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Even though I’ve been drawing every day for the DrawMo! project I still paint every day as well; it just takes longer. Here’s a landscape completely from my imagination, using very thin paint diluted with lots of turp. I just dripped it on, mixing wet colors together and let the painting tell me where to go next. I’m pleased with it. I realized that the tree trunks look like Roman numerals, hence the title of the painting.
Two and Six Oil on Birch Panel 16 x 16 $350
So these are the last flowers of the series I started last summer. The petunias made it through two frosts but we’ve had to take down the window boxes now that we’re getting freezing temperatures every night. Maybe I’ll paint house plants some this winter but for now I’m done with blooms.
Petunias oil on birch panel 11 x 14 $350
Even though I’m participating in the DrawMo! project I still paint every day. This is a painting I started on site last summer but was so unhappy with I considered painting over it. But I pulled it out recently and decided I could do something with it. I love these barns; the owner built them with his own hands. I’m using much thicker paint lately, the goal being to get the brush so loaded it doesn’t make any noise. I like the look but all the time I’m thinking about how much paint costs!
Star Attraction 12 x 16 oil on masonite, $350 unframed
I can’t believe how late into October the weather has stayed warm this year. Usually I’m through with plein air landscapes around the first of the month but we’ve had lovely days throughout. The painting group recently went across a fairly scary little bridge into some fields across from a farm and near a stream. A couple of us set up on the bridge itself and this was the scene before us. I’m concentrating more lately on smaller vignettes, more intimate rather than expansive views. The autumn foliage in its many variations of gold and russet is a lot of fun to work on. Because we’ve had such a warm year the reds are not as prominent as they have been sometimes in the past but much better than last year when there was some kind of maple blight. I love reflections–always a challenge but rewarding. I’ve tried to keep the paint thin for the water but quite thick for the surrounding vegetation.
October Stream 9 x 12 oil on birch panel, unframed $250
October has remained unusually warm so I’ve been able to get out to paint much longer than I anticipated. Right after I started in on this one the road scraper came by within inches of me, the driver grinning and gesturing to me that I wasn’t in his way. He returned several times during the morning, turning up a lot of dirt and dust. I feared that I would wind up with unwanted texture in the painting but surprisingly not. Anyway, I liked the shadows on the houses. And it’s such a pleasure to have all the fall color. The big tree has a major split in the trunk and higher up (not visible in the painting) is a supporting rod holding it together. When I was a child my father paid me a dime to memorize Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees.” Now I think it’s pretty sappy but I did remember some of it when I was painting this tree.
Morning Shadows oil on birch panel, 11 x 14 unframed, $375
A few days ago we had a change of temperature, resulting in a nice fog. The view is from an upstairs window looking down our driveway. It was interesting to have to dull down the colors, reducing the contrast of values, so the palette is quite different. After I finished the painting I scumbled lighter paint over darker to increase the mistiness of the background.
Peak color was just a few days ago and now after a couple of hard rains we’re losing the leaves rapidly. One year we had snow while the leaves were still on the trees, making branches so heavy many of them fell on power lines. The blackouts were widespread and lasted for quite a while. Loss of power is common here. Most people have generators but we have a battery that runs essential equipment. Before we got a more powerful battery a couple of years ago we couldn’t run the pump which meant no water from the faucets and no water for flushing toilets. We kept a trash can full of water in the basement but often ran out before the electricity came back on. (Once we had two couples visiting from Texas and the power went out for nearly 24 hours–a much more intimate experience than any of us wanted!) Now we can run the pump as well as the refrigerator and only once has the battery not had enough juice to keep us going during the whole outage.
Foggy Morning 14 x 16 oil on birch panel unframed $375
Ever since I’ve lived here I’ve wanted to paint a particular hill that’s a beautiful shade of brown and ochre in the spring and in the fall. Unfortunately there’s not a good place to park or stand. So I was thrilled when the leader of our painting group took us up to a house across the road and above the spot. The morning was quite cloudy with subtle, muted fall colors. There was a great expanse of landscape but I concentrated on just part of the hill. What I loved about the hill besides the colors were the rolling contours which turned out to be more of a challenge than I would have thought. The low key lighting gives the painting something of an antique look. I got down most of what I needed before the sun blasted out of the clouds and changed everything. Cloudy is good, sun is good, but changeable is frustrating!
Soft Hill 11.5 x 13.5 oil on birch panel, unframed $275
Although many dairy farmers in Vermont go out of business every year, the countryside is still punctuated with a lot of farms. Most of them have been around for so long they seem organic, like a natural part of the landscape. A friend walked with me up the road to show me where to paint mountains, but the farm below was so still and peaceful in the early morning shadows I couldn’t resist–yet another barn! The mist-covered mountains weren’t really there behind the farm but I could see them off to my right, so I just moved them in order to take advantage of both views–it isn’t just faith that can move mountains!
Farm Morning 9 x 12 oil on birch panel, unframed $250
The weather lately has been a gift–clear, sunny and comfortable; I’ve been getting out to paint most days. I must say though that it was something of a relief when it rained yesterday and I got a chance to catch up on some things inside. I’ve needed to sand and gesso some panels so now I have plenty of supports ready for the near future. This painting was done just up the road from us. I loved the lighted yellow around the edges of the huge tree and the smaller apple trees in the distance with their shadows and dark trunks. We’re getting a lot of wild asters everywhere so it’s nice to have that little touch of blue violet as a slight discord.
I’ve been rereading Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting. Every time I look back through it I notice more useful information. There is so much to keep in mind!
September Afternoon 11 x 14 oil on birch panel $325
I started this painting early in the summer but could never get back to the site at the same time of day to finish it. Yesterday I finally went there but all the colors had changed so I had to turn green into gold. Clearings like this are a common sight around here; logging is constantly in progress. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Vermont was large cleared land for farming and sheep. But after so many people left for richer, less rocky soil, the state has become largely forested. A good thing Vermont does is to give a tax break to people who keep a certain number of acres in either forest or farmland so there’s less incentive to develop this beautiful part of the country. We’re in that program since our place is all wooded. We have to have a forester so periodic cutting is managed properly to keep all the trees maturing in orderly fashion. (It tickles me that we have a forester–sounds like having our own gamekeeper!)
The Clearing 12 x 17.5 oil on birch panel $350