Tag Archives: landscape

Work and work

Posted by Jacqueline on

Goodbye to the mansion. For my last two weeks there I had this view and the smell of lilacs from my office window.

Office View with Lilac (pencil)

Office View with Lilac (pencil)

And here’s my new desk.

After

Van Gogh said:

At times there is something indescribable in those aspects — all nature seems to speak; . . . As for me, I cannot understand why everybody does not see it and feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand. For this reason I think a painter is happy because he is in harmony with nature as soon as he can express a little of what he sees. And that’s a great thing — one knows what one has to do, there is an abundance of subjects, and as Carlyle rightly says, “Blessed is he who has found his work.”

(From Van Gogh: A Self-Portrait, W. H. Auden, ed., 1963)

Here’s a little painting from a place near my favorite marsh, a meadow verging on marsh, last fall.

Essex Meadow, October (oil)

Essex Meadow, October (oil)

Now then

Posted by Jacqueline on

My workplace:

Manor House

Manor House (BlackBerry camera)

For three years I’ve been working here in this old mansion in a small town on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and now the company is moving to Boston. In two weeks I start commuting on the train to a city office building and working at a desk without even cubicle partitions, instead of an office with this view:

Office View

Office View (6B pencil)

This is the first drawing in the little sketchbook I bought a few months ago and have been too scared to use. When I started an oil-painting class last June, the teacher had us work from photographs and that’s all I’ve done ever since. Recently a painter acquaintance pointed out what a disservice this is to new students, because there’s so much more to learn by working from life. I’m not quite ready to paint from life, so I decided to start with sketching.

I happened upon a podcast, “An Illustrated Life,” by Danny Gregory, in which he interviews artists and illustrators about their sketchbooks. He’s just published a book of the same name that features these people’s work. (See http://dannygregory.libsyn.com.) I’ve been inspired by some of these interviews and I’m going to try using my sketchbook while working on my painting.

Harbor Lowtide

Harbor Lowtide (charcoal pencil)

The second sketch in my little book, low tide at the side of the harbor.