Hint of Spring?

This is Silver Creek which I have painted many times. For some reason it does have a shimmery silver color to it many days...more so than other nearby brooks. It is a good day for ducks...and artists who like to look for the subtleties in color that are hidden from our view on a bright day. It is painted with a variety of brands of soft pastels on art spectrum gold paper. It is one of the 12 x 16s from the Transitions Series.

Ragged Ends

SOLD 
A February evening in my neighborhood looks peaceful and quiet. I am certainly taking advantage of this exceptionally snowy winter in both Pennsylvania & Vermont. Often I don't get more than one or two snow scenes done per winter because I have a habit of trying to avoid February and March by traveling to warmer climes. This is another 12 x 16 from the Transitions series.

Wood Road and Snowdrops!

Yesterday turned into a very special day. After returning from the painful & mundane (physical therapy and grocery shopping), I decided to seize the 60+ degree afternoon for my first plein air painting of the year. The light was rather flat, but I liked the way the sky matched the earth in value and hue and subtle pattern. I grabbed my gear and drove a couple miles outside of Montrose to a favorite wetland area. The usually soggy and precipitous road shoulder was still frozen which made setting up the portable studio (Prius and half box french easel) a snap. Look,ma,no gloves! During the hour and a half I was there only three vehicles passed me and one was a good friend that I hardly ever get to see.

I used a sheet of UArt #500 and a jumbled up box of soft pastel bits. This image shows my work for the day. I think the foreground needs some strokes to complete it and as soon as I am inspired to see what those are and where they should go I'll finish it and add it to the growing Transitions series.

As if that was not a wonderful enough afternoon, I spot the welcome sight of spring bulbs along my front walk. Galanthus nivalis. They are called snowdrops for good reason. They are weeks earlier than crocus. They are cheap to buy and clump quickly. They only come in white. I know there are hundreds more under the snowbanks waiting for more melting. Alas, this morning they have disappeared under a fresh coating. They'll be back...they have the toough alpine spirit except they can even tolerate frozen puddles of poor drainage. Get some. Have HOPE at a time when we in the frozen tundra need it most.

Lewis Road

Yellow is a color that is found seldom in the background of a landscape. It disappears as it recedes into the distance. Most painters have struggled with trying to make a distant sunlit hillside of yellow fall foliage behave and take its place in the background. There are several ways to deal with the problem. In this painting I have used diminishing parallels (the lines in and on the side of the road) to tell the viewer that those trees catching the warm afternoon rays are the farthest object away from us on the land in this picture. That the moon and clouds are further away is something we all know and don't need convincing of, even if they are sometimes yellow. This is one of the paintings in the Transitions series.

Ground Hog Day in Vermont

No woodchuck saw his shadow this year...and many of us in the NE are ready for a hint of spring. So we are reassured that spring will come early. I spent the day looking out on two of my garden trees....sort of an incongruous, artless pairing. They are of a similar size; a black cherry and a paper birch. They appear to be growing away from each other like the north poles of magnets...likes repel. The day was full of heavy snowfall, but we did not get the 30" predicted...around 12", I think, which makes over 36" on the ground in southern Vermont. It was tough shoveling to stock the bird feeders. The snow blower is in Pennsylvania.

Birds in the Bush

This is a familiar view to me and to many of you as well; out the east window of my studio in Pennsylvania. The slate-colored juncos are the early risers here. They spend winter nights in the protection of dense shrubbery so at first light they are up and looking to see what I've sprinkled on the snow for them to eat.

Mondays & Tuesdays are my Cornell Lab of Ornithology Project Feederwatch days, so no matter what I'm doing in the studio I have one eye on the birds. These are the birds I've seen Monday & Tuesday so far;
mourning dove, cardinal, blue jay, tree sparrow, common redpoll, house finch, goldfinch, tufted titmouse, white breasted nuthatch, black capped chickadee, goldfinch,red-bellied, downy and hairy woodpeckers, crow, starling and the dark-eyed (formerly slate-colored) junco. These are the regular customers in winter. If I am in Vermont on Mondays and Tuesdays I count there and I get pretty much the same birds with the red-breasted nuthatch, brown creeper and pileated woodpecker being more frequently seen than here at my particular PA location. I have not seen the Carolina wren this year and I would like to. Nor have I seen an owl or a hawk on count days, but I have seen evidence in the snow of their presence.

Juncos at Sunrise 12 x 16

Fields of Snow

Very pretty around here...lately. Amazing what a good whitewashing does for the place.

Fresh back in the studio from a late afternoon drive around my PA neighborhood I choose this subject photographed across the fields above Williams Pond. I use one of my favorite pastel papers; salmon-colored Sabretooth. It has a deep, open tooth, which means that the color of the paper will show through a bit in the finished painting. I started with a light wash of some purple/red pastel and turps and then worked 5 or 6 layers of very soft pastels into the tooth. I love the depth and complexity this paper gives; you can see into it...like looking through layers.

My snow scenes are popular; probably because they are warm...in hue.

Fields of Snow 12 x 16...I cropped it poorly when I photographed it...there is a bit more sky than seen here.

Gone is my PC world. So using my new Mac and my same old lousy camera skills makes everything take longer so I hesitate to photograph it again for the fourth time right now. I am loving the Mac, though... knew I would.