Sketch of the Day – April 23, 2013

A bright but chilly spring day.  The wiry looking trees along the ridge line casting shadows on the spring green field caught my eye as I drove along this road.

I last posted a landscape sketch on March 21.  There was still snow on the ground on that day – even though it was the first day of spring by the calendar.  The winter like landscape called for a winter palette – blues, browns and grays.   Today, the bright sunshine and spring colors called for a different palette.

In full color paintings – basically any scene that isn’t depicting  winter – I often use a triad of “primary” colors and use those to mix secondaries and neutrals.  I say primary in quotes because, with one exception, all of the primary watercolor paint – red, yellow & blue – available, are actually tertiary colors.  That is they are unequal mixtures of the primary and something else.  For this sketch, I used two yellows – Burgundy Yellow Ochre and Quinacridone Deep Gold;  two blues – Cobalt Blue and Cinnerous Blue; one red – Permanent Alizarin Crimson.  There is also some raw umber in certain areas.  The bright green of the field is a mixture of Cinnerous Blue and Burgundy Yellow Ochre.  Most of the grays and the browns of the trees are a mixture of cobalt blue, alizarin crimson and quinacridone deep gold.  It is my sense that mixed neutrals tend to have more life than those obtained directly from a tube.

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Sketch of the Day – March 18, 2013

Since it’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to get out for some painting and sketching I decided to take advantage of some later winter/almost spring sunshine.  The ironic thing about this beautiful sunny morning is that the predicted weather for later today and tomorrow is for a major snowstorm! Such is the nature of weather in New England, especially near the change from one season to another.

I spend a lot of time painting scenes along Carpenter Hill Road.  It is a beautiful, unpaved, rural road that runs between the south of Bennington to the small town of Pownal Vermont.  Along the length of the road one can find a major apple orchard, many farms, fields, woods and a slow trickling  stream that follows along the road.  This morning, I noticed a farmhouse and it’s group of barns on the west side of road.  I’ve passed the scene many times with out stopping.  This morning, something in the scene caught me, as they say, so I stopped and put this one down on paper.

Farm On Carpenter Hill Road, Pownal, VT

Winter was cold but relatively un-snowy – this year.  Some recent warm temps and rain have essentially melted all of the snow at lower elevations.  With the bright sun, the leftover grasses and weeds from last year almost glowed with a golden hue. The farm buildings were all catching bright sunlight on their front sides.  The white painted farmhouse sort of peeked out from behind the large main barn.

Unlike most of my winter paintings, this one is filled with warmer colors, reds, yellows, sienna’s and golds.  The painting incorporates a good bit of Daniel Smith’s Burgundy Yellow Ochre.  This a is a new color on my palette and has been a wonderful discovery.  I’ve found it to be both subtle and strong and able to impart a beautiful gold glow in washes.  Although I’m not ready to replace my old standard earth tone yellow, raw sienna, I’m looking forward to working and experimenting more with this new hue.
Thanks for looking! More sketches of the day can be found in my “Sketchbook Posts“.
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Sketch of the Day – February 11, 2013

Ventured out on a day that I probably should have stayed in.  By the time I noticed this old barn with the weathered siding and two red-painted cupolas, it was snowing and sleeting at the same time.  I said a prayer as I pulled off onto what must be a grass covered access to farmland.  The two cupolas with their red paint caught my eye.

Pigeons On Barn With Red Cupolas, LaClairRd, Shaftsbury, VT

Not sure what would have a farmer paint the cupolas and leave the rest of the barn essentially in need of paint. perhaps it is a long-term project working on one section at a time. On looking closer at the subject,  I noticed swarms of pigeons, crowded on top of and next to the cupolas sheltering, I guess,  from the winter storm.

Knowing I’d at least want to suggest the detail of the roosting pigeons, I worked at a larger size than normal for a plein air sketch.  This one  is done in my D’Arches Watercolor Album and is a little more than 9″ x 12″ in size.

On a gray and stormy winter day, my palette of winter colors served well to catch the gray look of the day, the weathered structure and the forlorn look of the few grasses and weeds still managing to poke out of the ground.  The relatively bright red of the cupolas – using a mixture of cad red, raw sienna and some alizarin crimson – adds a bit of color as does the yellow of the farm house on the upper far right.

When all was said and done, I also found my prayer was answered as I was able to get off the access road back on the main road without getting stuck !

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Sketch of the Day – January 29, 2013

As an early riser, it is more typical for me to be up out and painting scenes in the morning light.  A meeting in  Massachusetts took me south from Bennington afternoon.  On the way home, passing through Pownal, a small town south of Bennington and an area full of paintable scenes, I decided to venture onto the back roads to see what I could see.

On Mt. Anthony road and looking south, there was a terrific view into a hollow with barns, and a farm homestead.  The sky was showing nice color for late afternoon on a winter day.  So many of my winter sketches are done with the same few colors. Lately I’ve been looking for the opportunity to add more color to my winter landscapes.  The colors presented in the sky and the buildings were presented a perfect chance to expand my “winter palette”.  This sketch includes three of the four winter palette colors – raw sienna, burnt sienna & cobalt blue. To those were added cadmium red, cadmium yellow and quinacridone violet.  The red and yellow were added wet-in-wet in to the sky along with cobalt blue and raw sienna. Different mixtures of cadmium red, cobalt blue, raw sienna and quinacridone violet were used to create the various colors of the barn buildings and the chimney on the farm house.  Speaking of wet-in-wet, the bare winter trees in the middle ground were created with a loose mixture of the winter palette colors, mingled together in a single passage.

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Sketch of the Day – January 26, 2013

Venturing out on a cold morning knowing I’d again be painting “en plein air” from my car.  Painting from the car is comfortable since it keeps me out of the temperature and the elements but requires that I find a good view from a location where I can safely park the car AND not get stuck in the snow when I’m ready to leave!

In this case, I found an area off the side of the road that gave me a view to the north east, and this forest edge along the road.  Bright morning sunlight was streaming through the trees and casting fairly delicate shadows over the snow covered road.   As with most of my winter sketches, this one uses the winter palette of colors – two blues, two siennas – but today, I added warmth with some cadmium yellow, cadmium red and quinacridone gold. The shadows are done with a combination of the two winter blues – ultramarine and cobalt and enhanced with a cool blue called “Cinnerous Blue”.   Cinnerous Blue is new to my palette. It’s produced by Sennelier of France, known for their creamy and fluid watercolor formulations.  This color was sent to me as a promo along with two other colors.  It’s a cool blue, similar to Cerulean blue only several steps more intense and much less sedimentary.  One of the things I like about using my watercolor plein air sketching kit  is that it allows me to try different pigments and mixtures of pigments before adopting them for studio work.  In this case, I removed the pan of Winsor Newton Cerulean Blue from the sketching palette and replaced it with the Cinnerous Blue.  I’m a creature of habit and relatively slow to change so it’s too early to know if I’ll permanently add this color to my palette, but I like the results so far.

The main focus of the sketch is a weathered and wizened old maple tree, placed prominently along one of the “golden sections” on the paper.  I wanted to catch the morning light as it filtered through the background trees onto the lower trunk of this one old tree.

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Sketch of the Day – January 22, 2013

A very cold day outside today.  Even though my sketches are done “en plein air”, today I spent the time painting from my inside my car.

“Farm on Coulter Road, Shaftsbury, VT”

This sketch is of a farm on Coulter Road in Shaftsbury,  Vermont.  This area, west of Vt Rt 7A  on Meyers Road is one of my favorite painting areas.  This farm has a number of buildings of various shapes and sizes which stretch  out along the property – a composition just right for one of my home-made sketchbooks. The pages in this one are 6″ x 10″ – slightly elongated and panoramic in shape.

Just after New Year’s Day, we had a fairly thick covering of snow on the ground.  An early thaw took care of that, but a couple minor snow storms have added some white back on the ground while leaving some places where grass and weeds show through.   This kind of alternating snow cover and weed cover often makes for interesting patterns and shapes. Although it was a cold day, the sun was bright and was casting long shadows across the fields.

The nature of color in winter means that the use of my limited “winter palette” which consists of two blues – cobalt & ultramarine – raw and burnt sienna and, in this case some cadmium red mixed with these colors to get the barn red.
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Sketch of the Day – January 1, 2013

Wishes for a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year to all!

Out and about early this morning looking for a good subject for the first day of the New Year.   Since it has snowed a good bit since the middle of December, it is already laying deep on the ground.  For me, this means  plein air sketches will mostly use the “winter palette” of colors that are so handy and appropriate for northern climates this time of year.

“Farm on Burrington Road, Pownal Vermont”

Today’s sketch was actually done with only three colors – cobalt blue, burnt sienna and quinacridone deep gold.

Painting the landscape plein air in the winter is a great way to get a handle on tonal values.  The winter landscape   often consist of many various shades of gray, especially if the ground is snow covered and the sky is cloudy. Observing and matching these values in paint is a great exercise which will only strengthen one’s ability to see even subtle value differences.

In the case of this sketch, the barn buildings themselves are sided in what is now just wood weathered down to to subtle shades of gray.  Except for the dots of brown-orange weeds and leftover stubble from harvested fields, this sketch is really a tonal study.   All of the grays are mixtures of cobalt blue and burnt sienna.  Quinacridone Deep Gold (from Daniel Smith)  is used to indicate the dots of warm “weeds & stubble” as well as mixed with cobalt blue to get the deep green used for the evergreen trees in the background.

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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Sketch of the Day – Feb. 25, 2012

Feb. 25, 2012 - Logging Site at the End of Carpenter Hill Road, Pownal, Vermont

Logging Site, West Carpenter Hill Road, Pownal, Vermont. West Carpenter Hill Road winds its way along one ridgeline, down into a deep hollow and then back up onto a high ridge where it dead end’s at a point where there is a spectacular 180 degree view, east, south and west over the Green, Berkshire and Taconic Mountains. I ventured out this morning with the idea of getting a nice sketch of this view with the newly fallen, light snow on the fields. Instead, at the point where the road ends, I found that some timbering had occurred and the harvested trees were neatly stacked and waiting for transport. The topsides of the logs were dusted with snow. Early morning sunlight was catching part of the snow and leaving other in shade. Rather than getting the vista, I sketched the stacks of logs, and the subtle changes in the color of the shade and shadow on their snowy tops.
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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Sketch of the Day – Feb. 24, 2012

Feb 24, 2012 - Farm On Middle Pownal Road, Pownal, Vermont

Farm on Middle Pownal Road, Pownal, Vermont. Seems that I’ve been visiting Pownal, VT a good bit recently. This small quick sketch was done looking at another farm in Pownal, this one along a dirt road known as Middle Pownal Road. Like my previous two sketches (Feb 22 & Feb 23), this one takes a minimal approach and puts more emphasis on the effect of light and overall design than it does on capturing reality. The color palette for this sketch is a return to the one from Feb 22 with cad red and thalo blue dominant and the addition of cerulean and raw sienna. Although this is a much less finished work than many others in this series, it’s simplicity brings focus to the main theme which is the bright, winter morning light striking the side of the barn. The sketch is built with all of the elements supporting that single theme – light struck trees, long shadows and snowy fields also capturing the bright sunlight.
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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Sketch of the Day, Feb 23, 2012 – “Pownal Farm, Simplified”

Feb. 23, 2012 - Pownal Farm, Simplified

Pownal Farm, Simplified. In a continuation of the theme from yesterday’s sketch, this work was also condensed to simple shapes in the form of a vignette. Like yesterday, this sketch was done early on a clear, sunny morning. From my vantage point, the farm buildings were backlit and cast large, long shadows into the forground.

Unlike yesterday’s sketch, the colors in this one are more realistic grays and browns, with liberty taken in the placement of cool and warm temperature passages to create interest through contrast.

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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