Fall fell into winter

Here we were hoping for a really great Thanksgiving when we could take a long walk in mild weather after the big dinner. We probably will not be doing that long walk this year. This is what we woke up to this morning.

We have never seen the branches of this tree sag to the ground like this. When we shoveled we measured 15inches of the wet stuff in our driveway. It has settled considerably. And the trees have bounced back up except for the branches that broke under the heavy snow. We could hear the branches cracking and falling while we were out shoveling. Heres hoping most if not all of this will melt sometime soon.

End of summer beginning of fall

We have had a tremendously busy August this year. We started out with a trip to the Salt Flats in Utah for Speed Week -- a two day trip both ways. We left heat and humidity in Minnesota and were met with the dry heat of the desert. There really is a difference in the heat. I'll take a bit of dry heat any time.

Here is a photo from that week. Dan by his roadster at sunrise. It is cool and beautiful that time of day on the salt. We took lots of photos of the various cars that try to beat the records for speed on the salt flats. Those guys are not only great engineers but also artists when it comes to designing their dream of what will go the fastest.
And right after we got back from Utah, I headed up to Wisconsin for my class with Bob Burridge. (See my previous post). Now two weeks later I am packing up to go on my trip to Ireland. Ten days with fellow artist, Gail Speckmann and 15 other artists. We will tour and sketch and take photos.  I could not talk Dan into cramping his self in to an airplane seat for 9 hours so I called my travel buddy and she will go with me instead. We travel well together and will have lots of fun. I will take photos and post some for the record.
After I get home from Ireland, Dan and I will drive south to Bowling Green, KY for a nostalgic drag race and car show. More photo ops. We will take the camper and stay right on the fair grounds. It is a pretty area there so if it is not raining (like it did last year) I will try to get in a plein air or two.
Gerry and I have been out painting a couple of days. Gerry is good at timing our outings so that we have good weather. The rest of this week will be raining so we went out yesterday. The weather was absolutely perfect.. The Kasota Prairie is a conservation area that is attempting to save the tall grass prairie. It is a beautiful area and has lots of potential paintings. I struggled with the lonely tree in this photo and have some work to do with the foreground. I only have this photo to give you an idea of what I am working on.   No photo of the painting yet.

It is hard to see in the photo but the prairie grasses are my shoulder height with lots of wild flowers growing in their shadow and butterflies flitting all around. It is just beautiful and smells wonderful.

Last week we painted on the Judson Bottom Road, an old wagon road that follows the Minnesota River on the western side toward Judson and New Ulm. It is narrow and tree shaded and twisty turnie with lots of places to paint there, too. Dan and I used to ride our tandem on the road. There were at least two bikers passed us while we were painting. Here is the result of that session. 11x14 on canvas with oil.

I started with an orange under painting that really kept the painting on the warm side. You can see some of it coming through in the trees. They really had not changed this much. Gerry keeps saying that I see colors way different than she does. :-) I chose this spot for the winding hill and the limestone cliff with the over hanging shelf. It was really fun to do because there was a built in composition for the painting. And I have always wanted to put in a road sign on one of my plein airs. ;-)

Gone for a couple of weeks. See you later. Hugs, Margie

Permission to be free

 My workshop with Bob Burridge last week was a week of work and fun. Bob passed out our permission slips to be free in our paintings and to express what we wanted. Being the tight painter that I am, this permission was one of the best things of the week. Our warm up sessions every morning, got us swinging our brushes and our blood heated up for the rest of the day. The short sessions with the model kept us moving a just putting impressions down on our papers.

The second part of the week we worked on our paintings of the model and learned (tried to learn) how to be free with collage. Bob sees collage a just another aspect of his painting. A touch of texture or a note of color on his painting. I had gone to the workshop with a big box of interesting collage items and only used some paper that I brought along. Every one in the class did the same thing. He fooled us all. His collage elements were photo copies of a small kids flag that he cut up and used as stripes or stars on his paintings. Very reserved for Bob. 

This is the collage that was the most successful of the whole week. It is a quarter sheet of water color paper with collage and acrylic paint. It did not come together until I added the greyed back ground. After seeing it here on the blog I think that I will soften the little white circles on the right. Maybe more of the light grey instead of white. Here is another that I was happy with.

This one is small, just a sixth of a sheet about 8x10. I liked how the color scheme came together and the little bit of gold foil paper that I used for added bling.  I think it looks like a group of gospel singers on stage. In the spot light. 

As you can see these are not figures that were collaged. I did not get to collaging the figure paintings. I am just too unsure of what I am doing with them. With more work drawing figures, I may get to that point in the weeks ahead.

I received a grant to go to this workshop. As a result of my contract with the Prairie Lakes Region, I need to develop a body of work for a show that shows what I learned with Bob at the workshop. My goal  this fall is to work toward a show of my work some time this coming spring. I also need to have three paintings ready to hang in January for the grantees show in St. Peter. All the award winners will be hanging their work at this show. Should be fun.

Reclining Nude

I have had a really busy summer. Plein aire painting, vacations and last week a workshop with artist Robert Burridge at Dillman's creative arts foundation in northeast Wisconsin. Bob is a very dynamic artist who encouraged us to loosen up and become more colorful. The week was divided into three sections. First the figurative drawing and painting, second we used the figures we drew and painted and did more with collage and finally on Friday we had a mARTketing work shop for artists.
On Monday and Tuesday we had a really professional  model, Vanassa Little Crow pose for both quick and long studies. This is a drawing that I did while she was resting. Usually she was standing or holding an unusual pose. I have more of my drawings and paintings on my Picassa album.  This is on a full sheet of watercolor paper that was coated with acrylic gesso and I used a water soluble pencil and then washed the background. If I had had any courage, I would  have added color and maybe some collage pieces to the drawing. But I did some really bad collages on some of my smaller pieces and didn't want to ruin this drawing. I guess the loosen up and get colorful message didn't get through to me on this painting.
We learned so much during the week. I hardly have had time to digest it all. But plan on doing the exercises that Bob taught us and to use his very unusual goof proof color wheel. Check out his web site to find out more about it.
Will be posting some more paintings as the week goes on. I am photographing some of my work and then editing them for the web.
See you soon.

Time flies by...........

Where time goes is a hard one to figure out. It sure flies by without us looking. Gerry and I have been out painting at least once a week. The hot weather has kept us in doors for much of the lost time. We did get out last week and painted in a friend's back yard. We always look for shade to stand in and keep our painting and pallets in the same light. Here is the result of that painting session. The upper left hand corner of all places gave me a bit of a composition dilemma. I painted the space originally with the roof of the house that had a dark brown trim board on it. After looking at the painting at home. I decided to paint the trim board and roof out. It took too much attention from the center of interest. Then that blank space did the same thing! So I decided to put the trim board back in the painting but lighter in tone. Now that space with the roof and the windows makes sense and I have decided to be happy with the finished painting. All that fussing and I really just wanted to paint the tree and the flowers under it.

Monday we had a chance to get back to the little cemetery so Gerry could work on a panorama. I decided to do the willow clump from a couple of weeks ago again but this time so the tree did not take up the whole painting. It ended up being a very high key painting. The day was quite humid and so we get the blue tree line in the back ground. I over emphasized the humidity to get away from an all green painting. This is a little bluer and darker green than real life.
Today I went out to 7 mile creek park and set up on one of the bridges over the creek. Wow, was it nice in the park today. The stream burbling below me, birds singing and children playing--sweet! Talk about green --- I truly need to find a new subject right now. Either that or take up nocturnals so I can paint something with the other colors on my palette. The painting needs quite a bit of touch up before I show you it. Either that or I will gesso the whole thing and start again. Until later.

Try spelling Minnewishinona

Indian names are so beautiful but awfully hard to spell. This little fall(s?) is in a new county park. Eventually it will be easier to see but at this time, I had to lean over a very shaky fence to see the falls and still had brush and leaves in the way. This was a late afternoon painting and the rocks were in full sun and blindingly bright. I was kind of hoping to have more water in the falls but even with all the rain we have had, it must drain away pretty quickly. We will have more opportunities at this site when the park is made accessible. There will be a bridge build right over the ravine the falls have carved. Should be a good view. Until then, here is the view I had last week.

8x10 oil on canvas.

Next up will be a little one of a friend's back yard. See you later.

Plein Air Again

I finally got some photos of my work outdoors. With luck this hot and humid weather will break tonight and my painting partner Gerry and I will get out again. This time I think we are going to try a water fall and break away from all the green.
Gerry found this sweet little hide away for us. It is a tiny rural cemetery on a little knoll over looking an elk farm, a nice meadow and lots of corn and bean fields. We could stand in the shade to paint and could find a painting with every turn of our heads. We did not try to paint the elk. But my, they are really big with huge racks on their heads. Hope the farmer makes a good living with them.

Number 1--This is a little 8x10 in oil on canvas. It is part of the pasture for the elk. They were in the shade but so far away that they didn't really show. Good excuse not to paint them -- right? The fence is at least 12 feet tall. So you can see that the trees were quite far away from me.

Number 2 -- This one is 10 x 14 oil on board. This day I concentrated on this willow clump. There was an elk in the shade again but not in the painting. Gerry and I are working on green variations. There are plenty to work with this summer. Everything is really lush from all the rain we have had. At least we get some variation in the clouds.  I think the saving grace in this painting is the little gravel road in the back ground. It breaks up the green in the foreground from the back ground fields and  trees.

Number 3 -- 11x14 oil on canvas.  I had an eye on this cross road. It was just down the way from our little cemetery. I had to stand almost in the road to get a good composition. It took about a half hour to set up my umbrella to give my canvas and palette some shade.  I liked the way the corn contrasted with the beans and the way the gravel road complemented the greens. Gerry said I had to add the stop sign. Dan says I need to put STOP on it. Not going to happen!  I did like the way the far road turned out with it's little dips.

While I was painting away my left brain kicked in and said " I like the horizon line in the middle and I love the way the poles are both leaning exactly the same. I am so good. I even fooled the right brain into thinking she got the horizon above the middle. The poles were so much fun to fool her with!"  

The right brain did touch ups at home to straighten one of the telephone poles and raise the horizon line. For a bit of wild life I put some birds on the line.

More paintings later--Blessings to all.