Abby Laux

Tag: oil

  • Green Tal landscape painting

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    In the words of travel writer Rick Steves,  “If Heaven isn’t what it’s cracked up to be, send me back to Gimmelwald.”  I spent four days in this area last summer hiking and sketching; it felt like an isolated paradise floating above the rest of the world.  One always had a sense of the height…

  • Blue Ridge oil painting

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    Here’s a painting from my trip to the Swiss Alps last summer.  We stayed in Gimmelwald in the Bernese Oberland Region.  My husband and I joked that every place we stood was a 45 degree angle.  This painting became about the sharp angles of the mountains.  I tried to balance the negative slope of the…

  • Spring Begins Plein Air Painting

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    It’s wonderful when the weather turns and it’s warm enough to enjoy being outside again.  I painted this small painting in a creek near my house early this spring when the redbuds were blooming and the  leaves of the undergrowth were just starting to pop.  There’s an interesting contrast in the woods at that time between…

  • Hay Tor

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    England’s Dartmoor National Park has large granite outcroppings called tors.  Hay Tor is one of the most impressive and popular.  There are small footholds and handholds to scramble to the top.  After exploring the rock structure, I sat in the field in front of the tors to make a quick graphite sketch.  Like everywhere we…

  • The Coast

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      Last fall we visited some friends on the West Coast and took a day to relax at the beach.  I did a small sketch on location, reveling in the geometric forms of the rocks.  This spring I painted this  little blue painting from photographs I took that day.  I really enjoyed getting to paint…

  • Early Light

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      In 2009, I took a family trip with my husband, mom, sister, mother-in-law, father-in-law, and two close family friends, Collin and Kathy Staley to Glacier National Park.  It was a bittersweet trip-the last one we were able to take with Collin, who was undergoing chemo at the time, but the first of many we…

  • Generous Solace

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      I created this painting as a gift for my mom in memory of my late father.  Sunflowers and Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings were favorites of his.  Dad, also a landscape artist, put the first paint brush in my hands as a baby, took me to my first museum when I was five, and continues to…

  • The Cedar

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    The corn field in front of our house has a lone cedar tree on its edge, and when the winter sun sets in the valley, one strip of sunlight illuminates it and the golden field right before dusk.  I started this painting at a workshop I taught at the French Lick Artisan Gallery this past…

  • Nightfall

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    While in Yosemite National Park, we watched the sun set from Glacier Point overlooking Half Dome.  As the light faded and the darkness became absolute, more and more stars appeared.  I had my camera set up and photographed the emerging stars.  To make this painting, I wanted to try the thick layers of  transparent medium again…

  • Meadow Creek

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        This is another painting from Yosemite National Park.  I tried a violet underpainting this time.  In an effort to become more efficient at starting paintings, I used a larger brush to block in colors within a couple of hours.  Details and reworking took considerable time after that though.