Painting into the Corner

 

By the Shore
Watercolor, 7.5" x 11" on Arches 100% cotton cold press paper

As a writer and artist, I often have the sensation of painting myself into a corner. Maybe I’ve finished an essay or painting, and no other ideas seem to be on the horizon. Or maybe the work is so awful that it seems like I’ll never write/paint anything good again.

That feeling is an illusion, of course, but it can be quite strong. 

With this painting (above), created from a reference photo given by my current instructor Andy Evansen, I was in love with it after the first two washes--the light wash and then the middle-value wash in which I tried to connect everything, a la Andy's technique. (See that middle stage just below.) 

But once I added the figures and boat and painted in a few darks, as the top painting—meh. Not so excited after that.

I’d painted myself into a corner.

So I did what I often do when I feel there’s no way out: I opened my sketchbook and popped out a very impressionistic version of a house in our neighborhood here in northern CA (see below). 

This sketch has its problems: The shadows on the bushes and ground just in front of the house are way too dark, plus I worsened that heavy darkness by adding an extra layer of cobalt blue to the sky, plus in general there are too many cool colors and not enough warm ones. 

But. I’m out of the corner because this little sketch inspires me to create a more deliberate, but still loose, painting in which I’ll keep a lighter sky and shadows.

Suddenly, a new idea—a new inspiration. A way out of the corner, or so I hope. Stay tuned.

Spring

 

Sausilito Scoma's 
11 x 15" watercolor
Arches 100% cotton cold press paper

A favorite seafood restaurant of ours is Scoma's in Sausilito. We took my husband's two sisters there recently, and I snapped this photo afterward, hoping it would be a good-enough reference photo to paint from. 

I'm not super satisfied with this painting, but we sure had a swell time with the sisters, and for that reason I may frame this one--never mind that it has a gash in the upper left quadrant that I didn't see until I started painting the sky. Did I graze it with a fingernail, maybe? Who knows? 

Iowa Skies

 

I’ve lingered in Iowa longer than intended this month, and I’m missing home, but gosh, these Midwestern skies are so darned pretty. I walked with a friend at Ada Hayden in Ames yesterday. We’d been look at at the lake, then turned around and wow, the clouds and blue sky against the grasses took my breath away. 

Arrested by Oranges

 

Ada Hayden Oranges 
10” x 14” watercolor on Arches 100% cotton cold press paper

I was walking a round a lake in northern Ames, Iowa, feeling badly for my elderly mother, 95, who lives in a nursing home and has developed a rough case of the respiratory flu. I was also feeling homesick for my husband and sons and daughters-in-law and 4 grandkids b/c I’ve been away from where we all live in the San Francisco/East Bay Area x 5 weeks, checking in on Mom while my sibs, who live near her, are out of state. (I thank the gods for her terrific aids and nurses!)

I rounded the bend and was struck by the beauty of the orange-ish prairie grasses and the light-colored trees against the beautiful blue sky. And suddenly all was well.

Second Try

 

11 x 15” watercolor on Arches 100 % cotton cold press

Yeah. I’m getting over my superstition that second versions don’t work as well as first ones. It helps to have a “what if” mentality: what if I use warmer colors for more of the trees in the background? What if that shadow on the barn isn’t so dark? What if I only barely suggest the hay bales on the left? 

Snow Practice

 

No snow yet in Iowa—I’m just practicing from a reference photo supplied by my instructor, Andy Evansen, whose year-long online course is a gift that keeps on giving.