The Classic Oregon Lighthouse … Again!

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C1602

"Summer Morning Shadows & Low Tide at Heceta Head Light"

(Oregon Coast)

Oil on Panelli Telati Linen Panel

with additional Coat of Rublev Lead Ground

6" x 8"

Click here to make this your Own

Friday afternoon rolled around after a couple of very bland days on the coast and it was time to attend the Artists Preview of the Coos Art Museum Annual Maritime Show.  It is always enjoyable and what with seeing and chatting with friends and acquaintances, I’m always hard pressed to make it around to see the actual paintings themselves.  Several of the artists have made it to Britain more recently than I have been able to do, and it was nice to recognize familiar places in their paintings.  After all too brief a time we repaired across the road to the Mexican restaurant, where I searched the menu for the delicious dish I had discovered the year before, and was determined to have again should I find it; after perusing the novel-sized menu for awhile I was pretty sure I found it and ordered the Shrimp Monterey, I believe it was called.  It is a half dozen shrimp wrapped in bacon presented on a bed of rice, with refried beans on the side, and the usual trimmings to be found in such salubrious establishments.  It lived up to me recollections. 

The next day was the official private view and between this viewing and that of the night before I managed to see everything.  I was pleased to see that mine looked good on the wall … what you have to remember is that most of my career I have been a painter in Watercolour and I have only seen a very few of my Oil Paintings in an exhibition setting.  Even with my familiarity with Watercolour I am always surprised how those look once they are matted, and again once they are under glass and in their frames, and finally when they are up on the wall; the same happens with Oils, I see, and the good thing about the Oils is that I don’t have to go through the nerve-wracking exercise of glass cleaning.  Anyone who assembled a Watercolour or a print under glass will know what I mean.  I mean, how many times have I cleaned he glass; placed the matted Watercolour on the glass; turned it all over; placed the frame on to it and turned it over; shoved a few pins around the edge; turned it back over to inspect it to make sure that no flecks of dust or stray hairs have shot under the glass before you push in the rest of the pins and taped the back, only to find some nefarious desperadoes of the dusty persuasion have insinuated themselves under the glass, no doubt laughing all the way?  How often?!!  Let’s just say that I’m enjoying framing Oils.  After a time looking at the works and more chatting with and meeting people, we all sat down to the private view banquet, which is free to us artists, and being a port town the provided fare was seafood heavy, and so delicious. 

After the banquet I drove up the coast to my clearing in the old growth forest near Heceta Head Light that I know about, and camped for the next few nights and painted.  I know, I know … I’ve painted the above view before (here), but it is the classic Oregon lighthouse view, and I can’t resist it if I spend any time painting hereabouts.  Of course this is only the second time that this view has appeared in this journal, but it is the sixth time I have set down this view in paint, both in Watercolour & Oil.  This time it is a Summer Morning.  I no doubt will paint it again.

Imprimatura: Venetian Red.

Block-in: French Ultramarine.

The Pigments used were:  Rublev Blue Ridge Yellow Ochre, Italian Burnt Sienna, with Winsor & Newton Cerulean, Cobalt & French Ultramarine Blues, Venetian Red, and Cremnitz & Titanium Whites.

Summer Winds

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C1599

"A Light in the Storm"

(Oregon Coast)

Oil on Centurian Oil Primed Linen Panel

with additional Coat of Williamsburg Lead Ground

5" x 7"

Click here to make this your Own

Weather-wise I could have well stayed up in the Coast Range, as when I finally arrived in Bandon, six days after my intention to be there, I could see the usual Summer winds were up.  If you were following these postings from their inception last Summer, you might remember that on this central & southern Oregon Coast the winds in Summer are usually strong, from the north (and therefore cold), and fairly incessant.  Thus they were upon my arrival late in the day after I had left my charming forest road campsite high in the Oregon Coast Range, and toddled into Bandon.  The next day, however, they had dissipated, but a dull overcast had set in.  This would normally not have prevented my painting on the shore, but once down on the beach, and while looking for a spot to paint, I noticed that the sands had shifted from what they had been last Summer … deeper and therefore the low tide was further out past sea-stacks that I had never been able to walk around on past visits to Bandon.  Considering the bland lighting of the overcast, and this new configuration of the sands, I decided to concentrate taking photographs and making pencil sketches in my pocket sketchbook.  The Oil Painting above was done from one of my drawings in that sketchbook, and is shown below.

While rapidly jotting down this pencil sketch, I had in mind that I would use it as the basis for a dramatic storm with crashing waves.  This is the type of drawing I consider as informational note taking, as are many of the drawings in this pocket sketchbook.  This is one of those sketchbooks where I had cut and folded the paper into sections and then had a professional bookbinder in Cornwall, England bind it together; I had about twenty of various sizes bound at the same time, eleven years ago.  Not cheap but now I have sketchbooks bound with the various papers (some handmade), that I most enjoy working on.  This is a Fabriano Ingres paper, 160 gsm in weight; I love the way a laid* paper takes the graphite, when drawing.  The day after the drawing was done I worked up the Oil Sketch from my Pencil Sketch, as the cloud cover continued and the wind came up again … the Sun did come out later … still breezy.

Imprimatura: Venetian Red.

Block-in: French Ultramarine.

The Pigments used were:  Rublev Blue Ridge Yellow Ochre, Italian Burnt Sienna, with Winsor & Newton Cobalt & French Ultramarine Blues, Venetian Red, and Cremnitz & Titanium Whites.

* A laid paper is one where you can see the laid lines (the close parallel lines), and the chain lines (parallel lines wider spaced and 90 degrees to the laid lines), indented in the paper, from the screen used during the paper making process.  A wove paper does not have these lines and is what you find as the surface of normal writing or printing paper.

Forest Road in the Coast Range

(Take Note: for those of you who have signed up to be notified by email of new postings to this blog, you have been receiving not just a notification, but an actual copy of the new blog posting as the email.  As this does not show the images of the paintings in the best possible light, you should click on the title of the latest blog posting at the top of the post, and not the title of the painting itself; this will open up the actual blog itself, and you may then enjoy the paintings at their best.)

C1598

"Forest Road in the Coast Range"

(Oregon)

Oil on Ampersand Gesso Panel

5" x 7"

Click here to make this your Own

I moved camp a further five miles into the Oregon Coast Range onto a spur a half mile onto a side road.  Again I had views of the open sky and forested slopes from here, although these are a little behind me in the opposite direction as seen in this painting of the forest road.  The previous campsite was directly on the main forest road, and though sparse there was occasional traffic passing by.  This new campsite is a bit more secluded, and the three days & nights I stayed here only one vehicle appeared up where the road disappears in the painting, just as the sun was sinking below the horizon.  It reversed and no doubt found some other place to set up camp.  I am always on the lookout for the chance to capture a forest road in paint; all too often there is no place to set up and paint, but this was one of the good ones, where I could camp and paint.  The deer came browsing along while in the midst of my working on this, so I dabbed them in.  Actually there was only one, but I preferred there to be two (painters can do this, since we are Artists, and not reporters … we move things around, for example rocks or trees, and might selectively eliminate something altogether ... or put something in that was not there).  To watch her slowly strolling down the road, browsing on the vegetation along the verge, was enjoyable … and peaceful.  She came about as far as is depicted in the painting, and then decided that she wasn’t sure about what the obstruction in the road ahead was all about, and after studying me for awhile, she slowly reversed direction and browsed back up the lane.  I never moved so as not to frighten her, and so she never bolted, just decided that wariness was the better part of valor.  I’m always surprised how large their ears are … almost Mickey Mouse ears.  I love days like this.

I had to work on this on two consecutive days.  I tend to forget how slippery the paint is on these gesso panels if I haven’t previously applied a layer of lead ground, or if I don’t use an Alkyd Medium in the early stages, so that later in the process the paint will grab a bit more.  I got so far on what I might call and underpainting or a block-in on the first day, and packed it in until the next day when that first layer gripped the ensuing brush strokes a bit more, and thus more pleasing to work with.  The deer appeared during this second day.  I could have stayed longer at this campsite, but I thought I had better get on down to Bandon, and see what I might find on the coast … also I had emailed my friends and told them I probably would turn up to camp on their property six days earlier … it was time I made an appearance down there.

Imprimatura: Venetian Red.

The Pigments used were:  Rublev Blue Ridge Yellow Ochre, Italian Burnt Sienna, with Winsor & Newton Cobalt, Cerulean & French Ultramarine Blues, Venetian Red, and Cremnitz & Titanium Whites.  The brighter greens are again a mixture of Yellow Ochre and Cerulean Blue … no Cadmiums used in the greens except for the touches of yellow flowers.

Early Morning in the Coast Range

(Take Note: for those of you who have signed up to be notified by email of new postings to this blog, you have been receiving not just a notification, but an actual copy of the new blog posting as the email.  As this does not show the images of the paintings in the best possible light, you should click on the title of the latest blog posting at the top of the post, and not the title of the painting itself; this will open up the actual blog itself, and you may then enjoy the paintings at their best.)

C1596

"Early Morning in the Coast Range"

(Oregon)

Oil on Raymar Portrait Quality Linen Panel

6" x 8"

Click here to make this your Own

And the mists gathered in the valleys and folds of the Oregon Coast Range and rolled over the high ridges as the sun arose in the northeast.  Another beautiful morning and I stayed put and worked on this painting on the 4^th of July, attempting to capture the feel of what I had seen for two consecutive mornings.  There were elk feeding in the valley immediately below, although to see them I had to walk past the stump on the left in this painting and look over the edge; I doubt they remained there during the day … wouldn't know ... I was busy painting. 

The fireworks I had seen on the evening of the 3^rd were observed in the saddle of the far ridge.  I was surprised by another display the evening of the 4^th, when they appeared to the left of the left-hand hill of the far ridge saddle.  I found out later in the week, when I attended the private view of the Coos Art Museum Maritime Show, that one evening the fireworks were at the casino and the other evening on the harbour front at Coos Bay.  Again, being nine or ten miles away, they were perfect through my binoculars, after a fine leisurely meal and interspersed with watching Venus & Jupiter sliding into the west and the Moon rising in the east.

You might think that in this painting I may have used a split palette as mentioned in the previous post of the Evening in the Coast Range, but no … it is my usual palette of earth pigments and the blues; it shows what can be done with coloured muds.  Of course the foxgloves and yellow flowers are dabbed in with the brighter pigments (W& N Cobalt Violet, Rose Madder Genuine, Cadmium Yellow Pale), but since they are incidentals to the main body of the painting, I don’t list them in my pigments information below.  Incidentally, even though I posted the Evening in the Coast Range before this painting, I actually did that one a day later … It took awhile for my signature to dry on this one before I could scan it. 

Imprimatura: Venetian Red, over the whole surface, not only where the ground is as I did in the last posted work.

The Pigments used were:  Rublev Blue Ridge Yellow Ochre, Italian Burnt Sienna, with Winsor & Newton Cobalt, Cerulean & French Ultramarine Blues, Venetian Red, and Cremnitz & Titanium Whites.