Marion Sunrise, 12 x 12, UART 400

As promised, here are the three paintings that I did in Sarah Brown’s studio in Marion, MA.  The first one was painted from a photo I took that morning of light over Marion harbor. It was pouring rain when I painted it.  The underpainting was in three values: 2 shades of brown and a dark.  The photo was completely gray, black and white with no color. I used a variety of grayed blues, violets and greens in the sky, with yellow, and did a certain amount of smudging.  It was really fun and took about 1 hour to do!  A great way to spend time while it’s raining outside.

Then I worked on the painting that I originally was going to do as the demo–Houses on Lake.  I had decided I didn’t want to do it for that purpose, but brought it along. I did an underpainting with hard pastel and alcohol. The major change from the photo is the background mountain (or hillside). In the photo, it was all green with a lot of different trees sticking up.  I decided to simplify it with the violet, and added an additional large tree behind the house. I thought it worked much better.  But I don’t think this is a particularly great painting!

Wash Day, Madrid, 16″ x 12″, UART 400

And finally, the demo, which was done from a picture I took in Madrid, New Mexico, on the way to Santa Fe.  By far, the most interesting part of this town is the backs of the houses!  I found wash on the line and decided that this might make a good demo. My goal was to do a “center of interest” painting with the emphasis being on the wash and leaving the foliage rather loose. I did a watercolor underpainting to facilitate leaving some of it uncovered. I began the underpainting with no drawing at all, focusing only on the shapes of the dark and light.   I added charcoal lines on top of the watercolor to lay out the position of the buildings and wash.  I wasn’t pleased with the wash–a little too heavy looking, I think.  I added some sky at top, which really opened up the painting.  I think that this was successful as a demo, but again, probably not a great painting!