First Brush of Spring

During this past week and weekend the First Brush of Spring happened in New Harmony Indiana. It was my first time at the event and I really enjoyed it. Artist were allowed to enter work that was done from Thursday morning up to Saturday morning into a contest Saturday afternoon. The winner of the show was an oil painting by Jeanne McLeish http://www.home.earthlink.net/~burkettmcleish/. The composition was killer and the color was amazing. I don't have a picture of it but hopefully she will have it up on her website soon. 

The whole experience was memorable. I had the chance to stay and paint with Larry Rudolech http://www.rudolech.com/ and also paint with Wyatt LeGrand http://www.legrandartstudio.com/.  I got meet two artist from arkansas, Jason Sacran http://jasonsacran.com/, and John Lasater http://home.centurytel.net/Lasater/home.html that I'd never seen before. They had some awesome work that I really enjoyed looking at. Those are just a few of the amazing artist there. Check out Indiana plein air painters website http://www.inpainters.org/ for some of the other artist there and perhaps photos from the show soon.

Anyway the painting above was done from the Indiana shore looking across to Illinois. The sun was going down and the scene had to be painted. The composition and color were something I couldn't have thought up better myself with all the time in the world. I had this piece and a few others stamped for next years field to finish. This will most likely be the entry for that show.

Up the Ohio

Today I was in Madison for a few hours so I walked down along the Ohio river and did a quick painting. Before I even had my materials out a barge floated by and it was neat to watch a massive piece of metal to float down the river. I kicked myself for not taking any pictures but the scene was beautiful so I set up everything anyway. Then as soon as I had the under painting done another barge came around the bend. I'm happy with how the boat pushing the barge turned out. It was quick and ended up looking better than everything else in the painting. The rest of the painting was filled with problems. The light blue I used for the sky and parts of the water ended up getting muddy as soon as I smudged it the slightest. Typically I use large bold strokes and don't blend, but I want pastels that can do both without creating mud. So that blue had to go. The composition also seems lacking. It isn't the worst painting I've done by far, but it is boring. With that being a problem I'm not sure any amount of reworking can fix it. It is starting to feel good being able to wipe down a painting even if there are parts to it that I like. The urge to keep everything that is even slightly successful in one aspect is diminishing. This is the beginning of a new chapter as far as space saving in my studio is concerned. Also it feels good to know that everything doesn't have to be great. They are just exercises for when a great idea for a painting pops into my head.