Portland Waterfront - sketching with friends

"I love to check your blog after our sketching days.. to see where we were through your eyes because what you drew is sure different than what I did", said my friend Linda after our Saturday outing to the Portland waterfront. We found a lovely park on the riverbank and after wandering through the plantings awhile we parked ourselves on a shady bench and set to work. Of course it's much more pleasant to sketch en plein air on sunny days with a slight breeze in a beautiful place and we agreed that we'll return many times.

I worked in my little Moleskine journal with my tiny limited palette of 6 colors and a miniature waterbrush. I love being unencumbered by unlimited art supplies when I venture out of my studio to work... no heavy bag to weight me down... just the things I always carry so that it's becoming a habit to pull out my sketchbook whenever I have a few minutes to see my world through artist's eyes. And of course the more I do it the better I will get.

A couple of days ago my youngest granddaughter and I drove to the coast to deliver an order and to enjoy a day together. She's nearly 9 and a joy to be with one on one. She has boundless energy and yet is content to let grandma sit on the park bench while she plays. We found a great park with monster playground equipment, walked the beach and played in the wet sand, ate lunch at a popular seafood cafe, and managed to get home in time for her gymnastics class. I started one on one 'grandma days' with my grands years ago and we all look forward to this time together, building relationships and memories, as we do a variety of fun stuff including lots of art making and museums.

Painting for the love of trees

This was my childhood home and MY oak tree. Pop made many swings over the years and hung them from a rope or a chain from one of its sturdy branches. There was no need of a fancy swing set, not when I had a swing that took me high enough to kick a cluster of leaves way up in the tree itself.

I can’t imagine living where there are few trees, like in the western Oklahoma panhandle or the Great Plains, or the Australian Outback. Trees have always been a living presence in my life and here in northwestern Oregon you simply can’t get away from trees, from the smallest of the Japanese Maples to the towering redwoods in our old growth forests.  I've just started thinking about drawing and painting trees, which is really strange, now that I’m thinking about my lifelong love affair with trees of all kinds. I've climbed them, eaten their fruit, cleaned up the messes they drop in high winds or in season, pruned them, grow them (we own a tree nursery, Reimer Nursery LLC, where we grow exotic trees for the wholesale trade), and I've photographed lots of trees wherever I’ve traveled, including a few favorites in Australia, including a huge ghost gum.

Lots of painters have been enamored by trees; I certainly don’t have a unique infatuation with them, but I’ll bet I can come up with something that stands out.

What I intend to do is draw and journal about and paint trees until the trees I show you will tell you something about trees that’s different than what the next guy has to say. I think I can do that and have a jolly good time working figuring out this new-to-me path. Well now, I think I just stated a new goal!

Does anyone have any idea what this tree is, the one with red twigs and red berries? The photo was take in Oklahoma City in the fall and I've been trying to identify it ever since.

But wait... trees have leaves so I guess I need to include drawing the leaves. This photo is of an acer palmatum "Bloodgood" in my front yard.

Red Clover Landscape Sketches

About this time every spring many of the fields in the valley west of town turn bright red with the blossoms of red clover which is grown for seed. Most of the fields are pure clover with few weeds, just acres and acres of red blossoms with bright green clover leaves hidden underneath. I spent part of Memorial Day alone at the edge of one such field, taking photos and making some color sketches in my journal, doing enough of the work of looking closely so that some day soon the clover will appear in a painting or two.

The sketch on the left is a color field study, supposedly showing the bands of color as I saw them but I didn't nail the values. In landscape painting the sky is the lightest color... #1, the ground is the second lightest...#2 because it reflects the light from the sky. Hills are darker, being on a slant and relecting some light but not as much as the ground, and the trees are the darkest dark...#4, because they don't reflect light except where the sun hits one side in early morning and late afternoon. Can you see that I got it right in the landscape sketch but not in the color field study? Now I'm on a mission to do my best to paint landscapes in only 4 values until I can do it in my sleep.

This last drawing is full of nostalgia. On the way home I drove out Kaiser Road and stopped at the cemetary that's at the corner of the acreage where we used to live. My children waited for the school bus near these 4 big old trees that stand guard over the cemetary where there's a headstone that states that Charles and Catherine Reimer rest here. Now they are no kin of ours, even though we share the same last name, but when we bought the property we sort of adopted this couple even though he died in 1917, the year my father entered the navy in WWI, and she died in 1944 while we were fighting WWII.

And finally, let me introduce you to "Wilson", a brush that John Lovett gave me. It's an ordinary cheapo throwaway brush from the hardware store, an Australian one (though you can find a similar one in your local hardware store for 79 cents). Wilson is great for lots of things, including fields of red clover, grass, and tree leaves.

Checkerboard Tree

Often when I start working I have no idea what to paint, perhaps because I haven't given enough thought to the things that make my life unique or to ways that I am to use these life experiences to make my work have meaning.

Robert Burridge told me to work with intention... definitely a contradiction to slapping on the paint and paper with no end in mind. He says that he does his Morning Pages first thing every morning and from that exercise he states his intentions. Bob says not to start a painting without knowing what the 3-Cs will be: Content, Composition, Color combination.

Cathy Woo talks about organizing a painting with the elements and principles of design in mind.

With this advice in mind I've made up little cards that help guide me when I start a painting, though I sometimes go down a different pathway right in the middle of my work. When starting to work I take a card and write out my intentions:

Series/Theme...
Composition...
Design Element... (balance, repetition, etc.)
Dominant Color
Complementary color
2 Spice Colors
Key (high, low)


The collage painting above is one I've worked on off and on for months but it lacked something, so yesterday I sat down and journaled about recurring themes and images that interest me with the intent of developing lots of drawings that symbolize these themes. One was trees. I could not live where there are no trees. I love trees. I climbed plenty as a kid and had several tree swings. I grow trees and prune them. I take shelter under them from rain and sun. So I gulped big, said a quick prayer for a steady hand, picked up a Pitt brush pen and drew this tree directly on the lovely background, praying I wouldn't ruin it. I didn't.

GrapeVine

I enjoyed an art date with my friend Jean Gale last Friday and came home absolutely aching to work. Jean showed me some collages she was working on, done on top of failed watercolor paintings and seeing hers gave me permission to try to make something of the stack of painted watercolors that have sat gathering dust in my closet. Some time ago I decided to make paintings in sizes that fit ready made frames, so I tore the paintings into quarter sheet sizes as well as 7.5 inch squares and into 5 x 7 inch chunks. Then I pulled out a quarter sheet, chose collage papers in colors that worked with the underpainting and set to work. The collage was finished in no time and then I set to work adding some journaling. Since the papers were all about grapevines I chose to write out Jesus's words from John 15:5... "I am the vine, you are the branches; apart from me you can do nothing". It worked, I think... at least my husband complimented me. Some days I work for compliments.

Sketchcrawl Saturday

My friends and I met at the Portland Farmers Market Saturday morning to do some sketching. No sooner had we settled down at an outdoor table than it started raining, so we quickly grabbed some coffee and seats at an interior window in the student union where we could watch the action down below. We did lots more talking than making art, of course, and then we took the tram up to the hospital to see the collection of art from Oregon artists that decorates the hallways.

Collage to Painting

I've been experimenting a bit with making a collage and then using that collage as the inspiration for a painting. It's sort of like doing a sketch or composition plan before making the painting. My original collage is 5x7 inches and the painting was done with acrylic on canvas board that's 11 x 14 inches, so the proportions are slightly off for that reason and also because I didn't do the best job of eye-balling my space divisions.

WALKING TO WORK

I overheard someone say “walking to work” recently and my mind did one of those flips that brings an AHA moment. My studio is in my home, in the center of my home in a big loft area that overlooks the living room, foyer, kitchen, and dining room and feels very un-business-like because of the location. Artists who rent space away from home can enter the studio and leave home matters at the door, but of course that has its own set of problems. My situation is right for me at this point in my life but it’s so easy to lose focus on art-making and waste time when the home work is right there in my visual field.

My AHA is all about perception. I can start walking to work and get my daily miles in at the same time. Here’s the thing… get up, shower, breakfast, and then walk to work… put on my jacket and walk my 2 miles, ending up at my studio where I take off my coat, and settle in to work. At noon I give myself permission to check email, have lunch, and even read, but in an hour it’s back to work. At the end of the day, around 4, I can walk home, taking the shortcut which is only 1 mile. I know it’s a game I play with myself but I’m going to try this for the next month and see what happens. I’ll get in 3 miles of walking every day and establish a new summer schedule. Of course I’ll have to fit in a bit of gardening time, perhaps before work. And I can’t answer personal phone calls at work. I start this new job Tuesday... and I hope it pays off.

We were at the coast last week and this one small watercolor sketch is the only one I made all week.

PATTERN

As I walked the coastline and prowled around town I was thinking about pattern, both regular and irregular: foot patterns in the sand that tell their own story (seagulls, cars, people); wave patterns in the sand that create a mini history of tidal action; patterns of trees and grasses in the forest and dunes. There’s so much to see when one takes the time to look carefully at this world of ours.

Self Portrait with Giraffes

Mothers and Daughters Collage Day at Jo's

Paper, glue, scissors, and 11 creative minds got together in my studio Saturday to learn about collage, and did we ever have a good time! My daughter and her oldest daughter each invited 4 friends to see what happens when there's unlimited papers with which to work. They got to take home some art and I trimmed down my collection of papers... though not the painted ones which I use all the time.

The budding artists turned my tidy studio into a big happy messy place and left 3 hours later with several pieces of collage done on 5x7 illustration board.

When they first arrived and settled down I talked about the process of making simple collages and then gave them their first assignment: choose 50 pieces of paper that you like from the boxes which line the center of my big work table.

When the timer dinged after 15 minutes I took away the boxes of paper to give them room to work, and gave their next assignment, to choose 4 pieces of paper from the initial 50 and create a loose 4-square collage which will be the background and glue it down. Then they could work at their own pace to add papers and images to make a collage that tells a story. They had each brought photocopied pictures from home of people, pets, and even a fish or two.

We worked happily for nearly 3 hours and they made some very nice art to decorate their homes.

My daughter it the tall redhead and her daughter is in front of her.

Romans 3

This will be hard to read. If anyone wants to see a larger version let me know your email address and I'll send it privately. As usual, this is 9" x 12", and is number 46 in the series.