Molly Hashimoto

North Cascades Institute Catalog

 This week I received the new North Cascades Institute catalog--you can obtain it as a hard copy, or read it online, even turn the pages! I was so happy to see my art on the cover, especially as this painting was done to commemorate a wonderful experience I had at the Learning Center last June. I witnessed this loon pair one evening on Diablo Lake when I was teaching a seminar--one of the graduate students pointed them out to me. Watching them dive and disappear in the remarkable colors and patterns of Diablo Lake was such a thrill. I made prints of this painting; the original size is 10 1/2inches by 13 1/2 inches and the format is horizontal. The talented catalog  staff at the Institute cropped the image to fit their mailing requirements. Here's a small thumbnail showing the original format of the art.

Daniel Smith Catalog Cover: Block Prints & Watercolor

   
 Daniel Smith Artist Materials just published their summer 2011 catalog, and I was really honored to have my art chosen for the cover.  If you'd like to learn more about how I created this art, just check out the Daniel Smith link here. I wrote a short article for them several months ago about it, and taught a class back in January at their Seattle store. I featured the work of my students on my blog, which you may enjoy taking a look at.

Watercolor Flowers Class: Students' Work

Several students worked with grisaille in unique ways, adapting the grays to the subjects they were painting.  To the left is Marilyn McGuire's painting of violets; she created a gradation of violet gray in her background wash, painted before the flower.   Carol Stanley used a very pale gray that did not interfere with the color of her hellebores. 
 

 
Barbara Broderick used masking fluid on her flowers before applying the background, and she opted to use a rose color rather than gray. She outlined the small flowers in fine pencil when the painting was completed.

Spring Watercolor Classes: Students' Work

 Spring watercolor classes have begun and the class on flowers is yielding some very good work. This week we worked on using grisaille underpainting; here are some examples of the underpaintings.

The work begins with closely observed pencil drawings that include only contour, no shading. Next a gray wash is applied and though it looks as if it might be tedious and time-consuming, that stage goes surprisingly quickly.

  
Next, when those underpaintings are dry, in about 20 minutes, the full color is applied.  That part takes a very short time. These are three examples from class of that second stage.  The darkest darks and most saturated colors may require an additional  third application once the second stage has dried.   Look for more work from this class next week!

 

 

The Pines & Arches of Rome

 Many of the hilltops in Rome are graced with tall Stone Pines: Pinus pinea.  Mature pines mirror the arches in the Forum--this picture shows the distant Colosseum. There is something deeply resonant to a modern viewer about the pairing of ruins and pines; is it perhaps because Romantic artists painted them compulsively and the combination has become part of our collective memory?  
 
  

The Capitoline Wolf

The she-wolf in the Capitoline Museum was my favorite art object in Rome. She looks wary and protective of her human nurslings, Romulus and Remus--the legendary founders of Rome. For centuries it was believed that she was cast hundreds of years before Christ, but recent dating suggests that the wolf is really from the thirteenth century. She looks distinctly Romanesque; I find art from that period has an emotional power that is missing from the more technically accomplished Renaissance. Interestingly, Romulus and Remus were added by a Renaissance sculptor--I think they are quite different stylistically. No matter, though, that this particular wolf is newer than supposed, because her legend was so important to the city that she existed in another form long ago. Cicero wrote about a she-wolf as one of a number of sacred objects on the Capitoline Hill, one of the most holy pagan sites in Rome. All of this brings to mind Berger's essay on animals in his book About Looking, which I wrote about in an earlier post.  The wolf saved the twins from drowning in the Tiber River and then raised them--yet another example of an animal serving as an intermediary between human beings and the cosmos. A later postscript to this story: in the disordered times of the 14th century, Rome's population had dwindled so much that there was wilderness within the walls of the city, and wolves were heard howling at night.

Baptistry Birds in Florence

The famous Baptistry doors opposite the Duomo in Florence are surrounded by a sculpted arch made up entirely of birds and animals. The species were closely observed by the artist and their poses are realistic and graceful.