• About
  • Jack!

S.Weber

~ Traveler / Artist / Photographer / Observer

S.Weber

Tag Archives: special place

Works In Progress…

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Susana Weber in Art, Caribbean, Nature, Painting, Pastels, still life, Travel ~ Photography/Art/Food/Culture, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

art, arts, landscape, nature, outdoors, painting, Pastels, rain, reflections, special place, St Martin, travel, tropical

Aren’t we all?!

Who said something about standing in the spring rain?

Oh, yeah… that would be me.
And here, it happens every day… faithfully. Everything reflecting in the lovely Italian marble floor… so beautiful, so… dangerous. I brought an old box of pastels, broken and worn. I used them years and years ago…I think. I’m so used to my soft pastels in the big box there was no hope of bringing along. So… the old box would do, of course!

Mistake.

I used these? Seriously.

They are the hardest, most frustrating materials. And…they won’t be returning to New England… they’ll be used up or buried on the island where no one will ever think of looking for them. A mystery one day when unearthed.

Until then… a reflective pool after a spring rain.

A work in progress.

After the Rain

After the rain – Pastel work in progress – approx 20×15

Waking…

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Susana Weber in Art, Caribbean, Painting, Travel, Travel ~ Photography/Art/Food/Culture, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

art, challenging yourself, inspiration, learning, paint sketching, reawakening, special place, St Martin, travel, vacation, waking up, Watercolors

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

From “The Waking”-  Theodore Roethke – 1953

image

It’s a sad thing when your electronic devices remind you that your last post was one year ago… Very sad indeed… Sigh…

Then… Good morning. Waking. Inspired, as always by a tropical sun and warm breeze. Making use of my time and all these reflections and shadows. I’m waking… Going where I need to go.

 

Back on Earth

03 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Susana Weber in Africa, Photography, Travel, Travel ~ Photography/Art/Food/Culture

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Africa, animals, culture, earth, inspiration, intensity, landscape, learning, nature, Ngorogoro Crater, outdoors, safari, sky, special place, Tanzania, travel

Hovering just above the red earth…

trying not to touch the ground.

What is this magic place?

No, no… don’t tell me.

I really don’t want to know.

I just want to stay a little longer. 

Ngorogoro Crater Conservation Area

Ngorongoro Crater Conservation Area

The earth and sky touch each other in a different way. There is a primitive look to the way the clouds hang at the edges before they curl over and flow gracefully on their way across the 20 miles of open space. They move in slow motion, unable to break through an invisible ceiling that prevents them from spilling onto the floor of the crater. Like an enormous stage set for a grand performance, the curtains have gone up and we’re speechless at the prelude.

Taking a break from the studio, family obligations and the daily routine of “life at home” we’ve ventured off to see what there is to see in Africa… well… in Tanzania, anyway. Some other parts of Africa are having their medical and/or political issues… but… Africa is a very big place… a very big continent, actually. And Tanzania has something we’ve been longing to see… very large spaces of unspoiled land where animals roam without barriers. These areas are protected. Access to humans is controlled but, poaching does occur sometimes. The animals are free to go where they want and some do migrate in and out of the parks and conservation areas. Some stay within the relative safety of the controlled parks. I say ‘relative’ because predators are everywhere and few species are spared being the prey of lions, leopards, cheetahs, wild dogs, eagles and others. Some animals are food for others and nothing is wasted… everything nourishes the cycle of life in this amazing place.

Walking on Main Street

01 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by Susana Weber in Abstract Macro Photography, Art, History, Photography, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

accidental image, accidental images, barn, color, fall color, fall leaves, flag, grunge, heart, hearts, hidden picture, houses, landscape, leaves, macro photo, outdoors, peeling paint, photo walk, photography, porch, special place, texture, us flag, walk

We walked on Main Street in Georgetown, Massachusetts… Jack and me, crunching our way through the piles of color and texture, our heads down against a steady breeze. Not because of some extreme temperature that need be endured… but to shield our eyes from the low and exceptionally bright Fall sun. We walked away from the center of town along the busy street, trucks rumpling by every few seconds… until the sidewalk ended, then turned and walk toward town on the other side of the street. We’re making good time when… a car stops and two young girls, visitors from Germany inquire about where they can find a MacDonald’s or a Starbucks. They aren’t looking for a fast food meal or overpriced coffee… but a WiFi zone so they can communicate with their families and friends… relate the details of their trip… reassure their parents that they haven’t kidnapped here in Massachusetts. So on we go. Main Street, we discover is all about texture and color today! I’m trying to take pictures of what I’ve found and Jack is all about getting back to the pet store we discovered on our way. There’s a treat waiting for him, he’s pretty sure.

Here’s what we found on a little portion of Main Street…

Color… of course… it’s Fall in New England. It’s what we have! With the tropical storm ‘Sandy’ approaching, there will be little color left when she’s gone!

Shadows on a red barn. The low sun at this time of year is interesting… creating patterns on everything.

Texture!! Can you even tell what it is? There’s another with a different pattern…

Believe it or not… this is from a front door. Paint peeling off a door on a house built in 1810. It’s unoccupied and probably for sale. Any one interested?

An American porch… without a doubt. The glow on the ceiling is a bounce from all the yellow leaves in the yard. I wanted to sit and watch the day go by.

Primary colors… gone too soon, to be sure.

One of my friendly tree people. This one seems a little anxious about the coming storm… excitable but harmless. :)

The white shade… A composition in angles and lines. This historic house, the Adams Clark House, is striking in that a corner of the house is almost directly on the street. A personal favorite from the days walk. Look how all the lines and shapes lead the eye to the center of the photo and the brightest spot… the shade.

An accidental heart… they find me everywhere… this one in the peeling paint of a neglected fence.

You’ve Got Mail… I couldn’t help smiling at the irony of talking with the girls from Germany communicating half a world distance from their families while we stood in front of this “LETTERS” slot on an ancient door. How long would someone have waited for a simple letter from a loved one to slip through this portal with the “latest” news?… not that long ago.

Leading the eye…

26 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by Susana Weber in Art, Image Post Processing, Learning, Nature, Photography, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arts, clouds, composition, cropping, inspiration, landscape, leading the eye, learning, nature, outdoors, photography, special place, sunset

I noticed something odd while I was editing a few recent images that I found interesting and thought I’d share… We’ve had some spectacular “cloudshows” lately and I stopped to capture one in the parking lot of my local grocery store. I liked the angle of the cloud formation and the overhead, umbrella of the massive formation on the left. While looking at it on the screen, I made a duplicate copy to try a different crop so I could look at them side by side. The two images aren’t that different but… it occurred to me that I was looking at images with two different subjects!

cropped version

In the cropped version above, the eye is moving down the dark column on the left and finally rests on the bright sun in the sunset at the bottom. To me, the subject  of this image is the sunset, the color and drama in the distance.

original version

In the original, it’s just the opposite… the eye is drawn down the thin clouds from the right and back up to the bright spot at the top. The eye is being lead in a completely different direction. (See the black and white images with the arrows.) The subject of this version of the image is the overwhelming scale of the scene, the height of the column of clouds, aided by the bright edge at the top and the tiny light poles at the bottom. A completely different feel. The actual sunset is secondary.

I’ve never seen as dramatic an example of the effects of knowing where the eye is being led and how much a simple edit can change the subject of an image. It’s important to know where the viewer’s eye is going in the composition of an image. You want the viewer to see what you see… to experience the impact of the scene as you did… or at least as close as you can assist them to see and feel.

Which image conveys what I wanted you to see? I’d have to pick the original. While I cropped the duplicate to make it a stronger composition, I lost the subject I wanted to present… the scale and feeling of being a tiny being on a beautiful planet… a very special place, even in the grocery store parking lot! :)

Agree? or Disagree? Your thoughts?

Filling the empty canvas…

16 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by Susana Weber in Art, Painting, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

art, arts, canvas, inspiration, intensity, painting, special place, St Martin, travel, vacation

The large white space has been knocking around this room and that one for longer that I remember… a 4 x 5 foot canvas… totally empty, that I bought for something that must have been in my mind years ago. Every now and then it would be in the way and it would get shuffled to the basement or the studio upstairs… or even used in the big window in the summer as a sun shade. Forgotten, it would sit in a corner… or behind a stack of frames where I’d eventually rediscover it. It’s accusatory white face gleaming at me… wanting to be painted and hung somewhere… anywhere. It developed a cut from something… a careless moment or pressure from some unkind frame or piece of orphaned glass leaning too close… Oops! so sorry… I hope it doesn’t hurt too much. A 4 inch gash 2 inches from one edge. Now that would have to be fixed before it could be painted… another delay!

Lucy's Snack Inspiration

Lucy’s Snack Inspiration

Several years ago… (God, this sounds awful!) I actually decided what I wanted to paint on the now spotted, fingerprinted and slashed white stretched surface. Vacationing in St Martin a few winters back, I took a photograph of a building whose orange color hurt the eyes to look at it… but, it changed the mood of the day to pass by it’s glowing walls! Everyone who walked in it’s presence looked outlined and “graphic”. One woman walked by in an outfit the same orange color. It was AWESOME! But, even though I could ‘see’ the finished painting in my mind… the start was still years away. Then……………………. I started.

Work in Progress in the photo studio... this thing is BIG!

Work in Progress in the photo studio… this thing is BIG!

The photo is fine for a photo but the painting in my head was a lot closer… a color-blocked composition with a figure walking through it. I rearranged the elements… sky, wall, roof, gate, sidewalk, street, figure… tighter and more focused… the elements becoming an abstract by themselves. Oh, and see that big hole on the right… yeah, gotta do something about that. I sketched the elements out and used a little fixative on the charcoal lines… then rough scrubbed in the blocks of color and values. Because this was so set in my mind, I felt there were few decisions that hadn’t been worked out even though I don’t remember thinking about it that much. I was just executing an already done painting. Weird… Next…

WIP 2

WIP 2

Things started picking up and I put an orange wash all over the figure and the sidewalk. Anything in front of the walls of Lucy’s Snack would glow! The under-painting let’s me work through what the values of the elements should be. I left off the iron gate because it would be easier to over-paint the wall instead of painting around the delicate lines. I really missed it as an element and couldn’t wait to get it back in.

WIP 3

WIP 3

I work on detailing some of the green metal roof, putting in a shadow for the figure on the wall and under-painting the clothing. The time of day is early morning just after sunrise with the sun low in the sky. This is when colors are their most intense, washing out in mid-day and softening in evening. This is the best time of day to photograph… and I love the light. The light is certainly an important subject of this painting. Oh, yeah… the hole is patched. Duct tape on the back and filled the gap with gesso and orange paint. Fingers crossed.

WIP-4

WIP-4

More detailing, building up that glowing color on the walls, adjusting values… darker or lighter… over-painting the clothing to the black and white in my vision… Really missing that gate. She needs that element to walk toward… to be ‘grounded’.

WIP 5

WIP 5

Finally… the gate from the unseen doorway. It adds so much… oh, well… that’s just me. Things are coming together. Lots of adjusting here and there… I think her head looks too big… so, I make it smaller from the back taking out some of the cap in the final. Seeking more movement in the skirt. Finishing the sidewalk textures and the street and painted stripes. The purse looks too important… no, just unfinished. I add a texture and more shaping, a shadow, a reflection from the white skirt on the bottom.

Morning light... Final

Morning light… Final

Is it done? Seems to be. I’m trying not to overwork it. Time will tell.

WIP face detail

WIP face detail

The canvas size makes it hard to see detail… so I’ve included these. It is great to keep a record of whatever kind of art project you’re working on.

WIP Final detail

WIP Final detail

Filling the big white space...

Filling the big white space…

So it’s done… the white canvas is no longer getting kicked from place to place. There’s a fortune in orange paint on it. The price of canvas has doubled since this one was purchased. And the empty white space in the kitchen is filled with something that reminds me of a very special place on the planet. It makes me smile… and want to plan the next trip there!

Recent Posts

  • Works In Progress…
  • Collecting time…
  • Unfinished but… delicious.
  • Waking…
  • Back on Earth

Archives

Categories

  • Abstract Macro Photography
  • Africa
  • Art
  • Caribbean
  • Food
  • History
  • Image Post Processing
  • Learning
  • Nature
  • Painting
  • Pastels
  • Photography
  • Sculpture
  • still life
  • Travel
  • Travel ~ Photography/Art/Food/Culture
  • Uncategorized
  • watercolor

Walk with me…

abstract accidental image accidental images art artful food arts blue caribbean blues chaos cherry blossoms cherry trees clouds crowds culture dark clouds dark mood different cultures earth fall color fall leaves flag food grafitti grunge heart hearts hidden picture home illustration inspiration intensity islands Italy jack landscape learning macro macro photo mermaid mermaids nature outdoors painting peeling paint Pennsylvania people photo editing photography Photoshop Pittsburgh plants rain real world Rome Saba sculpture sea Simpson Bay Lagoon sky special place still life St Martin storm sunset texture tile tile floor travel trees vacation walk Washington DC watercolor wax weather

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • S.Weber
    • Join 40 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • S.Weber
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...