9 x 12               Oil

These are the other two miniatures I recently finished painting of Lake Whitehurst in Norfolk.   I’ve enjoyed doing these so much I’ve decided keep painting in this size for a while.

I’m still working on miniatures – inspired by the miniature exhibit at Charles H. Taylor and the upcoming one for Tidewater Art Alliance I suppose.

I recieved a very kind offer last month to take some photographs of Lake Whitehurst.   It was still a little early for the fall tree colors and I plan on taking more photos even though the Nor’easter last week blew away most of the beautiful fall leaves in my nieghborhood and most likely at Lake Whitehurst too.   In the meantime I’ve been working on these little miniatures.   There are two more in this series.   Then I will be moving on to some medium size paintings of the Lake, the 9″ x 12″ or 11″ x 14″ range.

These are the last work I did at Art in the Carolinas on Sunday morning before I returned to Norfolk.   It was fun and lively doing these warm up exercises with Bob Burridge in acrylic.   I can see the benefit of doing these to loosen up at the start of every day.   Good habits, painterly attitudes and creative inspiration were plentiful at the conference this year and I greatly appreciated both the break from the excitement of Norfolk’s flooding and all the painting fun.

I’m catching up today.   I tried to remember to take everything I needed when I went to Carolina this past weekend.   I remembered everything except the power cord to my computer.   I’m back in Norfolk and the computer is finally all together and charged up.

I spent last Saturday morning playing with watercolors with Linda Kemp and made these two small paintings.   It was good to get back into watercolors.   I had way too much fun doing these.   I love this approach to what Linda calls ‘dreamscapes’, the kind of landscapes you remember from your dreams.   I can’t wait to do more of these.

A couple of weeks ago I was in Hampton painting en plein air with some fellow Hampton Art League members.    It was great fun and I always appreciate the camaraderie among the artists.    The Norfolk Paint Out is next weekend, October 22 – 24 (find more info at www.studiosatmonticello.com).   The following weekend there will be another paint out in Hampton, this time in honor of the city’s 400th anniversary.   I’ll post more information about the event once I get all of the details.

The first painting here was at the end of a side street in downtown Hampton that backs up to the Hampton River – I won’t be able to remember exactly what street unless I go back to Hampton and find it – it may have been at the end of East Sunset.  

I loved the way the morning light was hitting the white building and how all of the shadows from the tree seemed to danced across it.   As I was painting a young family came up to find out and if I was from the city and taking a survey or something.   They wanted to know because they were trying to rent the building for their work.   I told them who I was and what I was doing and they were satisfied.   Maybe an hour later the young woman came back.   She wasn’t interested in my piece but she wanted to ask my opinion about the looks of the building.   I guess there had been shutters that she had taken down and she still wasn’t sure doing so had made the building look better.   I couldn’t help her as I had never seen the building before.   I do think its a great little building with a lot of character though.

These are four miniature paintings I did en plein air while I was in Nags Head last week.   It was sunny, humid and warm most of the week, but the last two days were over cast and stormy and so I hit the beach with my painter’s box to capture some mood.   ‘Old Nags Head I’ was painted in the afternoon one day and ‘Old Nags Head II’ the next morning.   By the time I painted the fisherman standing in the surf the wind had picked up so much I couldn’t stand outside to paint.   So I set up my paint box just inside the sliding glass doors to the balcony and stood in the door way while I painted.   It was great getting out there and doing some en plein air painting, especially since a couple plein air events are coming up this next month.   Charles H. Taylor (4205 Victoria Drive, Hampton, VA /727 – 1490) is sponsoring a paint out this coming Saturday, October 3 with a Critique, Wine and Cheese Reception and Wet Paint Sale from 4:15 to 5:30 p.m. that afternoon.

And the big one is the Out and About Norfolk paint out at the end of the month.   Artists will be painting around Norfolk on Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23 and on Saturday evening, October 24 there will be a reception, awards ceremony and sale of art work created during the paint out.

A Lovely Pose Today

This was a lovely pose, the model bathed in morning light.

I finished this painting today – its not signed yet - and took a quick photo before I left the studio.   I’ve been doing a lot of work with graphite, ink and colored pencils lately so painting in oils this week has been lucious for me.