July 27, 2012

Alla Seconda? Not Quite Alla Prima

Normally, I paint "alla prima" putting wet paint into wet paint and finishing a painting in one intense, sometimes exhausting session.  I've got paintings in my studio that weren't finished at that stage and need more work, which I rarely get to.  The super hot weather has given me the incentive to go back to two paintings I started in May.

  


July 19, 2012

New Website!

I've just set up a new website -- judygilbertlevey.com -- which will soon have images of all my work.  It came with a new email, so I now can get email at judy@judygilbertlevey.com.  How cool is that?

July 16, 2012

Lotus Position

From the gardens at Kenilworth Aquatic Garden, the lotuses.  In the few weeks since I started this, many of the lotuses have dropped their petals and the "shower head" seed pod has begun to brown.

July 10, 2012

"Are you painting those lilies?"

Yes, I was asked this morning, by more than one person, "are you painting those lilies?"  And yes, I was.

I did get into a little discussion with a woman who said she thought I made the lily pond at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens look, in her words, a lot better than it does in real life.  She only saw the water as muddy brown.  The key for me is to find the other colors and see the beauty in them.  It was there -- maybe a bit easier to see when the early morning angle of the sun was more acute than when she stopped by -- but you do have to look for it.

July 9, 2012

Painting on Orcas Island


 I've just come back from a week in the Pacific Northwest and I brought with me -- a first -- a real "paint" suitcase.  I got a hard-sided bag that just fit 18 x 24 canvases and I figured I'd be able to travel with oil paints and not worry about whether the suitcase got messy.

Packing to leave during a power outage was a bit of a problem, as I realized on my way to the airport that I left my paint at home.  A trip to a Utrecht store in Seattle solved that problem nicely.  I also didn't have any canvas separators and found that on Orcas Island, paint supplies are sold in several shops and one even had actual canvas separators that look like double binder clips with a bump in the middle.  They didn't entirely do their job, as one popped loose on the trip home, but there's only a few spots on these paintings I need to fix where paint transferred from one wet canvas to another during the flight home.

Orcas Island has amazing valleys, steep peaks and its beautiful coast has gentle lapping water.  I made the most of morning painting time and painted in the town of Eastsound, where amazing perennial flowers line the sidewalk along the waterfront.  There's an island just offshore that people walk to during low tide and marine biologists take the opportunity to collect, count and measure ocean life as a sign of the health of the ecosystem.  I did that last small painting quickly when people were heading out to the island.

The two inland paintings -- the valley and wood-sided house -- are at the Turtleback Farm Inn.  It was a wonderful place to stay and paint.