2.9.24 Friday - Re-Acquired Paintings 9 and 10 of 10

This week I’ll be sharing two pieces of original artwork per day, pieces I’ve just recently re-acquired from exhibitions, or no longer in direct rotation for some of the more competitive show opportunities I’ve been pursuing.

While the work itself isn’t brand new - what I’ll be offering this week will be a bit of information about how the pieces came about, or other tidbits about each.  All the pieces are, as of this writing (the previous week), available through my website store.

Additionally, if you ever see something on my site yet you cannot find it in the Available Works section of my website, just ask me about it, by replying to one of these emails, using the contact page of my website, or sending me a new email at David@DavidOSmithArtist.com

Today’s pieces:

“Plein Air, 8-9am, Lake Union from Westlake, 3.27.23”, watercolor, 22 x 30”, 2023

This painting was the first I made of this view, looking east towards Lake Union and Capitol Hill from Westlake Avenue.  Since, I’ve painted this same view many times in many different conditions, but this first piece remains one of my favorite.  Occasionally (especially in the spring and summer) the morning light on Lake Union is augmented by just a touch of moisture in the air, and the glare becomes almost overwhelming.  This was one such morning.  The far shore of Capitol Hill, the Eastlake neighborhood where I grew up, was a mix of a warm and cool tone, to create the blue-gray.   I paid extra attention to the condition of the light around the glare on the water, and what it did optically to the horizon line around it.  This was one of the first times I really paid attention to the violet-red tones that emerge as the glare interacts with the human eye to create a warm glow, a lens flare around the edges of the white of the paper that is the glare.  There are two clouds in the sky, backlit, both brighter and darker than the color of the sky behind them.  Because of their shape some viewers have confused them for raising smoke.  At left is a barely rendered crane, erecting a new structure.  I tried in this painting to observe the reflections of the sky and the yachts at right as best as I could, and feel that that aspect of this painting was likely the most successful.  In the foreground glare (the white of the paper), the direction of the waves is diagonal upper right to lower left, while in the actual pattern of the waves and their dark reflections beyond the glare, the tilt is upper left to lower right.  This discrepancy is part of the process sometimes of observing a scene in time (in this case, an hour), as the wave direction changed from my painting the outline of the glare to the darker wave reflections.  Our brains will forgive minor discrepancies like this one if the colors are optical and put generally and specifically in the right places.  If I wanted to work from photos, I could, but working like this, en plein air, I welcome such changes into the piece.

“Plein Air 4-5pm Lakeside Crew at Kenmore Log Boom Park”, watercolor, gansai watercolor, white gouache, 22 x 30”, 2023

This piece is one that came about almost by accident.  I was in Kenmore, on assignment for Lakeside Magazine, the alumni magazine of my high school alma mater, Lakeside School.  The assignment was to create some original artwork depicting the school’s rowing team, Lakeside Crew.  I had already been out in the coaching motorboat, following practice and sketching watercolor in my all-media sketchbook.  While those had been fruitful initial works, I struggled to draw on them and on the photos I’d took on the day to create the large-scale more filled-out paintings I had in mind.  I don’t really work from photos anymore - I don’t know why for this project I believed that was my only option!  So off I went, many times, to visit Kenmore’s Log Boom Park, which includes a long wooden dock with great views of the northern end of Lake Washington, the body of water where my old high school rowing team practices in the spring.  Sure enough, on the day this painting was made, it was clear, a few clouds, bright and windy, and as I worked on the landscape a rowing shell and a coaching launch appeared directly in front of me and stopped long enough for me to include them in the piece.  Also - I recall making the foreground water of this painting too dark, and almost giving up on it… but reached instead for my gansai watercolors, a slightly different media than the transparent watercolors I usually use - which can only go darker.  The gansai, on the other hand, can become opaque with the right small amount of water - so I was able to lighten up the foreground water, and save the piece.  I added additional embellishments of white gouache for the glare of the sun on the water in the studio later on - from memory.