Finished

 

             Crab Dinner     Original Oil     10" X 17"

While this water took longer to paint than I thought it would, I think it helps in telling the story. 

And this is a sight I did not expect to see. Next time I will be less surprised watching a loon taking advantage of a tasty morsel found in salt water.

Loon

 From this stage, you can see what intrigued me so much with this bird's behavior. The loon has grabbed a tiny crab. Since all the loons I have seen prior to this one were in fresh water, I never thought of crustaceans as part of their diet.

Usually I start with the head of a bird and work outward. On this painting I began by painting the parts of the loon touching the water. This helped me "settle" the bird in the scene.

Water

 

When working to paint the bird's underwater feet, I find myself thinking my brush is under the surface of my painting board. It is a strange illogical illusion since I know perfectly well there is no "under the surface" to my gessoed board. 

Okay, so we have a bird in the water. Doesn't seem that unusual or something I might not have seen before. It is what the bird is doing that intrigued me and caught my attention.

Stay tuned.

Playing with water

                                 I've added some more of the lighter water before I start blending. 

Once I blended the two main colors, the water didn't look like it had enough depth. I mixed a deeper richer mid-tone and brushed it in throughout before starting on the lower section of water.

Should I paint it?

Every now and then I see a scene so beautiful or interesting that I say to myself, "I can't paint that. No one would believe it." The sunset from our deck is too intense, or the clouds look just like an elephant, or the color of the water is too neon.

Much more common for wildlife artists is seeing a unusual animal behavior in the wild and trying to decide whether to paint it. 

Some of the questions I ask myself are:

1.) Is this a one-time event or something that happens but I haven't seen it before?

2.) Does it tell a new story and maybe advance understanding of the species for others?

3.) Will it make for a good painting and resonate with people?

Four years ago I saw something I hadn't seen before. I starting thinking more about this bird which previously I had only watched on bodies of fresh water. It is time to bring the memory of that encounter to "life."

 

For water I like to start with the dark shapes first.

 

 

Here I have blocked in some of the lighter areas of the water.
 

What color is fog?

This spring I have been working on eleven paintings for the Louisa Gould Gallery in Vineyard Haven on Martha's Vineyard Island, Massachusetts.

On one piece in particular, I procrastinated. I had a vision of how I wanted the painting to feel but couldn't see the steps. I wanted fog. Usually one would think of fog as whitish gray. That would not work for this painting. I thought sleeping on it would help. It didn't. Giving it another day of rolling around in my head also failed.

 It was time to just dive in and start mixing paint. The reference photos I took had lots in the background: trees, other boats, and a few houses. I needed to ignore all of that.

Starting with a consistent (mostly neutral) color for the background, I painted from the top toward the lower half. As I moved down, I began adding more texture and then more vibrant color. 

In painting water, I work with it until it looks wet to me. Some stray colors add to the believability.

Tranquil    27" X 18"   Oil

This painting (along with 10 other paintings of mine) will be in the Louisa Gould Gallery for the July 1 Opening of the gallery's Icons of Summer Show.

The Spreadsheet

 If you are an artist and your eyes started to glaze over at the title of this blog, The Spreadsheet, I understand.

We usually think of numbers with the word spreadsheet. Years ago I found keeping track of entry/competition/event deadlines difficult with just various folders and scraps of paper. There was the added complication of figuring out which paintings to enter. When would I hear from this show so I would know if I could enter a certain painting in another show?

That is when I created my Competition Spreadsheet. Of course, being an artist, the spreadsheet had to have colors!

The next step was to figure out the layout, what categories, and in what order.  Rather than get fancy with it, I opted for the basics in this order:

Date Due, Date Results, Name of Application, Submitted Date, Paintings submitted, and two additional info lines. The info might be size limitations, which gallery, whether the painting must be for sale, which painting was accepted, or when the painting needed to arrive.

For colors I use blue for submitted, green for accepted, tan for not accepted, yellow for did not enter, and neon pink for an upcoming deadline. 

For the next year I save the file with a new name, change all the backgrounds back to white and erase the details except the Name of Application entries. As dates become available, they are added and the process begins again. In the past few years I have added a number of shows/events/competitions.

Here is this year's current spreadsheet.

You might ask, why bother? I have a number of reasons.

1. So I do not miss a deadline
2. So I do not submit the same painting to two events at the same time
   
3. To keep track of what was entered last year
4. To gain exposure to galleries hosting various shows
5. To gain exposure in various online formats or magazines
6. To win cash or prizes 
7. To sell paintings
8. To participate in shows

 

For instance, last year for the first time I entered two paintings in the American Academy of Equine Artists. Both were accepted and Range Runners won the Jean Bowman Award. Also last year for the first time I entered the National Oil & Acrylic Painters Society Spring International Online Competition. My painting Ice Bear won Best of Show. I have since joined NOAPS and have been in their 2020 Best of America Show, the 2021 Best of America Small Works Show, and the 2021 Spring International Online Exhibit.

This might seem like a lot of work but setting up this spreadsheet has made the application process so much easier and clearer for me.