"Vents"

As sometimes happens when painting plein air, my recent Plein Air Workshop was visited by rain.  As a result, this work which began as a class demo was done while I was sheltered just inside a door to the back deck of the Media Barn at Taraden Bed & Breakfast.   The view was of  the next barn over and the massive vents lining the roof peak.

Selecting a good subject for a plein air painting involves seeing the big picture rather than the detail and simplifying from the overwhelming amount of subject matter.  In this case, my low – relative to the peak of the next barn – point of view, the swirling storm clouds in the sky and the interesting angles of the barn roof caught my attention.  The rain slick roof was reflective of  both the light and of the vents.

Although plein air paintings can be relatively accurate depictions of the artists surroundings,  it is generally my way to take liberties with color for most of my plein air paintings.  This one is no exception.  For the most part the scene in reality was a study in gray and green.  The sky, the vents themselves, and the sides of the white barn were all some shade of gray.  The barn trim and the one element of greenery – the tree at far left – were green.  Knowing that I would want to inject color, I took my cue from the vents, the tops of which were heavily weathered and corroded.  Thinking of corrosion as rust, I decided to include a heavy dose of orange  and related colors into the composition along with the local color greens.   With those two colors included, it was a conscious decision to create the painting based on a triad of secondaries — green, orange & violet – with the subtle violets infused into the grays.  The result is both harmonious and contrasting in a balanced way.

An interesting thing to note about the subject barn is that it was the studio for the noted abstract painter and one of the best known color field artists, Ken Noland – see his official website here, and his Wikipedia entry here.   The barn itself is very large and served Mr. Noland very well in the creation of the large works he was known for.

Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

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"Beached"

In my post on May 6, I mentioned that my usual landscape subjects were not inspiring me and that the my usual solution to lack of inspiration is to work on something new.  At that time, I began working on a still life composed of wine bottles placed in front of my studio’s picture window.   At about the same time, I began teaching a new class at our local career development center.   In preparing for the class, “Creating Watercolor Paintings from Your Photos” , I was searching through my own stock of reference photos for something to use as an example. The photo below caught my eye.

The photo was taken at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, in Vergennes, VT some years ago.  The subject boat was up on blocks as a static display – its days on the water were probably over.   The simple shape of the boat and simplicity of the working rigging was appealing to me, although I wanted the boat to be in a different setting.  I don’t often paint from photos but prefer to use them as reference.   In this case, the essential shape and character of the boat were lifted from the photo and placed on a beach.

Many of my seascapes feature cerulean blue, especially mixed with cadmium red to create soft, strong, granular grays.   Cerulean appears in the sky, water, shadows and even on the red hull of the boat.  I have an affinity for the bright overcast that is often the condition at the coast.  I’ve included that sort of condition in this work and find that the cerulean/cad red combination can help create a convincing representation.

Painting a seascape themed work probably has to do with some anticipation.  I’ll be showing work at two outdoor art festivals this summer – Beverly Arts Festival in Beverly Massachusetts in June and the Manchester Arts Festival in Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts.  Both are in the Cape Ann area – one of my favorite painting haunts.  I’ve planned for painting time around both festivals and am looking forward to painting along the coast again this summer.

"River Valley"

4″ x 11″

Private Collection

With out going into a lot of detail about why, part of my painting process often leaves me with odd shaped leftover pieces of paper.  Many of them are in this “panoramic” format where one dimension is more than twice as long as the other.   The shape is well suited for a panoramic view of a landscape scene.    The scene depicted in “River Valley” is not any where in particular, but rather it is a made up location designed mostly to allow the depiction of deep, lush wooded hillsides and a sparkling, reflective river flowing through.

The summer landscape can be difficult to paint since there is an overwhelming amount of green.   In this case, I decided to focus on the look of deep, cool shade and shadow areas on the hillsides by pushing the color toward blue.  The sense of summer green is there but is subordinate to the blues.   Surrounded by so much dark and low intensity color, the ribbon of sparkling river stands out as a visual pathway through the painting and into the distance.

Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

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"Side Street"

12″ x 20″

This painting began as a demonstration painting created for the residents of Equinox Village in Manchester Vermont.   The scene is adapted from pencil sketches done on Cape Cod in the early 1990′s.    Though the sketches are older, the sense of place from that July morning has stayed with me.  Although the Cape is a popular vacation area in the summer, and has all the things that go with that, the backroads and village streets away from the tourist areas are as quaint as one would expect.  The original sketches were created on a July morning, with bright sun already raking the streets, creating dramatic shade and shadow in contrast to streets, yards, fences and homes washed in brilliant light.

The challenge for this painting was two-fold: first, painting for an audience presents its own challenges in trying to balance speech – explaining techniques, color choices and thinking – while maintaining a focus on the work in progress; Second, balancing the many shade and shadow areas with the sun-struck portions of the painting.   Speaking while painting I managed.  More difficult was getting the shade and shadow areas just dark enough to convey the point without creating the sense of a “black-hole”.  The bottom half of the painting – edge of a building to the left, its small side yard, the large expanse of street, a white picket fence line, and the yard with tree to the right, are all shadow.  Since the main focus of the painting is the white cottage home in the upper center-right, the value difference between this large area and the brightly lit street that leads to the house needed to be minimized.   Low intensity color in the mid-value range accomplish the sense of shadow without creating too much contrast.  Detail is also kept to a minimum in this area – in fact there is not much detail in any area of the painting – only the illusion of it.

My audience commented on the choice of color for the secondary house, the red-orange one, in the upper left.  True, it was somewhat of a dangerous or – can I say it – daring choice.   Yet it was a conscious to add that color in that location in order to help draw the eye into the background  where the focal point is placed.  The painting is dominated by cool color – green, mostly, with cool blues and violets as well.  The introduction of the warmer hues provides movement, contrast and relief from the overall cool dominance.  Red, as the complement of green, adds a glow that helps convey the sense of bright sunlight ” bounced” from lit surfaces into the shady areas.   By the way, this red color is a low intensity red that looks brighter because of its placement in an environment that is saturated in its complement. The color itself is a hue called “Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet” produced by Daniel Smith Artists Materials.  It is a deep, cool, gray red,  and is a favorite color of mine. It mixes quite well with a range of blues to produce transparent grays and gray-violets.

In addition to the red house, a number of warm areas were introduced into the painting to support the sense of bounced light and to keep the eye moving through the painting.  The extreme foreground fence post had a good bit of warm grey-orange on the foreground face.  From there, one can find touches of warmth in all of the fence lines as well as in the doorway of the focal point house, in the tree trunks and in the cast shadows.

I have made several paintings out of these sketches, all very similar in composition.  Below is another version done some years ago.

"Cottage"

11″ x 15″

Private collection

This version takes a similar perspective of looking up the street toward a house catching the raking light of a summer day.   Notice the differences in the two paintings in terms of color choices, point of view &  value range

Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

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“Light Dusting”

10″ x 14″

This scene could depict either the early time of winter when light snows begin to cover the fields, or late winter when the snow cover is receding.  The title gives a hint that it is early winter and in fact that time of year is the inspiration. Unlike most of my work, this painting has a very limited and muted color palette – necessary for a realistic depiction of the terrain as it looks in early winter.

Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

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“Rural Route”

5″ x 22″

This watercolor painting is unusual in several ways.  It began as a warm up excercise using  an oddly shaped leftover piece of watercolor paper and leftover paint from the mixing areas of my studio palette.  Using a single brush for the entire painting – one of my favorite 1″ flats (Winsor Newton Series 295 aquarelle) and drawing no lines first, I picked up some palette gray.   Palette gray is a term I use for the pools of leftover pigments left on the palette during and after a painting session.  The colors tend to mingle freely creating areas at the edges of the pools where multiple colors have run together forming unusual grays and browns.

The first stroke placed on the paper ultimately became the facing wall of the small, dark gray farm building near the center of the picture.  Once placed, both the color and shape reminded me of a weathered old barn and of a previous winter farm composition – http://tonyconner.com/2008/11/18/new-work-designing-winter/ – and that  became the point of departure.

Trying to stick to the original exercise, I continued to use only the 1″ brush and the gray and brown leftovers from the palette.  The building roofs were created by painting the negative areas of sky and trees around them.  Wanting to add some color punch to the forground I did pick up some cerulean blue for the left foreground and some Ultramarine mixed with some of the “palette brown” for the muddy road.  By the way, I have recently begun using Ultramarine Blue by M. Graham & Co.  I find it to be a terrific watercolor paint, with great color character and intensity.

I finished up the painting by placing the falling down fence in the forground and glazing on some deeper and darker color on the faces of the building that were not catching direct light.
This and other works on this site are available for purchase. Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

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“Farmyard”

9″ x 13″

This is one of what I often describe as one of my “drive by” paintings.  Most of my paintings are the result of series of sketches and studies that culminate in a so-called finished painting.  Sketches completed on location are usually the starting point in this process, and I very much enjoy the “en plein air” painting experience.  Although I always have sketching gear with me when I am away from the studio, I don’t always have the time to stop and sketch.

That was the case with this work.  I spotted the scene as I was driving by, back in early December.  Late in the afternoon, with only a small amount of snow on the ground at the time,  I passed by this forlorn looking building surrounded by fields that looked as if they had not been tended in quite some time.   Along with the building was a single tree – sapling really – casting a long shadow across the yard.   My car flashed by as I did my best to commit the scene to memory.   Within a day or so, I had sketched out a composition on paper and begun to paint.  After several sessions of studio work – this painting emerged.

This and other works on this site are available for purchase. Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

“Uphill Farm“

9″ x 13″

All of the recent snow has made begin to think of days when there is no snow on the ground.  This work is the end result of a series of on site and exploratory sketches – the whole process is described on my artists’ blog.  The work depicts bright sunshine and surprisingly spring-like color on a November day here in the northeast.

This and other works on this site are available for purchase. Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site. Email me at tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

“October Leftovers”

10″ x 14″

Another painting of the autumn season. The look of moving water reflecting the colors of the environment around it has become a new inspiration for my work recently. Like “Late Autumn – White Creek“, this painting features a stream and its banks, along with the trunks of the trees near the ground.  This painting is a depiction of an autumn day in what I like to call “mid”-autumn – that time when leaves are beyond their peak and the branches of many trees are bare.  What leaves remain have faded a bit in color.  Despite the lack of leaves, the waning light of the sun means that there is darkness in the depths of the forests.  The color scheme for this work is a favorite of mine – the complementary color scheme of blue and orange.  In this work, orange and other warm colors dominate, giving the work an upbeat feeling even though this time of year is really a time portal to the darker days of winter.

This and other works on this site are available for purchase.  Contact me if you have an interest in this or any other paintings on the site.  Email me at  tc@tonyconner.com or by phone at 802-375-5548.

]]> http://tonyconner.com/2009/12/03/october-leftovers-new-autumn-painting/feed/ 0 http://tonyconner.com/2009/11/06/new-painting-depicting-autumn/ http://tonyconner.com/2009/11/06/new-painting-depicting-autumn/#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:53:43 +0000 TC http://tonyconner.com/2009/11/06/new-painting-depicting-autumn/

“Late Autumn – White Creek“

11″ x 15″

Private Collection

The change of season from summer to fall to winter is rapid and dramatic from late September through late October.  I have several works that explore this theme currently underway.  This is the first of the works to be completed.  More to come.