Gallery Exhibit – “”Fresh Paint, Hot Pots, Dressed Wood”
The latest exhibition of North Adams Artists Co-op continuing members’ latest masterpieces and the introduction of our newest members to the public. While “fresh paint” will fill the air with “just off the easel paintings”, “hot pots” will emerge from the kiln with surprises in store for both artist and viewer.
My watercolor painting “Calla Lilies In Bold”, along with four other works are included in this latest NAACO Exhibit.
The Opening Reception will be held tonight, Thursday, January 28 from 5pm to 7pm – the public is invited and encouraged to attend. The exhibit will remain open through February 22, 2010.
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” – new watercolor landscape painting
"Barn Snowscape"
“5 x 7″
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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Watercolor warm up exercise becomes a painting
"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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Watercolor Sketch – Winter Landscape
“Snow Cover Landscape”
5″ x 7″
$95
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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“Woods Edge – Afternoon” – watercolor landscape painting
"Woods Edge - Afternoon"
5″ x 7″
$95
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.
“Uphill Farm” – New Watercolor Landscape Painting
“Uphill Farm“
9″ x 13″
$325
This work depicts the surprisingly bright light and intense greens of the fields on a mid-November day.
This work is the end result of a series of on site and exploratory sketches, beginning with two sketches done on location in mid-November, and continuing with exploratory compositional sketches in the studio. November is often a surprising month in New England. When one thinks of autumn in Vermont or New England, the visions are generally of bright reds yellows and oranges of fall foliage. In reality, the blazing color lasts only a few weeks, at most, out of the several months that actually contain the autumn time. The time between the drop of leaves to the time when snow begins to fall in earnest is probably the longest stretch of weeks in autumn – generally from mid-October to early December. It can be a time of unexpectedly bright sunshine and bright green fields still holding out against cold nights and frost.
The initial sketches were done off county Rt. 68 in New York (close enough to be considered New England!). This road which connects North Bennington, VT to White Creek, NY and on to Rt 22 and Cambridge, NY is favorite sketching territory for me. There are many farms, homes fields forests and streams dotting the rolling hills.
The initial location sketches are shown above – one in pencil, the other in watercolor. On that particular day, the sunlight streamed onto the farm and fields around it. Two things about he scene were attractive – the fields were well lit by the sun and were still very green, and I was intriqued by the single red barn building standing among the weathered gray structures and the green fields. The initial sketches captured the look of the farm, the field colors and the contrasting red barn.
Exploration sketch 1 - color composition
Exploration sketch 2 - shape and proportion
Exploration sketch 3 - color contrast and color intensity
The next step in the process was to explore color schemes, the composition of the farm buildings and examine color and intensity contrast.
Exploration sketch 1 was completed to test the placement of the red building within the picture plane, and to measure the effectiveness of the contrasting red and green shapes. At this stage, I have maintained the relative proportions and color of the four main farm buildings.
In exploration sketch 2, the pencil sketch, I have shrunk and moved the building that is foremost in the composition – the red one as it exists on the actual farm – in favor of “pushing” the red into a bit further into the midst of the farm complex.
The third exploration sketch was again a color sketch. In this one, the idea was to explore the new color composition and to test the effectiveness of having less color intensity in the foreground, and more in the area of the focal point, which is the farm itself.
The finished work follows the color scheme and compositional structure of the final sketch very closely.
Comments welcome – thanks for looking!
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.
New Sketch
"Watering Cans"
This is a quick sketch of two of my wife’s watering cans done as a demo for a recent class. The cans sit on a table top and were catching the bright late summer light. The pattern of light and shadows caught the eye of one of the students so we used it as the subject for the day. The color scheme is nearly mono-chromatic, using a limited palette of cobalt and ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and some quinacridone burnt scarlet.
It is large for a sketch, nearly filling a quarter sheet (11″ x 15″) paper. The subject was sketched in 2B pencil on the paper first, large washes were placed on the cans first, the main shadow on the table surface was added next. Once dry, shadows were added on the spout and side of the large can and on the underside of the handle on the small can. The work was finished up with some glazes of blue and raw sienna on the cans to produce some 3 dimensional modeling and ambient light effects on the shaded side of the cans.
Vacation sketches
Family takes priority during family vacations, so I sketched and painted less than I might have. Still, I was able to get some work done on our recent trip to Hilton Head. Living in New England means that I have very little opportunity to see and paint trees from the southeast. Trees are a favorite subject of mine and are often featured in my paintings. It was pleasing to be able to see and paint trees from a new area. Obviously, palm trees don’t grow in the forests of the northeast. The two sketches below are of a palm located in the courtyard of the condo complex where we stayed for the week. The pencil sketch captures the reality of the tree, while the watercolor sketch is a study in color, light and shade.
By the time I did this watercolor sketch, I had adjusted my color mixtures to be more representative of the colors of the plants and foliage in the Hilton Head area. My initial works lacked a bit of authenticity since I was using colors – particularly greens – that are more like those found in New England. The sketch below of a beach and salt marsh near where we stayed shows the difference. The green areas in the fore and middle ground are tall marsh grasses. As sketched, the green is more like the green of a grassy field in the northeast. Marsh grasses in this are tend to be a somewhat more intense yellow green than as depicted.
Port Royal Sound marsh & sky - Hilton Head Island
On this particular morning, the sky was overcast. I was pleased to find that my favorite combination of cerulean blue and cadmium red did work well to capture the look of the sky.
New Seascape
Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate for my Plein Air workshop the week of June 22. The idea was to spend four days painting on location in the Cape Ann area of Massachusetts. Instead of being able to paint outdoors, heavy rain, drizzle, low clouds and wind drove us indoors for most of the class.
We did venture out on the first day, optimistically expecting the weather to clear any moment. It didn’t – so we made the best of it by taking photos to use as reference material - praise be to digital cameras!
Below are a couple of photos taken at Good Harbor in Gloucester on Monday the 22nd – just to give you an idea.
Good Harbor, Gloucester, MA Monday June 22
- Looking toward the ocean from Good Harbor, Gloucester, MA June 22, 2009
One student got a photo of some brave souls walking on the beach in the wind and rain. The photo itself was a study in gray, but had potential as a composition. It was chosen as a subject on the second day of the workshop since it could be instructive in demonstrating obtaining mood in a painting as well as in the techniques of creating rock mounds and reflections.
"Cape Ann Walk"
Although most of my paintings begin with pencil sketches and thumbnails, for this one, I jumped right in. The idea was to capture the feel of an overcast day on the coast, while also depicting the reflective quality of the water. A minor point was to demo the techniques used to paint rocks – in groups and individually.
The work began by sketching the large shapes – sky area, distant ground, middle beach area, rock pile to the left and the foreground. Washes in these large area were next, beginning with the sky. In order to establish the mood of an overcast day, colors needed to be low intensity and value contrast was minimized. Overcast skies are a favorite of mine and I used one of my favorite color combos : cadmium red and cerulean blue. It’s a great combination but needs to be used carefully. The opacity of cadmium red and the heavy sediment in cerulean blue can become an flat, muddy mess. The key is to use the colors with plenty of water – either wet in wet, or directly with a big brush that hold lots of water. With enough water, the colors will disperse and settle evenly. These two colors will separate in wash, creating some beautiful gradations of temperature, value and color.
This same mixture was used to create many of the grayed violets in the painting – sand, rocks, some reflections and some shadows - and the cerulean blue was used alone in much of the fore and middle ground water areas.
The painting was about 3/4 done at the end of the day. I brought it back to the studio and continued working it to the finished product shown here.
Open Studio Weekend
"Early November"
Vermont’s natural scenic beauty is enhanced each spring when the work of Vermont artists and craftspeople can be seen firsthand during Vermont’s 17th annual Open Studio Weekend May 23-24.
My studio will be open from 10am – 5pm both Saturday and Sunday, May 23 & 24. I’m looking forward to again welcoming visitors my studio, showing new works and discussing my work, materials, processes etc.
Open Studio Weekend is a statewide celebration of the visual arts and the creative process. Bennington County, Vermont is home to many fine artists and artisans including the other members of The Artisans of Southern Vermont. The other twenty-nine members of the group will also have their studios open this weekend. The fine work represented by this group includes other paintings, jewelery, pottery, furniture, sculpture, and more.
Take the Artisans of Vermont Open Studio Driving Tour and be eligible to win a $150 gift certificate to the artist’s studio of your choice. Simply visit at least 8 of the 30 Artisans of Southern Vermont studios, get the artists signature and then leave the form at one of the open studio locations. Drawing to be held on June 15, 2009. Open Studio Driving Tour map, instructions and “Studio Sleuth” form downloadable here.
