6×8″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
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I’m still continuing on with my exploration of the waterfalls in the Catskill Mountains. Old Mills Falls is exquisite, with a beautiful, large, transparent pool at the base. I really want to go back and do a larger version of this as well. It’s a pretty steep descent to the falls, so I just stuck my little painting box in my backpack and went hands-free.
12×9″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
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Yep, back to Hell’s Hole again in the Devil’s Kitchen area of Platte Clove to do what I seem to enjoy most these days — painting waterfalls! This eastern section of the Catskills is so loaded with waterfalls. Many of them are challenging to get to, but some are roadside and easily accessible.
6×8″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
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This waterfall in the Catskill Mountains provided the perfect cool, comfortable spot to go painting on a hot day last week! The water was crystal clear and glistened against the moss-covered rocks.
12×16″, Golden Fluid Acrylics on Canson Board
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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.
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!
6×8″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.
It may seem like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth lately, but actually I’ve been so busy painting that I haven’t had a chance to post the paintings! This painting of Kaaterskill High Peak and Round Top was done very early one morning. The contractor who is building my new studio wanted to beat the heat and cut through a masonry doorway at 6:30am! That gave me good incentive to make the most of the early light in the mountains.
There were cows out in the field. I was hoping they’d come close enough for me to be able to see them well enough to put them into the painting, but they stayed way off in the shade. Of course, as soon as I was finished, they all sauntered over to the fence to say hello and see the finished product!
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″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.
This was one of those mornings with more atmosphere than I could dream for. The conditions kept changing dramatically every few minutes, so I picked out what I could of the sky, ground and water, and challenged myself to try to make a cohesive whole out of all those bits!
The highest peak in the painting is Kaaterskill High Peak, and to the right is Round Top. These two peaks dominate the landscape of Kaaterskill Clove, home to the Hudson River School painters…and me!
12×24, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
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If you think you already saw this recently, you did! I decided to work on it more in the studio, so above is (hopefully!) the final image of the completed painting. These long, horizontal formats show so small on the blog page, so here is another image that you can click on to enlarge it a bit:
I love this view of the barns against the eastern escarpment of the Catskill Mountains. This was painted on location, on this warm, breezy day of changing clouds and moving light. I loved the contrast in color temperature between the orangy fields and blue-green mountains, with the red spots of color contributing a nice focal point.
8×12″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
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This is the finished painting that I started on location a couple of days ago. This time of year unfinished paintings often sit around my studio for a long time while I’m busy outside painting plein air pieces. I’m glad I had some studio time to get this one done — a blessing in disguise!
I finally got out to paint yesterday, traveling up to the rolling hills of Amenia, New York to explore with my friend Tarryl. In the afternoon, we stopped briefly at this overview to paint for awhile. I wasn’t able to finish on location, but got a nice start to wrap up in the studio.
I was really sick for a couple of weeks and then my dad was in town for a week. We had a great time together traveling all over the Hudson Valley. Now I need to get back to the brushes. I’m so rusty! It’s time to shake off the rust and enjoy my painting life again!
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!
7×5″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard, custom framed to 11×9″
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This is a painting I did some time ago. It is seasonal and has always been one of my favorite little garden/fountain paintings, so I am reposting it today.
Although this scene was an enormous challenge to paint, I think I had an even more difficult time trying to get the photo right! I can’t seem to get the dark trees in the background light enough without bleaching out the foreground flowers. This painting will be available here on my website for only a couple of weeks.
Since this scene presented so many interesting challenges, I decided to take a few extra pictures to share.
Here is a photo of the scene:
I was immediately drawn to the strong contrasts, and the L-shaped composition created by the flowers, fountain and figure. I also love painting stone walls, so it was a plus to have that in the composition as well. Fitting all this onto a 5×7 panel didn’t prove to be easy.
Here’s my pack stool and lightweight painting box. The umbrella clamp is affixed to my stool. I was using a Pittman bag, which can hold my box flat so the paint won’t shift as I change locations. My panel carrier and extra paints fit in there too, and even the umbrella.
Here’s a closeup of the box, ready for paint. The panel is affixed to the box lid with blu-tac. It works great. The panels and paper stay put, and there are no clips or clamps obscuring parts of the painting surface. My paper towel is clipped onto the box lid to allow more room alongside the palette for paints and my sprayer.
The plastic paint storage containers were purchased in the camping section of Sports Authority. They have a rubber seal around the outside so the paint stays fresh. I find it much easier to set out paint this way, rather than having to search for a tube and open caps.
The box further to the back contains my standard plein air palette:
Cadmium Yellow Primrose
Pyrrole Red
Transparent Red Oxide
Phthalo Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Titanium White
The box in the front contains add-ons that I use in the figure studio. I bring it along for plein air too, just in case….It has
Naples Yellow
Cadmium Yellow Medium
Cadmium Red Light
Oxide of Chromium
Cerulean Blue Chromium hue
Permanent Alizarin
I also carry quinacridone magenta with me for these garden scenes.
Whoever said that every painting has to have an ugly stage sure knew what they were talking about. There’s mine! I toned the upper part of the painting with transparent red oxide, and painted the figures a dark, greyed blue. That way, even in the underpainting, I could judge the figures more carefully. Then I worked in the green background. I blocked in the area of strong yellow below to reserve it—-a useful tip given to me by wonderful plein air artist, Lee Haber.
From there, it was lots of fun getting the painting to emerge. I feel like my painting process doesn’t really get underway until after this block-in step is done and I have a layer of paint down. Getting this much done didn’t take all that long, but I forgot to stop and get more pictures once I got past this beginning stage. It did eventually get done.
I started another painting later in the afternoon, but it started to rain and I had to pack up. I’ll finish it from a photo on a rainy day later in the week. I hope you’ve enjoyed these extra photos!
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!
8×10″, Oils on canvas covered hardboard
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
I dragged myself out of bed this morning with a sinus infection, ear infection and strep throat (That’s why you haven’t seen any paintings coming off my easel for a few days!) and drove to Garrison to participate in the twice-a-year Artists on Location event. It was cold and windy along the river. I didn’t want to travel far to do my painting, so I set up right on the landing behind Garrison Art Center and painted this view of West Point. I loved the way the deep shadows cast by the foreground trees set up the painting.
There were several other artists painting on the landing too. Everybody was having difficulty holding onto their stuff with the stiff gusts of wind. Several paintings blew off the easels and of course we couldn’t use our sun umbrellas. I was cold and not feeling so great already, so I just did a small panting, finished it up as quickly as I could, framed it in the car, and brought it into the auction venue.
Of course, leave it to me to forget my camera. Grrrr! I took a quick photo of the scene and painting with my camera phone, since I won’t get it back again to photograph it if it sells at the auction. The painting ended up in the shade with most of the scene in the light, so it looks dark, but is not in real life. My phone takes terrible photos; it also can’t focus on something this close, but at least you get a little idea of what I did out there this morning. The auction is at 5:30pm tonight.
Palette:
Raw Sienna
Cadmium Yellow Medium and Deep
Pyrrole Red
Prussian Blue
Ultramarine Blue
Titanium White
11×15″, Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico paper
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This street scene of Coxsackie, NY, was painted last week during my one week workshop with the amazing Alvaro Castagnet. We all scattered about the little town, painting these beautiful old buildings near the Riverfront Park. I’m looking forward to exploring more of Alvaro’s techniques and subject matter in the weeks to come!
15×11″, Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140#
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This little stone well caught my attention as it stood out in value and texture from amidst the tall evergreens.
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
11×15″ (quarter sheet) watercolor on Fabriano Artistico
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
It was a beautiful evening on Friday along the Hudson River in Beacon, NY. My painting buddy, Sue, went with me to Long Dock after we left Boscobel, and I did this quarter sheet watercolor before sunset. Facing Cold Spring, this cluster of trees was leaning toward Breakneck Ridge, creating a wonderful composition.
I love my new Plein Air Pro watercolor easel. Since it has the little shelf, I’m thinking I can probably use it for smaller oil and acrylic paintings too, though I haven’t tried that yet. Here’s a photo of the scene and the easel:
6×8″, Oils on Raymar canvas panel
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This was painted on one of those gorgeous spring days when everybody should be outside painting! I went to Tilly Foster Farm to take in the beautiful view of the pond and rolling hills.
I used a wash of raw sienna to start off this painting, and a little Liquin Fine Detail to help it start tacking up. The painting was done with a limited palette:
Williamsburg Cadmium Yellow Light
Rembrandt Permanent Red Medium
Winsor Newton old tube of Ultramarine Deep (now French Ultramarine)
Winsor Newton Raw Sienna
Winsor Newton Titanium White
11×14″, Oils on mounted Multimedia Artboard (ready to frame)
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This was painted on a gorgeous, warm spring day. I headed out to Boscobel Restoration overlooking the Hudson River in Garrison, New York, and took in the spectacular cherry blossoms there. The saturated pinks against the blue sky were intense! Going back tomorrow……
Palette:
Cadmium Yellow Lemon
Raw Sienna
Permanent Rose
Alizarin Crimson
Cerulean Blue
Ultramarine Blue Deep
Viridian
Titanium White
9×12, Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico 140# rough
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This little, old rowboat resides at the shore of my neighbor’s farm. I went on Monday to paint there. I think there are many paintings to be had at this spot! I’m looking forward to exploring this scene with the boat at least a couple more times in watercolor, and can also envision it in other mediums and seasons.
12×16″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
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Today was one of those early, overcast spring days, with the foliage just emerging, and the flowering trees starting to bud. As always, the view overlooking Constitution Marsh and the Hudson River was spectacular.
In order to maintain the limited color out in the marsh, I stuck to a two-color palette of Transparent Red Oxide and Ultramarine Blue until the very end, when I added a touch of Cadmium Yellow — just enough to mix a hint of green for the foreground shrubs and treetops.
24×36″, oils on stretched canvas
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This large spring landscape is of the old Oak tree at Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Pound Ridge, New York. Unfortunately, the tree was destroyed during a big storm. I really miss its massive presence in the landscape.
9×12″, Watercolor on Fabriano Artistico
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This was my first go at painting this particular waterfall, but it won’t be my last for sure! I had to tiptoe across stepping stones to a little island in the creek to arrive at the ideal vantage point. The painting location was shaded by an overpass while the waterfall was in sunlight, so this will be a fabulous spot on a hot day! There’s been a lot of rain, and combined with the snow melt off South Mountain, the waterfalls were gushing this weekend.
5×7″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu, you’re right! This is an updated version of the painting I posted a couple of days ago. The picnic bench at the park was lopsided. I thought it was kind of cute and put it that way in the painting, but then decided to straighten it out. I also popped the white sailboat in the background. Initially, I liked it subdued, so that it appeared as a surprise when noticed. As I thought about it and looked at the painting, I felt a more prominent boat would make for a better painting. I also added a few more darks in the background and reds in the foreground. I’m leaving the previous version below so that viewers can see the changes I’ve made.
Today was absolutely gorgeous. I took the opportunity to finally get out of the studio, and went to paint with some friends at the waterfront park in Hastings-on-Hudson. The colors were soft, muted cool and warm tones of spring, so I included the bright red, somewhat-lopsided picnic table to throw a spot of more intense color into the painting.
I love the way this palette of colors is working, so I think I might stick with it for awhile. I used only Prussian Blue, Pyrrole Red, and Raw Sienna (plus white of course). Raw sienna was definitely the dominating color of the landscape today, so using that as my only “yellow” played into the scene perfectly. There aren’t any strong greens or yellow-greens in the landscape yet that would require the addition of a stronger yellow.
7×5″, oils on canvas covered hardboard
For purchase information, please email me at JamieWG@aol.com.
This is another painting from the Hastings Waterfront Park — a different bench, different cluster of trees, different section of the Palisades, and different angle from the one I posted yesterday, plus it’s a vertical composition. The colors on my palette, however, remained the same.
I’ve gone back into the one I posted yesterday. Tomorrow I’ll post the new version of that one and explain the small changes I made. Stay tuned!
6×8″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on sealed, primed hardboard
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
I had a true painting marathon on the day I did this painting, leaving the house at 7am and not returning until after 8:30pm. It was a fabulous day of great weather and beautiful scenery in Cold Spring, New York, along the banks of the Hudson River. I can well understand why some of the Hudson River School painters loved to paint from this very spot; I love to paint here too!
This was the last one of the day—attempting to catch the fleeting sunset colors during the few minutes before the light faded into darkness. There’s never enough time to “finish” one when painting sunsets on location. It’s really a matter of grabbing color as it emerges, and hoping for the best!
9×12″, Golden OPEN Acrylics on Arches 100% rag hot press watercolor paper, double matted to 16×20.
SOLD! Please email me at JamieWG@aol.com to inquire about a similar painting.
This was painted here in the Hudson Valley, by the lake next to my studio. I was so excited about getting out to paint that I ended up getting up at 4:30, while it was still pitch black. I dawdled at the computer and then all of a sudden realized it was already getting light out! Hoping to not miss my opportunity, I raced out the door just in time to catch this dramatic lighting on the lake and in the sky.
My palette for this painting was Hansa yellow opague, Ultramarine blue, Phthalo blue, Napthol red light, and Titanium white.
12×16″, Oils on sealed, primed hardboard
Email me at JamieWG@aol.com if interested in this painting.
This is another painting that was started on location and completed in the studio this week. I showed the work in progress with an image of the scene in a previous post. The humped peak in the painting is Breakneck Ridge. The marsh is where Fishkill Creek empties out into the Hudson River.
When I brought the painting back to the studio and put it up on the easel to add the finishing touches, I pulled up all my photo references from this location. I’d gone there several times during the falll, so I had photos from much of the season. I decided to go back a few weeks in time to when there was more fall in the air and leaves on the trees. I think it added a lot to the painting to be able to fill out that foreground tree.
