"Busy Night Out", a 32 X 16" Watercolor

Busy Night Out  © April M Rimpo

Busy Night Out

Watercolor, Varnished
32" X 16"

Mounted, Varnished and Framed in a 35" X 19" Brushed Silver Frame

SOLD through HorseSpirit Arts Gallery's

In Busy Night Out a place is shown where people are arriving for a night out. My goal is for you to define the stories about where these families and solo explorers are going and what they might do.  I'd love to hear your stories.

Varnished watercolor paintings are protected from the elements, so no glazing is used with this painting.  I think you'll find varnished paintings are more approachable and enticing.

Here are additional nighttime paintings by April:

• Night Reflections (12" X 18") - Moon over the water
• Distant Glow (16" X 44") - early sunset 
• Nighttime Stroll (30" X 24")and Quiet Times (11" X 14")
• Nighttime Glitter - 5" X 7" painting of the Eiffel Tower

You can see the student paintings from one of my Nighttime painting workshops here.

Interested in April's artwork or taking one of her classes? Consider becoming a Studio Friend by signing up for her twice-monthly email. April segments her newsletter so you can select topics you'd like to hear about when you sign up. For those who Select the General Interest topic you will receive emails about twice-monthly. If you are only interested in classes, then the emails will be much less frequent discussing upcoming classes and how to register. Select as many topics as sound of interest. Thank you for your support of April M Rimpo Art.

Contact April and see more of her art on her website

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Night Reflections" 12" X 18" watercolor by April M Rimpo

"Beauty is a form of genius--is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts in the world like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in dark water of that silver shell we call the moon." - Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)

Night Reflections by April M Rimpo

Night Reflections

Watercolor

12" X 18" image in 14 X 20" Silver Wood Frame
Varnished, no Glass

Available for Purchase HERE

Click here to Contact April or visit her website to explore her paintings on the Art page.

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

Student Work from Night Landscape Workshop

Last Saturday I taught a "Night Landscape" workshop for a watercolor group that meets monthly for a one-day workshop.  When their normal instructor was not available they invited me to teach. It was great interacting with the eleven artists who came out on a rainy day to enjoy a day of art. 

I was definitely stretching their comfort zone by having them work with saturated paint (where there is a much more paint and less water) and stressing to put down the paint and don't touch it, let the paint do the work. Several commented that they wanted to loosen up and they found this process liberating. Other struggled with not working back into wet areas.


I wanted to show some of their results here. When I took these photos the skies were done but most still needed to add one more layer to the lower portion of the landscape to shift the grassy area from daylight to night.  

Some had incorporated the house, barn and figures and others had not. 

 As you can see most have a mask over the moon, allowing them to paint the sky without having to work around the moon.  Once the mask is gone they'll have a bright moon that they can subdue with a gray wash to create a few indications where the craters are on the surface.

Some even finished the trees.

It is always fascinating to see the results when a group of artists work from the same reference photo to see how they interpret the scene. 

I'll be teaching another session of this workshop for the Baltimore Watercolor Society on Saturday, October 27th. 

You can learn more and sign up for the workshop here.

Click here to Contact April 

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Distant Glow" 16" X 44" watercolor by April Rimpo

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.Anne Frank (1929 - 1945), Diary of a Young Girl, 1952

Distant Glow, a 16" X 44" Watercolor by April M Rimpo

For me the beauty of night and the glow of the moon provides a sense of calm and peace over the world.

If this painting speaks to you, please share you thoughts in a comment.

Distant Glow

16" X 44" Varnished Watercolor*

* April's varnished watercolors are presented without a mat or glass. They are very well sealed with no risk that moisture will impact the painting.

Check out two other night scenes by April M Rimpo here.

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

Night Scenes by April Rimpo

Nighttime Stroll 30" X 24" Fluid Acrylic
by April M Rimpo

I've started a series of night scenes and wanted to share not only the paintings but a little bit about the pigments I used to accomplish these.

Nighttime Stroll

Fluid Acrylic

30" X 24" *

Quiet Times 11" X 14" Watercolor by April  Rimpo

Quiet Times

Watercolor

11" X 14" *

I often find it is best to experiment with color before starting a painting where I want something different.  In this case, the colors that work best for nighttime scenes are still luminous and not what artists call muddy.  Muddy colors are dull and lifeless.

In the fluid acrylic painting, Nighttime Stroll, I started with pale pastel color in the underpainting that I know would work well for the pale blossoms on the trees and also lend a glow to the rest of the surroundings.  The dark sky was worked second to get an idea of the value range from the lightest areas by the street lights to the darkest areas of the sky. At the very end I wet the entire surface and applied one final coat of the grayed blend of blue I was using in the sky over the entire surface (except by tree near the light) to add continuity and to shroud it all in night. The blend was primarily Indigo with touches of Permanent Alizarin Red, and Yellow Ochre to gray it.  These three colors have recently found there way into several of my fluid acrylic paintings, a new favorite triad of color for me.

Quite Time is watercolor and required a different set of pigments. This time a different triad of Daniel Smith Indanthrone Blue, Permanent Orange, and Hansa Yellow Medium. These were a new combination for me that I found through some research in a blog by Jane Blundell (https://janeblundellart.blogspot.com/search?q=mixing), where she presents complements that make a good "black" and perfect neutral blends.  I chose this particular triad also because it supports not only the dark sky but also a great set of greens that I knew I needed for the foreground. I love how three pigments can be used to create such a wide variety of colors.

I added a fourth color for the light sky areas (Daniel Smith Magnesium Blue). How I decided to use this particular color is a story for another blog post. 

* Both paintings will be varnished and framed. 

Click here to Contact April

Interested in learning more about April's art inspirations, tips about her painting process, or art business tidbits? Want to know when her art is in exhibits? Consider joining her friends and collectors by signing up for her twice-monthly email.

Copyright April M Rimpo All Rights Reserved. You may share my work with attribution and a link to this source site, but all other uses are prohibited.

"Lit by the Moon" 24" X 18" gallery wrapped fluid acrylic on paper

Lit by the Moon by April M Rimpo

Since night scenes are not something I’ve done a lot of, I wanted to be sure to capture the colors I used in Lit by the Moon.

Lit by the Moon

Fluid Acrylic

24" X 18" gallery wrapped and varnished paper

$995 for Original Painting

Options:

Original 24"X18" $995.00 USD  Print 14"X11" on watercolor paper $85.00 USD

 

Prices includes shipping within the United States*

* Contact April regarding shipments outside the United States

All are fluid acrylic except for:

Indigo blue – which is a Da Vinci watercolor pigment - and Coral, which is a Daniel Smith watercolor paint.  Both I mixed with Golden “Fluid Matte Medium” to make my own fluid acrylic.  Daniel Smith Coral is my go to color these days.  It makes wonderful shades of lavender when mixed with just about any blue.  When mixed with blue and yellow, you get great grays.

The Da Vinci fluid acrylics used are:

·        Transparent Raw Sienna

·        Quinacridone Gold (very sparingly)

·        Quinacridone Burnt Orange

·        Pthalo Blue

·        French Ultra Marine Blue (adding some Daniel Smith French Ultra Blue watercolor when I mix with Quinacridone Burnt Orange to create the nearly black darks

·        Titanium White (used mixed with the yellow pigments in the last layer of darks to recover a few of the illusion of clouds when I neglected to leave some of these open.)

I started with masking fluid “sprayed” on the white paper, which becomes the falling snow.  After an initial pale wash I added tiny wisps of tree branches and bits of snow that had stuck to the yet to be painted trees. I also added some masking fluid where I wanted the lit side of evergreens and bushes in the foreground.  And let’s not forget the moon was added in mask at this point so the yellow glow is retained.  I left some openings in the mask on the moon to allow darker hues to create the craters on the moon. Some kosher salt was applied to the bushes in the front in hopes of adding some texture to the snow as a foreground detail. I say "in hopes" because normally I test pigments with salt to be sure the desired granulation will occur, but the salt was a quick decision and timing the addition of salt is critical.

A second medium intensity wash was added to further vary the colors across the painting and to begin to make darker areas in the sky.  I left some of the yellow shining through, especially around the moon since I wanted the moon to glow. When dry this layer was followed by more masking of branches to give the illusion that different branched catch different amounts of the moon light. I added a small amount of dark on top of the dry salt in the foreground bushes to add some variety.  I actually had forgotten to remove the salt and knew I likely lost any subtle granulation in the snow.  These things happen.

Darker combinations of the blues were added in the third layer.  This is also where I used the pale mixture of white and yellow to retain some lighter cloud areas here in there behind the trees. There is a church steeple in the distance and I used some of the light yellow mix around the steeple so it wouldn’t be totally lost.  The steeple was inspired by St Paul’s Church and has the characteristic lighter stripes used to accent the architecture on the steeple, but I intentionally muted these at a later stage so the painting is about the falling snow and the steeple is there for those who really examine the painting in detail.

The trees were adding in dark and medium dark hues while most of the masking was still in place so the limbs catching the light were preserved.  At the end the mask was removed and just a few spots required a dab of darker paint here and there to integrate the branches.
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