Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. 7" by 5" oil on gessoboard.
>I felt like I was getting into a bit of a rut with color and such.I went and bought more fabric and tea towels. I love tableware but painting elipses is always tough. I just wanted to stay loose with in general and not get committed to a level of geometrical detail that is not my style.
Things have been kind of crazy here in the South watching these hurricanes pile up and trying to decide what level of preparedness is appropriate. As I write this tropical storm Hanna is passing through. Everyone in my family gets a little stressed and short-tempered until all is secured. Welcome to September in South Carolina. I am also preparing to head back to teaching at SCAD this fall after a summer of painting. I am looking forward to it as teaching keeps me learning and looking at things in new ways.
I must reiterate how incredibly beautiful the town of St. Andrews-by-the-Sea is as well as the surrounding area. It was the perfect place for a plein air workshop.
After years of pouring over Kevin Macpherson's books and enjoying his work I am delighted to have finally had the opportunity to take a workshop from him.
I liked that he had us all paint a scene first in the morning without demonstrating in order to see where everyone was at. He then gave a critique which he does well, spending appropriate time with each person's work. In the afternoon he painted a demonstration and I have included some of the photos in this post.
The scene for the demonstration painting by Kevin.
He emphasized seeing the lights and darks initially. He carefully placed them in his painting. He is very thoughtful at this stage and really looking to see, simplify and place the most important darks. The scene was somewhat backlit in the mid-afternoon. He tries to paint "what the air feels like" and not just what he sees in order to capture a true sense of both time and place.
Laying the the darks. Note he is wearing gloves.
I am a convert.He made use of the three values of portland grays(light medium and dark) along with a limited palette of alizarin crimson, cad red light, cad yellow light, ultramarine blue, and pthaylo green.(It was my first time working with the grays and I liked how it expanded the the colors in subtle ways.) As he painted his demonstration in continued to place strokes and color notes. He does this in a very knowing manner it seemed to me.
He laid in the sky with a solid value of portland gray light. As he painted the painting I wondered how he would resolve the sky. I thought just the color he had it looked pretty good. Then almost at the end he brushed in some very pale subtle yellow from the horizon line up into the sky and slightly blued the upper sky. It changed everything in a stunning way! The feeling of the light was there. Then he slightly warmed the value of the roof on the building in the distance and the whole painting came together.
The finished painting.
My quick camera shot does not begin to do justice to it.I think everyone got a lot more out of the demo having done their own paintings first and been frustrated in some cases. So the timing of his demo was well placed.
I have concluded that art books are helpful but there is nothing like learning by watching an accomplished painter paint and having him or her watch you paint and give you feedback.
As I said in an earlier post, I found Kevin to be an excellent teacher. He has an incredible eye. He is sharing and funny. I highly recommend him. By the way, En Plein Air Masters are heading to Greece next fall.
"Sunny Windowbox"Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. 8"by 10" - oil on linen panel.
The flowers and gardens in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, Canada were just stunning every where I went. There were lots of wildflower gardens with such variety. I had just finished painting the garden above and had a small canvas and took on this window box. I loved that everything was kind of high key in the sunlight and the effect on color in and out of the shade. This painting was done from that small study.
"Cottage Garden"- Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. oil on linen panel - 9" by 12".
This is a larger painting that I did from a smaller plein air study. Many plein air painters work this way. They get a feel for light and color on site and then take photos. Working from both the photos and the small study help to create the larger painting. Quite frankly working small for so long made this a bit of a leap for me.
I was walking down the street in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, Canada and this garden view just appeared after passing a large hedge.I loved the way the light and shade were hitting it and the quaint little cottage or potting shed in the background.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino.6" h by 8"w - Oil on linen panel.
I was actually painting another scene when this view caught my eye. I decided to paint it. I had to work quickly as rain was imminent. I liked the way the greens were kind of tangled together against the pink stucco. This is on a cute little side street in Savannah where there are endless views to paint.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. 6" by 6". oil on linen panel.
I got up early to paint this at 7am due to the heat. I have been wanting to paint this boat for a while. Maybe I liked it because it is the color of an eggplant.(Sounds a bit crazy) but it sort of looked like one sitting there in the water.
Any way, boats beat me up. I took this painting back to the studio and finally ended up repainting it. As usual I was attracted to the colors and shapes and the way the light was hitting it. I really wanted to stay loose with this one.(Re-occuring theme) because there would have been way too much to paint if I got committed to detail. I think technical things scare me so I tried to just regard it as shapes and color in a very interpretive manner.I have a feeling boats are going to a big theme when I go up to my workshop in Canada.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. 5"h by 7"w - oil on linen panel.
It is unbearably hot here on Hilton Head and since I got a late start this morning, I decided to paint the backyard of our Arts and Crafts bungalow-style home. There is a lot going on with the foliage. My husband loves to plant and it is very lush! There are a couple of giant oaks that move the shade across the yard. So for this painting I was trying to capture the feeling of the dappled light and shade in a very small painting format. A single brushstroke had to define a whole plant.
In a little over a week I am heading up to Canada. I am taking a workshop with Kevin Macpherson for a week with the En Plein Air Masters Series. I am also painting with Michael Chelsey Johnson for a day. I am getting quite excited. I was so clueless at the first workshop I took about 10 years ago. I think I am very open to learning at this point. Actually, I hope I always stay that way.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. 6" by 8"- oil on canvas panel.Click on image to view larger. Click here to purchase.
These are not just any pigs. These are Cinta Senese pigs that are an endangered species domesticated at Spannocchia the Italian organic farm I was at this past spring. It was a grayish day today so I went for my photos to do this painting. I tried to place the paint on this one and try not to fuss with it too much.
Speaking of Spannocchia I have gotten the dates firmed up for next summer's Plein Air Painting in Tuscany workshop that I will be teaching there. It will be from June 21 through June 28, 2009. I should have the prices firmed up in the next week or two. Email me me if interested.
Copyrighted © by Linda Warner Constantino. Oil on canvas panel - 6"h by 8"w. Click on image to view larger. Click here to purchase.
Thunderhead clouds are like the "mountains of the South." You sense their massive size just by looking. These clouds were like out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie. I kind of felt like some kind of miracle was going to happen at any moment! :)
I painted is on a different surface than I usually use.I usually use a #13 Classens double primed linen. This is a medium surface canvas panel. Photoshop picks up the texture more. If I try to hard to downplay it it looks blurry. This is pretty true to how it looks.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. 5" by 7" oil on linen panel.Click image to view larger.
The clouds were so dynamic yesterday. Sunny one minute stormy the next. The marsh at the Wildlife Refuge is so flat.It reminds me of the tundra in Alaska where I once lived. Here I was just trying to catch a sense of these clouds.
I came across some newsworthy items for daily painters. There is an excellent write up about Duane Keiser and his new collectors' blog by Katherine Tyrrell of Making a Mark.She includes a kind of historical synopsis of his development.
Karen Jurick is planning a workshop possibly in nearby Savannah. Check out her site for more information.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino, oil on canvas board 6"h by 8"w. Click on image to view larger. Click here to purchase.
I painted at the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge this morning. Acres and acres of marsh and lily pads! I did not know where to start. I did this little close up just to get acquainted. You cannot paint lily pads without thinking of Monet. Of course his paintings are gigantic and in some ways I think it would have been easeier to paint them on a larger canvas. What I was trying to do was a quick reponse to what I was seeing. Actually the bugs were bad. There are often challenges beyond the canvas in plein air painting! So here is my own little homage to Monet. I have even more respect for him now.
Copyrighted ©2008 by Linda Warner Constantino.Oil on linen board 6" by 6" - Click on image for larger view. Click here to purchase.
I am getting pretty obsessed with the blue-green thing. I think it is safe to say. Even in painting landscapes it is the blues and greens that challenge me. I am still trying to stay looser, and a bit more interpretive with my still lifes. With my illustrator background I have a latent tendency to get hung up in rendering. When I start to render too tightly I am committed to a level of detail that I am not really interested in. I like mark making and the vitality it can bring to a painting. I find it easier to keep the brushtrokes lively in landscapes than still lifes but I am working on it.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. Oil on linen board - 6" by 6". Click on image to see larger view. Click here to purchase.
I awoke to a nail and a stick in my tire so I knew I was not going out on site. I set up this little still life yesterday but did not get around to painting it because I had 15 family members over for dinner and decided I had to scrub the kitchen floor. Sounds ho-hum but sometimes cleaning can be very satisfying.I think I read somewhere once that Ingrid Bergman's hobby was cleaning! I guess that makes me feel justified.
Anyway, I have this thing with greens a blues. In this painting I was playing around with saturation and de-saturation. The cobalt blue pot is so bright. I decided to surround it with more desaturated blues and greens with some yellows and oranges as a kind of accent. I underpainted with a mixture of alizarin crimson, cad. red and some cad. orange. It is nice to have the time this summer to play around and experiment with painting a little more. I am really trying to stay a little looser with my still lifes.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. Oil on belgian linen on board 6 by 6 in. Click on image for larger view.
It's a cloudy day so I decided to do a still life. I collect Arts and Crafts pottery and I have a lot of little pitchers and pots. I love their colors and shapes. I painted this thinking more abstractly about shapes and colors. I could not resist the Queen Anne cherry for an accent. I am struck by how much tighter this painting is rendered than my landscapes. I think it is the challenge of painting the geometric forms and the fact that I can paint slower not worrying about the light changing. Still I try to paint spots of color without too much blending. As an experiment I used Galykd Lite as a medium just for the heck of it. Not sure how I feel about using it - a bit sticky.
Copyrighted © 2008 by Linda Warner Constantino. Oil on Belgian linenboard - 5" by 7". I found the view of this little marina full of shapes and the colors of the morning. I tried to capture the scene as a celebration of shapes in a more abstract way.
Copyrighted © 2007 by Linda Warner Constantino. 12" by 12" framed.
The clouds were so dynamic on this day, constantly changing. It even rained a little.
This painting is for sale framed on eBay and the selling price includes free 3-day priority shipping if you would like it in time for Chistmas,
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