I usually paint from photos I take myself, but sometimes someone I know takes a photo that I find so inspiring that I ask permission to paint from it.  My sister Nancy, who lives in Italy, recently took a trip to Slovenia and visited Lake Bled.  She took a stunning photograph of the lake and the beautiful cathedral on the island in the middle.  The surrounding mountains were shrouded with clouds, but the sky above was blue.  This made for beautiful reflections in the water.  On the distant shore stands another church. Anyone interested in following Nancy’s adventures as an American ExPat in Italy should read her blog.  Here is Nancy’s photo of Lake Bled. I cropped it to get the scene and composition I wanted.

The nice thing about this photo is that it’s portrait orientation.  As a landscape painter, most of the scenes I paint are landscape orientation.  Many are panoramic – I like painting in a footprint that is twice as long as it is tall.  We have this electrical box in the hallway just inside the front door of our condo in Northern Virginia.  It’s ugly and I’ve been wanting to cover it up but it requires a portrait orientation painting that is fairly large.  I had an 18×24 inch board that I thought would be perfect for the job, and Lake Bled would look beautiful there.

The painting was challenging.  I wanted the star of the show to be the island in the middle, with its contrasting green trees and red roofs.  I also wanted to capture the image of that reflecting in the water.  This was very challenging but a lot of fun.  The water was not still, so I had to capture the ripples with a series of small horizontal brush strokes of the varying colors.  These also had to fade to the white of the clouds and ultimately the blue of the sky.  There are actually four different sections of color in the water in addition to the image of the island.  The area near the distant shore is almost white, the gray-blue reflection of the mountain, the white/gray cloud layer on top of the mountain, and finally the bright blue sky.  Interesting that you can only see bits of that in the photo, but it’s evident in the reflection.  I actually broke my engineer brain’s connection to reality when I was painting this.  I was focused on shapes and colors and didn’t realize the sky above was blue until I stood back and looked at the almost finished product (below).

I am very pleased with this work.  It’s one of my best efforts to date.  Alas, it may not hang in the hallway at my condo, but that’s a good thing.

A few weeks ago I was at work.  My office is a gallery of paintings I don’t have room for.  I also like them because they remind me of my other life – what I’d rather be doing.  I was talking to Catherine, a colleague and she asked, “How can someone buy one of your paintings?”  I laughed and said “They’re all for sale!”  We continued talking and I mentioned that I was working on a painting of Lake Bled.  She announced, “I want to buy that one!”  As it turns out, Lake Bled was the destination of Catherine and her husband Mike’s first overseas trip.  She is looking for a unique gift for his November birthday and decided this painting would be it, sight unseen.  I shared a photo of the partially finished painting.  She still hasn’t seen it, but now that it’s done I’ll take it into work this week and if she likes it in person, it will be sold.  Fingers crossed.  I’ll post an update with the final result.

One of the things I’ve learned in my short artistic career is that people buy art for personal reasons.  Usually they choose a painting because it touches them emotionally in some way.  There is really no way to plan for that.  I paint for myself, and hopefully along the way my art will touch others as well.

Update:  Catherine did indeed buy the painting and she loves it!

Four years ago we took a trip to Italy with my sister and her husband (who now live there) and some other friends.  We rented Il Casale di Mele, a farm house in Umbria, for a week.  It was a wonderful place with spectacular views.  From the table out on the back terrace we looked out over a town called Collazzone.  This painting was painted from a photo that I took of that town.

I had fun doing this, although it took a while.  I focused on the values.  By that I mean I looked at the lights and darks of the shadows and the brightly lit facades of the buildings.  It took several sessions to paint this and it was done in the mountain house.  That allowed each layer to dry before I began the next.  First I did the drawing, which took a long time all by itself.  I drew each building and roof. I painted the sky up to the roofline.   Then I painted the roofs. Then I painted the light surfaces followed by the darks in a separate session.  Then I painted the windows, doors, railings, chimneys and touched up some of the shadows along the roof lines.  Finally I painted the trees.  I’m happy enough with the result.

This was a good exercise for me because it forced me to focus on shapes and colors rather than thinking about the “things” that I was painting.

I’ve said from the beginning that this blog is about my transformation experience from engineer to artist, and not just about showcasing my successes. Today I’m going to share something I consider less than a success.

A while back I completed a painting of a photo that my friend Sharon Littley took from her porch in Fairfield Virginia.  It was after a storm in the very early spring.  The sky was still wicked dark with white clouds along the front edge of the storm. The sun had come out and there was a partial rainbow contrasted against the dark sky.  The sun was shining on the hills in the foreground, highlighting the pale greens and other colors of early spring.  It really is a lovely and inspirational photograph.  I asked her if I could paint it and she graciously said yes.

Sadly, I don’t think I did it justice. It’s not my best sky.  I did capture the pale greens in the hills well against it.  I knew the rainbow would be hard but it came out okay – although my husband said he doesn’t like it because it looks too solid.

In the foreground of the original picture there were a few shrubs and a young tree, but there was also the end of the gravel road they live on.  I decided this would look better as a meadow. I also added a forsythia bush. My engineer’s brain still had trouble improvising. I think the perspectives in the foreground are off.  I also think it is somewhat unimaginative.  I tried to add a couple of Adirondack chairs in the meadow, but couldn’t get the proportions right so I took them out.  I guess I just need to keep practicing and going off script till it get better at it.

16 x 16 oil on board

Sharon takes many lovely photos from their porch. I’ve told her that if I lived there I’d just set up an easel out there and paint every day.  The wonderful thing about nature and the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains is that the view is different every day.  It’s a wonderful place to live.

In the meantime, I have two more pieces in the works that I like much better. Both are from my travels in Italy.  Stay tuned…

Several weeks back I wrote a post about the wonderful experience I had plein aire painting at the Devil’s Knob overlook when the group showed up to rehearse for a wedding that was scheduled for the next day. I promised to post a picture of the finished painting.  I did the sky and the mountains on location, but was forced to leave before it rained.  I finished the foreground, including the fence and trees in studio. I’m happy with the result.  More important it is an experience I will remember!