Windy Hill Studio on the Move!

Low Tide, Henlopen State Park

Just a short post today to let you know that

Windy Hill Studio has moved!

That's right. WINDY HILL STUDIO has moved to Lewes, Delaware, just minutes away from some of the most beautiful beaches on the East Coast.

My studio is nearly complete--I'm just waiting for the movers to bring in my storage cabinets tomorrow. The new space has lots of natural light, so I'm really loving it! And my furry studio assistants are loving to too!

Although my primary residence will be in Delaware, you can still find my artwork up in the Thousand Islands Region because I will still be spending summers at camp in the North Country. So look for my paintings, at Bay House Artisans in Alexandria Bay and River Muse in Clayton.

Floating Dream

Summer Afternoon in the Narrows

I feel so lucky to live in two extraordinary places, so full of natural beauty, so inspirational to paint!

Thoughts on Creating Atmosphere

I will be presenting tomorrow for the North Syracuse Art Guild, so while I was putting these thoughts together, I figured I might as well add this to my blog!

CREATING ATMOSPHERE IN YOUR PAINTINGS

There are two ways to think about creating atmosphere in your paintings. One is actual atmospheric conditions like fog, rain, early morning light, or sunset and the other way is to create a sense of place. Creating a sense of place tells us a story about the painting—like where it is or what time of day. And often that other type of “atmosphere” helps to embellish the story.

Know Your Subject 

In creating atmosphere or a sense of place in your artwork it really helps to know the place. I have always felt that I cannot paint a scene until it has gotten under my skin. I’ve been very fortunate to have traveled to many scenic places, but it is the paintings of places that I know and love that turn out to be the most successful. And most often these paintings are less about defining an actual scene and more about creating an atmosphere or mood. It’s about understanding that kind of hot, hazy day when the land and water are all blurry edges and color is soaked with sunlight, nearly to the point of disappearing. Or an overcast day when the water and sky are silvery gray shapes seamlessly merging together.

Over the last few years I’ve concentrated most of my landscape painting to the St. Lawrence River and surrounding North Country. My husband and I spend a lot of time at our place on Grass Lake in the Indian River Lakes Region, which is very close to the Thousand Islands. The landscape there, especially around the lake, has been a source of constant inspiration. The St. Lawrence River is also an area that I have grown to love. There are many painters on the River and one of the challenges I have had is in defining a style to set myself apart from the rest of the painters. The castles, lighthouses, iconic bridge and islands are painted over and over again.

Searching for a Style 

In searching for a style I realized that painting atmosphere, or a sense of place appealed to me so much more than painting Boldt Castle as an illustration.

And so most of my paintings deal with misty mornings, landforms and architecture partially obscured by fog, and impending storms (summer and winter).

I use color and light to set a mood, and don’t really concern myself with sticking to the colors in my reference photo or sketch. Color used expressively is in my opinion so much more exciting than local color. Shadows in deep blues, purples or reds add life to a painting. Skies can have so many more colors than just blue or gray. Bits of pink and yellow, even green can add so much depth to the sky

Leaving out distracting details is the hardest thing for me. I have a tendency to paint too much detail. In creating that sense of atmosphere it’s what we leave out rather than what we put in which engages the viewer. It’s the suggestion rather than articulation of each object that we strive for. In the acrylic painting below, I have painted just enough detail to identify the location and added a wet pavement and dramatic sky to finish “telling the story”.

In summary I would say that creating atmosphere or a sense of place in your work comes from knowing and understanding your subject, using color and light to convey mood and suggesting rather than fully illustrating the subject.

Joan Applebaum, Windy Hill Studio

www.windyhillstudioarts.com    joanapplebaumart@blogspot.com

Find me on Facebook Joan Applebaum’s Windy Hill Studio

I teach classes at the Thousand Islands Arts Center and the Sackets Harbor Arts Center in the Summer, and The Eye Studio in East Syracuse in the Fall and Winter.

Time to Paint the Boldt Castle---Again

"Daybreak, Heart Island"   JOAN APPLEBAUM

Time To Paint the Castle---Again

Remember that commercial"time to make the donuts"? I find myself saying that as I once again paint Boldt Castle. The castle and its haunting story have captivated Thousand Islands tourists and residents for decades. And all of the artists have painted it from every imaginable angle.

I prefer the other structures on the Island, like the Power House, Playhouse and Entry Arch, so I tend to focus on one of those and paint the castle looming in the background.

The painting  "Daybreak, Heart Island" was done in watercolor taking advantage of the wet-on-wet technique to create a dreamy atmosphere. While I was working on the painting I began to wonder how to capture the same or similar effects in acrylic paint. 

So when I finished the watercolor I started work on the acrylic version. Same view, but different feel to the finished piece. I used a pumice medium to make a texture and give bits of light-colored paint somewhere to hold onto to create an almost 3-d look to the mist. This painting is now on its way to a new home in Alexandria Virginia. From Alexandria Bay to Alexandria Virginia! Rather poetic, or perhaps ironic. 

"Morning Mist, Heart Island"

And One More Time!

When both paintings were finished I drew the Power House and Castle one more time for the Bay House Artisans coloring book which will be available when we re-open Bay House in the Spring. You will find the work of several of our Bay House Artisans in the book.

Another Angle

And just to prove that I don't always paint the castle from the same angle I have included "Winter Closing In", now on display in The Art of Winter at the Thousand Islands Arts Center in Clayton.

RELATED LINKS

http://joanapplebaumart.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-art-of-winter.html
http://joanapplebaumart.blogspot.com/2015/04/blog-post.html

The Art of Winter

"Winter Closing In"

It's time again for my annual blog about the Art of Winter at the Thousand Islands Arts Center in Clayton. I'm not sure how long the Arts Center has been sponsoring this show, but I have been a part of it for the last 4 years. Winter comes early to the North Country and tends to stay for quite a while, so rather than hide from the winter you might as well rejoice in its cold, crisp beauty.

This year I have painted the beginning and the end of winter. In the painting "Winter Closing In" the first snowflakes of the season are falling gently from the sky over Boldt Castle. Only the stag, a symbol of George Boldt's European lineage, is there to witness the silent snowfall as Fall fades away and Winter closes in.

"Spring Thaw" is a totally different take on Winter. After a long cold Winter it's good to see the land and water coming to life again.

In this acrylic painting we see the ice breaking up in front of Calumet Island. The water is still icy cold and the trees are bare, but we see hints of Spring in the warm colors peeking around the cool blues and purples.

The Art of Winter opens February 5 at the Thousand Islands Arts Center, 314 John St. Clayton, NY and will run through April 1.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Take Me Out to the Ballgame!

Tomorrow night The Boys of Summer: Art Meets Baseball opens at The Tech Garden in Syracuse.
And once again I find myself unable to attend an art reception due to another art commitment. But such is the life of a working artist. No offer to teach, or demonstrate my art form goes ignored if I can help it. Especially when much of my subject matter and sales revolve around summer along the woodlands and waterways of  Northern New York. The summer and tourist season here is roughly 10 weeks and I cram everything I can into that short time.

And when the season is over I'm back to teaching, marketing and preparing for the next summer.

So what does that have to do with "The Painter's Glove"? Well baseball is a big part of summer. But that's not why I chose this subject matter. Two reasons determined this choice: the baseball show (mentioned above) and I needed something different from my usual subject matter to use with my painting students at the Y Arts Studio. I was scheduled to teach an acrylic painting class in Spring 2015. I wanted to paint something from life, something I could set up in the studio at the Y and even drag back and forth to my home studio if I needed to. So the glove was just lying around in the garage and I thought why not give it a moment of glory!

Finding the Color

As a landscape painter I naturally gravitate toward specific subject matter: land, sky, water. But as a teacher I must approach many different types of subject matter and styles of painting and try to merge them with my own particular style.

For me, color, pure joyful color, is paramount. When working with students I try to encourage them to use color in an expressive mode, rather than being bound to reproducing an exact replica of the color of the object in front of them. Light, shadow, form and shape are defined by color values (lights, darks, neutrals) rather than mixing various shades of the local color.

So, with the baseball glove being primarily brown, brown and brown (hmmm sounds like a law firm) the joy in painting is in finding the values within the browns and painting them with colors which have the same value, not necessarily the same color.

Start With An Underpainting

When I work with acrylic paint I always start with an underpainting using complementary colors. Complements are colors which are opposite each other on the color wheel. Complements add a nice sense of depth when used underneath a color. They also lend a bit of dramatic surface tension when bits of the complement are visible under the local color.

It can be tricky trying to determine the complement for brown. I usually think of brown as being a darker version of orange and so go to blue as its opposite.

For the baseball glove underpainting I mixed 3 or 4 shades of blue in values ranging from dark to light. As the paint mixed on the canvas, more colors were created. The glove was painted roughly, with very little detail in the values of blue which corresponded to the light, medium and dark areas of the glove.

I also used a palette knife to add some thick rough textures in the paint to play up the beaten up quality of the glove.

When the local color was added by using various shades of orange, yellow, brown, purple and blue, I let the rough texture pick up bits of the colors as they hit the high spots within the roughness. I also used large brushes to keep me from getting too detailed.

When I was satisfied with the overall look of the glove I added the details of the laces with smaller brushes.

Finding a Title

How did I come up with the title? The glove had been my husband's when he was a kid. Each one of our three kids used the glove for short periods of time until they graduated to a new, better glove.

Since I have a small hand the glove fits me very well. For many years I used the glove when I would throw (badly) the baseball to my kids as they were learning to play America's Greatest Pastime. Evidently it didn't make much of an impression because they moved on to soccer, lacrosse and Irish Dance. The glove still sits in the garage and comes out to play ball (badly) once in a while.

 

And it's root, root, root for the Home Team

And...back to the baseball show-
I hope this show hits a home run and the opening reception is a success. I wish I could be there along with my painting.

But I'll be demonstrating watercolor in Alexandria Bay (not a bad gig).
Subject matter: Boldt Castle-of course!

 

 

Three Weeks and Counting till Opening Day......

Three Weeks and Counting....

As I begin this post I am reminding myself that I have just 3 weeks until we open our co-op Bay House Artisans in Alexandria Bay. This will be our 4th year in the shop right in the Heart of the Thousand Islands.

Over the past few months I have devoted many hours to painting, teaching art, taking an on-line marketing course (lots of homework) and a blogging class. And it was a challenge to find enough time to paint. So now with just a few weeks to go I feel that I am down to the wire.

I did find time to paint some new images of those iconic Thousand Islands scenes. It's always a challenge to find a new angle on those places that all the artists up here love to paint. Lately I find myself drawn to watercolor and the atmospheric effects which can be created with washes of color. I'm interested in portraying how the lighthouses and castles exist within those spaces where the sky and water become one atmospheric blend.

Floating Dream,  Boldt Castle

Frozen World, Clayton

Opening Day May 8!

Bay House Artisans will open on May 8, just in time for Mother's Day! I hope to see you in the shop sometime during the "season" May - October. I will have a selection of paintings, prints and cards of Thousand Island and North Country imagery available at Bay House and of course through my website. www.windyhillstudioarts.com

Bay House is just one of the places you can find my art this year. I have two special events coming up, but I'll save that for another blog post.

Thanks for stopping by my blogsite
Joan

Watercolor: Falling In Love a Little Each Time

Floating Dream, Watercolor

How do you know what to paint? And why do you paint it? 

These questions are asked of artists all the time.
Answers vary:
"I paint what I love"
"I paint what sells"
"I paint to show that there is beauty in the world"
"I paint to remind people that there is hate and injustice in the world"

Answers will vary from one artist to another depending on their intent and economic status. But I believe they have one thing in common.

They all fall in love a little each time they paint, or sculpt, or draw. They fall in love, but not necessarily with the image, although most often that is true.

They also fall in love with the medium. The way the paint tracks across the canvas in the process of blending and layering. The feel of the clay between their fingers, or the surprise of the random pooling of watercolor. Or just the way one color looks when placed next to another.

Each time I begin a watercolor I am not quite sure how it will all turn out. Although I have a plan, I like to give plenty of space to just let things happen. To let the water and paint mix, colors blend and bleed, and then surprise me.

And each time I let these random things happen, I fall in love a little bit again with watercolor.

Painting Boldt Castle

Boldt Castle has been painted countless times, by hundreds of artists. It's hard to find a new twist on this favorite Thousand Islands icon.  

The Castle consists of several buildings spread across Heart Island, in the St. Lawrence River. To include all of the buildings usually calls for a horizontal format, but I really wanted to include a lot more sky and water in my painting. My goal was to create a soft misty effect where the sky and water seem to merge, and the Castle would float above it. 

In the painting The Pump House sits at the edge of the place where the island meets the mist and the Castle rises out of the vegetation. The whole effect is of a floating dream world.

The background for this painting was done with a nice sloppy wet-on-wet approach. After the sky and water dried, the vegetation was roughed in. The architecture which was lightly sketched in before I painted the background, was painted when the paper had dried.  

Related Post: What made You Paint That Picture???
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