Art in the Making by Jenny Armitage

The Magic Bowl (12 x12 inch watercolor) $175.00

In many ways this was really a challenge painting. It took me some trial and error to get just the right amount of detail in. The metal marbles show a myriad of tiny highlights, not just the major one on top the few side highlights I have shown. The color in the marbles showed considerably more graduations than I have included in the this painting. In fact the marbles had no hard lines at all. But with more detail, the marbles ceased to look three dimensional. So simplified and simplified and simplified.

The palette was: cobalt blue, phthalo blue, cadmium red, burnt sienna, hansa yellow light, and hansa orange.   I used hot-pressed paper.

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Short Story II (11 x 11 watercolor) $225.00

Same song,

Second verse,

Should get better,

But it’s gonna get . . . .

Actually I like the second verse better.  The dark background gives Short Story II a punch that Short Story I lacked.  And I admit that painting the pine cone magnified by the paperweight was just plain fun.

The palette for Short Story II is the same as Short Story I.  I used more transparent glazes in building up the forms.  And I mixed the paint on the paper rather than the palette.

The deep background began as a burgundy mixture of burnt sienna and quinacridarone deep red rose, but the didn’t provide the depth I was aiming for.  So I followed it with several dark  washes of phthalo blue.  Afterwords I had to correct the glass reflections to match the background.

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Short Story (10 x 14 watercolor) $175.00

It’s Spring here and my first daffodils are blooming. I’ve painted them here together with some of my favorite glass from the sun room. The box is an old cigar box I bought on Ebay.   I like the look and smell of cedar cigar boxes though I neither smoke nor like the smell of smoking.

This is the first traditional still life I’ve ever done. Placing and lighting the objects increased my respect for the art of still life. And I’m tempted to play with glass and flowers again soon.

I enjoyed painting the contrasts in texture between the wood, glass, and flowers. But if I try this again, I’d like to do something with a more dynamic composition.

The techniques I used were very straight forward. I reserved the highlights in the glass and then painted wet on dry, from light to dark. I used three blues, cobalt, phthalo, and cerulean. I used two reds burnt sienna and quinacridone deep red rose. I also used three yellows, hansa light which has a greenish cast, cadmium yellow, cadmium orange. I also used burnt umber to help darken the cigar box.

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Storm Off Trail Ridge (12 x 15 pastel) $150

My husband and I took a drive over Trial Ridge Road above Rocky Mountain National.  It’s a drive I remember fondly from my childhood.  But that late June day a storm was brewing.  I should have known.  Foul weather is perfectly normal in June, at 10,000 feet and even lower.  I have been snowed on backpacking in July at 7,000 feet.

But Stephen and I drove happily on.   We enjoyed the brisk cool weather and admired the clouds, ignoring their warning.  The later half of the drive was white knuckles all the way.  The coming storm brought so much snow and wind that we couldn’t see enough to turn around.  Road construction in progress but temporarily abandoned for the snow, added to the tension. We stopped with relief at would have been the half way point of the drive, the Visitor’s Center.   The Center has a lovely wall of windows for panoramic views.  But that day they showed white, white and white.   So we drove back down the way we had come, slowly carefully, tensely.  Twenty minutes later we were below the clouds and our experience was already becoming funny.

The I took photos for this painting at the last overlook before we should have turned back.  Shortly after that, all was white.

I used the rough side  Canson Mi-Teins gray paper for this painting. Mi-Tieins paper has a chicken wire looking texture on the rough side which I intended to use for texture in the foreground.  Like detail and warm colors, texture advances.

I began by blocking in the mountains, big and small in hard pastels.   I lowered  back range a little to emphasize  the looming foreground mountain.  In retrospect I could have brought it down even further.

Then I worked down and from left to right.  Once again I worked the sky in PanPastels:  phthalo blue tint, white, ultramarine, and magenta.  I added some blue and purple soft pastels as well. The back range of mountains came next beginning with dark blue shade and lightening it up until  it look far enough back.  The darker background hills came next.

Finally I added the mountain in dark blues and greens.  I used burnt sienna tint to add the lighter areas, but color contrasted oddly with the sky, so I added light violets and greens as well.  When I  got the mountain modeled to my satisfaction I added the trees with a final layer of dark green soft pastels which I applied lightly to allow the texture of the paper to show through.  Lower down some of the gray paper itself shows through.

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Washroom Gears (8 x 10) $75.00

Yes, this is another painting of the machinery at the Mission Mill Museum. The barrel and gears are part of the fleece washing machine. It not only washed the fleeces but also pulled them apart and removed the debris. There was a lot of debris. Wool is a magnet for sticks, and bark, and other messy things.

The washroom is a dark place. Only the machinery is lit which casts dramatic shadows over the metal. In keeping with the dark room, I used a very limited palette: phthalo blue, burnt sienna, and quinacridone deep red rose. I mixed little or nothing on the palette. The color is mixed either with multiple washes or by dropping one color into another.

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Dusk Falls on the Pumice Field (11 x 18) $175

This is my second pastel.  The subject is the pumice field on the west side of Crater Lake National Park, Oregon.  The light was beautiful and I loved the way it lit up the wildflowers in the foreground, which are visually insignificant at mid day.

The support is once again Canson Mi-Teiten paper.  This time I used the rough side.

I began at the top with PanPastels’ ultramarine blue, ultramarine blue tint, burnt sienna tint and white.  The rosy hills are mostly PanPastel too.   I used magenta, violet tint, burnt sienna, burnt sienna pint, and finally a stick of purple pink soft pastel.

The tree lines are soft pastels in various combinations of an ultramarine shade, a phthalo blue, a iron oxide stick and a dark green.  The grass and pumice fields are various combinations of burnt umber, red oxide, burnt sienna in PanPastel and soft pastel sticks.  I added the gold light last soft pastel.

I added the shadowy path leading out  the foreground with purples and blue soft pastel smudged over the pumice field.

I began the red flowers by using a soft  purple pastel stick  to make dark bases for them.  I smudged the bases in and them added PanPastel red plus a little PanPastel yellow and smudged again.  I accented  them with hard yellow pastel.

For the blue flowers I made a darker purple base and drew thin marks over it in light turqouse blue which I half smudged.  Then I added blue squiggles again and again half smudged.

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Fall Poplars (12 x 18) $125.00

I have admired pastels and mixed media with pastels for some time now.  There is a sparkly quality about pastels that no other medium can match.  Pastels over watercolors can create both spectacular and subtle effects.

My husband bought me pastels for Christmas, and I have been playing with them this last week.   Pastels are if  anything less forgiving than watercolor.  All color mixing must be done on the paper either optically or by smearing.  Pastel smears easily.  The paper holds only so much pastel before it suddenly won’t take anymore.   This last can be fixed somewhat, by using a workable fixative.  Some lifting is possible with a kneadable eraser.

The method is very different from watercolor too.  Working with them is a kind of cross between drawing and painting. Pastels are an opaque medium and therefore work best if the dark tones are blocked in first and the lights laid over them.  Highlight go on last. Nothing runs.  The chalk stays right where you put it until you smudge it.

I started this image on the rough side of a rose colored sheet of  Canson Mi-Tietens paper.   I laid in the sky with PanPastels.  PanPastels come in pots rather than sticks and they are highly pigmented and almost dustless.  Applying them is reminiscent of applying dry eyeshadow or rouge.  The top of the sky is phthalo blue. Further down I switched to ultramarine blue. Then I worked back up the sky from the horizon, overlaying the deep blue with ultramarine and phthalo tints (both of which are almost white).  I used white, and more of the blue tints to lay in the clouds.  Then I got out a violet soft pastel stick and added the deeper shadows smudging them in as I went.

I roughed in the far tree line with a dark blue shade of soft pastel.  I added a dark green shade lower down and smudged.  I pushed the pastel up into the sky with a sponge applicator.

Returning to PanPastels, I added the hills with turquoise blue shade and bright yellow green shade.  Burnt sienna came next.  Then I went back over the hills with a variety of green and brown soft pastels to create texture.  I smudged these in with my fingers.

Continuing with soft pastels, I drew in the poplar trunks first with a dark green gray and a red brown.  I added a lighter gray and then an almost white gray.   Then I added the leaves beginning with a dull orange, continuing with a brighter orange and finally a yellow orange.  I smudged the leaves on the farther tree to suggest a little distance.

With soft pastels I put in blue and purple shadows under the foreground trees to indicate the rough grass line.  I drew in the grass over the shadows with a variety of  hard pastels starting with the darker colors and continuing with the lighter ones.  I softened the lines with a finger.

After years of reserving or painting around the lighter colors, laying in the trees over the sky and grass felt like magic.

I enjoyed this.  Watercolor will remain my primary medium, but pastel has a rough sparkly quality I’d like.  Some images just seem to demand it.  I may also do some mixed media, painting a watercolor first before accenting it with pastel.

I ship my watercolors rolled in a tube or, if they or very small flat.  I provide free shipping for watercolors within the continental United States. Pastels cannot be safely rolled since they would smudge and they should be both matted and covered with a protective sheet.  Therefore, the shipping cost of my pastels will vary depending upon size.  All pastels will will include an acid free neutral colored mat and backing.

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Submerged I (9 x 12) $75.00

I’ve been experimenting with a couple of new methods.  These two paintings are the result.  Both are based on  some photos of trees half drowned by the swollen Willamette River I took  this weekend.  I wanted to catch the cold grayness of of the scene and the mystery of the half hidden trees.

Blowing:

I blew the trees.  I placed puddles of paint on the paper and blew them into trees with a straw.  The line of paint running out from the puddle  looks surprisingly like a tree limb.  And the direction the paint goes in is quite controllable.  But once the paint has started in one direction it’s hard to make it turn.  The paint follows the wet path as if it were a stream bed.  The solution is to drag a little paint in the direction you want to take it and thus start a new path.  Where the trees over-lap it’s important to let the first tree dry completely before starting the next, otherwise the paint form the new tree will run up the first tree.

There are several ways to vary the color in the tree.   Leaving the supply puddle partially unmixed is one. New colors can be blown into the wet tree from the base.  Accents and be directly painted onto the dry trees. I used all three methods on these paintings.

Layered Masking:

The second method is painting grass and bracken with multiple layers of mask.  Thin lines of mask establish the highlights.  Then color is applied.  Then more lines are applied. Then more mask for multiple layers.  When the mask is removed a complex texture is revealed.  I was less successful with this method.  It’s hard to see what you are doing or to guess the result.  More practice is needed.

I used layered mask in Submerged I.  But I didn’t like the results immediately.  The foreground was too busy and detracted from my trees, which then looked much like the trees in Submerged II.  After some thought, I painted over the trees in dark tones to match the foreground.  The result is an evening picture.

Submerged II (9 x 12) $75.00

For the second painting I added the foreground wet into wet.  The result is simpler and gives the feeling of the gray afternoon on the river.

The palette for both paintings is:  burnt sienna, phtholo blue and dioxion purple,  plus a dab of hansa yellow.

Original Paintings

Submerged I $75.00 Submerged II $75.00 Submerged I and II $140.00

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Spindles and Spools (11 x 14) $150

I love the Mission Mill Museum and we often take visitors there.  We took my parents over the Christmas holiday and I snapped some more photos inside the mill.  Neither flash nor tripods are permitted inside, so photography is a challenge.  But the dark photos have a genuine feel since there was very little electric light in the mill when it was operational.  Bulbs were few and far between and they were all under thirty watts.  Without it’s numerous windows, the mill would have been dark indeed.

The machinery in the woolen mill fascinates me.  It was made before modern safety rules and much more of the moving parts are exposed than in modern factories and many of the moving parts are wooden.  Worn wood has a special appeal and contrasted with meta, it’s warmth increases.

When the mill ran, it ran continuously, and it was important that there be no more interruption in the looms than absolutely necessary.  Therefore, the yarn awaiting the loom was arranged on separate racks awaiting attachment to a loom as soon as one became free.  The foreground of the painting is such a rack.  The rear shows the huge spools on which the yarn was stored.

I began by reserving the highlights and yard strings with removable mask.  I washed the yarn on the white spindles first with raw sienna and then added the shadows with various combinations of raw sienna, dioxazine purple (yellow’s compliment and therefore a good gray for shadows when mixed with raw sienna) and cobalt blue.    For the blue yarn I used cobalt blue dulled  with its compliment burnt sienna.

For the green metal rack I used various combinations of phthalo blue, raw sienna and burnt sienna.  I began by painting the grooves in light phthalo blue and then painted the background around them.  Finally I accented the grooves with dark green made from phthalo blue and raw sienna.

I painted the spindles and spools in various washes of burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw sienna, cobalt blue and phthalo blue.  The spindle tops and spool buttons are cobalt blue and raw sienna.  For the rims and deeper shadows I added dioxazine purple.

Finally I removed the mask and greyed down the yarn strings.

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Reeds at Sunset (11 x 15) $75.00

This is the Willamette again, but it could really be anywhere.  I was struck by the way the reeds look like they are growing out of a sunset.

Like the Broken Dock I painted a couple days ago, I began this painting by masking everything except the water.  After the mask on the reeds dried, I painting the sky’s refection on the still water wet into wet beginning with an overall wash of very diluted burnt sienna.   When the shine left the paper, I added various mixes of quinacridone deep red rose and new gamgee (yellow).  I used cobalt blue and burnt sienna to ad the darker clouds and phthalo blue for the water.

Once the  sky had dried, I removed the mask and painted the reeds in new gamgee, colalt blue, phthalo blue and burnt sienna.

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