Tony Conner Artists Blog

"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.

“Farm In Winter”

9″ x 12″

Don’t get the wrong impression, I am not pining for winter.  Although I am not a winter sort of guy -  I exist mostly indoors with a mug of hot tea not far away from December to April – there are many things that I find very paintable in the winter landscape.   Anyone who checks this blog often will realize that painting is a process with me.  The process begins with sketches.  Usually, I start with pencil sketches that have been drawn at one time or another, often outdoors  on location.  In this case, I came across the sketch, below,  from an older sketchbook.  It usually my habit to note the date and time of the sketch, although this one had no such notations, so I am not sure where the scene really is or when I sketched it.

In any case, I liked the composition a good bit, without much change.  The scene is suggestive of summer or fall, with lots of leaves on the trees.   I decided to go straight to a color sketch, rather than to pencil thumbnails.  One feature I wanted to emphasize in the final painting was the low, elongated left hand barn building.  In drawing the contours of the buildings for the color sketch, I elongated this building even more and connected it to its mate.  I wanted to suggest larger, complex farm building arrangement so added additional shapes that suggested additional buildings, sheds and/or wings.  To emphasize the “horizontal-ness” of the building, I also made the sketch in an elongated, or panoramic format. The actual size of the sketch is 2 1/2″ x 6″.

Although winter was not on my mind as I began to work, the contours were suggesting a peaceful and calm winter day. The notion of calm led to the selection of green as the local color of the barn buildings, since both color and value contrast would need to be minimized in order to convey “peace”.

The color sketch is shown below.

Color sketch for “Farm in Winter”

2 1/2″ x 6″

As you can see, I went to a more conventional “landscape” format for the final painting, thinking that it would actually emphasize the shape of the focal point even more.  I also brought the building forward and balanced their collective weight in the upper right, with the muddy road, a scrubby leftovers from fall in the lower left foreground.

 “Along The Way”

9″ x 13″

Unframed

$235

It’s been almost two months to the day since the last post!?   Summer is a busy season for me with exhibits, shows and fairs.  The unfortunate reality is that actual painting time tends to get squeezed.  I have been more productive lately,  with a number of works in progress and a few completed.

As is the case for me quite often, this work began as a search through old sketchbooks for ideas and inspirations.  In this case, a very old sketchbook contained a color sketch completed in the little town of East Arlington, Vermont in 1994.

 East Arlington Vermont – Sept 7, 1994

The sketch is painted as if it was peak foliage, but it couldn’t have been that early in September.   Anyone who has looked at other posts on this blog knows my attraction to raking light and sunlit structures.  Looking at this one again inspired me create a similar feel but in the summer season.

My first thumbnail sketch was an attempt to keep both the feel and the scene as it was depicted in the original sketch.

After completing the first thumbnail, I decided to try another with the structures moved to the top of the composition and to give up the attempt to keep them as they were in the original sketch (and still are in East Arlington!).

This was the thumbnail that I decided to go with – with a couple changes.  In the final painting, farm buildings were switched with each other – the main building ended up to the right and the “el” building to the left. In addition, the both were pushed a bit farther into the distance and another building was added to the left to create more distance in the final work.

March in Vermont is when you can begin to anticipate spring, although it is not guaranteed to arrive until May!. My Monday morning painting class is a group of ladies who are interested in subjects that are found in classical still life paintings – dishes, fruit, & flowers. Recently, we began painting a floral composition – partly to learn some techniques that work well for this kind of work, and partly because we are all looking forward to the coming of spring. My painting turned out surprisingly nice, considering that it was painted over the course of 4 weeks – I would work on it during our class for demonstration purposes and then put it aside until the next class. Also, it is rare for me to paint still life, particularly those that are somewhat formal in nature, like this one.

In any case, here is the finished work, aptly titled “Classroom Composition”. The work is 13 1/2″ H x 9 1/2W and currently hangs in my studio.

Tony’s watercolor painting “Prairie Oak” will be exhibited as part of the Southern Vermont Arts Center 16th Annual Winter Members Exhibition.  The exhibit opens with a reception on Saturday, January 12 from 2:00 – 4:00pm, and continues through Tuesday, February 5, 2008.

“Prairie Oak”

“Prairie Oak” is a studio painting inspired by a work painted on location. The subject of the painting would seem to be the tree, whose shape dominates the pictoral space. Actually, the tree is the foil for the real subject with is the light that strikes portions of the trunk directly and reflects up into the branches snuggled up under the dense summer canopy. Much of the painting is executed with a very direct manner, laying in color and value in a single application. The foliage canopy especially was painted in this way. In contrast, the effect of reflected light on the trunk was created in a very methodical application of color layered in washes, one over the other. The result is a work rich in color and light which evoke the feeling of sitting under a large shady tree on a a summer day.

As I mentioned earlier, this painting was developed from a work painted on location. Despite the title – “Prairie Oak” – the genesis of the painting comes from a work painted in a location far from any prairie. “Common Old Man” is the original, on-location painting.

“Common Old Man”

“Common Old Man” is a painting of a weathered old tree on Boston Common – hard to be further from the prairie. At first glance, the relationship is not very evident. Certainly, the technique is not similar. Like most of my on location painting, this work is very direct and instinctive. Looking closely though it is possible to discern the basic structure of the “Prairie Oak”. Obviously, the setting of this painting is such that there would have been a lot of other things happening in the near and distant backgrounds. Those things were eliminated in this painting, giving the work a somewhat “prairie” feeling. That attitude was retained in the studio work.