Little Deer Isle

After several lovely cool, gray and rainy days it has become hot and sunny again today, Grrrr. Oh well, almost September so I tell myself these hot days can't last! The coolth is sure to come soon. I'm still on "baby watch", waiting for my daughter-in-law to go into labor. She is three days past her due date now.

I'm feeling tired and sluglike and too hot to want to do anything, so I decided I would try to paint a picture today - something not too physically demanding. I chose a reference of a photo I took several years ago up in Maine - maybe a way to remind me of the lovely fresh cool air and the icy waters up there. Ah, to be there right now ....

Celadon Vase

I've been on such a landscape kick lately, working from favorite photos. And in fact I had a favorite photo all picked out for tonight's art class as well. I had printed it out and was ready to go. Except that I forgot the photo and left it at home. I got to class tonight and was sorting through the photos I had with me, but none of them grabbed me.

And then it struck me that it's been such a long time since I actually painted something from life. It's been all photos lately. So I decided that "from life" would be good practice, and I painted this one from a small still life that Chris had set up in one corner of her studio. It's my usual new fave, 9x12 Art Spectrum Colourfix.

The Secret Garden

Last year I was in a show at the Bedminster Public Library. I missed the opening reception so went out with a friend on the following Saturday to look at the paintings. On the way home we took an alternate route, and ended up passing by the Leonard J. Buck Garden. Neither of us had ever even heard of it though we have lived in this area for years! So we decided to stop in. It was sort of a gray day, and we were the only visitors there, which gave it a secret and secluded air. The small pool in the central part of the garden seemed especially like a small and hidden retreat. I took some photos and had long thought of using one as a reference, and tonight suddenly seemed like the night.

I'll have a couple more pictures in a show at the same library next month. Perhaps I'll have to visit the garden again and see how it looks in autumn.

Cavendish Coast

This is another of my Atlantic Canada series, this time on Prince Edward Island. The north part of the island, along the coastline near Cavendish, has lovely rugged cliffs and scenery, part of which is a national park. Much of the rest of the area near Cavendish is known as "Anne land" for the Island's most famous fictional resident, Anne of Green Gables. Maybe one of these days I'll have to do a painting of the Green Gables farmhouse itself, which was said to be the model for auther Lucy Maud Montgomery's fictional home of Anne's.

Murray Corner

This is just a quick one from art class tonight. We spent most of the class having a lesson on making mats, and framing - all very useful stuff! But that didn't leave much time for actual art work. I just did this one during the last hour of class just to keep my hand in and feel I had done something. This is a scene along route 15 near Murray Corner in New Brunswick, Canada. 9x12 Art Spectrum paper.

The Farm Pantry

Today was a rainy and stormy day most of the day, with heavy rain and lots of flooding in the roads! I went up to Jerry's in West Orange to get some more pastel papers, and when I was there I saw they had the new Jack Richeson semi-hard pastels in open stock! I've been wanting to try them ever since I read about them on Wetcanvas, so I ended up buying a couple dozen colors I liked. They had some very nice cool blues, though they had no very light ones, which was my only gripe. No really light greens either. But I bought two whites.

Anyway, since I had bought them I decided I had to try them out! So I painted this picture this afternoon, from a photo I took this summer up at the farm in one of the small pantries off the kitchen. This is my standard 9x12 Art Spectrum, and mostly using the new Jack Richesons, but a few Faber Castells as well.