In the Bleak Midwinter
I finally cut down the last of my baptisia pods, which were attractive in the fall, but had become bent over and forlorn since the last snow. Still, I liked the shape of this stem and decided that a stark portrait might be fitting for the first day of winter. Christina Rosetti penned In the Bleak Midwinter as a Christmas poem in England sometime prior to 1872. The entire poem was later set to music and published as a Christmas carol in 1906. The script is based on Italics from the Treatise… Read More
Apple Season
I started this painting back in August when the season’s first apples appeared at the farmers market. There are 7,500 varieties of apples worldwide and I thought it would be fun to capture some of the ones grown here in New York State. I enthusiastically laid out the painting and started building up the forms of the fruit…and then a crisis of confidence swept in. What was I thinking? I’d only painted two apples successfully before. All of my other attempts ended up looking like round red balls with stems. How was… Read More
Picking Hops
This page exists thanks to a broken mechanical hop separator— a most unfortunate thing for my friend Dieter of Helderberg Hop Farm, which resulted in a rather fun hop picking party for friends and neighbors. We gathered in a circle, hop vines heaped in the center. People came and went from early morning through late afternoon, filling crate after crate with cones. Picking hops is mundane, manual work—but the social aspect harkened back to earlier times. Hop picking has been part of making beer since 1079, though the invention of the mechanical… Read More
Good enough to…paint
Certain vegetables are much better painted than cooked. Beets fall into that category, as does Swiss chard and turnips. These lovely Nantes carrots with their green stems and long roots still attached begged to be memorialized on paper rather than consumed. I started with a very quick, but careful sketch, determined not to get too fussy with detail. I kept the first few washes of watercolor loose, too. That enabled me to suggest the lacy leaves, rather than get caught in exactitude and overwork the piece. Now that the painting is done,… Read More
Tomatoes!
Farmers markets are an extravagant display of color and form at this time of year– the sheer abundance of summer’s harvest is astonishing! I went last weekend in search of both culinary and artistic treasures, and found a wealth of choices. Though tempted by the deep red-purple of beets and onions, I set those aside knowing that they would keep until winter. Instead, I selected some of August’s finest– ripe tomatoes, succulent apricots, and several varieties of the year’s first apples. Fortunately, my family is well trained– they know not to delve… Read More
In Camille’s Garden
Having creative friends is wonderful thing—especially when they invite you over for an evening of sketching! I’d been eying Camille’s garden for awhile and I was glad for the chance to look at it more closely. Unfortunately, the sun was fading fast, so I chose just a small part of the flower bed to paint. I especially liked the way the hedge bindweed threaded through the lilies and daisies. The wren is nesting in my own garden, but he fit that space quite nicely and so became the final element to the… Read More
Drawn In 