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.

Winter Bean Field

© Robin Edmundson, 'Winter Bean Field', watercolor, 10 x 14 inches.
Framed 18 x 22 inches, $375

I've been really studying our winter fields this year.  Cornfields retain a lot of gold, even after harvest.  Bean fields turn luscious umbers.   On cloudy, misty days, the woods, clouds and shadows turn all the shades of purple.  The subtleties are breathtaking and make for interesting play in the studio. 

Shed & Redbud

© Robin Edmundson 'Shed, Redbud & Chickens', watercolor, 10 x 14 inches.  $375, framed.

One of the great things about being an artist is that we get to - [we are encouraged to!] - change reality so we get a better painting.  I love doing the same scene in different ways.   

You saw the first version of this in the previous post.  I decided to put a redbud in behind the shed because redbuds are *everywhere* out here.  They mean spring is in full swing.

A little secret about my chickens.  I come from a family with a lot of girls.  6 chickens is me, my sisters and my mom.  5 chickens is me and my sisters.  3 chickens is me and my daughters.  Whenever you see chickens in my artwork, you know I've put my family in there.

January Thaw - Fog

© Robin Edmundson, 'January Thaw - Fog', watercolor, 14 x 10 inches.  $375, framed to 22 x 18 inches.

I forgot to post this one when it was fresh, but we're still seeing weather like this  --- super cold for a few days followed by warm rain.    The damp brings out the color in the field grasses and the bramble canes.  I love that.

Fog, fog, fog. 

Geese Flying

© Robin Edmundson, 'Geese Flying', watercolor, 10 x 14 inches.  $375

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Three Red Cows

© Robin Edmundson, 'Three red cows', watercolor, framed 18 x 22 inches.   $350.

I think a lot about limited palette studies.   Choose just a few colors and use only those for the whole painting.   It's easy for winter studies, not so easy for summer studies.   For this one I chose Azo Green, Indigo and Pyrrol Orange.   Basically a red/yellow/blue.   As I was contemplating the composition, I knew the cows had to be red so red they are.

It was fun to really look at cows to paint them.   What I usually see in the fields nearby are big black blobs with tails.  Then there was that one time when the neighbor's cow escaped into one of our fields close to the house.  I looked out and saw what I was sure was a dinosaur passing between the trees.  [I'm a sheep person, not a cow person]  Of course that might have had something to do with having just seen all of the Jurassic Park movies.   [#1 and #4 are my faves]

At any rate, since I am not a cow person, I had to really look at cows for the first time.   One of the things I love about painting is that it forces me not to just see something, but to really look at it.

A Kettle of Vultures

© Robin Edmundson, 'A Kettle of Vultures - Study', watercolor, 10 x 14 inches. 

This was a quick study of the way the light went through the bottoms of some trees in the fields the other day - and a study of a kettle of vultures flying around.   We see these often out here and it's mesmerizing to watch them fly the updrafts.   It's one of our favorite things about living in deep country.  

There are some things I want to correct in the next draft of this piece, but there's something I really love about this study.   I keep coming back to it.  

Is it the light?   The motion of the birds in the sky?   Everyone in the family has had that reaction...there's something compelling in this one.

I'll be working on this idea again.

Double Trees - An exercise in correction

© Robin Edmundson, 'Double trees', watercolor on paper, 9 x 14 inches.

I started this piece a few weeks ago just playing around with a composition of two sets of two trees.  I liked the trees, parts of the sky and some of the colors.  Then I set it aside because I really didn't like the foreground.

Then I took Sue Webb Tregay's 'Master Disaster' workshop in Indianapolis, which taught all the techniques in her fabulous book.   I came back and pulled this painting out and went to work.

I loved the trees the most, so I cropped out some of the sky to make the trees a better focus for the piece.  

The purple in the foreground had been MUCH stronger, so I took a lot of it out and  also some of the French ultramarine along the background fields.  

The bottom had been a weak gold, and I loved the stronger gold in the trees, so I layered on more of the strong gold in the bottom foreground.

It's a much better piece now and I'll be happy to hang it.

Painting for the Trash Can

I read a great piece by Jean Haines recently about painting for the bin.   At the beginning and end of every studio day, she pulls out a scrap piece of paper and just plays.   She knows it's going in the trash anyway, so she feels free to risk it all and just put the paint and water on the paper.   No pressure.

I feel a lot of pressure.   Pressure not to waste time.  Not to waste supplies.  Not to suck.  Pressure to make Great Art.   To make Frame-able Art.  To make Sell-able Art.  Blah, blah, blah. So I was really glad to read that article on painting for the trash can.

And I went out to the studio and pulled out a good piece of paper and just played. I started in one corner and I tried some  new things.   The first one was Awful. [Owl]  The next one not so bad.  [Rose a la Jean Haines].  The next one really cool [Abstract in wild and crazy colors].  The last one was a quasi landscape - my first love is landscapes - with a lot of wet on wet practice.  

I looked at the last one and pulled out a new piece of paper and a big brush that I almost never use - 1" flat.  It's like painting with a wrench.  I had been thinking about the color around here this time of year.  Lots of black eyed susans, iron weed, blue mist flower, and grass, grass, grass.  Lots of clouds in our skies.  Lots of trees because hello this is Indiana.

I started with foreground and painted a field, wet in wet with all the colors I see.  I didn't worry about it being good, I just played with the color and the water.

Then I did the sky.  I love painting clouds.  We've been really looking at clouds this year, noticing how most of the time they look pretty fake.  If I painted clouds that looked like that, people would tell me I need to practice a lot more.  Often lately, someone in the family will message me a pic - Look at these fake clouds!  It's fun.  And it reminds me just to Go For It.    Keep it WET.  Leave some WHITE.  Define later with 2 or 3 more colors.

And then I realized that the sky did not touch the field.   It needed trees.   My heart knew it so it told my brain and my hand to leave some space for it.

My one goal was to make a really interesting tree line, because I've gotten so good at simplifying the shapes that my tree lines are boooring.    And I wanted to keep using that 1" flat because I knew it would be hard to make 'good' trees, which meant I'd have to be creative.

I mixed up a bunch of greens and took a deep breath and dove on in.   And what came out was a really interesting tree line.

In the end this was a very satisfying session because my brain was engaged, but not constrained.  There was low risk and high creativity.   I have enough stuff in my bag of technique tricks that I didn't get really frustrated or stalled.   It was loose without being too abstract.  I looks like a field and trees and sky.  It was fun.   It feels like my voice, finally.   I don't know that I've 'found my style', but I did sing my own song with this one.  It'll be interesting to see if I can catch that flow again soon.

Autumn Shed

In the fall, stuff shows up against the backdrop of trees that you normally can't see - or don't notice.  Once the trees turn, my attention turns, too.  

I noticed this abandoned shed in a field along a road I travel often enough.   Maybe it was the light, or the fact that the shed matched the color of the sky that day, but it finally caught my eye.    Only after I got home and checked the pics did I notice all the windows and that it is more cabin-like than shed-like.   I wonder what the story is.

Color

Happy Wednesday!

The fall colors are really starting to show.  I hope you get outside to enjoy them.

Barn Across Wheat Field

A lot of farmers here have been growing winter wheat, especially since the big drought last year that left thousands of acres of corn withered and gray in the fields last summer.   The wheat ripens in June and makes a beautiful foil for the old barns. 

UPDATE 10:15am:   A couple of people have mentioned how this photo reminds them of Christina's World - a painting by Andrew Wyeth.   I admit I'd never heard of it, so I looked it up.   Very interesting painting and story.

Fields of Yellow Flowers

On the way out of Worthington, Indiana on Hwy 157,  just at a turn in the road, there is a huge field of yellow flowers. 

They look like yellow coneflowers to me, with some aster and purple coneflower in the mix.    I don't know if they've sown it for pleasure or to harvest seed.

In any case, it's beautiful.   From both the front and the back.  Here's the back

Winter Fields

This is a field down the way from us.  It is an old farm, with a huge barn and the biggest chicken house I've ever seen on a small farm.    There's a chance it was a pig house instead of a chicken house - hard to tell, as it sits way back on the property away from the road.   Either way, I'd love to have seen it back in the day when it was full of critters and the farm was prosperous.