Learning to Love Landscapes

 

Unlike many artists, I rarely felt the desire to paint landscapes, I'm actually not certain why. I've taken many photographs of wonderful views but haven't very often felt that irresistible pull to put paint to canvas to capture it. 

I have painted a few okay landscapes over the years, but also a couple attempts in the past led me to decide that landscape painting was just not my thing. A particular sunrise sky with clouds comes to mind...ugh, I never got that thing right!

 Last fall, my brother asked me to paint a landscape for him from this photo. With only one point perspective, no buildings and no trees, I felt I could manage it although the clouds did make me a bit nervous.

 After making my usual color sketch to figure out the palette and the basic layout I was encouraged. Plus it helped me see where I could improve the painting.

"Happy Travels"

The final painting came out pretty nice. I still wasn't itching to paint more landscapes, but it was a great feeling to know my skills have improved over the years and it was possible for me to paint this simple one successfully.

 

 June of 2022, I had the strangest thing happen. This early morning view out of my kitchen window captivated me. It was the pattern of shadows and the way the light was making the green tree leaves glow. I finally felt the call of the landscape, I absolutely had to paint it!

This year, instead of going straight to color sketches, I have been making simple value studies of all my subjects first. I am finding they are a great tool to simplify and get to the heart of what is working in a composition before adding color. When the black and white sketch still feels interesting, I know I am onto something good!

"View from My Kitchen Window"

I have also been watching several landscape painting classes on YouTube, specifically Mastering Composition by Ian Roberts. After watching his How to Use Color Temperature video, I followed his instructions and boom, it actually felt like a bit like magic as this great little painting came together for me. 

 

I was feeling so encouraged, I decided to offer to paint a landscape for my sister. She sent me two of her favorite vistas and told me I could choose which one I wanted to paint.

Landscape one.

Landscape two.

      

 Hmmm, which one to choose! I was having a really hard time deciding between them and the value studies helped me clarify what elements I felt were resonating with me and that made it easier to decide what direction to go.

Of course this involved plenty of color palette testing too.

 

"View from Green Springs Drive"

 My value sketches were pretty rough, but the essence of that wonderful dark and light contrast on the red cliffs still came through as the focal point of the painting. I'm really pleased with the outcome and yes, I think I may be learning to love painting landscapes. I've already had a few more calling to me...

Definitely a reminder to keep that creative ear open, you might hear an unexpected Muse! 

Happy creating!

>^-^<

Tina
 

Ian Roberts Mastering Composition

How to use Color Temperature

Another favorite YouTube Teacher:

Paint Coach

Seven Reasons Students Struggle Painting Landscapes

Little Trouble Maker

Home Sweet Home

I remember how nervous I was about moving onto our new piece of land in the mountains of New Mexico in 1996. I was excited to live in the forest, but also nervous about bears and possibly mountain lions confronting me on the way to the outhouse. It seems funny looking back now, because we did see a bear occasionally but we never had a mountain lion or even a bobcat bother us, what I should have been worried about were the much smaller animals!

One late fall afternoon, I had the door to the trailer open to enjoy the mild weather when I noticed something about the size of a small cat with tan brown and white fur scurry across the ground outside. It went from under one of our vehicles to hide behind some plywood we had leaned against the storage shed. Jeff was outside, so I asked him if he saw it. He moved some of the plywood and out popped this animal I thought looked like a Chinchilla. It had large eyes and ears and a somewhat fluffy tail. It was kind of cute, but what in heaven’s name was it?

To get a better look at this critter, Jeff set out a few pieces of cat food in a dish and we quietly waited to see if it would come out from under the VW bus and eat the food. It did come out, and quite brazenly too, especially since it was late afternoon and it would have been highly visible to any hunting hawks.
 

White-throated Woodrat, quick sketch

 
Even after a good look, neither one of us was completely certain what it was, so the next time we went down to town to use the computer at the library we searched on-line. (Note: At this point in time, we didn’t have a phone line to our property, there wasn’t cell phone service and we certainly didn’t have a personal computer.) We found out it was a white throated wood rat, often called a pack rat. They could be found living at high altitudes, in rocky terrain and ponderosa forests. Okay, we could check all three of those boxes! Now we knew what the critter was, but we had no idea that a battle of wits had just begun.

One night about 3:00 am, we heard loud scratching noises in the ceiling just above our heads. What was that? Jeff went outside to check but couldn’t see anything. He banged on the ceiling and the noise stopped for awhile but soon those scrabbling noises started up again. It sounded way too loud for a mouse, good heavens, could that possibly be the wood rat?

The walls and ceiling of the 1972 Prowler RV trailer we were living in were made of thin plywood with about a 2 inch layer of insulation between that plywood and the outside metal skin, even rain and hail storms were noisy, but good grief, it was hard to sleep with some large rodent up there making those annoying sounds just above our heads. It would settle down and we would drift off to sleep, only to be awakened again by that scratching! I still remember the vivid dream I had one night of seeing that wood rat’s face peering down on me after I dreamed it had gnawed a hole through the ceiling. Yeeesh.

The next morning Jeff went on the roof and noticed that the vent for our propane stove was the entrance point. He had put window screen over it previously to keep birds out, but this animal had chewed right through that, so he cut a small sheet of expanded metal mesh and attached it over the vent. Perfect.

That night, the scratching sounds started again! Good grief, we had inadvertently trapped the thing in! Sigh, we hadn’t given enough thought about this being a nocturnal animal. We couldn’t use poison, we didn’t want it dead in our walls, so how were we going to get it out? Jeff took the metal screen off and then spent the next few nights waking up at 3am to put it back on after all seemed quiet. We thought he could block the wood rat out after it had gone out to search for food. Nope, nope and nope!

Eventually Jeff came up with a different tactic. The pilot light for our propane fridge was accessible from a small hatch on the outside of the trailer. This hatch was long and narrow, about 16 inches long and 4 inches wide. When he took the hatch off, we could see by the poo-pellets left behind that our wood rat had been to that part of trailer. Great! Jeff decided to leave the hatch off hoping the wood rat would leap the 4 feet to the ground or jump over to the small juniper tree trunk that was only a little over a foot away from the side of the trailer. Problem solved.

Nope. That night we could still hear our unwanted “upstairs” neighbor moving around in the ceiling! That wood rat had moved in with us and wasn’t taking any of our hints to leave.

Follow the Trail, please!

 
 Jeff wasn't defeated yet, he took that long hatch door from the trailer and made a temporary bridge by balancing one end from a knot on the juniper tree’s trunk and resting the other end on the lip of the open hatch on the trailer. Then the best idea of all, he put a line of dry cat food pieces along his makeshift gangway.

We got into bed carefully that night, making certain we didn’t shake the trailer too much and undo Jeff’s handiwork. Generally, it’s not great to be awakened at 3:00 am, but it was the best thing in the world to hear that small piece of metal slap the side of the trailer and fall. After a few moments of celebration, we debated if it was worth going outside in the cold to put the cover back on the hatch. Jeff decided he wasn’t taking any chances and went outside and put the hatch cover back in place. Thank heaven he did.

We had just settled back down under the covers and started feeling sleepy when we heard the most unsettling thing of all, the sound of a wood rat’s tiny toenails scraping down the metal siding of the trailer! It was trying to get back in by leaping from the juniper tree and aiming for the once open hatch! Yikes!

It gave me such an eerie feeling that this animal was so determined to get what it wanted and it was my first inkling that I had underestimated what the smaller wildlife we were sharing this mountainside with were capable of.

Happy creating!
>^-^<

Tina

p.s. My right eye has been fairly stable as long as I keep using the steroid eye drops, still no diagnosis as to why I have this condition. I only have the MRI test left to do, but with the current Covid-19 virus trouble, that may take awhile to schedule.

Drawing From Memories

I’ve thought a lot about what I want to focus the Artist Life Experiment blog for 2020. I think we are due for some fear facing and experiment doing.

It’s time to confess my creative insecurity of not being that great at free-hand drawing. Frankly, it’s embarrassing. I’m great if I have my photo references and my drawing grid all plotted out. There is nothing wrong with using those tools. They make me feel secure and more confident that I will be successful in creating something beautiful. In the past, these tools have often been key for me to have the courage to even start a painting. The downside is that I think my drawings can be a bit stiff at times and I also wonder if my favorite tools have hampered me from developing a unique drawing style of my own.

I know the remedy for stiff drawings is sketching practice. Honestly, sketching practice has never been my favorite thing. It reminds me of practicing the scales for the piano, necessary work but not exactly inspiring.

If I’m going to do the work of sketching, I will be more likely to practice if I have an end goal in mind rather than just drawing “random things around the house.” I never liked that exercise suggestion! I’m thinking about making drawings for a book.

That book would be focused on the fifteen years we lived in the mountains of New Mexico and built our off-grid home from the ground up. Of course we have photos of many of the things we did, but I’m curious to see if I could do some drawings too.

It’s a huge goal and way too much to do in just one year, but “shoot for the stars and hit the moon” or some such inspirational meme. Seriously though, I won't know if this is a good idea or not unless I try it out.
 
To prove that I am not kidding about my free-hand drawing skills, I’m posting my first attempts at sketching with pen. Yes, pen, ballpoint pen and a little marker to be exact. I know, no forgiving pencil and eraser to cover past sins! 


I follow the blog of a pen and ink artist, Chris Wilson, who likes to share his knowledge. Chris claims sketching with pen is the best way to learn to loosen up. He suggests to start by holding the pen farther back and let the lines be less controlled. Also, imagine following the outside contour of the subject to get the overall gesture. This advice sort of works for me, but I already found out I do better if I look for shapes and aim to connect the shapes together, if that makes any sense.

Okay, here is my first try. Yikes! This looks weird even to me.

Cleaning Crew

and another…wow, a toy truck and giant deer! 

That elk in the back looks kinda good though.

Attempt #3. Messed up the placement of the back tire and what is going on with the chin of that little female elk up front…?

Funny Face

Oh, they actually have white chins! I looked for more image reference online to figure out what was going on. A big thank you to photographers Robert Harding and"@bingtravelbunny."

Finally, a drawing I’m less embarrassed about! Full disclosure, I covered up that mistake over the back tire with white paint and re-did the pen work.

Salt Lick

Here’s the story behind the event I am attempting to draw from January 3, 2011.

One Sunday, very early in the morning before the sunrise, Jeff called me very softly out of our nice warm bed. “Hey, you have to see this, elk are cleaning my truck…”
 
Puzzled, I got out of bed and made my way as quietly as I could over to the large east facing window to look, and sure enough, a small herd of elk had surrounded Jeff’s green Toyota Tacoma truck. The metal was coated with salt from the winter roads and these animals were solemnly licking it all over. In our fifteen years living there, we had never seen the elk do that before!

They must have felt they were in luck to find a tasty treat like that just waiting for them. We don’t know if road salt was safe for them to eat, but they were certainly enjoying themselves, even pushing each other a little, greedy to get to the un-licked spots.

Eventually they were done cleaning off the truck and started to notice us staring at them, that was their cue to disperse. They casually continued up the mountain side, nosing around for munch-able plants under the snow as they went. We watched as one by one the whole herd quietly vanished in between the trees. Another memorable moment that made our difficulties of living off-grid in the woods worth all the effort.

Just in case you were wondering, the door handles of the truck were not appealing to the touch when we went out to get in it later. Ick!

What do you think?

Here’s some of my original photos, they aren’t great because there was low light and my camera had a hard time focusing through the window. Do you prefer the drawing or the photos?

Cleaning Crew

The Elk Notice Us

Anyone else have a creative insecurity they are hiding? What are you doing to address it?

Happy Creating!

>^-^<
Tina
 
Here's a link to a list of Chris Wilson’s favorite books about drawing and sketching: https://chriswilsonstudio.com/sketching-books/

Preserving the Moment

I wait all year for the roses. I want to admire all the varied colors, marvel at the intricate petal layers and soak in the lovely scent. I was so excited when we first saw the home we rented in 2017 had two types of beautiful roses growing around the house!

Roses from the backyard.

This year I'm going to add the sense of taste to that list and I hope it is another way to preserve all that fleeting beauty a little bit longer. Yes, I've watched those cooking shows where adding too much rose flavor to food can result in a soap-like disaster, :P but I recently watched a YouTube video on how to make rose jam and I am definitely going to give it a try. I have cleaned and trimmed rose petals waiting in my fridge as I type this. Here's the link if you are interested. How to Make Rose Jam
 

Time Over Beauty

 This spring I had the opportunity to sketch out some designs for a book cover. I wanted to convey the idea of beauty in all the stages of life. Having observed rose blossoms bud, bloom and fade, often with all three stages happening at once on one stem, I feel they are one of the most naturally perfect illustrations of this concept.
 

Roses from the front yard.

Even though individual rose blooms may not last long, a rose plant can live much longer. I  hadn't really considered how long until I read about the "Thousand Year Rose" growing on a Catholic cathedral in Germany. 

The Rose of Hildesheim

 A long stemmed tea rose plant might live an average of 35-50 years and some antique roses for over 100 years, which is respectable, but the rose that grows on the walls of the Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany is verified to have been growing there for at least 700 years! 

It's a rosa canina, one of the simpler five petaled roses, but a rose still the same. It's an interesting story encompassing a king and surviving a world war if you would like to read it for yourself. Rose of Hildesheim

Perhaps they are stretching the story a bit for the "Thousand Year" title, but it is still a charming thought that someone living centuries ago may have stopped and admired this same rose. 

Happy creating and remember to stop and smell or taste the roses!

>^-^<
Tina

Lost your joy?

 

"A Joyful Heart" 7"x 6" watercolor on paper ©2016

I don’t know about you, but I can get completely overwhelmed and burned out on all the horrible and ugly things going on in the world. 

“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

― William Goldman, The Princess Bride

Sure we may laugh, but for years I have been secretly hoping it wasn’t true! I don’t think I am alone here. Many of us expect life to be much better than it is and then feel really upset and disappointed when our lives take unexpected turns or our fellow humans keep doing really awful things.

I admit, most of my life I have been a “cup half empty” type of person. I never realized until lately that I had this negative point of view because I was expecting life and people to be better! You would think as an amateur student of history I wouldn't be so clueless.

The irony is that finally accepting that life is often hard and painful and really difficult at some point for everyone has actually helped me feel happier. If the norm is pain and difficulty, then perhaps anything in my life that isn’t painful and difficult is beating the odds and deserves to be celebrated!

I am noticing more that even on my difficult days, I have a lot of reasons to celebrate!                                                                    

Don't get me wrong, I still believe that anything we can do to ease the pain and suffering in the world is worth doing and if I look at the big picture of history, mankind has actually made some progress.

I have also learned that being on full anxiety alert all the time isn't healthy for me or anyone else. It is necessary to regularly take a break from the hard realities and lift my own heart. 
 

"A Joyful Heart" 3"x 2.75" pen on paper sketch ©2014

One thing I like about cats is their sense of fun. They can find the most ordinary things fascinating and delightful, i.e. boxes, crumpled paper, a marble under the fridge, and the joy of joys, ornaments on a Christmas tree. They seem completely engrossed and happy in getting that shiny, swinging thing off of the tree! 

What is your shiny ornament on a Christmas tree? Have you ever thought about it?

My equivalent of batting around the Christmas tree ornaments is playing the guitar badly and singing along. Singing brings me so much joy, but the crazy thing is I often don’t do enough of it, unless I actually put in on my to do list! Ridiculous, right? 

This month I have been singing Christmas songs. I would like to leave you with this one in which I made some changes to the lyrics. 

1.     Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

        let your heart be light,

        even though our troubles are well in sight.

2.     Have yourself a merry little Christmas
        make the Yuletide gay,
        even though our troubles are here to stay.

Once again we will hold the day, each golden day is ours.
Faithful friends who are dear to us,
Will hear from us once more.

 3.   Maybe soon we all will be together,

        if the fates allow,
        until then we’ll bless the life we live somehow.
        so have yourself a merry little Christmas now!

>^-^<

Tina

My apologies to Hugh Martin who wrote the lyrics originally for the 1944 movie “Meet Me in St. Louis” starring Judy Garland. Mr. Martin claims that Ralph Blane didn't have anything to do with the lyrics...but that is another story.
 Check out the interesting history of this song on wikipedia here.

Find that Golden Moment

"Golden Moment" 5 3/4" x 7 1/4" graphite on paper ©2015

This is the sketch for what was to be my November painting. This is an orange and white striped cat basking in the low autumn sunlight, with a roll of baled straw and fall leaves as a background. I love the contented, happy look on his face as he enjoys his golden moment.

With all of our changes, job hunting, packing and moving from country to country these last few months, there has barely been time for reflection, let alone time or space for painting.  I have to admit, I feel a bit disoriented, kind of like trying to find my balance while standing on a beach ball.

It's been good to be back in the States, but there has been a lot of emotion to be felt going through all our belongings to reduce them to fit in a smaller storage shed and going to the family farm to pick up my share of Mom and Dad's things. It was rather unsettling seeing the reality of the farm house empty and not having Mom and Dad there to greet me.  

One nice surprise was that my older brother, Gary, had arranged to have many of my Dad's Super 8 home movie films transferred into a digital format. What a treasure! Family Christmas parties and reunions of long ago, dear faces that are no longer with us laughing, watching myself and my brothers and sisters grow up, all in short little visual phrases, and pheasants...lots of pheasants and geese. Dad loved wildlife of any kind. I think he was making his own National Geographic nature specials.  Oh, how good it was to enjoy those moments again, sometimes wishing they were not so short!  Movie film was expensive, so every shot was carefully limited.   

All this nostalgia made me think about today. Is this moment, this "today" going to be a golden moment when I look back to it?  Will I think, wow, those where the good times...even though I feel disoriented and tired of not knowing what direction we are going in?  I know I don't have that contented look on my face!

I think those golden moments are just that, moments. I know there were sad and stressful things going on in those past times too. I think the great moments are short like the film clips, and short like that beautiful light when the sun is going down. Brief and beautiful. When the sun has gone down and the air is cool, that handsome cat will get up, stretch, and go on to find a more comfortable seat.  

We have to pay attention to catch the beautiful today or it will pass us by, leaving us longing for it in the rear-view mirror.

click to tweet

I am practicing to remember to notice today.  I hope this post will remind you to look too. 

May your heart be fully warm and content in that lovely, brief moment.

>^-^<

Tina

The 'Fraidy Cat Appears

"Fraidy Cat-updated" 3"x 3" graphite on paper ©2015

 October, 2013.  It was an intense time.  My Mom had passed away in July, Dad had died the year before in August.  Jeff was graduating with his Masters Degree. We would be moving again soon, we didn't know where.  Along with the grieving, I felt very anxious. Change does that for me. 

All that year, I had been studying about how to start a business.  I really wanted to find a place for my art in the world, to do something good with it, but what?  Everything I read talked about creating a "brand", something that identifies you and your business.  Something that is uniquely you. "Good grief", I said to myself, "what could that possibly be?"  I don't really have a stunning artistic vision.  In fact, I often questioned whether I was a "real" artist.  I happen to like to paint flowers and cats most of the time. Occasionally a landscape, oh my, truly shocking, innovative stuff, I know. I thought about this question for weeks. 

One afternoon, I remember lying on the bed and just thinking about it.  What in the world do I do better than anything?  Then it hit me.  Fear.  I am the complete Mistress of Worry.  I am pretty much anxious about everything. Permanently.Terminally. Anxious. Since I was about six, the world has often seemed a scary place to me.  Anxiety attacks were standard, I just didn't have a name for them until I was 21.

I thought to myself "I am a complete "fraidy cat.".  I always hated being teased about that, but I decided I was finally going to "own it".   I did a quick sketch.  This little drawing reflected exactly what I felt like emotionally then, especially with all the new things I was facing.  I thought, I can talk to people about being afraid and what I have learned about moving forward.  Especially when it comes to creating.

My"Fraidy Cat-original" 1.5"x 1.5" pen on paper ©2013

  I can hear y'all saying.  "What are you talking about, Tina?  You've traveled all over, you've lived off the grid with no running water and built your own house for pity sake."  Yes, and I was often gut-wrenchingly frightened a lot of that time.  If I hadn't met and married Jeff, there is a pretty good chance I would have never left my parent's house.  Love doesn't completely cast out all fear, but it certainly helps!

So, that was 2013 and now it is 2015?  Exactly.  It has taken me that long to work up the courage  to open up and talk about this and maybe if I am lucky, I can help myself and some other people along the way too.  I believe creative expression in any form is a key part of being happy, at least it is for me. 

Disclaimer: Now, I know, there are truly horrible things that happen in the world when people have every right to be terrified.  I am not talking about those things.   I am talking about anxiety.   I realize I am not an expert or psychologist, but I have read and learned some good things from people who are.  I truly know that I don't know everything. ;0  Although, helpful suggestions are always appreciated.  :)

If you would like a list of the topics I am planning to cover this year, subscribe to the Confessions of a 'Fraidy Cat newsletter there on the right side of this page.

Happy Fear-less Year!  Thanks so much for reading.

>^-^<  Tina

Is Your Best Ever Good Enough?

"A Partridge in a Fir Tree" 3.5"x2.5" graphite

The sweet, sweet taste of low hanging fruit.   Do you ever allow yourself to enjoy it?  Are you wondering what I am referring to here?  What I am talking about is the concept of choosing a "course of action that can be undertaken quickly and easily as part of a wider range of choices or solutions to a problem." (thanks dictionary.com) 

It seems sensible enough, look at what you want to accomplish and take the easiest steps.   I didn't really think I had a problem with this until I started looking at what has been really holding me back in setting up an on-line business and also in sharing my paintings and music.  I want everything to be perfect and the best before I share it with anyone.

For example, this little drawing.  I have had this concept in mind all week to share on my blog, but hadn't actually put pencil to paper to create it, because I didn't think the idea was good enough and I thought I didn't have enough of the right photos to work from.   Once I got started, I didn't end up hardly using any photos.  Secondly, I didn't manage to get it painted first before my Monday blog deadline came around.   I wasn't going to share, and then I thought "this is the whole doggone point!"

You may have noticed my sign up for a newsletter on the side of the blog.  I have decided this year I want to confess and share my creativity hang-ups with the you, in the hopes that I can face them better myself, be accountable and perhaps inspire you to do the same.  Even better, it would be nice to get feedback so we can inspire each other.  I can't be alone in this fear.

If you are interested, please sign up.  I don't spam or share e-mails, and you can always unsubscribe any time.  'Fraidy Cats, unite!

The Odd Couple

"Odd Couple" 5"x 7"graphite sketch on paper, c. 2013 TMW

Does anyone remember the old tv show the "Odd Couple"?  The show was about two male friends, Felix and Oscar, whose wives had thrown them out of their respective houses.  Felix liked his space painfully neat and Oscar was absolutely messy– the tension between the two friends equaled fun for the viewing audience.

When I saw the picture of Dr. Iroh, the cat with the peaceful Buddha smile and Maiyu with her intense, wide open eyes,  I loved the contrast between the personalities of these two cat friends.  I have been purposefully looking for ideas and images that have that productive tension, that "what happens next?" part of the story that keeps us interested and watching to see what will happen.

I tried a sketch first to see if I thought the image would work as a painting.  The arrangement and lighting on the cats could be a challenge, but I did like the sketch enough to consider it.  Thanks again to Jackie Gratton for this cool photo of your cats that inspired me.

If anyone else has some "cool cat" pictures of their own they want to share with me, let me know.