“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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"Barn Snowscape"

“5 x 7″

Private Collection

This small work began as a study for a larger composition and took on a life of its own.  The main challenge for this work and for the larger painting was in balancing the warm and cool areas and in unifying the colors.  The background went in first with yellows, oranges and mixed violets for the forest and the trees.  I wanted to use blue  for the snow shadows – primarily cerulean and ultramarine – which I did.  The problem was that the foreground and back ground did not relate.

The solution was to pull background color into the mid and foreground, while bringing the cool blues up into the sky areas.  The barn itself contains colors from all areas of the painting.  Because of this and because it is the focal point of the painting,  it created a great deal of harmony and unity on its own.

There are three other significant locations where color was added specifically to create unity – the silo, where an intense spot of cerulean blue was added high, so that it would overlap the background, while using the deep violets from the woods on the lower parts;  the left forground snow cover has both violets and a spot of warm orange mingled with the ultramarine; and the fence post to the right, which anchors in the foreground and overlaps the mid-ground and background.  The post was the last item painted and received cool blues where it overlaps the background and warm orange-grays where it overlaps the cool snow shadows.

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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“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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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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“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.

"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.

“Late Winter” – Watercolor landscape – 13″ x 17″

More information about the creation of this work, including the original pencil sketch, can be found at my artists blog.

Interested in this painting or any of my other work – contact me via email – mail@tonyconner.com; or by phone – 802-753-1156

“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.

“Equinox Road”

20″h x 27″W

This work is available – contact me for more information

This work, with its final details and adjustments made only a few days ago, represents the final statement of a series of explorations in paint. It’s title, as well as the painting itself is more metaphorical than literal. The idea began with a quick color sketch in early February. That sketch, show below, was created on the fly focusing on composition and color rather than subject.

“Winter Sketch”

Thumbnail sketch 3″ x 4″

Although the idea was to explore a winter theme, once completed, the sketch appeared to feel more like the the time between winter and spring, where winter hangs on in patches of snow while the brightening sun spreads warmth over the cold landscape. A few days later, after having considered the initial sketch, and mulled over the image, I created another thumbnail sketch, shown below.

This sketch was created specifically to explore a color scheme that would better convey the contrast between gathering warmth and retreating cold. There are more warm hues and warmer mixtures of the cool hues and a stronger play of direct light.

After completing this sketch I decided to do a larger study to help work out composition, color and color mixes. This work, shown below, is the result. It was compelling enough to be given a title. More importantly, it was invaluable in discovering where I would encounter problems and showed where the the composition would need adjustments.

“Equinox Time”

8″h x 12″w

This work is available – contact me for more information

In earlier posts I have talked about the process of creating a painting. The question is often asked and it is a struggle to answer because, for me at least, so much of the process occurs in thought and consideration rather than in action. This post includes four physical works completed between Feb. 4 and March 30 – almost two months. While these were not the only sketches and paintings started, worked or completed in that time, the question could be asked as to whether these four couldn’t all have been completed in just a few days. The answer is both yes and no and has to do with the internal, non-linear, often wandering, parts of the process.

Thanks for taking a look at this latest work. Enjoy the coming of spring!

Well, the work is finally finished and is presented below – or I should say one version is finished. More on that below.

This watercolor painting is titled “West of Tinkham” and is 9″ h x 13″ w. It is so named simply because the original pencil sketch, made in November 2005, has a note “On Myers Road, west of Tinkham”. This place in Shaftsbury, Vermont is a favorite sketching area of mine. The area is very rural with both a great deal of forested land as well as many open, rolling fields. I enjoy the look of rolling fields in winter. When one thinks of a blanket of snow, the tendency is to think in terms of the whole surface of the earth covered in a uniform layer of snow which covers everything. Even in this snowy part of the world, unless there is a substantial amount of the stuff, the earth generally shows through here and there. For the painting, the task was to create the feeling of those rolling fields and forested hills while also creating a well balanced, well designed watercolor painting.

My earlier post indicated that I expected to finish the work within a week. As often happens, the work took longer than expected. While working on this a painting, there are many short burst of intense “brush and paint to paper” work, and many longer periods of staring at the work while evaluating it – such as it was at each level of completion.

As mentioned above, the point was to create a feeling and mood, in the context of a well designed work. Winter scenes always present a unique design challenge in balancing the values of the various passages – for the most part, winter landscape paintings will always include both whites and very dark darks along with the mid values. As I see it, there must either be more white or more dark with enough mid-value areas to stabilize the value structure. The sky, distant background and dark areas that represent forested land all went in quickly. Then came the non-snow covered fields. Initially, only the immediate foreground, the middle-left field and a small patch of visible earth on the distant far-left field were painted in. The remaining snow-covered fields appeared very stark and empty. I added some subtle, light washes to the snow covered areas in order to tone them down and unify them with the rest of the work. While it helped, it was not enough. Over the course of the past week, I have continued to carefully place additional areas of brown earth – starting first in smaller areas – first the distant field in the upper right, then the closer field in the upper left. Finally, touches of earth showing through on the far distant middle field were added along with some dry brush work in the foreground field on the left. Compare the treatment of these areas to the color sketches in the earlier post.

At the beginning of this post, I remarked that this painting is one version of the painting. It is often the case that a sketch or series of sketches will inspire more than one painting. This is likely the case for this particular series. As mentioned, this is a smaller work. I had in mind the idea that this composition was a good basis for a larger work. In addition, in working through the sketches, several different color schemes seemed to work as well as this one. While the next version is not on the board at the moment, there are likely others to come.