"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.

"Equinox Road"

This painting was posted shortly after it was completed in April 2008.  In that post, I talk about this work being metaphorical and composed just to communicate the way I sense the change of season between winter and spring – more about this painting can be found here.  A large cool shadow area covers most of the bottom third of the painting. Below are some other newer and older works that feature similar compositions.

"Deep Autumn"

"Winter Light"

"Cape Time"

"October Blues"

So, how come?  Why does this compositional convention show up so often in my landscape paintings.  The answer I gave during the demo is true – it works well as a compositional tool.  Beyond that, I have an affinity for the play of light in nature.  In a painting, the only way to convey light is to contrast it with shadow or shade – meaning that there must be some variety of darker values near the lights.   As I alluded in the earlier post, and as I try hard to convey to students in my classes, the composition of value shapes is what provides structural strength (or weakness) to a painting.  Personally, I like a solid visual step at the bottom edge of a painting, which is the reason that I so often include it in my work.   What would Sigmund Freud think?  Something deep, dark and troubling no doubt!    I prefer to think it’s just my best efforts at good composition. That said, perhaps I’ll mix things up in work to come – stay tuned!

"Park-McCullough View"

"Breaking Light"

"Afternoon Farm"

"Golden Afternoon"

"Rural Route"

Contact me if you have an interest in these 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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"Bridge In Morning Light"

4″ x 9″

Private Collection

Since it has been non-stop snow here lately it has been hard to get outside for new material.  In the case of this small watercolor painting, I went back to my sketch books.  Covered bridges are plentiful in Vermont and are painted by many.   It can be hard to take on a subject so well explored by artists over time.  Most of what is to be said about the subject has been said.  That said, I dove in anyway.  The watercolor paper chosen for the painting is by Sennelier, a French art supply company known for its fine professional grade watercolor paint.  The paper is from a small watercolor block shaped in this long horizontal (or tall vertical) format.  The paper itself has a heavy coat of sizing which makes it “slick” – the pigments lie on the surface of the paper rather than becoming absorbed into the paper fibers.

The focus for this work was getting a good composition onto the unusual dimensions of the paper.   A long span of covered bridge seemed to be a good fit for the page.   Without any particular color scheme in mind, I chose colors that are favorites of mine – cerulean blue, Daniel Smith’s Quinacridone Deep Gold (I blogged about this color in a September post) and Dioxazine Violet.    Deep Gold suggests autumn, so the painting depicts the bridge in autumn.

I am always attracted to light effects.   Light as it appears early and late in the day is particularly appealing in the way the slanting warm light affects all the surfaces it touches and causes any standing object to cast long shadows.    The combination of two cool colors and one very potent warm color suggested a play of light and shadow on the long side of the bridge.

The finished work seems to have captured the look.

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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Having lived in Vermont for the past 20+ years has not made it easier for me to endure winter.  It is long, cold and dark. Worse, there is usually not a warm spring with gentle rain and bright flowers as a reward.   People from places that have warmer, or at least, milder winters ask how I get through.  The answer I think is in the fact that while the weather can be a challenge, the winter landscape is quite visually beautiful and exists in a unique serenity.   The sun can seem to be absent for days at a time when, suddenly, the clouds open, the sun shines and the snow cover changes from flat white to mottled white, grays, blue, violet and even warm hues of ochre and yellow.  It is at those time that trees and saplings cast their sharp shadows across the snow.  Such was the case when I created this small painting.  The sun appeared briefly after several days.

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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"Watering Cans"

This is a quick sketch of two of my wife’s watering cans done as a demo for a recent class.  The cans sit on a table top and were catching the bright late summer light.  The pattern of light and shadows caught the eye of one of the students  so we used it as the subject for the day.   The color scheme is nearly mono-chromatic, using a limited palette of cobalt and ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and some quinacridone burnt scarlet.

It is large for a sketch, nearly filling a quarter sheet (11″ x 15″) paper.  The subject was sketched in 2B pencil on the paper first, large washes were placed on the cans first, the main shadow on the table surface was added next.  Once dry, shadows were added on the spout and side of the large can and on the underside of the handle on the small can.  The work was finished up with some glazes of blue and raw sienna on the cans to produce some 3 dimensional modeling and ambient light effects on the shaded side of the cans.

“Farm In Winter”

9″ x 12″

Don’t get the wrong impression, I am not pining for winter.  Although I am not a winter sort of guy -  I exist mostly indoors with a mug of hot tea not far away from December to April – there are many things that I find very paintable in the winter landscape.   Anyone who checks this blog often will realize that painting is a process with me.  The process begins with sketches.  Usually, I start with pencil sketches that have been drawn at one time or another, often outdoors  on location.  In this case, I came across the sketch, below,  from an older sketchbook.  It usually my habit to note the date and time of the sketch, although this one had no such notations, so I am not sure where the scene really is or when I sketched it.

In any case, I liked the composition a good bit, without much change.  The scene is suggestive of summer or fall, with lots of leaves on the trees.   I decided to go straight to a color sketch, rather than to pencil thumbnails.  One feature I wanted to emphasize in the final painting was the low, elongated left hand barn building.  In drawing the contours of the buildings for the color sketch, I elongated this building even more and connected it to its mate.  I wanted to suggest larger, complex farm building arrangement so added additional shapes that suggested additional buildings, sheds and/or wings.  To emphasize the “horizontal-ness” of the building, I also made the sketch in an elongated, or panoramic format. The actual size of the sketch is 2 1/2″ x 6″.

Although winter was not on my mind as I began to work, the contours were suggesting a peaceful and calm winter day. The notion of calm led to the selection of green as the local color of the barn buildings, since both color and value contrast would need to be minimized in order to convey “peace”.

The color sketch is shown below.

Color sketch for “Farm in Winter”

2 1/2″ x 6″

As you can see, I went to a more conventional “landscape” format for the final painting, thinking that it would actually emphasize the shape of the focal point even more.  I also brought the building forward and balanced their collective weight in the upper right, with the muddy road, a scrubby leftovers from fall in the lower left foreground.

“Crow Foot”

20″ x 20″

This work looks more like autumn than any other, although I had no particular season in mind. This work is more about color and design than anything else. The important subject is the play of light and shadow on the foreground tree trunk and on the ground. The contrasting of light and dark,warm and cool is a favorite concept for me. This painting uses both to present a view into a shadowy forest on a warm, sunny day. In many ways this is a minimalist work. There is little texture on either the tree trunks or on the forest floor or even in the paint marks themselves. There is consistency in the treatment of edges – nearly all shapes are hard-edged. The combination of these elements along with the warm dominance are unifying factors. The work uses simple shapes and forms with the rhythm of shadows providing movement and excitement. The square format is unusual for me and not really deliberate, although it seems to contribute to the modern, minimalist feel of the work. The original sketches, shown below were drawn in squares – for no particular reason, except that the square format appealed to me at the time. If you are interested in the process, read on….

As is often the case, I perused some old sketchbooks for ideas for this painting. In this case, one contained this series of three sketches of the foot of this old tree in the woods. The sketches are undated but it seems as if they had been done within the past few years. All were completed in an unusual square format. The sketches, shown below, are thumbnails each being approximately 2″ x 2″.

Thumbnail Sketches for “Crow Foot”

These sketches explore the composition of the shapes and values for the finished work. It is only since sharing my work on this blog that I have discovered how creation of a painting actually stretches over very long periods of time for me – months or years. Without dates, there is no way to be certain exactly when these sketches were completed. Clearly the pencil thumbnails convinced me that the composition should feature one main tree trunk with roots in the immediate foreground and lit by side light – since both color sketches feature that composition. Generally, the color sketches are completed after finding a value thumbnail sketch that I am comfortable with. As I recall, these were done sometime in the past year, although, again, they are undated. In rummaging through a portfolio of older works, I came upon these two color sketches, after I had completed the two studies shown below.

Color Sketches for “Crow Foot”

Two small compositions based on the same sketches. After discovering the pencil sketches, I completed these two color studies. Although they began as studies, I brought them to the stage of finished work and gave them titles.

“Old Crow 1″ “Old Crow 2″

Each of these works explores a slightly different viewpoint and points of emphasis. Both are somewhat less lively, even more foreboding and moody than the larger work. As studies, each helped in the decision process, especially in terms of color, shape and placement.

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