On gouache
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
6M ago
It's been a very long while, but I have decided to give the old blog a go again, even though I am not entirely sure that many people even read blogs any more. I guess I am about to find out!? To get the ball rolling, I thought I would revisit some thoughts on gouache. While I love my oils, sometimes I feel like the preparation, heft, and cleanup of carting out my oil painting gear can actually be a deterrent to regular plein air practice. I started playing with gouache some time ago as a way to develop a simpler, more lightweight plein air painting kit that is easier to set up and clean up. Go ..read more
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Commit to the feeling not the photo
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
3y ago
So I have been working on this 24x30” canvas off and on for some time. It was actually based on a series of photos I took on a drive not far from my home. I was after a particular feeling I had witnessing a warm, glowing evening sky in Hanover County filled with spectacular clouds. It is oh too easy though to get lost in the details, and that is exactly what I did! The clouds became too busy. The highlights lacked color. The landscape below needed something. Ultimately I took a big ole squeegee over the whole thing and scraped the paint and blurred a lot of the details out. I took an oil paste ..read more
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Reworking and "oiling out"
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
4y ago
Each year my family looks forward to our annual beach week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I have written a lot about how much I love painting down there. A week never feels like enough time, but this year it feels like a lost luxury because the family made the tough decision to cancel our rental due to the risks of traveling during COVID19. Needless to say I am feeling very nostalgic for the beach, and have spent a lot of time looking the painting, “Radiant Dawn,” which I painted a couple of years ago during another pivotal time of my life. This was the view from the bedroom balcony of ..read more
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Lake Como Painting Progression (continued)
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
4y ago
Well the time has really gotten away from me this week, as we are in the home stretch of my daughter’s “learn from home” work for her last weeks of fourth grade. But I HAVE been making progress on my painting of Varenna, the start of which I shared in my prior post. First things first… I thought before going any further I would share a little about the colors currently on my palette, and what I’ve been using to work on this piece. I will start by saying that this is a pretty big palette of colors for me, and definitely larger than what I use for my field work. But because I have such limited ..read more
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Lake Como painting progression
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
4y ago
I am working on putting together a video post, but I have to get my 9 year old to help me with some of the technical side first.? So today I am relying on the good old fashioned blog post, sharing a step-by-step painting in progress. I had such a good time with my last Lake Como Painting that thought I’d “laissez les bons temps roule,” (as the Cajun in me likes to say.) I chose a scene in Varenna from my photo archives, one of my favorite memories that now feels like both yesterday and a long time ago. I chose one of my favorite canvas sizes, a 24x30”, and a color scheme of jewel tones that al ..read more
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Life post-Covid19 shutdown +Lake Como painting of the gardens at Villa Balbianello
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
4y ago
Hi friends, It is kind of strange to be posting this blog at this point in time. I had imagined I would restart my blogging with happy news—posting from the road perhaps during my plein air festivals, updating you all on social media with paintings from trips to the beach, the marshes, and the mountains. But that isn’t the way things have worked out for me this spring, or, I suspect, for a whole lot of other people who have found themselves in home confinement during this COVID19 pandemic. This spring I’ve been mostly occupying myself with helping my daughter with her home study, adjusting to ..read more
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From Study to Studio: Rose Regalia
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
5y ago
There is little more satisfying than capturing a moment in time through painting. And there is no better method to achieve that end than painting from life. The beauty of plein air painting lies in its freshness and immediacy. At its best, pure notes of color painted with confidence are juxtaposed with passages of broken color as the painter makes new discoveries along the way. Light and shadow fit together like pieces of a puzzle until a unified statement coalesces into art.Where plein air painting is very spontaneous, my approach in the studio, while similar, is more deliberate. Here I can a ..read more
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Sharpening the Saw: The value of a quick study
Jennifer Young Fine Art
by Jennifer Young
5y ago
Last month I completed a weekly class with David Tanner, a painter well-known locally for his portraiture. I believe the best artists, and especially the best teachers, are also lifelong students. Thus I am a true believer in the periodic practice of focused study to “sharpen the saw” and to discover new ways of seeing and working.My current obligations and time constraints make it difficult to invest in a week-long workshop out of town. So I was really interested when a fellow painter-friend recommended David’s class down at the Visual Art Center in Richmond. I have known and enjoyed David’s ..read more
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