Day 6, 7 and 8 - 30/30 Challenge - The Faster I Go, The Behinder I Get!

Day 6 - Summer Pond

6"x6", watercolor, $35

Day 7 - Casita Rosa, Autumn

6"x6", watercolor

Day 8 - The View from Cadillac Mountain

6"x6", watercolor, $35

I got behind. Work and life catches up with you and in my case, I gotta pay the bills.
I did paint the Summer Pond on the 6th, but didn't quite finish it and certainly didn't have time to post it. After a couple of days off (from this) I squeezed in a little time to paint two more. So I'm caught up through the 8th. I have to paint a couple more today! LOL

The Summer Pond is from a hike I took in the summer with my cousin and her husband in Rhode Island.
The Casita is the little cabin in the woods on my aunt and uncle's property. There used to be several cabins, but this is the surviving one expanded over time with pieces of the others. It's a rustic sort of bunkhouse, but there's air-conditioning and a kitchen and a shower, so it's not too rough. We  have a lot of fun there.
The View from Cadillac Mountain is from this past October. The cool purples and blues of the water and land with the intense color of the blueberry bushes and birch trees was spectacular!

Stay tuned as I catch up!

Day 15 - 30/30 Challenge - Autumn Walk, Ninagret

Autumn Walk, Ninigret

Pastel, approx 12.5" x 9.5, $150

SOLD

Two posts in a day! Scary!
Looking back over the paintings I've done so far, one would think that I'm either extraordinarily depressed or I'm enjoying the limited palette experiment. I don't think it's the former, though I think I have certainly had enough of the later. It's not that they're bad, or depressing subjects, or feel depressing when taken one at a time. But when I look at them together...

So from here on out I promise to USE A COLOR! Maybe even more than one.

Update: I felt increasingly yucky as the day went on, so I decided to finish a painting I started back in October on my trip to Rhode Island. Happily, It has a lot of autumn colors!

Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge

After I visited Pt. Judith (see blog post here) I took a drive over to Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge in Charlestown, about 20 minutes away.

Ninigret started out as farms, but in the '30s the Navy bought up the property and turned it into a flight training facility for the Navy. Known as Charlietown, it was in use, in one form or another, until the early '70s when it was turned over to the US Fish & Wildlife Service. Now it is acres of reclaimed marsh land, scrubby forest and huge meadows where the runways once were. I saw wild turkeys, deer and lots of birds. The leaf color was really peaking and I walked about 3 miles. There was something beautiful to paint around every corner. It was late afternoon, and the cloud cover started filling in so I stopped and started to paint this plein air.

I think it's done. I might do a bit with the sky and maybe the upper right side. I have to sit on it a bit and see if it tells me anything.  I hope you like it!

Day 28 (aka Painting 23) - In Which I'll Start Counting Backwards to Fullfill The Challenge!

Autumn Peaking Through

10.25" x 10.25", Watercolor

Soon to be in my Etsy Shop - In the meantime, please contact me 

in the comments below if you are interested in purchasing.

Saturday, I made it to Planting Fields Arboretum in Oyster Bay for a lovely day of painting with a group via Annie Shaver-Cranston.
I met some nice people, including a lovely woman named Susan who also knew some wonderful places to paint all around Long Island! It was so funny to find out that we had many of the same places in common - Bayard Cutting Arboretum and Caumsett State Park, and we shared some new places with each other - I told her about Uplands Farm and she said that the gardens at Farmingdale College were fabulous!
We chatted like old friends and I hope to meet up with her again for walking or painting!

This is the second painting of the day, looking north from the Maple Field area south of the playhouse and lilac and rose paths. The fall colors are juuust starting to peak through.

The lindens are getting greeny-gold and the Norway maples are starting their signature blazing red-orange. I look forward to getting back over there in another week or so.
In the final, I closed up a lot of those white spots (too distracting), made the dark area darker and cropped - the middle sliver of blue and the dark areas under the trees are what I liked best. Hmm, maybe I made the lindens too orangey....

Ok, off to enjoy the day - not many more left to sit at the beach or by the shore with out freezing!  Maybe I'll do another painting!