Yellow Sky

 

I painted this about a week and a half ago, it seems like another lifetime.

The days have been full since school started.

Once the routine settles in, I'll get out and paint some autumn scenes. 

For now there's this.  A sunset over a pond at Orchard Hills Park.  The sky started as a pale blue, but as the light changed it morphed to yelllow.  So beautiful.

Loosening Up

Orchard Hills Park

6 x 8

Oil on Panel

Since summer vacation started I've gone out to the local parks to do some Plein Air painting.  Each time out has been totally wonderful.  I try to arrive around 7:30 or so and spend a few hours painting.  Last time I painted two panels, with this one being the better of the two.

Last year I painted this:

I liked it for a while.  Then I didn't.  The composition really started bugging me.  I loved the colors, the brushwork, but otherwise...blech.  So I decided to do a paint over the other day.  I zoomed in on the Orchard Hills painting.

Orchard Hills

Oil on Canvas

24 x 24

Now this, I really LOVE.  Loosening up is soooo good.

Some details:

This is color I could just Eat!

Summer Vaca has started and I've hit the ground Running

                                                                Orchard Hills 6 x 8
                                                                                          oil on panel

Where to begin?  It's been so long since I've posted and there's so much to share and say.  For now I'll share a few pics of some little paintings I worked on this week.  The scenes were painted in a few different parks within the Geauga Park District.  What has been intriquing and of great importance to me lately has been negative space.  How it is used in an artwork.  I love the abstract shapes that negative space creates.

                                                                                        Orchard Hills  6 x 8
                                                                                            Oil on Panel

It was fun to mush the sky up against the trees and to paint the pinks behind the trees.

Swine Creek Park  6 x 8

Oil on Panel

This started as a demo piece, waterbased oils on panel.  I reworked it a smidge this morning (the demo was on Monday night) putting regular oils over the waterbased oils.  Which works just fine.  I also turned the painting upside down when I worked back into it.  (I revisited this idea courtesy of a friend who often paints her work upside down--she's not standing on her head, the work is upside down :) ) 

                                                                    The Rookery 6 x 8
                                                                                               Oil on panel

This is a painting from last summer that I was never felt was complete.  So, since I was turning paintings upside down, this one was flipped and worked into.  It's more intense than before, the colors and paint is getting nice and juicey.

Book Art

                                                      PEACE

During the months of November, 2009 through the start of February, 2010 The Geauga County Park District held The DiscARTed Art Show revolving around the theme of recycling.  Artists submitted a range of works from stringed instruments made from cigar boxes (a bluegrass band played them the night of the opening), to lamps, jewelry, wall art, huge iron sculptures......

I submitted this book.

Last spring our school librarian was getting rid of boxes and boxes of books, to make room for more computers. (I've got mixed feelings about that.)  

I took many of the books for conversion to Art; for both me and my students. The book I reworked was from a series called THE GREAT IDEAS.  Full of writings by philosophers of whose work I know next to nothing.   The first page (shown above)  includes some of the names; Cervantes, Descartes, Spinoza, Newton, Locke, Hume. Faraday--these last three names are significant for any LOSTIES out there!

When I started with the book this summer, I used the pages in a random fashion for wiping my excess paint from my brushes.  Which then becomes a nice start for sketching, painting or collaging on.

What you see here is the Front Cover and the inside cover (p. 1)

Collage, oil paint, oil pastel, photographs, string.

Audubon Christmas Bird Count

8 am

 coffee

an angel

winged greeting

lone trees windblown drifted

amish country barns shocks of hay

some birds seen

Bald Eagle

Pileated Woodpecker

Belted Kingfisher

Red Tailed Hawk

Red Shouldered Hawk

Bluebirds

24 species total

Lots of laughs, oatmeal cookies, muffins, slippery roads, pork roast dinner when I got home!

Collage in 3-D

This artwork was created for the DiscARTed show at the Geauga Park District.  I could only submit two entries and I made four.  The two that were entered are a cigar box which I call Bird Box and a book which I altered with collage, painting, stitching and sketching. Pictures will be posted when the show comes down in January.
For this one I assembled pieces and parts of old paintings, collage materials, and plexiglass.  It's mounted on a stretcher frame from an old canvas.  The little popsicle stick figures were made by my daughter when she was about ten years old.  They're meant to symbolize us--the human race, the owl represents wisdom. I placed the people behind the plexiglass with the idea that it represents a barrier.  The barrier for when we aren't connected to earth.   The circle in the background symbolizes  the circle of life, our life path. The hands are painted with symbols which I read about in a National Geographic magazine.  Hand prints were discovered on a cave ceiling in a remote area of Papua New Guinea.  They are ancient and thought to be ceremonial, ritual handprints of an ancient culture.  The amazing thing is that each handprint was painted with a different symbol.  Who knows what they represent?
So I was trying to link the ancient world with the 21st century (popsicle stick people); the birds represent our beautiful earth and the inhabitants of the natural world. The Owl being wisdom, linking the old with Now.  My prayer is that we are wise enough to honor and love our earth.

Twenty Minute Challenge and a Bonus Bald Eagle

Not such a clear picture of a Bald Eagle, but, I had to share it!  My neighbor and I have decided to walk every trail in every park in our local park district; no set time limit for the walks or for when we complete the venture.  It is serendepitous in plan, we go when we can, weather permitting.   The mild November weather lingered for our walk today.  As we emerged from the woods into a large open meadow, one bird flew by (Bald Eagle #1), a second followed.  The second Bald Eagle rode the thermals for a long time.  We lingered.

It seems I can't stop with the Twenty Minute Drawings.  I'm loving it!  Its great practice. The two shown here were done during AP Studio Art Class.  It was a quiet day, the students were working with such intensity that I was able to sit (for the most part uninterrupted) and finish in twenty minutes. The top piece is oil on watercolor paper and the bottom was done in my sketchbook using mixed media; prismacolor markers, watercolors and pencil.

I guess I'd better enter  The Twenty Minute Challenge soon.

Shadow

meandering in the woods
my bright green hand
strong shadow of
my mother's hands

of turtles, coltsfoot and vernal pools

Springtime in Ohio!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Birds galore spring peepers peeping sunshine and warm air
hhhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...................