Preparations for a large painting

 Last night while looking through the remaining photos in this round of paintings, this one is going to be a larger painting. So for today's daily painting I decided to do thumbnail sketches along with three color maps. This is from the smokey mountains. When Cristina and I were walking up this trail there was this huge rock on the left side of us that looked as if it could come down at any second. The main trail kept going up the hill but there was a small trail that went up to the rock. Apparently some people like to get up on the lip and wonder what it would be like to be a stain on the forest floor. I took the photo and got back to hiking up the trail.
The value sketches are at the bottom of this post. I started by doing a thumbnail of how I would like it laid out. Then did a mirrored version with some slight alterations. Typically I will do three or four layouts with mirrored version but I really liked the first one so I went with it. Then I did a value scale thumbnail below it. Again I liked the first one so didn't go on with more.
After the thumbnails I did three quick sketches at 6x4.5 on 90lb watercolor paper and began making color maps. The first map used greens, blues, and purples with orange accents. The green made up the foreground since its the warmest in that color set with blue in the mid ground and purple in the background. Typically I would go with purple in front of blue but because I was going to use the orange as the accent in the mid ground the blue popped out from the purple background.

 The second color map consisted of blue and orange only. I went with darker blues in the foreground and lighter in the back. The orange for the trail, big rock and highlights on the smaller rocks.

 The third color map was with yellow brown, purple gray and light blue.

First Attempt at Oil

This is the dark layer in my first attempt at oil painting. Well to be honest it isn't my very first attempt. One weekend a month or so ago I bought some cheap oil paints two brushes and two canvases. After doing my pastels I thought oil's would be just like them only in a tube. That was a stupid mistake. I looked like a smurf afterwards and made a complete mess. The paint never dried and it was a very frustrating event. Afterwards I asked Donna Shortt what I was doing wrong and apparently everything.
Oil paints have to be mixed with alcohol or another medium to thin them out. This helps it dry. So to begin with I mixed an orange color and mineral spirits to make a warm wash. When that dried a dark purple mixed in with linseed oil for the dark layer was added. This layer still looks very wet as I write this so hopefully I mixed it right. Once this dries I will move on to lighter layers. I know it looks like I can't paint straight lines right now(which I can't) but I will use the sky to form the outline of the shapes so all that fuzziness will go away when I'm on that layer.
Anyway this is exciting and messy (sounds awesome).

Looming Clouds

If you notice that my paintings contain a lot of power lines, cars, and fields you would have a good idea of what I see on a regular basis. Those three things are everywhere around me and I want to be able to portray them correctly. Each time I paint them they seem to get easier to represent. Whether they look better or not is another story. One of the things I'm working on is to go with my instinct and to be decisive in my paintings. For a while I was having a hard time deciding if what I was doing was going to look good, and more likely than not it doesn't matter because my technical skills are lacking.
I'm happy with how the horizon turned out on this painting. It seems to really be pushed back there. Everything up to the red barn looks like it falls in place. The grass along the road as it leads up to the foreground could have gotten larger, been represented better and the field a warmer yellow. One mistake I seem to make more than I should is under estimating how much paint is needed to fill in a shape. The road is a perfect example. The center of the road between the two yellow lines is darker than the left and right sides. I started with a color already mixed and ran out after I got up to the next hill in the road. When I started to mix the color for the left and right, the color in the middle had already began to dry. When watercolor dries the color lightens up. That is why you have to make colors darker than you think you need. When I laid down the sides of the road they were the same color as the center but seeing as the center was already drying the sides turned out even lighter.
Anyway it was a good learning experience. It will turn out better in pastels.

Ninja Star Comic

This past fall I had an idea for a comic that I never got around to pursuing. So now I'm going to make the time to sit down and do some drawings for it. The comic is titled Ninja Star. When I get further along I will start another blog based on the comic. My plan is to do a weekly series along with every few days having concept art put up. The comic will be fairly graphic so that's why I wont be putting it up here. Anyway here is teaser image of ninja star launching himself through a bubble screen. Today I sat down and penciled it on watercolor and started painting. Over the next couple of months I will be writing and getting a head start on the comic so when I do release it I can move them out fairly quickly.

Driving home after the rain

This is supposed to be driving back home from Ripley county on highway 50. The sun had just come out after a rain storm and it made everything glow. This is only a small study but I think it conveys the mood fairly well. The tires on the car in the front gave a laugh after I realized what I had done. It looks like a tank car. Other than that the scene turned out fairly well. I think when this is turned into a larger painting I will play with the road a bit and maybe add a few elements but as far as overall atmosphere I like this a lot.

 More Barns

Today I painted the same scene twice, with differences in the cropping and styles. The first painting is a tighter style that is painted from the distance to the foreground in layers. The second is painted darkest values to lightest and is a looser style compared to the first. I think the second painting has more potential for further paintings but the first turned out better this time. The depth reads well in the first painting. The second painting I learned more from. The tree should have a better defined shape. It could read better against the high contrast small barn behind it. Also the shadow needs to be defined better. When the pastel version of this painting is done I will go with the second painting as a template and alter it from what I've learned. I'm happy with how they turned out given the short amount of time spent drawing and finishing the paintings.

Heat Wave

Yesterday afternoon I went out around 5 pm to paint hoping that it would be slightly cooler as I got everything set up. Never again will I feed myself that illusion. It was unbelievably hot. This location is out in one of the cattle pastures back home. The cattle were back in the woods and wouldn't come out for me to paint. Truthfully I can not blame them.

The fence line brings back a lot of memories for me. Where the tree's shadow is cast is where we used to have an outdoor calf feeder back when I used to show cattle. I remember plenty of days when the heard would hang out under that tree while the calves ate. We would just walk up through them and they didn't even bother getting up.  Where the fence line disappears over the hill is where the pasture connects to another. When we would run them across pastures it looked like a stampede in an old western with all the dust stirring and the cows balling.

After painting this I realized how many places there are to paint back home. I think I could spend the rest of my life painting those fields and pastures and never paint the same thing twice. Also painting outside in that environment gave me an idea of things that I need to do next time I go to a real paint out. My pastels are not in any order nor do I have enough values to paint  larger scenes. I am still keeping my pastels in the boxes they came in. They were never in order based on values and when I'm painting it takes me far to long to get the right value that I want. This coming week I am going to organize my materials and that should keep me from making mistakes that are from a simple lack of planning. After ruining multiple paintings by poor value choices this is the next step I have to make.