Dear friends and visitors,

I am very pleased to report that these newer paintings of mine have been very well received lately! I put four of them in a show this past weekend and sold two! Not only that, I received a commission to do three more! I have been selling the wool bags and getting steady commissions from that, as well.

The two that sold are Green Forest and Birch 2. The two that are still available, now framed in a beautiful cherry wood, are Shadows and Ocean in Black. The price for each of those is $160.00 and $100.00, respectively. If you are interested in making a purchase, let me know ASAP. I am happy to ship to you, insured, of course.

Soon, I will be creating my first ever Holiday card. A s soon as it is complete, I'll post it here!

Don't forget to visit my website. It's been updated recently with new information. I have not posted any classes yet but am working on a few ides for the winter and spring. I originally thought I'd cease to teach for the winter. After many requests to offer something, I am reconsidering my decision. Stay tuned for details!

Also, I have a new fundraising partnership to announce. I have partnered with the Exeter Historical Society to offer Home & Garden Portraits. For any member who commissions a work from me, 15% of the commission goes to the historical society! Two other organizations are considering the same program, Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary and the Historical Society of Old Newbury. If you are a member of any of these three groups, consider a Home & Garden Portrait for yourself or as a gift for someone special. My website has a description of my approach to Home & Garden Portraits as well as samples in my portfolio. If you have any questions about my work, don't hesitate to contact me.

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I'm going hiking and plan to eat my dinner on the summit of Mount Kearsarge with my daughter, husband and dog. I hope your day is most enjoyable.

Kindly,
Sandy

Hello all! I have three new images to post. I was at the Ipswich River Watershed Association's property in Ipswich this past Saturday. Nine people showed up to sketch that day...what a terrific turn out! It was amazing to see a few folks who I haven't seen in years, literally. Thanks to all of you who were there. I think these sketching outings are catching on. I'm looking for ideas on locations for January and February. Send any thoughts my way, please.
Best view is when you click on an image to magnify.

Image 1: Fall Grasses 2, Watercolor sketch, $45 unframed
Image 2: Amy, pen & ink sketch, $30 unframed
Image 3: Ipswich River Watershed Association, pen & ink sketch $35 unframed

Mid-Fall Trees

My palette is continuing to be a place of great learning for me! What fun it is to discover new combinations! I recently added Quinacridone Gold and Thalo Blue to the palette. Both of these colors have the ability to create some of the most wonderful greens. Because I've added two colors, I needed to remove two colors, in order to keep the palette limited. I removed Cerulean Blue and Cadmium Yellow. This doesn't mean I'll never use them. It just means that the focus of my learning will be with using these two new colors and how they work (or not) with the rest of the palette.

10.5 x 14.25" watercolor, $95.00, unframed

Ocean in Black

This piece is another of my favorites. It is a study of values. I loaded the brush with pigment and water and with it created a wash for the sky and then for the ocean. The clouds were created by pulling pigment off the page with a damp brush. The pigment is not actually black but, rather, a mix of ultramarine blue and burnt umber. If you click on the image, you can get a close-up view and see how the two pigments have separated on the page in a few areas. I think that makes for a subtle and interesting effect.

9.5 x 6.25" Watercolor wash, $65.00, unframed

New Birch

I call this piece New Birch because it's a contrast to the image of a birch I use as my logo, which I created about six years ago. You can find the logo on my website, www.birchtreestudioart.com. Compare the two vastly different styles! I love them both. But I think this one reflects more technique with the medium of watercolor. Look at the area on New Birch where the foliage meets the trunk. I love how the colors from the foliage seem to drip into the shape of the trunk. What do you think? Do you like on style over the other?

10.75 x 4.5" Watercolor, $75.00, unframed

Green Forest

This image was as study in negative painting. The idea is to first create a base wash of color with a loaded brush. The brush is loaded with lots of pigment and some water. Bringing in a variety of colors during this first wash can produce some exciting results but I chose to stick with a within the green family. I then threw a bit of salt into this wet layer and let dry. Once this layer is dry, I drew in some tree trunks and painted around the trunks. Essentially, painting in the negative spaces between the trunks. I used darker pigments during this process and less water than the first layer, but still somewhat wet. When this dried, I repeated the second step one more time. When all was dry, I brushed off the salt and ended up with this little gem!
10.5 x 4.5" Watercolor, $85.oo, unframed

Cow & Barn

This piece is based on a photo in a Yankee Travel magazine, . I saw the photo while flipping through the magazine and new right away that I wanted to do something based on it. It is not a "copy" of the photo. I rearranged elements to come up with a composition I liked. I was concentrating on using more pigment than what I'm used to, composition, and creating a pleasing balance of values.

3.5 x 6.5"$55.00, unframed.

Week of October 14th

Hi friends!

I have some new works to share with you! All are watercolor paintings. I'm beginning to explore a new direction with watercolors and am practicing with them fairly regularly. Last week I participated in a four-day landscape painting workshop given by Ann Lyndsay (www.annlyndsey.org). She is a wonderful teacher and through the exercises she was teaching, I was able to narrow my focus and identify exactly where my struggle has been with painting. It's so liberating to identify what my weaknesses are! Once I identified my specific challenges, I only wanted to take off and start the process of improving these specific skills.
My challenges lie with values and pallette. My colors have tended to be too watered down, too mid-toned throughout the images I paint. There's not enough pigment to give pizazz and pow to my paintings. I think I've changed that! Or at least I've started to change that. I learned that I really like a bright pallette. I don't like using too many neutrals. I envision spending the majority of this winter working on new paintings that have this central focus: deeper colors (more pigment, less water) and a pleasing balance of values (lights and darks). I'll be out and about taking photos and working on preliminary sketches in the field that will then be used to create finished paintings. When the weather warms up again I'll try my hand at plein air painting, hopefully with these new skills perfected over the winter.

All of the new art is posted above this entry. All of it is for sale. Prices and other details are listed alongside the image. As always, I'm very interested in feedback from you so take a moment to let me know what you think!

I will continue to post new art on this blog as quickly as I can get it uploaded. My website continues to be a central location of information and will be updated seasonally. But my blog will be the place to look for the freshest and newest of my work and a place for interaction with you. Please send my blog to anyone and everyone whom you think would appreciate what I am doing. Thanks!

September 18, 2008

Good morning!

Another beautiful day in the neighborhood! My good friend Jennifer Hogg invited me out to sketch with her on this sunny morning. We went to Swasey Parkway. A link to her blog is on the left of this page so check out what she created while we were out.

It was low tide so a number of bird species were about. I decided to use my pen today and work on blind contours. What first caught my attention were three great blue herons. In between watching and drawing them, there were plenty of gulls and a group of ducks to draw. I actually really like this page! It was quite fun, very relaxing and the contours are charming, I think.

Two business decision I made recently that I would like to share with you: My main focus from now on will be the Home & Garden Portraits. For a full description of how I think of this traditional form of painting can be found on my website, www.birchtreestudioart.com. The other piece of focus will be Nature Note Cards. As my field sketches get better and better through practice, I am going to develope a line of Nature Note Cards. These will feature field sketches, done entirely in the field, along with observational notes. The inside will be blank.
I will continue to be available for all of the other services I offer but I will not be marketing them. If they come to me via verbal references, that's swell. But my business efforts will go towards the Home & Garden Portraits and, eventually, Nature Note Cards.

I have plenty of references for the Home & Garden Portraits and a healthy body of work to show potential clients. If you are considering such an item for yourself or as a gift for someone, let's talk!

Well, on to my work for the day...the second in a series of three home portraits for one client! Enjoy this wonderful weather we're having...cold and rain is sure to come all too soon!
Sandy

September 11, 2008

Hello all. I'm already behind on posting my sketches. But I've been very busy with other exciting things like making some business decisions. On with the art, though!

I did this little painting last Thursday, 9/11/08. It was a busy day. It would have been easy to find an excuse not to go out and sketch. But what a gorgeous day it was! So I made myself just go somewhere and see what I could see. I went to Swasey Parkway, which is a little walkway and auto road along the Squamscott River in the downtown area of Exeter. Both sides of the river have a section to walk along leading out of downtown. On various occasions I have seen all kinds of birds, turtles, fish and even a river otter. It also offers terrific views of the backside of downtown Exeter.

On this day I chose a tree. Not surprising. Trees have always been one of my favorite subjects to draw. This one is some kind of maple. It has very dark reddish-brown leaves that glow with an orangey light when the sun goes through them. My objective was to get to the color with my paints. Although I did not achieve quite the darkness that the shadowed side had, I like the end result that I cam up with. It was quite a tricky thing, trying to match the colors that I saw. My first attempt fell way short. I was mixing the wrong kind of greens and reds to make the dark reds. And the glowing orange color completely escaped me. It was a dull yet brilliant orange from sunlight passing through the leaves. I think I was using too much red.

I began by trying to identify what the base color is...red. Then I had to figure out from there which of my reds to use...the warm or the cool red? I went with the warm red. Of course, mixing it with green will go to a brown, depending on the percent of each pigment. What I wanted was to darken my red with it's opposite but not loose a sense of "red" in the color. It's amazing, when implementing this theory, how far you can push a color before loosing it completely. After lots of mixing and testing and not coming up with a reasonable match, I realized that I was probably using the wrong red. So I switched to the cool red and viola! I came up with a very happy color almost immediately. The orange color for the illuminated leaves was far trickier. After about an hour-and-a-half of working on this piece, I decided to be happy with what I had done.

So, in the end, I have a lively tree with real nice coloring but no illumination. What do you think?

By the way, I learned yesterday that I did not receive the grant I applied for. Nonetheless, I am carrying on with some of the elements from my grant application. Life is good.

Spetember 4, 2008

12:30pm.
Hot and humid today. Late summer heat and bugs.

I'm real happy to report that I used my first day pretty wisely, I think. After getting a bunch of chores done, I did some correspondence to set up the first meeting with a very good friend, one who is to become my business mentor. In addition, I signed up for a business and networking workshop for artists and registered for a week-long painting workshop. Both events take place in October.

People have said to me in the past that I should avoid all chores on days when I'm working at home. Ignore the dirty dishes and the unmade beds. Instead, focus on the work at hand, the making of art. I used to believe that and practice it. But today I realized that getting a couple chores done this morning actually helped to unclutter my brain, thus, allowing me to focus on the work at hand. It felt good seeing that the dishes were done and the beds were made. I got it done pretty quickly, too. By 9am, I was ready to work.

After the chores and the correspondence, I made a point of going out to sketch. I chose a fitting location, a site that I used to pass on my way to "work". I would always note what a great spot it would be for sketching but never went there just to sketch. I went to a horse farm! It was hot and not much of a breeze was blowin'. My knowledge of horse anatomy is obviously lacking. Nonetheless, it was good practice. I spent about an hour in one spot, moved to the other end of the farm where I stayed for about a half-hour, and then drove to a second farm. The second farm has alpacas. Unfortunately, they were not visible from the road.

At both farms, I was parked alongside one edge of the property and sketched from this vantage point. Neither road was very busy and vehicles were very respectful of my position. Perhaps I'll muster up the courage to ask the property owners if I may come onto their property to sketch their farm animals one day.

I chose to work with just the pencil today. I think it's part of a warm-up, transitional thing, but I didn't want to get involved with paints or pens today. This is very new to me, spending the time to just sketch when I feel like it. My mind wanders onto things I'm feeling I should be doing, instead of just sketching. It might take me a little time to fully relax into this new phase.

Lastly, I created this blog today.