Feb 5, 2012 - North Bennington Freight Station, February Sunset

Feb 5, 2012 – North Bennington Freight House, February Sunset.  I came upon this scene around 3:30 in the afternoon.  The winter sky was bright and cloudless and the setting sun was striking the freight house and the historic North Bennington passenger station brightly and at a very low angle.  The light was changing rapidly so I drew in simple shapes, mapped the lines that separated sunstruck areas from shadowed areas and began to paint as rapidly as possible.   In all, this sketch was completed in about half-an-hour – at least twice as quickly as any of the other sketches in this series begun on Feb. 1.

The color scheme in this sketch is not reminiscent of winter at all.  Both buildings are painted in a shade of maroon. The freight house is old and appears to be unused, so is not really in a state of good repair and has not been painted in some time.  The passenger station is well kept and is used by the Town of North Bennington for meetings.  Perhaps I was a little tired of the muted winter palette, as the warm colors of this scene were really appealing the moment I saw it.

Incidentally, a portion of the space in the old passenger station is also used for the annual North Bennington Art Park.  The North Bennington Art Park is an annual event in which many of the professional working artists in the area exhibit their paintings (indoors) and sculpture (outdoors).
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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February 4, 2012 - Front Yard Hawthorn Tree, February Afternoon

Feb 4, 2012 – Hawthorn Tree in the Front Yard – February Afternoon.  A very chilly and still snowless afternoon in February.   We have two of these Hawthorns in our front yard. I find nearly all tree varieties beautiful in one way or another, but these have a very unique, wildly twisted and curvy trunk structure with thick canopy branches that transition rather abruptly into thick tangles of small twigs at the end.  During the parts of the year when the trees are leafless, they cast wonderful shadow patterns on the ground.  On this day, the three main trunks of this tree and the angle of the sun combined to cast essentially one single, stark shadow on the ground.  Given that it has been a very mild winter and  there is still no snow on the ground, I noticed that the grass is still somewhat green and tried to catch the mostly backlit trunks and the dark green shadow they cast.  The color palette of this painting are the muted colors of winter again – with ultramarine and cobalt blues along with raw and burnt sienna dominating.

I painted this sitting on our front porch.  Since it was a very chilly day, I had to dash inside a couple of times to warm my hands.  It is painted in an old Liberte’ watercolor sketchbook.  From the looks of it, I last painted in it in 2009.   I’ve had this sketchbook for years – the sketch on the first page is dated 6/5/94.   Every time I use it, I find the working character a little odd and artificial.  Now I know why – inside the front cover is a description of the sketchbook and the paper which explains that the paper is a combination of half cotton rag and half “man-made non-allergenic fiber” , 80lb weight and acid free and manufactured by D’Arches – the famous French paper-making company.  I don’t know if these books are still made but it’s not my favorite surface; I’m not likely to purchase another one.
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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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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With the cloud cover, it was impossible to find a nice light effect, but some orange glow in the sky at sunset made for a nice quick “skyscape” sketch.  When I say quick, I mean it.  The sky wash was laid in with blue gray for the clouds and mixture of cad orange and cad red dropped in at the horizon.  As the sky dried, I went in quickly with a thick was of mostly cobalt blue for the more distant mountainside.  The nearer mountain is a mixture of cobalt blue, Daniel Smith’s Quinacridone Burnt Scarlet and some raw sienna added quickly and thickly over the wet sky wash.  Although there is virtually no snow on the ground in reality, I created a very simple forground with a dark stream running through a partially snow covered landscape.

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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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"Woods Edge - Afternoon"

5″ x 7″

Private Collection

This small painting  begun as a quick sketch study for a larger watercolor work. The painting itself has a nice feel on its own and so became a more finished work.

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.