Visiting Thomas Cole

3×5″, ink and watercolor on cp watercolor paper
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.

I am finally back from my painting trip! I’ll be posting those paintings during the week as they are photographed and finished. Some were completed on location, while others need some studio work to finish them up. I wanted to post them as I went about my trip, but time and imaging software didn’t allow! Much as I wanted to take photos of the paintings and scenes like I did at Boscobel, I completely forgot the rest of the time! I’d get back to the house and realize I never took out my camera while I was painting. It seems I get that one track mind once I have brushes in my hand.

I took a trip to Cedar Grove, the Thomas Cole Historical Site, with a group of 11 painters last week. I’d done the house tour before, and commented here that I saw the River Views show there a few weeks ago. But the show was so wonderful that I was happy to be able to see it again with so many of my plein air friends. Visiting the home of the father of the Hudson River School is a pilgrimage that I like to do from time to time.

The day started out overcast and drizzly, so most of us just sketched rather than setting out all our equipment and not being able to pack up fast in a downpour! A few of us sketched the Thomas Cole house together from the same angle, sitting side by side. Here’s my version.

I’m using an upgrade of my image editing software, which sizes images differently than the previous version. I hope this image comes out large enough to see!

Apple Blossoms and Alyssum

Whenever I’d drive along farm roads in spring, I always admired the bright yellow fields of Alyssum. Imagine my surprise, when spring came along, to find I now have my own field of them here at the new house! I hope I get to paint them before the flowers die. I snipped one of the last of the apple blossoms to paint.

Here’s my sketching stuff out on the porch. I did the little gouache sketch of the apple blossoms first, then put the alyssum into a small pitcher and painted that.

Afternoon at RiverWinds

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10×10″, gouache in my kraft paper sketchbook

The Hickory Tree

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10×10″, Cretacolor sepia and white leads in my kraft paper sketchbook

The Village of Falling Waters

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10x10", gouache in my sketchbook

South Mountain and the Catskill Mountain House

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10×10″, gouache in my sketchbook

Home Sweet Home

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10×10″, gouache in my sketchbook

Good Things Come in Small Packages

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10×10″, Winsor Newton and Holbein gouache in my sketchbook

Text:

Good Things Come in Small Packages
Feb 07 2009
What’s in the Box?

Few things are as much fun for an artist as that brand new box of art supplies waiting on the front doorstep when you return home. Today I was surprised by this box from Dick Blick that arrived two days early!

Inside were kneaded erasers, some Golden mediums that I’m running out of, plus a few new things to try, like these tubes of Holbein gouache. I got Viridian, Cobalt Blue and Cadmium Yellow Orange to round out my gouache assortment. There was also a great deal on Simmons Titanium brush sets, so I’m trying some of those too.

Landscape Sketches

10×10″, Gouache in my kraft paper sketchbook

As you can see, I’m still having way too much fun with gouache in my new sketchbook. I know the text can be difficult to read when I post these pages from my sketchbook. Here’s what today’s page says:

It’s not often that I paint from photos, and it’s even less often that I paint from photos I didn’t take myself! However, this weekend’s Wetcanvas WDE (Weekend Drawing/Painting Event) had some that I just couldn’t resist. Seeing them here now in gouache makes me wonder if I should have painted them in acrylics or oils on a more archival support, or at least so they could be taken out and popped into little frames. Maybe I’ll do another version of these.

Seeing how these gouache landscapes look on this paper makes me think that this could be a fabulous way to work en plein air. I did both of these with only a single, round synthetic brush and a pre-filled Mejillo palette. Pre-cut Canson boards, or other archival matboards with a a similar color to this, would also be lightweight and easy to travel with. They dry instantly, and could be stored in a plastic zip-lock bag for protection.

You can click here to see the reference images uploaded by Wetcanvas member “Upnorthtim”. You can see that I made a lot of changes to the photos in content and composition. Sometimes I do stay more true to a photo, but I never hesitate to change elements, leave things out, or move them around to create my own vision, or to change color and sometimes values. It’s where and how we use that artistic license that creates our individual styles and preferences.

Every Friday, a Wetcanvas member is host of a Weekend Drawing Event in which they upload 16 photos. Members have a week to create art from those photos and post it to the forum. They are not supposed to spend longer than two hours on a painting. Give it a try sometime! It’s great fun to see what so many different artists can do with the same set of images.

Hydrangea Sketch

10×10″, Gouache sketch of a hydrangea for a future painting, coming soon!

My husband adores these colors. I’ve prepared a panel with a lighter, scrubby, warm yellow background upon which I’ll paint the blue vase and violet flowers, as my second in this little series of floral works for Valentine’s Day.

Rose Sketch for a Future Painting

10×10″, Gouache in kraft paper sketchbook
Oil/acrylic painting of this sketch coming soon…Stay tuned!

I am having way too much fun with gouache sketches on this paper! I am thinking of ways to achieve this look with oils/acrylics on a more archival surface. I think I’m going to give it a whirl for tomorrow’s daily painting.

Edit: To see the final painting of this subject, click here.

Sunday Sketches

I’ve always wanted one of these sketchbooks with the heavy, brown kraft paper. I have a huge roll if it, which I tear off into 24×36″ sheets for figure drawing. I was in Borders yesterday and saw this one on a “discontinued” rack for 50% off. It was “now or never”! It’s a great size at 9-3/4″ square. That’s too large to keep in my purse, but a great size for small gouache paintings, charcoal and pencil drawings, with room to write on the same page too.

Unfortunately, I don’t think this paper is archival, but sometimes the freedom to create something on “junk” leads to something special, which can then be recreated in the studio using better materials. This neutral background gives a midtone against which one can bump lights and darks very effectively. This was just what I needed to get me back into my grove of the Saturday/Sunday Sketches. I even painted my little “Bluebird of Happiness” to show how thrilled I am with the new book!