This is Mendenhall Glacier in Juneau, Alaska. It is only 4 miles from my home, and a favorite destination for walks. I particularly enjoy how many blues there are here. Blue is my favorite color, and they are so beautifully displayed in the mountains here! I tried to add some warmth to the sandy areas to balance the cool. It might even need a bit more warmth.
I really enjoy small town scenes like this. I have never felt adept at painting them but this shot made me want to give it a try. The view of Mendenhall Glacier on our road is spectacular. On this particular day, my husband was driving and it allowed me to get a good shot. I think it is always appealing for local people to see a familiar scene. I like how this one worked out.
I am actually quite taken with this little painting. There is something very pleasing about its simplicity. To try a painting using just one color is a great process for beginners. I even think that this practice is helpful for more advanced painters. This is useful In many ways… like helping one to recognize the values in the painting. After doing this you could more easily adjust your values to emphasize different areas of interest or intensity. This can also help one to see the unnecessary details of their subject. This is also good practice for how one might do an underpainting of their subject. Many artists will do a complete, thinned down, two tone painting like this before they add their color. That way they can concentrate on adding color without thinking about the value as well. This is often helpful when the subject matter has a lot of detail. But this is not a necessity, just a matter of preference. I have done some of these underpaintings and found them very helpful. But there are many times that I just want to be more spontaneous.
(as a side note, this post should have come before the last one) I would be interested to hear about anyone else’s experience with this process as well.
This is one example of how I used the underpainting process. The detail in this particular picture probably didn’t warrant the need but I was still experimenting with it at this point. But you can clearly see how helpful it is to see the value in a two toned painting. And I must say again, that at this stage, it is really easy to adjust something that may look a bit off. This layer of paint should be very loose and thinned down with turp or mineral spirits. You don’t need to add white to your burnt sienna, you just thin it down a bit more. It is also very easy to wipe something off and redo it. If nothing else, I find this quite fun to play around with because you can move the paint so easily.
This is my second painting on gesso board. I also used a pallet knife. I deliberately kept this loose. These low tide scenes where you can see beach forever always appeal to me. So I just thought I would do something a bit different. You can probably see that I don’t have one favorite subject yet. I am enjoying the learning process and trying all types of subjects as well as different light.
This is a view looking down the channel towards Downtown Juneau and the Juneau/Douglas Bridge. I made a stop on the side of the road, probably where one really shouldn’t stop, but I just had to get a few shots of this beautiful scene! One thing that I learned and applied here is to paint the sky and then make extra of that color. Then use that color to blend into the mountains to give you that nice atmospheric look. It is much better than just adding white. It unifies the whole thing much better. I am looking forward to doing this on a larger canvas very soon.
This is another 5×7, also a view from my front yard. The low sun in the winter is spectacular when it comes out. The mountain is green with trees, of course, but the warm sun makes them appear orange in the evening. I wanted to capture this extreme color compared to the cool sky and snow for later reference. Sunshine makes me smile! ( =
This is a view from my home. There is a mountain that goes straight up just across from us. The way the sun hits it in the evening amazes me. the colors are so strong. I’m not sure how this reads to someone not familiar with the view. But it is supposed to be a patch of the mountainside just catching the sun between the dense foggy patches.
I love painted trees! I need to practice them close up because they are very tricky to paint. So in this I combined the tree practice with the strong warm light practice. It is just a small 5×7, but I think it has good impact. When studying a subject close up, the things you learn can be easily applied to a more suggestive painting later on. This is another thing that I need to remember.
This is the second little 5×7 study of the warm light effects on a subject. In this case it made a nice backdrop for the interesting foreground. I thought it was interesting that the fog looked so warm compared to the cool, shaded trees. I really wish that we had more sunny days here so I could get outside and paint!
Art with my Coffee 