Brittany- Land of My Heart

     Drizzle- Rain -with occasional bouts of sunshine, and wonderful things to see,  is how I would describe my trip to Brittany in France this past September. I had the opportunity to go, thanks in large part to my ex-husband who gave me a frequent flyer for the trip over. I have a lot of family there so I scrimped and saved so I could go.

 It was wonderful! - I was able to visit with Aunts and cousins I hadn't seen in fifteen years! I was also so inspired by the scenery. Its really lovely there with lovely terrain, really neat castles and picturesque villages as well as some wonderful churches, filled with incredible art both sculptural, architectural and painterly. Here are a couple of images:
                                                                                                       le Folgoet- interior

Locronan        

Is it a wonder then That I am so inspired!. I have been working on some pieces from my sketches and photographs and here is one I finished which shows a view of the port of L'Aber-Wrac"h, located in the finisterre ( lands end) of Brittany.

This is a pastel and was done from my sketches mainly with the aid of a photo for stone details.
Painting this helped me relive the day which was fun and was a time when it wasn't raining.
 
I have a couple more paintings in process which I will discuss next time so look for it. i am hoping eventually to have enough pieces for a show focussed on this trip.

            This past weekend was the Southport Plein air Paintout and what a wonderful weekend it was!
Though I go painting outside fairly often, I had never participated in a weekend  paint out, so it was a real learning experience as it turned out.
 Southport, if you are not familiar with it, is a lovely little port on the North Carolina coast about 45 minutes from Wilmington and really very close to Oak Island. My son Will first took me there when he was living in that area and I thought it looked like one of those coastal towns in New England. Therefore,  when I was sent the invitation to participate in a paint out, I decided to do it.
 The nice thing about this event is there is no jurying process and no fees taken from sales and very little competition which is fine with me since I really dislike all the emphasis on awards and competition. One should be painting for different reasons than awards. Personally I would rather have someone buy my piece rather than garnering an award that is subjective anyway.

  I was lucky in that I have a student who let me use her vacation house on Oak Island and my friend Diane came with me which was fortunate since I have a lousy sense of direction and probably would have gotten lost several times without her navigation skills.
  In any case we arrived on thursday in the mid -afternoon and though other artists started painting then, I decided to check out  the town to see what i would paint on the morrow. Great idea, you say which is what I thought, but in retrospect I should have started painting then because only friday was a  lovely day. I painted a view of the pilot house which had lovely light on it.

morning light

I was happy with the way this one turned out, and actually someone bought it at the wet paint sale on saturday.

later I painted this wonderful old pin oak with a view of a lovely white house with neat gables. I really liked the juxtaposition of the tree and the gables. It took me a while to do this one as it was pretty complicated as you will see when I show you the result.

Juxtaposition

I learned a lot from this event and painted out of my comfort zone- I;ll show you the last painting I did in a future blog.

Pastel painting Demonstation

       
           The Pastel Society of North Carolina have regular meetings on the 3rd saturday of the month. During those meetings, there is nearly always a speaker or demonstrator. In January I was the demonstrator. I was asked to do a snow scene. I decided to show how to do a pastel painting with an underpainting of gouache to create a certain mood or light.

Since we have had no snow this year, I used a photo of a place in that had feeling for me since it was in Maryland. I did a small oil painting on watercolor paper to work out what I wanted to include and what to leave out. Here is the oil:

Next to it is the smaller study . Now I felt I was ready for the demonstration. One must be ready so as  not to be distracted by questions or comments. The best way I have found is to be very prepared.

One must be an entertainer as well as one who imparts his or her knowledge of a subject

Finally- here is the demo- It is not quite completed since I have some little detail elements to do yet but the lighting is what I wanted and so is the feeling