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What feels more like autumn than the color orange? Fall is definitely here in the Pacific Northwest -- too cold and rainy to paint en plein air, so I assembled the zucchini, squash, my favorite rooster, watermelon radish pods, a leaf from my neighbor's maple, a tiny basket, my copper kettle and the last of my Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, pansies and Mexican sunflowers to paint fall in the studio.

What a challenge to change from a Washington stae palette to to one for painting Baja Sur. My web site collection, "Baja Sur" will soon be filling up with paintings of muted desert colors, large sky brights, varied agricultural field greens and sun on the Pacific Ocean and sandy beaches. I'll be painting six out of seven days for 10 weeks from my base in the small puebla of Pesdacero (and Skyping to my husband back home), so my Baja collection will grow exponentially. Now, though, I need to scrape off my dark greens, grays and high chroma Washington colors.

I drove up to Coupeville on Whidbey Island on Sunday, as I intended to spend a day learning from James Moore at his studio starting early Monday morning. I got there in time to go paint at the city boat launch on Sunday afternoon, a place I had painted once before, with good water, mountain and cliff views. It took hours to get my feet and hands warm again after painting en plein air in my breezy and very cool spot, and I came away with what I thought was a disaster, shown here. Then, I spent some time later working on it in my studio, something I rarely do. The next day, I met James for the first time; Here's his web site, http://www.jamesmooreartist.com/, but it doesn't do justice to his work that's full of rich color, unity, delightful pieces of abstraction amidst representational scenes and strong light.

I found that James is a very kind and patient soul, a great thing since I was really off kilter that day. I told him beforehand that I get lost at times and lose my plan when I'm painting. He had ample evidence of that during our day together and was good at stopping me when I'd, as he said, "Go sideways." He pointed out that I was encroaching on my lights, something I really couldn't do if I was to end up with anything resembling the cloud formations I'd chosen to paint. He also helped me to recognize color temperatures as I painted, pointing out when I could do better by varying cools and warms, something I don't often attend to well. James showed me how to make a sky look as if it's arcing above you -- by deepening the color, or in my case, blending in more of a violet blue graded from the top straight down.  He introduced me to a langnickel brush, a very handy natural bristle brush that he let me use to lightly drag edges for variation and softening, when he saw my frustation without a brush adequate to the task. Even though I gave up after hours of struggle because I'd gone beyond fatigue with the piece, it was a good day of learning. Thank you, James!

Photo coming soon...

See the web site of Jolyn Wells-Moran at http://jwellsmoran.com.

See http://jwellsmoran.com, and yes, web site is web site, not website...

Realism isn't my preference or style, but I learned a lot about values last winter when I couldn't get outside much -- since I live in Seattle -- by taking a studio realism still life course from a local realist, Sandra Powers. I just added one of my realist paintings to my web site portfolio. I had dabbled in realism as a young painter, but always in watercolor. Sandra claimed I'd learn a lot about values for my plein air work, and she was right.

I measured a lot, had to look hard for the exact colors and laid paper towels over layers to avoid ridges in the paint, but the real lesson was attention to values. The experience has carried over to my plein air work; I'm now much more careful about values and know what other instructors are really saying when they comment on values.

Saturday after Saturday, layer after layer, I struggled with the values in this painting, at three and a half hours per class. I worked on this painting for a total of 21 hours. As a plein air painter, I was stunned by the time this little 10" by 8" painting took, but Sandra didn't allow much of a sidetrack into alla prima. Still, when I finished, she said that next time I'd do realism! She said my piece, especially the bottle, was still alla prima. Okay, so here's my realism/alla prima piece.