Outdoor Washtub

Water is all done but the varnishing. I think this may be Robert's favorite painting.




Spent the day doing photography for the new still life, tweaking the positions of elements and trying variations on the lighting. An excellent day. 

One of the pleasure of painting is permission to look closely and at length at a still life.  Drawing gets what I see into muscle memory. I've been told that good draftsmanship is based on basic hand/eye coordination.

Tomorrow I'll be toning the canvas, and the day after I'll grid it with white chalk. An 8x6" photo with a one inch grid works out to a five inch grid on a 30x40" canvas. I'll use that to translate the source photo into a fairly detailed pencil drawing.  Hey, if it was good enough for Michelangelo, it's good enough for me.

Blues

Water today. Worked on the reflections more. Love all the blues.

Shadows on curtains

Bocked in the curtain, fan shadow and corner of the mantle. The saturated color is delicious to me.

Working on the branches of the trees reflected in water. A breeze after doing the limbs of trees in Boomlift. Again, the saturated color is like a cup of strong, milky tea and toast with butter dripping from it - such a pleasure.

motion and stillness

Added another layer to the clouds and sky, and worked on the surface of the water. I loved adding the sky's broken reflection, bouncing off each angle of the surface of the waves.

The reflection off the saturated sand is still crude, but I don't doubt I can get it where I want it to be. Pondering the inclusion of more cloud in the upper right corner. I may just add some semi transluscent wisps.
I am drawn to the opposites - the crisp precision of the foam at the edge of the tide, the blurred melting refection on the sand, the stillness of the earth, the restlessness of the water. The invisible wind pushing the great towers of cloud.

Here's a closer look at the waves.

Isle of Palm

Here's the beginning. I painted the sea yesterday and the sky today. Trying to figure out the best way to render the there/not there edges of clouds. It's from a photo I took on the Isle of Palm last spring. What I loved was the way the sky reflected in the saturated sand.

I'm working on this using three reference photos. I love that it shows three of the four elements - earth, air, water - and the fourth, fire, is implied by the light.

It's only the first layer, but I think it's going to break the cloud jinx.