Down By the Abita River

For this weeks class we met under the Rails-to-Trails bridge in Abita Springs. Just a block away there is the noise of a small town with big trucks barreling through town but here it was quiet and peaceful and we could just enjoy the moment.

October Plein Air Painting Class

Thursday was my first time teaching plein air. There were five students in the class and we met at Fountainbleau State Park. After a week of rain we were lucky to have a lovely sunny day. On Monday and Wednesday I had done some practice painting. I find rainy day paintings a little gloomy but several people liked my darkest version of the scene.

New Mexico Art

 I am privileged to be juried into the Placitas New Mexico Holiday Show and Sale the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I've got a little stockpile of art at my house there.
 The churches of New Mexico are always eye catching to artists. They are also wonderful to visit, especially the one in Chimayo. On a recent visit we met the priest who has been there for 50 years. What a wonderful giving man. He escaped the communists in Spain and has dedicated his life to the parishioners and to improving the sanctuary

grounds ever since. He pointed with pride to all the trees he had planted.

Fun with Torn Paper

In the Carol Nelson workshop I took this year we learned to create colorful papers and then turn them into paintings. At first I found it frustrating but now I am enjoying it. The first step is an acrylic underpainting. Once I am happy with the painting I can start glueing torn paper in matching colors on top of the painting. This probably takes 5 times longer than the acrylic underpainting did but the result is so cute and original

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Down on the Farm

A customer that had bought a cow painting asked me to do some companion pieces. She had many happy memories of summers on her Grandparents farm, a Mennonite dairy farm near the Blue Ridge Mountains. She was sad that her Grandmother had left the farm for a nursing home and that her children would not experience the farm. Someone just last week had

said to me that we buy things that remind us of where we want to be. I had never thought about that but she is right, since I made the decision to move to New Mexico I've been buying things like an antique horse collar and other rustic Western things.

Toys from the 50s

I found a rusty old Radio Flyer red wagon that had been kicked to the curb by my neighbor. I asked my class to bring something that would have been in their red wagon to the next class. Everyone in the class grew up in the 50s and 60s so they knew what I was talking about. Ferris brought baseball bats. I have a Teddy Bear. Leslie brought her wonderful doll collection including Raggedy Ann and Andy. I had so much fun painting them. I posed them on a child sized chair that my daughters Great Grandfather had made and put the spot light on them. Ann had been obviously been 'loved' a little more than Andy.

Counting Paint Strokes = Big Shapes

Today I taught my class a Peggy Kroll Roberts exercise to help them simplify and use more paint. The goal was to cover the whole canvas in only 25 strokes. I practiced the day before and my first attempt was 43 strokes, way too many. It is the long narrow painting at the top.
  The next attempt was the demo for my class. The pressure was on and I made it! Just 25 strokes and the whole canvas is covered. From here I may add more detail but I am happy with the colors, values, and composition so it will be worth my time to work on it more.

Dairy Day

This little 4 x 4 painting was among three that size that sold this weekend. My daughter is in vet school and had a calf that she trained and groomed to show at their Dairy Day event. Rajah was a very well groomed and beautiful calf, but a little stubborn about trotting around an arena.

still life demo

I taught a class today and the emphasis was on separating darks from lights. I showed the method of making the dark paint thin and the light paint very thick. It makes a more interesting painting to have a variety of surface textures.  I was trying to do this in 30 minutes but did at least make it in 45. One of the students bought this painting and left with a wet canvas.

My LPB Donation

 I just donated this painting to Louisiana Public Broadcasting for their annual art auction fund raiser. I am joining the Hammond Art Guild in this worthy cause. I painted this portrait from a photo I took at the Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge. I know the artist in the painting and she complimented my work saying that I really caught her focused-on-

painting facial expression.

Little Green Heron

 Every time I go to City Park in New Orleans I see a Green Heron stalking along the edge of the pond. I love his crazy bird eyes and the frilly white crest.
 I painted this with a pallet knife. The paint is very thick and textural. It will take a week to dry and then it is going to the Artisan Gallery in Mandeville.

Loosening Up

Painting this morning in Abita Springs I could really feel and see how much I have improved at painting plein air since January. I have gotten much looser and more painterly.  People are always telling me that they cannot draw or paint. I always disagree and say it is more about working on something than about an innate talent.

House Portrait

I took the photo for this home very early in the morning. My favorite architectural feature is the tower-like structure over the door. The dark cast shadow on the roof next to it helped reinforce that as the center of interest. I did thin paint everywhere else and then piled on the pale yellow on the tower.

Little Flower Villa

 Mandeville, Louisiana does not have a lot of historic homes because of the many hurricanes that besiege this little town perched on the edge of a huge lake. This was historically a place for wealthy New Orleanians to escape the summer heat and yellow fever epidemics and relax on wide verandas enjoying the relatively cool breezes from the lake.
  One of the few surviving homes is Little Flower Villa, which my friends and I painted

. Can't you just picture yourself sipping a Pimm's cup on the porch?

Like a Day at the Beach

I got to paint at the Ponchatrain beach

this morning right before a big storm blew through.

Portrait of Suburbia

 You know how the Impressionists painted everyday life as members of French bourgeois society and it all looks so romantic and beautiful? I asked myself today why paintings of our everyday life don't seem to sell. Especially figure paintings of modern life. Figure paintings may win awards but the bottom line is that selling a landscape is much easier than selling anything that shows modern people and how we live. If anyone has a clue to why only landscapes sell please write.
 I am happy to have received a commission from a realtor to paint portraits of the houses she has been selling. The realtor then gives these paintings to her customer as a thank you. I think it is a very wonderful thank you gift!
 This is my first in the commission series. I tried to make the house very recognizable but with some magic in the shaft of light crossing the front of the house and the slight fuzziness in the background.  I also some unexpected pops of color. If you look closely the orange color I toned the canvas with shows through in many places.

Bert's Boatyard

I love boatyards. All the colors and angles and activity are so interesting. This boatyard is tucked into a  backyard in Madisonville off of a bayou. From the street you just catch a glimpse of the boatyard in this mostly residential neighborhood.  The owner graciously allowed us to set up on his lawn between the house and the work area.

First Things First

fFYesterday I was inspired by the reflections of trees in the local marina. Unfortunately I waited to paint that section last and guess what happened? The wind came up and the reflections disappeared. I had to paint from memory.  Always paint the thing that caught your eye first is my lesson of the day.

Peggy, Ferris, Wanda and I were all painting in the same location. We all saw different things.

Bayou Lacombe

Three of us painted this scene from the St. Tammany

Trace Ranger station balcony overlooking Bayou Lacombe. The amazing thing is looking at our work you would never know it was the same scene. I will have to post all three next time we paint together.

Painting in the Dark

  In a class taught by Mark Chatov we did figure painting in very bad light. I thought it was just logistics, in order to have light on the model with 16 painters gathered around it was the only solution. But Mark told us that he always paints in low light. The advantage is that you see value on your painting more easily.
  I painted at my friend Trudy's studio last week and ended up doing my own set up in a dark corner. When I finished the painting and brought it out into daylight it was like Christmas to see all the bright colors. Trudy's yard was full of these beautiful hydrangeas.

en plein air with no touch ups!

I had not done very much outdoor (plein air) painting before January of this year and it was such a struggle at first. I would do the best job I could of capturing the colors and shapes, then go home and look at the photos and often repaint the whole painting. I am so proud of todays piece because I am not touching it up, just leaving it fresh and spontaneous. This was painted at Sunset Point in Mandeville, Louisiana

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Coffee Stop

My husband and I rode our bikes 25 miles yesterday on the St. Tammany Trace rails to trails bike path. I wanted to see what the access and views are like at a new ranger station/rest stop on bayou Lacombe. On the way home we needed some caffeine and a little break. I took a photo of Paul resting

and painted this painting from it later in the afternoon.

Out of Painters Block

Getting out with other artists and painting last Friday really helped me get out of the art slump I was in. Summer in the deep south is a challenge for plein aire painting but it is not impossible. I painted this little yearling from a photo I took in my New Mexico neighborhood last month. I have gone horse crazy lately. I am looking forward to moving full time to where the wild horses roam.

Return to the Shiver Shack

Painting this Snowball/BBQ/Bike rental  stand was so much fun last week that three of us painted there again today. I used oil paint this time and chose a different view.

My schedule all Winter and Spring was to get up, eat breakfast, start painting. Now with the heat I am exercising first and by the time I'm cleaned up and ready to paint it is 10 o'clock already and the creative juices are gone. I painted this little 8 x 8 pastel to just get something going. I have some great photos I took this Spring at a little farm in Bush, Louisiana. Twice I've painted one big rooster that looks like a saddle shoe, white on top with a black tail and belly. This time I thought I would try a speckled chicken. I had seen Jodi Armstrong's lovely pastel of 3 or more chicken painted on a dark paper so I wanted to try painting on dark too. I just toned mine with Indian Red acrylic.  Jodi's is much much better but I can't improve without picking up the pastel stick. Chickens sure have humorous crabby expressions!

Torn Paper

I learned to make colorful papers and then tear and paste them into artwork at a workshop last month taught by Carol Nelson.  Who knew that could be such fun! This little bunny was photographed by me at a Bed and Breakfast in Albuquerque. The sun was rising behind him lighting up his ear in glowing orange.

Carol Ordogne's New Blog

I have never done this but it is a step along the way to being a Daily Painter. I started painting almost every day in December 2012 after reading so many other artists' blogs. So here it goes. This is a painting I finished yesterday. I started painting it last week en plein aire at the old railroad station in Mandeville Louisiana. The heat and humidity are high this time of year so my painting friend and I had brought fans and started at 8 AM. In the South Snowball stands are one way of coping with the intense heat. This one will be doing a booming business in the afternoon.