Life is a River

I love rivers as metaphors for life, and this image is particularly rich with metaphoric possibility.

Today’s piece is again from the Nantahala River trip. The steep mountainsides keep the ambient light low and the reflected sky cobalt clue. Golden fall colors set the river aflame. Nothing special was done to this image aside from standard brightness and contrast adjustments…and creative cropping.

Nature is such an enormous canvas; there are dozens of stories being told everywhere we look. Our minds average them into an overall experience. Even within the viewfinder, what was aimed at one story, on closer inspection may reveal a composite of several woven stories. Maybe it’s just my perspective, but I find that these competing threads dilute the impact of an image. I always look forward to the gems my cropping tool and I will uncover as we sift through a photo shoot.

Reflections In Old Nantahala

One of my focuses on the Fall 2011 trip was to photograph reflections in water. I hoped to capture some inspirations for abstracts.Across the road from the big aqueduct I wrote about in the last post is the old Nantahala River. It's a demure little creek now, with a couple decent falls along it's path.We had stopped at one of those falls. To my left the falls, and to my right...this.
Well, this was part of it, anyway.
There is no enhancement here, the colors were satiny glorious just as you see them here.

Nantahala Aqueduct

 (edited May 4, 2012)
I have not shared much from my body of digital art online for several reasons, but the ‘Just 3 Years’ thought frame has really challenged the validity of those reasons.It also launched a wave of deep thought, that just today has clarified something for me. My digital art is it's own journey. I use the camera to explore my world. I bring to it my own perspective, and in post processing, I reveal even more of what I was sensing in the field. I'm usually not happy with it until I'm surprised.

Today’s entry is a piece of the Duke Power plant's aqueduct photographed on a recent trip to the Nantahala gorge area. I rarely do landscapes or architecture, but this hunk of pipe was just so beautiful, I couldn't resist.

If you’re not a local, Nantahala means ‘land of the noon day sun.’ The gorge itself, for which the national forest is named, is a rather limited area of steep and closely set mountains in western North Carolina. It gathers the area waters into the Nantahala river which is collected in the man-made Nantahala Lake. The Duke Power company siphons off lake water through a giant aqueduct running along Old River Road, which appears to be the original Nantahala river, (now a quiet creek along a sandy road). I recently came across a mention that this pipeline may not be in use any more. A much larger creek spills out of the bottom of the lake. Locals call this Dick's Creek as nearly as I can gather. The two merge again later while still in the gorge. (You can see a snapshot of what I think is called Dicks Creek Falls on my nature blog.) The water from the aqueduct pours (or poured? might not be in use now) through the turbines at the bottom of the gorge where it joins the smaller creeks and creates a great river famous for exciting rafting.

The exact name of this aqueduct pipe is unknown to me. Given it's location, Nantahala seems to fit best, but there is a nearby wide spot in the road called Aquone that gets credit for an aqueduct, apparently bored through the mountains with a waterfall inside of it...so the more I research the more confusing it gets.

Golden Moment

"Golden Moment" Watercolor on 300lb Arches Cold Press

Oh my, it’s been so long since I posted last. Whatever have I been doing?
Well, I embarked on my study of watercolor. One needs paints. Which ones? That lead me to books on techniques that specialized in glazing, mixing, textures, and color theory for palette selection. 

Along the paint education path I found Hillary Page’s encyclopedic reference book, Guide to Watercolor Paints. I learned a great deal about pigments, light-fastness, why certain ones mix better than others according to their light refraction curve, paint names, and how paint handling varies by manufacturer. Wow. I love this stuff. I sadly dumped some Holbein favorites that were not light-fast, others that were opaque, and ordered some Winsor Newton and Daniel Smith paints to go with the remaining Holbein favorites.

I spent months mixing colors and creating charts to explore and document proportions between 2 mixed colors. In every chart was a surprising discovery. I could be a professional chart maker. (LOL)
Finally in June I felt ready to try putting the elements together into a painting. The first one worked out well enough, but I won’t publish it here, because it was soon eclipsed.

The second pass was with a very flawed photo of Alocasia leaves as seen in the Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Fortunately I had a good memory and my trusty Photoshop to help me find my way back to inspiration.

I used wet in wet to mingle complimentary colors into browns. I carved in veins while wet. I masked to save hard edges. I mixed and glazed and painted wet on dry. Finally, I used Pitt Pen to build in texture and contrast in passages.

**I have since darkened that pale stripe up the center leaf...but have not re-photographed because it is now framed.

The knowledge gem that this piece delivered was about the additive property of colors in glazing.

The background was giving me fits. Having removed it twice, this final pass produced results I could accept.

I began with a rich coat of Hooker green (which is PG7 and PY150-Nickel Azo). It was grass ‘green’ so I glazed it with a coat of Holbein Peacock Blue (PB15-Phthalo blue + PG7) which I had used in the large leaf already. I did not get blue green. I got a richer Hooker green. Why? The extra layer of PG7 and the fact that PB15 and PY150 make green, I had nothing BUT green on the paper! Note to self.

I wanted it to be earthier and much darker, so I mixed Hooker green with Quinacridone Burnt Orange (also already in the painting) until it was a perfectly balanced coffee brown. What I got was a rich forest green now with a granulated brown texture. Hooker does have a slight granulating tendency, but it doesn’t always show up. Another batch of rich coffee-colored glaze, and I had finally found the value and texture I had been seeking. Lucky me!

Fortunate Event Number 4

This fall stacked up to be a series of fortunate events that began when the printer head clogged beyond repair. Weeks of brain-draining research and assessment later, that decision was made which opened up art card printing right about the same time I was making concept break-throughs that needed a different media than Pastels. I just didn't want to even think about these using pastels.

That's where I was back in November when I discovered Joseph Raffael. He was featured in Watercolor Magazine. After a visit to his website I bought his book, (which I highly recommend). I fell in love with his process and especially his older work. In it I saw what floats around in my head: A mixture of abstraction, realism, and jewel-tone color. It combined neatly with what I was discovering about value, color inversion, and abstraction through Photoshop.

So in the first week of December we had a morning with pretty light. I went to the garden to see what could be found – Joseph Raffael abstraction+realism still strongly in mind. For an instant I was disappointed-what will I find in a garden of brown bushes and sticks? And then I kicked myself. “Think like an artist, look for the shapes of shadow and light, the edges, the movement of these shapes and spaces…color can come later.”

Here is 'Spirea Dreams 3' from that session. There were quite a few that worked out (7) and I had fun turning them into cards…which I’ll post on the card blog. I keep thinking they would make really cool watercolors if done much larger than life. It will be a while before my watercolor legs are strong enough to take on a project like that, so until then, the digital versions are really cool.

New Year, New Directions

Happy New Year everyone. It’s been a while since I posted, but a series of fortunate events has kept me quite distracted.

Since I first entertained this idea of learning to paint and becoming an artist I have been racking my brain to get a fix on my visual voice. Knowing what it looks like drives selections in reference work, media, and focus. I knew it was nearby, practically underfoot, but I could not get a solid glimpse of it. This led to a feeling of creative resistance as I made myself do ‘something’ until I could figure it out.

 Two of the fall events led to what you see today. First, I began to explore the Photoshop filters and an adjustment layer I had never tried. These tools allowed me to explore the relationship of nature’s values in an image to the visibility of the architectural design in the image. I found that frequently the brights and darks were in the wrong places, and the mid-tones suffered from tonal muddiness. This is just nature, but it is also why we don’t even SEE what’s right in front of us. I don’t have any qualms about turning values and colors on their heads if it helps me find the music. Reality is overrated.

In this image we see the photo crop of the tree canopy. The sky is brightly overcast and the branches dark. This means that the sky fights with the red canopy for attention, and the branches are a non-item.
However, change the sky to black, the branches to white, and tweak the mid-tones into a neutral...and vio-la! Now the branches and canopy are subject and the sky recedes into graphic support.

That was so much fun I tried different color combinations of sky and foliage and found that I could do a whole series with one image. Now I really think these would benefit from watercolor as the backgrounds have lost their luminance, and with dark branches they would benefit from a ‘cleaning up’, but it’s exciting to see the possibilities laid out so clearly.

This break through begged the question: Now what? Is digital art 'the' medium or is this just a step towards painting? Is Pastel really what you want to use for this crisp graphical look? More on the answer in the next post.

Wayah Creek - Rubies & Rhodies

I've noticed a thematic perspective recently. I love to be deep in the embrace of the forest, looking upwards. It's a natural perspective in the Blue Ridge mountains, where the vegetation is thick and rich, and the small, smooth mountainsides are steep. Rhododendron again clothe this dell. Columns of deciduous trees vault their canopy against the sky, sheltering the ruby dogwoods. From a scene along Wayah Creek in NC.

12x17.5" Soft Pastel on LaCarte Pastel card

Wayah Creek - Rubies & Rhodies

Hope Rises at Rufus Morgan Falls

This week's painting is a bit of glorious fall color from a trip last fall to the Rufus Morgan Falls trail area. That particular day netted a rich collection of references.

 "Hope Rises"

12x18 in. Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade paper

Rapture and Serenity

'Rapture & Serenity' 11x13" Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade Paper

Early one evening my darling and I took supper on the patio. As we finished I took note of the fringe of white fire that the late day sun was striking in the edges of the Sieryu maple. The Buddleia was still in bloom, and despite the contrast, her purpleness, and some lovely orangey glow was twinkling in her canopy. I ran for the camera and after snagging some shots, I continued to study the scene for the few minutes that it continued.
As you might expect, the photo darks were very dark, near black, but I knew they were not quite as inky as they appeared. There was a ‘smokiness’ to those darks in the real garden. As I prepared to paint I considered two conflicting strings of painterly advice I had picked up:

• “Students go too dark too soon. It’s a common problem.”
• “In pastels, if you don’t get your darks ‘dark enough’ early, there’s really no going back to fix it late in the game.”

Hmm. Definitely some serious darks here, and some serious brights. I decide to set the darks at absolute and layer in lighter values of color as needed for texture until I found that ‘smokiness’, whatever that was. It went slowly for me. Long periods of looking and thinking between small bits of painting. I tried a blue in the darks to push them back…but ouch! It was all wrong. Broke the warmth of the scene. In brushing it off, I found my way back in. The brushed out areas left a dark haze, but some tint of light was shining through from the white paper. There was that suggestion of smoke! I do love how the process of painting can be a continual puzzling out of problems, approaches, fixes, and yes, that sweet rush when some little thing works.

March 2011
I renamed this piece and post 'Rapture and Serenity' after cropping it hard on the left and studying it some more. I just couldn't escape the sensation of 'standing in the presence of God.' Here it is cropped and framed for printing on greeting card stock.

Joy of Man's Desiring

Out Highway 20 at Arbor Ridge road is an unnamed garden center housed in an old barn faced with galvanized sheet metal. On the morning that it caught my eye, the nearly noon sun was barely peeking over the edge of the 'cowboy town' facade where it happened to strike a few purple muhly grass in full bloom and the variegated yucca beside them. Ever since then I've been determined to capture that muhly grass and the lovely rusting wall.
In the actual painting that deep watermelon halo on the muhly grass is hardly noticeable behind the creamy salmon froth of light. I just haven't figured out how to quiet rambunctious reds in Photoshop without losing the jewel-tones in the other colors.

Joy of Man's Desiring

9x9" Wallis Professional Sanded Paper

I've been trying a new approach this week. I didn't use an under-painting, but used the brown Wallis paper, and did a very loose color study on a scrap piece to work out most of the values and color choices. I just wanted to see how throwing down color fast and loose would work out. I knew I'd make color mistakes and was happy to scrub over them until I got closer to what I wanted. In that process I discovered the joy and necessity of that delicious grass apron, which I extended for the painting. In that discovery the final painting became all about the three color fields, with the elements themselves as mere excuses for placing and layering those colors.

As I considered the title for the finished piece, this indulgence in the joy of color brought to mind Bach’s famous treatment of the old hymn, and suddenly the fact that the subject was a garden center became essential. What better place to see the joy of man's desiring than in the plants he grows to recreate the Garden?

Rufus Morgan Falls and Life in the Shadow

Today’s pastel painting began with a photo from a lovely hike in the forests of the Rufus Morgan Falls area of North Carolina. I wanted to do something different with the picture, something that is focused on color, something that keeps the mystery of the dark wood alive while celebrating the sparkling fall sunlight. So I dove in, and when I was done I had landed here.

And if you didn't see it yesterday, too bad. I decided to crop it today and that crop is now posted. I'll probably catch some flack from the Mathemagical Cowboy who made me promise not to ever throw any painting away no matter how bad I thought it was. Guess I'll save the scraps for him. Now I have to change the title, as the focus is a little different.

4 o'Clock Shadow
10.5 x 10.5" Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade Sanded Paper

This week I also ‘discovered’ Wolf Kahn. I had viewed his work a few years ago, and didn’t really get it. This time I watched a couple video interviews and I heard him articulate precisely what has been bedeviling me. I Love color. I Love working from the inside out. I have little interest in ‘representing’ a scene realistically, yet it seems that’s the only approach I know. Kind of maddening.

Here are my Wolf Kahn Take-aways:
• He always wanted to get away from ‘description.’
• ‘Get away from the brushstroke, just let things happen.’
• ‘Get away from deliberateness.’
• ‘To Paint is to live in the moment, trust our intuition and freedom of expression.’

At least my natural impulses are in good company. There is some comfort in that.

Hoping to go see his exhibit at the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta GA this month.

The Diva of Cullosaja Falls

Last fall I was traveling up the Highlands Highway in North Carolina and stopped to take my tourist shots of Cullosaja Falls.The shadows were long. The river poured out of the blue forest before me onto the giant golden-rock falls caught by the hot evening sun. At the top of the falls stood this distinctive tree. She reached into the spotlight and presided over the crashing drama below like an Opera Queen in her final aria. I knew I would paint her one day.

I've removed her from the big stage so I could concentrate on her unusual structure and the fall foliage. Second in the tree series.

'The Diva' 8x13" Pastels on Wallis museum grade paper

The Goldenrain Tree

She just seems a bit shy to me, as though she would happily hide, but the harsh afternoon sun and her own exotic foliage conspire to make her a star.

'Reluctant'

5.5"x11.5" Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade

The challenge to myself was to take an utterly boring photo and do a painting using Richard McKinley’s watercolor under painting technique…and try to make the painting more interesting than the photo. You see the journal entry here with color sketch and photo.

The first time out I used a rather strongly colored under painting like I see so many artists use. My colors got too hot though and I couldn’t get harmony between a lemon-lime sky and hot orange leaf litter.

Version 1

So I tried again. Here is a series of snapshots as things progressed toward what was the final piece at the top of the post. This time I spent much more time on the sketch, trying to get the radial arms placed properly as shapes. When I wing it, my drawing mind gets lazy trying to keep up with my color hand (as we see in the first attempt). In the end I could see from the watercolor where the painting was supposed to go.  That’s much more than I could say for the first attempt.

So okay—it’s a tree in the woods and it’s not a riot of circus colors...it’s nearly normal looking, and yet I am pleased. 10 hours today from decision to the declaration of  ‘done for now.'

Journey to Horse Creek

Thank you Gary Keimig for allowing me to use your photo from Horse Creek as the reference! It’s been a month getting here. First, I was enamored of Gary’s photo, but wasn’t really sure what was drawing me to it. Maybe it's that I’m a mountain girl at heart and here I saw what could have been my beloved Appalachia and the Rugged Rockies in a single view. At any rate, I wanted to explore this image, and an expedition it became.

'Clearing'

11x17" Soft Pastels on Wallis Museum Grade paper

I took the image into Photoshop and just pushed the contrast and brightness a little. That revealed the shadow lines and the lay of the land in the foreground. Wishing to avoid all the detail of the brush, I simplified the image to value masses and decided to try it as a representational abstract in watercolor. Enjoyed this, but the clouds were a disaster. Removed and tried again until I finally ruined it and gave it up for lost.

 Gary Keimig's Photo from Horse Creek

Determined not to be beaten, I returned to Photoshop just to play and see what I could discover with the painting tools as I had not yet used them. In my mucking around I happened to create a pale yellow sky where there was none at all, and THAT inspired the treatment you see here.  I saw a late (or early) thunderstorm moving off east, with a clear yellow sky, and cloud tailings being pulled away into the retreating clouds. That gave me excuse for the light on the golden hill, and a way to tie the bottom of the image to the top. This time in Pastels.

Update 08.03.10
I have been living with this piece for several weeks and love it more very day, though until today, I was unable to say why. Now I know. I like that the distant mountains seem to be so 'other worldy' as if from a dream. This picture speaks to me in metaphor, the 'mental' clouds beginning to lift the veil between what is beneath my feet and what could lie in my future. Solid obstacles lie between, but so does a path from here to there...and so the name should be simply 'Clearing.'

Moonfire

At last. After 25 hours of painting, she is presentable.
Early one spring morning I was out with the camera. It had rained the night before so everything was drenched and sparkling in the morning sunshine. I was standing inside the canopy of the Moonfire Japanese Maple just to see what could be seen from there. The  foliage  was ablaze with translucent fire and reflected violet. This is the sort of subject that I really enjoy painting...though I'd starve to death if I needed to make a living from it!

11x15" Wallis Professional Sanded Paper, Pastels

The challenge to this piece was it's complexity. I did have to simplify some, and to invent a couple hands of foliage to fill in where I omitted visual chaos. I knew that once all sketched onto the sand paper, it would be hard to keep up with what the lines 'meant' so I outlined with red, violet, or green pastel pencil as I went. This proved to be very helpful. I knew that 'value' was going to be a real challenge for this piece. #1 because the darkest and highest contrast objects were in the foreground and these were 'cool' colors #2 because behind them were flaming reds. It's just the nature of even a dark red to be brighter than any blue or blue green.

Thought it might be interesting to show the reference work. First is the original snapshot. Second is the crop from that original that I used as the inspiration.

Perilous Rest

For almost two years I have wanted to paint from a photo of a log jam along the Columbia River in Portland. The image had strong lines, but until now, I could not think how to interpret it. In my sketchbook I worked in pen and then colored with alcohol markers to get a feel for value and colors. I actually love that sketch but I knew that it would not translate to pastels, they just handle so differently. Finally I decided to think in terms of abstracts for pastels: indulging the shapes, the colors, the values, and my 'poetic' concept of what I was rendering.

'Perilous Rest'

6x9" Wallis museum grade sanded paper 

~~~

Anyway, I also decided that I would have to pick up water color so I could try pursuing my ink and color sketches.

Back to the Sycamore with Bill James

I’ve been stalled, art-wise.  I got to a point where I didn’t know what to do next that would keep me growing. I felt like something energetic and emotive was beating on the walls from deep inside, but what I was doing was just not giving it expression. Did I need to move into abstracts? Did I need another couple media under my belt to have some choices in times like these? Did I need to scrap all my reference work and strive to collect only images shot in the dark with a slice of light piercing the gloom?

I bemoaned to my friend that I couldn’t believe established artists weren’t using the internet and Photoshop to reach and teach students coast to coast in a personal way that didn’t require expensive travel, or limit the student to local teachers. Then I discovered Bill James, master of three media, who offered just that.
I submitted my 4 best recent pieces for an overall review. The upshot was that I lacked dramatic lighting and attendant value changes, which would not only add focus and energy, but would also allow 3-dimensional form to be emphasized, adding depth. What I thought was bright light was just too dim.  What Bill did was SHOW me how to envision the life back into my own work. He digitally re-tooled one of my jpgs to show me what HE saw that was missing. This is even better than having a teacher ‘show’ you on your own canvas.

So, here are the Sycamore Branches from November 2009, re-polished.


One thing I confirmed from this exercise is that my Rembrandt pastels just aren’t cutting it. The brightest brights are just plain flat and true darks outside of pure black are non-existent. I was able to get the pop only after finding that a few of my Sennelier were applicable.

This has set me on the great search for better quality pastels. This is going to be a considerable investment, as you know. And I’ve never ever been okay with the 16 color crayon box. SO, I have ordered a few selected super-darks from Diane Townsend Soft Form and Terry Ludwig and some mid tones from Great American ArtWorks to see how these compare to Rembrandt and how they layer.

If I like them, the long term plan is to cover all the bases with a couple sets of Great American, selected Ludwigs, and mostly Unison. This also forces me into a ‘big box’ storage system for all the brands. I’ve spent many hours comparing every pastel storage system I can find….It’s looking like a Heilman box (gulp).

Morning Sanctuary

Soft Pastels on Wallis professional grade paper 6x9”

The ‘Ann’ saucer magnolia in bloom seems crowded with exotic pink birds, her complex curving branches weaving an open air cage. The open weave of this frame was essential to the setting for this uncluttered pair, but it was the idea of ‘Sanctuary’ that allowed me to find the life in the lighting.
The placement of the branches provided the composition lesson for this piece. The curving branches generally spiral from behind the flowers. I included a couple branches I shouldn’t have, and had to minimize their presence late in the game. On the right I used the nexus of crossing branches to accomplish two things: to establish a third ‘point’ in a diagonal arrangement with the flowers for a subtle sense of movement, and to become the bottom frame for the space on the right that features the distant pink spot. To keep that space from spilling off the page, I pulled a branch down from above.
(This piece no longer exists. I tried to 'fix' all the 'official' issues with it and finally threw it away. Lesson? Leave well enough alone. Start again from scratch if you think you can improve it.)

Candlelight Mass

 11.5 x 10.5" Soft Pastels on Wallis professional grade sanded paper

This painting began with a photo of Japanese Maple leaves back-lit by the bright November sun. I imagined I would paint a sunny salute to the winter blues. But I studied the reference, squinting and glancing for quite some time. I wanted to be sure I knew what this painting was about before I began. Christmas music played soothingly in the background. Soon I saw that the leaves looked like little red-robed fairy-angels hovering over a candle lit service in a large cathedral. The blue sky became the cathedral window, soft with the blue of an early evening sky. The little halos of light became distant candles. When I finally finished, I saw the Virgin Mary in silhouette with babe in arms, an entirely unintended likeness.

I liked the process for this painting. Figuring out the background was a trick, but after that I was not plagued by fears that I was toiling over a disaster. I love layering rich color with pastels.

Have a blessed holiday season, everyone!

Ladies of the Court

7.5x13” on Wallis museum grade sanded paper


Rex Begonias sport some of nature's most beautiful foliage. Their leaves, like fancy court skirts are quilted, blistered, crimped, and ruffled. Their fiber optic-like stems can light the interior spaces with an appropriately sultry and spicy glow.

At first I felt that this subject was a bit ambitious for me, especially since I just spent a week working on an utterly lackluster piece that I buried with the other junk. But, this is where I want to go, sharing the intimate spaces of nature that have always seemed to be my secret treasures. I figured I had better start reaching for the hard stuff. With each of the many times I was ready to throw it away, something would go right and I would keep working. I was surprised at the end by the contribution of the final lower left leaf. Its strong design really suggested the 'courtliness' of this scene in a way entirely absent from the photo reference. I was finally able to describe the sense of whimsy that accompanied my admiration of these leaves and their interior spaces.

(I don't yet understand it, even years after this was painted. Whenever someone (so far that means 'anyone') see this painting for the first time, they have an instinctual and physical revulsion to it, as though they have been punched in the gut. I've seen a lot of ho-hum paintings in my life and none made me groan out loud. Very curious indeed.)