Catskill Serenade
16×20″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on archival board
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
Here a clickable image, if you’d like to see a larger version of the painting:
This painting features a view of the famous of Kaaterskill High Peak and Round Top mountains as seen from the Hudson Valley, where one enters Kaaterskill Clove. I did a small, 6×8″ version of this scene a few weeks ago and liked it so much that I returned to do a larger version.
Click image to enlarge:
16×20″, Acrylics on archival board
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
I went back up to the Catskill Mountain House site, eager to do a larger painting overlooking the Hudson River Valley from up there. It was a fairly overcast morning, and looking out from the cliff’s edge, the most striking feature below me was the silver ribbon of the Hudson River off in the distance. The Berkshire Mountains merged into the sky beyond the river. Bits of farms and buildings peeked up from below as the morning went on and the haze started to lift, so I put some of those in too as they came into view.
This Canson MiTientes board has a fabulous surface texture, varnished to a beautiful sheen, and can be framed without glass like an oil painting. It’s my favorite surface for acrylics. Stay tuned for a special series on this surface sometime around November!
6×8″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on archival museum board (frame like an oil painting)
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This painting was done on location on the cliff of the former site of the Catskill Mountain House on South Mountain. On a clear day, the view overlooks 60 miles of the Hudson River and a vista that extends all the way to Massachusetts. However, on this day, we were treated to a spectacular display of atmospheric clouds both below and above us, with occasional peeks through to farmland below and glimpses of the river. I love revisiting this location. It always has something special and new to offer. I guess that’s why Thomas Cole and Frederic Church kept coming back here too!
Another thing that made this day so special was that I was accompanied by friends L. Diane Johnson from North Carolina, and Ruth Ann Sturgill from Ohio. It’s not often that I get to paint with friends from so far away! We spent a wonderful couple of days together, and I’ll be posting more about what we did and painted as I have a chance to finish up and photograph the paintings.
I’ve been so busy painting up a storm out on location over the past couple of weeks that it’s been impossible for me to keep up with photographing work, blogging, and putting on finishing touches. Now things are settling down, and I’m hoping to get all these things up for you to see!
12×16″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on Canson Board
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This was painted on location yesterday overlooking the Hudson from the grounds of the beautiful Vanderbilt Mansion property in Hyde Park, New York. A group of us were painting up there behind the mansion. We just about finished our paintings when it started to rain. I was using Golden Fluid Acrylics because I just adore the pigment load and the consistency. It glides across the surface as easily as oils. If it had been any warmer and drier, I’d have switched to the slow drying Open line instead. I figured I’d probably be forced into making the change half way through, but was able to finish up with the Fluids.
This Canson board is one of my favorite painting supports for acrylic. It can be purchased in a number of different colors. I cut it to size, and although it’s not necessary, I size it twice with Golden Matte Medium diluted 20% with water. That decreases the absorbency of the surface, and the paint sits beautifully on top. Once I apply an isolation coat and varnish to the dry painting, the surface has a deep, glossy richness to it like no other, with that lovely MiTientes texture visible. I frame them just like oil paintings on hardboard or stretched canvas.
I set out Golden Heavy Body Acrylic Titanium White, Carbon Black, and all the Neutral Grays in between that Golden makes in a plastic container with compartments and a seal. Value studies are so important, but premixing all those grays ahead of time can be cumbersome enough to put it off time and time again. Now I have no excuses, and this container makes it so easy to pop the lid and paint at a moment’s notice.
This book is about 6×9″. I’m reserving it for my value studies in acrylic, and have dubbed it “Shades of Gray”.
Here’s the first page. The cow was painted from a photo I took on Friday. The little landscape was painted here by the lakeshore this morning.
8×10″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on Canson Board
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
I went out to the lakeshore very early this morning to try to grab some morning color before a thunderstorm moved in. I was there just in time, because it started to rain just as I was putting the painting away!
Click image to enlarge:
8×16″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This is a plein air painting that I did in May at Garrison Landing. It needed a few minutes of tweaks in the studio before posting and still needed signing, so I had to wait until I had the Fluid Acrylics out again!
I really enjoyed doing this painting; I need to do more street scenes! I so love the serenity and natural beauty of the Hudson Valley that it’s hard to pull myself away from that in order to paint more of our contemporary and man-made environment.
Fluid acrylics are so much fun. When I first started using acrylics, I used heavy bodied paints and diluted them to a more fluid state. It was very frustrating that this would also dilute the pigment load, and the paints would go streaky on me. Then I learned that the Golden Fluid Acrylics are formulated to have a very high pigment load already in that perfect fluid state. I was in heaven! I’ve loved using these ever since. They do dry quickly, so on a warm, dry day of plein air painting, I switch to Golden OPEN. The Fluids are also perfect for underpainting because they dry so quickly. Then I can finish the painting with Golden OPEN, which gives me extended working time and stays wet on my palette. These two products are so much fun that I sometimes wonder why I ever bother with oil paints!
5×7″, Acrylics on canvas covered hardboard
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
This past weekend, my husband and I hiked out to Huckleberry Point in the Catskill Mountains. From the vantage point of these rocks, you can see east over the Hudson Valley to the Hudson River and beyond, south across Platte Clove, and west toward the Catskills and through the clove. It is truly one of the most spectacular places I’ve encountered in these mountain meanderings. We found the hike to be more strenuous than what the guide books described, so if you go, be prepared! We brought our walking sticks along, plenty of water, and lunch to have a picnic — things I’d definitely recommend to others who venture out there.
The painting above was done from one of the photos I took there. You can see the Hudson River near the horizon, working its way southward, and disappearing behind the Gunks.
I pulled out the acrylics this morning. Every time I paint with acrylics I ask myself why I ever paint in oils. These are just too much fun to be legal. I used Golden Fluid Acrylics today, with plenty of Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid to keep the paint workable. My palette for this painting was:
Hansa Yellow Opaque
Diarylide Yellow
Pyrrole Red
Cerulean Blue Deep
Prussian Blue Hue
Jenkins Green
Titanium White
I loved this palette!
18×24″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This was painted on location at Boscobel Restoration in Garrison, NY a few weeks ago. It needed a few finishing touches and signing in the studio, which I finally got to do today.
This painting is not an exact scene, but rather a composite of elements that were there at the time. There was a row of cherry blossoms in full bloom that were stunning. There was also a path alongside them; however, that path is actually on the other side of the trees, and runs parallel to the river, rather than toward it. I wanted to switch things around for a change, have the pathway lead the viewer’s eyes to the overview of Constitution Marsh, and bring the cherry blossoms into the painting as well. Fortunately, as artists, we can use our artistic license to have our cake and eat it too!
8×16″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
With the cherry blossoms gone at Boscobel Restoration, I turned my attention back to the Hudson River, and the channels weaving through Constitution Marsh. The afternoon light turned the marsh a beautiful, dark reddish color.
I used three of the new Golden OPEN Acrylic colors coming out this month for this painting: Diarylide Yellow, Quinacridone Crimson, and Prussian Blue Hue. I also added Raw Sienna and Cadmium Yellow Primrose. I love these new colors.
If you think you saw this painting before recently, it’s because you have! I posted it a couple of weeks ago, but decided to do some additional work on it. While I was painting on location, a wonderful ship went by out on the river. It was too early in the process to put it into the painting at the time, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted it in the painting. I added the ship the other day from a photo, and reworked a little of the foliage too while I was at it.
Here’s a photo of my setup and the painting with the scene, before I put in the ship. It’s always fun to see the painting and vista together!
9×12″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on canvas covered hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
On Friday morning, I dashed back to Boscobel, hoping that the cherry blossoms would still be in bloom. To my dismay, most of them had come down in the strong winds during the week. I found this one tree that still had blooms on it, and pulled out my artistic license to add a few more.
From this vantage point at Boscobel, Constitution Marsh stretches out below, and the West Point Military Academy is on the hillside across the Hudson River. You can barely make out the buildings of West Point on the hillside in the painting.
Palette: Hansa Yellow Opaque, Diarylide Yellow, Raw Sienna, Quinacridone Crimson, Transparent Red Oxide, Ultramarine Blue, Prussian Blue, Titanium White
