"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.

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.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens - Lotus Flowers

Just getting underway with a new painting of lotus flowers at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens.  The lotus flowers are water plants that rise high above the surface of the water, with large leaves that look like umbrellas and flowers that have a center seed pod shaped like a shower head.  A pond filled with them is a spectacular sight and they are at their peak right now.  The painting I've started shows how both light comes through and deep shadows reflect on the water; it's a nice contrast to the way the water lilies in my other recent paintings rest on top of the water and create a different pattern of shadow and light.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens is a fantastic place to see lotus flowers and water lilies.  What I didn't expect -- and was fascinated by -- were the mud flats of the marshy areas covered with animal tracks.  There were clear prints of herons, raccoons, ducks, many birds and some paws that might have been beavers or muskrats.  We only saw the herons and other birds during the day; we also saw turtles but I can't say whether they left behind any prints in the mud.

Long View of Lilies

This is the finished painting of the lily pond at Lilypons -- it's 5 feet wide, 3 feet tall.

Accuracy in Water Gardens

Just to be clear -- those upright water plants with purple spiked flowers are pickerel rush, not water lilies.  The water lilies are the plants with pads that rest on top of the water.  

Painting in a Series -- More lilies

The lilies at Tregaron have quickly begun to go to seed.  I went back for an afternoon painting today.  The brush I was using, at one point, was the kind of brush that was just stiff enough that it took more paint off than it laid down.  Very frustrating.  I also used a few transparent colors that barely mixed with other colors.  Ugh.  I ended up with very thick paint and deep brushstrokes.

The pattern of the brushstrokes had to be worked to support some of the painting was upright plant material, some was a horizontal plane of water and some was reflected, going deeper below the surface.

There's a course at the Corcoran School on painting in a series that a friend of mine has taken.  I haven't taken it, but here I am, working my way through lily paintings.   I've been looking at how to take a subject and work on it using a variety of viewpoints, palettes and techniques.  The trick is to make the paintings work together.  Once these lily paintings are a bit drier, I need to see how well they group and what seems to be missing.

Blooming at Tregaron

What a thrill to go to Tregaron today and see that the blossoms had opened and beautiful purple spikes of flowers were all over the pond.

I am wildly happy about the reflection in the pond in this painting.

And, in case you are wondering, insect repellent inside a car does nothing to stop mosquitos, wasps and untold numbers of bugs from landing on a painter in the woods by a pond.

Knitting in the Garden

It wasn't immediately obvious that there was going to be something to paint when we got to this house today.  The owner's mother had a knitting project to work on and agreeably sat -- better than a professional model! -- quite still and worked on her baby blankets.  The family dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback, periodically stopped to sit beside her.  At one point, the dog rolled on his back and I thought that would have been an interesting view to paint!

I can see now that I'm out of the bright sun that a few things need balancing and a few things need to be knocked off balance (the too-even spots of sky between the distant trees).

5 Feet of Lilies

Just getting underway with a painting that's 5 feet wide by 3 feet high.  I'm working on it in the studio (can't manage a canvas this large outside) and hoping to create a sense of distance at the back of the painting as the painting shifts in scale and color intensity.

Lilies, finished