Green Cottage

6"x8" oil on Belgian linen mounted on archival board

"I can envision a small cottage somewhere, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends."
- Lt. Richard Van de Geer

The second painting on Friday during my Chincoteague Paint-out last week-end:

Over on Maddox Street, about 9am the sun is still moving quickly and making some interesting shadows under the eves and porch roof on the front of this house. I love to see the varying temperatures of light as it glances across the angles of buildings. Top that off with the gorgeous crepe myrtle on the front corner of this cottage and I've got a wonderful complimentary color thing going here. I'm set up on the lawn of a hotel just across the street, in the shade of the hotel sign, so there is no direct sun on my canvas or palette (makes it easier to see what you're doing!) Now if you've been to Chincoteague, you'll know that there are several bands of roaming ducks- being surrounded by water, this should not come as a surprise. I was wondering if they would come up and start pecking at my paint tubes, but they kept their distance. Whew, dodged that little bullet. So again, to start a painting, I indicate the large masses- with 'masses of paint' and block that in with these considerations in mind: warm vs. cool colors and light vs. dark values. As a painter, you'll find that if you allow yourself to block in with simple shapes first(and fairly abstractly), and get that canvas covered, the details you add on top of that will finish things up easily. And I am so glad I chose those shadow shapes immediately and got them indicated with the initial block in. As the sun continued to rise, the shadow shapes continued to change and weren't near as interesting as when I first saw them!

*Painters, make your decisions early and stick with them, see them through to the end. If you really must change for something 'better' you can always do that later. But if what you saw at first is the best, and you haven't gotten that down on canvas, it's more difficult to go back to the shadows that "used to be there". By 11am I was wrapping things up, the sun is high in the sky and I was ready to move to my next selected painting
spot.

Contact me to purchase this painting: roxannesteed@gmail.com