Taking a Break To Post……

As noted on last post, its been a busy period. Getting ready for shows, sifting through material, sketching out possible projects, value studies and, finally, some actual progress on painting! I had been commissioned by the Bee Cave Arts Foundation ( www.beecavearts.org ) to do a conceptual piece for a proposed Sculpture Park in Bee Cave, Texas. I finally got it done and presented it at the most recent Board Meeting, along with some designs I had worked uo for the Bee Cave Art Bench program. The painting, Bee Cave Sculpture Park, is intended to be a tool for drumming up support for the sculpture park envisioned for the site of the old City Hall/Library. Check out the web site if you’d like to learn more.

I’ve also been busy working on some of the New England/Canada material from a recent trip and can post a completed painting, B & B For Sale as well as a sketch for the next

painting in a series of Nova Scotia based projects: Washed Up.

 

 

 

 

 

Peggy’s Cove is a very picturesque site in Nova Scotia and I hit it on a relatively rare bright and sunshine filled day. B & B For Sale reflects that feel but I found myself wishing that I could see the place in mist, snow, fog or rain! I’m going to experiment with some different moods and plan to start with the sketch, Washed Up where I think I’ll go for a more low key painting with something of an Andrew Wyeth feel. I don’t plan to paint every blade of grass around the boats but will dial the color back and seek something like Wyeth’s Distant Thunder where there’s a wide range of value but the color hues are subdued. The sense of being used-up and forgotten doesn’t call for a vivid palette!

Flamingo Lights: Completed

Finished up Flamingo Lights today and figured I’d get it posted. This one was originally set in daylight but after working my thumbnail sketches looking at different value approaches for the background, foreground and middle ground, I decided to set it at night. Made sense as I wanted to focus on the play of artificial light which, after all, is key to Vegas. I changed up my palette a bit and added some more electric colors such as, Opera Rose and Andrew’s Turquoise. This effort completes the short Las Vegas Series from my recent trip, however, I’ll be revisiting the material I collected and will probably add a few paintings to the series after I finish current projects and begin some work on a contemplated New York City and Coastal New England Series. More on these projects at a later date!

New WIP

  

    

       Flamingo Lights                       Sicilian Garden                 Pride of Barbados

I had originally intended to simply post all three of these paintings upon completion but thought it might be fun to contrast the approaches among the three and then contrast them at this point against the final paintings when done. My strategy with Flamingo Lights was a high key, warm painting in the yellow to red color family with the contrast being between high intensity, clean color and low intensity dirty color. Design elements include “S” curves to guide the eye into the picture plane, with dark verticals creating a rhythm breaking up the intense reds, oranges and yellows. The approach with Sicilian Gardens is a cool painting in the blue color family. The key contrast here is hot flowers against the cool background. In the case of Pride of Barbados, the strategy is for a high key painting in the yellow family and contrast against a green background. Of course the sinuous “S” curve pulls the eye through the composition. We’ll see how things develop.

In terms of inspiration, Flamingo Lights is the second of the Las Vegas Series based on material from a trip earlier this year. Sicilian Garden is a rework of an earlier project, In the Shadow of Mount Etna. When I changed the composition it became less about Mount Etna and more about the foreground contrasts and shapes. Pride of Barbados is simply the result of seeing a composition in a shrub in my front yard. I also have an Esperanza that is vying for attention if I can work out a compelling composition. There you go….. work in progress…..time to get to work!

What I did on summer vacation…….

Well, we’re back in the Austin heat having returned from the mountains of Colorado after two months of cool mornings and highs in the low 80′s. A lot to catch up on. First, I have completed three watercolors that I posted to the web site www.joeblanford.com today. No, I don’t have a series of shots start to finish as things were busy as we prepped our cabin on the South Platte River for sale. I had material from recent trips to Las Vegas and San Antonio and had started a rework of Cavtat Harbor in Croatia from a trip a few years ago.

Viva Las Paris has an interesting genesis. I had planned a visit to Paris and had been noodling how I would handle that iconic image, the Eiffel Tower. I had pretty much settled on a foreshortened vertical composition that cut the picture plane in a diagonal. I had used a similar approach on Sacristia Famillia and really liked the results. The trip to France had to be cancelled, however, a visit to Las Vegas enabled me to use the plans I had made. Here is the result. It’s interesting to see people react to the picture, instantly recognizing the tower but then wondering why there are palm trees involved!

In addition, I completed a painting from San Antonio, Riverwalk Mariachi, that is a composite of material collected on two different trips to the area. I had collected the fountain scene about a year

 ago. I liked the image but it just didn’t say anything standing alone. I collected a series of mariachi images this year when I delivered a painting to a gallery in San Antonio and married the two figures to the left with the fountain scene. I used a high key approach with amped color to communicate the fiesta feeling that is the Riverwalk. I have used color and a series of curves to create a circular movement to the composition.

Lastly, is a rework of an earlier painting. This project, Cavtat Harbor II, was done large on a full sheet of Arches Cold Press and focused on the reflections in the still waters along this section of the Dalmation Coast. I used an old, tried and true technique of splashes of red that move the eye around the picture plane.

Now that I’m back in my main studio I am able to get back in a rhythm and have several other watercolors in the works. Hopefully, I can get back into a rhythm on blogs as well! On the show front, I won a Winsor Newton Merchant award for Santorini II at the RCAS Regional Show and was jurored into the SWS Annual Member Show with Mykonos Porch. Check out the calendar on the web site , www.joeblanford.com .

Hora Mykanos

Wrapped up this half sheet project on the Hora or Old Town of Mykanos. This is the last of a series of projects featuring material I gathered in Mykanos about five or six years ago. As is the case with a lot  of my Greece stuff, the contrast is high which is the feel I get from the light in this part of the world. The colors are in your face. I particularly liked the way the whitewashed buildings marched up the hillside. This painting is essentially completed. I will immerse the entire painting in a water bath after giving the pigment a chance to settle a few days. The darks of the foliage are a tad too dark even with a better photo image. Soaking the painting and agitating the water slightly will allow me to lift some values where I want to lighten the values. I may need to touch up some areas once the painting has been stretched and dried but only a little. The value of settling the dark values and softening some edges is worth the extra step. Once that’s done, I’ll take the final proof picture for my files, prints and web site.

I’m currently working on a full sheet watercolor of Cavtat Harbor, Croatia and once that project is wrapped up I plan to spend some time completing several oils I’ve been neglecting before traveling to Las Vegas and then Colorado to deliver some new material to Seven Arrows Gallery and drop off a painting for the International Watermedia Show in Colorado Springs. I expect to gather some material for new projects from this bit of traveling. You can also expect some urban landscape work from New York City, Boston, Quebec and Montreal later in the year! So much to paint and so little time! Also plan to hit the Met, Whitney and Frick while in the Big Apple.

Mykanos: Little Venice

There is a stretch along the water on Mykanos where the homes/businesses sit right on the water with waves lapping up constantly and, at times, waves breaking over the bulkhead. They call the area “Little Venice” for obvious reasons. I’ve talked about the light in this area of the world. Bright and contrasty (is that a word??) to the point of hurting your eyes. When I paint this area you’ll probably see a lot of hard edges! Such is the case with this project. Some paintings progress smoothly…. this one did not and was a struggle to the end. I suspect part of the problem was that I broke one of my rules and jumped in without an adequate value study. I found myself overworking everything as I had to readjust values at various stages of the painting.  I’ve been doing this for quite a while now and should know better! So if you are looking for a tip from this effort, its work out issues of line, color and value before you pick up a brush. There are enough issues that arise with good planning. You don’t need to create problems for yourself!

Odds and Ends

The last couple days have involved touching up here and there on some of the recently posted stuff like Bellagio and Mykanos Porch, among others. Often, I’ll set a painting aside for a few days and let it dry thoroughly before soaking and re-stretching. It also allows a little time to pass so that I can get some feedback from friends/fellow artists, take a fresh look at things and adjust where necessary. With Anchoring Along Mykanos, for instance, I needed to adjust some values on the white boat, tinker with some areas and do something subtle with the shoreline to give it some interest (see previous posts). You can check out the web site at www.joeblanford.com to see the final results.

I’ve also been cleaning out my studio and finding some old projects that warranted some tinkering. In two cases the earlier works were about six years old and each suffered from poor composition. In both cases, I severely cropped the old picture and then addressed some issues  and voila!. Here are the reworked Fowl Weather (originally Rockport Shrimper) and Taos Pueblo:

     

Bellagio

I have wanted to do a painting of Bellagio on Lake Como for some time. After a stay at Villa Serbelloni for a wedding anniversary, I had the material but, to date had only completed one Lake Como project, Cruising Lake Como. This one might end up on a wall at home.  Our stay in Bellagio was brief. We had a four-day weekend after a series of classes in Rome during my summer studying Etruscan architecture and Italian landscapes. We bit off a bit too much and took a train to Cinque Terre for a two day stay and then hopped an express train to Milan and a local to Lake Como region and Bellagio. The train to Bellagio was a hoot as the train was surrounded by an Italian riot squad. The train had been commandeered by a regional soccer club heading up the line to Lecco for a game. Our “reserved” seats were no longer reserved and we took what was available for the short trip to Varenna and the Bellagio ferry. They take their soccer very seriously in Italy! What a shift to the senses. Where Riomaggiore was bright, hot and hectic – Bellagio was cool and serene. More Swiss than Italian. Hence a shift in palette to more blues and greens which allow the yellow/orange buildings to contrast nicely. With the earlier post that shows the painting after all the washes are done and the masking has been removed you can see the impact of brush work on the finished painting. 

On the show front, good news. I had a painting, Duval Street, accepted into the International Watermedia XVII show in June/July. Details are posted to the calendar on the web site at www.joeblanford.com .

Lots of New Stuff

Coming up for air! Time to post a few things I’ve been working on. No step by step here unless I get a question or two. Here is the stuff I’ve been working on. Just a dump and a few comments on each. All are watercolors:

   

The first image is from the Real Alcazar in Seville, Spain. I often will focus on some aspect of a composition. In this case it was the interplay of the various Moorish arches resulting in a more abstract approach that focuses on shape and form more than the actual subject matter. This 15 X 11 painting is on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press. The second is a scene from the streets of Mykanos, Greece. I do not do a lot of figurative work. When I do i try to tell some type of narrative. The Tourists fits the bill. This painting is 22 X 15 and was also painted on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press.

 The picture below was a scene off the coast of Mykanos: Anchoring Off Mykanos. It was painted on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press. And finally, two projects in process. Both have gone through the pouring /masking process described earlier on other projects and I am about to begin brush work. The first is Bellaggio from Lake Como, Italy. It is 22 X 30 and painted on Arches 140 lb. Cold Press.

The next is a scene from Mykanos, Little Venice, where the water beats up on structures along the water’s edge. Also on Arches, it is 15 X 22.

Mykanos Porch

Whew! I was involved with a workshop last week and have been in my studio catching up ever since. I have several watercolors underway and have yet to get back to the six oils in various stages of completion. I just completed Mykanos Porch and figured I would at least get something posted. I’ve talked about inspiration in previous posts. In this case, I was cleaning out some old pictures from about five years ago and came across this scene done on Crescent Board watercolor panel. I wasn’t happy with the effort but liked the play of light on this view of a porch in the mid-day Mykanos sunlight. I cropped out alot of the original scene that I felt lent little to the overall composition, focusing on the play of light at the foot of this typical blue Mykanos doorway. End result, I’m happy with the piece and will add it to inventory. I also pulled out my image files from Greece and found some additional material that I am exited about and have already roughed out.  The point is, inspiration can come from many places, including a fresh take on your past work.

As indicated, I have alot of stuff in process and will probably scale back the step by step narrative unless I hear a clamor for it. I would rather spend time in the studio!