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.
No Mail Today – Karen Winters Daily Painting
No Mail Today – 8 x 6.25 – watercolor sketch
I painted this little vignette this morning as a way to get some art practice no matter what the rest of the day would include (chores, an art association meeting and demo, car-shopping, housework, etc.) I’m very disciplined about making sure that I paint daily – and now I know why. At yesterday’s Watercolor West demo featuring Elaine Harvey (watercolorist) she said it’s essential to practice frequently because painting is not just an intellectual activity – it’s a physical activity. If you don’t paint for awhile she says, you lose some of your dexterity in brush handling, color mixing, just the way you move your hand and move paint around. I hadn’t really looked at it that way but I can see the wisdom in it and will continue making time for at least one painting or sketch a day – more if I can afford the time.
This little sketch is a bit of a fantasy based on a little picture I took last summer of a country road. It looks nothing like this in real life but it does capture a little bit of a peaceful, cheerful country feel, in a completely romanticized way. Every now and then it’s sort of fun to escape from the mud and muck of reality. Like, during the US election season, you know?
Harvest – Still Life Daily Painting – Karen Winters
“Harvest” 8 x 10 oil
Available
Persimmons are still in season around here, so I decided to do another still life including one. This is a lot looser than most of the oil paintings I’ve been doing, and I enjoyed the opportunity to try something different. This was painted from life using reasonably thick paint and larger brushes than those I normally use. I had intended to push the abstract qualities even farther, but this was about as painterly as I could manage at the moment. Next time I do a still life maybe I can nudge it even a little more in that direction. Although it’s still a month or more away, I’m beginning to get a few notions about what I want to learn and explore in 2008. Opinions about this different approach?
Climbing Rose Oil Painting
“Climbing Rose” 5 x 7 oil on canvas on board
This is the second in what will be an ongoing series of rose portraits – at least as long as they keep blooming, which will probably be a few more weeks from the looks of things at Huntington Gardens and Descanso Gardens. I think it’s the warm weather that is encouraging this last flush to be so abundant. This climber was twirling itself around a trellis without a care in the world.
Here we are eagerly anticipating the return of our daughter from business school in Chicago. We’re clearing away the residue of months of back to back art shows and getting seriously organized until the next wave begins. Any day now I’ll have to give some attention to my garden which has been sorely neglected. Ironic, that. I spend more time painting flowers than pruning my own. If only there were a way to add an extra 10-12 hours a day I’d be just fine.
Huntington Gardens San Marino – November Dawn – Karen Winters Daily Painting
November Dawn (Scott Gallery -Huntington Gardens) 12 x 16 oil on canvas
This studio painting depicting dawn in the Shakespeare Garden is based on plein sketches and photos I’ve taken at the Huntington. In fact, I’ve never been there at dawn, but I’ve taken some liberties with a noon photo (below) to imagine how it must look at the peak of fall bloom.
Changing the time of day and angle of the sun was a real exercise in thinking about color, shadows and so on because I had no reference to rely on. I remembered that white marble often glows pink in the morning, but there are touches of warm, too. To break up the wide expanse of the wall I invented shadows, but then I had to think about what color they would be. The same is true of the shadows of the side of the building – where would they cast shadows? The sky is different at dawn. Darker at the top than at the horizon (as usual) but it is warmer in the direction of the sun. So those colors needed to be softly blended to suggest the right atmosphere for that time of day.
I find this kind of exercise a lot of fun because it helps me to break out of painting that is just copying. This can be useful for plein air painting, too. For example, if you are a distance from your subject and you know there’s a shadow there but you can’t see it, you can use imagination and logic to decide what color to paint it.
Impressionist waterlilies – daily painting
Pink waterlilies – 9 x 12 inches – oil on canvas
I had such a good time painting the reflections on “Drifters in the Stream” that I decided to paint another “reflections” painting but this time with brighter subject matter. These bright waterlilies provided exciting subject matter to practice with.
Saturday night’s opening at the Pasadena Women’s City Club (Blinn House) was a wonderful event and I was so honored to be able to participate with a painting in the show. The show features 40+ paintings of streams, rivers and harbors and I was happy to see many of my painting friends there. We also had the distinct pleasure of meeting Lewis MacAdams, poet and co-founder of Friends of the LA River. His enthusiasm for stewardship of the river was contagious and we found ourselves captivated by his “word paintings” as well as his wealth of information about this beautiful resource. It’s just another beautiful place to paint in LA.
There aren’t any waterlilies in the LA River (that I’m aware of) but there are fish such as tilapia, catfish and carp and abundant crawfish which the herons and egrets adore. Steelhead salmon used to run in the LA river, although those days are past. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the river could be restored to the degree that it was possible again? To the untutored eye, the LA River seems to be completely encased in concrete — yet there are miles and miles of stretches where the river has a natural sandy bottom and where plant life abounds. Yes, I am a natural history geekette as well as a paint and botany fan. I could listen to stories of our local environment for hours and thankfully my dear husband feels the same way – we are both inveterate information junkies.
Persimmon and Plumbago – Karen Winters Daily Painting
Persimmon and Plumbago – 8 x 10 oil – Available
I was coming into the house from the driveway today and saw that our plumbago shrub was covered with blue-violet blooms. It immediately struck me that those colors would be a good compliment to the yellow-orange persimmon I painted last night, and which had survived the ordeal, no worse for wear.
There is something to be said for working in a series. I found the persimmon easier to paint today than last night
So I set up another still life in the same stage, this time a wider shot incorporating a bit of drapery. I don’t often draw folds, let alone paint them, so this was a good experiment for me, and I’m satisfied with the result.
I used the same colors as yesterday for the persimmon, plus UM blue and some alizarin crimson for the plumbago.
White Lilies
“White Lilies” – 5 x 7 oil on canvasboard
These are two of the blossoms in the beautiful bouquet my children sent me in celebration of some of my recent good news. I’m slowly catching up and getting back to ”normal.” This week I hope to get back in the routine of painting every day while getting some things framed for upcoming shows and taking care of other business details. Today I made time for two back-to-back art events. First, i saw watercolorist Frank Webb demonstrate at the National Watercolor Society annual demo series, which was terrific. I’ve long been an admirer of his work and enjoyed seeing him create in person. Then, I raced back to Pasadena to catch the very end of the California Art Club artist’s sale at Casita Del Arroyo. Most of the people were already packing up but I did get to see a little bit of what they were offering – very inspiring.
Red Tulip – Daily Painting – Karen Winters
Red Tulip 11 x 15 watercolor on paper (quarter sheet)
Here’s another new one for the show – a red and golden striped tulip from Descanso Gardens, catching the last rays of the day. And speaking of rays, I’m happy to report that our heat wave has broken. We had dinner on the patio last night and it was 68 degrees at 7:oo or so – what a change from just a week ago when it was close to 100 at that time. Very weird.
I spent today organizing my files to make prints and I was astounded to discover that I have more than 162 pieces in my catalog – and that’s just the ones that I have a positive feeling about. There must easily be three or four times that many. Today was the process-athon. Tomorrow begins the making print and framathon. Eventually comes the sleepathon.
At least (I think) I can take some comfort in the fact that I will never have this kind of intense startup again. There will be more paintings to paint and frame, but the learning the ropes part, the knowing where to go to get this or that supply – that should hopefully be a bit more predictable and relaxed.
