CC's pastels on Exhibit at SAG 5 "16

I decided to put some of my Pastel beach scenes on exhibit at

 Seacoast Artists Gallery this month.

St Augustine, Florida - Last Day 12' 13

Florida Lightening Storm 8" x 10" pastel

 We had wanted to visit  Cape Canaveral and tour the Kennedy Space Center on this visit to Florida, but the mother nature had different plans for us.   All started off well enough in the morning when we headed  south on Florida coastal highway A1A, but the further South we went, the rougher the weather got.  By the time we reached the Palm Coast we were hitting heavy rain, lightening and  were being buffeted about by some very strong wind. gusts.  A police car flagged us down.  He said the storm was predicted to get much worse and advised us to turn around.    It was Good Advice..  We heard later on on the news that a tornado had touched down in the area shortly after we left, and had ripped apart 6 or 7 homes and brought down power lines all over the area.  Needless to say I wasn't going to tempt fate by trying to plein air paint in that weather, but once I got home,  I was able to paint this picture from a composite of  several photos I managed to capture from the car.

St Augustine, Florida: Salt Water Cowboys 12'13

Salt Water Cowboy 5" x 7" pastel

After a very long 6 hour drive to St Augustine, both of us were ready for something to nourish our stomachs and sooth our weary spirits.  We found both when we picked  Salt Water Cowboys out from the long list of restaurants in the Yellow Pages.  This  hidden gem is a small  seafood shack built out over  the salt marsh at the end of a unpaved residential street.   It's very popular with the locals, and for good reason.  The food is delicious and the views are  breathtaking.  We  got there just before dusk and I was able to grab a couple of photos which I used to paint the 5" x 7"  pastel the next morning.

 

PAP-SE Wet Paint Show Opening 11"13

And the PAP-SE paints Charleston Marathon continues:

All week long we've been watching the nationally, and internationally known artist members of PAP-SE painting in on the streets  and surrounding marshes of  Charleston.

 

   This evening we got to see three  of the paintings produced by each of the artists at  the

Wet Paint Show Opening - Nov. 8 

While I had enjoyed watching the  artist's work in progress,  it was even better to get to talk with them without fear of interrupting their  concentration,

 and to see their beautiful artwork finished and framed.

 Their work will continue to be on display  until Nov 16th 

  at three adjacent  Charleston galleries:

Coco Vivo - 25 Broad Street,

 Galerie on Broad - 29 Broad Street

and Edward Dare - 31 Broad Street

Santee River Delta 9'13

Highway 17 cuts across the wide Santee River Delta between Georgetown and Berkley Counties via two very long bridges. Between the two bridges is an island with a small parking  pull off for wildlife viewing.

Completed painting

In the morning, the Delta fills with fog.  I loved watching how the scene changes as the mists move around obscuring or highlighting the various elements in this lovely wilderness. The fog does however make it hard to plein air paint a scene that is constantly changing.  After several frustrating attempts,  I decided on this attempt I would take a different approach.

This painting was  started in the studio from a photo I had taken earlier  in the month .

Photo shows WIP onsite over the under painting  and the  main elements blocked in

I toned the canvas with a bright coat of cad red, then blocked in the main  nearby landscape features with ultramarine blue. After  the under-painting and main composition was laid in and dry, I competed the rest of the painting  on site. As usual, the fog continued to hide or reveal the distant elements of the scene, but the  values and colors of the closer landscape remained relatively constant enough for me to finish the piece to my satisfaction.

Little Red Barn 9 '13

Little Red Barn photo

It seems that when it comes to plein air painting I am a bit lazy.  Or maybe, it is that I just don't like having to hunt for something to paint. Why waste the golden hour scouting unfamiliar locals, when one can just drive down the road and find something interesting  to paint?  The majority of my plein air paintings has been painted  on or near Highway 17. And I have a huge stash of reference photos to remind me of promising subject matter that  I have spotted in my travels along  this major coastal thoroughfare. 

Little Red Barn painting

 Case in point: The Little Red Barn is located on Highway 17 in Pawleys Island (across from Hobcaw Barony) . It is less than five miles from my house.  Waking up early in the morning to a stormy sky, I knew there was a high probability the barn would soon be awash in really dramatic light. I managed to capture the lighting on the barn and foreground  foliage before a  passing shower sent me packing. 

Like many of my plein air paintings, it is not a perfect rendition of the actual scene. In my rush to capture the dramatic light on the main subject, I  hurried through the sky and the background. The trees on the right were not fully completed before I had to leave. They look more like oaks than pines.  I haven't decided yet whether I want to leave those tree tops as is, or reshape their tops in the studio.  Most likely, this  little 9" x 12" will become the study for a larger studio painting.

Food for the soul 9 '13

I spent the morning filling out the registration forms  for art shows, and taking photos of the paintings I plan on exhibiting this fall ... you know -- doing  all that important but tedious stuff that is the business side of art.  Just when I felt my soul about to implode from boredom, my hubby arrived home with some photos he'd taken of  a spoonbill feeding in the Litchfield marsh. A quick painting one of them put the blues behind me.

It's going to the birds 9 ' 13

I have a great exhibit grid in the SAG Gallery at the Market Common this month.

I put 10 new paintings on display. They're right by the main window so everyone walking by can see my artwork .  All ten are oil paintings of low country bird scenes.

WIP- Day 3 Middleground of "Ricefields on the Ashley" 7"13

Sorry about how dark this photo came out.  The foreground tree is really is very dark in value, butit also has a lot  more variation in the foliage colors than you can see in this picture.  Today I focused on correcting the values and shapes within the clouds and the  middle ground of the ricefields.  Tomorrow I will work on the foreground near the bottom of the picture,  making the sky-holes in the foreground tree a bit more realistic, and adding any finishing touches I think are needed.  
See the two  earlier posts  in in this process beginning with the first on July 16th

Photograghy at Margnolia Plantation and Gardens 7'13

One of the benefits of being a member of Charleston Artists Guild  is free admission to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.  As a result, I have been there many times.  Yesterday, however was my first in mid-summer.  I was pleasantly surprised by how beautiful it is at this time of year.

When I wasn't hanging out at the CAG exhibit booth, I spent much of my free time in areas of the Plantation I had not visited before, like the Audubon Swamp Garden.

  You can get really close to the raucous juveniles and the rookery on the boardwalk through the swamp so it was not too late in the season to get some interesting bird photos.

 I also followed the bike path along the river and through the rice fields.

 The views along  that path were  spectacular as well.  Pretty sure some of these reference photos will become paintings as well

Magnolia Gardens Photo Shoot 4'13

  The Charleston Artist Guild is collaborating with Magnolia Plantation on a  exhibition of paintings of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens.  Even though the exhibition won't happen until next Fall, I though it wise to visit the plantation  to start scouting out painting locations and to collect some additional reference photos .

 

Bruce volunteered to come along as chauffeur and part time equipment caddy.  ( He is incredibly patient about pulling off the highway for me to take a photo of something I've spotted along the road, and very helpful in holding my purse and camera so I have both hands free to do a quick sketch).

The fact is I enjoy his company and he is a good photographer in his own right..

 

 He introduces  interesting and different perspectives often pointing out  subjects I would have overlooked had he not been along.  e.g. it was his idea to visit the plantation's  slave village where I got this and several other  interesting photos

It is a good thing we went when we did.  Most of the camellias were already spent, and this years rains had knock off many of the azalea blossoms.  Still we did get  some very good classic shots of the grounds in bloom taken this one taken near the Administration Center Pond.

 I  have numerous reference photos of Magnolia Plantation from visits made in the Fall and early Spring but   the  none were in quite the same weather conditions.   Today was very gray and overcast, giving an entirely different look and feel to the grounds..

.. some spots were almost ethereal and others very stark compared to the exuberant photos I had taken of the same scenes  bursting with color in fall and early spring of previous years. ( see 11/20/10  "Magnolia Plantation and Gardens Photo Shoot 11 '10")

We both got some really beautiful photos

CAG Wall Updated 1'13

It's  been too cold for out of door activities , so I decided to  drive to refresh my wall  at the Charleston Artist Guild Gallery with some bird paintings before the Wildlife convention opens next month.  ( Just wish I'd snapped the reference photo AFTER I straighten the paintings and took the ID labels off  SIGH!).

Just being in the gallery gives me a morale boost.  It is so nice to hang out with people who like art. 

Super tide at Pawleys Island 12 '12

 

   Flood warnings have been  posted all along the South Carolina coastline today  due to a super high tide. Far from wanting to flee the in-coming tide, Bruce and I rushed to the end of our street  to see what the high tide would do to Pawleys Island Marsh. In short, it turned it into a  gigantic mirror. With no place to go, many of the marsh birds huddled together on bits of debris like a still life stranded between an infinite sea and sky.  It was beautiful.  When I finally got around to reviewing the photos I had taken, I thought I had mistakenly set my camera on a black and white setting.  They were all nearly near monochromatic.  But no, it was just that I was so focused upon capturing the photo ops before me  that I failed to notice the lack of color in the scene.  I love how the gray-scale quality of the sky and water amplifies the stark nearly abstract design of the solid objects.

Low country in Autumn '12

Fall has arrived in the low country , and  the usually solid green landscape is awash with vibrant colors.  I took a quick run out along some country roads this morning to try to capture  some reference photos before the scenery  turned mono-chromatic again.  It was a good call .  I got lots of ideas for new landscape paintings.  The photo above was shot along the Black River in Georgetown County, SC

Cotton's High

Large flatbed trucks with their trailers piled with rolled bales of cotton, fill the South Carolina's back roads. Waiting fields of  cotton in stand ready to harvest. The  bright white of the cotton  stands out sharply against the darker hues of the  harvested and dry crop fields around it. I've been trying to capture the scene in my latest oil painting..  Still needs some work, but I think it conveys the image I was carrying in my mind.

Fort McAllister State Park, GA

It's that time of year.  Everywhere you look there is is a scene  just  begging to be painted.  This early morning tidal creek photo was taken at Fort McAllister State Park GA.

Nora Makin Exhibit

We will be attending Nora Mackin's opening reception this afternoon at the Beach House Fine Arts in Calabash NC July 7th 12-4 pm. If any of you are in the area, stop by and say "Hello" . Nora is a fantastic artist and she'll have some of her best work yet on display..
http://norapaints.blogspot.com/2012/06/invitation-to-opening.html

The Red Hat

The Red Hat

I am attempting to stretch my artistic skills by having a person(s) as the focal point of the painting. This is #10 of twelve beach scenes which include people. Once I get all 12 completed, I plan to reward myself for the effort by finishing the series with some beach landscapes sans homo sapiens.

Happy Mother's Day

My Mother's Day Gift: " Charleston in My Time, by West Fraser.  More than two hundred beautiful reproduced color plates showcase Frasier's plein air and studio paintings of Charleston's landmarks.

Newest Addition to Beach Scene Series

"First Watch" 6"x12" Oil

Lifeguards have started re-appearing on the beaches of South Carolina.  . Sometimes I think they must wash in with the gulf stream.  Their high lookout stations sit empty all Winter and for most of  Fall and Spring; then one day, the waves turns warm and their they are, all brave and bright in the brilliant sun. I couldn't resist adding  a painting of one  to my beach scene series