Another Poem and The Ace Hardware

12 x 12 inches, acrylic on canvas board

I was excited about how the last acrylic painting turned out, so I launched into another last night. One thing I like about Janesville is some of the old-fashioned signs in town. This one is huge, rising over the old hardware store that is one of my favorite places to shop. There is another over a downtown jewelry store, though the wonderful neon diamond on that sign blew down in a storm a few years ago. I painted the neon sign on front of our venerable Chinese restaurant (the oldest in Wisconsin) a few years ago, although I'd like to paint it again, larger, and in acrylic. My problem is that I don't manage to paint buildings and lettering especially well. If I practiced more on it I'd probably improve, but I suppose I'm too lazy to paint something, then write it off as "practice."

Tree Cutting

by Hanne Gauls, in the 2009 Wisconsin Poets Calendar

The county Artillery

lined the corner

of Timberline

and Europe Bay Road

declaring war

on enemy trees

obscuring the view

of highriding SUVs.

Bloody branches

spattered the road

winded trees

stretched their

injured stumps

yellow eyes egging

for their missing limbs.

Rain on the Pumpkins

12x12 inches, acrylic on canvas board

I'm still playing with the techniques I was introduced to in last week's workshop. I see now that the pavement needed an orange under painting, but this will have to stand as it is. I photographed the scene a couple days before Halloween, when we were out looking for pumpkins to carve. It was drizzly and cool, and everything was wet.

Three Days, Three Paintings

16x20 inches, acrylic

The Shelby Keefe workshop I attended at the Peninsula Art School certainly got me painting. I mostly finished three paintings in three days, and realized what a slow painter I am. This fall scene was my first attempt, and though I like the way the under-painting makes the colors vibrate, I probably will go back and make the trees look more three dimensional and the leaves look less like blobs.

I believe there probably are enough barn paintings in the world already, but I wanted to tackle my personal nemesis, architecture. If I were doing a watercolor I would have plotted this baby out on a graph and gotten it as close to right as possible, but here I eyeballed it. I looks a wee bit like paint-by-numbers, but I am satisfied enough for a class exercise. The blue peeking through the gold soybean field adds interest, and ties the bottom of the painting to other areas.

This poor woman ended up with essentially no face and an arm that appears to have been badly broken in childhood. I like the rowboat best, and again the orange and blue in the under-painting adds more interest than would have been there otherwise. This photo was a challenge for the Different Strokes From Different Folks blog, and I've wanted to try it for ages.

So, now I'm back home in my teeny studio, and am trying again. This time I have a photo from a local farm market of pre-Halloween pumpkins, and I hope the blue underneath will lend sparkle to the painting. It's certainly a different way of working for me, and I have hopes that I'll like the results.

All these paintings were done in acrylic paint. Keefe only uses acrylic for her under-paintings, then uses oils for the main part. I've always been hesitant to use oils, though I have a small selection of water mixable oils set aside. My big concerns are that they smell strong in such a small space and that I cannot figure out where I would put them to dry. Still, I want to try using them, if for no other reason than I already bought the paint.

Fiddle-dee-dee, I'll worry tomorrow.

My Extended Weekend "Up North"

The past few days I've been having fun "up north." I signed up for a painting workshop at the Peninsula Art School for last Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but left a day early to spend a day with my aunt in Algoma. People sometimes call the small town on the shores of Lake Michigan the "air conditioned city," and in the summer it is almost always cool. I have been visiting there since I was a child, and have a pile of photos from the little harbor. It used to be lined with commercial fishing boats and tarpaper fishing shanties. Most of the shanties have been torn down to make room for condominiums, and now there are only two left. This one was refurbished and moved to its prime location near the red lighthouse. I managed to crop out the condos.

After a good visit with my aunt I headed to Fish Creek for my workshop at the Peninsula Art School. My aunt doesn't like coffee, so when I got to Fish Creek Thursday morning I popped into the Blue Horse Cafe and bought a latte. I was charmed by the smiling face in the foam and was sure it was a good omen for the day.

I have always been fascinated with the Mexican celebration of Day of the Dead, and the gallery of the art school had several shrines filled with food, photos, artwork, religious symbols, and these wonderful calaveras (sugar skulls).

The main reason for the trip was the painting workshop, and it turned out to be a winner. The instructor, Shelby Keefe, paints by using an acrylic under painting in complementary colors, then the main part of the painting is done in oils. She demonstrated part of each morning, then we had lots of time to work on our own. She was helpful and encouraging, and I was happy with my first attempts at working this way. Actually I worked all in acrylics, since I didn't have a way to transport wet oils and didn't want to smell them for the entire two hundred mile trip back home. I got mostly finished with three small paintings, which I felt good about since I tend to paint rather slowly.

I hope to post pictures of my finished paintings later this week.

November Scenes, a Poem, and a Workshop

Our pumpkins are on a fast downhill slide. Too ripe when they were carved, the squirrels are nibbling on the the soft Jack-o-lanterns. Dick's "snowman" looks like he has been lethally shot from behind and is on a slow pitch forward toward the deck.

I was glad to have a sunny day, because I needed some more reference photos for a painting class I'm taking this week two hundred miles north in Door County at the Peninsula Art School in Fish Creek. Shelby Keefe, an artist who paints mostly urban landscapes in oils with acrylic under paintings is the instructor. I've been collecting materials, painting in acrylic, and assembling reference photos in an effort to be prepared for three intensive days of painting.

http://www.peninsulaartschool.com/

This shot of an old brick barn on the Tallman House property appealed to me because of the lines, and the single fall leaf against a window.

I liked this photo of downtown Janesville for the geometric shapes and bright colors. You can't see it, but the Rock River runs along beside these old buildings. I will be back on Sunday, and I hope to have some interesting paintings to show.

If you'd like to see some of Shelby Keefe's work, check this link to her website:

http://www.studioshelby.com/

Just for fun, here's a poem from the 2009 Wisconsin Poets' Calendar to celebrate the start of November.

Before the Fall

by Alice D'Alessio

We brake against the earth's spin,

clutching this lush

and gaudy day; spiral

of hawks against the blue

and sumac spreading fire

in tallgrass prairie.

We gather apples

from the last tree --

lumpy rejects, they burst

with cidery exultation

on the tongue. Then

pause once more

by the beaver pond

where fresh-gnawed sticks

arrest the stream. As if by

peering deep into the murky

bowl we could unlock

time's secrets.

A single yellow leaf drops,

Somewhere the night begins.