Day #14 :: WARM SPOT :: January Daily Painting Challenge

WARM SPOT
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

$125 + $8 shipping

This afternoon I had to pick up our youngest from an after school activity and left a teensy bit early so I could scope out the area near yesterday's painting. I had such fun painting last night's piece, and thought I could take more inspiration from the spot. I wasn't let down. 

With sketchbook and camera phone in hand off I went. A quick notan sketch, color notes, and a click from my phone helped to get to this result tonight. Of course after taking the photo I had to go to school, come home, make sure homework was done, clean up, help with dinner, help clean up, etc. etc. before painting. Still, I was excited to see what I could make, and that is such a great feeling!!

When I stepped back and looked at the light in this piece I knew I had got it right. Yay, me! ;)

And I have an amazing painting idea for tomorrow. What crazy color! What beautiful light. We shall see if I can pull it off, but as my friend told me once before an art show, I got this! 

Thanks for reading! ~kmw

Day #13 :: THROUGH THE TREES :: January Daily Painting Challenge

THROUGH THE TREES
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

$125 + $8 shipping

Our neighborhood is an enchanted place. Being an artist, I spend my time looking at things around me seemingly with a viewfinder in my mind taking snippet notes of my surroundings and thinking "someday it would be nice to paint something or other...."

This daily painting challenge makes the 'someday' turn into TODAY! 

Tonight's painting is from the marshy area on the Charles and Mill rivers in our neighborhood. As you drive home at sunset/dusk/twilight, the light coming through the trees creates this magical twinkling of the spectrum. 

During winter this color show is vibrant with only silhouetted evergreens and the tree branches. I find the scene foreboding and yet also hopeful simultaneously, such a contrast of feeling, much like the painting construct is a contrast of dark and light and of warms and cools. 

I have SO MANY IDEAS swimming through my mind. Maybe tomorrow I'll have some time to fledge them out a little more fully. Bigger pieces are jonesing to be painted. I taught an oil painting class today and their buttery quality made me want to get smooshing around some oils. We shall see....

Thanks for reading! ~kmw

Day #12 :: WINTER BLUES :: January Daily Painting Challenge

WINTER BLUES
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

Sold!

Today is the perfect example of why a challenge like daily painting is great.

I did not want to paint tonight. I wanted to call it in and catch up tomorrow. Our youngest has a nasty cold and we were together for the entire day after a draining night. Tonight it's snowing big, attractive, romantic puffy snowflakes, and I have lit a fire in our cozy fireplace. We read earlier tonight by the fire before the girls went to bed. Goodness, it was the essence of winter warmth at our house tonight! 

Still, though, I came downstairs into the chilly studio and made this painting. Hunter and I are good walking buddies and here our puppy is exploring the marshy field streams at that fleeting time before the light disappears. 

I've written before about night and twilight and dusk and about how I love paintings depicting these elusive and fleeting times of the day. This piece worked up in a classic complementary palette of violet and yellow. I love when things like this happen -- I feel so academic and that I really learned a thing or two in art school. ;) 

When I look at artists whose work I enjoy, again I bring up Marc Hanson. When I analyze his color choices, I see that white is hardly present, and when it is, it's in tiny dots and emphatic small gestures. What an impact that restraint can have. 

Today's painting was about exercising that restraint. My notes and reference about this scene were that it was so dark it was near impossible to see. Of course I took liberties with these notes, and in the end feel that I made a good painting. 

Hurray for challenging yourself! 

And now back to the cozy warmth of upstairs, watching the snow fall, and embracing winter. 

Thanks for reading! ~kmw

Day #11 :: SWANBOATS :: January Daily Painting Challenge

SWABOATS
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

Sold! 

The Swanboats in Boston are such a wonderful city treasure. I've had this image kicking around in my studio for a while and today was the day I decided to try it out as a painting. 

It was fun to paint except for the GREENS. Goodness me! Greens are a constant issue in landscape painting. When you paint with pastels, greens are a funny thing. They always seem too something. Too blue. Too false. Too dull. Too bright. Too light. Too mossy. Ha! On and on and on. The greens in this painting were all over the place, too. 

Had I had more time (an excuse, yes, but geez, sometimes you don't have a lot of time) I would have done a notan study of the piece and had a stronger idea of the lights and darks in the distant shore of Boston Public Garden. 

All in all, it was FUN to paint. The struggle was fun and so was remembering when this was taken. That day was great. It's one to remember always. When it was our turn to get on the swanboats, this cute Japanese couple sat behind us. By the time we got to the bridge in the middle of the lagoon, their friends were all standing on the bridge holding signs. It was a proposal. We turned around to find him on one knee and she was crying and hugging him. Hurray for love in the Boston Public Garden and a wonderful proposal we will always remember having witnessed.

Thanks for reading! ~kmw

Day #10 :: LIT WINDOWS :: January Daily Painting Challenge

LIT WINDOWS
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

$125 + $8 shipping

Nocturnes are some of my favorite paintings. I am captivated by the way artists are able to capture the subtle colors of night. I wrote of this in September's painting challenge about my painting Blue Moon. Since the creation of the camera, it seems that night paintings are some of the most authentic ways for an artist to really insinuate themselves into a painting. Cameras take photos of any scene but night paintings say more than a night photo often can.

I'm in need of practice for nocturnes. The color palette isn't what I'm used to at all. The marks I made, too, are different for structures rather than features in nature. With practice I'll improve, and that right there is the nugget that makes these #30in30 painting challenges worth their weight in gold!

Off to watch Downton which started 40 minutes ago.

Oh! I haven't forgotten about my new pastels. I'll post about them hopefully tomorrow. They are still being tested. and so far, so good!

Thanks for reading! ~kmw

Day #9 :: HUNTER :: January Daily Painting Challenge

HUNTER
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

$125 + $8 shipping

Each day I place my pastel on the scanner bed and hit 'preview' and wait. The machine buzzes and whirs and I always cringe as I wait for the image to appear. Each day I am tense with questions. And so it goes....

Artists are like this, I think. We always second-guess what we make and how we feel about it. This back-and-forth effort may be why I'm so tired after painting. The conversations in  my head are intense deliberations of color and shape and mark. Back and forth. During the process there are intense highs (the beginning) and the yucks (the middle) and hopefully the whole mood elevates again as the piece progresses to the end. Of course there are the times you don't leave the yuck period, but there is always something to learn and so off to the next!

If it's not the apprehension of success in painting-making, then I have oodles of stress for the scanning and optimizing. UGH! Despite having had tons of practice, Photoshop and I have a fickle relationship. I do my best, heck, that's my life's motto!

Here is our puppy, Hunter (obviously). He's a hoot. I've always  been a dog person (although cats can be cool, too) and now we are the caretakers of this little stocky fellow. He's a great dog and we've been training each other on how to be owner and puppy. We go on walks in the conservation land in the neighborhood.

We are both in our element in this field. I find wild cranberries. He finds entrails from a coyote kill the night prior. I discover Fibonacci's sequence in the frost-kissed Sweet Woodruff and he delights on the frozen streams and chomps on chunks of ice. Of course it was only a matter of time before he'd show up in a painting. And look how small I made him!

Thanks for reading! ~kmw

Day #8 :: RIVER COLOR :: January Daily Painting Challenge

RIVER COLOR
by Kim Morin Weineck
original pastel, 6x6"

$125 + $8 shipping

The art supplies I ordered came in and yes, they are pastels. Perhaps tomorrow I'll take some photos of them and link up to where I bought them in case you're wanting an excuse to buy some new color! UPS was to deliver them "by the end of day" and dang it! They arrived at the END of the day --- 4:58pm! 

As is my norm when I have new tools, I fall back to subjects that I'm comfortable with to familiarize myself with my new (wonderful) materials. The juncture of land and water is a magical place for me, and I'm always striving to make a painting sing as the actual scene does -- and maybe stretch the color a bit the way I'd like to see it. 

This piece is inspired by my neighborhood and is painted on archival suede board. Usually I love the softness the board provides. Today, though, I would have loved the chance to get some straight, hard lines for the reeds. Next time! New surface. Perhaps a Sennelier sanded board. Or a UART mounted board. It's fun to make these decisions. 

After yesterday's draining day, it was wonderful to have some support from you. I always end with "thanks for reading" but today there's a deeper meaning in that phrase. 

This challenge is shaping up to be a most interesting journey. Puppies and people and still lifes are bound to make an appearance shortly ;)

Thanks for reading! ~kmw