Category: Landscapes

A wide variety of greens are showing off at this time of year. For a painter it’s a challenge to differentiate the many greens — unfurling leaves, mature leaves, grass, a variety of plants, all in either sun or shade. How many greens are in this painting? The sheep are just simple shapes.

The beauty of winter.

Seeing a painting of this scene on a friend’s wall, I was fascinated by the rhythm of the receding hills and trees, and the way the sheep were suggested with simple shapes. I took a photo and tried to reproduce it with pencil, pen and watercolor.

The trees in October and early November are so beautiful.

With so many vacations cancelled, this painting, which I did awhile ago — with its empty chairs and boats — seems evocative of these strange times.

This summer I’m going to take a partial break and only post once a week. Instead of Monday and Friday, you’ll receive one painting Friday at 5.

Please remember that at least 50% of my art sales (for paintings or commissions) in the next four months will be donated to the election, to increase voter turnout in swing states. Info here.

Juneteenth is the celebration of the end of slavery. 155 years ago, on June 19, 1865, Union troops led by General Granger reached Galveston, Texas and announced that the war was over and the enslaved were now free. Although Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation 2 1/2 years before, this was the last place in the country to hear this news.

After an unusually mild winter and a cool wet spring, the warm weather has unleashed incredible growth in the plants and trees. One of the hidden blessings of the pandemic is that we have been forced to slow down, which gives us the chance to appreciate the nature around us.

The Newton Watercolor Society is learning together via Zoom every week, and last week Chetana taught us about painting on Yupo paper. Yupo is not absorbent, and it produces a lot of different textures you can’t achieve on absorbent cotton watercolor paper. Painting on Yupo (this scene was out of my imagination) was fun, different, and required giving up some control. What do you think of this approach?

Every spring, artists dust off their greens. There are dozens, hundreds of shades of green in nature. Painters can start off with a green like sap green or viridian, and modify it with a touch of yellow and red. Or mix various blues and yellows (I have three of each on my palette, there are dozen more). Then decide how much water to add to make it lighter or darker. Myriad choices to evoke the unfolding colors of the world around us.

We have devised several strategies to stay sane in this crazy time. First and most important, limited exposure to the news. Second, quiet classical music on the radio all day. Third, staying in touch via phone and video chat (Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom). Fourth, feed the birds! Here are a Carolina wren and a male goldfinch who visited our feeder last week.

I love sharing with you, especially now, and a number of you have written you feel the same. If you know anyone who might enjoy receiving my posts, please forward to them. They can sign up by emailing me at lynnholbein@gmail.com, or on the right-hand side on my website www.lynnholbein.com. Stay safe!

On my daily walk, there are many reminders that, while the human world has changed dramatically in the last month, the natural world goes along unfazed. Pollution over Wuhan has disappeared, emissions from planes and cars are reduced, and more. Meanwhile, the birds are winging their way north and the earliest buds are preparing to unfurl. Here’s my painting from the edge of a lake.

Four years ago today, Dr. James Phillips replaced both my knees. He literally put the spring back in my step. I owe so much to him, and to Dr. Asmal and Dr. Bala (my PCPs for more than three decades) for keeping me healthy.

To what medical professionals do you owe thanks for your quality of life, or even your life itself? We are so incredibly blessed to have modern medical care available to us.

New England is famous for its colorful fall foliage.
It’s a great time of year to live here.

We have come to the Rockies for ten days to visit family in Provo, Utah, and then Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. The Grand Teton range is awe-inspiring, especially for us New Englanders for whom 5,000 feet is a big mountain. We are staying at Jackson Lake Lodge, elevation 6,400, with this view of Grand Teton, elevation 13,700 feet. The conspicuous patches of snow are small glaciers.

We have had a beautiful full moon the last few nights, though no snow since before Christmas. 

This little landscape was made with pastels, as medium I don’t use often. Yellow and purple are opposites on the color wheel (like red & green, and blue & orange), so the combination “pops.”

Nighttime in the winter can be magical.

Our friend Keith said, “I know just where it is. It’s the coastline of Norway with the mountains behind. The red is the people and towns just barely hanging on at the edge of the sea.”

As I paint, I imagine looking across the lakes of Vermont and New Hampshire where we vacation every summer.

What do you see?

We have been in Chapel Hill for Easter, where spring is in full bloom. This painting celebrates two years since our daughter Kate (Rademacher) published Following the Red Bird, a memoir about her faith journey. We raised our three kids Unitarian, a non-dogmatic faith which honors all world religions. In the last dozen years, my husband Bruce has become Catholic,  Andrew is Christian (attending African-American churches where he plays gospel piano and organ), Kate has become Episcopalian, and Christopher and I are still Unitarian. Did I mention our son-in-law practices and teaches Tibetan Buddhism?

Today is the shortest day of the year. I once read a children’s story that called the winter solstice “the first day of summer,” because from now on the days will get longer. Happy solstice!

 

 

Several years ago we made traveled to Utah, rented an RV, and toured the major national parks for ten days. Arches is huge and studded with rock formations like this. The Three Gossips is iconic. You can see why.

Since Labor Day I’ve only posted one painting a week, but I’m resolving now to get back to twice a week, which go out Monday and Friday at 5 p.m.

The white pines of New England are such majestic trees. This one in our yard in easily 80 feet tall.

I love sketchbooks which are “Landscape Mode,” like this Moleskine Watercolor 5″ x 8 3/4″. (A tall sketchbook is called “Portrait Mode.”)  They give you the option to turn them on their side to draw something tall and thin, or do a long view, as you will see with next Friday’s sketch.

New Englanders are divided between those who head to the ocean on vacation — Cape Cod or the coasts of New Hampshire or Maine — and those who prefer the inland hills and lakes of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine or the Berkshires. We are in the latter category. We are spending the last two weeks of summer in Vermont and New Hampshire, and these late summer days are a good time to paint.

We are home now, and I am painting from my photos. Our Amtrak train from Seattle to Los Angeles, the Coast Starlight, went inland for awhile, and then turned toward the ocean.

I’ve lived most of my life near the Atlantic Ocean, and by comparison the Pacific seems more majestic, colder and more forbidding. But we did pass some beaches where people were sunbathing and surfing.  I used a white pen to indicate the edges of the surf.

 

We are at home now and have become evangelists for seeing the country by train; you can relax and see America out the window while avoiding driving, interstates and the same chain restaurants.  I still have some paintings I want to create (from my photos) and share with you over the next couple of weeks. I will post them in the order we traveled:  the train from Seattle to Los Angeles, a couple of scenes from L.A., and finally our train trip from L.A. to Chicago across the heartland of America.

The Coast Starlight is the Amtrak train which took us from Seattle to Los Angeles. It travels for a couple of hours  through the Salinas Valley, where agriculture bring in $9 billion each year. Strawberries, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach are the dominant crops in the valley, as well as broccoli, cauliflower, wine grapes, artichokes, and celery. Due to the intensity of local agriculture, the area has earned itself the nickname “America’s Salad Bowl.” 

 

En route from Chicago to Seattle on Amtrak’s Empire Builder, we passed through Glacier National Park. In mid-July, you can still see snow on the peaks. The observation car gave us great views including this one.

Sitting  by a train window hour after hour watching the endless expanse of plains and  farmland of Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana, helps you appreciate  the immensity of this country. Thinking about how you would feel if you lived there, so different in terms of lifestyle, worldview and even politics than living on the urban and suburban East Coast.

Our beautiful granddaughter Maggie (Margaret Grace) was born to our daughter-in-law Eva and son Andrew in Brooklyn on Wednesday. 10 pounds 5 ounces, normal delivery, perfectly healthy. We are all thrilled and so blessed!

What potential does this new life hold?

During my trip to San Francisco last week,  my step-sister Elizabeth and I visited Muir Woods. Here’s what we learned from a lecture by a volunteer: Giant redwood trees can grow up to 320′ and live up to 2,000 years. They once covered the entire Northern Hemisphere worldwide. The climate changed and many of them gave way to other species, but there were still millions of acres of redwoods, especially on the West Coast. When white men came west, they discovered that the wood from these trees was resistant to insects and fire, so redwoods became the preferred building material. Finally, in 1909, there remained a small stand near San Francisco on land owned by William Kent. After the 1906 devastating earthquake and fire in San Francisco, the stand of trees was about to taken by eminent domain to rebuild the city. Through his Yale connections, Kent appealed to Teddy Roosevelt, who, with a stroke of the pen, and within days of the clearcutting, proclaimed Muir Woods a National Monument. It’s within an hour of the city and is a popular place to visit and see the world as it once was.

 

A semi-abstract painting, like this one, evokes a realistic scene, but has fun with color and shape. This is one of my favorites. You can see I used a variety of techniques , including painting on a section of wet paper, which flows, and painting on dry paper, which stays where it’s put.

In New England, we are past this peak foliage thanks to a cold snap last week. I painted this scene last year with artists’ crayons (trees and water), watercolor (sky) and a Sharpie to delineate the layers of trees. Water brushed onto artists’ crayons “melts” them, as on the lake. The crayons on the trees I left alone for texture.

Our fall has been warm and dry so the foliage hasn’t been that brilliant. Here is a painting I did a few years ago when it was at its peak. The foliage New England is famous for!

We’ve gone up to Vermont to close up our cottage, which has no insulation  or central heat, and (at 35 miles from Canada) gets a bit nippy at this time of year. I’ve painted this view of the Caspian Lake from our porch a dozen times, but I really like this one I did in August.

A typical Sandy Island cabin. This is the only painting I’ve ever done in oil, courtesy of Amy Stein who shared her materials at Sandy Island.

It’s all about the shadows.

New England used to be full of sheep raised for mutton and wool. There are still a few around.