Brought Out The Brush

Most of this has been done with a painting knife, but I thought it might be nice to bring out the brush to diddle around a little. A small brush is good for fine lines and the wide, flat brush was good for hitting the branches for a gauzy foliage look. Once I got some of those droopy branches and foliage in, I didn't want to mess with the background so much. It didn't need it, other than me wanting to lighten a path through the left side which will draw the eye beyond the tree trunks, which I'll get to eventually. I am having a mental arguement with my style, wanting to be so much looser. You'd think, using a painter's knife, that I would be producing something pretty loose. I guess it'll come when I'm ready for it. Maybe more plein air painting will get me started. Since it's no longer freezing outside, I'll have to make a plan to get out there and do it.

Love The Large Format!

River Trees 30x40" One can't tell from a cropped photo how large this painting is. I ought to not crop it one of these days, so you can get an idea of how much it resembles a window's view of the river outside (I wish!). It sits in my dining room, when I'm not working on it, giving me the impression that there's a lovely flowing river and, now that I have it at a point where it doesn't bug me, I find it very relaxing and soothing to look at. It would be a nice thing to gaze at in a doctor's office or auto repair shop...two places that cause anxiety. I'd been missing the layer upon layer of painter's knife painting that made up the entire "Storm Wave" painting. It was so freeing to go in with bright colors and then hit it with duller glazes of blues and greens, come back with more brights and lights and then bring it closer to reality. The layers look so good with a top coat of varnish because you can see the under layers peeking through. Lots of depth. So, the trees got a little of that action the past couple of days and then late yesterday I went after the rock walk on the right. I saw blue undertones in the rock, so actually did a pure color glazing of Cerulean on different spots and went off to do something else while it dried a bit. When I got back, there was still enough tackiness to it that I could work it in with a lighter pinkish lavender mix and so it developed some grays in spots. But, right before I gave up for the night, I didn't like what I had and decided to chance mixing right on the canvas with some Titanium white knifed into the tacky paint. It worked a treat! I only mention my success with this as a lesson on how not to listen to your teachers, haha! Mixing pure pigment on the canvas is usually a big No No, so I was mentally slapping my hands even as I was finding it working so well. Another life lesson, brought to you by the Bonga. Feel free to use it, but don't tell anyone I told you.

Out, Damned Pink!

"River Trees" 30x40" The pink trees may have been restful, but I think I was just reading a bad photo copy and not staying true to what I know these trees to be. BUT, I will concede that there was a bit of sunset light playing on them, so the pink is there to some degree. Anyway, I'd gone so overboard with it that it annoyed me all day and finally, while my soup was simmering at 6:15, I went up to the studio for 45 minutes to see if I could rid myself of the worst of my annoyances. I knew I didn't have energy for more than a bit of glazing, such was my day (or allergies). It's getting there...slowly, but surely.

River Trees

This first picture is of the beginning of the painting. Wednesday morning was icy and cold and not sunny, so I attempted to photograph this from inside, with my spots in the diningroom. I'm almost embarrassed to post the picture of the second stage of this painting, because it's such an awkward stage. I painted for 4 hours, late yesterday, and believe that it was 1 hour too long. But, the water looks good at least. I also was on the phone about a brother's medical emergency and keeping a daughter company as she drove back to Richmond from D.C., which is a little distracting to the painting process. But, the water looks good. And maybe, if I keep mentioning the water, you won't wonder too much about the pink trees? Cuz, the water looks great! It's okay, though, because I'll do a glaze over the pink and bring the values down, then move on to the background and then come back and see what I can do about the rock walk on the right without making it too chalky looking, work on all the roots and check on the trees again to see what else they'll need before the final work on the tree limbs. I always wish that I had given myself a larger block of time to work, because I always seem to stop before I've finished a stage, but this painting showed me that 4 hours is too long and you can get ahead of yourself to the point of no return, if you're unlucky. I'm lucky, though, and can see where to go next. Phew! And doesn't the water look great?

I Love A Good Experiment, Don't You?

I had a couple of hours free, and a cheap 16x20 canvas (sure seems small after my 30x40's), so decided to work through the same experiment with looseism (yeah, I made up a word, but I bet you know what I mean!). I thought the best way to start was to work from my previous attempt, instead of having a photo reference. I can remember some of the photo, and just did a bit of creative color choices in the foliage (which will have to be lightened up at the top), but really tried for nice strong strokes of the painter's knife and let each stroke stand. Problems that occurred: the bridge still stuck out like a sore thumb because I had made it so defined. So, after I'd closed the lid on my palette and was about to call it a day (in disgust), I took one of my painter's knives and blurred the definition with large strokes. Then, it was just one brown blobby thing, so I stole some excess pale blue from the water and went over the large pillars to give them some light. It is what it is, but I am relieved that I could do it and now feel like I can move on to another composition, though I can't recall having anything in mind for my next painting! I've been going like gangbusters here for a couple of weeks, and loving it, so I guess I need to slow up and do some research on what to do next, where to go and how to get what I want from it. I'll take suggestions if they don't involve animals or bridges, haha!

Two, Count 'Em, Two Done!

" Monticello Fall Tree" 30x40 oil on gallery wrapped canvas "Monticello Woods II" 24x36 oil on gallery wrapped canvas Not signed, but I am calling two paintings done! The Monticello Woods II was a no brainer...add some foreground leaves and "leaf" the rest alone. That was the intention, but I did work in some more depth in the foliage all over the painting, BUT I left the ground plane and the trees alone and that's a big step for me. Fall Tree, which will be renamed, "Monticello Fall Tree", just for the heck of it, needed work on the tree trunk. It was driving me crazy with its cool tones which, surprisingly, didn't work well against the warm foliage and warm ground plane. So, Transparent Red Oxide went to work again. Love that paint color! I combined it with Ultramarine Blue, in various mixtures, and reworked the foreground tree and the background tree. Then, used a glaze of Transparent Red Oxide on all the foliage and came back in with the yellows and orange tones to finish it off. I feel like it flows better now, colorwise, and I can relax and...sign them!

Monticello Woods II

Sometimes it's good to let a painting rest before you go in and muck it up. Because of that, I have TWO paintings resting in my dining room which, along with other finished paintings that I want to hang or are waiting to be framed or are waiting to be delivered to a show, is starting to look like my studio annex instead of the entrance to my home. Kinda colorful, I must say! So, what do you do when you want to give a painting a rest? You start a new one. I believe I've said that just recently and that's why I started "Barton Creek Bridge" on Sunday. Now THAT one has to rest and I started a new one yesterday. And nearly finished it, too! As with "Monticello Woods", this one went quickly but I was able to go even further with it because of having done the other one just last week and stopping it at an earlier point. So, now I have a little bit more to do: I have too many "sky holes" that require a bit of overlay of leaves so they don't stick out like...sky holes. And, I think I will leave it be after that. I am learning, in my exploration of this "less is more" technique, that the dense application of paint sometimes makes the painting more flat and has less of a glow about it. I also see that some of the energy dissipates so I'm going to see if I can manage to get what I want in the first paint application so the glow of the white canvas beneath the paint remains. I think it might take making several paintings of the same composition, like Monticello Woods, to help me with the more a la prima technique that captures the energy and glow. I'll let you know how that goes and what I'll be able to do with the paintings that are "resting" to recapture some of the initial energy and fire.

Spent Some More Time With This

3 more hours of work on this and am somewhat satisfied with the results. I don't know if I'll work on it today, because the power company has asked us to cut back on our electrical usage due to the huge drain these frigid temperatures have put on the grid. Rolling blackouts are plaguing the state, though my house has been spared so far. My appointment got cancelled and the grocery store blocked off the frozen and dairy aisles because they've been losing power off and on all morning. Were I to decide to paint, I'd have to power up my laptop for the photo, turn on the overhead fan and my work lights, which isn't saving much power.

No Exactly What I Planned

So, Monticello Woods is now signed without me putting another touch of paint on it. Unusual for me to call it finished before I get into lots of color, tones and texture, but a friend begged to buy it at this stage. I couldn't deny her and also thought that it was pretty cool and said a lot with just those few lines of trees. I think I probably would have only brought in a few foreground leaves on the trees and maybe given more dimension to the larger trees, so it's okay to stop. And, what do you do when you'd planned on a week of working on a painting? You start a new one. And the new one, originally, was going to be another Monticello Woods with the added touches that I hadn't gotten to do. But, best laid plans... I was on Facebook and saw a painting a friend, Scott Ewan, did of a river/lake scene. So loose and abstract and inspiring! The reason that I took up the painting knife was to get to that point. I am so inspired by the work of Alex Kanevsky and, in my heart, am heading in that direction. So, with those two artists' work in mind, I started a new painting from photos we took on our walk around Town Lake last year. Best intentions though, were foiled by a bridge! You know me and man made structures. I cannot figure out how to let them be loose! My other complaint will get fixed today and that is that the drawing was fine but my looseness got all over it and messed up the angles of the bridge. Frank noticed it right away, but to give him credit, he first said "Whoa!", which is a compliment if you know my hubby.

New One Blocking In

I decided to let "Fall Tree" sit for a bit and see if I need to do a few little things or let it stand on its strengths as is. So, to take my mind and attention off of it, I started sketching out some new compositions from the same trip to Richmond. The light there, at Monticello that day, was wonderful and I felt such a great peace wandering the grounds. I'm sure a lot of what I was feeling was because I was with my daughter, whom I miss soooo much, but the beauty of the place couldn't be denied. I even went so far as to sketch a shady path WITH PEOPLE (tourists), which I have been avoiding lately. It's not that I can't paint people or don't want to paint figures; it's just that I like putting myself in the scene and people just clog it up with extra ideas. So, we'll see if I ever paint that one, but this one flowed so easily when I sketched it, and again with painting knife in the block in, that I know this will be a fun painting. I like the elongated format, too. (36x24) I've been raving about how much I love Transparent Red Oxide on Facebook. It's transparency makes it really glow on top of a white canvas. All of the red and yellow leaves in the trees, and the yellowish sky, are all done with just Transparent Red Oxide and gel medium. The ground plane and trees are a mixture of Transparent Red Oxide, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna, which makes a lovely chocolatey brown with purple undertones. I usually use Burnt Sienna and Ultramarine Blue for my block ins. I love Burnt Sienna! And now I love Transparent Red Oxide. There's so much yellow in it that, when mixed with Ultramarine Blue, you can get some interesting greens. Won't see many of those in this painting as all these trees were in full Fall mode with oranges, reds and yellows abounding. We were dumbfounded at the glowing colors which surrounded our walk through the woods. 'Twas a wonderful start to a fantastic day which included a Colonial lunch of the best fried chicken I've ever eaten, a steep walk up a mountain to pick gigantic Fuji apples and coffee in cute Charlottesville with a young friend from Sami's high school days.

Shadow Work

Nearly 2 weeks later, after a visit home from my daughter and a bad week of allergies (damn cedar fever!), I got back to painting and am happy with what occurred. I was bothered that entire time off by the shadows on the ground; some were extremely cool and the others extremely warm. When you've got such a sunny day, you're going to have a lot of daylight filtering through the trees and so these extremes wouldn't actually be seen in Nature. The tree got some work, too, also because of the light bouncing up and filtering through. Unfortunately, I'm getting a lot of reflection from the horizontal brush strokes, which I didn't see when I was painting, so I'll need to go back and tamp those down quite a bit. Other than that, I don't hate it.

Turn It Upside Down

I had to resort to the old tried and true method for "getting it right" when I can't tell what's bugging me the most about a painting. In this case, though, I was pretty sure that what was bothering me was the lack of foreground space and the thickness of the trunk of the tree. What had drawn me to the composition in the first place was the design of the shadows in the foreground, yet, when I did the sketch, I placed the bottom of the tree too far down and stretched out the trunk. I thought I'd be okay with that and lost myself, instead, in the plethora of colored leaves. In the end, or at least 12 hours into the painting, I always come back to what is missing and it was the big, fat foreground. And so, to punish my weak ways, I did a day of technical painting with the canvas upside down so I could only look at shapes. This usually works to help me see things more clearly and I can figure out where the weak spots are. So, I think I got it! And now I may just spend another painting session working upside down so that I can really get the shadows the right value, hue, and color temperature, though I am rather fond of the warmth in them right now (on the right). We shall see. I may just finish making dog food and do laundry for the rest of the day. I'm a hippie mom.

Welcome To My Hatred

There is a point in nearly every painting I do, usually about the 12 hour mark, that I find more to hate than to love about what is on the canvas. I don't go so far as to take a knife to the canvas, but I spend many heart rending hours trying to will away that hate. The only thing to do is go in with more paint and paint away the offensive areas and create new magic. This takes no strength of will, because I already hate the area. So, suffice it to say that it will look better next time you see it. Ugh!

Technology Can Bite Me!

Oops! You caught me in a cranky moment. I am dealing with the new computer/external hard drive woes and can't wait for the procedure Frank is promising me where any photos I upload to my new computer will automatically be copied to the external hard drive. My editing software doesn't recognize the external hard drive, so I have to upload my photos to the desk top, edit them and then move the file to the external hard drive. Of course, now that I've written that, it occurs to me that it's not too many more steps and I should quit whining! Afterall, I have a new, superfast hard drive and updated editing software so life really isn't all that bad. Just...different. Speaking of different, can you spot the changes in this painting? My husband could and we all thought he was oblivious to my artwork. Just turns out that he needed better lighting in which to view it. So, thank goodness he tackled my "honey do" list this past December and finally installed my track lighting chandelier in the dining room where I have one spot trained on my easel which displays my work in progress. It's a great set up for me, because I can bring my painting down from the studio and let it sit in a spot light all night where I can view it from a couple of different vantage points and determine what needs work the next day. I may just put in 2-3 hours of painting a day, but am working the rest of the evening every time I walk through that space. Anyway, if you haven't figured out what has changed, the ground is a huge hint. It's mostly lighter, but I worked on all the shadows, too. Worked on some background and worked on the background leaves in the trees so that there's a bit of a feeling of depth there. And, I worked on most of the tree and tree limbs. Unfortunately, my editing software doesn't include photoshop, so I couldn't get rid of the glare on the lower tree limbs. I will have to rough them up a bit, with some thicker paint and a painter's knife which will cut down on the glare. I love how the colors in this painting are so harmonious with two other paintings I have in the dining room right now: Berkeley Bird of Paradise and Boat (www.conniemiller.net).

Autumn in Reverse

Usually the leaves fall in Autumn. While painting this, I purposely chose not to put in all the branches and leaves right away, to leave room for background sky. So, now I've put in more branches and leaves. It's still mostly blocking in, but I do work all around the canvas and have been dealing with the trunk of the tree in more detail. What's really bugging me, at the moment, is the ground. The sunlight was so strong that the colors were more washed out, so I will have to tone down the saturation. Having a new computer and dealing with accessing photos stored on our external hard drive has been a pain, and a distraction, but I now have my photo editor installed and have figured out an extra step for storing photos, so I can crop photos again! I'd much rather that all that stuff was second nature and I could just paint, but this seems to be the month of learning new things...like a new website! If y'all haven't checked it out, it's www.conniemiller.net, hosted by Fine Art Studio Online. I may also be checking out their blogware and see if it's a little more user friendly for a person who can't figure out how to set paragraphs! I'm sure it's some little html symbol, but it's beyond me at present. So, that's why all of my thoughts run together...much like the title of this blog!

Visit To Monticello

Autumn in Virginia is absolutely lovely; something I missed when we moved to Texas so many years ago from Michigan. The colors of the trees, on our drive to Monticello from my daughter's apartment in Richmond, made us ooh and ahhh the entire trip. And, once we got there, we knew we'd come at just the right time. The maples blazed, the sycamores were ruby red, any number of trees held golden to bright yellow leaves. Everywhere we turned, on our walk of the grounds at Monticello, there were purple mountains as a backdrop and muted to brilliant foliage as our eyes moved across the landscape and our cameras clicked away. This particular tree was in Jefferson's "back yard" and grabbed me from every angle. I particularly love the gnarly trunk and the low sweeping branches. The sun shown golden on the fallen leaves all around it, which makes this enormously warm and inviting to me. Let me explain the funny shapes of blue on the canvas. I really hate "sky holes" and try to avoid them whenever possible. Instead, I prefer to paint in the sky and later bring in the tiny branches and bits of leaves so that the sky is then peeking through instead of what I perceive as lying on top of the painting when the "sky holes" are painted in. I think you get a lacier, lighter effect this way. And so it looks a bit awkward at the moment, because I did the sky with a painting knife, which means thicker paint that I couldn't paint into without making a mess. I'm not an a la prima type painter, so it's what I'll get to today or tomorrow. I hope you enjoy the colors!

Fall Tree

It's been 3 weeks since I have done any painting and maybe that's why I've been a little cranky. I've had this painting in my head all this time and was just waiting for the opportune moment to get up to my studio and start the sketch. I also knew that I wanted to do it in a large format, 30x40", so that it would make a nice statement. And I think it does already!

Maverick Is Signed!

"Maverick" 2010 C.S. Miller 24x18" oil on gallery wrapped canvas

Gave Him A Glow

Maverick's color has been bothering me for a while, so I took the painting into different rooms in the house to look at it in different lights. The final decision was to warm up my palette and make him glow. I got out my new #12 Flat Silver Brush (love it!) and ditched the fear that comes with painting over what I had liked. The result is a warmer, more proportional dog and a background with sunlight peaking through the trees overhead. I like the combination of big brush and painting knife effects and am giving myself 2 days to finish him. It was commissioned as a Christmas present, so has to be dry enough for retouch varnish, painting the sides and wiring to hang. Then, I can think about Christmas.

Background Fun

Decided to work on the background yesterday. It involved putting in some bright blues and peaches and then coming over it and scraping darker, grayer greens, then coming over it again and scraping with yellow greens. The last layer was a darker, more olive green glaze.