Feb 3, 2012 - Silk Road Covered Bridge Bennington, Vermont

Silk Road Covered Bridge,  Bennington, VT.   Like most winter days in VT, it was “cloudy with breaks of sun” as the forecasters like to say.  When I sat down to paint, there was sun light hitting the left – south – side of the bridge and some of it was passing through the lattice structure and landing on the white door casing on the interior right. By the time the drawing was done, the sun was pretty much gone.  I left the sun & shadow pattern on the inside of the doorway never-the-less.   The finished sketch is about “9 x 12″ and done in a D’Arches 140lb CP watercolor paint book.

Winter colors dominate this sketch, just like they do in the previous two – Feb 1 & Feb 2, 2012.   It is a challenge to create enough variety in the grays and other low intensity earth colors to keep shapes from merging with one another too much.    The grays in this sketch are mixed from either ultramarine or cobalt blue with burnt sienna, raw sienna or Quinacridone burnt scarlet.  Using these five pigments in varying combinations creates a nice variety of color and value which gives the sketch the look of winter without being too somber.

This can’t really be described as a “wet-into-wet” watercolor painting, and yet the technique is used in a number of places – especially in creating the look of distant forest without much fuss.   Beyond the distant trees in the background, it is also used on the foreground right roadway, the sky and in laying in the initial rusty, violety (if there is such a word) red on the covered bridge itself.

If there truly are trends that take hold, become popular and then eventually give way in watercolor, I would have to say that ultra, macro realism is the current look and technique for watercolor painting.  All the big national and regional watercolor exhibits seem to have more every year.  Sometime that doesn’t leave much room for those of us still painting in “older”, less trendy styles and techniques.  I tend not be a follower, so will continue working in the style and with the techniques that produce what I like to describe as “representational impressionism” seen in most of my work.

In the classes that I teach, I have noticed my students having two very different reactions to the wet-into-wet watercolor technique.  They love the look it produces, but seem to feel nothing but frustration when trying it themselves.    By popular request and in response to both of these reactions,  I have put together a new class called Wet-in-Wet Watercolor and will be offering it for the first time in just a couple of weeks.  The class will teach the basics of the technique along with several skills needed to handle wet-into-wet watercolor without, or at least with less, frustration.  Not only will the class teach the skills but is guaranteed to loosen up the work of anyone using them.   More info on the Wet-in-Wet Watercolor class can be found by clicking here.

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Feb 1, 2012 - Near Sunderland VT

I always encourage students in my classes to liberally buy and use sketchbooks to develop their skills.  Yet since, last fall when both art and non-art related things started taking up my time, I’ve been ignoring my own sketchbooks.
Beginning yesterday, Feb 1, I have a new commitment to liberally buy and use sketchbooks – actually, I won’t need to buy any since I already have a drawer full of them – and to post at least one new sketch every day.   I’ll ask that you hold me to it by asking me when you don’t see a sketch posted on a particular day.

The first effort is this one, sketched in watercolor in a Kilimanjaro Originial Bright White Paint Book,  was done just off Sunderland Hill Road in Sunderland Vermont.   It’s been an unusually mild winter in Vermont so far. In the valleys and lower altitudes, there is hardly any snow on the ground.  This view looks northwest through an old forest.  Although it isn’t seen from this vantage point, there is a stream just on the other side of the large foreground trees.  Rather than snow showers, we were having rain showers, which left the puddles in the road.  The sky alternately cleared and clouded over as I painted so this is a designed composite of the rapidly changing 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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"On The Point"

This watercolor painting depicts the gradual and subtle changes that occur as winter changes to spring.  During this time of the year the light is slowly becomes brighter and warmer, earth that has spent weeks under layers of snow begins to reappear and streams thaw and begin to visibly run at the surface again.

This scene is late in the day with bright slanting light and it’s associated long shadows.  Like many of my works, this watercolor painting emphasizes warm/cool contrast in its color scheme – perfect for depicting the everchanging balance of cold and warm weather.

 
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.

I enjoy welcoming visitors to my Studio Gallery. It is open by appointment – please contact me to arrange a visit.

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"Under The Canopy"

This painting began as a demo for my recent “Painting the Autumn Landscape” workshop, held last weekend.  On Sunday, the second day of the workshop, we decided to set up on the grounds of the historic Park-McCullough House in North Bennington, Vermont.  The grounds have many paintable scenes, but this one which included these three old trees attracted our attention.  The day was mostly cloudy with sunshine breaking through now and then.

The twisted, gnarled and rough trunks of older trees, deep shade with bounced light, and the filtered sunlight found under the branches of  tall trees are all attractions for me.  The composition was a bit difficult due to the separation of the trees.  For an artist, it is always appropriate to change visual reality.  In this case, the biggest compositional decision early on was where to place the trees in relation to each other. The decision was to leave the proportional spacing nearly as it really exists, mostly because I wanted to capture the foliage of the largest tree in the middle – specifically, the different areas of  that were back lit against the areas that were shaded, along with the large “U” shaped branch on the left side. I wanted un-obscured views into these areas so knew that I couldn’t move the left hand tree much closer to the middle tree.   Because of that, I decided to leave the right hand tree pretty much in place as well – actually, it has been moved a bit closer to the middle tree to keep it in the picture plane. This decision left two large,un-interestingly shaped background spaces on either side of the main tree.   To add interest to the areas, I made sure to provide activation  – graded washes in the deep background and the shapes of some shrubs along the low stone wall.

The overall effect works fairly well, capturing the look of tall, old trees in early autumn with their glowing leaf canopies, deep and luminous shade on their trunks and dark shadow on the ground underneath.

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.

I enjoy welcoming visitors to my Studio Gallery. It is open by appointment – please contact me to arrange a visit.

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"Afternoon Farm"

“Afternoon Farm” is one of 13 works which will be on exhibit at the Bennington Free Library, 101 Silver Street Bennington, VT from August 28 through December 31, 2010.   Planned as an ever-changing exhibit, Wallworks provides an opportunity for patrons to enjoy fine art while visiting the Library, and to learn more about the many talented artists who live and work in our community.

The exhibit will feature 13 of my watercolor landscapes which depict the variety of color, texture, light, shade, and shadow of the seasons in Vermont.

The Opening Reception is Saturday, August 28, 2010 from 1pm – 3pm.  The public is invited. For more information, contact the artist at 802-375-5548 or email at mail@tonyconner.com.

The library can be contacted at  802-442-9051 or on the web at www.benningtonfreelibrary.org

I enjoy welcoming visitors to my Studio Gallery. It is open by appointment – please contact me to arrange a visit.

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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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Family takes  priority during family vacations, so I sketched and painted less than I might have.  Still, I was able to get some work done on our recent trip to Hilton Head.   Living in New England means that I have very little opportunity to see and paint trees from the southeast.   Trees are a favorite subject of mine and are often featured in my paintings.  It was pleasing to be able to see and paint trees from a new area.  Obviously, palm trees don’t grow in the forests of the northeast.  The two sketches below are of a palm located in the courtyard of the condo complex where we stayed for the week.  The pencil sketch captures the reality of the tree, while the watercolor sketch is a study in color, light and shade.

By the time I did this watercolor sketch, I had adjusted my color mixtures to be more representative of the colors of the plants and foliage in the Hilton Head area.   My initial works lacked a bit of authenticity since I was using colors – particularly greens – that are more like those found in New England.  The sketch below of a beach and salt marsh near where we stayed shows the difference.  The green areas in the fore and middle ground are tall marsh grasses.  As sketched, the green is more like the green of a grassy field in the northeast.  Marsh grasses in this are tend to be a somewhat more intense yellow green than as depicted.

Port Royal Sound marsh & sky - Hilton Head Island

On this particular morning, the sky was overcast.  I was pleased to find that my favorite combination of cerulean blue and cadmium red did work well to capture the look of the sky.

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