification, I recommend mushroomexpert.com 

And if you can identify any of these mushrooms, let me know!

Blackbird Painting Finished

"Who Ya Callin' Yella?"  7" x 5" acrylic on canvas board

It's done! And on time, too. I hope to post some pictures of the exhibit soon. My husband came up with the name for this piece, playing off the bird's brilliant colors and their territorial nature. He also found this frame. What a great guy!

WIP - Yellow-headed Blackbird

Ahh, the beginning of a painting. There's so much potential at this stage.

 

 

 

 

  

I'm entering a piece in a miniature show and the painting is due by the weekend so no more time to procrastinate! As usual, I'm trying to find a happy medium between my tendency to be overly detailed and my desire to be more painterly. We'll see how it goes. The painting is acrylic on a 7" x 5" canvas board.

I'm pleased with my chosen color palette, but I feel like the bird and the cattail need a little more oomph.

It always amazes me how just a few brush strokes can make such a difference. This is the point where I began to really like the cattail but felt that something wasn't right with the proportions of the bird's body.

I'm now at the awkward painting stage where one doesn't know if it's time to start all over again or if things will turn out okay in the end. I find it best to step away from the easel at this point, but I can't step away for too long. Stay tuned as I paint down to the wire. And then I still have to find a frame!

Sketching at the Local Watering Hole

If I were a portrait artist, this post might be about a completely different place but...

Colored pencil sketch of a medley of mallards.

Pen and ink drawing of two Canada geese. Notice that's Canada geese, not Canadian geese. Not all Canada geese are actually Canadian. Where is the furthest from Canada that you've seen a Canada goose?

Oregon Coast Revisited

I've written about the Oregon Coast before (here, here and here), but I can't get enough. The scenery is stunning, the food is delicious and the nature-viewing is spectacular.

Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach. Thousands of sea birds (including puffins and murres) nest on the rock while some of the best tidepooling on the Northern Oregon Coast is at the base.

The last time we went we only had half a day to explore before we had to be back in Portland but it was better than nothing. We chose to go to Cannon Beach as it was the quickest trip from Portland (about 1.5 hours) and had guaranteed wildlife viewing. We had no idea what the tide schedule was when we went, but as luck would have it the tide was out, making the tidepooling great.

The Friends of Haystack Rock have a wonderful intrepretive program in the area and the guides are eager to help identify the marine life in the tidepools. They also have viewing scopes set up so that the public can see the birds nesting on the Rock.

Sea anemones and sea weed in a tidepool. The reflections on the water make photography a bit tricky. This was my best shot of the day.

A harlequin duck watches the surf.

Watercolor of ochre sea star

With the constant wind and moisture from the surf, it is challenging to sketch on the beach. Given our short time there, I decided to draw what we saw later. I planned on just a quick watercolor sketch of this lovely sea star but as is typical of me, I ended up spending nearly 2 hours on this piece. Ochre stars are very common along the coast and the only type of sea star I've ever seen there. This great website shows all of the other sea stars found in Oregon. Since I hope to be able to go back to the Oregon Coast again and again, maybe I'll get to see some of these other species someday.

Possible Delays

I'm making a few changes to my blog so there's a chance things may be wonky for a little while. If you notice anything amiss, please check back later and hopefully everything will be working again soon. Thanks for your patience!

A Hot Date

Did the post title perk you up for a minute in that supermarket tabloid kind of way? Did you wonder if perhaps I was finally going to admit to some colorful personal details that might make your day a little more interesting? Well I'm going to dash your hopes. My hot date was just an artist date I've been promising myself since we moved to a town with its own small zoo. I'm as sick of all the boxes and unpacking as you would be if I kept posting about it, so time for a field trip!

There's nothing quite as sleepy (and smelly) as a zoo on a hot summer day. All the animals are hidden away in the shade somewhere and the flies are out in abundance. I was also counting on the fact that the humans would hide away in their air-conditioning, leaving the zoo to me, my sketchbook and the hot animals.

Of course first I had to find some animals to sketch...

Water - relief from the heat and the flies.

This big guy found a comfy hollow in the dirt in which to sleep away the day. The rock provided a little privacy from all the paparazzi.

A couple of hot mountain goats dreaming of cool green alpine meadows.

Let's not give in to all the roasted turkey comments we could make.

This marmot was not part of any zoo exhibit and seemed unfazed by the heat.