Author: dnesbitt (Page 10 of 17)

I grabbed a book at the library called Paint Lab: 52 Exercises inspired by Artists, Materials, Time, Place, and Method by Deborah Forman:.  One of the exercises showed how to draw the nautilus shape based on the golden ratio The page also included a design that intrigued me.  It was a cross between a mandala and a spiral made of dots.   There were no instructions on how to create it.

My curiosity led me to our modern font of knowledge, You Tube.  I searched on the word “mandala”  and quickly got sucked into the vortex of Dearing Draws and My New Compass just to name a few.

I was fascinated so I started playing with the ideas in a sketchbook and then moved onto greeting cards.

I tried various media including pencils, Sharpies and pens.  The card stock I was using wouldn’t handle much liquid so watercolors are out.

I liked them even more after jazzing them up with Krylon glitter spray.  Since I need to fidget when I watch tv, I’ve been playing with these in the evenings while I waste an hour or so on Net Flix.

I even learned a little bit about how to use a French curve in the process.  I never did figure out the design I saw in the book, but I’m sure it’s based on the same principles.

It just goes to show that when you’re curious you become creative!

I have been neglecting this blog lately and I tell myself it’s because I’m painting so much. Good excuse, right?

The highlight of my painting year is our annual Central Ohio Plein Air retreat at Linwood Park, organized by the super-organized painter, Nancy Vance.  We all look forward to it, but at the same time we know it’s signaling the end of summer. So it’s a happy time but, for me, a little melancholy.

It’s also a good benchmark to measure your progress as a painter from year to year. The 2015 version of the bridge was painted in the morning light and I remember struggling for quite a long time with it. In 2017 I was there in the afternoon and able to choose the view pretty quickly. I blocked it in and caught some highlights and reflections in the water that made it a much better painting.

Vermillion River Bridge 2017 in pastel

Vermillion River Bridge 2015 – oil

Although the residents of Linwood Park are happy to have us come, most aren’t interested in buying paintings.  The lady who lives across from the lodge expressed an interest in this little 8×10.  If I were a skilled sales person I would closed the sale and pocketed a check.  Instead I told her about the sale scheduled for Saturday (where she bought a painting from one of the other painters).  The upside is that I got to keep the painting!

As the sale was going on I painted one of the nearby cottages.  My idea of a cottage is a lot smaller than this, but I guess they’ve added on over the years.  I really wanted to catch the shadows on the sunlit side.  Although it was much admired by browsers coming to the sale, there were no offers so it’ll grace my wet paint shelf for a while. I took it down a few days ago, ran it through my self critique process and touched it up a bit.

Now it’s time to soak up those last few days of good painting weather and look forward to next year’s retreat. Thanks, Nancy, for making this wonderful experience possible.

A popular scene to paint at the BFEC

If I had to choose just one place to paint for the rest of my life it would be the Brown Family EnvironmentalCenter at Kenyon College.  I painted there four times this summer and wouldn’t run out of scenes to paint if I went there 400 times.

There’s so much material to choose from:  flower gardens, a lily pond, a mini waterfall,  buildings, farmland,  the Kokosing River and bike path.  It makes me want to move back to Knox County!

A water feature in front of the farmhous 

The evening I painted the water running over the stones, the sun was being selective with the highlights.  I captured it as well as I could but I’d like to revisit that lighting in a new painting.  It’ll have to be plein air.  A photograph doesn’t have the nuance I want.

The View From Observatory Hill

I’m working on being a bit more subtle with color and texture.  I felt like I nailed it in this panoramic view looking down into the valley on the Fourth of July.  What I nice morning!

Stonehenge at Kenyon

I painted “Stonehenge” on COPA’s Saturday paint-out.  By the time I drove to Gambier the garden was already swarmed with painters and I was too lazy to walk to the river.  So I decided on the rock garden because I liked the shadows.  When I got home it looked much darker than it did on site, so it took a bit of adjustment to get it into shape.

The center’s manager, Noelle Jordan, welcomed our Central Ohio Plein Air group multiple times throughout the summer, keeping the center open on Wednesday evenings and the Fourth of July as well as one Saturday morning time slot.  All that work resulted in a show that opened at the end of July and runs through September.