Author Archives: Cynthia Gilmer

Various Paintings and Other News

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It’s been a while. I’ve been doing a little painting but have also been distracted by various other happenings. Still, I thought I’d share the few things I’ve been doing. Some are good…some are not so good, but as you know we share the good, bad, and ugly here. That helps me learn from my mistakes.

First up is a little ditty that I did of Three Ridges, which many of you know is a common subject of mine. In this painting I was trying to paint loose. I’m not crazy about Three Ridges itself in this painting, or the background mountains, but like the contours in the foreground mountain, and I like the light in the leaves of the trees. This was a new technique that I used where I left a white border between the trees and the mountains and then filled it in later to maintain the highlights. You’ll see that I used this again later and I like the effect. This painting is 12 x 6.

Second is a painting of a stream from a photo I took on a recent hike. I tried to do a time lapse of this one to share with you, but I had issues with the video. Also, I spent a lot of time painting rocks, and it wasn’t really that interesting. I am pleased with the feeling of depth that I got with this painting. It is 8 x 8.

Next we’ll talk about one of the ugly ones. I stopped on my way back from the grocery store a few months back and took pictures of a recently mown field that had hay bales…always a popular subject. I composed the scene using several photos and did the composite sketch in my sketchbook to make sure it worked. I still like the little sketch quite a lot. I wanted to paint this one big, because I need something to put above the bed in my guest room. I don’t know what I was thinking when I (over) contoured that front hill. I also don’t know why I was so compelled to show the mowing swathes. Plus, the contrasting distant mountains are darker and more prominent in the sketch. I lose some of the atmospheric distance in doing that, but might still like the result better. Here is the little sketch followed by the train wreck of a painting. I still think the scene holds some promise, so I might try it again. The big painting is 24 x 12.

I found an old photo I took along the Skyline Drive and thought it would make a fun painting. I don’t remember exactly when or which overlook I took it from but it’s a pretty scene, with misty mountains and flowers. I masked the flowers in the foreground so I could preserve white to make bright yellows and oranges. I also used the same technique as I mentioned earlier to preserve light in the treetops, but I don’t think it was as successful. I will keep working on it till I can get it consistently right. This painting is also 12 x 6.

Finally my friend Carlo, who follows my blog, asked me if I would do a water scene he from a place on the Magothy river that is special to him and his wife Mary. He sent me some photos and I did a small sketch that I was happy with. I shared it with Carlo and he had some suggestions about perspective and some other things that were not apparent from the photo. I owe him another sketch and eventually a larger painting that will fit in the space he has in mind. These are next on my list. This sketch is 10 x 4.

I am excited that I was contacted by the new owners of the Stonewall Jackson Inn in Harrisonburg, Virginia. They are prudently in the process of renaming the inn to something less Civil War focused and changing the decor accordingly. They want to feature art by local artists and have asked me to provide them with some paintings. These will be for sale, allowing guests to take home a memento of their stay, which I think is a wonderful idea. I am in the process of choosing and framing some appropriate paintings. Hopefully my next post will showcase my selections.

Two Versions – Nellysford Field

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Nellysford is a town that is not far from where I live. It’s a small town, but it includes the neighborhood of Stoney Creek, which is the valley located part of Wintergreen Resort. There is a field just north of Nellysford on the east side of Route 151 that I’ve been driving past for years. I’ve wanted to paint it for a while. It’s very pastoral, which is a feeling I often try to bestow upon the viewers of my art. I recently stopped and photographed it. Here is the photo reference I used for these two paintings.

The first painting is 16 x 12 showing the field horizontally, with two layers of trees in the background, the silo in the mid ground along with three large trees on the right, and finally the stream in the foreground. I did this with my usual Da Vinci watercolor palette, which I confess I’ve been growing a little bit bored with. Here is that painting.

As you might imagine, doing the water and the reflections was one of the more fun and interesting parts of this painting. I enjoyed that very much. I masked the silo with painter’s tape to maintain its white and did that part at the very end.

As a landscape painter, I find very few opportunities to paint in a vertical orientation, which is sometimes nice. When I was done with the horizontal version of this painting I looked at it an realized that just the left side of it had nice composition in it’s own right so I decided to do a smaller version of just that part of the scene in a vertical orientation. This painting is 9×12.

While I was painting the first painting I watched a video from Steve Mitchell on his Mind of Watercolor YouTube channel. He is my favorite online instructor and the source of much of my inspiration. He created a limited edition palette of Daniel Smith watercolors that was being sold on line through a store in Minnesota called Wet Paint. It has some bolder colors than what are on my normal palette, which allow me to mix more variations of green. The second painting was done with this palette. I really enjoyed working with something different and I’m looking forward to doing more with it in the very near future.

Here is a scan of my swatches for this new palette.

The sad news is that two weeks ago would have been my week at Nimrod Hall Summer Arts Program, but they cancelled their full season due to the pandemic. I really missed my week painting. I’m looking forward to next year.

Be well!

My Painting Process

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I don’t really think of myself as having a painting process, and if I do, it’s certainly evolving all the time. I’m still too new to this to have a fixed process. I follow a lot of Facebook groups like “World Watercolor Group”, “Watercolour Sketchers”, and “Watercolor Landscapes” to name a few. People post their paintings on these groups, but some also post time-lapse movies of them painting.

I became curious enough to want to try doing a time-lapse of myself painting. I bought an iPhone holder and suspended my iPhone over my painting table and gave it a whirl. It was actually very enlightening. I’ve not really seen how I paint, until now.

There was a time not too long ago when I never would have attempted to paint around light areas, but now I do. For the most part I’ve got it, but I struggle with small details like getting actual flower shapes in the yellow flowers. The negative painting around the grass was questionable but looked okay once I put the details in.

You can see where I switched from a brush to a pen to put in some of the details. I use watercolor to load the pen, so the painting is all watercolor, not watercolor and ink. This is a technique I started using recently and I’m still perfecting it. It worked okay here, but I’ve had more success in other paintings.

I did this painting in several different short sessions, letting the painting dry between sessions. You can see how much the paint lightens up when it dries in the transitions. I melded all of the sessions together into a single “movie”. It’s time lapse as opposed to an actual video recording, so it speeds by quite quickly capturing a few hours of work in 2 minutes and 49 seconds.

The painting is not one of my best, but came out okay. I might start doing this more, because I think I can learn from it. Here is the movie…as I said it’s only 2:49, so it won’t take up your whole day.

And here is the finished painting. I admit I did touch up around those flowers a little after the fact.

I’m still staying home as advised because of the pandemic, but I’m anxious for some new material. I’m going to sneak out soon with my camera to take some reference photos. Stay tuned.

A Tale of Two Paintings

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It’s always interesting when I paint the same subject twice, especially over a short period of time. I usually do this for a few different reasons. Sometimes I really like the first painting, and want one to keep and one to offer for sale (this is rare). Sometimes a really like the composition of a scene but want to paint it in a different season. Most often, I don’t like something in the first version so I try again, and the result is usually two paintings, each with pluses and minuses as is the case with this example. Maybe eventually I’ll do it again hoping for third time lucky.

I feel doing the same subject multiple times puts me in good company. Many great artists have painted multiple versions of the same scene. Scroll through this list of Monet’s works and look at how many repeats there are. There are actually 17 different versions of his famed Houses of Parliament! I’m sure he intended some of them to be studies for an eventual serious painting, but others he clearly painted a second time because he wanted to do something differently. In the end, 100+ years later they are all Monets and they are all considered masterpieces. That will never be the case with me, but I think it’s an interesting observation.

Usually I paint from my own reference photos, but in this case I did not. I follow a Facebook group called Exploring Virginia, where people post photos they take of the beautiful state I’m lucky enough to live in. Every now and then I see a photo that I find very inspirational and I ask permission to use it. The good news is that Virginians are nice people and the answer is almost always yes. Here is the photo reference for this painting, credit Mark Calhoun. Thank you Mark for being so generous with your work!

I love the sky, the silhouettes, and the mist rising behind the tree line. I cropped off some of the sky to achieve something closer to a 2:1 aspect ratio that I like for many of my landscapes. It’s a really tough subject, and I didn’t really do it justice, but the paintings stand alone.

Version 1:

I masked out the barn and the house with painters’ tape and I started with multiple layers of wet-in-wet for the sky. For the mountains I glazed a deep purple hue and then dropped water into the lower part to create the mist. The tree details were done using a nib pen loaded with watercolor pigment. The pink highlights were added. The house and the barn done in multiple layers as was the foreground, to eventually achieve the shadow value I wanted.

There were several challenges (aka learning opportunities) from this first attempt. First, I did not stretch the paper. I don’t usually stretch, but the extreme wet-in-wet for the sky resulted in buckling that caused some unevenness. The clouds ended up with harder edges than I would like. I reworked them later, but wasn’t able to achieve the softness that I wanted.

There were also some things I really liked. I liked the mist and the silhouettes of the trees. I also really like the barn with a slight reflection of the setting sun on the roof.

Version 2:

I used basically the same approach as above, but I stretched the paper and this helped the sky be more even. I spent a lot more time working the clouds when they were still wet and got more softness than in the previous version. I masked out the moon, which I didn’t even notice when I did the first version. I had some challenges making it fit in when I put on the finishing touches. I ended up reworking that cloud to partially obscure the moon and I liked the result.

Several things I think were better in Version 1. The colors in the sky are bolder. I feel that the barn in the second version is too small. To a critical eye, it is too small in comparison to the house, since the barn is a lot farther forward. I think I get away with it because of the distance between them. The mist in the first version is lighter and that contrast helps the overall composition. I compressed the vertical aspect a little in the second version and as a result, the mountains lost some of their height. I think this compromised the mist and the height of the trees.

In summary, I don’t hate either, but there are things I would do differently if I did it again. I’ll give it a break for now, but we may see a third version at some point in the future.

Stay safe and be well!

Social Distancing

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With the COVID-19 pandemic I am not working, so in theory I’m painting more. I am sitting in my studio a lot, but don’t feel like I’m accomplishing that much. That said, I recently did a painting of an abandoned cabin, from a photograph I took last fall. This cabin was in a small town called Tyro, situated on Route 56, not too far from where we live. It was early fall. The leaves on the tops of the mountains were changing, as were some at lower elevations.

I spent a lot of time on this painting compared to most. I had fun with the tree line, especially capturing the dark shadows under the umbrella of foliage. I masked out the cabin so I could do it last and I spent a good deal of time doing the detail. The finer details in this painting were done using a nib pen loaded with watercolor, a technique I’ve been using a lot since Steve Mitchell from the Mind of Watercolor introduced it to me a month or so ago.

Funny, but my husband is really bothered by the logs not being straight on the front face of the cabin. That is exactly how they were in the photograph (see below). If anything, I was frustrated that I was unable to make the cabin look rundown enough. Still, I’m happy enough with the result.

Everyone, please practice social distancing and stay well.