Clouds of 2018

Clouds in Shades of Grey

If the monsoon clouds are not colorful then they look best in black and white. It always rather amazes the number of shades of grey in the clouds.

Black Lake Dawn

I bought my house because of the dawns. My windows don't face the setting sun but the east. Dawns do some marvelous things.

Storm Building over Ute Valley

It was a spring with fires all around us. Not always easy to tell which clouds were effected by a fire on the other side of the mountain and which weren't. The Ute Valley clouds above were just clouds I think. But the pink clouds below were at least colored by the Ute Park Fire.

Angel's Fire

And a fire to the west of my house seemed to give the clouds silver linings.

Partly Cloudy

But the last photo is at the least clouds generation by the Ute Park Fire and color intensified by the setting sun.

Clouds and Smoke and Sunset

Week 12 - 2017 in Photographs

Day 78

I begun this week with color. First, another spectacular dawn from the studio deck. And then on to the flowers blooming in the warmth of my passive solar studio. First, the Crown of Thorns, my oldest of three, which blooms constantly. And then on to two of my orchids.

Day 79

Day 80

Day 81

I have been busy stretching canvas prints and matting and framing black and white prints. So thankfully there were things to photograph close to home. And in a moment or two stolen while on the computer playing around with black and white treatments of a colorful subject.

Day 82

Day 83

I believe the photograph above is of a propane fired lantern? I love its shape but any input on what it is would be appreciated.

Day 84

And on Friday winter returned.

Week 40 - 2016 in Photographs

Day 274

This week is all about skies this week. And there were some awesome skies to photograph. Most of these I took on my two day retreat to Ojo Caliente Spa. Getting away from home has its advantages. My new Nikon D7100 has a dawn and dusk setting which has proven to be quite useful. Only Day 274 and 277 were not taken at dawn or dusk.

Day 275

Day 276

Day 277

Day 278

Day 279

Day 280

Fall Creeping In

Yesterday

I was awaiting summer

Sowing seeds in the damp soil

Today Fall comes

creeping in

on a different wind.

The upper meadows

have a golden cast

Green leaves of the aspens

seem nervous

quaking in the breeze

A subtle rattle when I pass.

The skiers

push the season

like a five and a half year old 

saying he is six.

The summer residents

pack up to fly south.

I stand

on my deck

awaiting dawn

it is later today

than

yesterday.

The flowering plum

 has red leaves

 Did it bloom this spring?

Was I too preoccupied with summer

to notice?

J. Binford-Bell

September 2016

Dawn Chasing Away the Storm - A Creative Process Blog

Dawn Chasing Away the Storm

Been a while since I have done a creative process blog. First I figured it was because I had not been painting much. I have been busy doing other things. But I have also been taking progress photos with my tablet as opposed to my camera. So this morning, when I decided I need to do a process blog, I had to figure out how to get my tablet photos to my desktop photo files to use.

The first part of any process blog is to get all the key photographs of the painting's progress in one folder. This actually helps me clean up my picture files because I can delete all the multiple snaps in other files.

Sketch transferred and masked out

For this painting I used a drawing from a much earlier painting. One I had done and sold without ever actually getting a finished photograph of it. Or at least I could not find it this morning. That painting was 16 x 20 and done before I began stretching my own canvases. I have come to like the long and thin horizontal or vertical sizes best. This one is 14 x 30 and the original drawing had to be altered to fit. I added on the sides and cut on the bottom.

Sky poured

I am also in my stormy cloud period. Though I must confess I was thinking more along just a sunrise sky. But as I pour my skies they often get to dictate where the painting is going. Which is fine by me but sometimes it is just a surprise. 

I was dedicated, however, to dawn.

Sun and mountain peak highlights

I like to believe I have some control over the clouds if not the sky. And I found myself attracted to the idea of storm versus dawn. The war was going to have to be fought on the peaks of the Ortiz mountains. 

Shadows on the peaks

I confess to being stopped briefly at this point. I have driven the road through these mountains often. And it a photograph I took on a New Year's Day morning which inspired the original painting. In that photograph and the painting there was a road. Because of the colors I could introduce I changed it to a stream. And a dry winter morning to a lush August dawn.

The green valley

You may also notice changes being made in the storm clouds and the shadows on the peaks. Introduction of new colors seem to dictate changes in the ones already laid down.

Canvas covered

It is usually at this point I want to cover all the white canvas to assure myself I have a direction which will work. I confess there are a lot of steps taken from this point to the finished painting at the beginning of this blog. Changes in values and increase in shadows and a glaze of white over distant mountains to add depth. I did take progress photos all along the path. I do this at this stage more for me than the thought of a future blog. I find I get to intimately involved in the painting and it blinds me to its faults. A photograph gives me the space to look at it critically.

A midpoint on the journey

At this point in the process I was not happy with several things. Mostly shadows. I needed more shadows especially along the main mountains. I did those at the foot of the mesa first and liked where it was going. And it can be slow going. I found myself getting rather impatient. Between this stage and the finished painting above is the deep shadow at the foot of the mountains and the whitish glaze on the mountains beneath the sun. And so many little changes in the clouds I am embarrassed to even mention them. Watercolor on canvas allows for colors to be picked up and replaced. Canvas does not wear out like watercolor paper.

Dawn Chasing Away the Storm
14 x 30 on Artists Canvas
$1050

I have posted it again for you to more easily compare the finished with the step above. And of course I added the birds. It is in the process of finishing this painting I came to realize I am an abstract painter. "Abstract art uses a visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world."

Sometimes I think my independence is getting greater.

Dawn Banishes the Night

Dawn Banishing the Night 18 x 24 Mixed Media
Goddess Series

Okay, I think this is finished. I said in this morning's blog that I had an issue I was dealing with on this painting based on Arches National Park's Double Arch. The issue was depth or rather the lack of it. My solution was glazes using Chinese white in part. The sky I did with the white, a blue and an iridescent medium. The large tower in the back center left was glazed with white and yellow.

The large arch was poured to give it a huge feel. Brush strokes to me seem to make things seem smaller. Or maybe it is just the size of the brush which has its individual limitations while pouring has none. I generally pour skies because of that large feeling pouring gives you but as the double arch breaks the sky into two smaller pieces this sky is painted. Dawn forms the support of the smaller of the arches.

Last night when I went to bed this painting was unfinished and I thought maybe lost. I believe the glazes worked. I am living with it for a couple of days before signing and varnishing. As we know I do change my mind from time to time.

Finished the 14 x 14 church painting I was also doing and will post that next.

Painting in Our Minds

During my college days I would be assigned a term paper and rush immediately to the library to begin research, narrow my topic, and start filling out countless 3x5 cards. This fury of activity would last about a week and just when it would look like I could have my paper done months in advance I would stop to now work actively again until two to three days before it was due.

My "style" did not change when I was doing freelance writing. I had to chew subconsciously on my topic for a while. Yesterday when I seemed to be avoiding sitting at my painting desk in the studio I realized I was essentially doing the same thing.

My research is photography. Traveling back from my sister's house on New Year's day I took some interesting but uninspiring photos of dawn's light hitting the mountains I was driving through. And on January 2nd I took the above photo from my studio door. My paintings thus far have been of rising full moons or the sun above the horizon. Now my mind is chewing on dawns with no sun in view. How to paint such a sky? Or the mountains being painted gold on their east facing tips?

I saw a painting today of a Palestine cliff face being hit but the "off stage" sun and added that to my mental 3x5 cards. I don't spend a lot of time doing sketches or thumbnail color studies because by the time I am ready to paint what my mind has been chewing on I have painted it in my head. I may do one "study" on a smaller scale. To achieve this sky I will play with colors on a smaller canvas. I will do a sketch that is part Ortiz Mountains and Palestine cliff. I will look again at my "notes" - the photographs I have taken. Then I will paint what is in my mind.

Until then I seem to be avoiding that corner of my studio.