What is it about Ice Fishing?

I don’t fish.

I like lots of aspects of the fishing culture. I like lakes and rivers. I like boats. I like hand tied flies, and I like fish.

I just don’t want to catch them and kill them and eat them.

So I observe, ask questions and translate into various paintings.

For the 1st time I am living on the shore of a frozen lake. I knew about ice fishing, but I didn’t pay much attention. This winter, life on the ice is proving to be a vivid, ever changing show.

The shanties began to appear in December and now there are at least 3 dozen.

Some have full on heating systems and rustic touches like elbow stove pipes. Beyond you can see a “bait bank.” A bank consists of a submerged barrel to store live bait, generally with a padlock on it.

This one has a solar powered porch light too.

And some have homey, gingham curtains and custom, fish, address plates.

Fascinated by this new, growing village on the ice, I began photographing, drawing and finally painting with gouache.

A helpful fisherman posed for the foreground figure. His manual ice auger is in the background. many fisherman have power tools for this.

Once the ice has formed, it is strong enough to drive on, so there are tire tracks everywhere.

Once I became familiar with what the surfaces looked like, I began to think about what lay beneath.

That’s when I imagined this scene.

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7 Important Reasons Why: Color, Light, Line, Texture, plus Denise, Ashley, Food!

I am so excited to be teaching an art workshop this spring: April 21-23.

The wildly talented Denise Fleming

portrait of Denise Fleming with gelli print block in the Highlights Barn Studio

and Ashley Wolff

portrait of Ashley Wolff prepping a gouache resist piece in the Highlight Barn Studio

have put together an art immersive weekend called the Color, Light, Line and Texture Hands-On Workshop.

It is one of the entertaining and educational programs the Highlights Foundation supports at their beautiful Pocono Mountains location.

You DON’T need to be an  “Artist” to join this workshop. You can register here right now.

‘Not an artist’ made this collage last spring

You don’t need to feel confident drawing, painting, or coloring in the lines.

You DO need to have a love of tackling something new, and you have to be attracted to this:

COLOR

 

and this:

LIGHT

and this:

T E X T U R E

and this:

L I N E

Join us for 3 days and 3 nights of playing and getting deeply involved with color, light, texture and line!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The venue will be the Barn at Boyd’s Mills, 10 miles from Honesdale, PA. You’ll sleep in beautifully appointed cabins, dine on fantastic food at every meal and be entertained round the clock with lessons, games, surprise guest speakers, and a field trip.

I’ll be leading photography rambles and you can wander the pretty spring woods and pastures, so bring your camera and sketchbook.

Register here for a fun time!

How I Paint with Gouache in my Brown Paper Sketchbook

A friend asked me to do a step-by-step on my sketchbook painting technique.

The point was made that one rarely sees the underlying drawing or the build up of paint in an artist’s work–just the finished product. I have posted step-by-steps of my niece’s murals and cottage cards, so here goes another.

I drew the pony with a 3H pencil. It is hard and light and good for the underlying sketch.

Using gouache as if it were watercolor, mainly burnt sienna and cobalt blue, I added the 1st set of darks.

I use a smallish palette of colors, mainly primaries. I love gouache because it works well both transparently and opaquely.

Using cobalt blue and yellow ochre I filled in a background.

The pony’s spots seemed kind of flat, so I washed some orange over them and added darkest darks using  a small liner brush with indigo and burnt sienna.

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