Horse Heaven Hills 1 Study

Horse Heaven Hills 1 Study. Oil on Linen Panel. 6" x 8".

This past couple of weeks I've worked on a number of studies of eastern Washington landscapes. I'm preparing for a large and interesting series of paintings over there and thinking through how to merge the quality of the landscape and light with indirect painting. Many of the yellow paints I like best are opaque and thus, not suitable for glazing.

This was painted with an underpainting of Vasari Shale and Gamblin Transparent Earth Yellow. Over that I layered Vasari Naples Yellow (I have a really big, to-die-for tube of the stuff) and Transparent Earth Yellow mixed with a translucent Holbein gray. Some layers were toned down with the Shale to add a dusty quality. After all, what we remember as 'yellow' is often a brown. Oh, and I used a bit of that gritty Williamsburg Brown Ochre in this too.

The sky is a mix of Williamsburg T-Z White, Gamblin Indanthrone Blue, Gamblin Manganese Blue Hue (sadly the real stuff is too toxic), the Naples Yellow and Holbein Cad Yellow Lt. Over that I glazed w/ a bit of Hansa Yellow light, to blur the edges.

Yes, the edges are blurred: my camera refused to focus, try as I might and I had to switch to manual.

Comments

Casey Klahn said…
I always look forward to your Eastern WA paintings.
April 9, 2010 at 5:53 PM
Katherine van Schoonhoven said…
I love this! Eastern Washington holds a special place in my heart -- it's where my kids went to college. I loved traveling to The Palouse for Dads' and Moms' weekends.
April 9, 2010 at 9:40 PM
Lisa McShane said…
Thank you Casey! I'm really excited about this new series. I've enjoyed painting fog and rain this winter but my heart is to the east.

Katherine - thanks for stopping by my blog! Isn't that drive the best? My husband and I found our way to Unionville a couple of summers ago and thought we were in heaven.
April 9, 2010 at 11:50 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My favorite love poem - West Wind 2 by Mary Oliver

Image
for Dan on Valentine's Day West Wind 2 by Mary Oliver You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and your heart's little intelligence, and listen to  me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a  dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks --- when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming---then row, row for your life toward it. Still Waters. ©2010. Lisa McShane.
Read more

#artinthetimeofcorona

Image
Tenino: Flooded River; Dalles at Dusk , 2020, Oil on Linen, 24" x 60". Shown here with Andrew Vallee sculptures. Hey check out this great blog article from Metropolitan Frame! It's an interview of me and where things are at with my work, given the virus. Metropolitan Frame is a custom frame shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota that produces most of the frames I use these days, including the one above. Their work is flawless and fits my work well. Click here for the article, #artinthetimeofcorona
Read more

My favorite art inventory system

Image
Over the past couple of years I've looked at and played with a lot of computer programs for keeping track of artwork. Here are past blog posts on the subject: Art Inventory Systems, here's what I've tried and then this Update on Art Inventory Systems Alyson Stanfield has also written about this riveting subject on her great blog here . I come to these systems with built-in bias. I prefer a FileMaker based system to an Access based system because I think it's a more powerful and smoother software to use. I'd worked for a nonprofit that used Filemaker and it's what I know. I also prefer a system without goofy graphics. I'm an artist. I care how things look. If I open up software every couple of days I would like it to be clean and simple and not ugly. But computers evolve and the next direction is to the cloud. That is a system where software doesn't live on your computer but you access it via the internet. I operate on 3 devices: my iMac in my
Read more