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Plein Air with One Brush, #8 Bright

Oil painting of coral bean flowers

Oil painting of coral bean flowersI have hired Saramae Dalferes to help me take the fast track in my transition to becoming a full-time artist at least two days a week by the end of the year.  Saramaeis a Nationally Certified Counselor, Mentor, and Personal Coach.  I told Saramae this week that I was going to set up a challenge for myself at the weekly plein air outing of the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters.  My plan was to paint using only one single brush for all parts of the painting, so that I would paint faster and more loosely.

Once you tell your coach that you are going to do something, there is no going back.  So today at the plein air outing, I chose a #8 bright, a brush which is approximately 1/2″ wide, with stiff bristles that are about 5/8″ long.

Our location was an exquisite house with beautiful gardens.  After walking the grounds, I opted to paint the flower of a coral bean plant that I found in an ungroomed part of the backyard.  I choose a smaller canvas panel, 6″ x 6″, unsure whether I would just be making a huge mess by using only one size brush.  To my surprise, I finished the painting in just one hour.  I had time to paint another!

For my second painting, I chose the house itself, which had a turret and a roofline with many planes.  I struggled with the perspective of the structure.  But while I was painting, I found I was less concerned with accurate perspective, and more concerned with the general “feel” of the place.  I was moderately successful, especially considering that I was still using only the #8 Bright.  The roof angle is a little confusing in my painting, and I did not correct it when I noticed, preferring to focus on color and light and shadow.

Oil Painting of Chrissie's HouseAt the critique afterwards, Sue Carol Knight Woodley mentioned that towards the end of her painting, she was thinking about the elements and principles of art, particularly the elements of line, form color, and texture.  I’ve focussed on the elements (7 in my book: line, shape, size, position, color, texture, density) and principles of design (balance, rhythm, and harmony) when figure drawing, but I confess, much of my plein air effort is simply trying to figure out what colors to mix together to get the color I am seeing, and then trying to figure out what shapes to make with that color.

While painting the house, I came to have an even greater appreciation for the skill of artists such as Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper.  I regret that the photograph at right does not show the dark blue-green of the roof shingles.  The more I paint, the more I am noticing that the camera rarely captures color accurately.

Most of my paintings and images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Essential Character of a Place: Plein Air Nature Trail

Oil painting of Nature Trail at Grayton Beach State Park

I was privileged to paint plein air beside my artist friend Betty Cork yesterday.  I am the proud owner of one of Betty’s paintings, the bright colors of a path under the oaks of Eden Gardens greeting me when I walk into my business office every weekday.  I met Betty through the Cultural Arts Alliance.  We both drew at the figure drawing sessions at Studio b for 3 years.  And it was she who twisted my arm to be on the A+Art Committee which I now Co-Chair with Robin Wiesneth, showcasing CAA member artists work in the reception area and conference room of the South Walton Center of Northwest Florida State College.

The plein air painters met at Grayton Beach State Park this week.  Most of the painters went to the beach to paint the misty shoreline and emerald waves, but Betty and I hiked a short way up the nature trail and set up to paint under the canopy of scrub oaks. I was looking towards the sun, so that much of the foliage was beautifully backlit, but with the sun in my eyes, it was a bit of a chore seeing the brilliance of the colors.  The gnarly tree trunks were silhouetted against the bright light.

I post on Facebook photos of my work in progress and also the finished piece. I found it interesting that one of the comments on my finished piece was “That is so here!”  I wonder, what is the specific visual imagery that depicts the essential character of a place, making it “here”? In this case, I think it was the combination of the palmetto bushes underneath with the twisting shapes of the scrub oak trees.  The live oaks at the beach are very small, hugging and conforming to the dune line, sheared off at the top by the salty winds. On the bay, the same trees grow into massive giants, with Spanish moss dripping from the acre-wide branches.

One of the constrictions of plein air painting is that you don’t have a lot of time.  Because the scene before me was so chock-full of brush and foliage, my challenge was to simplify it into layers. I painted the background foliage first, so that I wouldn’t have to take the time to try paint the negative space around the foreground shapes afterwards. The gnarly tree trunks came next, and the palmettos in the foreground were last.  Betty suggested to me to put some of the oranges and very bright yellows in the palmetto leaves.  She is an expert with bright color.

Below is the start of my painting, and the finished piece.  Contact me if you are interested in purchasing this piece, with or without frame. — Joan Vienot

Oil painting of Nature Trail at Grayton Beach State Park

 

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Plein Air Painting in the Rain

Oil Painting of Boats in a Boatyard, Freeport, FL

Oil Painting of Boats in a Boatyard, Freeport, FL

It rained for the plein air group’s outing yesterday, deterring the less intrepid (ha!) painters. Three of us were silly enough to go anyway.  I went just to see if I could paint in the rain.  I have no idea why the other two artists persisted.  It seems like anyone with any experience would have stayed home to paint in the comfort of their studio or perhaps just gone to the movies.

I parked my pickup where I could sit under the hatchback, and set up for the morning. My shelter was less than perfect, with drips coming through the seam of the hatch on either side of me.  I caught one steady drip in an extra paint-thinner bowl, emptying it frequently, and I put a towel under the other drip.

The subject?  My nemesis, more boats!  The agreed upon location (nobody asked me) was Fisherman’s Boatyard, in Freeport, Florida.  Shapes, I told myself, you are just painting shapes.  It doesn’t matter what the shapes are, it’s just shapes.  Except the shapes probably ought to look a little bit like boats.  The colors were dimmed by the cloudy skies, and the boat-shapes were sharp against the trees on the other side of the creek.

I painted for 2½ hours before the chill crept up from my freezing wet feet into all of my bones.  My painting was unfinished when I stopped, lacking the top of the tree line, the standards supporting the boats, and the catamaran’s mast wires.  So I took a few shots with my iPhone to help me remember what the scene looked like, to finish it in my studio.

The three of us met for a country lunch at the local restaurant.  It was a good 40 minutes and two cups of hot tea before I was warm again.

One of the other artists mentioned that she didn’t care for blogs, that she felt that people don’t have time to read a blog, and it would be a better use of an artist’s time to paint instead of blogging.  I considered her opinion, and realized that the primary reason I blog is because I want to preserve my own feelings and thoughts about the process.  If others enjoy it, fine, but as long as I offer the option to bypass the blog and go straight to my galleries, then hopefully I can please most everyone.

Below are a few photographs from this weekend’s jaunt in one of our coastal dune lake state parks, Camp Helen.  I faded and increased the contrast on the first three and I increased the saturation and the detail on the fourth one.  Click on photo for larger image.

Photograph of Grasses and Reflections in Water Photograph of Scrub Oaks Following Dune Line Photograph of Dune Grasses at Camp Helen State Park, Florida Photograph of Sunset at Camp Helen State Park, Florida

Most of my images and paintings are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Plein Air Painting Progress Report: Leaps and Bounds!

Oil Painting of Old Boat "Pompano", Nick's Restaurant, Basin Bayou, FLI am starting to see in color.  That may sound strange, but the fact is that most of the time in my normal everyday activity, I hardly pay attention to color.  When I was focusing on figure drawing, I occasionally used color, but for the most part I was focused on line, shape, and value, usually rendering the whole piece just using a black-white value scale. Now that I am painting again, I am noticing for example, when a white railing is picking up the blue of the sky, or how intense a green becomes when it is contrasted with red.  I am finding that much of what I think I am seeing as different tones of a color are actually the same color which looks different depending on what color is next to it.  I am particularly challenged by all the greens I see, when landscape painting.  If I try to mix an exact shade of green, it often seems muddy compared to what I actually see.  Who knew, that Einstein’s theory that everything is relative applies to painting as well as nuclear physics, that the better way to achieve a color is to find the color next to it which gives it the quality I want.  Resisting the temptation to launch into that as a metaphor for life, I’ll instead move on to my adventures in plein air painting over the past week.  Last week we painted at Nick’s Restaurant, and I bemoaned the fact that I know very little about boats.  The next day I decided to take another run at the featured boat, using my photo references, and came up with the piece at top right.  It was the little paprika-colored spots of rust washing out from the old nails in the hull, that gave the greens and turquoise the punch I wanted.  So I wafted a little of that color into the foreground grasses too.

Oil painting study, Bayou Grass, Point Washington, FLThis week is the largest of the spring-break tourist weeks in the beach resort communities of Panama City Beach, Seagrove Beach, and Destin, FL.  So when the announcement came that the plein air painters would be meeting at the docks again in Destin, I knew the drive would take all the fun out of the adventure, so I opted to paint from my dock in my back yard.  I had thought I would be painting my view of the creek leading into Tucker Bayou, but when I looked upstream, the color of the bayou grasses intrigued me.  My initial 6″ x 6″ study, left, did nothing for me by way of planning my painting, but rather served more like a singer doing la-la-La-LA-La-la-la scales to warm up her voice before performing.

I needed a warm-up!  The temperature was less than 40 and the wind was chilly.  But it was a clear spring day with bright light.  I roughed in the composition and then went to work on the trees at the edge of the Bayou.  The spring gold-greens of the new leaves contrasted with the rich, dark pines and the shadows underneath.  I resisted the impulse to paint the shadows a colorless dark value, which has the potential to suck the life out of a painting.  Instead I darkened my green shadows with a touch of the same deep red I used to tint the pink flowering trees in my distant neighbor’s yard.  I stuggled with the grasses, because the shiny highlights were picking up every color of the palette.  Uncertain whether I was just making a mudpie, I plowed onward through the painting, until I was satisfied I had achieved an approximate similarity to the colors I was seeing.  My two cats initially were scared by my unusual activity on the dock, but they grew braver throughout the 2 hours, wrapping their tails around my legs as I scratched some final textures and highlights into the grasses and the tree trunks.  Upon completion, I stood my painting up against a piling and stepped back from it only to have a bitter wind gust blow it onto its face, requiring repair where it had landed on an edge of a dock board.  Remembering the worm crawling across my finished painting two weeks ago, I decided that paintings are not really finished until restored from an inevitable mishap at the very end.

Oil Painting of Bayou Grass, Point Washington, FL

The day before yesterday I was excited to find a delivery frames on my package stand as I entered my driveway, so even though it was late, I spent the next couple of hours framing my earlier paintings done in November and December of last year, when I first resumed oil painting after a 30-year hiatus.  Looking at them, I realized that I am growing by leaps and bounds.  The rate of my improvement surprises me.  I thought I would progress more slowly, and even be tempted to give up, because oil painting so intimidated me, no doubt from my tortured efforts during and shortly after college.  I find I am enjoying the time limitation of plein air painting, which while still allowing for tortured effort, does not allow it to continue for very long, with only a two hour window before the light changes so much that further attempts at capturing an impression are not worthwhile.

I continue to play with my photography.  I am learning about photo-editing, taking a class in Photoshop Elements from Jackie Ward at Northwest Florida State College, South Walton Center.  She is teaching us what Photoshop can do.  It’s difficult for me to remember.  My poor brain may be overloaded, trying to run my business, my day-job, the one that pays the bills, while I try to learn more about photography and painting.  I still enjoy the easy editing that can be done with Snapseed App on my iPhone.  Yesterday I paddled my canoe on the Bayou with a dear friend, a fellow photographer.  You can’t take a bad picture at sunset!  Most of my editing of my iPhoneography consists of simply straightening the horizon line and perhaps a little cropping, but I had some fun dramatizing and saturating the photo below.

Photograph, Tucker Bayou, Point Washington, FL, Joan Vienot

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Painting Plein Air at Nick’s

Oil Painting of Boats at Nicks Restaurant
My view of the boats at Nicks

Today the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters painted at Nick’s Restaurant on the north side of the Choctawhatchee Bay.  When I first arrived, one other painter was already setting up.  I walked around the derelict boats and dinghies decorating the grounds, following the Bay beach to the inlet and then up around the aged structure of the restaurant itself, shooting photos with my iPhone as I went.  A painting could be made from everywhere I looked.  I settled on the old boats lined up in the front yard. By the time I had gotten my easel set-up and made a preliminary pencil-on-paper sketch to try to lay-out my composition, about 10 to 12 more artists had arrived.

Most boats around here are white, but the boat in the foreground was red, and that color was the element that interested me.  I painted nearly every other part of the picture first, saving the red boat for last.  But as I worked, I cursed my choice of subject matter, having once again chosen to paint boats, which I know almost nothing about.  My biggest struggle was with the shape of the boat in the background.  The cabin morphed into an odd shaped roof over what I presume might have been sleeping quarters, but which now sported a gaping hole, a mate to the hole in the deck at the back of the boat.  Its one redeeming feature, besides its mass, was the turquoise color of the bottom.

Boats at Nick's

A tiny sliver of the Bay on the far left, and a nondescript structure in the background were the only hints at the location, but anyone who has eaten at Nick’s will recognize the boats.  The sandy beach was dotted with little grasses and vines, and I took liberty with that part of the painting, bringing in a few taller grasses, to break up the large area of plain beach, and to repeat a few reds.

When we lined up our paintings for the critique before lunch, I again was amazed and overwhelmed by the talent in the group.  One of the artists made a comment that caught my curiosity.  He was expressing frustration about a car pulling up and blocking his view, after he had already mixed all his colors and was ready to paint.  I have never approached my painting that way, instead mixing my colors as I go.  I may have to watch him paint sometime, to see how that works.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Plein Air Light

Oil Painting of Reflecting Pool at Eden Gardens State Park
Reflecting Pool at Eden Gardens State Park

Joining the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at their weekly painting location was a short trip today.  We met at Eden Gardens State Park in Point Washington, Florida, just a half a mile from my home.   The azaleas are in full bloom right now, brilliant clusters of alizarin, rose madder, coral, and white, in a sea of green and yellow leafy trees.  Gray Spanish moss hangs from 500-year-old giant live oak trees, with resurrection-fern-covered branches so long and heavy they curl back around and down, even all the way down to the ground in places.  Magnolias, tupelos, aromatic cedars, long-leaf pines, and so many flowering plants, especially camellias, roses, and the butterfly garden flowers are punctuated by statuary, the whole of it complimenting and ready to replace the present seasonal palette of the azaleas.  Koi play between the overflowing bowls and spray feature in the large reflecting pond facing the restored antebellum mansion in the center of the grounds.

I had arrived at 9:00, which was very nearly 8:00 since we had just changed to daylight savings time this past weekend.  The early light created high contrast, with bright sunlight highlighting the east sides of the trees, the other sides colored in muted grays in the long shadows.  I painted until 11:30, but when I stepped back away from my painting to see what I had done, I saw how much the light had changed over the 2½ hours.  Gone were the muted grays, and in their place were the dark greens of live oak leaves, and the shadow underneath them had taken on a much cooler cast than the warmth I had seen in the early light.  I decided to leave the painting that way, a testament to it being painted plein air.

My Vantage Point

I walked around the park to see what the other artists were doing, and to see if they would be joining us for a critique.  When I got back to my painting which I had left fastened onto the easel support but lying on the ground, I couldn’t believe my eyes — there was a thin vertical streak going right through the middle of the azaleas, the reflecting pond, and my carefully blended grass.  I could not imagine when I had brushed against it, and with what.  Looking more closely, I realized the streak was getting longer, right before my very eyes.  There, close to the bottom of the canvas panel, was a very small worm, happily crawling through the wet oil-painted grass!  What to do?  I had already cleaned and put away all of my brushes and paints.  So I picked up a long-leaf pine needle and flicked the worm off, and then used the pine needle to drag the paint crosswise back across his trail.  I actually was surprised at how successful I was.  Within just minutes, no one could tell a worm had ever been there.
Many of the artists opted to return to work on their paintings after we finished the critique.  I made a mental note to plan on painting longer the next time I paint.  It might mean that my blog will have to wait, but it seems like I really am just getting warmed up when the session is over.  It would be to my advantage to start another painting immediately, while my color-mixing skills are at their peak, and after my eye is seeing the shapes and colors correctly.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

 

 

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Story by Lori Ceier, on www.waltonoutdoors.com

Oil Painting of The Al-Lin in Destin Harbor

Bringing our surroundings to life a natural process for South Walton artist Joan Vienot

Lori Ceier, Walton Outdoors

http://www.waltonoutdoors.com/bringing-our-surroundings-to-life-a-natural-for-south-walton-artist-joan-vienot/

 

Joan Vienot paints plein air along the Destin Harbor. Lori Ceier/Walton Outdoors
Joan Vienot paints plein air along the Destin Harbor. Lori Ceier/Walton Outdoors

Point Washington resident Joan Vienot is on the path to fulfilling a lifelong desire of becoming a professional artist. After 45 years in the aquatic industry and only occasionally investing time, Vienot is now dedicating two days a week to creating fine art.

Growing up in the small town of Brighton, Colorado, Vienot always enjoyed drawing and painting, and knew at a very young age it was something she wanted to pursue.

“The first publication of my art was when I was seven years old. My second-grade teacher asked the class to illustrate and write stories about astronaut John Glenn circling the earth. Many of my classmates’ stories were printed in the local newspaper, but mine was the only drawing published. I was so embarrassed that my story didn’t merit publication, not realizing how special it was for my drawing to be recognized,” said Vienot.

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Recent work from journey to North Carolina. Photo courtesy JoanVienot.com.
Recent work from journey to North Carolina. Photo courtesy JoanVienot.com.

Vienot’s passion for creating has now fully evolved into lush, colorful interpretations of our surroundings. Landscapes, figure drawings, still life and photography are just a few of the mediums Vienot has facilitated to create remarkable works of art.

Be on the lookout for Vienot’s work in local galleries in the near future. Meanwhile, you just might find her plein air painting one of our scenic landscapes in and around Walton County.

Vienot has a BA in Fine Art from the University of Northern Colorado. In addition to teaching art to high school students, she is involved as a volunteer for the arts in Walton County, serving on the board of directors for the Cultural Arts Alliance and co-chairing the A+Art Committee for CAA, which showcases member artists’ work at the South Walton Center of Northwest Florida State College.

To learn more about Joan Vienot and her work, go to joanvienot.com.

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An Ideal Day

Oil Painting of Pelican on Providenciales
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I have set a goal this year, to make a transition in my life, to live at least two days a week as an artist by the end of this year.  It may happen lot sooner than that.  It all started when I decided to hold myself accountable for not yet having made the leap.  Frankly, I’ve been fearful that I would not be able to support myself with my art, a legitimate concern up until this point, since I have been sporadic in my production of art.  To support my fear, I have used every excuse not to be more prolific, or in many cases, to go days without sketching or painting.  My most frequent excuse is that I do not have time.  Guess what — I do have time — I’ve been less than truthful with myself.  I simply have chosen to use my time for other purposes, instead of for producing art.

I hired a coach, to give me suggestions and feedback for making progress towards my goal.  One of the things she asked me, was what an ideal day would be like for me. I described waking up rested, taking some time for meditation and then working out or paddling or doing some other fitness-oriented activity, followed by a visit to a gallery or some other “artist-date”, and then painting all afternoon, probably plein air painting, followed by a cultural event in the evening, perhaps a play or dance theater or a musical performance.  But then I thought to myself, about a week later, that if I had described that as my ideal day, then why had I not ever had an ideal day, and I realized then and there that I was lying to myself, because I have had unscheduled days before, but have not ever done all the things that would make up an ideal day.

So when one of my best friends called last week and asked another friend and me over for breakfast on Sunday, and I declined because I had other tentative plans, I instead invited her over to my art studio on Saturday because I intended to paint.  She is a writer, so I asked her to bring her paper so she could write while I painted.  She offered to bring breakfast.  Meanwhile, Saturday brought incredibly bad weather with it, and another friend decided to cancel a trip to see a client, and instead came over to my house to wait out the rain and to work on a drawing she was making.  So the morning found the three of us in my studio, painting and talking and solving the world’s problems.  I made a small painting of some young bananas growing on a tree that I had photographed on North Caicos a few weeks ago.  At left is the sequence of development.

I cannot describe the creative spirit that filled the studio while we talked and worked.  I was in awe of the circumstances that brought us all together, and the energy of the dynamics.  Both friends left around midday, and I took another half-hour or so to finish my painting, before going upstairs to get my house ready for the evening activity.  I had invited 6 friends to participate in “The Art of Seeing” class which Ponce de Leon, FL, artist Mary Moses teaches through her gallery, HRMagoo.  I still needed to trim the legs on 3 of my stools so everyone would be comfortable at my art table, and I needed to go to the deli to pick up the supper wraps I would be serving.

Mary brought a friend with her, guitarist/artist/singer/songwriter Sharon Johnson, who played her guitar and sang while the rest of us learned the Art of Seeing.  Mary demonstrated, toning a plywood board with charcoal and then showing us how she picked out shapes and faces from the patterns in the wood grain, and then developed them.  We all dove in, everyone in the group helping each other “find” shapes in their panels, with a good amount of laughter, all inspired, often awed, always positive, and occasionally raunchy, and all in all, a lot of fun.  The time flew, and we all had a great time.

I think I probably could continue to work on my panel, but I am surprised and happy with what I did so I may just call it finished as is.  It is not at all like any art I have ever made before, and it is uniquely my own, in that I drew the shapes and faces that for the most part I alone saw, and in my own way, without pre-planning the composition.  I found a number of faces on my panel, including a few aliens and a horse and two elephants and a covey of birds.  I assign significance and meaning to it which no doubt would alarm my some of my friends and family and perhaps cause them to look askance at me, so I’ll leave that unexplained for now, and settle for letting you do the interpreting and drawing your own meaning from it.  It is below left.

I would say that this day qualified as an ideal day.

I painted the pelican, below right, a couple of days later, using a reference photo from my vacation on Providenciales in January.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot

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Back-to-the-Basics Drawing Course

Hollington Farmland

 

In February, 2013, I will be offering a “Back to the Basics” Drawing Course at the Bayou Arts Center, in Santa Rosa Beach, FL, for the Cultural Arts Alliance.  The course will be four two-hour classes, on Tuesdays from 1:00 to 3:00pm.  We will practice line quality, “seeing” shape and drawing what we see, and creating textures.  We will practice drawing as preliminary to other art, as well as drawing as the final masterpiece, and we will experiment with several kinds of media.

An otherwise fabulous work of art can be ruined by poor perspective.  So in the first of the four two-hour classes, we will review one-point and two-point perspective, which are useful tools for making representational objects look “right” in our attempt to create the illusion of 3 dimensions on a two-dimensional surface.  Knowledge of perspective will assist us in seeing correctly.

Above is a drawing I made several years ago, showing the weeds near to the viewer to be much larger, relative to the trees and the structures further back in the picture plane.  As objects recede, they should be drawn smaller and there is an orderly way to go about that, which is the tool called perspective.

Below I have posted a simple sketch showing some perspective problems.  You immediately get a sense that there’s something wrong with this picture, and you may or may not notice what it is exactly that bothers you, but you will recognize it and agree that the house on the right looks crooked, and the telephone poles seem too tall as they go over the horizon, and the fence underneath them doesn’t seem right, and the tractor looks too small.

 

Back-to-the Basics Drawing Course

Register at (850) 622-5970.  The fee is $100 for CAA members, slightly more for non-members.  Below is the suggested supply list.

  • Ebony pencils — jet black, extra smooth (Prismacolor) or similar very soft, black graphite pencil (6B or 8B)
  • A water-soluble pencil, i.e., Derwent Sketching pencil – dark wash, 8B,  or Derwent Graphtint pencil – nice colors are steel blue(06), port (01), shadow blue (05)

  • A water-soluble pen, dark (Vis-a-Vis, or Flair) — blue, black, or brown
  • A white eraser (White Pearl)
  • 12″ ruler — 18″ is even better
  • Watercolor brushes — nothing fancy, anything will do, but if you have one, a #4 rigger/liner/script and #6 pointed round
  • Small water container (Dixie cup is fine)
  • Soft cotton rag for smudging
  • Old sketchbook for note-sketches and for practicing at home
  • Assortment of papers — white, cream, mid-tone, and colors, different textures, nothing terribly expensive, but better than newsprint,whatever you have on hand, and perhaps some watercolor paper or illustration board, 12 x 18 or larger
  • Plus anything else you might want to draw with or on
  • You may want a to bring your drawing board and table easel or stand-up easel, but we can work on the tabletops.
  • Optional supplies the instructor will bring for you to experiment with:
  • Charcoal pencil, paper-wrapped — soft or extra soft (Berol)
  • Woodless pencil, 6B (Grafstone), or graphite sticks
  • Cretacolor Woodless watercolor pencils (Aqua Monolith)
  • Nupastel, white, and some dark colors
  • Stabilo Aquarelle Black 8046 or Red 8040 or Brown 8045
  • Practice paper (cheap, not colorfast):   Smooth newsprint, Textured newsprint, Gray bogus paper

The instructor gets supplies from www.dickblick.com, and standard delivery is usually about 10 days.  But please do not spend a fortune — let’s use the supplies you already have!

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The Ruins at Coba

I spent a week in Mexico in mid-December.  Ruins from ancient civilizations fascinate me, and the ruins at Coba were no exception.  A boy there drove our big tricycle-tour-carriage to one of the pyramids, Nohoch Mul, one of the few in Mexico that visitors are still allowed to climb.  Nohoch Mul is the tallest pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula, 138′.  At the top, you can see out over the Mexican jungle to other points breaking the treeline in the distance, which I presume are other pyramids.  There was a structure on the platform at the top, with a short doorway which was screened closed.  The walls inside were black, like many fires had been burned inside.  It felt spooky, and I wondered if sacrifices had been made there — maybe some spirits were still hanging around.

Our tricycle guide took us to some of the other structures, including a round temple-pyramid and a Mayan ballcourt.  After we finished our tour, we realized there was another, smaller ball court, near the entrance to the area.

I found the ballcourts to be particularly fascinating.  I could almost hear the cheering for the teams of players trying to pass a ball through the stone rings in the center of the sloped side-walls.  The game was played recreationally, but also ceremonially when it is thought that the captain of the losing team gave up his head.

One of the rings was broken at the second ball court, and its jagged edges and sharp shadow shapes intrigued me.

As often happens when I am first starting a painting, the initial paint-drawing frustrated me and I almost quit.  There was very little color to the ruins — just the black, white, and gray of the rocks and mortar.  But I didn’t want to make it a black-and-white painting.  Near-black, and gray can be made from many colors.  I wanted the areas lit by the sun to be warm, and the shadows cooler, so I chose an orange tint for the sunny rocks, and I used cobalt violet mixed with orange for the shadowed areas.  Where I needed it to be even cooler, I added a little viridian green.  The broken stone ring was the obvious focal point, being so very different from the planes and shapes of the rest of the structure.  To bring even more attention to it, I added a warmer gray to its shadows, with more orange.  The shadows cast from the ring are in sharp contrast to the sunlit area, as opposed to the shadows from the trees overhead, which have soft edges.

Most of my images are available for purchase.  Contact me if you are interested. — Joan Vienot