Williams Pond

SOLD
August 9th I wrote:
This morning the haze & mist hung heavy over Williams Pond. It is a location that I have been painting and drawing for 30 years. It is, so far, quite unchanged. This is the initial lay-in; defining shapes, values and suggesting colors. It was too wet outside today for pastel painters so I worked on this inside. I like the way mist & haze transforms space and distance and makes my familiar surroundings look alien.

Today I have almost finished the painting of Wiliams Pond 10 x 15 inch image size.

Bella's Garden

OK, I said I was going to paint every day in August, which is not the same thing as creating a new painting every day. There are intrepid painters who have been making "a Painting a Day" for years now. I intend to paint on all days in this month and today I've started a new studio pastel of a delightful garden near Brackney, PA. It's wild and it's bold and it's strong. And it has a blue reflecting ball...something I never felt the desire to have in my own garden...but it is perfect in Bella's. I'm not even going to change the color.

I've been thinking about this painting for about a week. Today I worked out the overall structure in my sketchbook. No need for detail now.

When I felt comfortable with the shapes & patterns, I started working with black & blue Nupastels on my 20 x 24 piece of rose gray Colourfix paper. This painting will be framed with a mat so the paper is actually 6'' larger than that to allow a full border under the mat.

Next, I chose 2 warm and 2 cool medium value colors (orange, blue) and proceeded to energetically develop my abstract "underpainting". There will be quite a bit of chaotic color coming next so I want to have a painting underneath that holds it all together. Hope I've done that.

I am excited about this painting, and I want to keep right on going, but today is my birthday (Barack Obama's, too) and I'm going to a French Restaurant for dinner. So...more tomorrow.

(Still having trouble making my images mind! They 'sit' and 'lie down' wherever they want. Yikes, they are in the reverse order of what I thought I had done. If you know how to control where and in what order images appear, please comment and tell me.)