Snow days

'Winter Scene'

Bobbie George

'Peeping Through' - Lynn Dargis

'Winter Rhodos'

Susan Smith- Knoblauch

'Snow Berries'

Cindy Shorris

'Plum tree in Winter Wonderland'

Melanie Stanley

'December Snow'

Linda Jones

'Winter White' Marie Wright

'Winter Calm'

Linda Jones

As artists living in Northern Virginia, it is not surprising that our watercolor classes in recent weeks have included an afternoon or two painting snow scenes. For all artists, not only those just starting out in watercolor, painting snow is a challenge. It is definitely not all white and not the white of watercolor paper. It reflects different light and colors depending on the time of day; the hues cast in the shadows by the trees and buildings in the scene; the color of the sky, whether gray and snow laden or clear blue after the storm has passed; the terrain and rolling curves of the drifts.

It is best to paint snow when the experience of fresh snow lies outside the studio window, heavy on the trees, still pristine in the calm after the storm. The same freshness and perception of color is not so easy to achieve when painting from photographs or when the snow has long gone and the memory of the warm blue shadows has faded.

This is definitely a time to look at the landscape with an artist's eye, observing the sharp and soft edges of the shadows, the subtle warm and cool colors in the snow, and the way it clings to and wraps around tree branches. Observing these features leads the artist to use interesting washes, both wet on wet and layered glazes on top of dried paint. Snow compositions necessitate having a clean brush and water handy to lift colors and soften their edges. We haven't yet used the masking technique in class, so we painted around our white snow emphasising the softness. I don't believe it is cheating to use gouache to portray the pristine white snow heaped on branches or to pinpoint the whiteness and glinting highlights at the end.

Dispelling the Myth

One of my main objectives in teaching watercolor is to dispel the belief that watercolor is an unforgiving medium. There is of course an element of truth in this thought when you compare it to acrylics in which mistakes can easily be painted out. I am constantly responding to requests for help from my students who think they have ruined their work or made a mistake in their painting that can't be overcome.

It gives me great pleasure to demonstrate how they might lift off their last brushstrokes removing an unwanted color with a different brush and clean water, add a subtle wash in a suggested color to tone down the negative space that might have become too dominant, or alter a composition slightly to cope with a mishap. All three instances occurred in my recent class "Abstracting from Nature - Bird Paintings". Images from this class will appear in a later blog.

When I was teaching high school my students teased me occasionally when I frequently repeated certain phrases in class. Saying their goodbyes, one senior class created and painted a huge card incorporating many of these catch phrases. Now in my adult watercolor classes new catch phrases are emerging, and when I hear my students repeat them, I realise I am hopefully achieving my goal. At the first introductory class I remind all students not to get stressed over a painting with which they might be struggling, saying, "Remember, it's just a piece of paper". Now I hear this coming back to me, "I think this painting has become 'just a piece of paper'." Most often the piece of paper can be rescued.

This week I found myself saying, "Don't worry, a mistake is just an opportunity to learn something new". It was immediately picked up by the group and I have a feeling I will hear it repeated in future classes.

Painting in the Style of Danish watercolorist Mads Stage

In recent watercolor classes I have been introducing my students to the work of Mads Stage, the twentieth century Danish watercolorist and illustrator with a distinctive approach to painting nature: birds and animals in a minimalist style, in which his use of negative space demonstrates that less is definitely more. Frequently his paintings do not depict the entire animal in watercolor although simple pencil lines suggest where the animal lies, how its ears twitch and the branch on which it perches or the plants in which it hides.

American Robin - Linda Jones

Using photographic source materials, my students painted foxes, a heron, bluetits, an English robin, a horse and a tiger, while I painted an American robin that had perched on a fallen evergreen tree outside my kitchen window in the recent snowstorms. Examples of the afternoon's work are shown here.

An English Robin, reproduced by kind permission of the artist, Bobbie George

Painting with PulseArtists

Every Thursday I paint with PulseArtists. We are a group of artist friends who paint and show our work together in the Washington Metropolitan area. We paint in a variety of media: oils, pastels, acrylics and watercolors, and our work represents a wide range of genres from realism to abstraction, from small watercolors to large canvases. We encourage, support and critique each other. Sometimes instead of painting, we go on field trips to galleries and art museums. This week we are going to a painting demonstration at the Vienna Art Society by the oil painter Armand
Cabrera.

For more information on this active group of artist friends, visit our website http://www.pulseartists.com/

Visit my website http://www.lindajonesart.com/

Commissions

I have recently finished two commissions.
























'Grandmother's Memory (Copyright 2008)
This is a 30" x 24" acrylic on canvas. I was inspired by Elaine's story of hunting for Pink Lady''s Slippers on Sunday afternoons with her grandmother. The various woodland images evoke the landscape they would have encountered in their search for the rare orchid as light filtered through the canopy of trees: mountain laurel, ferns, periwinkle, pachysandra and fallen leaves surrounding the pink lady's slipper, the sought after orchid at the end of the hunt.

'Snowbound' (Copyright 2009)
Sharon wanted a watercolor of a winter snow scene. She looked through my website gallery of landscapes and chose the acrylic painting of a summer storm: "Fallen Tree". She asked me to paint this landscape as it was in January, with snow on frozen Deep Creek Lake in Garrett County, Maryland.

Visit my website http://www.lindajonesart.com

Looking at the world with an artist's eyes.

This week the subject of my watercolor class was portraying light and shade to give a painting life. In the studio I had a range of different still life objects set up with directional lights and a list of 12 questions to encourage analysis of warm and cool light, color temperature, soft and hard edges, transparency and the the effect of the native color on which shadows fall. As the students were arriving, I looked out and noticed the wonderful, clear, February light falling on the trees in the yard, casting shadows on the patches of snow, the grassy areas and the fallen leaves. With the questions in my hand, I greeted the class and we spent the first few minutes analysing the light and shade in the surrounding woods. Their surprise in realising that shadows are not all gray or black, that their colors and intensity vary, led to a more successful and fun class once we moved into the studio to paint apples and pears. Next week we will be using light and shade to add interest to a landscape.

Visit my website http://www.lindajonesart.com

Linda Jones Art: Welcome to my Art Blog.

I have had a website: http://www.lindajonesart.com/ for some time. On my blog you can receive the latest news of my paintings in watercolor, acrylic and mixed media; the newest additions to my portfolio, current shows and classes. I am an active member of Great Falls Studios here in Northern Virginia, I teach private watercolor classes in my studio and through the Great Falls School of Art. Keep in touch with what is happening in the local art world and please contact me via the blog or my website.


About me.
Living in wooded Northern Virginia near Great Falls on the Potomac and Chesapeake Bay gives me a wonderful environment in which to paint. My work reflects an intimate relationship with nature, whether it is a landscape or an individual element such as a flower, fruit or tree. Many of my pictures depict nature in close proximity such as a bee on a flower or the morning dew on the grass by the creek in my backyard.


Current shows.
Anticipation: This is a solo show at the Great Falls Library, 9830 Georgetown Pike, Great Falls, VA 22066. You can see my watercolors and acrylic painting in the small conference room during library hours until the end of March 2009. The paintings anticipate the warmer days ahead with a display of spring flowers, butterflies and bees, painted in the gardens of northern Virginia.

Swallowtail: Watercolor (Copyright 2008)

I also have three paintings and art cards in the winter show through at the Garrett Arts Council Gallery, 206 E. Alder St, Oakland, MD 21550. My painting: Rolling towards the Blue was selected by the Garrett County Chamber of Commerce for a show at Deep Creek Lake Visitor's Center in McHenry, Md 21541.

Rolling towards the Blue: Acrylic on paper. (Copyright 2008)

Visit my website http://www.lindajonesart.com