Aunt Mildred

Aunt Mildred
watercolor by Jane McElvany Coonce

I started a watercolor portrait a few weeks ago.  After taking a watercolor portrait workshop sponsored by the Arlington Artists Alliance Academy, I decided I'd better practice what I learned.
I'm going to do a series of watercolor portraits of woman (and possibly men) in hats.  This is the first one in the series.  I love Aunt Mildred's hat and how dressed up she was for this photograph.  I knew it would be a great painting if I could pull it off.  I've been wanting to do this portrait for over a year, and I finally got enough guts to start.  It was so much fun.  I finished it yesterday during the snow storm.  See, snow is good for some things!

Now I'm ready to start my next "woman in a hat" painting.  But after that, I don't have any more ideas.  So if you've got a great hat, I'd love to come and photograph you in it.  You can be my next Guinea pig.

Pen and Ink sketches of Italy

Italian Door Front and Windows
pen/ink and watercolor
by Jane McElvany Coonce

When you travel, sometimes it's hard to take all of your equipment with you.  For an oil painter, it's really difficult because you can't take mineral spirits on a plane which means you then have to find a store at your destination that sells it.

Traveling with pen and ink and watercolor is a good solution.  You can fit a small sketch pad in your purse, along with a permanent ink pen and a small travel watercolor set.  In a half hour, you can sketch a scene.  Later on, you can go over your pencil lines with a permanent ink pen.  Then you can put in the color and have a great sketch of the place you just visited.

This is a sketch of a doorway in Umbria.  The Italians have flower pots and flower boxes everywhere.  Home fronts are beautiful.  This was a beautiful door front in Todi, a darling town where many Americans live.

Storefronts
pen/ink and watercolor
by Jane McElvany Coonce

The other sketch is of a storefront in Amsterdam.  I couldn't resist the red awnings.  Traveling with a sketch book is a great way to capture the scenes of a trip without lugging a ton of equipment.

Nandina

Nandina
watercolor by Jane McElvany Coonce

I had a big surprise today.  I went over the the gallery to meet up with a friend and head down to the Richard Estes show at the American Art Museum (which, by the way, was mind blowing. Tomorrow is the last day to see it.)
When I walked into the gallery, I was told  my painting, "Nandina, had sold.  It's a watercolor I did when I was studying the leaves and berries of a gorgeous scrub that grows out my front door.
It was with joy and sadness that I heard this news.  I was thrilled that someone loved it enough to buy it, but I was sad because I loved it, too, and had planned on hanging it in my dining room after it made the rounds in several shows.  But I'm happy that a friend of mine, Sandra Hill, bought it.  So I can still see it from time to time when I go over to her house.  This happens to artist at times.  You do a painting that you don't care if it ever sells because you like it so much and don't mind keeping it.  It doesn't happen with every painting because we really can't afford to own all of our own paintings.  So there are always those select few that you miss after they are sold.  Nandina is one of them.

After I got home from the Richard Estes show, I learned that I sold another painting, "Rehoboth Night", at Stifel and Capra.  I think today was a lucky day.

Rehoboth Night
watercolor by Jane McElvany Coonce

Rehoboth Nights

Rehoboth Nights
watercolor
by Jane McElvany Coonce

Today I finished my first night scene in watercolor.  I've done lots of night scenes before in oil, but this was a new challenge.

My brother has a beach house up in Dewey Beach , Delaware.  Dewey is the next town to Rehoboth.  We spend a lot of time up there, and we always go into Rehoboth for it's shops and it's restaurants.
This is a scene of the Rehoboth boardwalk at night.  In the summer, the boardwalk is hopping, night and day.  But we go up to the beach off season, and it's much more quiet.

I'm a member of the Rehoboth Art League, so I may enter this one in one of their shows this summer.

Pears and Lace

Pears and Lace
watercolor
by Jane McElvany Coonce

A new year begins with lots of ideas for the next painting.  I'm really trying to focus on watercolor while still doing the oils, too.  This is a watercolor I just finished from a still life set up.  I had never done lace before in watercolor.  I had done it in oil, but I find oil less stressful because if you make a mistake, you can let it dry and then cover it up with more oil paint.  In watercolor, there is no covering up.  You need to think things through before you ever put the brush to the paper.  You paint the tablecloth first as if it is a solid fabric with no holes.  Once it dries, you can draw with pencil the pattern of the lace, the flower shapes and the curly Qs.  Then you begin to paint the dots.  It takes a while but it was actually fun (and nerve racking). But, it worked out and I'm pleased.

First Painting for 2015

by Jane McElvany Coonce

I finished my first painting for 2015.  I have a private student that wanted to do crabs.  So I used photographs from a still life I had set up in the summer time when crabs were plentiful.  Might be hard find crabs this time of year.  Previously, I had done a crab painting with a suduko game on the newspaper.   I made this one a crossword puzzle.  My student and I did a paint-a-long, and she would do what I did on my canvas.  She added a few more crabs and a beer bottle, so the paintings aren't exactly alike.

The basket in the painting is the same old basket that my dad used to use to catch crabs in the Chesapeake Bay when I was a child.  We would camp at Seashore State Park, and every morning, he would go out on the beach with his chicken necks and string and a weight to hold the bate down on the ocean floor.  I was my dad's shadow, and he taught me how to slowly pull the trap line in and get the chicken neck off the ocean floor so that we could take a net and scoop them up.  We caught enough to fill the basket each day.  It was fun and I enjoyed "the hunt."  Later, we would carry them over to my grandmother's house who lived in Norfolk, and she would steam them up.  Of course, back then, I didn't eat crabs (what an idiot!)  Now I have to pay for them and they cost a pretty penny.
 However, it needs a title.  If you have any suggestions, please feel free to make them.  I am not very gifted in the titling paintings.

The January Art League Juried Show-2015

Cell Phone Eaves-Dropper
by Jane McElvany Coonce

I'm starting the year off right!  I made it into the January Art League Juried Show down at The Torpedo Factory in Old Town Alexandria.  Competition is always stiff.  There were 600 entries and the judge picked about 90 paintings.  So it's always a thrilling feeling when you get in.  It's like winning the lottery for the month!

This painting was done in watercolor from my trip to Umbria.  This was in a hill town of Italy.  The old lady on the bench seemed to be listening to this young man on his cell phone.  Was this boy talking to his girlfriend?  Was the old woman getting a kick out of what she heard?  I actually was attracted to this scene because of the light falling on both of the figures. He's in the bright light in the beginnings of his teenage years.  The woman, in her waning years,  was in the corner of an archway and would have been in the shadows if the sun hadn't been barely hitting her.  I thought it made a good story and an interesting composition.  Let me know what you think.

If you get a chance, go down to The Art League and see this fabulous show. It will be there for the month of January.