Week Two Results & Start of Week Three

Above is a compilation of paintings five through ten, my second week's efforts. I want to reorganize them, but keeping them in chronological order makes sense.

I'm off to a great start on week three already.

11.

On Wallis, painted with Pans underneath to establish the values, then with sticks on top of that for the details.I'm fairly happy with this one. I like the underlying composition, and the shadows please me, but I didn't have the 'right' orange-red-yellow colors in my palette and found myself niggling over those strokes in ways that I dislike now. If I was going to paint it again I'd try to use more expressive, lush strokes for the flowers.


12.

Pastelmat and Pans, no sticks at all. I'm pretty stoked with this one. Mooooody. I like the shapes and the movement.

The sky and mountain are interesting and keep you going back there, but the foreground pops, too. I like the lights and the texture worked out well. The coup for me was handling the grays by using many layers of various colors. It's a real place, high up in the Rockies. Friends who do a lot of serious hiking took the photo and gave me permission to use it.

13.

On Pastelmat with Pans.It was an experiment to see if I could carry off the yellows. I might need to add more whites yet, but I like the boldness and simplicity of it. I pretty much made up the land plane, from a memory of colors seen around my (former) mountain home.

More to come. Your comments would be so valuable to me. Thanks!

Deborah Secor

deb@deborahsecor.com

The Challenge Goes On

I'm continuing my less-than-an-hour, 9x9" paintings. It's been fun getting back into the swing of painting fast! I recommend it to loosen you up.

My agreement with myself was that I would show the good and the bad, so here you are:

6.

On Wallis paper, toned a lavender color, using all my soft pastels again. It was interesting to go back to the sticks after using the Pans for several pieces, however quickly I painted. They seemed a bit...thick! Weird. I'll adjust soon enough, I'm sure, and with the new SpectraFix as a final coat the dust is minimized a lot. (Great stuff!)

My evaluation... Well, it's a bit stiff. I like the sky a lot. The turquoise touches in the lower mountain range are too blue, and the rusts might be a bit too vibrant there. But I stuck to the deal: less than an hour!

7.
Also Pans and sticks on Wallis. This one pleases me. I simplified the foreground enough to let you get out to the tree and the lavender flowers. I love the distant hills and field behind it. The color makes me happy. I like the underlying composition, too.

8.
Pans and sticks on Wallis. I'm not crazy about the greens in this. Too blue in the distance. The dark trees are drawing the eye a lot, but I don't want to overplay the darks in the fore so I've let them rest. If I switch the values so the darks are in the fore (making it more accurate to reality, that is) the balance changes in a way I don't like. I really like the orange-yellow-purple strokes, though, and the shapes make me happy.

9.
On Pastelmat. I held a class devoted to color and how it enhances mood, so this seemed like a natural one to do. Yes, you may recognize it as the same resource photo as #4, but done in reds.

I like it a lot. I painted on a canary yellow color that I like. It made the progress interesting, as I built the turquoise blues and lavenders over the yellow. I really like the foreground shapes and the smaller shapes in the lower sky. The color is fun (though I think I should blend the turquoise in the center more)--those red clouds really make me happy!


10. On Pastelmat, using sticks as the UNDER painting and Pans used on top! A bit of a switch, but I like it. I'm quite pleased with this one. I have a lot of experience painting these sunlit hills and I feel that this one really captures the essence of the light.

I like the blocky approach to the sky, and I'm quite taken with the colors in the foreground shadows and the little highlights hitting the tips of those branches. If any criticism, I'd say maybe the width of the shadowed area and the hills is too similar, but then again it's a 1/3, 1/3, 1/3 painting, and that's really not bad, IMHO. So basically I'm satisfied.

I'd love to know your reactions. Which one do you like best and why?

Deborah Secor

deb@deborahsecor.com

My Personal Challenge Continues...

Three more in my fast square paintings series. These three are on Pastelmat using only my PanPastels. Fun!


3.

I loved the light on the road curving away in the sunset in Santa Fe. I've tweaked it a little more in the mountain range, developing a bit more depth there, but kept soft.

4.

This is such a simple composition, but effective, I think. The light on the clouds pleases me a lot.

5.

The arch of the clouds focuses you down on those bright clouds over the mesa and mountains.

Below are all five, in order. I'd be curious to know which ones you think work the best...

More are coming soon! Stay tuned.

Deborah Secor

deb@deborahsecor.com

My Challenge to Myself

I decided I need to loosen up and get free again, so I'm doing what I always suggest to my students--do fast paintings, limiting the time, working on one size, and just letting loose! I decided to do five paintings a week from now through the end of May, for a total of 15 paintings. I chose 9x9"" because I have 9x12" Crystal Clear bags and can fold one side. I like the odd size, too. And I'm working on different kinds of paper, using different media, but mostly pastel, I suspect.


1.
This is from a photo taken up near Abiquiu, which is Georgia O'Keeffe country, you might remember. I like the bold colors and the purple rocks. It might need a bit more sense of depth, but it pleases me nonetheless.

I decided to work on my last piece of Clairefontaine paper, which a friend send me from Europe. I found it works remarkably well with PanPastels. The pads and foam brushes really grab this soft paper! I wanted to use the Pans to keep things quite unstructured. I've always believed it was best to use the largerst 'brush' (or pastel stick) I could for as long as possible, so these big spongey pads function nicely in this role.


2.

This one is on a piece of mat board that a student of mine coated with pumice. You can see the strokes in the sky. I wiped out a painting, leaving a soft grayed-lavender color behind everything, which I think worked. I like the softness of the shadows.

More when I get to them!

Deborah
deb@deborahsecor.com

Back to pastels....

This painting is 9x12", and is painted on a pale gray color. I used a photograph I found in the Reference Image Library at WetCanvas and interpreted it my way. It didn't take me more than 45 minutes to paint what you see. I hope you like it!

Rushing
$200 + actual shipping (unframed)

Deborah Secor
deb@deborahsecor.com

From my sketchbook, plus...

Windswept Grays

As you can see this one is in my little 3.5 x 5.5" Moleskine watercolor sketchbook. The image itself is 2 x 3.5". The color of the close-up is closer to the real thing, but I wanted you to see how small it is in real life. I enjoyed playing with the back-lighting on the cloud, and in this case I think the white paper made it work pretty well. (However, I use black masking tape, so when I'm painting the image looks like it's on black paper, in a way. It's interesting to remove the tape and have a nice white 'mat'.)

I must learn how to make these images a little closer to squared up! I never could find level or plumb without a ruler...

Fiery Winter Day

I've painted frequently from this favorite photo that I took alongside the highway in the Taos Canyon a long time ago. I love the reds and oranges of the winter willows and the dormant tree adds a lot of drama, too. This one is 3.5 x 2" in size.

In case you wonder, no, the sketches in my Moleskine are not for sale. I only sell the ones that are loose. Maybe one of these days I'll have the whole sketchbook for sale, but at present I don't plan that. These are just for me to enjoy doing, although someone suggested I consider making a book of my sketches and sell it on one of those POD printers like Lulu.com. I kind of like that idea! We'll see.

Cottonwood Morning, $20 delivered in the US

This is on Somerset Black Velvet. I decided to discipline myself and cut some paper in different sizes, to challenge myself not to make everything random in size--a sign of my hasty nature! So this image is 4.5 x 3" in size. (Now, tell me why I thought that wasn't random! LOL I don't know!)

The place is Elena Gallegos again, a hiking area nestled at the foot of the Sandia Mountains. I liked the light on the tree and grasses, which particularly please me here. I think I really caught the textures of the grasses and the black paper works very well.

Deborah Secor

deb@deborahsecor.com

This little gouache painting is only 4.5 x 3.5" in size. It's from a photo I took long ago up in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, in a hiking area called Elena Gallegos. It was early in the day and the scent of dew was still fresh. There's an aroma to the chamisa I just love. The sandy soil has a crunchy sound to it, too. The long, leafy vines you see trailing out are actually datura or jimson weed, which is common around here. (Think of the big white flowers that Georgia O'Keeffe painted!)

I managed to layer a few colors back into the path that worked well, I think. Gouache has a habit of rewetting, so you can paint a new layer and the colors can remis a bit. I wanted the blue of the shadows to recede, being darker in the foreground and paler and somewhat bluer farther away. I thnk it worked!

Sandia Pathway, $20, delivered to your door (as long as you are in the USA and a 42 cent stamp--oops, 43 cents soon, will get it to you. )

This gouache painting is similar in size, 3.5 x 5", and is a favorite place of mine. My friend Maggie Price dubbed it "Annoying Arroyo", because at the time she had a little trouble with it (since mastered, as you can imagine!) It's actually where San Pedro Creek crosses Highway 14, although the creek isn't in this view. It was a hot summer day, high sun, and the chamisa and little mesita made such a nice contrast of colors.

San Pedro Mesita, also $20, as above.

Deborah Secor

deb@deborahsecor.com