Fresh and Green

The other painting

The painting above, Fresh and Green, is one of the other paintings that got me into the Indiana artist club. I recently finished a large studio painting based off of this work. This painting has a lot of design work involved and isn't particularly true to the exact scene that was in front of me. It was more about the patterns I was seeing and trying to organize it in a way that made sense to me. There was so much happening in the lower half of the scene that it had to be edited down and re-arranged to be an attractive showing of what was there. I'm a fan of visual rhythm. If I see shapes that repeat it doesn't matter what the subject material is. It could have been cars, boats, dogs, etc.., as long as it is has a flow. Anyway I need to get back to work. I am doing line and marker drawings of people using a a couple of websites. http://www.artsyposes.com/index, http://lovecastle.org/draw/. Check them out.

Quick Post

Tonight I'm busy getting ready for another show and an adventure tomorrow. The other paintings of the dunes haven't been photographed yet and this was one of the small studies that I have ready. This is a little 6x6 of the canal downtown. At the north end of the canal are two areas where the canal forms circle points. This is of the first one. Along the edge of the circle are neat water features that radiate out and pour water into the canal. Things like this always catch my eye because of my background in landscape architecture. Anyway I hope to be a little less busy tomorrow night but if not that will be a good thing.

More of the Dunes

After finishing the dunes painting from a few days back, the value sketch for this study was next in line. This is a view from the top of Mt. baldy at the state dunes. There was a lot of overcast that day and it helped emphasize the atmospheric effect on the background. With this study I'm happy with how the mid and background turned out. The values and colors give the scene a sombering effect which plays well with this large industrial plant shadowing behind these beautiful dunes. The foreground didn't turn out as well as I would like. The amount of water on the paper or lack of got a little out of control as I was hurrying to get in the darks before the paper completely dried up. I enjoy the composition of the scene and think it plays out well. The trees in the foreground overlap into the mid-ground and the mid-ground trees overlap into the background. This gives the scene a soft transition from the bottom to the top which works with the horizon being where it is and the perspective from up high. I'm happy with the values and this will be a good map for a large painting.

Today's plans foiled

 Today I had planned on continuing the abstract series and was foiled by muddy paper. The other papers my daughter had drawn on were cheaper and lighter papers. That coupled with her poking holes in most of the drawings made me take another route today. These are two of the many rock formation studies that I did today. They are a lot of fun to do and are only 4 by 5 inches at max so I can get a lot of them done. This got me to thinking I should do a mini landscape elements series. If it wasn't so difficult to do pastels in the studio right now I would continue on with the old series but as things stand I'm going to have to put the pastels on hold. These small paintings will be easier to do on a daily basis and will help build up some knowledge on these individual elements so it is easier to put them together in larger paintings. I've already got a lot of river and waterfall paintings that have been on my mind but I wasn't sure how to do the rocks. Once I get water and trees down those paintings should flow out.

Field study

The edge of tree lines are always fascinating to me. There is sometimes a tree that stands out away from the rest and has a character of its own while the rest of the trees become the woods. When I will drive tractor for my dad during planting season I'm always watching the tree lines with their shapes and colors. They change the entire time you are driving. Every time you turn around and go back you get to look at it from afar all the way to almost touching it (and you will if you're not paying attention). Also depending on how big the field is, you can see it change over the course of an entire day. During the morning the entire front side of the tree line could be lit up and 5 hours later everything but the top and largest trees sticking out are in complete darkness.
Anyway watching the scenes around me always kept me from getting bored while out there. This will be the last daily watercolor in this series. I'm deciding to cut the watercolors short and move on to pastels. It is always excited to be working on them and hopefully it shows in the upcoming paintings.

 



This is a study from last night. The car belongs to a family friend and when I saw it, it had to be painted. It is an old ford thunderbird. The car is beautiful so in the study the main focus was the perspective of the car and placing powerlines in the background. The area around the headlight turned out to dark so that was changed in the final.