"Heading South," (Lucas Cross Farm), p. 2

First I painted the whites, so I could make some value judgements.  It's a good idea to paint your lightest lights early on. 

Then I looked at dozens of my photos of cloudy skies, and finally decided to do it this way. Most of my photos showed horizontal streaks of gray, but I found that if I varied the streaks, it was more interesting. Remember I'm going to add a flock of geese. I worked on the middle ground trees,  the cornfield, the grass, and a bit on the road.  

I need to finish the foreground, especially the big tree on the left, before I can go back and refine the rest. 

 Lucas Cross Farm 

I took these photos nearly 10 years ago and I have wanted to paint these barn buildings since then.  I think it will be a good demonstration of the planning and execution from a photo to a painting.  I'm attracted to the simple palette and the contrast of the barn against the dark sky.  

First, here are a few pictures of the original scene: 

I will be using the center one as my basic design, with some changes of course.  

Step 1. PRINTING

I cut a piece of the Strathmore Canvas Paper to 8 1/2 x 11 and put it in my printer, with my fingers crossed that it wouldn't ruin the printer.   It went through just fine, and this is the image.  The paper didn't take the ink too well, but it saved me a lot of drawing.

Step 2.  DECIDING ON A SIZE

I waffled for a while between 9x12 and 12x16, and finally decided on the former.  So then with the proportion wheel, ruler, and white masking tape in hand, I decided where it needed cropping.  Then I started to apply paint to the canvas paper print.

Step 3.  ADJUSTING THE DESIGN

I asked myself what I didn't like about the painting...the major thing was the silo was too tall.  So I shortened it, made the right hand tree more interesting, and developed the gray thing on the right into a house.  I made the center tree larger.  

Step 4. MORE DEVELOPMENTS

I tried some blue in the sky and made notes on the canvas.  I plan to add a flight of geese and will call the painting "Heading South."

Step 5. THE GRIDDED CANVAS

I marked off the canvas with soft vine charcoal into one inch squares and numbered them accordingly.

Step 6.  GRIDDING THE PRINT

I taped Saran Wrap over the print and used my ruler to divide the space into 9 equal sections vertically and 12 equal sections horizontally.  Note my ruler is not in the corners.  The actual size of the print was around 5 1/4" horizontally and I wanted to divide it into 12 parts.  I angled the ruler until the 6" mark was on the right side of the print.  I then put a tick mark every 1/2 inch.  Then did the same vertically, and numbered the squares accordingly.

Step 7. THE CHARCOAL DRAWING

Following the grid on the print, I carefully drew in the basics of the composition.

Step 8. THE COLOR DRAWING

Carefully wiping out the charcoal as I went along, I painted where the charcoal lines had been.  I used a darkish blue-gray.  

Step 9.  THE UGLY COLOR UNDERPAINTING

You can see I'm still undecided about the sky. I do want to keep it on the dark side so it will contrast with the white barn.  The geese will go somewhere in the left side.  That's a detail which I will paint last.  I made one major change...rather than have the road make two turns (which confuses the eye), I eliminated the right hand turn which keeps the eye in the picture.  The eye then goes back to the tree and up into the rest of the painting.  

Honoring the Shiplap House         Pinkney Street Shadows (plein air), 14 x 18, oil on linen       After walking around forever looking for an exciting scene at a "Paint Annapolis" plein air event, I finally found this historic street which beckoned me with its luscious lights and shadow patterns where I happily settled in to paint Pinkney Street Shadows.      At the time, I was unfamiliar with all the history, and so I had no clue that the red clapboard house that I included on the right had any particular significance. Boy, was I wrong.          I have since learned that it is the Shiplap House, built by Edward Smith about 1715, and is one of the oldest surviving houses in Annapolis. It is downtown at 18 Pinkney Street, just blocks from the Maryland State House and the US Naval Academy. During the eighteenth century, it served as a tavern and an inn, run by Mr. Smith and his wife.  The word shiplap comes from overlapping, random-width flush siding on two sides of the building. It is painted this lush barn red color and the widths of the boards are unusually wide, indicating that were made from old mature trees in the early 1700s. Currently the Shiplap House is home to the Historic Annapolis Foundation. Below are some pictures of the Shiplap House:

Prints of my painting, Pinkney Street Shadows, are available at Fine Art America. The original is available on my website and comes in a gold frame with free shipping.

Resurrecting the Kauffman Mill

Kauffman's Mill, 22x45, oil on linen

Kauffman’s Mill was built around 1775 on the banks of the Shenandoah River near Luray, Virginia by David Kauffman, son of one of the original settlers in the Shenandoah Valley. The original structure stood for nearly a century before being burned by Union forces during the Civil War. A second mill was built at the same site after the war in 1866, only to be destroyed four years later by the Great Flood of 1870 that washed away every mill from the headsprings of the Shenandoah River to Harper’s Ferry, Maryland. Undaunted, a third mill was erected in 1871 and stood until 1972 when the ravages of time required its removal. The eighth generation of Kauffmans still reside at the mill site. Earlier this year I connected with a descendant of the Kauffman's who commissioned me to do a painting of the mill and the surrounding area as it appeared around 1910. He had done extensive research and taken hundreds of photographs. In the family archives he located many photographs from that time period and before. We worked closely together to establish the parameters. He wanted the scene to depict the grist mill, saw mill, and milldam as they looked circa 1910. The mills, milldam, and even the mill pond no longer exist. Dozens of old photographs and recent aerial photography were used to recreate the scene. The people canoeing on the mill pond are his grandparents and are shown exactly as they appeared in a 1912 photograph. The reflection of the Massanutten Mountain on the mill pond creates an image resembling a bottle laying on its side. The Kauffman family always called this the “Massanutten Bottleneck.” Below are a some of the source materials I used. I thoroughly enjoyed this project. My collector was a stickler for detail and an absolute joy to work with.  I learned more about grist mills, lumber mills, mill dams, and mill ponds than I'll ever need to know again.     My collector took this photo from the site where the mill originally stood. It shows the blues of the Massanutten bottleneck contrasting with the warm gold fall colors along the Shenandoah River.  This picture shows the mill with the lumber mill to the right. Later an awning was added as you can see in the next photo. Over the years the mill went through various design changes...sometimes it had an awning, and earlier, around 1895, the sawmill stood on the right, as in the earlier photograph.  Here you can see the Shenandoah River in the background and the pylons that supported the lumber mill, until it was destroyed.  My collector rendered this scale drawing showing exactly how the mill facade should look with the sawmill. This was big help in understanding how all the different parts went together.   The flour was put into sacks and lowered through an opening, down through a trapdoor on the awning roof to the scale below where it was weighed.  These are my collector's grandparents enjoying an afternoon canoeing in the mill pond. In the far distance over their heads, the actual dam across the Shenandoah is just barely visible. This photo is circa 1895 and shows the mill without the awning but with the lumber mill attached.               In future newsletters, I will share plein air excursions, painting trips, commissions, and other events.

Plein Air Painting at Fletcher's Boathouse

Plein Air Painting at Fletcher's Boathouse  Water's Edge, 16 x 20, oil on linen         Most of my landscape paintings begin with a plein air sketch at a park or some other favorite location.  On this fall day, I and other members of the Washington Society of Landscape Painters met at the historic Fletcher's Boathouse, known for fishing, rowing, and canoeing on the Potomac River near Georgetown in DC.         I have a long history with Fletcher's.  When I was growing up in the Maryland suburbs, my father owned an outboard motor and occasionally would load it into the old Chevy along with my mother, me, and a picnic lunch and head down to Fletcher's Boathouse, where we would rent a rowboat and navigate up the Potomac.  We usually discovered a spot on the Virginia side, where we could pull the boat up onto the shore, climb up the river's edge a bit, and have our picnic lunch. Lots of good memories.         Over the years, I have painted many times at Fletcher's. This particular day I wanted to paint the scene down river from the boathouse.   These are reference pictures of the scene I painted.  It was a gorgeous day, a little breeze, no mosquitoes, just a few other folks out fishing and picnicking.  This shows a little more of the Virginia side of the Potomac River and the colorful reflections.  The trees were just beginning to show their fall colors.  Above is the plein air sketch, where I combined the two scenes above. However, I thought the result rather ugly, particularly the foreground.  At my old faithful French easel, just getting started: my palette is still rather neat and tidy.            The painting River's Edge at the top reflects the changes I made to the sketch, incorporating elements from the two reference photos.        In future newsletters, I will share other plein air excursions, painting trips, and other events. You may expect a Nuss News from me the first day of each month.

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Twilight Time, Finished!

The Finished Painting

I have really struggled with this painting, getting it to a point where I liked it. I have now added the flowers and details to make this an inviting scene. I'm very happy with it now.  It makes a big difference to have the houses of a different size. I've put some lights in the windows so you know that someone is home.

Twilight Time, Step 7

Drastic Changes

After much deliberation and trial and error, I finally decided that I would feature the large house, so I made the one to its right a bit smaller to look more like a guest house.  I deleted the little cabin replacing it with a small rowboat in the reeds, so I still have the balance of the steelyard composition. I like the feeling of this so much better, as I have implied a story which anyone can read something into it.