Summer Street Project

1. Developing the perspective and selecting the light for this Summer Street painting turned out to be the easy part.

2. My photo references were in brilliant sunlight with dappled shadows from tall trees in neighboring yards, so I established the lights & darks & placed the various plants and objects.

3. Starting to paint the assorted plants, I faced a real challenge-green. My first view of this house, several weeks ago at the Buffalo Garden Walk, I exclaimed about the front of the house-the green of the house & the Hydrangea leaves coordinated to emphasize the flowers. Now that I was painting the greens, I wanted to find differences. Kitty had used blues & light green leaves in her garden, but the light on the building had already created a variety of greens for background. I love a challenge, but this one took a while to work out!

4. Thank goodness for flowers! Notice the white lilies & the begonias on the porch rail, the blue hosta.

I continue to wonder if it is harder to grow & maintain a garden, or to paint it--as my own has overgrown in this sunny-& rainy-summer as I painted in the studio upstairs.

Chasing the Sun on Summer Street, oil 11x14 2008

New painter in town

It took until after 1 am to arrive in Buffalo, but Sandi & Bobbie were here for the weekend. They left the bad weather in NYC to enjoy blue skies & barbecue here. We took Bobbie to the airport today, but Sandi will be staying through the week. Tomorrow she will paint plein air after a morning visit at Riverwood.

Jet Blue adventure, August 2008 [photo by BTP]

Torrit Grey Competition

An annual painting contest limits artists to painting with white, black & the annual 'Torrit grey'. It is created by the Gamblin company by cleaning the filters of accumulated gook & giving tubes away at art stores. It is a 'green' use of mixed paints that would otherwise be garbage. This is my 2nd time entering the Torrit competition, the first was in 2006. The scene is from Buckhorn, a late snow on budded trees. Click here for details, you can see last year's entries.  Gamblin Artists Colors: Torrit Grey Competition

Spring Interrupted by Snow, 8x10 oil

402 Summer Street

NFPAP artists visited the cottage district again this year for one of our summer paintouts, with GVPAP.

I had walked the area on the weekend with Carl, discussing several options for painting on Tuesday. However, we were there in the afternoon, and the light was reversed & all wrong for me on the second morning visit with paint & canvas. This spectacular painted brick cottage had caught my eye-the green of the house behind the hydrangea leaves made the lavender & pink snowball flowers look like fireworks in the garden, & the morning light made it even better. Fortunately, there was a little shade tree across the street for me. Peggy Walker & Joan Shaw were painting close by & the homeowner, Kitty has a lovely daughter, Emma, who engaged us all as she painted her own first plein air of a newly planted street tree.

Although this is basically a plein air, there were so many details and architectural delights that it took three sittings to complete. If you think this house is sweet, go to the Buffalo cottage district-one house after another is a delight!

Summer on Summer Street  oil 11x14 2008

2009 Calendar Goes to Press

The calendar went to the printer today. There were a few glitches along the way-my errors, because the screen images could not match the proofs. Of course, I knew that, screens are backlit with light & paper proofs are ink on paper. I guess that's why they make proofs. Everything is fixed, thanks to Carl's endless patience with my impatience.

What was the hardest part? Choosing January. I just could not decide how the year should start, but my interest in night pictures caused me to paint this one...just a few weeks ago. As soon as I had it half done, I knew it would be right for 2009. There are actually 4 paintings from Niagara Falls again this year, they just are not as obvious.

If all goes well, there will be calendars at the Lewiston Art Festival this coming weekend!

Backpage, 2009 Calendar