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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
This is a more completed version of my last post. As you can see I dropped in a figure looking towards the distant hills, as I thought the picture was lacking a focal point. The foreground has become darker and cooler as the individual is looking ahead into the distant light after exiting the woods. Making all of the various marks in the foreground I found very exciting to work on. For me they describe the season and time of day and give direction to the painting. This area has the most abstract shapes within it as I used a larger brush with greater pigment.
Getting the figure right took some effort as I drew on trace paper various figures and debated adding a dog to the left of the man. One of the critical decisions was how big to make the figure and thus, how much detail to include. I do like the man's posture and his clothing, plus how he is facing toward the other side of the field.
One of the qualities I was after in this picture was the way the late sun at this time year washes across the edge of the woods, a glow before the sun goes down.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
The woods and fields of the Windham Foundation are traversed by many in Brattleboro who are trying to get a walk in. I have walked across these fields many times, in all kinds of weather. Over time I have learned to appreciate the changing light with subtle and dramatic changes in the sky.
As I began to paint this watercolor, it seemed to have the qualities of an oil painting. There is a build-up of paint in the foreground while the tree line to the right has a glow as if from the light you see in oil paintings. In addition, I tried painting the sky differently, giving the clouds a layered and hard edged appearance.
The ground plane has been a struggle to get just right. I have learned that the landscape needs to be a distinct value darker than the sky to give it a solid grounding and separation from the sky.
At this point in the development of the painting I have come to realize the foreground needs something to give it a spark. I plan on adding an individual to the right foreground, looking towards the distant hill. I might even add a dog in front of the person to strengthen the focus of the picture.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
After spending a good chunk of the day volunteering at the Harris Hill Ski Jump earlier today, I could not help but think of this watercolor, that was inspired from the very same site. The weather was quite beautiful, perhaps the best I have ever experienced at the hill, and the ski jumpers' performance left me impressed. All the ski jumpers, I thought, jumped well. In past years you might see a rare hard landing, an injury or a fall, but not this year or at least this day.
When the ski jump grounds are not in use, which is all but one weekend, the property is well used as a recreational spot. I know because I walk these grounds often as it is a few blocks from our house.
This watercolor is of a frequent sight, that of individuals parking on the edge of the corn field and hiking with their dogs through the fields or woods. Since the ski jump faces east, the light on the hill continually changes throughout the course of the day, affecting the temperatures. I feel the snow above captures some of those qualities, which I was reminded of today.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
This watercolor was inspired by a scene last summer of Frenchman Bay from Hulls Cove on Mount Desert Island in Maine. A storm had passed, leaving calm waters and skies in stark contrast to the remarkable turbulence that had been there not long before.
I had not painted on the thicker 300 lb. Arches watercolor paper recently, which has a rougher surface. I do like the water marks which are left when you drag the brush across the surface. These marks can look like incomplete brush strokes or jagged light areas, such as can be seen in the sky. There is something attractive about the light along the shoreline below the tree line which conveys a universal quality common in landscape painting.
The light was wrong when I snapped the photo of the painting, so the colors are off. The scene is dominated by blues and green without much of the warm browns. The foreground remains incomplete.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
This week here in southern Vermont we have been pounded with snow storms. I believe this is the fifth straight day shoveling snow of some quantity. Up to this point in the winter, snow coverage had bordered on adequate to spotty depending on your view of whether you loved or hated this season. When cross country skiing this season, I found it was often icy with flat light, so I needed to seek inspiration in other activities.
Two winters ago I found the huge snow falls to be rather inspiring as our homes were wrapped in snow drifts with the natural light creating fascinating abstract patterns. With this new accumulation I have taken out my camera in the search for interesting subject mater, but I have not yet had a chance to print the new photos.
I have been itching to paint some landscapes as I have done many portrait-related pictures lately. This landscape, captured on camera last fall, was painted on a watercolor remnant cut off from a previous painting. I like this skinny format as the painting still projects a large scale; however, I don't feel the pressures associated with doing a full sheet. It is less of a commitment and less work, but it provides opportunities to test out ideas.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
I have done a lot of drawing lately. Recently, I rediscovered a large sketchbook that I had with many unused pages. I like the large size (12" x 16.5") and the soft surface, which seems to absorb pencil marks without the scratchy quality of other sketchbooks.
Since the New Year I have been searching for subjects to draw that include interesting faces and expressive hands in the same composition. Artists often say that hands are the hardest thing to get right, but they can convey so much in a picture. Hands say a great deal about an individual, whether you work outside and have weathered skin or have pale, smooth characteristics. They also suggest something about your posture and place in society.
Last year when I was at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., many of the presidential portraits excluded the subject's hands, downplayed them, or left them incomplete.
My depiction of hands is progressing, but I am not yet proficient. I have a tendency to draw hands that are undersized, perhaps inspired by the current president. It is one thing to draw a pair of hands on their own, but when you add a face with them, the scale of the drawing becomes critical.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
This is a little study of a portrait which I am certain will become a much larger painting. These days it is common to see people looking at their phone throughout the day with that head bent down posture. Someone told me recently that the average young person looks at their phone over one hundred times a day. That number if accurate, is unbelievable to me.
For sometime I have been thinking about trying to capture that 'phone' posture as it has become universal across cultures. As a composition, I believe the profile perspective as compared to a straight on shot to be the strongest. Not only can you capture the expression of the face honed in on the small screen but the fingers moving rapidly across the phone. In essence, I like the idea of an 'L' shaped composition along one edge of the sheet of watercolor framed against the backdrop.
Before painting the figure I applied a diluted wash of permanent magenta, a light purple color over the entire sheet to reduce the overall whiteness of the paper. I think with the skin tone as such it made the face come forward a bit. I feel the simplicity of the color scheme and brushwork makes the viewer focus on the facial expression.
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| (C) 2017 Dale DiMauro |
Cheap Joes, a mail order art supplier, sells these watercolor sample packs. They assemble a variety of watercolor sheets from various manufacturers for artists to experiment with. The sheet I used to start this picture came from one of those packs. I am not sure who made this sheet but it is a paper I have not used before. There are many manufacturers of watercolor paper, such as Arches, Fabriano, and Saunders etc., with a rich history dating back hundreds of years. I have found this paper frustrating as it buckles quite a bit when wet even though it is much thicker than the paper I normally use.
The subject is a local ice pond in late fall, which caught my eye. There is little subtle color in this scene, which I like, as it is full of mystery. The heavy shadows, stillness and eerie silence seems like the perfect scene to attempt to express in watercolor. I under painted the shoreline to the right with a warm color which will be blocked in with other dark colors revealing the glint of light reflected off the downed tree.
This is definitely not my best watercolor but sometimes I learn the most from these kind of struggles. It forces me to consider how I would approach it differently next time. I do like the quality of the surface of the pond with it's shimmering ripples.
