Painting with Sophie

"Penny on the Porch"

My 9 year old grandniece Sophie, who I painted at Christmas playing her violin, is visiting for a few days and today we spent part of the afternoon painting. Sophie was a great student, working from a sketch she had made earlier of our dog Penny and creating a composition with flowerpots on our back porch. When she started this painting she commented that everything was a dark color and lightened the blue bed to make the black shape of the dog really stand out. Pretty smart, huh?
In the studio together, I looked around and decided that she was by far the most interesting thing I could paint so here's the oil sketch- as far as I got.


Now it's time to go make homemade pasta together and find some ripe tomatoes and basil in the garden to go with it.
Dennis and I are going to a wedding at the coast and will be gone for a few days. More when I return.

Star Gulch Ranch

'Star Gulch Ranch" 16" x12" oil on canvas $199

Three posts ago I showed you a painting done at Terry Miura's plein air workshop and said I would post another when I finished it. Here it is. I'm noticing a zig-zag composition appearing in all these latest paintings. Do you see it?

Oregon Coast at Smith River

Oregon Coast at Smith River 16" x 12" oil on canvas $250

We have been back for a few days and the contrast between the cool, overcast coast and the sunny, hot weather here makes me feel like summer has finally arrived. We've even harvested a few ripe tomatoes! After such a cool spring and early summer we were beginning to wonder if it would ever get toasty here, like it usually does. The folks at the coast said their summer lasted about two weeks and fresh tomatoes never cross their minds.

When we left here the air was full of smoke from all the forest fires so we welcomed the clean air from the ocean and felt blessed that the usual wind was not whipping up the sand. I was able to set up my easel, at the top of the path leading to the beach from our motel, and peacefully paint all morning without fear of the wind upsetting everything... or shifting shadows, or sun glare on my wet canvas! I was struck by how vibrant the yellow flowers were on such a gray day and so they became the "star" of my composition. Below are a few shots of the painting's progression which show how I had to mute things down all around the yellow in order to get it to "pop".

OK. enough computer time! I'm off to a "hot day" task of mucking out our pond before the water lilies are suffocated.

Ashland Sky

"Ashland Sky" 41/2" x 61/2" oil on paper, matted $98

A few nights ago we drove the 50 minutes it takes us to get to Ashland to attend the opening of a friend's show. She was in Terry's plein air workshop this summer and it was fun to see a group of her landscapes together.

The sun began to set while we were in town, turning the sky into a riot of purple and orange against a mild blue background. Both Dennis and I stopped at this wall and commented on what a bold image it made; I kept it in my head until the next day and did this little painting from memory. I guess this one would classify as a city-scape.

We are going to the beach for a few days so I will share what I do there when we return.

Back to Painting!

"Applegate River at Star Gulch" 9"x12" oil on canvas $125

It's been over two months since you have heard from me, but it has not been two months since I've painted. In June Terry Miura came to our studios at HUMMINGBIRD to present a plein air oil painting workshop and I participated as a student. I'm not really interested in becoming a landscape painter per se, but I often use landscape in my work and was happy to get some instruction on how to do it better. We live in such a beautiful place it's hard to resist wanting to paint what you see, and painting outdoors is very fun and challenging- almost a sport in some ways. Terry wrote a complete run-down on the workshop so I won't go into it here (Thanks Terry!), but a great time was had by all and I did three paintings. The first I sold without photographing it, the above is the second and I'll post the third as soon as the glaze dries.

More about what has been occupying my time in posts to come.