Art Every Day Month - Nov 21 -

Winter Fireweed

Winter Fireweed  - a pioneer species waiting for its time

Source photo

Fireweed is called a pioneer species, because it establishes itself rapidly in areas where the ground has been burnt-over or where the soil has been disturbed.
In summer, the fireweed sports bright magenta flowers on a straight tall stalk, and in winter, the fireweed's leaves dry into curved hooks which mat together and trap the plant's fly-away seeds in with other wind-borne material. Fireweed seeds remain viable in the ground for years, waiting for conditions to be right for a new plant to spring into blossom. A pioneer indeed!

Art Every Day Month - November 3

Spooky Dead Plants

November Fireweed - Detail of 11" x 15" Watercolour on paper -
Study in silhouetted form

Source Photo



There are walking trails and bike trails running throughout our town. Part of my AEDM process this month is to go out for a morning walk along one or other of these nature trails, with a camera, and take photos that focus on some design element that I can use in my daily painting. My intention is to elaborate on that design element or concept and make an "abstract" painting for my daily posts. After a month's practice at abstracting, I hope that my realistic painting style will have loosened up somewhat. 

Well, that may be easier said than done...yes, my daily walking is a good habit, my daily picture-taking enhances my ability to use the camera, and my daily observation of design elements sharpens my perceptions. So far so good. Painting in an abstract style, however, is tricky. I am so used to using recognizable images in my artwork that they creep in unbidden right under my eyes.

So today's image... is it realistic or abstract? You be the judge.

Bones of the Earth - L'Anse au Clair

Bones of the Earth - L'Anse au Clair, Labrador

Oil on Canvas, 16" x 20"

detail - Bones of the Earth - L'Anse au Clair, Labrador

For a long time, I have been fascinated by the rock formations that I recognize driving through western Newfoundland and southern Labrador. In some places there are towers of rock and in other places craggy cliffs or piles of boulders and rubble. Here, years ago, a forest fire opened up the rocky surface, which hasn't yet grown over again. It's as if the broken soil has exposed the Bones of the Earth.

On My Back Door-Step # 11

Fireweed Turning Color (#11)

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Watercolor on paper, 11in x 15in
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In summertime, the fireweed plant has the-pinkest-of-pink blossoms that shimmer and are practically florescent in the sunlight, along with a subtle, sturdy green color for its leaves and stems.
But in the autumn, it is the foliage of the fireweed that has the showiest display, in fiery (of course) reds, oranges, yellows, and various shades of chartreuse.
In painting #10, I was unhappy with the mixes I had achieved with a limited palette of three colors, prussian blue, cadmium yellow medium and rose red quinacridone. Today, I added viridian and cadmium red medium to the lineup, and I substituted hansa yellow lemon for the cadmium yellow. Well, what a difference!
Today was a sunny fall day and the light kept moving through the trees, changing the intensities of the colors on the ground even as I was watching them brighten and fade.
Nevertheless, I am happy with what I recorded today. Never satisfied, but happy!
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On My Back Door-Step #10

Fireweed Blossoms (#10)

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Watercolor on paper 11in x 15in

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For many years, I have worked with a limited palette of colors: a bright yellow, a red usually in the pink register, and a blue of some sort. Since I started these back door-step paintings, I have been using my outdoor sketching supplies, which include a portable box of a dozen pans of watercolor, two yellows, two reds, two blues, two greens, two browns, plus a black and a white.

Well, it's starting to get chilly outside, so on some days for this project I confess, I am actually doing the painting indoors once the drawing is established. And yes, I am noticing a difference in how I am handling the paint.

Indoors, I take more time in applying the color, and today, when I used tube color instead of my trusty little paint box, I fell back into my comfort zone of the limited palette of three colors. Honest! I didn't mean to! I did take out five tubes, but I only squeezed paint out of three of them, cadmium yellow medium, rose red quinacridone and prussian blue. So, there I was working with a limited palette again.

And what did I learn? I found I was unhappy with the approximation of the colors I was mixing, and with how distant those hues were from what I knew I had seen. In working outdoors, I have learned to perceive more of the colors that my eyes can distinguish.

I want to go back outside and paint this image again.

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On My Back Door-Step #6

Bunch of Fireweek (#6)

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Watercolor on paper 11in x 15in
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It's a rainy day and not good for watercolor painting outdoors. So I set up my painting gear in the light coming through the back door, put a handful of fireweed flowers into a Mason jar, and settled in. Indoors or out, I still have to record the image before the light moves, so once the pencil sketch was established, I applied paint just as loosely as I would do out of doors.
This painting is a great example of wet-into-wet washes, without doubt the loosest of watercolor painting techniques.
Wet daubs of pink blurring into pale green stripes give the gentlest of neutral shadow tones. A fat painty brushstroke touching into a clear water shape defines a flower form. Then there's the background, all water and paint with a characteristic back-flow effect revealing the blue and brown pigments that this gray was mixed with. Back-flows can be disastrous or very effective, and this painting has examples of both.
So be it.

On My Back Door-Step #5

Fireweed in Dappled Light (#5)

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Watercolor on paper 11in x 15in
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Sunlight which is filtered through a canopy of trees reaches the ground in patches of various colors, depending on what happens with reflections and highlights and shadows.
Objects which are struck by this dappled light appear to lose their solid form due to these mottled highlights and shadows. The whole scene becomes a floating mass of light and color.
I tried to anchor this painting with the color of the fireweed blossoms, but I believe it is the mobile textures of branches and stems, leaves and foliage that have won out.
Makes for a lively painting, though!
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On My Back Door-Step #4

Fireweed and Branches (#4)

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Watercolor on paper 11in x 15in
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Contrast. It's out there all around.
I didn't realize how much contrast I was dealing with until I started to get into it. As I set out my paints, I thought "Today I'm working with the contrast of complementary colors - the pink of the fireweed flowers against the green of the foliage."
Well, fine, but then there's the contrast of the small size of the pink area and all those masses of greens, and the contrast of the highlights in yellow-greens against the dark-olive shadows. And the contrast of the horizontal curves of the branches against the vertical curves of the stems and leaves. And the thickness of the tree trunk against those same slender stems.
Contrast? I got a lot more of it than I had bargained for... and you know the best part? The next time I go looking for contrast in a scene to paint, I will probably find even more to play with.
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