Looking at the Sunset (Part 4)

Early this evening (Thursday, 28 May 2009), looking south across Baltimore harbor from Fells Point:

Pencil and Prismacolor crayon on paper, 6 x 8.I like gray (of course), but I thought it was funny that just about everything I was seeing, with the possible exception of the sailboat, could be considered a shade of ‘gray’.

The sunset that I’ll be posting will be a composite of (gray) skies I watched as we drove to dinner for Laura’s birthday, in Hampden.

Looking at the Sunset (Part 3)

From Baltimore harbor, Wednesday, 27 May 2009.

Baltimore. Pigment liner pen in Moleskine notebook.My sketches for sunset paintings are often in a sort of code based on years of painting the sky. This was about 30 minutes before sunset. The word ‘streak’ appears crossed out but is actually the word written over the lines, to remind me that there was a streak of light there.

Baltimore. Pencil on landscape notebook.There would be a third sketch five minutes later just concentrating on changes that took place with the sunset. Here I was working from a different place on the dock and getting more of what would be the actual sunset sky. When I do the oil painting at home on the 31st (see the post from yesterday), the result will depend as much on an overall impression and feeling as on all my notes, and may or may not pay attention to the city skyline.

Yours truly.

Update on Thursday, May 28, 2009 at 09:58AM by BVD

Overheard last night on the street [one dog owner to the other]:

”Oh, she’s a mix of rotweiler and Baltimore alley hound.”

Southwest Mountains (9 June 2004)

Conté crayon on paper, 4 x 6.This was done on the trail with Flint the foxhound, which usually means one has only a minute or so before Flint becomes irked by the evidence that you’re not really serious about helping him find deer and foxes to chase. (Which wouldn’t matter except that an indignant hound becomes much more difficult to direct off leash.) And this was about a one-minute sketch as I stood in what we call the Power Line Road – that’s the eroded track to the right of the fence – facing the Southwest Mountains.

The Southwest Mountains are a chain of small peaks to our east, parallel to the Blue Ridge. I believe they may have gotten their name because – just like almost every other range in the entire Appalachians – they run from northeast to southwest, and these would have been the first mountains encountered by colonists moving west through the Piedmont. This view is from about a mile or so east of where I do most of my sunrises, and these are the mountains you can see in many of those sunrise paintings.

If you’re half as fanatical about geography as I am, you might like to know that the area known as Stony Point lies on this side of the mountains, with Barboursville off to the left. Over the mountains: Keswick and Cismont. If you were to turn perhaps 30 degrees to the right, you’d be facing toward Shadwell and Monticello.

Along with Monticello there’s a sad thing – a big hill – called Pantops Mountain. Where Monticello has been celebrated and preserved, Pantops, just across the way, has been repeatedly paved until it’s basically like a shaved head. It’s the home of car dealerships, shopping centers and office parks, with most of the construction seemingly designed to take out the maximum amount of natural vegetation. Monticello and Pantops, I think, reflect a kind of split personality in our area, and I sometimes imagine the two mountains having conversations just trying to figure the whole thing out. Usually in these scenarios, Monticello proves to be too aristocratic to empathize very much with poor little Pantops’s plight.

John, hope you had a nice 37th birthday.

Oak Leaf (24 May 2004)

Conté crayon on paper, 4 x 6.This may have been a blackjack oak (which I only recently learned to recognize) and I simply left out the fine details. On a walk with Flint.