The last few days have consisted of gathering materials instead of painting output, but I did a few drawings with art stix and conte crayon. On a couple of the drawings I have experimented with pre-scoring the paper with a dull knife so that some branch lines appear. Happy New Year to everyone!
As opposed to slow impressions, I suppose. Today was warmer than yesterday to wander about in the snow. The drawing is on the approach to the colonnade. I was the first one through the colonnade yesterday. It felt strange leaving footprints. The view of the bridge is from the foot bridge. It probably should be bigger. Maybe an oil. I have a couple slow impressions in the hopper.
The arrival of snow provides the opportunity to do more "graphical" kinds of things, as the above drawing. The painting shows the canal with a little ice on the edge from a few days ago.
There's River Road and River Drive and Rivera Avenue. These are views on River Drive, but not today, because it's snowing.
Third River's Edge sounds like the name of a bank, not a river bank. I guess one can get away with a lot more in a black and white charcoal drawing. Color is less forgiving.
Here are two paintings, same scenes as previous drawings. As you might guess, I am not working today, only painting! These are pastel on Wallis paper prepped with acrylic washes.
There has to be a pony in here somewhere. I may try to tackle all three as paintings. These images are from this afternoon at the river's edge on the New Jersey side.
The bottom is a 9x12 colonnade oil that I worked on a few days ago. The above is an 8x10 canal charcoal. I usually don't add a figure. Both images pull you in. I probably will do a few more drawings to find another painting.
This is the pastel version of the river flotsam that has collected on the New Jersey side under the Washington Crossing Bridge on the Delaware River. The boat section that is visible in the upper right is now no longer there since the water is going down releasing some objects to float downriver.
The bottom image is a pastel view up the Delaware River at the end of the street. The top view is a drawing view of the trash collected by the river under the Washington Crossing Bridge. The river has some ice in it. I hope to do a painting of the drawing's view tomorrow.
These two landscapes are different, and also similar. I am trying to work at making marks, suggestive marks. It was Richard Schmid who wrote that it's a mistake "Trying to paint things instead of color shapes." The bottom is an oil, and the top a pastel on acrylic wash.
Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek writes, "I want to think about trees. Trees have a curious relationship to the subject of the present moment...I live with trees. Trees are creatures under our feet, creatures that live over our heads, but trees live quite convincingly in the same filament of air we inhabit, and, in addition, they extend impressively in both directions, up and down, shearing rock and fanning air, doing their real business just out of reach...they abide." 
Lately, I have been reading a lot about Winslow Homer. Of course, I tend to favor his late paintings which are more pure landscapes (or seascapes) without all those people. He did preparatory drawings, sometimes years earlier than the paintings that followed, even though he liked to give the impression that everything he did was "plein-air". His drawings are quite remarkable. I hope to say more about Homer in future posts.
Early in the morning on my daily walk I continue to visit the colonnade, but I want to do some other images. Last week I sat outside and drew these silver maple trunks in charcoal. This is an 8x10 pastel on uart paper.
