Calm pond

J recently took me to the super peaceful weekend at Lovett's inn in Franconia, NH for my birthday! And ofcourse, going with my current obsession, I packed my basic painting gear.

However, after the eventful flipped canoe on Saturday, the only time I had was about 2 hours Sunday morning after Bella's walk and breakfast and before the checkout time. Unfortunately, as beautiful Franconia is, I had still not found a view that truly inspired me. I think it is the effect of peak summer. Everything is green.. and given the heat wave, there aren't that many flowers. Well, even if there were flowers, flowers are not really my thing when it comes to painting.

Anyways, when we were out on the walk in the morning, we met an elderly couple, who apparently had been married for 50 something years if I remember it correctly. They were playing with the inn owner's dogs and the wife mentioned that right across the street from the inn was a beautiful pond. We checked it out, and indeed... it was right across the street but hidden by bushes and flowers, and surrounded by tall trees on one side and and bushes on the other with a reflection of s faraway mountain making it even more pretty!

Unfortunately, my camera and both our phones had gotten wet in the canoe trip and the only camera we had left was J's film camera that he swears by as the best camera in the world. Unfortunately, not so much for me. This is the picture I pieced together with the pictures we developed.

According to J, some parameter was not set right! And her is the other view where you can see me painting.

Given the short amount of time I had to setup and that the sun had already started coming out and warming up the place, I did not get too far it plein air.

Here is the progress as I try to remember the actual colors and beauty of the view and put it on canvas.

Plein air easel

07/17/2013
After reading a bit more, I have realized that my current easel works for me for the ease of carrying it and for the size. All I need is a tripod painting shelf as show below.

The leftmost one is actually designed by someone and the rightmost one is sold by Cheap Joes's for $38.

I like this one the best for its larger size and if I can make it foldable by adding hinges in the middle, and a little cup holder hole, that would be perfect!

07/15/2013
Since my first attempt of plein air painting was so enjoyable, and I would like to do it more often, I thought I should have a good plein air easel.
I currently have a simple aluminum easel. It works fine. But the first day I was painting, I had to setup near a bench as I had not carried a table.. which sort of ended up defining my painting layout.. and the second day when I actually carried a little fold-able table I have home, it actually ended up being such a production, hauling the table, easel, my bag of paints, brushes, water and other supplies, that I haven't tried it again.

After a lot of online research, I decided that a french plein air easel fits my requirements the best.But these things are pricy and I am not sure if I will ever sell my paintings, so the expense is not exactly justifiable... except that, last week was my birthday and I decided that is what I want for a gift... and lo-and-behold.. Ocean state job lot had it for only $55!! Yey!!

 

Ofcourse I got it.. opened it up in the store itself to make sure that it was functional. Except that I got is home, and my paint tubes are too 'fat' and 'long to fit into the neat little drawers in the easel.. which means I will have to carry them separately, instantly removing the entire purpose of this  style easel especially give that it weighs atleast five times my aluminum one!

Hmmmm..... back to the drawing board...

When J and I were away this last weekend, I did carry my old easel with me.. and it is infact much easier to set up compared to the plein-air easel.. The only thing was that all my supplies were on the floor and I had to bend down if I wanted to add a color to my palette or wash my brushes. Now only if I can figure out an attachable tray or something to the right of the easel, that could solve the biggest requirement I have of a table.

P. L. Deshpande park 1

This is based on a picture of P. L. Deshpande park or Okayama friendship garden, a new Japanese style garden in my home town Pune, India by Ajay Adiya.

I really really like this painting. I like the effect of sunlight, I like the rocks, that I have been able to paint for the first time. I like the water and rocks in it. I like the bushes and distant trees and reflection of sun on water.. basically I am excited about this painting!

 

One thing I learnt was if I am laying down a background color, I better lay it down according to what my final image is gong to be in that area. E.g. The leafy area in the front has brown and dark green as background colors, but while laying down I kept the brush strokes as if I was painting leaves and not just as a random wash. That way I did not have to do too much work while building up the top layers.

Flower Meadow

This is an imaginary painting I did for a friend of mine. She wanted something springy or fall like.. but sadly (note heatwave!) its summer.

I started off with J's suggestion of a mystical feel.. But I couldn't get there, so I changed the gears and decided to go in the 'evening' route.

The day I was supposed to give this to her, I still was not a 100% happy with it. So I got up early, walked Bella and started adding flowers to it based on some photos I had taken on our walk the previous day.

I also added a vine based on all the vines that are covering most of the large tree trunks in my area.

But, it still felt a little empty. I added some more reds after this to get to the final version. And I have to say I do like it.

The settign sun

 

I was a huge fan of Thomas Kinkade growing up, until very recently. I had always thought that he was some kind of pioneer in painting the light and was from the 18th century the latest!

But then I googled him....

As it turns out, he was mainly famous for mass reproductions of his work that people could buy at an affordable cost, and hence the most possessed by common people. And just like it does most of the times after over-inspection, his work lost its charm on me. I started noticing a cartoonish, fantastical feel in his work, and not necessarily in a good way.

 Luckily for me, a few months ago I stumbled upon Helen White's work. She is a UK based artist, who does this beautiful photo-realistic work with light. And she also shares my other love, windows! At this point I almost want to thank Helen for doing her art and keeping the 'torch' lit for me.

This painting is based on a picture taken from my living room window which overlooks the Indian lake. The sun was setting, bathing the sky and the back forest in beautiful colors.

According to my current teacher at the Worcester Art Museum, the sky still looks like an under-painting. 

Day 1 at the class

Day 2. I tried to remove some of the yellowness from the clouds that are higher.

I added some more light greens in the bushes and slightly corrected the direction of the reflection on water.

Here, I added made the reflection more orange than yellow and added more file lines of orange across the rest of the water. The lines might not be very apparent as it was a thinned out paint, but I am hoping it gets the feel of very small waves. I need to add more greens to the bottom layer of trees such that it almost forms a halo.

The paint photographs differently in day time as compared to at night time as in previous two pictures.

I added the basic color to the houses lines for sidings and shingles, and the second tree on right.

I added a stronger perspective to the shingles on the left house than needed. In fact, if I add any significant increase in the shingle sizes going from top to bottom, I am going to end up in trouble with respect to the right side portion of the roof of the same house as that does not increase in size top to bottom. As I am typing this now, I can also see the problem with clouds that Ella pointed out.

After waiting a  few days, I changed the colors of the roof and the left house, added some details to the left window. I should add the siding lines to it, but I don't want to draw them as I did in the right house. I do not necessarily like that effect.

Cat in the hat cake

I tried my first attempt at fancy frosting today.

 

Many many years ago, back in India, I used to love baking. 

But frosting, that I never even tried.I remember my mother toiling over a bowl of butter and sugar for hours at a time before each of our birthdays, whipping those together literally by hand! That is how she was taught in her baking class. It looked painful and I didn't care much for the frosting anyway! 

And back then, there was no internet to teach you things. 

And the fancy frosting tips and bags were the things of either rich people or professional bakers.. 

But recently I came across this tutorial through Pinterest, and I wanted to give it a try. And the chance came with my friend's daughter's first birthday when her usual cake maker was busy with the new baby. She asked me to make an individual cake for her daughter. (Thank God for one of the supermarket bakeries which offered to make the big cake with rice paper printed frosting.. it would have been a nightmare to do this on a big scale the first time.)

First attempt using Betty Crocker Whipped butter cream frosting..

The good thing was that, even though I could not find black color for the border, I was able to mix the three standard colors to get a darkish gray color! 'Yey' for painting basics!

Second attempt with the same.

But this time it came out nice and looked fabulous while still on freezer paper! But the problem with the store bought frosting is that, it does not freeze solid. And this is what happened when I tried to peal it from the paper!

Finally, during my third attempt, I decided to not be lazy and make my own frosting, simply by mixing butter, sugar and vanilla extract. And I was amazed as to how easy it was!

  
I still had the leftover storebought frosting, and it worked out perfectly to frost the rest of the cake as it did not have the slight yellow tint my homemade frosting had and took on the blue color beautifully!

Finally, I added the peaks of blue and white using the $3 frosting tips I bought from Christmas tree shop, and voilla! Love it! Can't wait to try it again!

Plein Air painting: Elm park

I tried.. well, let me rephrase, started my first ever plein air painting today. I am only saying started because I hope to go back tomorrow and finish it plein-air.

But for today, I am only barely done blocking.

First of all, I did not go there at 10:00 am as I had decided previously. I started for the park at 2:30 pm.
By the time I got my green tea frappe and set up, it must have already been 3:30. But hey, the days have gotten longer and there is a lot of bright light all the way till 7 pm now a days. So no harm done there.

However, only after I started setting up did I realize a few of the main challenges.
1. I need a table or some sort of heigher surface to put my paints and water. Since I did not bring a table with me. I had to set up near a park bench. Which means I could not choose the view.
2. There are way too many trees and poles and sleeping people and baracaded things in between the view I wanted.
3. No matter how much I sprayed the canvas and the palette with water, the paint kept on drying on the palette (despite of it being a Sta-wet palette), or worse, the brush.
4. It is really hard to draw defined shape of a bridge free hand with just paintbrush. I got so frustrated, that I just decided against the full bridge and chose a different composition.
5. And finally, its hard to get correct colors mixed in bright outdoor ever changing light.

Despite all these issues, I have to say, I had a great time. Lot of nice people stopped by and cheered me on. The nicest were the kids. Some wanted to paint with me, others wanted to talk and tell mw what they like to do and all were super excited to see it. Now how can you not get excited when you hear "I am coming back to see the finished version" from a 10 year old,  with her younger sister chiming in "I am definitely coming back"!! :)

So I am going back tomorrow to see what the finished version looks like.

Day 1

Day 2

You can see how dramatically different the light on the two days was... Firstly because the first day I was there int he evening... the second day I was there in the morning! And secondly, the cloud cover was simply different..
When I was done with the second day, as I was trying to stay true to the colors I saw, it just started looking like a blob of green in the back.Also the little tree on the right had some weird dimensions and so did the one one the left.

So, I used some more of the dark green to reshape the trees and glazed the background trees with matte pthelo blue glaze. I like the way the bridge turned out. I am still not a fan of the left tree and the foreground grass.. it looks very different in style than the rest of the painting. But I guess, I don't mind the overall effect. And, I have learnt how a photograph does not do justice to what an eye sees. I can't go literal with the paint colors, but I have to pump them up quite a bit to get the feeling I got while viewing the scene.

Update: July 31, 2013

This painting sat there this whole time while I have been trying to decide what I do not like about it.

I  darkened the ground in the back. which though helped bringing the front trees to the front a bit, still felt off.. 

Finally I decided that I do not like the water and I do not like the grass on either sides of the front pathway either. I covered the water with more mossy dark green and started covering up the grass with bushes.

I need to add more branches at the bottom of the left green tree so it does not look so horizontal and add light effect similar to the main tree to the other foreground trees.