Second Movement

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit  www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com   

Fog

My intention today was to work some more on yesterday's panel.

  
But several correspondents told me not to touch it. After pondering that idea, I decided to make another panel, of the same non-existent place, and to paint it in the manner of a recent favorite.

But, as Carl Sandburg wrote, "the fog comes on little cat feet."
Soon I heard the protracted, anguished moan of the foghorn at Rawson's Point, calling warnings to those upon the sea. In what seemed like just a second, it was upon me, everything sheathed in gray.

You can imagine the situation in my studio. Aside from anything else, I couldn't even see my coffee cup---a dire turn of events.
This is where I stopped.  

So now I still have to tackle the one from yesterday, again.

********************************************************


Just five weeks 'til Holland! Please note, in the section on classes, that there's a class sponsored by the Ogunquit Summer School of Art on 14-15 August. Sign up and paint the sea with us!

***********************************************************
The Ogunquit Summer School of Art Ogunquit, Maine
 14-15 August 2014
27-28 September 2014
Contact them at 603-819-9100

Holland 
4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net TWO PLACES REMAINING

Toronto 6-10 October 2014
Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net THIS CLASS IS FULL

Norway August 2015 Contact me to receive information as it becomes  available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales A possible 2015 workshop for the Welsh Academy of Art.    

Unfinished Symphony

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit  www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com   

The Ultimate Dead Painting

Yesterday Brian MacNeil, Brian Martin, Tony Bevilacqua, Paul Batch, Eden Compton, Kelly Carmody, Leo Mancini-Hresko and I converged at the Blackstone River and Canal Heritage Park, in Uxbridge, Massachusetts for some plein air painting.

It was a first meeting for many of the artists and, I think, the beginning of many new friendships. Of course there was shop talk, good humor, and a general sense of camaraderie.

I believe everyone came home with at least one painting to show for the day.

But not me.

I was painting the river, a view where the opposite banks begin to converge as the river moves away. I made a reasonable start, but soon I had too much paint on the panel. This led to a series of bad decisions and, ultimately, to my wiping out the whole thing. You could still see some pentimento.

This morning, when I got to the studio, I brought the panel in from the car. The color, a sort of velvety warm gray with some darker, tarnished pewter bits, invited me to make something of it.

I started in, imagining a sea painting where the water would be hemmed in between opposing land masses. This is what I got.

This will give you an idea of the initial mark making. I was just playing, as I'm wont to do, waiting for something to catch my imagination.

 
 Here, as you can see, I added some height on the left, and really beefed up the foreground. I erased the horizon line and made some ripples in the lower right. At this stage the panel had the feeling of a very still moment, just before dawn.

But I didn't like the far peninsula, and the suggestion of a mystery vertical in the distance. I modeled the left-hand cliffs a bit, and generally just made things more solid. 

I liked the sense of cul-de-sac created by the opposing cliffs, but I found myself thinking more about towering sea cliffs than about this protected anchorage.

So I made some changes.

Because I had an afternoon appointment, I had to stop at this point. I rather like moonlit coolness of this stage. 

Here's a detail for those of you who can't live without them. 

The initial grisaille was done with a mixture of burnt umber and ultramarine, as is my custom. The far cliffs are mostly ultramarine. The sky is a mixture of Cassel Earth and white, the moon being just a small flick of pure titanium/zinc white.

Tomorrow I'll stare at it for a while, and make a final commitment to a subject. Another hour should find it done.

**********************************************************

Just five weeks 'til Holland! Please note, in the section on classes, that there's a class sponsored by the Ogunquit Summer School of Art on 14-15 August. Sign up and paint the sea with us!

***********************************************************
The Ogunquit Summer School of Art Ogunquit, Maine
 14-15 August 2014
27-28 September 2014
Contact them at 603-819-9100

Holland 
4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net TWO PLACES REMAINING

Toronto 6-10 October 2014
Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net THIS CLASS IS FULL

Norway August 2015 Contact me to receive information as it becomes  available. dbjurney@verizon.net

Wales A possible 2015 workshop for the Welsh Academy of Art.

   

Field Trip

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit  www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com   


 Brenton Point, Newport

A quick post, to keep you in the loop. Tony Bevilacqua, Paul Batch, Brian Martin and I all went to Brenton Point, in Newport, Rhode Island, for a day of painting. In fact, we managed a half-day and a nice lunch, with Brian's wife, Amy.

Brian Martin (holding Elliott), Paul Batch, DJ, and Tony Bevilacqua

 Here's what I did, 11" x 14" (28x36cm).

Tomorrow, Monday July 21, we're off to the Blackstone River and Canal State Park, in Uxbridge, MA. Here's a photo from the web.

I haven't painted trees in a long time. Perhaps I'll do a seascape from my head. Hope you're painting.

*****************************************************

The Ogunquit Summer School of Art Ogunquit, Maine
 14-15 August 2014
27-28 September 2014
Contact them at 603-819-9100

Holland 
4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net TWO PLACES REMAINING

Toronto 6-10 October 2014
Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net THIS CLASS IS FULL

Norway August 2015 Contact me to receive information as it becomes  available. dbjurney@verizon.net
 
Wales  A possible 2015 workshop for the Welsh Academy of Art
 

Stages

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit  www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com   


...mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.*

This morning I started in on a new 8" x 12" (20x30cm) panel, as is usual, I was making it up as I went along and it occurred to me that I could take some photos as it progressed and possibly show the steps in its realization. It's still not at its final state which will probably be reached tomorrow.

I decided to paint some woods on the right, and a field with a range of hills behind.

As you'll see, the panel was toned with a coat of transparent red oxide (OH) and liquin. This was done the other day, so it was completely dry. The grisaille is done with ultramarine and burnt umber (both Rembrandt). 

I began to think about perhaps having a road through a wood instead.

 

But I was still intending to keep the field and the hill. As you can see, things are more massed in than drawn.

Whoops! Where did the field and the hill go?

Nothing is ever set in stone in my paintings, whether a small study such as this or on a 48" x 72". I relish keeping all my options open for as long as possible.

By this stage the surface was so wet that I thought I'd give it some time to dry a bit. Had I been outside in the sun and wind, it would have dried very fast. But in the studio it's a bit slower.

One of the things that's valuable to do, and easy since we all have a phone within reach, is to take a black and white photo of a painting. It immediately helps pinpoint issues in terms of values.

To enable you to get a sense of how loose the grisaille really is, here's a detail.

Notice, too, how neutral in color the ultramarine and burnt umber mixture can be.

Because I wanted to let it rest for a bit, I distracted myself with another panel. A couple of years ago I had done a quick sketch, probably on the back of an envelope, of the moon rising over Plum Island. There was a lead-in created by a bit of the Merrimack River and by the local road. As you might expect, I have no idea where that sketch is now, but I remembered enough of the general layout so that it could serve as the basis for a study. The lane is now a busy road. But in time past it must have been a more country route. In any event, that's how I decided to depict it, as it looked perhaps a hundred years ago.

Here's what I made of it.

Relative to the first panel, this is very definitely drawn rather than massed. Right from the beginning the composition needed to be set. Because I used the panel as the brightest value, the moon doesn't really show up too well. Still, I'm quite pleased with this one.

But let's get back to the original one. 

Here I've strengthened some of the values, added some Permanent Brown Madder (Rembrandt) very thinly in places, put some violet in the shadows on the road, and generally tried to organize the material.

The last one from today shows the addition of some additional color, more value adjustment, and the beginning of the sense of a particular time of day. What, if anything, I'll put in the far distance I don't yet know. I like the sense of glare. There's much yet to be done.

This photo seems too yellow to me. I'll try to post the next steps tomorrow, if you'd like.

Happy painting! 

*From the beginning of Dante's Inferno, "...I found myself in a dark forest". 
___________________________________________

Classes:

The Ogunquit Summer School of Art

Ogunquit, Maine
 14-15 August 2014
27-28 September 2014
Contact them at 603-819-9100

Holland 
4-12 September, Alkmaar, NL Contact me about this dbjurney@verizon.net TWO PLACES REMAINING

Toronto 6-10 October 2014
Contact me about this. dbjurney@verizon.net THIS CLASS IS FULL

Norway August 2015 Contact me to receive information as it becomes  available. dbjurney@verizon.net
 
Wales  A possible 2015 workshop for the Welsh Academy of Art
 

Hot, Hazy and Humid

For information about the Plein-air Workshop in Holland, please visit  www.donaldjurneyworkshop.blogspot.com   

 Weather Delay

Today was another day of not-very-accommodating weather. It ended this evening in a thunderstorm, complete with some large hail.

But, in the studio, painting went on despite the sweltering heat. This morning I painted an 8"x12" (20x30cm) panel from imagination. I've called it The Edge of the Marsh. It needs some little fiddling, but it's essentially done.

Chief among the bits remaining to be done is the issue of the edges of the tree clumps, where they meet the sky. They need to be a bit less spidery, and softer. Tomorrow, when it's dry, it will be a matter of 30 seconds to fix.

This afternoon, at the suggestion of a couple of studio visitors, I left my made-up coastline, and ventured off in my imagination to dream up some  mountains. This one is even further from complete, but there was too much wet paint to go further.

It's also a study, 8" x 12" (20x30cm). I often find that as I get tired (as I was when I finishing this session), I start to put a lot more paint on the panel. My natural inclination is to paint very thinly, but here I've just slathered it on. The real painting isn't quite this orange, and it's more evening-like. I don't know what the orange line is above the far mountain---I didn't notice it in the painting.

Finally, a painting by Frederick Childe Hassam (American, 1859-1935). Hassam is a favorite painter of mine. Although I'm not wildly keen on his flag paintings from the First World War, in honor of tomorrow I give you one.

The Avenue in the Rain, 1917

Happy Fourth!