Sunday Road Trip

This morning, it couldn’t quite make up its mind re rain but then the sky opened up to blue and the car pointed northward.

I wasn’t convinced I’d get a chance to paint without getting rained on, so I headed up to Bennington. Wandered around the Old First Church’s graveyard where Robert Frost is buried and looked at a lot of other interesting gravestones. Many of them had quotes on them, including Frost’s with its oft-cited “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world”. There’s a nice little trio of birches planted near the Frost family graves.

I thought this was an interesting snippet of verse made more interesting by the problem of gravestones being vertical rather than horizontal:

Could modest worth elude the grasp of death
This virtuous fair had ne’r resign’d her breath
She ne’r had wing’d the long, the glorious flight
To seats of bliss, to realms of sparkling light.

Then I drove down 7 enjoying the views of Pownal VT. This led me right to The Clark. I went in and got tagged (being a member includes free entry) and filled my waterbottle before walking part way up the hill. There I sat in the shade and painted while people walked up and down the path. I could watch them visiting with the cows who at one point took over the paved path. A woman walked by with two chihuahuas and I soon heard serious barking but the cows didn’t budge. As the trio walked back past me I mentioned I’d heard some attempt to do cow-herding? The lady laughed and said these were city dogs and had never encountered cows before but now they had. And hopefully the experience would have tired them out for the remainder of their trip home.

Here’s what I painted, first in my sketchbook and then two on paper. Little kids were curious as were many adults. One boy asked me LOTS of serious questions: what was the second pot of water on the ground for (brush cleaning)? why were there no cows (will do them last. He pointed right to the spot where the cows SHOULD be!) had I done the painting lying on the grass too? (yes). A couple people told me I’d “nailed” the clouds. One lady told me she did acrylics because she didn’t get how to keep the colors separate in watercolors. Ah…

For more photos, here’s a Flickr album to click on:

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Happy Painting Mail Day

One of the folks I follow on YouTube said this was his oldest, most-used and most-valuable book. Found a copy VERY cheap on Abesbooks and it arrived today from the UK. I can see why he spoke so highly of it – it’s got sample paintings by all kinds of folks like John Pike and good basic how-tos and ideas, clearly demo’d and with lessons you can do yourself.

Rubberbanded to that package from a little box, a little something I’d almost forgotten about only because I’d preordered it quite awhile ago – a new larger Schmincke paint box with a beautiful colored exterior (normally they’re black) and filled with colors chosen by a watercolorist. Cool concept as a way to try new colors and for me a brand of paint I don’t normally use. I like that the box has larger mixing areas and that it can fit 12 full pans or a mix of full and half.

Had a little downtime at work today an did some clouds:

and then showed a co-worker how I approached doing clouds in Procreate on the iPad.

Hate and the Hater

This great quote from Peace Pilgrim who died this day in 1981.

There is something to that old saying that hate injures the hater, not the hated. — Peace Pilgrim

July the 6th – rain and coolness again

Serious rain this morning which cleared the air and made it in the 70’s with a nice blissful breeze. No sunset spectacle so I stayed home and put the potted plants to work.

cropped to square:

full:

my happy little roll of brushes:

The iPad geraniums I did earlier today at work

Still hot, no paint today

I did stop at the local lake/reservoir and did a very fast sketch because folks 11:15 am on a day that it is 90F and there’s no real shade… let’s just say it was hot. Later at work I did an iPad cloud study.

Here’s the whole view, with clouds

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Beautiful and Cooler Evening

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I did two small sketchbook paintings (one on the “wrong” side ie the back of the previous painting duh) and one larger one:

Hot enough for you?

It’s been a week of heat. And by heat I mean 90F plus with 100F plus heat index (really? it FEELS hotter?) Yesterday the car thermometer kept telling me it was 99F-100F. When I finally got home last night it was a chill 80F plus.

Days like that means my goal is to find places with AC and to deal with it. Lots of people go to the mall which is my workplace. It’s not conducive to painting because the paint dries quickly on the paper and palette, making it harder to blend colors and soften edges. But we do it anyway because it is

Ever since the first shaggy hunter outlined a running deer with a stick dipped in wood ash or puddle clay or blood, paint has served a vastly more significant and creative purposeas a vehicle for the human imagination, a creator of illusions, the modest but endlessly pliable means of fixing a glimpse of loveliness for posterity. The true originators in this field have always been the great artists. But close behind these masters of illusion came the masters of the applied arts designers, architects, decorators, legions of craftsmen whose vocation was to reflect contemporary standards of beauty and harmony. — Jocasta Innes