Berry Hill, Nashville

If I can, I usually arrive at least a day early at a new workshop location. I feel more comfortable teaching in a place that’s at least a little bit familiar to me. That was the case last week in Nashville. I arrived on Monday evening so I had Tuesday to drive around with my host and sketch in the Berry Hill neighbourhood of Nashville where Warehouse 521 is located. It’s a great area, and the art studio is surrounded by recording studios, small cafés and restaurants. I sketched Nashville Jam Co, which I thought was a music venue of some sort but it turns out that it’s a brunch place where they make their own jam. You can see all of my Nashville sketches in the latest issue of my newsletter The Wheelbarrow. And there’s a link there for a new YouTube video of me in my kitchen sketching these green onions.

As good as it gets

Happy first day of spring! This morning I had a snowy view outside my window in Montreal, but it certainly was more springlike last week when I was teaching in Nashville. I’ll post my urban sketches later in the week, but here’s one from my last day in Tennessee. On the recommendation of one of my workshop participants, we visited Cheekwood Estate and Gardens, just outside of Nashville in the suburb of Belle Meade. Besides flowering magnolia and cherry trees, there are over 250,000 bulbs in bloom. Daffodils and tulips as far as the eye can see. I sat on a bench in the sun to sketch these pink tulips, and then ate an ice cream for lunch. That’s about as good as it gets.

Like butterflies

I can’t stop painting these mini-daffodils. This time I painted them in my portrait format sketchbook. When I looked at them up close with all their delicate details, they reminded me of butterflies, so I added a deep sky blue background with some Prussian Blue. It’s not that easy to paint around all these shapes so I wet the paper first, as best I could, around the flowers. In some places I went back with a second wash of paint which ended up a little too dark in spots. Sketched in my Hahnemuhle 100% cotton sketchbook.

Daffodils

Last week I bought a pot of tiny daffodils. They seemed to hold all the promise of spring. At first only one bud was half open, and I could see the tiniest glimpse of yellowish orange. Each day since then a few more flowers have opened. I’ve painted them several times — at first, just a quick sketch of the pot on my window sill…

…and then today, the open flowers in all their spring glory. I chose to paint them this time without the pot, imagining that this might be how they would be coming out of the ground in my garden. This second time is painted in direct watercolour (no pencil drawing) with a dagger brush, using a limited palette of a few yellows, a few blues and a little Cadmium Orange that was left over on my palette from yesterday’s clementine sketch.

On my counter

Thanks to all of you who wrote encouraging words the other day when I went through a trashing paintings day. It was so comforting to know that we are all in this together, in different ways and on different days. I didn’t save the paintings to analyze what went wrong, but I will consider that for next time. In the meantime, you might enjoy this podcast I just listened to. It’s Kelly Ann Powers interviewing John MacDonald on the Learn to Paint Podcast. She’s a great interviewer and he’s a very articulate painter, and of course I was intrigued because one of the subjects they covered was what to do if you have a failed painting. Perfect timing, right?

I spent the last few grey days sketching stuff around the kitchen. My Kakimori dip pen was collecting dust in a drawer so I dusted it off and used it to draw the clementines. And then when my Lufa basket arrived, the spring onions with roots still attached were irresistible, so I drew those too. If you are interested in the painting process for either of these, I recorded them both and will post them to YouTube very soon.