~More Haiku~

Poetry just comes when I am full with emotion.  I like the brevity and the simplicity of Haiku.

   

Paris is Beauty

The parks, the art, the river

Paris fills, lifts, heals.

(2008)

Loss and aloneness
Is living without living.
Beauty fills the void.

(8.15.09)

Simmering summer

Blazing days and sultry nights

Florida August.

(8.1.09)

I was thinking of my friends in Denver when this one came to me.....

Old friends remain near

In my minds’eye, in spirit~

Distant companions.

(7.22.09)

Footprints fade away

Remembrances of happy days;

Beach bums together.

(3/5/09)

Wave after wave flows

Rhythmically on to shore; the

Heartbeat of the sea.

This Haiku was created for a special friend's birthday card~

You, my friend, transform

Plain and simple into the

Extraordinary.

~Maclay Gardens~

Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park in Tallahassee.

The gardens are just a small part of this 1,200 acre State Park.

New York financier Alfred Barrymore Maclay bought this land overlooking Lake Hall in 1923 and created this beautiful garden for his family's southern retreat.


Entrance to the Gardens.

 Late winter is the best time to see the splendor of the gardens.  There are several varieties of Japanese Magnolia.  The spanish moss adds a romantic feeling to the garden.

Japanese Magnolia

Brick path to the Maclay house.

The camelias had been in bloom for awhile and the wind had blown many of the petals off the trees. But there were still many to view.



 So many different colors~

Red Camelias next to Japanese Magnolia

Canopy walk to the Maclay house.

Huge oaks with silvery spanish moss formed the canopy along the path to the house.

Lake Hall

 We made a brief stop at the family residence; a small, unpretentious and exquisitely decorated home. The house sits on top of a hill overlooking the lake.

 From the house we followed the Camelia walk arriving at the Walled Garden.

The walled garden

A view of the Reflection Pool from the south portal to the walled garden.

From the walled garden we continued to "the pond".

There is a lovely path that encircles the pond.

 More Magnolias...

The attendant at the Visitor's Center identified a few flowering trees that we were not familar with and also told us that the Azaleas would be in bloom in 2 weeks.  That will be a spectacular sight.

What a magnificent winter retreat!

Carmel Bay~ Start to Finish

In 2010, the US Open Golf Tournament was held at Pebble Beach in California.  While watching the 4 rounds, this scene was shown prior to most of the commercial breaks.  The Big Sur coast and Carmel Bay is just beautiful and I wanted to paint it.  So I grabbed the sketch book and while watching the golf, sketched the coastal view over the 4 days.

(My sketch didn't copy very well....I don't do detailed value thumbnail sketches.)

Once I got the basic composition worked out, I chose my color palette for the painting. Over the years, I have made and accumulated a lot of color reference swatches.  I used the following swatches to choose the palette for this painting.

I chose the sky color (windsor blue and pthalo blue), the ocean colors(cobalt teal and ultra turquoise), the rock combinations( all the different umbers and violets), the colors for the sand(buff titantium) and trees (several combinations of blues and quinacridine gold) and shrubs.  Usually,  I would put all of these choices on one sheet of paper for reference while painting and then keep it with the sketch for future reference.

I also look through my library of art books to get ideas for the different effects that I may want to create.  For this painting, I needed to review wave action so I looked through lots of seascapes.

I referred to this image for rocks, foamy water and wave action.

I faintly sketched the horizon line, then the trees and rocks coastline. Then, as I always do when I start a landscape, I put in the sky and clouds first.



Then I lay the first wash of the sea, rocks, beach and trees, shrubs and foliage.

I continue to layer on color, creating the light and dark areas.  For this painting, I got this far and got stuck. The background is not too bad but the foreground looks very pale and undefined, I didn't like the water color and I wasn't sure how to proceed.  I was liking what I had so far and didn't want to mess it up...BUT I didn't know what it needed or what to do next.  So I put on top of my bookcase and studied it ....a lot!

I wanted this area of the water meeting the beach to be foamy.

After a week or so, I decided to take a photo of the unfinished work and send it to my art teacher, Dani Tupper; asking her to critique it and offer suggestions.

"Carmel Bay"

This is the finished painting.  (It's pretty obvious that it is definitely a better photograph.) The sky is the same.  I changed the color of the water by glazing with different shades of turquoise so that there would be more of a color difference between sky and water.  The foamy rush of sea to shore is created with negative painting and also adding white gouache (This is where the reference photo was most useful).  Adding the purple to the beach, suggesting wet sand, provided the contrast of water meeting the beach.  Dani suggested deepening the values of the rocks and having them less detailed in the foreground so that your eye would travel down towards the point where the rocks meet the water.  I removed some of the deep greens in the background trees and shrubbery.  I also scrubbed out the sandy paths between the rocks leading down to the beach creating the needed value contrast.

When I posted this painting on Fine Art America, I received a comment from a Californian saying that this was exactly how it looked....I thought that was the best compliment.