Storm

Sky Part III – Storm

August 12, 2018

Storm Acrylic on canvas 16"x20"

This was a day of lots of laughter and silliness. Miss Beth was out of sync and the set up routine became a puzzle. The biggest puzzle was getting the easel set at the right height and angle, bringing everything to their right places for painting. Mom joined in as we loosened and tightened various bolts and wing nuts. Cannon took delight in our struggles.

Then Cannon was excited and focused on the opening of the Ninja smoothie maker mom was unpacking and getting ready for its first blast of smoothie making – more laughing in anticipation. 

 

At last we turned our attention to the canvas. 

We have had some good summer storms lately, lots of thunder and lightning in the distance and clouds heavy with rain moving across the sky. So it is time to bring out some of Cannon’s favorite colors – a touch of raw umber and ultramarine blue to warm and cool the grays and near black in the sky.

We started by adding the paint directly on the roller and began working in layers of color. Later Cannon indicated where other colors should be added and they were applied directly on the canvas 

 

When the canvas was covered with these first layers we took a break to try out the smoothie maker.  Cannon’s first flip of the switch sent us both into the air.  We jumped out of our seats with the sudden loud sound of the motor.  Cannon made two different smoothies and we each tried both of them.

Then it was back to the canvas to add final colors and textures to the very heavy menacing storm cloud composition.  

Contrails Revised

Contrails Revised
August 26, 2018

Cloud – Inside Looking Out acrylic on canvas  20"x 16"

Picasso and other artists knew when a composition is not working or feeling right and they painted over it and started anew. After working on the Contrails canvas several times we decided to take another view of clouds – from the inside looking out.

A little more research on clouds - 

“Although we can see clouds, if you were to try to touch one your hand would go straight through it. ... Although we can't really touch clouds you could walk through one. In fact that's what fog is: a cloud that's formed close to the ground instead of high in the sky.”

                                   samanthagouldson.com/can-you-touch-clouds-and-are-they-fluffy

Cannon has flown through clouds so it was not too difficult for him to imagine and paint a cloud from the inside.

He used his favorite painting tool – a small paint roller that has developed a textured surface of dried paint. The original contrails quickly blended into the dense cloud and the clear blue sky could be seen peeking through the cloud.  Cannon’s energetic movements are clear and give the cloud a sense of its ever changing nature.

This artist makes perfect clouds indoors check them out. Cannon and I enjoyed watching this video.

https://www.wired.com/2015/06/berdnaut-smilde-nimbus/   

Sky part II – Constable Clouds

Sky part II – Constable Clouds 

June 24, 2018

Sky Part II Constable Clouds Acrylic 16"x20"

The Inspiration

 

John Constable 1776–1837
Cloud Studies 1822
Constable’s oil studies of skies show a remarkable understanding of the structure and movement of clouds. Most also give a good impression of their three-dimensional volume. 

Gallery label, February 2004

The studies vary in size. Above is one of only four examples painted by Constable on a larger format. The larger the scale the more difficult he found it to balance crispness of detail with speed of execution. This is why the larger cloud studies tend to be more generalized. The inscriptions on the back – ‘11 o’clock’ and ‘Noon’ – indicate that this study took him about an hour to paint.

Cannon looked at several of the 1822 cloud studies by John Constable before choosing this one as his inspiration for this next sky-scape.

Contrails and Jet Propulsion

 

But before he started work on the second canvas that he had prepared at the last session we had another experiment on jet propulsion and the contrails that we see in the sky.

First we tied a string to the top of the storage closet door, and then we stretched it across the dining room and into the living room. We threaded the string through a drinking straw.

Mom blew up the balloon and holding tight to the end with Cannon’s help attached it to the straw (the fuselage of our plane).

After the count down Cannon released the balloon and watched it take off across the rooms to the top of the closet door.  We completed the experiment several times noticing the difference in the balloon's flight when the string was loose or taught. 

I pulled the string straight up, perpendicular to the floor so that Cannon could see that a vehicle could travel straight up from the earth to space outside our atmosphere. I mentioned Arthur C. Clark’s concept of a Space Elevator that he wrote about in his novel The Fountains of Paradise. Now that is something to wonder about.

Fact or Fiction

 

Cannon may see this concept become a reality: 
“Sep 6, 2000 - Inspired partly by science fiction, NASA scientists are seriously considering space elevators as a mass-transit system for the next century.”

Putting Paint on Canvas

At last it was time to study the Constable Cloud inspiration and pick up the paint brushes.

White paint was placed on the prepared canvas and Cannon used his large round brush to make curved and rounded brush strokes on the canvas. He also experimented with a “double brush”.

Lots of energy went into this process as he pulled his brushes across the canvass with speed and direction similar to our propulsion experiment.

He took a couple of short breaks between the action on the canvas. He added some gray brush strokes before setting his brushes aside.

Breakfast Break

 

We stopped for a breakfast break before cleaning up our materials and putting away our supplies. Cannon did the wet clean up and I stowed away our equipment.

We had enough time to play a fun round of our Frog and Toad Game, then it was time to move on into the rest of a lovely summer Sunday.

Sky part I - Daytime Sky with Contrails

Sky part I - Daytime Sky with Contrails

May 20, 2018

Introduction to the Inspiration

One of my earliest memories is of standing belt high next to my father looking up, my bare feet in the cool dewy grass of a summer morning.  He would take a deep breath and look at the empty sky and say “I smell rain”. Then looking down at me “Can you smell it” I taking a deep breath and exhaling I would nod my head “yes”.

At other times of day I would see him standing and looking up just watching the sky I would come up next to him and he would glance down at me and smile we would stand silently together. I stood belt high then middle button high then pocket high, shoulder high and then eye to eye. We stood quietly looking at the sky.

I have studied Constable skies, Turner skies, Monet skies, and van Gogh skies. They all go back to the first sky gazing with my father.

Constable - Salisbury Cathedral
from the south-west 1820

Turner - Venice from the
Porch of Madonna della Salute 1835

van Gogh -
Wheat Field with Cypresses 1889

Monet -
Cliffs and Sailboats at Pourville 1882

 

Together Again

Cannon and I have had a long hiatus. My downsizing, time with my daughter and family, and getting two new knees, have kept us apart for more than a year. At last we have picked up the threads of our art making.

 

Sharing the Inspiration

Cannon is ready to get out his tools and start putting paint on canvas. Before our first session I started looking around for an inspiration to offer him for this next series of paintings.  I found it on a morning drive; there above me were the contrails of the morning airplane traffic criss-crossing and making triangles, trapezoids, quadrilaterals on a vivid blue sky.  Seeing that clear blue sky with the contrails reminded me of those mornings of sky gazing with my father.

On our first workday in May, I shared this vision with Cannon and offered the idea of making four different sky scapes. We looked at images of the contrails of the jet planes. We also looked at the 1822 Cloud Studies done by John Constable.

We looked at the different types of clouds and their names, Cumulus, Stratus, Cirrus, Swelling Cumulus and more. Meteorologists are scientists who study weather and Nephologists study cloud formations.

 

A Compass

It is helpful when sky gazing to know which direction to look at different times of the day, where the sun will rise and set and to find north and south. So we experimented with making a compass with a needle, a cork, a bowl of water and a magnet. We magnetized the needle by moving it across the magnet in a circular motion.

Then we placed it on a thin slice of cork in a glass bowl of water in just a few seconds it turned and stopped. That was north. We repeated the experiment several times to test its accuracy.

 

Time to Paint

 

Cannon unwrapped the new 16”x20”canvas
and placed it on the easel.

   

We used painters tape to reserve white spaces. Cannon directed the placement of the contrails.

Two new blues were added to his palette.

Then he added white to lighten the value to the sky blue he desired.

Like Van Gogh, Cannon likes to place the paint from tube directly onto canvas. He directs the placement of each color.

Picking up one of his favorite tools, this time the small paint roller, he covered the canvas with his combination of blues and white to make the clear blue sky color he desired.










The first step completed we set it aside to dry. 

 

Sky Studies Part 1 – Contrails continued

June 3, 2018

Set up – this session started with the usual setting up of the work space, covering the table, getting out supplies and moving the easel into place. Then it was time to start work.

Cannon pulled the blue painter’s tape from his blue canvas. Using a one inch flat brush I covered the raw white canvas “contrails” with white acrylic paint.

Then it was Cannon’s turn. He used a painting tool we made with small square of terry cloth stuffed with cotton and tied with string. This created a stamping tool. The Cannon grasps the “tail” of the tool, loads it with paint – white this time – and stamps along the contrails. This creates the cloud like look of the vapor trails.

While this first layer was drying, we started the second canvas in the Sky Studies series – Constable Clouds.

Sky Study II Constable Clouds

Cannon prepared his second canvas with a combination of the new blues and white. He used his textured paint roller to cover the canvas with a range of blue values, from very dark blue to pale blue – almost white. We set both canvases aside until our next session.