Sunset, Friday, 8 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Something like the big blue sky of high summer, today we had our version of high winter – deep and unforgiving, more wind than sky. Strangely, evening on such a day often brings a huge gold sun and then a band of violet-rose. The colors seem so close to spring, in general, the artist has to look to the temperature of his paints, or the picture may resemble a Parisian twilight in an old ad for Guerlain. Which might not be so bad.

Update on Saturday, January 9, 2010 at 09:09AM by BVD

Traveling for a couple of days – sunsets for Saturday and Sunday may not show up here until Monday.

Sunset, Thursday, 7 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

A few snow showers along the Blue Ridge at sunset.

Earlier I pulled up to an intersection and beyond the red light thought I saw a pink flush over the haze horizon. Colors of coral and starfish, I decided. Long thin white clouds were foam. The blue sky between them turned out to be just that – blue sky. I was surprised to realize everything around me on the ground was the ocean and I was looking up through its surface.

Sunset, Wednesday, 6 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

The big blue-green copper dome extends beyond blue snow mountains, past amethyst clouds, above carved oaks of gray-brown agate, over fields of broken green and white marble, over our house of sugar and salt, and my slate painted with powders of iron and zinc, glazed with ice. Crystalline evening.

Sunset, Tuesday, 5 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

The Onion ran a great item on a guy who writes in a Moleskine notebook so as to avoid the pedestrian experience of having to write in a cheapo pad from CVS. (“Privileged Little Artiste Writing Something Oh-So-Precious Into His Moleskine Notebook.”) Especially funny to me because I do exactly both – I love my Moleskine notebook, which I use for combined sketches and notes (as seen, for example, here and here), but can’t function without my CVS Chunky Pad, which I write on every day. (Sadly, CVS now calls this product something else much more generic, but I’m sticking with ‘Chunky Pad’.) I’m sure to post a sketch someday in “Bic Velocity Ballpoint on CVS Chunky Pad.” Not archival, but you won’t be able to tell the difference.

To complicate matters, this entire entry began as a test of my theory about another notebook, the one I use most often. It’s made in Japan by Apica (here’s a plug for where I got mine). My theory: the Apica’s paper is so amazingly smooth, and effortless to write on, even though I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, this post would just start writing itself, automatically. Which it did!

Apparently writing pads, left to their own devices, like to write about other writing pads.

Sunset, Monday, 4 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

Today’s projects included an apple, a lemon, and a sort of seascape. Here’s the apple:

William Theodore Van Doren. Ashley’s Apple, 2010. Oil on paper, 6 x 9.

Sunset, Sunday, 3 January 2010

William Theodore Van Doren. Sunset from Stony Point, Albemarle County, Va. Oil on watercolor block, 16 x 20.

A cold sunset, in the mid-twenties, after 24 hours cold enough, and windy enough, to have needed water dripping in every part of the house to prevent frozen pipes.