painting Archives - Page 7 of 8

Posted on 10/17/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

The Present Moment — A Showing of My Art

Grayt Grounds of Monet Monet to showcase local artist Joan Vienot Nov. 2 – 17

“The Present Moment” show features landscapes painted in oil

A story by Lori Ceier, Walton Outdoors, http://www.waltonoutdoors.com/grayt-grounds-of-monet-monet-to-showcase-local-artist-joan-vienot-nov-2-17/

Artist Joan Vienot painting plein air at Grayt Grounds. Her work will be featured Nov. 2 – 17. Lori Ceier/Walton Outdoors

A one woman show of works by Walton artist Joan Vienot will be on display at Grayt Grounds of Monet Monet in Grayton Beach Nov. 2 – 17, 2013. Opening night is Nov. 2 from 5 – 8 p.m.

Cheri Peebles, owner of Grayt Grounds is excited about the show.

“My idea is to have a coffee house that is diversified and a service. Featuring local artists is good for the community and neighborhood,” said Peebles.

Joan Vienot’s history of making art in Walton County goes back to the first gallery in Grayton Beach who showcased her watercolor paintings of the dune lakes, Bay, the Gulf, and all things that grow and flourish along the coast. Her passion for the natural beauty of this area has led her to become a fine art painter. Vienot’s outdoor paintings done ‘en plein air,’ in the moment, capture the beauty we recognize as the paradise we live in here in Walton County.

The show will feature her plein air style 8”x10” oils on canvas offered in an affordable price range. There will be between 40 -50 works on display.

“I paint what I see, in the moment, which is reflected in my preference for figure drawing and plein air painting. The greatest pleasure for me as an artist is the capture of the present moment, a little piece of Now, or at least my impression of the Now. When painting on site outdoors, or figure drawing, the scene or the pose is very likely to change during the process of drawing or painting it. I enjoy that hurried pace, the rush of the capture, the challenge of the media, and the ongoing quest for quick mastery. In each case, the subject must be portrayed in fairly general terms, with only enough detail to lend unique identity and a little atmosphere. I must forgive myself for a bit of inaccuracy in favor of conveying the essence of the subject in an abbreviated period of time, rarely doing much correcting when I return to the studio, preferring to let my interpretation of the moment stand on its own,” said Vienot.

Below find a sampling what you may see at Vienot’s show:

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About Joan Vienot
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.

Recent exhibits and publications:
• Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters booth at ArtsQuest 2013
• Scenes of South Walton, 2012, Honorable Mention for “Aster Reflected,” at Hidden Lantern Gallery
• CAA Directors Show, 2012, Bayou Arts Center
• A Passion for Art, 2012, A+Art, Northwest Florida State College
• Figure It Out, 2011, Studio b
• Photography for The Stand Up Paddle Radio Show: published in The Paddler ezine, and Standup Journal

To learn more, go to joanvienot.com.

Posted on 09/11/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Painting Plein Air At Home

Oil painting of the view into Tucker Bayou

A nice thing about plein air painting is that it can be done anywhere outdoors. I am fortunate to live in an area of wonderful natural beauty, so everywhere I turn, there is a scene worth painting. I didn’t want to make the 30 mile drive into town to meet up with my plein air group, so I stayed home. The trees were tinged with fall colors, and the sky had returned to blue, after days of haze. It was a great day to paint. But I was in a bit of a rush this morning, wanting to finish by a certain time in order to be able to go to a poetry reading. After an hour of painting fast-and-furious, I left my easel setup on my dock, running to the house for a quick shower before driving to the reading.

Posted on 08/14/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air at Grayton Beach State Park

Oil painting of dunes at Grayton Beach State Park

The last time I painted at Grayton Beach State Park, it was pouring down rain, so today’s partly cloudy skies were a treat. A lot of painters showed up. I didn’t work as hard at accuracy, instead trying to capture the general impression of the funny-looking clumps of greenery on top of the dunes, and exaggerating the texture of the sea oats. These are the two 8 x 10’s I painted, oil paint on canvas panel. A number of visitors to the park passed by, all pleasantly wishing me a good morning, a few stopping to see what I was doing.

Posted on 07/24/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — 1 Comment

Water , Water, Everywhere – Julie Gilbert Pollard Workshop

Oil painting of reflecting water scene, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop - first try

Oil painting of reflecting water scene, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop, second try

Last week I learned that water can see. Who knew?! That was just one of the hundreds of tips Julie Gilbert Pollard gave in her workshop in Panama City Beach, Florida, “Wet and Wild: Painting Vibrant Water Scenes in Brilliant Color”. This tip came on the first day, when we were working on reflections. In other words, Julie said, “Water reflects as if you were looking at the scene from its vantage point.” To illustrate, if a dead tree is angled out over the water sideways to the viewer, the reflection is a reverse mirror image, the same size and directly underneath the tree, in reverse angle. But if the tree is angled towards the viewer, the tree above the water will appear shorter due to foreshortening, but the reflection will be much longer in proportion, because the water is “seeing” the tree from underneath.

So I look at reflections differently now. I look at color and shapes differently too. Everything is more colorful since that workshop, and I am seeing much better. I find this is always the case after any period of immersion in art, that I see better and am more aware of colors and shapes. One of the other participants in the workshop said that one of the few things you get better at as you age, is art. I laughed, but I understand that statement.

We worked in the classroom, from sample photographs Julie provided which illustrated the concepts and techniques she was teaching. She used the first four chapters of her Adventurous Oils, a Workbook Companion to Brilliant Color as well as several hand-outs. It was a treat being taught by someone who understands how artists learn, who was able to paint and talk at the same time (no small feat, integrating both the left and right brain at the same time!), and who was able to provide constructive assistance as we worked on our various pieces. And the participants were a happy bunch, the paint-mixing and experimentation punctuated with their softly-spoken stories to their table-mate and their laughter. My own table-mate, Faye Gibson, owner of Meacham Howell Design, also was using oil paint; the rest were painting with watercolor. Since the instructor was giving demonstrations in both watercolor and in oil painting, I brought in a 6-color Walmart watercolor set and made a watercolor painting and then painted an oil painting the second day when we were studying waves, shown at left. The watercolor painting was snatched up by a good friend of mine as soon as I posted it on Facebook.

The third day we studied cascading water. Julie teaches cascading water as if it were a gathered skirt of a wedding dress, with the initial drop being the waist and flowing skirt, followed by a ruffle of white where it splashes down on the pond below, with a “train of lace” surrounding the splash on the flat pond. I painted my first palette knife painting that day. Clean-up is much easier at the end of a knife painting — all you have to clean is the knife!

The fourth and fifth days we were supposed to finish the paintings we had started the first 3 days, but I had already finished mine and painted a second one each day too. Plein air painting has made me pretty quick. So the fourth day I cut a few flowers off the crepe myrtle bush in the parking lot, and put them in a pitcher of water on my desk, thinking I would learn to paint the pitcher full of water. But the flowers fascinated me, so I painted them primarily, with only a suggestion of the pitcher underneath. Our technique for the day was negative painting, where you paint the negative space surrounding the form. My efforts taught me the techniques, but made the painting very twiggy, so the following day I painted out most of the twigs and branches, and it became flowers again.

Oil painting of a wave, painted with bright colors as a value study of color, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop

Photograph of bright color painting, de-saturated to show values of pure colors

On the final day, the technique assignment was to paint a scene in pure color, using colors straight out of the tube, or pre-mixed, using colors for their inherent light-dark values instead of as color. I again painted with a palette knife, using the wave photos for reference. Anywhere there were dark values in the painting, I used ultramarine blue, violet, and reds, and cobalt green, lavender, and orange for the middle values, and orange and yellow for the lighter values, with white for the froth. The idea was that if you took away the color, the painting would read correctly as a black-white-gray value study. So I took a photograph of my painting, and then de-saturated it to remove the color, and was pleasantly surprised that indeed, it looks “right” as a value study.

To top off the workshop, there was a drawing for one of the instructor’s paintings, and I won it! Icing on the cake!

Joan Vienot with Julie Gilbert Pollard
Photo by Helen Ballance, Beach Art Group

Incomplete oil painting in progress, crepe myrtle, negative painting assignment, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop

Oil painting of crepe myrtle flowers, in Julie Gilbert Pollard workshop

Posted on 06/12/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air: Battling With Nature

Oil painting of Tucker Bayou Through the Trees at Eden Gardens State Park

Every geographic area has its plagues, I suppose. Here in Northwest Florida, our plagues are yellow flies from mid-May through the middle or end of June, and in late summer or fall, dog flies. I react badly to yellow fly bites, getting a huge hive within minutes. If I put a good anti-inflammatory cream on the bite right away, I will avert a reaction. My plein air painting backpack is stocked with a strong repellent, and the best anti-inflammatory salve I can find. I used both today.

We painted at Eden Gardens State Park, which is just a hop and a skip from my home. I cajoled my dear friend, Lori Ceier, into coming out and painting with us. Lori is the producer of my favorite website for local activities, www.waltonoutdoors.com. Lori claims not to be an artist but I think what she really means is that up ’til now, she has preferred photography to painting.

Having recently completed my training as a Reiki Master, and thoroughly convinced of the Law of Attraction, nevertheless, during yellow fly season, I still cover most of my skin with clothing and put repellent on what’s left. I fared pretty well, until the last half hour when the frustrated flies were fairly spitting their venom. We all stopped painting soon then, and went to the screened pavilion for our critique. Lori took a series of Photos showing the progression of my painting, and posted them on her Facebook page for WaltonOutdoors.com.

Plein air critique is interesting. We each put our paintings up in a row and everyone ooo’s and ahhh’s and then each artist talks about their piece, the challenges they faced, what their intentions were, etc., and then the group might offer a suggestion for this effect or for that one. If an artist has had enough of that fun, he or she might end the suggestions by saying thank you , y’all have given me a lot of ideas, and then we move on to the next piece. Generally though, these are what I would call “soft” critiques, in that all of the artists are so encouraging — no one ever tells you that maybe you should take up sculpture or some other art form.

I felt so brave when I was painting, daringly putting a muted purple in the trees in the background, and a bright purple in the shadows in the foreground, and painting the silhouette of the foreground tree leaves a deep red-violet. But when I look at the painting from any distance, the purples just become dark values, not daring at all! My intention was to paint the background trees and grasses with brighter colors and more detail, and the foreground with broader brush strokes and less detail. I think everything turned out more or less as I had hoped, except for the color of the water. When I put the rich red-violet trees and shadow patterns in the foreground, the water of the bayou in the middle-ground, which I had painted a light pinkish blue, became more muted by comparison, almost a light gray.

In general, I’m pleased with the overall impression of looking out at the bayou through very large trees. The barely visible picnic tables show the scale of the trees.

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

Posted on 05/17/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters at ArtsQuest

Oil painting of the Bayou at Nick's Restaurant, west of Freeport, Florida

Oil painting in process, showing tents at ArtsQuest 2013

Tents at ArtsQuest Fine Arts and Music Festival, Watercolor, FL

ArtsQuest Fine Art and Music Festival has come and gone, and in its wake, the familiar feeling of having passed through a wormhole in time and space, a sort of time warp, coming out on the other side with everything the same and yet very much changed.

Members of the sponsoring agency, the non-profit Cultural Arts Alliance of Walton County, are invited to exhibit 3 pieces of their artwork in the member tent, in exchange for 4 hours of volunteer work at the festival. For my volunteer work, I was asked to defend some No Parking cones and to move them out of the way when exhibiting artists needed to get through to set up their booths. It was the first time that I had seen booths being set up. My only exposure to setting up tents has been for overnight camping, and it is in light of that experience that I can pronounce tent-raising to be a close second to two-person canoeing for the fast track to divorce court, so I was fairly amazed at the calm and congeniality of the artists doing their nesting. The next day I helped set up the Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters tent and found it to be not at all unpleasant, so I think the key ingredient is having artists do the job.

The festival opened Friday afternoon. The experience was invaluable. With the tunes of Kelsey Anna and Matt miller and later Cody Copeland wafting over the grounds, I painted plein air near our booth the first afternoon, and again on the afternoon of the third day, the air filled by other musicians. The rest of the time I talked to the passers-by about the plein air art and artists and I explained what plein air painting is to everyone who would listen. Almost no one knew that plein air painting simply means painting in open air, on-site, looking at the scene you are painting.

We enjoyed great exposure at our booth, picking up some 30 email addresses to add to the 95 that already receive weekly notices of our next plein air painting location. One of the regular participants in our outings, Melody Bogle, had submitted her work and been juried into the festival, so she had her own booth. We all were overjoyed when the announcement came that she had won Best in Show for the 2013 Festival. With more than 100 artists juried into the festival, I felt like her win validated plein air painting to the show-goers.

I painted the painting at left on the first afternoon of the ArtsQuest Fine Art Festival. It shows the plein air tent and the row of tents that housed the CAA members’ exhibit in front of the concrete pond in Cerulean Park at Watercolor, Florida. I re-painted the lawn when I got back to my home studio, because the shadows made the pond look like it was higher than the tents. By removing the shadows and instead painting some downward-curving lawn contours, it was a quick fix to make the pond look lower than the tents. Perspective and postion are, after all, merely optical illusions. I compressed the scene to show only the tents, without any of the commercial buildings that were actually there fronting the streets of the beautiful village of Watercolor, Florida.

I own and manage a swimming pool service company as my “day-job”. One of my customers came by the plein air booth, and I enjoyed showing her my work. After the festival closed, she came to my home studio to see more of my work. As I develop my skills and learn the business of being an artist, I am recognizing that every experience is another notch in my belt, each in itself valuable for future actions and interactions. (Thank you for taking the time to visit with me, Becky Arnold. Did you realize you were contributing to my training?)

At right is the completed version of the painting I posted last week, the brightly colored building in downtown Grayton Beach that houses Shorty’s Restaurant. After I got back to the studio, I realized that I had not painted the railings nearest me, or the flower pot that had attracted me to that point of view in the first place! To paint it plein air, I had positioned myself with my back to the sun with the unfortunate result that both my palette and my canvas were so brightly lit that I was “snow-blind” for most of the morning while I painted. It is truly a wonder that my colors turned out to be fairly close to correct! But that’s my excuse for not painting the railing and flowerpot until I got back to the studio.

Below left is the piece I painted this week at the regular weekly Emerald Coast Plein Air Painters outing, at Nick’s Rstaurant on the Bay, west of Freeport, FL. I worked very hard on figuring out how to make convincing pine trees, most particularly the brush strokes and stamps to use to show the so-very-important silhouette edge, and also the layering of values to show the masses of the needles. In this part of my process, that is one of my goals, to be able to learn to quickly portray recognizable forms just by using a few simple brushstrokes. I was not as comfortable with my efforts with the rippling reflections in the water below the trees. I reworked them in the studio, and came up with a fair representation of the lattice-like pattern. I was not at all successful with the muted land-mass on the horizon, across the Bay. I painted it and scrubbed it out 3 times plein air, never able to achieve a straight and level line that I was happy with. The horizon you see now was painted this morning in the studio.

And below right is the beginning of a painting that I started the last afternoon of ArtsQuest. The family in the picture was watching me paint, and asked if I might be able to put them in it, since they had been watching the watercolor workshop while I was painting. They want to see it when I finish it, so now the pressure is on!! I had fun with this painting at ArtsQuest, letting a few of the people in my audience paint a spot of color here or there. It was interesting how without fail, they would at first decline, but once the brush was in their hand, they would start smiling, daubing a little color or texture here or there! I think they all will be making a trip to pick up art supplies this week!

Unfinished oil painting of Workshops at ArtsQuest 2013

I was pleased that another one of my photographs was published this week, to illustrate a story by my friend Leslie Kolovich, host of The Stand Up Paddle Radio Show, for her column in The Paddler ezine, a United Kingdom publication. The article can be found at http://www.issuu.com/thepaddler/docs/thepaddler_8.

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

Posted on 04/17/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air with One Brush, #8 Bright

I 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.

At 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

Posted on 04/04/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air Painting in the Rain

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

Posted on 03/30/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Plein Air Painting Progress Report: Leaps and Bounds!

Oil Painting of Old Boat "Pompano", Nick's Restaurant, Basin Bayou, FL I 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.

This 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.

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.

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

Posted on 03/20/201304/03/2024 by Joan Vienot — Leave a comment

Painting Plein Air at Nick’s

Oil Painting of Boats at Nicks Restaurant

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.

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