Saturday, October 29, 2011

A SPLASH OF FALL COLOR by Cecelia Lyden www.cecelialyden.com

oil/canvas


11x14


Squeezed between a cold, rainy day on Thursday and a cold, snowy day on Saturday was a cold, partially sunny day on Friday. Our plein air group decided to seize that day and we headed for Willow Park. I shivered for most of the time we were there, but we managed to find a spot of color by the creek and, once again it was so nice to be out painting with friends.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

CLOUDS REVISITED www.cecelialyden.com


















































































Lately my "head has been in the clouds." Clouds make such beautiful, interesting paintings. Sunrises and sunsets are much more dramatic when there are clouds in the sky. And there have been so many cloud-filled days this summer and fall; it has been difficult to avoid them, when painting outdoors.


It is a challenge to paint shifting, moving clouds en plein aire. Not only are their shapes rapidly changing, but also the varying lights and shadows that their movement produces is difficult to capture. For those reasons, most of my paintings of clouds have been done in studio-all from photos I have taken. It helps not to have to deal with lights and darks changing throughout the painting, while attempting to see and record the different values and colors in the clouds themselves. I try to keep my brushwork loose in order to convey those fleeting and changing shapes. I also attempt to convey the sense of cloud movement across the sky.




The skies in the paintings above were in the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Florida, and Arizonia.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN



www.cecelialyden.com




oil on panels

6x8

9 x12

Claire Carnell, however, made it easier to produce greens by demonstrating, in her Green Workshop, how to mix many shades and tints of greens used in landscape painting. Creating the dreaded color charts, Claire showed us how to mix marvelous greens using ultramarine and thalo blue, cad yellow medium, cad lemon yellow, cad red light, alizarin crimsen and white.
After mixing the greens, we painted from 2 photos that Claire knew contained the greens we had been mixing. We painted those scenes and compared and critiqued each other's works. It was 2 days of learning, painting, accomplishing, and fun.