DAYLILLIES IN MINERAL POINT, WISCONSIN

Wisconsin Daylillieds, 6 x 5 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark   SOLD

I sketched these daylillies one morning in July at the Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts when I was neither teaching or taking part in a workshop at the annual Woodlanders Gathering.

"ART SYNTHESIS 2014" EXHIBITION AT INDEPENDENCE LIBRARY IN CHICAGO

Steam (Levee  at St. Louis). 23 x 29 oil and colored pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

My painting Steam (Levee at St. Louis) is currently on exhibit in the ART SYNTHESIS 2014 show at the Independence Branch of the Chicago Public Library located at 3548 W. Irving Park Road in Chicago.  The exhibition will be up through November 29, 2014.  Library hours are Monday and Wednesday from 10am to 6pm, Tuesday and Thursday from noon to 8pm, and Friday and Saturday from 9am to 5pm.

BELLY DANCE PERFORMANCE IN CHICAGO PARK

Belly Dance Performance, Independence Park, Chicago, 10 x 13 inch ink and colored pencil drawing
 by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Sometimes I don't have to travel very far to find my subjects.  These ladies are part of a troupe from the Arabesque Dance Studios who did a belly dance performance the Sunday before last at this year's first Farmers Market in Independence Park, a short walk from where I live on the Northwest Side of Chicago.  They looked great, but constant motion made them as hard to draw from life as the alligators I tried to sketch in the Everglades last year.  So I did the same thing I did in Florida-- I photographed them and then sketched from my photos.

THE FORESTER'S HOUSE

The Forester's House, 16 x 12 inch oil on canvas by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

My problem with the natural summer foliage of the American Midwest where I live is that it is all pretty much the same green color-- the trees, the grasses and the shrubbery.  That's why most of my Midwestern landscapes feature prominently big areas of other color like buildings, plowed fields, bodies of water, roads, or railway tracks against which the foliage can act as counterpoint.  The Forester's House is a rare example where I have let the foliage take center stage because I really like the shift in color and texture that the blue spruce trees at the heart of the painting make with both the deciduous forest in the background and the shrubs and day lilies in the foreground.  I like the rustic house in the forest too that gives the painting its title.  This was painted on-site in a public park in Schaumburg, Illinois, a western suburb of Chicago.      

PLOW ZONE

Plow Zone,  24 x 40 inch oil and pencil over acrylic sized paper by George C. Clark    SOLD

Plow Zone is a studio painting of spring plowing in the corn and soybean fields around my wife's late aunt and uncle's farm in Carroll County, Indiana.  I stained a sheet of Japanese Toyoshi printmaking paper a paper bag brown color with an acrylic sizing process I described earlier.  Then I washed in the sky color in semi-opaque acrylic.  The painting was completed with oil paint and Prismacolor colored pencils.  It was purchased in the 1980s for the corporate offices in Desplaines, Illinois, of the Sandoz Crop Protection Corporation, the American subsidiary of Sandoz/Novartis AG of Switzerland.  The American operation was eventually relocated back to Europe, and I have been told its art collection is now in Denmark.

The title Plow Zone is the archeological term that describes the first foot or two of soil in a cultivated field where found artifacts cannot be dated by their depth because you have to assume the earth has been jumbled repeatedly by plows and other cultivating implements.  After a rainfall on recently plowed earth is the best time for archeologists to do a field survey looking for artifacts on the surface as indicators of a site's potential for further study and possible excavation.

ART SALE AT THE PALETTE AND CHISEL SATURDAY APRIL 26

Audubon House, Key West, 8.5 x 9 inch ink and watercolor by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

This little ink and watercolor landscape is one of 6 works on paper I will have in the Art Sale at the Palette & Chisel Academy of Fine Arts at 1012 N. Dearborn Street in Chicago next Saturday, April 26, from 11am to 4pm.  This sale features hundreds of work in various mediums.  My other paintings in the sale will be a railroad image and four female nudes.

AN AFTERNOON IN THE COUNTRY

An Afternoon in the Country, 30 x 40 inch oil and colored pencil on paper painting by George C. Clark    AVAILABLE

Some years ago I did an exhibition of landscapes with an art dealer in Lake Forest, Illinois, a posh old money suburb on the shore of Lake Michigan north of Chicago.  She wanted to show some art with local interest, so I painted a couple of Lake Forest subjects, including this painting which I titled House in Lake Forest.  Several of my Italian landscapes sold, but not this painting, even though the dealer showed it to both the family that built the house in the 1920s and its current owner.  So I added the three Lombardy poplar trees which weren't there, changed the title to An Afternoon in the Country, and now I tell people it's in the suburbs of Paris.  The music room is at the right.

ABANDONED TRAWLER IN TOFINO, B.C.

Tofino Trawler, 12 x 16 inch watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

In the fishing port of Tofino on British Columbia's Vancouver Island, I found this old wooden trawler abandoned in a vacant lot half a mile from the sea.

WATERCOLOR DEMONSTRATION AT THE RIDGE ART ASSOCIATION

Mineral Point Log Cabin, 16 x 12 inch watercolor and colored pencil by George C. Clark

I was invited to do a visiting artist gig yesterday afternoon at the Ridge Art Association in Chicago's historic Beverly Hills neighborhood where I grew up.  The Ridge Art Association meets in the field house of Ridge Park, which also is home to the John H. Vanderpoel Art Museum where I had a one-person exhibition in 2010.  I showed the group how I create a watercolor for my Traveler's Sketchbook series when circumstances don't permit me to paint on-site as I like to do.

I found this early Nineteenth Century log cabin in Mineral Point, Wisconsin last winter on one of those overcast days when the snow on the ground is brighter than the sky.   When this painting demonstration opportunity came up this seemed like a good subject to me, with big areas of sky and snow that could be painted quickly, but also some nice detail in the cabin and foliage that would enable me to show a variety of watercoloring techniques.  I hoped to finish the piece in two hours.

I started by showing my copy photos and explained how I transferred a rough sketch onto a sheet of watercolor board.  Then I mixed colors and blocked in the sky and base colors for the roof, the log walls and the stone chimney.  The painting was pretty wet then, so I stopped painting and talked about the examples of my finished watercolors I had on display, both on-site and studio pieces.  Then I finished the drying quickly with an electric hair dryer and began adding details and building the textures of the various surfaces with transparent washes.  At the end of two hours the painting was shaping up nicely but I still needed to tighten it up quickly, so I got out my Prismacolor colored pencils.  I used them to lighten or darken edges and to add more color richness to the various textures in the painting.  By two and a half hours the painting was finished, signed and donated to the Ridge Art Association which will sell it in a fund-raising raffle at a dinner for members in May.

I thought the presentation went well.  I am able to talk and paint at the same time, so in addition to explaining what I was doing I was able to tell stories about my art-making experiences and to field questions from the group.  Many of the members are artists, so there were some very intelligent questions.  I hope my answers and demonstration were informative.  I'm always a little nervous before doing art in front of an audience, but I think we all had a good time yesterday.             

George C. Clark watercolor demo at Ridge Art Association March 9, 2014
Photos by Pat Clark

ABOARD THE M.S. CHALLENGER, LAKE UNION, SEATTLE

Aboard the M.S. Challenger, Lake Union, Seattle, 16 x 12 inch watercolor by George C. Clark   AVAILABLE

Some years ago my wife and I flew out to Seattle, spent a few days there, and then drove around the Olympic Peninsula.  In Seattle we stayed aboard the M.S. Challenger, an ocean-going tugboat that had been converted into a bed-and-breakfast.  Several of the larger (?) spaces on the boat had been refitted as guest accommodations.   Also available but not recommended were the actual crew quarters on the boat, which were dark and barely large enough for a skinny bunk and enough space to stand up and pull your waterproof clothing on.  The Challenger was docked on Lake Union, which is surrounded by Seattle, near the terminal where the float planes that provide passenger service to Victoria, British Columbia, and the San Juan Islands land.  I sat on the top deck one afternoon and painted this watercolor.  

T-REX FOSSIL SKULL AT THE FIELD MUSEUM

T-Rex Fossil Skull "Sue," Field Museum, Chicago, 6.5 x 10 inch ink drawing by George C. Clark

Last winter I attended an evening function at the Field Museum and sketched "Sue," the most complete tyrannosaurus-rex fossil skeleton yet found, displayed in an action pose in the museum's Stanley Field Hall looming over the coffee service of the evening's buffet.  I posted that drawing from my sketchbook on this blog back in March of 2013.

I was at the museum again a couple of weeks ago and this time I sketched "Sue's" skull displayed in a glass case on the museum's mezzanine overlooking the action pose skeleton.  The action pose skeleton is held in place and supported by an unobtrusive steel framework.  However, a framework strong enough to support this 600 pound skull out on the end of "Sue's" long neck vertebrae would not be unobtrusive, so the real fossil skull is displayed upstairs while the action pose skeleton sports a lightweight replica.  Also displayed in the glass case are teeth found with the scull that couldn't be replaced in the jaws because of distortions caused by being trapped in layers of limestone for 65 million years.