Just another wonderful Monday.

Though it is still cool, hints of Spring are showing in the few Redbud Trees I  have seen in bloom and the visit of a Blue Jay . I walked the Gulf Beach yesterday and found many a treasure as the shells were plentiful. I wished for warmer water as many were within a few feet of shore, yet I was unwilling to soak my blue jeans. I have moved my studio space inside for the winter and look forward to the move back out to my open air garage. It won’t be long now.

As you can see in the photo to the left, I am close to completion of another in my “Schoolhouse Beach” series. This is a commission, as was my last. It is tedious work and I felt the need to break away to paint a shell. Most are unaware of the planning, time and various tasks that are involved in creating a successful painting. My pieces are started in one of  three different ways. For my “holistic” pieces such as the Schoolhouse series, the Rock and Shadow series, as well as my water pieces…I begin with a series of photographs I have taken of the subject which I reproduce as a large color copy, mount on cardboard, cover in a sturdy, clear plastic and draw a simple grid on top. The same grid is drawn onto my canvas. From there I project the image onto the canvas, sketch out the dominant shapes and then refer to the photo copy for a careful rendering on the canvas of the image. The same photo copy will be at my side through to completion. The term “holistic” is my own. Similar to Monet’s Water Lily series, with these images the entire canvas is treated with equal importance or “as a whole”. There is not a single object or place in which the artist is focused. I am asking the viewer to take in the vision as a whole. No element is more important than any other.

With my beloved seashells, which I have been fascinated with since I was a young girl, I sometimes start with a sketch, but often there is no need. I have been drawing them and gazing at them for so long I feel they are a part of me. So I simply place my subject atop my canvas, pull out my acrylics and sketch out the shell directly onto my canvas. It looks rather odd I have realized, the relatively tiny shell perched on top of a large canvas. It makes me smile.

The use of acrylic is new to me. It dries very quickly, is much less of a mess and provides me the means to get my image down, provide a colorful base coat, and then immediately pull out my oils. Oils can take anywhere from days to weeks to dry here, depending upon the humidity level. I like to use layers of color which is not always readily apparent to the viewer. No matter…it adds a richness and depth that would not be there as when I paint “alla prima”. This is derived from the Italian phrase which means “at the first” referring to a painting that is completed in one session without an underpainting. If one were to look closely, they would see the colors of the underpainting peaking through the dominant colors of the subject or where one color field meets another, I will often leave a small space where the colors beneath will vibrate. This technique is used most often with my rocks and shells and sometimes with my water. At other times my water is painted in a series of translucent glazes. My “Schoolhouse Beach” piece which was featured in the Best of American Oil Painters 2010 edition, as well as the one that is pictured above, were both executed in this manner. The water has anywhere from four to eight layers of color. The first three to six are translucent and the remaining are the more opaque lines which depict the water’s movement reflecting the pale blue sky. The carefully applied translucent layers beneath are what gives the water it’s depth and it’s wet look.

Then there are my beachscapes. Some such as “Storm Break” and “Live Oaks” were painted “alla prima”. Others, such as “Yellow Pines” and “Walk with Me” are a combination of the use of translucent glazes for the water and layers of opaque color as described above. The wonderful thing about painting is there are one thousand different ways to approach a canvas and  for the passionate, the never ending goal to always improve one’s craft!