Autumn Trees in the Western Sun

Autumn Trees in the Western Sun

Texas weather was again delicious for plein air experimentation.  After school let out, I immediately went out in search of autumn colors, and it didn’t take long to find them.  This time I layered Winsor & Newton watercolors with Prismacolor Watercolor Pencils, going back and forth between the media.  I found a happier balance this time, and believe I have come up with one of my better watercolor sketches of fall foliage.  It’s rather small (about 9 x 12″), but I think it will have  a smart appearance once matted and framed.

In looking at this pair of trees, I was surprised to find the one with the dead leaves still sporting its full headdress, while the tree of living leaves had already lost about half of them.  I found that strange, and wanted to try and sketch the pair accurately.  Fall is coming on.  Because of the dreadfully hot and dry summer, I’m afraid that Texas will see little-to-no color this season.  Nevertheless, I still like the looks of the trees as they begin casting their leaves, even if the colors range only from green-to-brown. All the same, I’ll try to capture some of them in watercolor sketches en plein air this time around.

Thanks for reading.

Strawberry Fields Forever

Strawberry Fields Forever

Leaving school this afternoon, I drove my Jeep out into a beautiful world, awash with Texas sunny skies and temperatures at 71 degrees with cool breezes filling the air.  I slipped a Beatles Anthology CD into my player and listened to the three different renditions of Strawberry Fields Forever.  I felt a sense of sadness, realizing that I miss John Lennon more now than I did in the immediate years following his untimely death.  Maybe I lacked maturity in those days, but his death was a sensationalist event in the media and I never really felt the sense of sorrow and loss until much later.  Now, I have trouble listening to Imagine and Strawberry Fields.  As the song played, my mind’s eye was filled with this image from Stovall Park in south Arlington, Texas.

I drove to the park, got out of my Jeep and walked to this location, and as I gazed at the tree in the late afternoon sun, the muse whispered sweetly and gently into my ear, and I knew I had to give it a shot.  I must say the muse was with me this time, as I felt genuine joy working on the piece, though I only lingered 45 minutes over it.  I was intrigued with the darkness and density of the tree, with the sun behind it, and the contrast of the yellow, sunlit leaves in particular places.  I also felt stirred at the dark lavenders and crimsons I sensed in the sprawling shadows beneath the spreading tree.  The only part at which I labored the most was the dark density of the body of the tree top, trying to find the right kind of blue tones to put into the shadows.  I’m not sure that I got it right, but I think I have improved over past attempts at painting trees en plen air.  I hope I can find a way to do it tomorrow as well.  My dreaded 4-class school schedule will hold me until nearly 3:00, but maybe I can get away quickly enough to capture the afternoon light again.

Thanks for reading.

Looking Forward to Fall Colors and Plein Air Watercoloring

Looking Forward to Fall Colors and Plein Air Watercoloring

The cool, autumnal temperatures that lightly kissed the four-day Grapefest have left me yearning for the changing colors that announce the plein air season for passionate watercolorists.  Though the art festival season will be extremely heavy from September through October, I am of a mind to commit my weekday afternoons to plein air watercolor sketching.

This is an open meadow across Business Highway 287 on the north side of Waxahachie, Texas.  I had stopped by Zula’s Coffee House late one autumn afternoon in 2010, and enjoyed my coffee outdoors at a picnic table while watching the sunlight sweep across the field across the highway.  I took out my watercolors and made quick work of this vista.  Now I’m ready to chase autumn colors with the brush again.  They cannot come soon enough.

Thanks always for reading.

 

Kerouac’s Dream, December 18, 2010

Kerouac's Dream

I have already painted this vintage car several times, but thought it was time to put some fall foliage around it.  It is a 1950 Chevy Sedan Special Delivery, parked in a field north of Hillsboro, Texas, along Highway 77.  The owner has graciously permitted me to come onto his property and do watercolor sketches en plein air of his collection of vintage cars.  Hillsboro is a one-hour drive from where I live, across beautiful sprawling Texas country.  I have Jack Kerouac’s On the Road that I listen to on CD as I drive and let my mind drift across the American landscape.  With my company’s name, Recollections 54, I still look for ways to translate the memories of the American fifties into watercolor compositions and vignettes.  Even if I never reach the standard of quality that I target, I can already say that this journey has been a profoundly rewarding one.  Soon I will journey to my hometown St. Louis for Christmas, and look forward to finding new vistas to record.

Thanks for reading.

Equestrian in Fall Foliage, December 17, 2010

Equestrian in Fall Foliage

Here is a large 18 x 24″ watercolor I began over a week ago.  It’s been difficult finding quality time to paint, trying to close out the fall semester at school.  My wife Sandi is riding her horse Andante just as the leaves are beginning to turn in south Fort Worth, Texas.  Most of the foliage at the top is poured from bowls onto the wet paper that was previously masqued, then treated with salt and a spray bottle, along with plenty of tissue-blotting.  For the first time, I’m introducing the color aubergine into the shadows of the bay horse–I’ve never before known for sure how to shadow this guy.  I think this is going to work.  I did a plein air sketch of the pair of trees behind the fence, several weeks ago while we were on location.  I also took several digital shots of Sandi and Andante.  Now I’m hoping to combine two photos to create this landscape.  Hopefully I can finish this one by Christmas.

Thanks for reading.

Autumn Afternoon at Zula’s Coffee Shop Waxahachie, Dec. 17, 2010

Waxahachie Autumn Afternoon

Finally out of school for Christmas vacation!  I am pretty backed up–I have completed a number of watercolors and have many more in-progress, but haven’t found quality time to blog any of them.  Too many school responsibilities as the semester comes to a close.

One afternoon, at the height of the fall season, I traveled south to Waxahachie, Texas.  There was some art business to wrap up at the Ellis County Art Association.  I always love to stop at Zula’s Coffee House, now located on the north side of town on Business Route 287.  As the afternoon light began to fade, I saw this fabulous meadow across the highway from the coffee shop and decided to sit at a picnic table outside and try to capture it before the light was gone.  The wind made things pretty difficult, and the darkness came quickly.  Fortunately I had taken a decent digital photo of the site.  I returned to the site one more time to tweak the plein air colors in the foliage.  Then I took this painting out to my garage to paint in the pure light of the afternoons, looking at an 8 x 10 print I made of the photo.  I’m happy with how it finally came out.  Texas has had a lengthy and comparatively colorful autumn this year.  I find these rare, and am very grateful that I got out a number of times this season to capture the colors and light.

Thanks for reading.

Thanksgiving Fall Foliage from my Garage Studio, November 26, 2010

During the Thanksgiving Holidays, as the temperatures dropped and the sunlight grew stronger against the fall foliage, I got this crazy notion to set up my French easel in my garage and do some quick watercolor sketches of the neighbors’ trees across the street.  Keeping warm with a thermos of coffee, I had the time of my life that afternoon as I worked on two quick sketches that involved plenty of masking and pouring of the watercolor pigments.  I’m still messing with the two pieces but decided to post one of them tonight to show anyone interested how the experiment is coming along.  I had a fabulous time, working like a mad scientist in his laboratory that day.  I hope to do it again soon.

Thanks for reading.  Hopefully I will be able to post before long a new painting of my wife on her horse, along a fence line, beneath fall foliage.  This is going to be another large poured piece.

Fall Colors in the Horse Country, November 27, 2010

Fall Colors in Horse Country

Saturday morning found me waking to temperatures in the upper 30′s.  Sandi had a riding lesson scheduled in south Fort Worth.  Since it was the first time to take her horse trailer out, I decided to come along to offer an extra set of hands for some of the details of loading a trailer and helping get the horse in and out.  Once we arrived, I found the world to be extremely bright and clear with sunlight.  Sandi got her horse prepped for the lesson, and I photographed her and Andante riding about the pen, stretching and loosening up.  By the time her lesson appointment arrived, I looked around for something to do.

These trees were “calling out” to me from the time we arrived on the property.  The incredibly bright yellow and orange leaves against a dark forest just would not let go of my imagination.  The sight of leaves falling between that dark space of tree cluster and bare ground also raised my ecstasy.  I walked around, looking at this site from three different directions, all the time trying to talk myself out of the commitment to a plein air watercolor.  I felt rusty, out-of-practice, uptight, not ready.  All of this added up to the “dance of avoidance” Ian Roberts writes about in his Creative Authenticity. I knew that, like Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth before me, there would be rewards waiting if I would just respond to the call.  But I was overwhelmed as I continually gazed at the complications–the masses of fall foliage, the dark forest behind, the bald, dirt ground beneath, the shadows spinning out from the trees and their gnarled trunks.  I felt there were just too many details to chase, and I felt tired.

I pulled out four unfinished watercolors, along with the 8 x 10 photographs I had taken of the subjects.  Nothing moved me.  I took out my digital camera and photographed the scene before me repeatedly, trying to convince myself that I could do a better job working from the photographs and inserting a grazing horse beneath the trees.  I knew that I would not do that, however.  Trees from photographs just don’t “do it” for me.

I even contemplated reading; I had a whole bag full of books.  I even thought of writing in my journal.  But I knew I would live with regret if I passed on this opportunity, and Sandi’s riding lesson was going to take up an hour.  So I sat, and looked, and thought–and finally drew out my watercolor block and sketched in the tree trunks and fencing.

Next I pulled the Super Nib Masquepen and began to dot in the hundreds of leaf clusters and falling leaves, along with the pipe fencing.  Once everything dried, I laid in a quick Cerulean Blue sky.  Fortunately the steady cold winds were drying out the surface of the watercolor block quickly.  Quinachronine Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson and Sap Green were the predominant pigments to help see me through the fall foliage.

I was pleased at my overall draughtmanship on the gnarled tree trunks.  I mixed plenty of Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Winsor Green and Ultramarine Blue to come up with my blacks and grays.  An HB pencil also aided me in drawing in the tree bark, along with some help from an 8B Derwent watersoluble pencil.  The tree trunks came together quite quickly.

I felt pretty lost on the shadows across the dirt, so I used more of my black and gray mixings from the colors listed above, and swirled them about on the dry paper with my “ugly brush”–a real staple for me.  My “ugly” is a flat sable that I cut diagonally and then used an X-acto knife to pull out some of the bristles, leaving a jagged chisel-looking brush for my foliage, weeds and tree bark.

I’m really delighted that I responded to this opportunity, instead of passing it by.  I was really taken by what Annie Dillard referred to as the “tree filled with lights.”  I could not get over the beauty and splendor of the bright, bright sun reflections coming out of those brassy-colored leaves.  And to think that I almost passed on this to read instead.  I recall Nietzsche talking about how “positively wicked” it was for a writer or scholar to spend the prime time of the day reading–lost in other men’s thoughts–instead of producing one’s own.  I’m grateful that this day was a day that I decided to create.

Thank you for reading.

Afternoon Autumn Glow, November 23, 2010

Afternoon Autumn Glow

Well, it’s the first evening of a five-day Thanksgiving Holiday.  My wife and I have been sick with sinus infections for over a week, and I’ve felt too poorly to focus on painting.  But once school ended today I couldn’t get to rural Burleson fast enough.  This gorgeous crepe myrtle is on the property where Sandi boards her horse.  I could not believe how alive it was in color as the sun began to set.  This is a quick, 45-minute sketch of it.  I guess Emerson called it right when he wrote that “nature wears the colors of our spirit.”  This is the first day I have felt “whole” in over a week, and as I stood at my easel, taking in the beauty of this tree, I felt cleansed as I sought to reproduce these fiery colors on the paper.

My own neighborhood is alive with color, and has been for over a week.  It is as though nature waited patiently for me to recover from this annoying illness and muster enough stamina to paint her.  In the morning, I intend to step out into the neighborhood and do my best to capture more of this scintillating fall foliage in watercolor.

Thanks for reading.