For my assignment for my watercolor class this week, I decided to paint a scene from a photo of Lopez Island, one of the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound. I’m going there next week to paint with other plein air painters, and I thought I’d practice before I go. I chose a scene of a rocky inlet with trees on the hillside. Little did I know how I would struggle with those rocks! I painted five versions of this watercolor in addition to the black and white version. In the end, I used a credit card to scrape out the shapes of the rocks in the foreground.
On Thursday and Friday I attended a paintout event with Plein Air Washington Artists at Lake Crescent in Olympic National Park, one of my favorite locations. We started at Log Cabin Resort on East Beach Road. I made a painting of kayaks at the dock, above. I was pleased with the way the yellow from the kayaks melted in to the blue of the water below.
The same kayaks zoomed out.
The second day it rained. I tried to paint from the shore, but my watercolor was ruined by drops of rain. So I moved to the shelter of the porch at Lake Crescent Lodge and painted the long row of tourist cabins and the big Doug-fir trees that tower over them.
The cabins at Lake Crescent Lodge.
There were probably twenty or more artists at their easels around the lake, and it was a lot of fun to see what other people were painting. On our second day, we shared our paintings before we left and gave each other lots of encouragement and support. I camped Wednesday and Thursday nights at Fairholme Campground at the end of the lake.
Last week I drove to the Chimacum area to find a place to paint. I found beautiful barns and farmhouses set in a valley surrounded by forests.
It was early morning with strong shadows. I set up my easel on the shoulder of the road and made a pencil sketch of a house across a field on the far side of the road. When I saw a man come out of the house and drive his tractor across the field toward me, I thought he was coming to exchange pleasantries with me. Most people are happy to see artists. Not this fellow.
“What the hell are you doing?? he yelled as he came near. I said, “I’m going to make a painting of your house.” He said, “The hell you are. You get out of here. We have enough robo-calls as it is. Get the hell out of here!”
I said, “You don’t want me to make a painting of your house?” He said with venom, “No! Get the hell out of here.” So I did. I packed up my easel and drove away.
I knew that he had no right to make me leave my place by the roadside. State law allows anyone to take photos or make paintings from a public road. But I wasn’t about to try to get in an argument with a man who was apoplectic with rage. Later it occurred to me that he might have had a gun.
I drove down the road and found a sprawling barn on a hill that just begged to be painted. So I got out of the car and set up my easel again. A pickup from the farm came out to see what I was doing, but this time it was a woman rancher in a denim shirt and jeans, maybe in her fifties. She asked about my painting and said she’d love to see what I came up with. “I have to go to town but you’re welcome to paint anywhere you want,” she said. What a contrast.
So I made this quick watercolor sketch of the barn and one of her cows. She said the cow was just about ready to give birth to a calf.
I thought the foreground in my first attempt at painting the Geoduck Tavern was too dark, so I made a second watercolor. In this painting, I lightened up the foreground, which helps lead the viewer’s eye into the main subject, the diners on the deck. See what you think.
The Geoduck Tavern is a venerable bar/restaurant on the shores of Hood Canal, just below Brinnon, WA. You can have clam chowder or oyster shooters while seated on the back deck overlooking the tide flats of the Dosewallips River. I took a photo of the deck and later made this painting, first in one color, then in watercolor.
I’ve been busy traveling and haven’t had a chance to paint lately. But summer is almost here and it’s time to paint outdoors in the fresh air. This is known as plein air painting, a well-loved practice of painters who like to paint on location. There’s a freshness and spontaneity that come from painting outdoors. These two paintings were made on location. My goal is to do a lot of plein air painting this summer.
The first painting is of The Tides, a cozy restaurant located about 5 miles North of Hoodsport, WA, right next to Highway 101. I got a great cup of clam chowder there. I like the shadows from the building and the lovely tall Douglas-fir tree next to it.
The second painting is a ramshackle house in Bremerton, WA, on a steep street. I particularly like it because of the odd angles and bold colors.
In my imagination this barn was built many years ago by a frugal hardworking farmer as he and his family carved out a homestead on Big Valley Road. He built the main barn first, then added to it over the years, patching shed to shed, until it became this sprawling structure backed up to the fir trees.
In our last watercolor class, Eric Wiegardt challenged me to paint on a bigger scale. So I painted the barn as a quarter sheet (11 x 15 inches), followed by a half sheet (15 x 20 inches). You have to use a big brush and lots of paint and water to cover so much paper. For the barn and the meadow I painted three different colored washes on top of each other to produce variation in the color. I was undecided about the large expanse of grass in front of the barn. It seems like it needs something. Texture, maybe? Shadows? A piece of farm equipment or a pickup truck? Or maybe it’s fine as it is.
Half sheet – 15 x 2 inchesQuarter sheet – 11 x 15 inchesEighth sheet – 7 1/2 x 11 inches
Last summer when I visited friends on Kupreanof Island in Southeast Alaska, I took a photo of nearby Sasby Island. It lies just across the Wrangell Narrows from the town of Petersburg, and has exactly one house on it, complete with a dock and boatshed. The dock is tucked in behind a small point so that it’s completely protected.
I made a series of watercolors to see how best to capture this scene.
At high tide, the creeks that run up into Willapa Bay come right up into the trees. In our watercolor class last week, Eric Wiegardt made a demonstration painting of one of these creeks, and today I made a copy of his painting. First I did a black and white version, then I did a color version.
The goal is to create a painting that draws the eye to the area of dominance, in this case the point where the trees and the water meet. I put in the most detail in the edges of the trees, and I painted a red slash of brush below the trees to draw the eye there. I de-emphasized the lower portion, especially the lower corners, to not distract from the area of dominance above. Eric’s watercolor was much more lively because he painted without stopping, letting the washes flow into one another, and he kept his brush strokes loose. I was only partially successful in copying him.
Walking on the beach with someone you love is a favorite pastime in the Pacific Northwest. The pungent smells of salt air, sea water and marine life make for good memories. I painted this watercolor series from a photo of a beach at Fort Flagler, not too far from here. It was in an article explaining how the silt and dirt from bluffs in Puget Sound fall into the water and feed the shoreline with material for new beaches that become habitat for marine life.
I made a watercolor from the photo, then remembered that my class assignment is to do a black-and-white version. So I painted the black and white watercolor, which is probably better than the color version. The next day I painted a second version of the scene in color. You can decide which one you like better.
First version. I like the softness and looseness, especially the way the skies, the beach, the line of the bluff, and the beach log all point to the center of interest, the figures.Black and white version. This seems a little more free.Second watercolor version. I think the colors are better than the first version, but the top line of the bluff is too hard and jagged.
