The Light of Spring

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

I have been working on this watercolor on and off over the last two weeks. I wasn't sure what color to paint the actual house. I was leaning towards white or off-white, like a traditional colonial home. This would offer a nice contrast with the sky. I had left this area of the picture unpainted, so that everything else in the landscape and sky had color, but the snow on the ground and on the entry roofs blended in and became lost. So I ventured to paint a blue-green which would not be overwhelming to the architectural details and shadows, yet harmonize with the dark evergreen on the left. 

The perspective, to me, gives reverence to the building, with the subtle upwards view. I like the warmth of the deciduous trees. Also, there is a stillness to the picture which I particularly like. Usually at this time of year with southern exposure, at least in Brattleboro, the snow has melted and broken up a little with some rich, exposed earth coming forth.

I used a very minimal palette, which includes paynes gray, cobalt and ultramarine blue, sepia, and phthalo green.

Portrait Painting

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

The book, Math and the Mona Lisa: The Art and Science of Leonardo da Vinci, by Bulent Atalay, which I just read, was fascinating. The author explores how the sciences and arts have influenced each other with nature both the inspiration and resource bank. He discusses and sites examples of the golden rectangle, the golden triangle, and the Fibonacci sequence among other phenomena in nature and expressed in paintings and building design.

However, what intrigues me most is the data on portrait painting in western culture. Portrait painters typically place one of the subject's eyes in the very center of the picture, towards the top third of the canvas, suggesting the composition of the portrait has an unwritten order. Painters typically present the left side of the face towards the viewer, moreso than the right as seen in the drawing I did above. This is true of iconic paintings including the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci and Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer. This will definitely change the way I look at portrait painting.

Stonewall Jackson

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

I recently finished reading Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson by S.C. Gwynne. When I first signed this book out from the library, after my injury, I was not sure I would read it because I could not hold a book open with one hand. However, as I got into the book it became fascinating to learn some of the events of the Civil War, in particular from the Confederate point of view. Also, on a personal note, I had ancestors who lived in Virginia and fought against the Union. 

Jackson graduated from West Point with some of the generals whom he would fight against in the Civil War. He also taught at a military school in what is now West Virginia. Many of the students who would become soldiers would end up fighting for him. He was known for getting his Confederate troops in fighting shape in short order and winning many battles against a much larger Union Army with limited resources. When he died nearly two years before President Abraham Lincoln, it was considered the first national mourning for a fallen leader in United States history.

This is not the best painting I ever created, however, it is essentially a watercolor sketch done rapidly without too much fuss. It is based on the cover photograph of S.C. Gwynne's book, taken over 140 years ago, which has the top of his head cropped off. This picture is not intended to glorify Jackson as he had a reputation for wearing tattered clothing and was wanting in appearance. 

Pencil & Paper

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

The cast on my left forearm was removed this morning. It was truly an exciting moment. It has healed nicely but needs physical therapy to get back to its usual functioning. Right after I got home from the hospital, I realized I did not want to look at my limp arm all day. So I drove to Keene, New Hampshire where there is an art group that meets on Thursday mornings. Artists bring whatever projects they are working on, whether it is a watercolor, as I usually work on, or a lovely colored pencil drawing of a still life, as a woman across from me was creating. Another person was painting a garden scene in acrylic on slate.

Since my arm is tender and it was really windy, I did not want to carry much, so I threw in my L.L. Bean bag a sketchbook and pencils. In a half hour between introductions and conversations I did this little drawing of an older woman from a photograph in Vermont Life Magazine credited to Chris Cammock. The others are quite impressed with some my watercolors, but they were not familiar with my portrait drawings! This one does seem to capture a sense of the model's presence and connection with the viewer. I did the entire drawing with one HB pencil, and it did not require an eraser. I wanted to make use of my time doing something creative and this worked for me.

The winter that was

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

I am truly excited about this painting! For me it has some magical qualities. There are atmospheric affects which go beyond just mixing colors and applying paint to a surface. There are heavy cool shadows in the foreground conveying temperature change and the fading daylight. Yet there are puzzling qualities just beyond the hedge and on the right side, where there is a wall of snow which seems to roll right off the page. Perhaps the real mystery is what is going on behind the house where the light is warm and seductive.

The snow seems to root the house to the earth while the power lines connect it to the larger community. You can feel the weight and temperature of the snow on the hedge. And this is no small hedge! There is a bit of benign neglect, such as the uncleared walk and stoop, which give it a Hopperesque quality.

Throughout the fall and winter I have been deleting elements and simplifying my landscapes in search for stronger compositions and more powerful imagery. Often it is subtle changes in color or the ground plane, a shift in the horizon or eliminating a window in a house etc. The result I think is a stronger regional identity. Maybe not. What do you think?

Watercolor figure study

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

Like most American households, my wife and I receive many alumni magazines in addition to all the mail order catalogs. The University of Oregon's school of allied arts sends out their alumni magazine every so often and usually there is an active outdoor scene on the cover. However, the recent cover does not depict some great western scene but students helping out with construction of a new building on the campus in Eugene, Oregon. This was the source of inspiration for this little figure study.

I mentioned in an earlier post when I have limited time I like to do little figure studies often on remnant watercolor paper. The posture, body proportions and color of the clothes seem to express everything in this watercolor. These little pictures do not have the build up of watercolor washes as a finished watercolor may have. I often use a handful of pigments at most. There is not much detail in the faces, hands or feet. I mix yellow ochre with quinacridone rose and the color simply reads as skin tone. The shadows are painted in payne's gray, depicting the direction of the light source and providing depth to the objects in the foreground.

Andrew Wyeth's Campfire

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

In twelve days my cast will be cut off, freeing me to be truly active again! Yea!!! Again yea!!! For those of you unaware of my condition, I broke my left wrist in the beginning of February, in not one but two places. Fortunately, it was reset expertly at Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, here in Vermont, in the emergency room. It was reset so well that no surgery was required! It has progressed to the point where I played two matches of racquetball recently. After weeks of minimal activity I was desperate for exercise. I even have a handsome blue cast, in the cerulean blue color range. The nurse offered a swatch of colors to choose from as if selecting wallpaper patterns!

In the meantime, our living room is littered with pencil drawings of faces, figures and feet. I even have a little portrait of my wife. Since my stamina was limited, I did a small knock off of an Andrew Wyeth's painting called Campfire. Many artist friends who live in New England, I find, have a book or two of Andrew Wyeth. Well, I have one called The Helga Pictures, published in 1987 with much controversy to follow, but I won't go into that here. I like this painting because it is direct, abstract, and applied with wet washes. It is even understood that Wyeth used a straw and blew air to create the nodules and uneven edges on the branches in his picture. 

I find the sky in Andrew Wyeth's watercolors to be of particular interest. There is a lot of atmosphere in his sky with little pigment used. This sky is warm in temperature, using a small amount of yellow or even a drop or two of red into a wet wash.

I had a square watercolor block kicking around that I think has perfect proportions for doing little portraits. It is small in size so as not to allow for too much detail, yet the sheet enables me to get the essence of the scene. I only focused on one area of Wyeth's painting, which included the backside of Helga, the model's head. I was interested in mixing colors to match what he might have used, with techniques he may have applied. However, I did not use a straw in this case, even though I have tried in the past because, I failed to consider it at the time. 

Changing seasons

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

I have been working on this watercolor on and off since Christmas. It is of a neighbor's house right outside my studio window. I like to observe the changes in the landscape throughout the seasons, from the emergence of plant life pushing up from the soil to the colors of fall foliage and finally snow accumulating.

I got off to a great start with nice rich washes of pigment but set it aside as the bustle of the holidays picked up. When I came back to it, I was more tentative and some areas became more overworked than I prefer. I like the little old garage building with the natural light filtering through and around the curtains. The silhouette of the trees behind the garage look too evenly spaced, providing an unnatural appearance. 

However, there are many other things I like about this watercolor. I like the warmth of light projecting from the windows in the house. I love the warm glint of light coming off the clapboards just below the eaves on the front of the house. The large, draping evergreen seems to glue all the elements of the picture together and add an element of mystery. Next time, I would use a cool blue such as ultramarine blue to push back the groundcovers in the foreground with less opaque greens. 

What do you see or what would you imagine? Sometimes I get in a zone and paint in a seemingly random sequence. Is it finished? Sometimes I know right away but with this one not so much.

A summer's day

(C) 2015 Dale DiMauro

I figured I would give you the reader and myself a break from this winter with a late summer scene. Put the snow aside at least for a day!

Last summer the Brattleboro Outing Club had a paddle on Lowell Lake, which is near Londonderry, Vermont. It was a beautiful day on a lovely, clear, clean body of swimmable water with wildlife to boot! We saw a blue heron, an eagle, and painted turtles sunning on a downed limb hovering above the water. There are no year-round homes on the lake, so it generally is quiet and peaceful. We weren't the only paddlers, but all were respectful of the surroundings.

This watercolor is a detail of a study I made and added to recently. It is a tall, narrow, sheet of watercolor paper, a remnant as such from a prior painting that had been kicking around. This photograph cuts off much of the top and some trees but the camera simply could not capture it all, with such narrow proportions. This sheet lends itself to a slice of nature with its vertical orientation, which is what I intended, from the paddler to the sky. I plan at some point on doing a near full sheet of this emphasizing the vertical orientation so that water, vegetation, and sky are all included, but on a more generous scale.