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  I'm excited about showing my new series, "Out of the Ordinary," at Gallery North in Edmonds, Washington. The tag line to the name of the series is, "Jolyn Wells-Moran  it's such a shock to be back here in the northwest after six months in Baja California Sur, Mexico -- culturally, but also environmentally. The northwest is almost the opposite of Baja Sur; wet, cool, often gray, green, tree-covered and very populated. Maybe that's why I've chosen it as my other major place to paint. So much about Baja Sur is mysterious and wondrous to a person from the northwest and I like to think I bring a sense of that to my Baja Sur paintings.

While my aim is always to share my sense of  connection with the natural world as richly as I perceive it, just the act of painting plein air often brings me joy, wholeness and tranquility. I can't paint in pouring rain and drizzle very well, so Baja Sur is a good solution for me. I'm pleased that the results will be shown May through July.

I've been painting most of my life and studied with Mitch Albala, Gage Academy of Art and Pacific Northwest Art School; Kathryn Stats; Camille Przewodek;  Derek Buckner; James Moore; Ken Roth; and other fine instructors. A few years ago, I attended the Marchutz School of Drawing and Painting, Institute for American Universities, Aix-en-Provence, France, and I minored in Art in college. My work has been shown in various venues and currently, is at Gallery North in Edmonds, WA.

There are several benefits to painting small. One, of course, is that these are great for planning larger paintings so that you don't have to leap off that cliff to a large size without first carefully planning your composition, values, colors, edges and more. It's a great time and effort saver. There are other benefits too.

Small might be a 12-inch by 16-inch painting to you, but I'm talking about thumbnail size and up to about 8 inches by 10 inches. If you know you won't ever want to use it as a framed painting, you can even use thick paper or gessoed cardboard for the practice sessions. You can even use acrylics or maybe goauche for these.

It's often a good idea to intermittently paint many small works to loosen up. Painting small can also help you to capture fleeting light or other action. Further, it's good practice -- whether to work on a specific issue, such as composition, brush work or values, or to practice painting with a special technique or capture certain objects or phenomena.

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Finally, if you're interested in selling your art and don't yet have access to wealthy or even less well-healed collectors, smaller paintings can be great for the buyer on a budget. Even if you do show in a reputable gallery, offering some small pieces there, or on your own, can draw in some who haven't yet become big collectors. I know I'm always on the lookout for small works by some of my favorite artists. Customers at art fairs, coffee shops, member galleries and the like aren't as likely to gasp as loudly at price tags from $50. to $200 or so as they will at those higher prices either.

You can see most of my current, smallest paintings at http://jwellsmoran.com/collections/56376.

I've been to more painting workshops and courses than I can remember, but these varied enormously in quality. Some, even master, painters just aren't good instructors. This can be very disappointing if you've paid much for the instruction. Now, with video online, there are also more opportunities for learning, and these too vary in quality -- and cost. I just discovered a real bargain online, though -- free -- and the quality is excellent; Richard Robinson, a fine oil painter in New Zealand, has a new video instruction series online that encapsulates the best of several good workshops in short, digestible chunks of information. It's advisable to view these more than once and even take notes so that the lessons stick in the memory for access when painting, as the information comes fast and furious in these short videos. Robinson has done a great job of getting right to the point in each of this series. Sign up at http://www.livepaintinglessons.com/.

You can keep in touch for more valuable information through my blog at http://jwellsmoran.com/blog or through my newsletter at http://jwellsmoran.com/email-newsletter. I'll be referring my students to this series as part of their homework in my upcoming course, "Painting the Landscape in Oils" described at http://jwellsmoran.com/, in May at Gallery North in beautiful Edmonds, Washington.

Happy painting -- and enjoying fine art!

Santuario de la Virgen, 12" x 16," oil

Know someone who'd like to paint landscapes en plein air, but doesn't know how to get started? Me too. That's why I wrote this free ebook, "You Can Paint Plein Air." It starts with everything a person needs to get out there and paint. Short and to the point, it's basic enough for the beginner, but many experienced plein air painters are likely to find some reminders and new tips too.

There are lots of specifics in the ebook, such as chapters on, "Objects, Details, Brushwork and Edges," "Clouds," "Water," and finally, the unadulterated truth of what it takes to progress at it, a chapter titled, "Pain, Humility and Learning." Passion, inclination and, perhaps, some raw talent, aren't enough.This realization, especially when a painter has invested time and effort in many paintings, yet procrastinated at disciplined study and learning from a skillful art instructor, can be devastating. This is often the point of a commitment to learn or throwing one's hands up in disgust and quitting.

The artist must learn the skills of painting and what works for certain painting challenges before even the rudimentary vision of how she or he would like to paint can be expressed. Feel free to share this ebook with anyone who might benefit. It's a solid first step to successful plein air painting, a helpful guide to the artist who has been struggling with plein air painting and a reference for the more experienced outdoor painter. Write in "Free ebook" in the comments on this page, http://jwellsmoran.com/contact, and we'll send you the free ebook right away.

Temor (emotion), 16" x 20", oil

Sometimes it's helpful for me to be out of my usual surroundings to refresh my eyes. When we are first learning to paint, we come to understand that what we expect a thing to look like influences how we paint it, but when we have fewer preconceived ideas about a thing's appearance, we are forced to look at it and paint from seeing. This can result in a far more genuine experience of the thing in the painting or drawing of it, because little or no preconception is skewing our sight. That's part of why I paint in Baja Sur some of the year.

We can train ourselves to see, wherever we are, though. It requires practice and tricks such as using a mirror to check our work, pretending that we're painting someting  other than what we see, painting from a photo turned upside down or painting upside down from a photo turned the right side up. These measures can work to help us paint what we really see. In time, seeing when we look, without preconceptions, becomes easier. Still, every once in awhile, I like to be in an unfamiliar environment to wake my brain up to seeing again.

Asadero Oso Negro (roughly, black bear barbecue), 12" x 8"                  Aguas Termales El Chorro )hot springs, El Chorro),

                                                                                                                               12" x 16", oil

Beginning a painting of the desert here in Baja Sur always starts with a huge sigh. There's so much scrubby vegetation that hills appear fuzzy. Bushes obscure the larger masses. Values are often so close that it's difficult to discern shapes of bushes and small trees. It's taken me awhile to learn to ignore the scrub for the larger masses and then to simplify the details, a challenge we all face as painters anywhere to be sure, but here I've found the vegetation particularly distracting. Not so much now, though. I finally learned to simplify masses here in favor of the compromise between the composition I want and the one that's there -- while igoring the vegetation and then, coming back to it later.

In the painting, "After the Rain," the landscape is largely of varying greens -- it had rained hard here awhile back, which always brings the desert from browns, golds and grays to suddenly grren life. As a native of the northwestern US, this doesn't faze me much here because the greens are varied enough, shadows really do have color and enough other colors, values and shapes exist in the vegetation that the greens are more easily controlled than in the evergreen states.

We paint. We learn.

 The heat is slowly decreasing, which means there are fewer and fewer bugs, and that means I can paint more and more out doors. I'll be glad when it's the customary 76 to 82% here in Pescadero, Baja Sur, Mexico, although the biting insects are what force me inside. Still and all, here are three new paintings, after I had to tweeze off dozens of tiny "bobos" (tiny, annoying flies) that are attracted to wet paint -- much to their dismay, I'm sure. Frankly, I'm considering going into the Mexican fly catcher business -- it really works! I'm certain they have a place in the eco system, like feeding birds and geckos, but I wish they'd keep their sorry little xz!#o&@##!!! out of my way!

  "Late Day at Playa Cerritos," 13" x 11", oil

Back on topic, of course my palette has changed down here. The greens are different -- yes, there are many greens right now because of the rains before I got here, more very yellow and bluish greens. There are also more neutrals, bright to pale oranges, pale yellows and cyan blues. I'm work hard at a looser style so that I can more successfully blend realism with abstraction in my landscapes. I think the connection with nature I'm seeking is within that realm, more an expression of how I experience nature.

  "Las Palmitas," 20" a 16," oil

I just signed up at Fine Art America so that people can buy prints and cards of my work. Here's the link, http://fineartamerica.com/profiles/jolyn-wellsmoran.html?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=230854. I'll be posting more there during this week. 

Meanwhile, three of my paintings are at Gallery North in Edmonds, Washington, if you're in the neighborhood.

Talk again with you soon!

You know those boxes with squiggles in them? Got one today after someone at Fine Art Connoisseur told me that one out of seven art viewers are using their phones (like an IPhone) to read these little boxes to access artist web sites. It's very simple. Go to any free QR generator and then follow directions, very easy. I just used http://www.qrstuff.com/. View mine with your phone for an example, next;

Easy, huh?                                      Out of the Ordinay

                                                                            Jolyn Wells-Moran Fine Art

Most of the aspen leaves had fallen in early October, obscuring the undergrowth beneath, when I walked the Chesterfield Gorge in Massachusetts with my family. The rocks and this small waterfall weren't completely covered, though.

  One of the wonderful things about oil painting is that the painter can go back and make changes if the paint hasn't dried. Some artists, especially early on, don't do this, with the idea that a painting must flow in one fell swoop somehow feeling it's not being true to the scene, the process or the vision to go back and make changes. The fact is, thought, that most paintings don't come to us in a fully formed vision of a scene that we can then simply execute. Not only must we work to create a good composition of the largest masses -- even moving, changing, adding or excluding certain elements -- in the planning stages, but drawing, hues, values, textures and inclusion of any necessary detail within masses must be carefully executed. No one who knows anything about writing would suggest that a written work never be touched again after the first draft. A painting, like a piece of writing, usually needs further work. Some of that needed work is only apparent after completing the first draft.

Here are some of my recently re-worked paintings, all of which have been improved by second, third and even further drafts. These first three paintings, and the two at the end, are currently being shown at Gallery North in Edmonds, Washington.