In A Softer Light

Fourth week of class: Belvoir, oils on canvas board, 9" x 12"

The dawn's light was soft, presage to an overcast day. Driving to class the clouds hovered over distant Baltimore and the Chesapeake Bay in amazing formations: long, flat layers with torn edges. The light from the sun filtered through the violet clouds giving soft orange hues in places. The planes of trees at different distances were perfect for atmospheric studies. I almost drove off the road while looking. How I wished I could snap away with my camera while driving! Around here it's only on the highways that we seem to get those wide panoramic views.

The class met at Belvoir again, same as last week, but the light was so different. I wondered how we would render the difference, and Lee's demo was a great explanation of how the change in light affected the colors to soften and make them earthier. After all, that is what we are concerned with as painters: the light, how it affects objects. My awareness continues to expand, and here's my painting to prove it.

Saffron Harvest

Saffron crocus

Saffron is a spice valued in Spanish cuisine which is very expensive. Many years ago I remember the grocery stores would keep it under lock so people couldn't steal the tiny envelopes containing a few pistils, which were valued at around $5 in those days. I can't recall even seeing these at a regular grocery for years; I shudder to think what the price might be in a specialty store.

This ingredient is essential for paella and for real Cuban yellow rice, so I decided to grow my own. A few years ago I planted about 20 bulbs of saffron in the front yard. This past week they started to bloom: this is one of the flowers of the beautiful autumn-flowering crocus. The orange three-pronged stigma is the part used for the spice. I've harvested about a baker's dozen flowers so far, hope for a few more before the season ends.

I've seen photos of the area in Spain where saffron is grown commercially--it's a fairy-tale setting of round hills and ancient windmills. The flowers are picked in the morning as they begin to open, and traditionally are processed in family kitchens. The saffron workers' hands are stained orange from stripping the stigmas from the
thousands of flowers needed to make an ounce. Yet an ounce of the spice is worth thousands of dollars.

The Colors at Belvoir

Third week of class: Belvoir, oils 9" x 12"

The Road at Belvoir, oils 9" x 12"

These are the two paintings I did yesterday at our painting class with Lee Boynton. The class was actually in the morning, but since I was free for the entire day, I brought my lunch and stayed to do a second painting in the afternoon.

The weather is turning crisper and the fall colors are starting to show, so the day's challenge was to find just the right colors to express the light and atmosphere particular to the unique day. Our class was held at a place called Belvoir, a private estate in Crownsville that had once belonged to the Scott family, renowned for having produced Francis Scott Key.

In the 1920's part of the estate was bought by relatives of Lee's mother-in-law, and is now owned by a private academy. We had permissions to use the grounds, and will be meeting there next week as well. I suspect Lee selected the location not only because it's bucolic and private, but because that maple tree we painted as it was beginning to turn, will likely be flaming with color by next week. I'm off to find more fall color this afternoon and tomorrow if the weather stays fine. Tune in next week.

Un-local Color

Spa Creek, 2nd week of class, 8" x 10"

What a beautiful day! Driving to Annapolis there was lots of "atmosphere," that light mist that suffuses everything around here on early fall mornings, fogging the distance. A bit of it stayed in the air as our class set up to paint at the same location as last week, this time in color.

Trying to find the right colors to render the effect of sunlight and shadow on the trees and water was much easier after Lee's demo and his explanation, and here's my painting, with a little help from our teacher. I 'm starting to understand how to organize my paintings better so I can achieve the effect I want. Now I'll be off to practice some more: the weather promises to be wonderful all weekend.

Painting for the Colorblind?

Spa Creek in Black and White, oils on canvasboard, 8" x 10"

This is one of yesterday's paintings done in Lee Boynton's class. His approach to teaching is that to understand landscape painting it's easier to start with value studies in black and white, but that doing these value studies in charcoal, pencil, or pen and ink (which is what most of us have done before) doesn't necessarily translate into oil painting: the student must use oil paint in order to understand how to work with it. So for this first session, we painted only with black and white paint.

I like the way he breaks down the process of bringing order to the painting. First, he subdivides the painting into three basic values: light, middle and dark grays to create the composition. Each value represents an area of the landscape, with the sky generally the lightest value, the ground the middle value and the trees the darkest. Once we have the shapes of those three areas established, the composition is in place and it should "read" as a representation of reality as well as an abstract composition.

Now to begin to articulate what we are trying to represent, each value is subdivided into three more values within that range. Within each subdivision, we can begin to define the sky as generally lightest at the horizon and darkening toward the zenith. The ground plane (in our case the water in the creek) again has subtle variations, while the variation in trees gives an idea of the distance from the viewer and their shapes.

The title of my post is intended to be amusing--contrary to what I once imagined, people with total color blindness (achromatopsia) do not see the world as we would on an old black and white TV set. They actually are quite impaired, unable perceive critical visual information in bright daylight. The neurologist Oliver Sacks writes brilliantly about this unusual condition in his book "The Island of the Colorblind," about an island in the Pacific where this rare genetic condition has a high incidence. In a chapter in another of his books called "The Case of the Colorblind Painter," he writes about a painter who becomes colorblind as a result of brain damage, and the fascinating ways he adjusts to his new life in the absence of color.

It's amazing how seeing in color informs us about distinctions between objects, distances and spatial configurations, not to mention how lovely it is in and of itself. Now that we have a better understanding of the underlying order in a painting, next week our class will start dealing with the complexities of color.

Paint Annapolis

Conduit Street, oils on canvasboard, 12" x 16" N.F.S.

Paint Annapolis last weekend was a fascinating event. I spent the better part of three days there, commuting back and forth from Columbia and sold two paintings: one off the easel at the city dock sale after the Dueling Brushes competition and another at MAPAPA's All Members show at Maryland Hall.

The juried artists' work was fabulous , specially the prize winners; I am very glad to have fallen in with this group of truly serious artists. It seems to me that this is what real painting is all about: none of the gimmicks of conceptual art, installations or other celebrity-seeking artists' traps we hear about ad nauseam, just plain skill and lots of work.

This is my third painting, a quiet dead-end street just a few blocks off Main Street where I spent two delightful afternoons reveling in the perfect weather. Comparing my work to the work of more advanced artists made me want to become part of this Annapolis School of painting. The lineage goes back to the Cape Cod School of Art, the premier school of American Impressionism, but with its own local flavor.

I found that Lee Boynton, an artist who is credited as one of the artists who started the Paint Annapolis event, was teaching a class at Maryland Hall starting this week, so I signed up for his class. I'm really looking forward to working with him: his passion and committment to painting is contagious!

A Birthday Gift From Above

Island, (original sold) digital prints (giclee) available.

An envelope from Gallery 1683 came in the mail yesterday; it was my copy of the gallery's consignment sheet for the two paintings I'd dropped off last Friday. The sale of a small giclee was also listed, and next to it, hand-written, J. Travolta and a smiley face. Could it be for real? John Travolta bought a digital print of my "Island" at the gallery? I called the owner today to verify and here's the story.

Another artist at the gallery also happens to be a yacht broker in Annapolis, and John Travolta was in town to pick up his yacht for a cruise to Maine. He mentioned that he was looking for art for his yacht, so Chris arranged a private appointment for him at Gallery 1683. The owners were out of town, but their daughter and another gallery artist who lives there opened the gallery for him. He bought four original paintings and my little giclee.

So there you have it-- I'm in John Travolta's collection. Island is probably hanging in the head, but whether there or on the poop deck, it's still quite an honor to have my work selected by Travolta, one of three artists from among the many artists at gallery.

My birthday is a little more than a week away, and here I am scheduled to go in for a root canal re-treatment a few days before, so this sale is like a birthday gift from above--just the thing to cheer me up!

Fawns in the Morning

Yesterday morning was cloudy; as I was getting up Herb called out "Deer alert!"
Two fawns had wandered into our back yard, browsing on vines while one and then the other seemed to keep a look out. They went as far as the fence at our neighbor's yard, staying close to the woods, then came back. A doe showed up a few minutes later, presumably the mother of the one young enough to still have spots. I grabbed my camera and stepped out on the deck to snap a few shots. The deer weren't fazed at first, but the moment they heard the buzz of the shutter, they grew skittish and then the doe took off with the fawns at her heels.

In the evening, the sun was out and as we were going out on the deck to enjoy the golden hour, I saw a groundhog up in our neighbor's mulberry tree that overhangs their peach tree. I ran for my camera again--I knew without a photo nobody would believe it. I had a hard time believing my own eyes the first time I saw this rascal in the tree earlier this summer--groundhogs can climb trees! This one is young, agile, and fearless--he's about 15-18 feet off the ground on a precarious perch, trying to get at the peaches.