Sunrise Rising Up

yet to be titled Sunrise over Iowa St, 36x36, oil on canvas

After weeks of being unable to work on this painting due to a shoulder injury and then on top of it not being able to keep up with my blog due to my laptop being infected with nasty virus's, we are back in business. My shoulder still cannot take a full day of painting but it seems to be getting better slowly with time. My laptop, after 3 visits to the shop, I pray, is finally clean. One thing I can say though, I am getting used to not feeling drawn to be on the computer since it wasn't available, and I have grown to like it!

I had posted this painting in progress a few weeks ago when it was first started and then I began another, smaller piece in between. That waiting time was good for this painting because when I got back to it, I was ready and it just flowed. The movement and orchestration of the medium value of the trees is critical to the light. This piece is still a work in progress but great headway was made and I wanted to share it. I don't know if I will get to finishing it up this weekend and did not want to wait any longer to post the progress. Where it still needs to go is neither the signs marching up the street to the stop signs, nor the tree structures within the right-hand side mix of leaves and branches, have been completed, along with a few other minor details.

I took this painting in to work this week to see it in another light and it is the best received piece I have brought in to date. Uplifting to all who viewed it. What more could an artist ask? Art should uplift the soul of the viewer. Now to come up with an appropriate title.

Iowa Street Sunrise looking West

Iowa Street Sunrise, 36x36, oil on canvas_Work in Progress

This is one of my latest projects started a few weekends ago. I did not make any progress on it at all since then. My shoulder is giving me fits and it is too painful to paint on this large of a canvas. I know when I get back to it it will flow!I have been studying it and figuring how I want it to read.

The top photo would be the end of the second day after I got things figured out and loosely blocked in and have started to lay some paint down. The bottom photo is after the third day. Wanting to weave the color and the textures of the trees and have then the halo of light create a silhouette is where I was headed. I decided to start on the periphery with the trees coming down from each corner and working my way down each side. Then I switched to the  middle and made the light halo more solid and the blue sky a bit darker. Last I started to work my way out from the rich color of light down the center of the street and that is where I got stuck. I made it up the left side just fine but on my way to the right I started to get lost in the trees and going into too much detail. I had to stop to begin fresh another day.

Downtown Denver Squared

Downtown Denver Squared, 30x30, oil on canvas

Here is a night scene of downtown Denver. I took the reference photo one evening while painting during the Denver Plein Air event a few years ago. My painting did not turn out well that evening but I did get a few good reference photos. Yesterday a friend came over and critiqued this piece. His suggestion was to darken the tower of the library and to soften the edges to push it back. That would give the foreground more focus.

I had a lot of fun with this painting. I loved all the graphic shapes and the way those shapes and colors played together. Even though this is a night painting there was so much light, but I agree with Drew; I need to play down some of that light as long as the capital does not then become too much of the focus. My husband had said the library needed to be grayed down, so maybe between a darker value and a more neutral value that tower will fade back where it needs to be.

A funny aside. Being a graphic artist by training, this painting is more in my comfort zone. But since taking the master painting class 4 years ago I have worked hard on not making everything so hard edged. When I brought this painting in to work a number of people commented how out of the ordinary this piece was compared to my "normal" style! I had to laugh out load. I had not realized how much I missed this more graphic style of work until I got into it.

Semur-en-Auxious, An Old Walled Town in France



Untitled, 36x24, oil on linen

To start the New Year off, here is a painting I am still contemplating. Not sure if it is completed yet. I think not, but it is close. Why I say that is because I think I want to darken the shadow that wraps around in the alley, and then the reflected light on the back wall will be lighter and brighter. Or possibly just to darken the wall that is wrapping around from the light will do the trick.

In the Fall 2007 I was on a three week vacation with my sister, her husband and another couple. We had done 5 nights on the Yonne River in Burgandy, gone to Dijon for 2 nights and were on our way to Paris when we stopped at the little medieval town of Semur-en-Auxious. I had read a blog post on the walled towns of this region and the writer, living in the area, said Semur was the best and the least touristy. It was a wonderful example of the old walled towns and though we did see one tour bus, it was a small tour group! This is not the first painting I have done from this village, and it will not be the last. Because it sits on a hill and the streets roam up and down (and has an ancient Roman Aquaduct!) there was so much that caught my eye. This scene,which includes my sister, is one of them.

Road Trip?

The new museum of American Art that just opened a few months ago, Crystal Bridges, looks like it will warrant a road trip. Here is the New York Times article on this new museum. I think the road trip must wait until the pools are running with water but other than that, I am ready!

The Alley Reflected

Reflected Alley, 36x24, oil on linen

Here is a new alley in the continuing alley series I have been working on for the past 2 years. I am not tired of alleys yet (although you all may be) as there is so much to discover. I keep thinking I should move out of my neighborhood, but each time I think that I find another scene worth doing. It sure is easy when you can paint a scene so close to home. If I get stuck, I can walk back over and just check it out. This one presented me with a few questions that I needed to venture out to solve but overall it was fun. I can't wait to find out how many people tell me this is just like the alley where they grew up!

Burghausen Again

Burghausen Castle, 20x30, oil on linen

I discovered a funny thing while painting this piece. We were in Germany in December 2003 so I was still using film cameras at that time. I used Seattle Film to develop my negatives, and with that they offered digital images as well that they kept in albums online. So I went to the website (now owned by Shutterfly) to download the digital image so I could work from the computer. On screen there was this odd green light in the sky which is barely visible in the bottom photo and a bit more in the top photo, going across the sky about midway. In person, this green really drew the eye to it. I was trying to explain this to someone at work, as I do take paintings to work to see them from a different point of view. I sent the digital photo to my work computer to show her, but the green did not show up on my screen at work. Go figure. So I then dug around in my photo albums and found the print. The green light was not in the printed version either. But what I did discover is that the print (4x6) showed way more detail than the digital image. So from the original photo of Burghausen that I posted a month ago, I went about adding the details that were lost to me on the screen. I made the wooden covered stair way more interesting and not so flat by suggesting the boards; I discovered window boxes under the windows; and a red door in the shadows under the walkway. I had put a door there anyway but now I knew there was one and that it was red. The dark blue window bothered me so I lightened them all up a bit. I also decided to put more detail into the whole wall and lightened the tree somewhat so it wasn't quite so dark.