A BREAK IN THE RAIN

Columns    14x11,    framed in gold,   $495

A ha! A sunny morning!  I headed out by 7:15 this morning to paint on location.  It rained "rivers" last night, so the sunny morning surprised me.   The Delano Rose Garden here in Decatur is always an easy choice for painting.  Wish you could have smelled the roses.   These hydrangeas were showing off in the morning sun. By 9am the sun had gone away, and returned to our usual overcast weather for the last month.   It will look better when I straighten the columns!

This one would be something nice for your home.

contact Robin -  Lroberts@hiwaay.net  

IS SPRING OVER?

Mist Lifting , 24x36, oil $1400, framed in simple gold.

start

Mist - almost finished - can you spot the differences in the finished version?

and my palette after the finishing.

You saw this painting on an earlier blog. It didn't take this long to paint it, just this long to decide what tweaking was needed. Or maybe I just wanted to prolong the season.

I feel an urge to paint horses now.........

FUN WITH PAINT

FUN WITH PAINT
Today I'm featuring 3 painters in our monthly oil painting class. There are several more, and they're all GOOD. I really have to dance to keep up with them. And they're brave. Instead of being intimidated, they all just jump right in and seem to enjoy the process of figuring it out. That's all we can ask anyway - am I putting the color and value in the place where it belongs? Then it all comes out in the end. This teapot project called for simple color which seems to emphasize the curves in the composition.

Victoria McConnell- great drawing, careful attention to design - and look how those colors work together and heighten the sense of light passage. At this mid stage it has all the "bones" and the rest is gravy!
Sandra Letson- notice the rhythms in the compostion with a good solid feel. The color harmony is much better than my photo. The scheme of secondary colors is purple, gold and green - notice the purple dominates and the greenish gold supports it. This is mid stage too, but is great with or without the reflections.
Karen Whitley - just makes you want to pour the tea! The warm and cool alternation is what makes it so gleaming, and the subtle colors let those curvy lines become important for our eyes to play with.
One of the points is that we don't have to be whiz-bang professional artists - we just enjoy learning to see what's really there and deciding what to leave out! I've said it often = I can't make up anything as exciting as what I see in nature.
Here is the reference:




and my demo painting/study


Click on the images to see the brushwork.
p/s information on classes is on the website RobinRobertsARt.com
I offer an introduction class to get started - it's scheduled separately from the monthly class.
questions: lroberts@hiwaay.net

SPRING LANDSCAPE

24X36

SPRING LANDSCAPE - the beginning.

Perhaps this one is mid way - I hope! The peonies may have been upset by the 6 to 8 inches of rain we've had, but the wisteria this year was great. Wisteria will be the subject of this painting when it's finished. As I travelled around 4 counties this spring, I saw numerous places where wisteria draped over trees for a half mile or so. This scene though, is only a mile from home when the sunlight glowed through the wisteria as I came around the bend in the road.

If I'm lucky, I'll capture that sparkling morning sunlight when it's finished. All I have to do is get that bottle of sparkling sunlight and apply it to the canvas!

There isn't much texture yet on this painting, so clicking on the image might show the smooth texture of the clay surface on this brand of canvas. When it's finished, there will much more paint to see.

BLACK HORSE

BLACK HORSE

BLACK 9x12 oil on board
This painting was a demonstration for class today. I used it as a way to talk about drawing. It started upside down.....



as in the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. We talked about the importance of getting the silhouette right, watching for angles by using our inboard horizontal and vertical ability ( the equivalent of gridding), and and attention to the spaces between things - like legs. We also talked about the willingness to wipe out and start over to get the shaping right. That helps to take the fear off drawing.
This horse presented a good example of using simple large dark and light shapes. Simplifying. Clarifying. Watching warm and cool relationships. After I got the shapes going to the point where I could continue, I turned it right side up to do the color work - and we had that AHA ! moment - realizing it's not a HORSE, but a collection of shapes. The next part was observing the color of the shapes inside the body, paying attention to edges. Could just as easily have been an outboard motor or a face. Now you know all the secrets!
Click on the photo to see detail - apologies for the wet paint glare.

BACKWARD IN SEASONS

February Frost, about 20x30, oil on canvas
When there is nothing to lose, sometimes the painting improves!
This painting started with enthusiasm, then got lost. I could hardly look at it. So I attempted some fixes with glazing, with the idea that if it didn't work I would just recycle it. Now it looks presentable. It took more than glazes - some minor composition changes and temperature adjustments helped this simple scene that jumped out at me from the side of the road. It was back in February. The weather had been warm enough that we were knowing spring was around the corner, but a little frost nipped the fields waiting for plowing.
Click to see detail.
Now back to the present season................

PAINTING ON THE RIVER

start

ON THE COOSA RIVER, that is

Steadfast 11x14, oil on linen board, framed in gold , $450 at Gadsden (Al) Museum of Art through June 5
This is day Four from the Southeastern Plein Air Festival in Gadsden Ala. The first painting on this day was this little one about 7:30 in the morning:

Silver Morning, 6x8 oil on board

Everything was so quiet, like the sun wanted to sneak over the trees.

The painters were fanned out along the Coosa River in several locations. I scouted the location between the new bridge and this rusty old original bridge. The new bridge presented a lovely challenge and several painters came up with WOW compositions. But the old rust and concrete kept calling to me over the more graceful and modern bridge. The closer I looked, the more I became attracted to it. My challenge was that the composition forming in my mind would not be the viewpoint most attractive to a collector. But I did it anyway. My habit while plein air painting is to set the easel at a sharp angle to the scene I'm painting and look over the shoulder back and forth. It became a joke among artists and visitors about what scene I was looking at. People would peer over my shoulder looking straight ahead over the easel, trying to understand the scene they saw with the strange marks on the canvas. Actually the scene would be directly to my left.

There is much less texture on these paintings than in previous paintings here on the blog, which you can see by clicking on the images.

The Gadsden Museum will have an auction on their next First Friday event, JUNE 5. First Fridays in Gadsden are a BIG, FUN, FREE event. The streets ( Broad Street) are closed with all kinds of entertainment. The Museum is on Broad street downtown in the middle of the festivities, and you can preview the 300 paintings we produced during the paintout. And you may bid on these two, or contact me lroberts@hiwaay.net

SECOND DAY PAINT OUT

Evelyn's home, 6x8

It's not a good idea to show so-so paintings, but I'm using this one as an illustration of how the painters got the royal treatment at the Southeastern Plein Air Festival in Gadsden Al. In the front yard of this home was the tent used as volunteer headquarters where they fed us lunch and kept the painters supplied with water and entertainment.

I wish I had done several things to improve this little painting. I think I was just dazzled by the gardens and homes nearby and dazzled by the way we were welcomed and encouraged.

Gee, those iris by the white fence were lovely.......and the paint above the brick on the house really was a beautiful turquoise

PAINTING AT THE WINERY

PAINTING AT WILLS CREEK WINERY - Alabama has a treasure near Gadsden - WillsCreekVineyards.com. Owners Jahn and Janie hosted the Southeastern Plein Air Festival (sponsored by the Gadsden Museum of Art) Tuesday. About 25 painters enjoyed the acres of vineyards, donkeys, mountains, and ponds. I was SO exicited to be there painting plein air (outdoors on location). It was so inspiring that I finished 3 paintings. I think everyone turned out a great painting that day.

New Buds, 11x14 oil on panel, for sale online or at the live auction at Gadsden Museum of Art on the first friday in June. $425 Gadsden Museum