Since I have done so little plein air painting lately, I was a bit timid to show up at an event and try to compete so I put just two Plein Air events on my calendar - one day events at that!

 

Cary North Carolina's Paint the Town event started out with forecasts of rain so I started early. I love the Cary Saturday Farmers Market with its tents and bustle of people.  I was set up on the sidewalk with my car positioned so on one could park and block my view.  I was pretty calm and carefully painted my way to a piece I was happy with. My second attempt was a little more labored but still good enough to turn in to the judges. Two was the limit so I packed up and went home.

 

At the Auction and Gala my painting, “Saturday Farmers Market”, was awarded Best in Show!  Super exciting for me and I also sold the painting making it even better!

 

Yesterday a friend and I drove to Elk Creek, Va. to paint in the Solstice paint out at Stonefarm.

 

My first painting of three small barn/sheds started out nice.with bright color and clear shapes but as I worked on it I lost that freshness.  It took me awhile to realize the canvas I was using and my brushes weren't playing well together. Then I recalled mounting that canvas on a gator foam board because I was out of 9x12 panels and it all became clear. It was from a new roll of canvas I had not used before - a roll of VALUE PRICED (cheap) canvas which I chose because I was too LAZY to remove the packaging from the roll of nice linen canvas I usually work on.

 

After lunch that painting was wiped down and I had less than one hour to come up with something to submit for judging and sale.  I took out a small 8x8 Centurion linen panel and turned my easel to face a view of a hillside with magnificent shapes and angles. 45 minutes later I had a pretty nice little piece which was not overworked! This time I got Second Place and my friend, Arlene Daniel, was awarded First Place! Great day - fun people - and the painting sold too!

 

Note the ALL CAPS because they are highlighting things NOT to do. Being lazy and using inferior material is a way to ruin any painting. We all just need to be reminded once in a while.

Dancers on the Lawn   I have been painting cityscapes for so long that it was very exciting to work on something different this past week. I started this painting of dancers a year ago and had the underpainting done but no time to complete it. I had taken lots of photos, hundreds, of these twirling dancers when I was in Ecuador many years ago and have done a few paintings of them in the past but always wanted to do more. This was a composition created from photos of two different dancers. I spent a good amount of time working out the composition from the photos shown below.     After sketching various versions, I ended up with this one.  As you can see it is pieced together because I combined two of my sketches to get what I wanted. I think this worked because instead of doing a line drawing I focused on dark and light shapes, drawing with a thick piece of charcoal. I did this to work out the value pattern and also to get the movement of the dancers in the sketch so I could keep that energy going throughout the painting process.

This was fun!

At the beginning of August I travelled to Raleigh, NC, to take a three day workshop with Dawn Whitelaw. Dawn does not paint  just landscape, still life, portrait or figures. She paints it all and expertly!  How does she do that?? She doesn't paint trees, vases, eyes or hands – she paints shapes, values, edges, hues, and temperatures of color and she lets her heart guide her.

 

The workshop focused on painting from photos which is not as easy as most people assume. While most artists agree that painting from life is best, it is not always possible. Dawn was there to guide us through the lies that photos can tell you, how to analyze them and turn them into good paintings. We began with five photos that we had taken ourselves, out of which we chose the two that spoke to us. We were asked to tell her why we chose them. This is the first step - what do you want to say in your painting? What is your intent? Then everything you paint reinforces that message.

 

After some instruction from Dawn, we started one painting using big shapes of dark and light and put it aside to finish on day three.  Dawn did a demo of how she would start a piece and then on day two we started a second one.

 

 

The third day was for finishing and that was unique because in some workshops, especially a three day one, you don't ever get to that stage. She did a demo to finish the one she had started and then we worked on ours.

 

 

I came away with a lot of information and individual help from Dawn and I am confident that I will be more successful now in doing paintings from photos.

 

The workshop was held at Nicole's Studio in Raleigh. If you are interested in Dawn's workshop or other great workshops and classes, go to www.nicolestudio.com/

I am going to have a tough time choosing what to paint first!
Maysville, Kentucky, a small town on the Ohio River, is a place I discovered last summer. Over the past 10 months I have been in touch with the folks I met there and have shared some of the paintings I have been doing from the photos I took while visiting. Dee Werline of the Ohio River Valley Artists Guild (ORVAG) has put me on their calendar for a solo show at the beautiful Cox Gallery in October 2019. This is very exciting for me and also means a lot of work because I will need about forty pieces!!

The people of the town are really enthusiastic about the changes taking place in Maysville. Buildings that have been empty for many years are being restored to their original beauty, parks are being built, public art such as sculptures and murals are bing installed. The old high school has been converted to residences and the list goes on and on. The Cox building which houses the Cox Gallery was built in 1886 and historically restored and rededicated in 2012. Two other projects underway now are the restoration of the Washington Opera House and the Russell Theater. And we can't forget the bridge! This is the nostalgic Simon Kenton Bridge that crosses the Ohio River from Kentucky to Ohio. To keep the river from overtaking their town one more time, Maysville has constructed a massive flood wall complete with lovely murals of scenes of the town's history. While it's true there are a lot of isolated buildings and objects that could be painted, I prefer to combine the lovely buildings, the flowers and the gorgeous sunlight to create a scenario. I spent five days chasing that light, because it was scarce and without weatherchannel.com and their dependable hourly forecast I don't think I would have succeeded!

The exhibition that I was hoping to have in Maysville, Kentucky, is now officially on the Ohio River Valley Artist's Guild calendar! The exhibit is scheduled for October 2019 with an opening receptionon October 4, 2019. That leaves me with almost 16 months to create enough pieces to fill the Cox Gallery in Maysville. Their estimate is that I will need 50-60 pieces!! The work will center around scenes of this beautiful little town sitting on the banks of the Ohio River that my husband and I discovered on our way to Milwaukee last summer. Rather than stay in a motel along the Interstate we spent the night there at the French Quarter and the experience became one of the trip's highlights. I have quite a few pieces in progress along with some finished ones. I am planning a trip up there to meet Dee Werline and Caroline Reece who arranged the show and to do as many plein air pieces and take as many photos as I can. I am also anxious to explore parts of town I didn't have time to visit the first time. Will keep adding images of the pieces in my artwork collection “Maysville” on my site and blog about the trip later in June when I return.