Saturday

Our weather has been temperate--warm actually--but dry. The fall colors are near or just beyond their peak. Here and there an oak or maple flames red-orange, or bright orange while other trees show us cool and dark reds. But much of our Iowa landscape glows in shades of yellow. 

"Greenwood Park," wc/ink on paper, ~8x10

This sketch is from last weekend. The group met as usual and discussed where to work; the consensus was to stay in Greenwood Park, which provided the brightest and most varied color. I sat near the Rose Garden and worked on this red giant.

Multimedia

"Coneflowers," digital

"Coneflowers," casein on panel, 6x8

A few years ago, as an experiment in art media, I did a series of paintings of purple coneflowers outside my studio. The idea was to compare using oil, casein, watercolor and digital methods to make a painting. Here are the four paintings, each done with differing materials.

I used Sketchbook and a Wacom tablet to paint the digital coneflowers. Otherwise I used traditional media and traditional supports. Casein and watercolor are thinned with water, of course, while oils require a solvent (turpentine or oms).

The results were interesting for several reasons. First, the digital image (top) seems comparable to the other images made using traditional media. Casein and oil paint each gave results that to my eye look rich with implied depth. The watercolor, while more transparent, also gave a visually interesting background. 

Seems to me that depending on subject and the eventual use of the painting, any of these mediums is a reasonable choice.

 

"Coneflowers," oil on panel, 6x8

"Coneflowers," watercolor on paper, ~6x8

 

Dog Cart

"Pushcart," oil on panel, 12x16, private collection

Manhattan is brimming with pushcarts of all sorts. You see hot dogs, chestnuts, falafel, and much more being sold on street corners from the southern tip to way beyond Central Park. This particular hot dog vendor was set up in the Financial District, near Wall Street. This particular work was done from a photo reference, considerably modified. 
 

Sherman Hill

"Houses on Sherman Hill," wc/ink, ~8x10

This watercolor and ink sketch shows a couple of very similar houses in the district of the city known as Sherman Hill. The name derives from Hoyt Sherman, a younger brother of the famous Civil War general, William Sherman, who built himself a large house there in the 1870s. Subsequently the house was expanded and became Hoyt Sherman Place, with a large auditorium, an art gallery, and other amenities. 

Fall Foliage

"Blue Heron Lake," wc/ink on paper, ~8.5X3.5

Saturday the sketch group went to the Raccoon River Park in West Des Moines, an enormous multi-use facility that features Blue Heron Lake, fishing, boating, swimming, softball, a dog park, and a lot more. I sat on the west side of the lake and sketched the opposite bank, where grasses and trees have just begun to show fall color. The day was perfect.

Ten Years Ago

"False Dawn, Union Square," oil on panel, 16x20

This cityscape is a view of the subway station entry on the west side of Union Square in lower Manhattan. The sun hasn't risen but its light is creeping over the horizon. To my eye the roof looks a lot like our popular concept of a flying saucer.

Spanish Lighthouse

"Almeria. The Light." wc/ink on paper, 3.5x5

This little watercolor dates from a few years ago. We sailed the Spanish coast and islands for about a week,  visiting small ports and savoring the food and wines. This is a view from our ship while anchored.

A Rare Pastel

"Egon, Dead," pastel on paper

Although I have a few old pastels from two or three decades ago in my files, I've done far fewer than my other works in oil and so on. This one floated into memory today. It's a bit rough, being one of my first pastel paintings twenty-five years ago. It's after a death photo of Egon Schiele, the young artist whose work was sometimes considered scandalous (he was even briefly jailed for some of it--click the link for a bio) and who died in 1918, before he was thirty, of influenza.
 

Autumn at Whiterock

"Autumn at Whiterock," oil on panel, 9x12

This landscape was done as a plein air work just about a year ago, at the Whiterock Conservancy. The October colors out there are simply luscious.