Supporting The Battle of Franklin Trust

History buffs in the Nashville area may be interested in the art show/fundraiser that kicks off this Thursday. The art group I belong to, The Chestnut Group, is partnering with The Battle of Franklin Trust to put on this fundraiser. There will be paintings of Civil War action, portraits of quaintly dressed characters, rustic farm scenes, and more. Many of the paintings are based on a Civil War reenactment that took place last March, providing a dynamic variety of painting subjects. After I dropped off my paintings for the show, I took a look at the huge collection of paintings bundled together in the room, ready to be hung the next day. It was like looking at all the presents under the Christmas tree. There was an eye-pleasing array of subject matter, from 19th-century plantation scenes, to armed horsemen charging across a field.

The show will be at Carnton Plantation in Franklin, Friday through Sunday, with a pre-show for artists and patrons on Thursday. I'm entering nine paintings in the show, and I have posted my favorites below.

This dapper and well-armed gentleman posed for a photo at a Civil War reenactment at Carnton Plantation. It's not every day you see someone wearing both a bowler and an ascot!

"The Dandy" 9x12

I painted this mother duck and ducklings from a photo I took at a barn at Harrison House farm. The farmer warned me not to get too close or she would attack. I hope I captured a little of her hostility in this painting.

 "The Protector" 8x10

I painted the adult duck and the background from life. The duck actually held still long enough for that! I  added the ducklings from a photo. (Here's a secret: the ducklings I added actually belong to a mother of a different species...I have sacrificed biology for the sake of art.)

"The Outing" 5x7

This horse belonged to one of the actors at the Battle of Franklin re-enactment. The steed was so mellow, I was able to paint most of him from life, and then touched up the painting from a photo. I asked the owner for the name of this battle horse … and it's Wimpy!! But there's a hero somewhere in his timid little heart.

"Battle Horse" 6x8

These regal peacocks gave me great poses at Harrison House farm near Franklin. I painted them from two different photos. I like the frame I chose so much, I decided to post it along with the painting. (Frame supplied by Lyle Teague Moulding in Hendersonville)

"Bejeweled" 6x8

Colorado Trip 2011

Last week I returned from a vacation in Colorado. I visited with my family, ate lots of food, hiked, and found some time for plein air painting. On my first plein air outing, we pulled off along a highway in Rocky Mountain National Park, not far from the city of Estes Park. I painted this 6x8 canvas in about an hour, which is unusually fast for me. I started at 6 pm-ish, when the sunlight is starting to slant and become richer in color.

Sunny Rockies - 6x8

After packing away the first painting, I continued riding up the mountain highway until we reached a high look-out point. I had to hurry–the sun was sinking quickly! I painted the 5x7 shown below.

Lonely Peak - 5x7

A couple of days later, I painted another one from a roadside pull-off in Rocky Mountain National Park. Backlighting is my friend! Backlighting gives sharp definition to monochromatic vegetation, and backlit mountains have a soft, hazy look that increases the sense of distance. I need to put a little more blue in the sky. I was so intent on maintaining strong contrast between sky and mountains, I nearly wiped all the color out of the sky.

Evening Sun - 8x10

One day I painted mountains from my parents' house outside of Loveland. Below is a distant view painted from their back porch. The double-peaked mountain to the far right is Long's Peak, and the blurry, mostly unpainted town below is Loveland. Toward the end of this painting, I about had a heat stroke from the sun pouring through the windows of the back porch. It seems ironic for a Tennessee painter to get overheated painting a Colorado mountain scene…

I also painted a scene that was a little less rugged than the others. This is the garden behind my parents' house. I love the flower in the lower right; it has both lavender and blue petals on each flower. As I worked on this painting, it felt like a juggling act. There were so many elements to keep in the correct relationship with one another, especially as far as position and value. 

Summer Garden - 8x10

That's it for the paintings. Now here are a few photos I shot during my explorations in Rocky Mountain National Park. (Unless I'm in it...then someone else took it!) Click any photo to enlarge.

A mallard drake preens himself at Crystal Lake.

Backlit aspens along the trail, which is starting to get snowy.

Snow formations over the lake.

A nice view!

The trail gets snowier...

...and soon there's no trail at all.

Just because the trail ends, doesn't mean the fun has to end!

 Sliding down!

 

A young elk gives me the deer-in-the-headlights look.

Then he strikes a thoughtful pose.

Sunset over the Rockies.

Spring Portraits and Still Life

This spring I varied my routine by painting portraits and still life rather than my usual landscape. I wrote in a post about two years earlier that working on my most difficult subject, plein air landscape, could be a way to improve my ability with painting other subjects. I think I may have been onto something. After the grueling difficulty of painting thousands of translucent leaves under changing sunlight in the sticky heat, I feel much more in control when I paint these politely unmoving, indoor subjects. All of these oil paintings are hanging at Carrie's Coffee, Etc. for the month of June, if any Nashville locals want to see them in person.

Here's what may be the only finished painting of Megan I will ever paint. Not long after I started painting at a portrait session where she modeled, she had a schedule conflict and had to quit modeling. She always had an interesting choice of clothing, such as this Victorian-collared shirt she bought at a vintage consignment store.

Megan on Black - 8x10

I had just bought this pitcher at Hermitage Antique Mall because it looked highly "paintable." I was intrigued by the turquoise and leaden colors that reflected off its darkly tarnished surface. I had purchased the roses, but the dogwood flower was clipped from the tree blossoming in my front yard. I had to keep cutting fresh clippings, because the flowers would wilt during the hours I spent painting. Sometimes still life is not so still!

Antique Pitcher - 8x10

I had bought this brass bowl two years ago at the same antique store where I had recently bought the silver pitcher. I love to paint metal, and this bowl has irresistibly paintable scalloped edges and ornamental handles. The rose was clipped from a bush in my front yard. (I don't live in Florida, so all fruit is from the grocery store.)

Brass Bowl - 8x10

The iris is my favorite flower. These irises grew alongside the roses in my yard, often strangled by the sprawling thorns. (I'm not a gardener at all!) I loved working with the whites, neutrals, and translucencies in this scene. 

Iris - 8x10

This is a two-hour paint sketch of Megan. I had not yet deepened her hair to its black color, but I think the brown works well with the overall tan color scheme of this painting.

Megan on Tan - 8x10 

These Clementine orange slices, with their varying levels of translucency, were great fun to paint. However, the fluffy little muffin was not! For some reason I had a tough time getting just the right look in its puffed-out, slightly crusty crown. Maybe I was distracted from wanting to eat it. 

Poppyseed Muffin - 5x5

The sunflower painting below is the only one that is not recent; I painted this one a year ago. I can see the difference in painting style from a year ago to now. My drawing in the painting below is less precise, but some viewers may like how the paint has a thicker, "brushier" application. Now I feel in the desire to paint sunflowers again! They all seem to have a different mood, like a cluster of ragamuffin characters.

Sunflowers - 8x10

This quote comes to mind, but I don't affect to think my flowers even approach the league of the painter speaking: 

To me, they are like enchanting but naughty children, each crying for attention—or each perhaps, a bittersweet thought—but flowers are never simply pretty adornments.

Richard Schmid, Alla Prima

Touching up Some Carnton Paintings

I took a couple of paintings I did on site at Carnton Plantation, and touched up using photo reference. Click here if you want to compare the original works. These scenes are from a reenactment of the Battle of Franklin.

click either painting for detail

The painting below now has steam and smoke, and the soldier is looking at the viewer. I also added a little more detail overall.

Plainclothes Soldier - 6x8

The proportions of the horse are a little closer to the actual horse at the scene. This horse, by the way, is named Wimpy, which may explain why he wasn't included in the military drill! The colors are overall brighter, and the background foliage now has the appearance of early spring growth.

A Battle Horse Left Behind - 6x8

Two Familiar Trees

I love these two old trees. They're like pillars to an enchanted doorway, especially in the early spring, when they're surrounded by frilly ground cover and encroached by violets and grape hyacinths. (Fortunately, I don't live at a place that requires a homogenous, manicured lawn!) 

The sad thing about the two trees is, I think they're dead. I don't recall seeing leaves on them last year. I'll check again this spring to see if blossoms or leaves sprout. If they are dead, I've been warned that they might decay and topple onto the house. I should probably check with a few tree cutters. I really will hate to see them go.

There are other trees of this species in my back yard. I've never seen a flowering tree like this. Most flowering trees are small, like dogwoods or pear trees, or bushy, like magnolias. But these tower up straight and tall, like a forest tree. In mid spring, they blossom into white flowers that look like large clusters of grapes. It's so odd to see the white blooms hanging high overhead in the craggy, somber branches.

There's an old fence gate leaning against the fence, in the upper right. My ex boyfriend had found it in the woods, and brought it to the house in case we ever wanted to complete the fence enclosure and add another gate. I should probably get rid of the gate, but it's actually an interesting visual element to break up the verticals of the trees and the fence. Albeit, the trees aren't really all that vertical, which is probably further evidence that they are dying! I better paint them while I can.

Spring Views from the Front Yard

This is the third year in a row I have painted the sun setting through the neighbor's spring foilage and ivy-covered hackberry. This scene looks especially magical in the evening, when the setting sun blazes through the red and white blossoms and stains the grass gold. It's fun adding in the white autos, which add some hard edges to the scene and balance out the white cherry tree. This year the dog, a little chow mix, happened to pose while I was painting.

Spring Evening - 8x10

I took a break from "Spring Evening" to paint "Paddington" from life. He was a 13-year-old chow mix with partial paralysis of his limbs and organs, and a small extension on life. He was supposed to be put to sleep a week prior to the painting, but a last-minute second opinion bought him new meds and more time. He briefly improved, but soon he appeared to be having pain and anxiety. He was peacefully put to sleep about a week after I painted this study. I'm giving it to the neighbor in memory of the little furball.

Paddington - 6x8

On another evening I did a very rapid study of the sun burning a triangle of light through the neighbor's yard. I think I got the values more accurate on this one, so I used it as a reference and deepened some of the values on the first painting. It pays to paint multiple paintings of the same scene!

 

Triangle of Light - 6x8

It's good that I painted the spring scenes while I could. Shortly after "Triangle of Light," the weather became steadily overcast and drizzly. It's possible that the blossoms will be gone once the sunny weather returns ... such is the impermanence of spring, and really of all life. Plein air painting keeps the essence of those moments alive.

A Cornucopia of Scenes at Carnton Plantation

Yesterday I went to Carnton Plantation to see what paintings I could get out of the Civil War reenactment. This plantation was the home of the McGavocks, a family who just happened to live at a strategic location during the Civil War. Their plantation became the site of the Battle of Franklin, where 10,000 soldiers were either killed, taken prisoner, or went missing. The large manor home of the McGavocks served as a field hospital for the thousands needing emergency care. Mr. and Mrs. McGavock tended to the wounded, and at dawn each day Mrs. McGavock was up cooking breakfast for the soldiers, with the hem of her dress awash in blood. This was a well-to-do family that might well have turned their backs on the needs of the "lower classes," but their duty to aid humanity overcame social norms.

When I arrived at the plantation, I found myself immersed in a sea of paintable scenes. Men in quaint attire were lounging about on blankets, forming living 19th-century Impressionist vignettes. Only instead of a park or a beach, they were on a dusty campground, surrounded by campfires, bubbling pots of stew, and crates of carrots and potatoes. At the end of the field the sun glinted off the chestnut and black backs of the tethered horses. The air was sunny and tinged with woodsmoke, boiling onions, and sweet pipe tobacco.

Fueled by the wealth of paintable scenes and the beautiful spring weather, I got started on my plein air sketches. I started more paintings than I actually finished, because as subjects moved, sometimes I would completely lose the painting. But then I would just start another. I loved the freedom to paint quickly and not mull over details.

A Patient Battle Horse - 6x8

A Battle Horse Left Behind - 6x8

Plainclothes Soldier - 6x8

Evening Meal - 5x7

End of Day - 6x8

In addition to quick studies, I got lots of photos to potentially use as studio paintings. Here are a few:

Click to enlarge

I'll also include a painting from last week, when I painted the manor house. I'm always intimidated by architecture, and this one was especially difficult, because of the shadow breaking across the right. There were a lot of different colors to juggle on that side, and forget about lines and angles. At times I wondered if I should call this one "Psychedelic Carnton." Once I got the whole thing blocked in, I felt a little better about it. 

The Manor House - 6x8

Painting the house was a learning experience, but I think my real "rush" comes from painting those unpredictable animals and people. I really should do those sort of studies more often so that my draftsmanship and value/temperature accuracy improves. Plus, it's just plain fun.