Tony Conner Artists Blog

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.

"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.

"Early November"

A depiction of the light of early November on the leafless and wizend tree.  Trees, particularly weathered old trees are always inspiring to me. This work is a cousin of several other of my recent works, all of which are the genesis of two sketches – one in pencil and one in watercolor – done on Boston Common in June of 2003.

This painting began, as many of my paintings do, while perusing old sketchbooks.    While paging through, I again came across the pencil sketch from my trip to Boston.  As usual for me, the rugged, weathered look of the trunk was attractive.  The sort of tripod form of the main branches as they grow up and away along with the sense of the main trunk twisting over itself also caught my eye.

Often, upon finding an inspiring sketch, I’ll begin composing a new painting. In this case, I decided to create another pencil sketch using this sketch as the model for the new drawing.

This was last November.  I am very attracted to the quality of light in November.  It is clear and bright and yet is also obviously fading.  The shadows cast on a sunny November day are sharp but seem to have a transparency that is different from other times of the year. In the painting, I wanted to capture the sense of November light as well as the character of this old tree.

The new pencil sketch is shown below.

In the sketch, I tried to create a new tree, but wanted to retain the sense of twisting trunk and the tripod form of the  main branches.   Once complete, the sketch remained near my easel for some time while I considered  it’s possibilities as a finished painting.  Obviously, the sketch was turned into a painting, the one featured on this post.

As I mentioned, this work is the cousin of several others.  One in particular , “Prairie Oak“, has had particular success in juried exhibits – it is shown below.

“Prairie Oak“

Interested in either of these paintings or any of my other works – contact me via email – mail@tonyconner.com; or by phone – 802-753-1156

My artists website - www.tonyconner.com

My architectural illustration website – www.tc-ai.com My house portrait website – www.houseportraits.biz

“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.