Winter Cornfield, Blue Barn

© Robin Edmundson, 'Winter Cornfield, Blue Barn', watercolor, 10 x 14 inches.
Framed to 18 x 22 inches.  $375

Here's what I like about our winters:

• They're varied.  This has a negative flipside when it comes to things like beekeeping, but mostly it makes things really interesting.
• There's a lot of green.   The fiddlehead ferns in the woods are evergreen, as are the southern red cedars.  Then there are the lowest layers of grass in the fields, and the moss on the trees [and the north side of most houses/roofs]
• Willow tips turn gorgeous reds in the winter and get brighter as the weather warms in the spring. 
• Cornfields retain a lot of gold all winter long and can really glow when the light is right.
• Last year's little blue stem and wild petunia plants turn the most gorgeous orange.  You can see it in all the hayfields, roadside ditches and windbreaks. 
• The old gray tobacco barns turn blue - it's probably because the old rusty roofs really show their orange this time of year.
• Oaks and young beeches hang onto their leaves most of the winter.   Beautiful russets, rich browns all season long.

Right now I'm loving the quieter palette of a southern Indiana winter.

Red Barn

© Robin Edmundson, 'Red barn, cornfields', 18 x 22 inches framed. 

Usually the barns out here are set close-ish to the house, but occasionally, you'll see one up on a hill all lonely.   Often these were old tobacco barns or hay barns.  The doors on both sides allow for equipment to be pulled all the way in and unloaded, then driven out again.    I love it when both sets of doors are open.

This piece is 18 x 22 inches framed.  $350.   It will be hanging in my show in August and September.

September Cornfields

Every week I drive to Clay City, Indiana for work and one of the things I love about the drive is the range of rural landscapes that I see through the seasons.   I'm always inspired by something that I see.  Always.

The past couple of weeks, I've been watching the cornfields and so I painted this piece.   The cornfields out here are the first things to turn colors in the fall.   From early September until late October the colors are spectacular.   I'm hoping to be painting a lot of autumn inspired pieces over the next couple of months.   At the very least I'll be taking photos for reference later.  

I'm developing a painting 'process'.  I paint like I write.   In the first draft I get down the main idea and I play with a few options.  It's messy and ugly.  Then I start refining and adjusting and trying new things in the next drafts.   I've done as many as 15 drafts of the same landscape.   I stop when I've learned what I need to learn or when I get something I really like.

This is only the third draft of this particular piece and I'm really quite happy with it.  I learned what I needed to learn and I don't need to do another draft of it.   In this last edit I made the sky a much brighter blue to really emphasize that cloud and to balance all those bright golds.   I also added a dark shadow on the road from the corn so that the day would look really bright.    I strengthened the darks in the front at the base of the corn and at the back behind the cloud of dust on the road behind the bus. The roof on the house was originally dark green.   I asked Claire for feedback and she said I needed some red, so I changed the roof to red, which made the house a better focal point and an obvious destination for the bus and the eye.