Sycamores and Sand
SOLD
Sycamores and Sand – 5 x 7 acrylic on canvas on board
Click for actual size painting
Colors are strongest at sunset and dawn. In this miniature painting of a winter sunrise, the dawn touches wildflowers and clinging sycamore leaves and makes them shimmer. The location is near Palm Springs in one of the canyons where water and plant life are abundant.
May 2008 American Art Collector Ad
Here’s the Daily Painters ad for May’s American Art Collector magazine –
My painting is the seascape in the upper right hand corner
I’m one of the juried artists at Daily Painters a collective of professional artists who paint and post daily. That particular 16 x 20 inch oil painting sold last year, but I have others (smile.)
In fact, I have a new landscape to post – which will be coming up soon …
Tulip Magnolia – Karen Winters Daily Painting
Tulip Magnolia – 7.25 x 7.25 inches – watercolor
SOLD
The magnolias have arrived in all their glory. A procession of bloom should follow for a month or so, so I’m going to make the most of it while I can. In some parts of town the trees are in full bloom, while in other microclimates the trees still have bare sticks with only the slightest hint of bud swelling. And although it’s confusing to me how that happens, it only means that the bloom will last longer. Perhaps it has to do with differences of species, I don’t know.
Camellia Blossom – Karen Winters Daily Painting
Camellia Blossom – 11 x 14 oil on canvas
Camellias bloom in Los Angeles anytime from November to spring, depending upon the species. These are the first in a botanical series which I’m starting work on. There was a certain learning curve as I worked to render the delicacy of the petals. I’m used to painting camellias in watercolor, but it’s quite different in oil. To do the finish on this I was using sable brushes as small as size 0.
There is nothing like trying something new, whether it’s an entirely different subject, different style, different medium or different species to force yourself to GROW. Each painting is like a puzzle to be solved and only you can solve it.
Closeup of big blossom – click to enlarge
At a Lavender Farm – Karen Winters Daily Painting
“At a Lavender Farm”
5 x 7 mixed media (watercolor and acrylic)
We have some friends who live in northern California who own a lavender farm. The climate is perfect for growing this beautiful fragrant plant. The plants actually grow in more regular rows than this, but I sort of like the wild blowsy look.
Sunday Sunshine – Karen Winters daily painting
Sunday Sunshine – 6″ x 6″ – watercolor with colored pencil accent
SOLD to a collector from Texas
Rather, this is the sunshine we WISH we had right about now. It’s been cold, wet and lightning is promised tonight. But I really can’t complain because this sort of weather is such a rare event and the gushing streams and wildflowers that follow will be glorious. In the meantime we’ll just snuggle up with an extra comforter and umbrella and wait until the sun breaks through.
This afternoon I painted this to remember the warmth of spring days yet to come. The lemon is from our tree and is presently full of new buds (if the rain doesn’t knock them off.)
Doing a painting like this is an entirely different experience from some of the bolder more expressive things I’ve posted recently. I’m not abandoning any style at the moment, I’m just exploring a range of techniques and looks. Painting something like this is a very quiet, meditative experience – using a smallish brush and taking quite a bit of time. Painting something like “Tumbling Down” for example, is an invigorating emotional experience, using a large brush and painting impulsively in a short period of time. They’re just … different experiences and sometimes one fits my mood more than another. You think maybe it has to do with caffeine? Hmmm … now there’s one to think about.
Edited to add: an art friend asked how I got the spotted effect in the lemon and how I did the edge of the lemon where the white of the paper is the bright spot.
The lemon was painted with multiple glazes of transparent watercolor – up to 5 layers, if I recall correctly. (Sometimes I forget when I’m in the flow of the moment.) The final glaze was a very pale orange and the uppermost spots were touched in with the tip of a small brush. The rougher spotty texture (toward the bottom of the lemon) comes from using a very light layer of colored pencil in the darks. The edge at the top of the lemon, where it meets the crystal, was just “painted around.” No masking was used.
Arroyo Pond – Arroyo Seco Painting – Karen Winters
Arroyo Pond – 12 x 16 oil on canvas
When the rains come, a part of the upper Arroyo Seco (in Hahmongna Park) can fill up with water, creating a seasonal pond. Here’s how it looked on one overcast day in early spring. I’m wondering what the current rainstorm will bring (this was from a few years ago.)
Conventional wisdom says that there should be a vertical element in a composition for balance when it is primarily horizontal, but in this case I think the purely horizontal format helps to reinforce the feeling of peace and tranquility. This view is from above Devils Gate – looking southward in the early morning in the direction of the Colorado Street Bridge. The hazy mist is typical when there’s a lot of moisture in the air.
Winter Reflections – Daily Painting
Winter Reflections – 10.8 x 7.8 inches – watercolor on paper
A subdued day – quiet colors under a grayed sky. Could a few drops of rain be ready to fall?
Early this morning, when there was a break in the storm, I went to Hahamongna Park to see how the Arroyo Seco river was flowing. There was certainly a volume of water, but nothing approaching dangerous. The stream was about a foot deep, I’d estimate, and about 15 feet wide at its widest. And there was snow in the mountains above. I would have liked to have painted but another storm started, so I just took photos instead.
Later today we spent some time at the Pasadena Museum of California art where a celebration is being planned to honor Milford Zornes, a celebrated watercolorist who is 100 years old – and still painting! Although Milford suffers from macular degeneration, he continues to produce remarkable works of art. We should all be so fortunate to have so many years to pursue our passion. They were hanging the Zornes show while we were there and what I saw of it looked spectacular. There were paintings from many private collections, from the 50s up to more recent times. His use of graduated washes is quite incredible and I look forward to seeing his works in more detail.
Arroyo Ramble – Pasadena Arroyo Seco
Arroyo Ramble 12 x 16 inches – oil
This is a part of the Arroyo Seco – a sandy river bottom that fills with water whenever there’s a big rain (like now.) One of these days soon I’m going to head over there and try to find some way to plein air paint while the waters are still flowing. I love it that we live in an area where wild nature is so close by (like 5 minutes away.) If you live in a rural area, that’s no big deal. But we live in a suburb of Los Angeles – so every bit of wilderness is treasured. Those are the San Gabriel mountains in the distance and they really are violet at certain times of the day. If the storm clears, maybe I’ll get over there tomorrow.
More later …
Tumbling Down – Karen Winters daily painting
“Tumbling Down” – 10 x 14 – mixed media on watercolor paper (wc and acrylic)
Last night, after I decided to stop working on an oil painting (for the moment), I took out a watercolor pad and thought I’d experiment with some of what I heard Jerry Stitt talking about – painting what things are “doing” rather than literally what they look like. This was the result.
I started with big bold washes with a wide hake (goat hair?) brush, and then started layering with other watercolor washes. I dropped thick paint into wet areas and let it run. I used the edge of a flat brush to sculpt some of the rocks. Dry brush was added here and there for foliage. Most of the white of the waterfall was the reserved white of the paper.
After the watercolor was dry, I went back in with acrylic (both diluted and full strength) to add more crevices to the rocks and to add to the spray effect over dark rocks. Knowing that I was going to include acrylic, I didn’t use any masking.
I only vaguely used a reference photo as a starting point and to understand the flow of the cascade. Most of the rocks were made up as the paint did its own thing and I needed to respond to it. That’s something else that I found fascinating from Stitt’s demo – he did his paintings completely out of his head based on his response to a very quick gestural drawing and what the paint was doing on the paper. Stitt has been painting for so many years that his knowledge of land forms is vast, so in a sense he’s relying on an internal reference library and a near photographic memory. But what he says is true. At a certain point in a particular painting you need to make the painting work and forget trying to match a scene “out there” in reality. I observed the same ability with watercolorist Barbara Nechis who invented landscapes as she painted … again building upon years of experience as a painter and observer of nature. This is yet another reason to keep a sketchbook and draw nature wherever you go. By this simple act you are committing nature to memory.
