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, Van Gogh skies. They all go back to the first sky gazing with my father.
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| Constable - Salisbury Cathedral from the south-west 1820 |
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| Turner - Venice from the Porch of Madonna della Salute1835 |
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| Monet - Cliffs and Sailboats at Pourville 1882 |
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| vanGogh -Wheat Field with Cypresses 1889 |
I passed this onto my daughter and now grand daughters, all the young people I can. Now I think it is Cannon’s turn. There is so much to learn from sky gazing.
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, loaded it with paint – white this time – and stamped along the contrails. This created 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.
