Whaddya know, but I have a new B&W piece to put on the blog! After doing several pieces for the Great Chattachoochee River Paint Out, there were several things I wanted to work on, so last night I did this piece from a photo. The scene is actually a field with some bluebonnets from somewhere near Llano, TX.
My goals were to work on my edges, and I still need to work a lot more on that. A second goal was to work a bit more with the 'tree framing' composition. And lastly, I wanted to experiment with three different kinds of white and see how I'd like to use them (Griffin Aklyd, Titanium White and Gamblin's Flake White Replacement). Sometimes I like the more transparent whites (Griffin and FWR), and other times I like the opaque (Titanium). Would it be weird if my palette included three different types of white?
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Well, the tree is black and white but Door County is in color this time of year. I was there last week for a personal painting retreat and the colors were subdued compared to many years but still the sugar maples are very colorful. It was very chilly most of the week and sometimes very windy so this painting was done one cold morning from the window of my cabin. I did do some watercolor sketching of Rowley's Bay and painted there with pastel one day when the wind was really fierce. I took some photos of the bay, too so I hope to work up some in studio pastels from those. The most gorgeous view I had of the bay was the 2nd night I was there to watch the sunset and huge grey and purple clouds and a pink and peach and pale golden sunset was reflected in nearly glassy water; all that and floating on the water were at least 40 Mute Swans. It was a priviledge just to be there. I also include a couple of the watercolor sketches. These sketches were done within minutes of each other; one was looking west and the other north; the skies looked totally different depending which direction you looked. It's a beautiful place and preserved for us by the Nature Conservancy and the state of Wisconsin.
