Spring Boise Foothills WIP

FullSizeRender-78

Saturday I started this little guy.  It needs a few more passes at it.  I’m going to work on my patience and spend more than a day on it.  I’m donating this to my daughters school art auction, just as a little silent auction piece.  So I wanted to pick a subject that would appeal to the locals, everyone in Boise loves the foothills.  It’s such a simple subject and composition, the challenge will be creating space and making it interesting.  I’m trying to puzzle out landscapes.  It might take 1,000 paintings and 20 years.

8×8″ oil on canvas

San Francisco-The Presidio

FullSizeRender-74.jpgSpring break (still) day 4.  The trees along the coast of Northern California are incredible.  I’ve always loved the shapes Monterey Cypress trees twist themselves into to reach out through the fog for every bit of sunlight they can get.  I hope to take many more photographs next time we are in CA.  Better yet, paint on location!  This painting is of the presidio in San Francisco on the farthest north-west side of the city just before you get to the bridge.  I took a picture of the cypress trees in the presidio and then turned around and took the classic shot of the Golden Gate bridge stretching across the mouth of the bay.  I’ll start that bridge painting next.  The Presidio painting is a work in progress, I’m still hammering it out.

IMG_4499

I often turn a painting upside down to paint parts of it.  I especially like to work on portraits upside down because it helps me see the image as just shapes, colors, and values, rather than the person.  That’s all anything is, shapes and values.  But I’m working hard to figure out the tricks of landscape painting.  To me it’s still a mystery and seems like magic.

Thanks for looking and reading!  Jill

Sketch for new painting-Cypress Trees

FullSizeRender-70.jpg

New sketch, excited to see where this painting goes. Why the red X?  Because after sketching I  decided to take out the Mercedes SUV.  Nothing against that car, it’s just crowding the bottom of the picture and doesn’t “let you into the painting.”  OR, maybe I’ll paint this picture with the front car and put a big red X through it as some kind of social statement.

This is another image from my trip to San Francisco.  Monterey Cypress trees with their branches that stretch out to the sides, reaching through the fog for all the sunlight they can grab, are among my top 3 favorite trees.  Redwoods are another favorite.  Closely followed by craggy oak trees.  All three grow within a 30 mile radius of where I grew up.

Some days are really busy for me, but I try to make some progress each day on my art.  Yesterday I only had time to do this sketch.

8×10″

 

Spring Break-Day 4

FullSizeRender-68Any guesses where we went next?  I have a few more Spring Break day trips to paint and blog about.  After hanging around Ukiah for a couple of days we decided to take a day trip to San Francisco.  SF is 100 miles south of Ukiah straight down 101.  Growing up I made that trip many times with family and friends to do this and that. I also lived in Alameda and could see SF from across the bay.  One of my favorite memories, from when I was little, is of going to the city to see  a traveling Broadway production of “Annie.” SF was such a different world from small town Northern California and the bridge, the sights, the people, colorful houses, shops, theatre, and especially the live music and the children singing it seemed like magic.  That must have been a big deal to drag 4 little girls to the theatre in San Francisco.  Thanks mom for taking me!  I have loved Broadway musicals ever since.

On the way in to San Francisco we crossed the Golden Gate bridge.  While driving across I was trying to take pictures but the clouds were blocking the sun and the bridge was pretty dark.  When the sun hits the bridge it glows orange.  I looked behind me and noticed that  the tower behind us was lit up so I crawled to the back of the car and took a picture out our back window.  This painting is of us driving south across the bridge into SF but looking back towards Marin.  You can see a little green of the Marin headlands, and that one tower that was sunlit.

This painting was really just going to be about the bridge, but as I was painting I noticed that it turned into a painting about the bridge tower and that white van.  I’m happy with this one.  I’d never painted cars before.  Painting my way through spring break has pushed me outside what I normally do, which is both exciting and scary.

9X12″ oil on canvas

Look at the difference in color between these two photographs.  The first one is the finished piece.  The actual painting color is somewhere in between the two photos.

And again, here are the spring break paintings:

FullSizeRender-68

Can I “reblog” your work? Guest Artist.

FullSizeRender-60

Art reblog Tuesday! How about you “like” this post if you wouldn’t mind me reblogging and showing one of your paintings on my blog.?.?  It’s not a competition, I just have a nice community of artists growing and I thought I would enjoy sharing, and others would like to see.  You know, sharing and supporting one another through this little outlet.   I have recently seen so much work that I love here on wordpress, work of people from all over the world, it’s exciting for me.  I say this is not a competition because I don’t believe art can be judged by comparing one persons art with another persons art.  Whatever someone creates and pours their soul, or at least their time into is great in my book.

I will make Tuesday’s my “show and tell” day.  Sometimes just my “show” day.  Maybe everyone already does this??  And I’m late to the game?  But here I go…

Since I haven’t heard from anyone yet (do I need permission??, I see a reblog button), I’m going to show the work of my bold and creative daughter.  With my boys, I take a “teen” art class with a terrific artist and my 9 yr old daughter always tags along.  She is welcome because she brings such fun & good energy to our class.  She LOVES to paint dogs, the stranger the dog the better.  During class she pours over a dog book that’s in the studio and picks whatever stands out as wonderful to her.  Here are a few of her dogs.  I can only dream of having her bold freeness.  Ah, children’s art, how do I love thee.

Can I show your work?

 

Spring Break-Sunday Dinner

FullSizeRender-53.jpg

Painting my way through Spring Break.  One more about Ukiah!  What’s spring break like for you?  Do you have a favorite place or people you visit?  I’d love to hear your stories/traditions.  We seem to have a spring break routine we follow & this year I took  more pictures than usual so I can paint pictures of the main events.

After driving from Idaho to Squaw Valley, CA. we went on to my parents house in Ukiah.  Northern California this time of year is stunning, with green rolling hills and new life everywhere.  Spring comes about a month later in Idaho.  I have 2 more day trips I’ll paint/blog about.

Sunday dinner at moms house is legendary.  She is a locavore and grows a lot of her own food.  If she still lived in Southern California I think she would grow ALL of her food, especially avocados.  She raises all of her own meat and so many beautiful fruits and vegetables.  You will often find her out in the garden or in her greenhouse before dinner collecting beautiful little lettuce leaves and edible flowers for a salad.  Sunday dinners usually accommodate the vegans, carnivores, and all the picky eaters.

Ukiah in July is the best, with the peaches, berries, and everything else in season.

I LOVE vegetables and all of my moms cooking so we made sure to make it to Ukiah for dinner.  This year she made this salad in a hand carved mahogany bowl that she bought at a farmers market in Sonoma.  When everyone came together for dinner I saw how amazing her salad looked, always a work of art itself, and asked everyone to wait a minute to eat it so I could take a picture.  I ran off and got my camera and took this shot.  There is one more little clear dish of butter or something that I am going to paint in still.

I’ve been working on mixing colors that are rich in chroma.  I’ve learned that if I lighten a color with another light color, like zinc yellow I can get a beautiful light spring green without killing all the chroma.   Of course sometimes you want to kill the chroma.  For the pretty spring green of the lettuce I used ultramarine blue, zinc yellow, and probably a tiny tiny bit of titanium white.

Spring Break- Ukiah

FullSizeRender-51

Oil on Canvas 8X10

Still chronicling sprig break over here on my little art blog. This has been a mostly fun project for me, and is forcing me to try some things I’ve never done before, for better or worse. This piece I’m posting today is one that I painted last year after Spring Break. It’s the other end of my parents pasture deep in the rain forest. Just kidding about the rain forest, it’s in Ukiah CA, so it’s surrounded by a few tall redwoods, huge craggy oak trees, madrones with their cool red bark, and lots of other big green trees. This corner of their property seems to have its own eco system. It’s always a little damp and cool down there. I call this painting “Ghost Barn.” The barn is not really blue, it’s made of wood. My mom designed this barn and my dad and some other guys built it. 10 or 15 or so years ago the original barn burned to the ground and so my mother modified a house plan she designed and never built and created this beautiful barn. It’s a chicken and pig paradise.

On another note. I struggled my heart out yesterday with a different painting. Painting can really knock you right off your feet sometimes. I’m not sure what was going on, other than I was trying a new subject. I got a lot of funny feedback from my family. The best was my husband looking at it and saying that it looked like something that he could paint. And he is a chemist. You win some…

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started