Started New Oil - Klamath House

Started a new oil painting tonight.  It's a picture of an old dilapidated house down on the north end of Klamath Lake.  Been wanting to tackle this one for a while. Decided to go back to my other palette of colors (not the Kevin MacPhearson palette) and I'm I can say I like them much better.  So here's the underpainting and first rough sketch. 

And just for fun here's my palette.  My grandpa made this palette out of thick piece of sheet metal.  It's very sturdy, fits my hand nicely and is a breeze to clean up.  You can scrap the heck out of this palette!  The colors I'm using now include:  pthalo green, pthalo blue, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow light, cadmium red medium, permanant rose, alizarin crimson, and titanium white.  

Brad Teare Blog

Stumbled across an artist who's work I really like, Brad Teare.  Turns out he has an amazing blog packed full of really good information.  Much of it is revolves around painting with Thick Paint, but there's much more information than that.  One of the things I really like is that his blog is a good mix of textual information as well as video shorts demoing various techniques that he's teaching. Only problem I see with painting as thick as he does...I'm not sure I can afford it - that's ALOT of paint!

Turns out his wife, Debra Teare, is also an amazing artist.  Her thing is Trompe L'Oeil...never heard of it before stumbling across her site, but it absolutely blew me away.  You have to check out the painting she calls "Textures in Tin".  Amazing what people can capture with a brush!

I'll definitely be spending some pouring over Brad's blog and pulling out things to try in my own 'fledgling' work ;-)

Tonight's effort

Got a couple hours painting in tonight.  Did a lot of work on the treeline and highlights in the trees.  Also, more work on the sky...I like the way that's turning out.  I'm finding the sunlit sandstone cliff a challenge and soon will be diving (forgive the pun) into the water soon ;-)

Old House - WIP update

Had a chance to do some more on this old abandoned house.  So far I like where it's going.  I really enjoy doing the sky, such freedom in pushing the paint around!  Can't wait to begin putting details into the house and of course the fine branches on those sparse trees will be a challenge.  I know not to try and paint every single little branch, but how to get the equivalent affect...I'm not quite sure.

New Painting Started

Been trying to up my brush time so I squeezed in 45 minutes on a new 6x8 oil.  Still using Kevin MacPherson's palette: cadmium yellow pale, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, pthalo green and titanium white. Will be interesting to see where this one ends up.

I love painting outside!!

Had a great Sunday...did some paintin' outside, a little dip in the pool, watched "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" one more time.  Here's a shot of my little painting setup outside under our big maple tree.

These are still works in progress trying a different color palette than I'm used to.

This one here is based on a photo I took on a hike up the Clackamas River in Oregon.  Also work in progress.  You'll have to ignore the sunlight hitting the canvas on this shot.

Study based on Kevin MacPherson

This start is based on a demo in Kevin MacPherson's Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color.  Great book as far as I can tell!  I like is loose style which is something very hard for me to do...must be the engineer in me...gotta' make those paintings precise ;-)  Anyhow, this one is just a rough start focusing on shapes and colors.