Painting on the Beach in Mexico

I'm using "interactive acrylic" paints -- a product that's new to me and so far so good. I brought only red, blue, yellow and white and I'm mixing to get color ranges. The Pacific Ocean is an amazing blue green, hard to get right, but I am going to keep trying!

Carousel Sketch at Glen Echo

It's hard to resist painting the garish colors of the historic carousel at Glen Echo... but I did. After about 45 minutes standing under an eave in the rain, this is where my sketch ended up.

I always liked it when I went with small children and they picked the deer or rabbit to ride on instead of the horses.

Foundry Gallery's New Website Launches Today!

Check it out -- www.foundrygallery.org -- it's our new website! If you find anything worth commenting on or needs fixing, let me know (glitches, typos, bad grammar) since I'm one of the administrators and I'll fix it.

Fall Along the C&O Canal

A beautiful morning to paint along the canal at Swain's Lock. The leaves were starting to turn and I exaggerated their intensity while the sky was grey and dark -- when the sun came out, the color was all there. There's some shine in the image here that's from wet oil and the camera flash, but I have to see how the painting dries a bit to figure out whether there's also some real life spots that I need to fix.

Ready to Move On

I've now explored the effect of lighter and darker foregrounds, warmer and cooler light areas... and I think this is it for the Brookside Garden banana plants... until next year.

Model & Banana Plants, 2.0

A gorgeous day today but I didn't finish the painting. Much improvement in depth, model's hat, light/dark balance, but I still have unresolved areas around the pot on the left and just to the left of the model. We won't be painting again at Brookside, so this is going to force me into my studio (and force me to clean the work space!).

Black, White, Burnt Sienna

Dreary day outside, we had the model in the studio. Painted with a limited palate, chose to keep her skin tones all warm and let her dress, the chair and background stay cool.

Back to Banana Plants

Today I was back at Brookside Gardens, back to my favorite pots of banana plants. I painted from a spot at a little different angle, and I sat down in the wet grass so I could catch the back of the model sitting in the middle of the scene. If experience is any guide, I'll be looking at mums when I get back to finish the painting as the banana plants give way to fall. I've got some work to do on the hat -- the "easy" part of the painting! -- which needs emphasis on the back of the hat, a better fit on the model's head and maybe some color adjustment to take its proper place in the arrangement of pots and arching leaves.

Back at the Orchard

I brought back yesterday's painting to put another hour into resolving some of its distance issues.

Butler's Orchard

Beautiful day at Butler's Orchard. They had huge bags of honeycrisp apples, our absolute favorite. The painting wasn't bad, either, but I was rushed (aren't I always?), this time because I had the 9-week-old puppy at home and was worrying about him. My friend Marie and I compared notes about teacher/artist Christine LaFuente as it turned out she'd also taken a workshop with her. I am hoping the puppy wouldn't mind if I go back tomorrow to get a few more thoughts into this painting.