September 22, 2011

I get to paint on Tuesdays, so this update is actually a couple days late.  I was pretty pleased with the changes I made.  I worked mostly on the figure at the bow.  My hubby says I should put in some rigging lines.  I was trying to be less detailed than that.  I’m still thinking about it.  Here is a poor quality photo of what it looks like so far…

The figure on the bow is my daughter, Connie.  She loves to sit on the railing there and let the wind blow her hair everywhere!  If you could see the painting in real life – or at least shot with a decent camera – you might notice my hubby’s head back in the cockpit.  He’s back there holding the tiller and watching the lines so the rest of us can just enjoy the ride.

August 16, 2011

I got a little bit more done on the Dulcinea this morning.  Finding my focus for this painting has been a bit of a challenge lately.  Little Mr. Justin is 5 months old today and he likes to take an awful lot of my attention.  So, the painting will get done slowly; there’s nothing wrong with that.

Looking at the painting over the last few days, I decided that the far shore of the lake should have a bit of green trees reflecting in the water, so I added some green back there.  I think I’ll probably fiddle with the tone of the water just to the right of the boat next time.  Hopefully, I will be able to make corrections here and there without overworking it.  I also added an off-white tone to the sail, then hit it with some bright white here and there in an effort to show some wind action there.

Here are a couple photos from the end of my painting session today:

July 19, 2011

Wow, I can’t believe it has really been three weeks since I worked on this!  Time does fly when you’re having fun and since we have been busy with Vacation Bible School, we’ve definitely been having fun!

Justin fussed and fidgeted at me quite a bit while I was painting today, so I really didn’t get to focus very well on the painting.  I fussed and fiddled with things and then just ended up blending them in.  I decided I was trying to get too much detail in the background, which really didn’t fit in with the style of the foreground.  I’m shooting for a looser feel with this one, using the palette knife more.

You may have noticed that I peeled the blue masking tape off the edges of the sail area.  I just got sick of looking at it!  That bright blue edge was annoying me and getting in my way as far as seeing the true composition of the painting.

June 28, 2011

I started my big painting of the Dulcinea today.  It’s on a 12×24″ canvas.  Here’s the first blocking-in stage.  It still has blue masking tape protecting the edges of the sail area.

And here’s an exciting announcement.  The Twin Rocks painting is officially finished!  I signed it this morning.

You can’t see it in the photo but I added some metallic silver highlights in the water and the sky and a few touches of metallic gold in the foreground grasses.  Here’s a (lousy cell phone shot) detail of the rocks:

June 22, 2011

When I sat down at my easel, I was a little daunted by the Twin Rocks painting, so I decided to do a warm-up just to get my mind focused on painting.  I really wanted to start on my next painting but I knew that if I started a new one, I wouldn’t want to touch the rocks again, so I whipped out a little ACEO study of it.  The final painting will be in a different format (12×24″) but I think it helped a lot to work out the basics of the form and reflections of the boat.

I did this one in acrylics, partly because I haven’t worked with acrylic paint much and I thought it would be a valuable exercise, and partly because they dry so quickly.  This one is ready to sell!  Our sailboat, the Dulcinea, on Timothy Lake last summer.

So after I got my mind in gear, I tackled the Twin Rocks painting again.  I spent some time just slapping Payne’s Grey onto the background, just trying to get things darkened out toward the horizon.  Then I laid in some violet, cobalt blue and turquoise.  After that was done, I added some shadows under the edges of the foam on the waves (how did I miss that before?) and did some refining of the edges of the rocks, added more highlights and shadows – and then I ran out of time for painting.  It was probably time to quit for the day anyway.

So, here is what it looks like now:

June 7, 2011

I have taken a slightly different direction with the Twin Rocks painting this week.  Here are some detail shots and an overall view that I took at the end of my painting session today.  My goal was to push the rocks farther off shore.  I still need to fine-tune the waves, but I think the work today was a definite improvement.

May 31, 2011

Here are some photos of my current project.  I started painting it May 3rd, although I’ve been thinking about this one since last August.  It took a while to decide I needed to just pick up the brush and DO IT!  It’s just paint, for goodness sake!

March 1, 2011

I have been putting off updating this page lately.  I’ve done quite a few projects without posting them here.  I apologize to you all.

The last month or so has been devoted to some teeny-tiny ACEO projects.  A friend of mine mentioned ACEOs to me as a potential method for drawing people to my larger paintings that I have listed at  www.etsy.com/wendelika.  Now, you’ve probably heard of them before, but the concept was completely new to me.  ACEOs are basically trading cards (like baseball cards) of original artwork.  They can be done in any media and any style on canvas or any type of paper, as long as they measure 2-1/2 x 3-1/2″.  People collect, trade and sell them, just like baseball cards.

So, here are my first few attempts.  The first two are also my first attempts at doing something abstract.

And here is the sketch I did for the little horse I’m currently working on.

I worked on him today, but I don’t have a photo ready to upload yet.  I’ll have to get one up here soon.  I was a little hesitant to add color to him, I liked the sketch so much.

November 9, 2010

I was planning on starting a small study of the Twin Rocks painting on cheap canvas paper.  I got into my supplies and discovered that I have used up all of my canvas paper.  Not good.

I sat for about an hour, listening to people talking all around me and trying to decide what to do.  I haven’t painted in a while and I really wanted to get a brush or two in my hands today.  I thought about driving into town to the art supply store to buy canvas.  Maybe I was feeling wimpy but I decided not to drive that far in the rain.  I thought briefly about just slapping some paint on the canvas that I already bought for the final project, but that was kind of expensive, which is why I wanted to do the study in the first place.  I would like to work a few things out before I commit to the full-size canvas.

I finally decided to do another little 5×7″ canvas so that I could at least say that I’d painted SOMETHING today!  There’s a beautiful green cinderella pumpkin sitting on a counter under the window that was just begging me to paint it’s portrait.  I’m thinking it might make a nice companion to the pear I painted recently, so I used the same cold wax medium tinted with VanDyke brown that I used for the background of the pear.  I got a pretty good start on it, but had to stop to let the wax medium harden before I get into the details.

Here is what I did with it today.  First block.

Second stage.

I just couldn’t leave it alone and finally had to drag myself away from it before I destroyed all of the cool texturing from the cold wax medium.  Here is what it looks like right now.

October 12, 2010

I’m working on a new idea for a painting.  It’s going to be fairly large, and I haven’t really worked out all the details of the composition yet, so I’m still in the sketching stage.  I’m really not very skilled with a pencil, or even a whole set of pencils.  I really prefer to use colors, but working in black and white does help you to focus on the shapes and forms without all the visual stimulation that color gives you.  It becomes easier to see if something is misplaced or out of proportion and it really is better to fix that in the early stages of a painting.

I always photograph my work as it progresses.  Sometimes I don’t photograph until I’m finished painting for the day and other times I take a quick shot just to get a different viewpoint while I’m working.  Things seem to be simpler in a photo.  I can sometimes spot mistakes in a photo that I miss just looking at the actual canvas.  I don’t really understand why it works, but it does.  I can see large shapes and repeating patterns easier, too.

So, here is a photo of the first sketch I did.  I think this was a few weeks ago.  I was just getting the details of the rocks figured out.

Here is a revision of the sketch.  I added some motion to the water and some rock shadows.  Oh, and I added some clouds in the distance.

I did some more refining of the whole thing this morning.  The sky looks more interesting, now.

Before I was finished for the day, though, I knew I had to tackle formatting the entire canvas and thinking through the rest of the painting without worrying so much about the details around the rocks, so here is my quick sketch in roughly the right proportion.  It’s very small, so I’ll have to expand it greatly when I start laying it in on the canvas.  I’m still toying with ideas for different angles.  So, for now, here it is.

August 25, 2010 – I’ve been on vacation with my family, so I got a little behind on my updates.  I finally got things settled and had a great time at yesterday’s art class (http://www.coltoncommunity.org/ARTuesday.html).  I finished the little rose garden painting – signed and everything!  So then I had to decide what to paint next.

Hmm…

I have a small stockpile of Bob Ross paints that someone gave me about a year ago and, can you believe it? I have never EVER opened any of that paint up to play with it.  So, since I had no other plans for my next project, I pulled out yet another 5×7″ canvas and bravely opened my Bob Ross paints.  Here is what I came up with.

I know the Bob Ross style is wet-into-wet, but that was all I had time and energy for, so I’ll have to finish it after it dries.  Maybe I’ll find some Bob Ross videos and watch them between now and next art class.

August 10, 2010 – I started a new painting today.  It’s just a little 5×7″.  Someone asked me today why I’ve been doing such small paintings lately.  There’s a very simple answer to that.  Someone gave me a bunch of 5×7″ canvases.  I’m discovering that it’s kind of fun to do somethng small and quick in between the larger projects, too, so who knows?  I might just lay in a supply of little canvases just to have on hand for after I’ve finished a big project or just need to take a break from one for a week or two.

So, here’s today’s little painting.  I’ll probably work on it one more time before it gets a signature.  It’s going to need a few touches of highlights and some deeper shadows here and there, but this is all I could do with it today.

August 3, 2010 – Well, I did it!  I signed the Creek painting.  I also signed the leaf painting I’ve been working on, so I finished two projects in one day.  That’s almost completely unheard of.

I did end up using a toothpick to refine the sandals a bit.  I ended up wishing I had an “undo” button on my canvas somewhere.  I think I managed to fix it.  I noticed that one of the rocks on the left was done in cooler colors than a rock to the right that should have been farther away from the picture plane that was done in warmer colors, so I fixed that.  I added a very pale wash to some of the high-key area in the far background.  I also warmed up the sunlit side of the rock face on the right edge of the canvas.

As for the leaf, I just added a little shadow detail using burnt umber and (again) a toothpick and then did a little wash of burnt umber over some of the edges and around the veins of the leaf and then I took the plunge and signed that one, too!  What a momentous day!

July 27, 2010 – I’m back to working on the Creek painting.  I finally put in the sandals on the central rock.  They need some refining, yet.  They’re so tiny at this scale that I think I might need to put in the details with a toothpick, or something.  I don’t have any brushes that fine.  I added some grasses and some more brush and leaves on a few of the tree branches overhanging the water.  I also added a couple new rocks in the water and added some touches of shadows here and there.

July 20, 2010 – I fussed and fiddled with the highlights on this thing for 3 hours!  I think I ended up taking off almost as much paint as I put on today.  I finally just had to stop before it got completely muddied and overworked.  Here it is so far.

I’ve taken a break from the creek painting I was working on.  This one is just a little 5×7″ painting of an oak leaf frozen in a puddle of water.  I’m painting it from a photo in an old book about painting trees that was brought to my attention a few weeks ago.  This was the end of my first session with it, July 6, 2010.

I did some work without taking photos – sorry.  I also took a couple weeks off and worked on smaller projects for the Colton Farmer’s and Crafter’s Market.  This is the painting as of June 29, 2010.  I did manage to get those tree branches in place and hang some moss all over them.  More little details in rocks and water and weeds.  I darkened the upper left side of the canvas in an attempt to bring out the spot of sunshine in the center more.

May 18, 2010.  I fiddled with some little details, refining rocks and water and stuff.  Mostly, I was avoiding the tree branches.  Some things you just have to be good and ready for before they can be tackled well.

May 11, 2010.  It’s starting to show some direction to the light filtering through the tree branches.

Second photo taken the same day – only a few minor adjustments were made.

Here’s my current project.  I began on April 27th, 2010.  This photo is my preliminary blocking.

Here it is all finished.  These photos really don’t do it justice.  I hope you like it.

This is where the water really started to glow for me.

I looked at a LOT of sailboats before I finally decided on this one.  I wanted to get the glow of that sunset along the curled edge of the sails.

That sky was just crying out for a seascape beneath it.

It all started with a picture I took with my cell phone of a gorgeous sunset over Seattle.  I was travelling up there to see a concert with my Mom and two of my daughters.  We had a great time and I got the beginning idea for a painting!

This is my latest finished painting that I neglected to post while I was working on it.  It didn’t take too long, but I think it turned out to be one of my favorites.

And this is a view of my little portion of the “studio”.  I paint with a wonderfully encouraging group of artists every Tuesday morning in the Fellowship Room of Colton Community Church.  Everything has to be portable so we can break down the art studio and have everything cleared away for Tuesday night bible study.

This is the entire canvas so far.  It’s definitely not finished yet, but it’s getting there.

This is a close-up view of the central bird.  I did some detail work all over this guy today and added some definition to the eye.

This bird is perched on the edge of the sand dune in the lower left area.  He looks, to me, like he’s about to skitter down the sand and investigate something.

February 16, 2010 – I started this painting session with this bird in the upper left area of the painting.  He’s a not as distinct as the other birds that are closer to the picture plane.

February 9, 2010 – I started with two of the smaller birds, then gathered my courage and went after those wings.  I’d really like to get out to the coast and really look at some seagulls.  By the way, the broken sailboat in the background is patterned after an old boat of my son’s that’s out in our backyard.  I’m thinking of draping an old tattered sail from the mast.

This photo is from later in the same painting session.  I gave the body of the seagull a little bit of form, a little color, a little shadow.  I haven’t felt brave enough yet to try the wings.  I’d like to see some sunshine coming through the feathers.

February 2, 2010 – I’m starting something new.  It’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before.  This is my first attempt at a bird of any kind, but this image just sort of stuck in my mind, so I guess I needed to paint it.  Here I have the background basically blocked it.  That’s the easy part.

August 4, 2009 – Here is the finished product!  The boat has been adjusted for the last time, more details added, more branch detail and leaves added to the birch trees and some fine grasses and weeds at the foremost edge of the pond.  Some little details were touched up here and there.  I love it!

July 28, 2009 – You can see the painting is much more developed now.  Shadows along the bank and through the trees, more reflections and highlights on the water.  The tree trunks have some more detail, too.  The boat has been adjusted a bit, as well.

This was step two of the block-in stage.  I began putting in the greens over the sunshine yellow and established the shadow under the foreground birch trees.  The boat is in there, but the placement isn’t exact yet.

July 14, 2009 – I needed to take a break from the big corner painting and I just wanted to PRODUCE something.  I’m working from a photo I took with my cell phone camera while visiting some longtime friends who live in Sweethome, Oregon.  This is their pond, complete with rotting old boat pulled up onto the bank.  It’s old and rickety and full of leaves and weeds!  I just love the looks of this old boat.  I painted in some areas of sunny yellow to portray the effect of that brilliant sunshine showing through the trees.

Here’s a closeup of the girls.  I painted them into a similar setting because I couldn’t stand to see them floating in mid-air and also to get an idea of how the colors are going to work out.  I was originally going to paint the towel that the upright girl is playing with in blues and greens, but that blended into the landscape colors too much, so I changed it to reds and it makes her much more noticeable.  I also used the same base color for the towel that I used for the sweatshirt on the new Cynde figure, which gives them some congruity.

May 12, 2009 – I’ve been sketching two more little girl figures and this is what I’ve come up with.  I did them originally with watercolor pencils and photocopied and taped them onto the canvas in various configurations.  I won’t bore you with all the photos I took of all the options!  I think I like both of these girls better than the one I did earlier, so I’m tossing the old one out.  Sorry, Cynde, I’ve repainted you!  I also thought I’d place one girl on each canvas, but that really made them look like they didn’t want to have anything to do with each other, so I decided it would be truer to my fond memory to place them together, playing underneath the old oak tree.

And here’s what we have so far.  I keep telling myself, “It’s getting there!”  I wish I had more time for painting.  I’m really getting excited about seeing this finished.

I thought it might be interesting to get a shot of the joint between the two canvases.  This is the most difficult part of the whole project.  This is where the angle of the sun has to shift from top right of the small canvas to top left of the large canvas.  It sounds a lot more simple than it really works out to be.

This is just a closer shot of the foregroound area of the small canvas.  I was trying to lay in those rocks and still keep the surface of the water over them.  I ended up wiping paint off and starting over again!  It took about three tries and then I got it.

Here is a close-up of the cliff area.  I worked on this quite a bit today.  I wish the photo were better.  Someday I’ll figure out how to really use photoshop and then you’ll get a better idea of what my paintings really look like.  These really don’t do it justice.

Here is an overall view of the larger canvas.  I worked over the whole painting today adding details, shadows, highlights, correcting colors.  It’s coming along, but I still have to sketch out another little girl.

April 28, 2009 – I added more rocks under the surface of the water here because this section, being closest to the viewer, should have the most detail.

This painting is taking up so much of my attention!  I can imagine splashing my feet in the water, hopping from rock to rock across the water, watching Cynde’s leaf boats drift downstream.  Some of this is memory, but not all.  The painting is not an exact replica of the place where we played in the summertime.  I find myself wanting to explore those rocks, to see what’s around the corner.  It’s a mystery.  It seems to me to have life!

I focused so much time and energy on these rocks today!  Adding shadow detail, adjusting tones of color, trying to create the effect of the light playing over the angles of the rocks.  Pushing the cliff wall back behind the foreground trees and trying to keep enough contrast between the rocks and the fir trees that are growing out of the cliff on the far bank.  I also added some water motion around the rock that’s sticking up out of the water at the base of the trees.

April 21 – I shifted Cynde over a bit.  She’s still a paper cut-out.  I’ve been working on the rocks at the right edge of the canvas, trying to make the join between the two canvases work better.  I refined some shapes by adding shadows and I added an old fallen-down log at the top of the cliff in amongst the trees.  I added some shadows in the branches and leaves of the old oak tree, too.

This is a shot I took with my cell phone camera.  I scanned my sketch, printed it out and cut and pasted (well, taped) Cynde onto the canvas.  I want to sketch myself at about 10 or 11 years old and play with positioning the two figures before I actually commit to painting them in.  I think I’ll have to adjust the splash of sunlight across her back a little when I actually paint her in.

March 31 – This painting really is a favorite memory of mine.  I sketched out my little sister at about 8 or 9 years old playing under the old oak tree.  She’s setting a leaf boat adrift on the water.  This was our favorite swimming hole, although we didn’t do much swimming, we just played in the water.

Today I added more definition to the center portion of the rock wall and gave it another tree.  I did some fine-tuning of the water line and tried to cool down the shadow color on the far side of the bank a bit.  I think it’s gaining more depth and looking a little less like the water is trying to run uphill!

March 24 – Still having camera problems.  Thanks, Mom, for taking these shots for me!  I didn’t do a whole lot of work on this canvas today, just some little touch-ups here and there.  A little sparkle on the water and some refining on the rocks under the surface of the water.

I did a lot of work here.  I toned down the blue-gray at the top of the rocks at the upper left.  I also did some more detail work to the cliff face and gave the rock shelf under the surface of the water some more shaping.  It was hard to stop painting!

March 17, 2009 – I’m having camera issues, so I haven’t updated for a while.  I added a spot of turquoise to the water here on the smaller canvas.  I spent some time looking at aerial photos of this stretch of the Little North Fork of the Santiam River and noticed that it’s made up of a bunch of stretches of river broken up by what looks like a lot of great fishing holes.  You get a deep hole, then it shallows out for a stretch that runs into another hole.

Okay, this is the whole thing so far.  I’m thinking of starting something smaller while I have this in process.  I’d like to look at something new.  You can only think about rocks for so long, you know!

I didn’t do much at this end.  This is the far right edge of the large canvas.  I darkened the water between the trees to try to bring them forward more.

I love this part of the rock face.  It’s beginning to have the right form.  The whole thing is sedimentary rock.  I’m trying to get the feel of those layers upon layers of rock.

I did a lot of work in this section.  I seem to be working this large canvas from left to right.

I did some fine-tunimg on these rocks and worked on the tree a bit.  I’m trying to keep some sunlit areas on the rocks in the background, but I’m not sure I have the tone right.  Rocks drive me crazy, but I love them!

Another detail from the smaller canvas.  I worked on defining the edges and forms of these underwater rocks.  I like the movement going on here.

Here’s a detail of the tree to the left of the small canvas.  I like the ripples and stuff going on in the water in this section.

Here’s the large canvas.  I added a rock and adjusted the water line on the left.  Those big rocks were pulling back too far and I wanted to move them forward a bit.  I added some shadows and details in the rocks.  I also added a bit of rock shelf in the foreground.  I’ll have to do some more work developing that.

January 27, 2009 – I’m doing lots of detail work now.  Trying to add a glow around the edges of the tree branches, some little ripples in the water, details on the rocks.  I added a tiny bit of foliage to the tree in the distance.

So here it is altogether.  I think I need to work on the join between the two canvasses.  It just doesn’t seem to be working yet.  It’s harder than I thought, trying to get the angle of the light to shift from one canvas to the other.

The cliff is beginning to have a little more definition, now.  I’m not even thinking about all the trees and brush that will need to go at the top of the cliff yet.  I’m going to have to face them someday soon, though.  I added a rock shelf under the surface of the water to the left of those tall foreground trees and some rocks to the far right of the canvas.  I can’t quite decide what tones to use on the left edge in the rocks.

January 17, 2009 – I haven’t updated this in such a long time.  The difference with this update is amazing!  I was blown away when I looked back and compared the stages this painting has been through with the point it’s at now.

This cliff is really puzzling me.  It’s not going to look right until I get a better picture in my head of where I’m going with this.  I like the rock shelf under the surface of the water, though.  The deep channel running through there got a little deeper-looking.  I like it, but it needs work.

Oct 29, 2008 – OK, maybe I’ll keep it!  I added some more rocks and that really helped.  I also modified the tree on the right, farther back.

I added color to this canvas, too.  It sure has a long way to go.

Oct 22, 2008 – I’m just starting to add some color.  Now it’s starting to look like something.

Oct 15, 2008 – This is my current work in progress.  It’s one of those crazy ideas I sometimes get when I’m lying in bed not sleeping.  The main painting is of a riverbank.  I’m hoping to fit it into a corner, with the smaller canvas to the left, so you can face the riverbank, then turn to your left and look upstream.  I have just sketched and blocked in the major shapes and shadows.  At 24×24″ and 24×48″, this is definitely the largest painting (or set of paintings) I have ever done.  It’s always exciting and a little frightening at this point.  I sure hope it works!