Granite - WIP

Just started a new 8x10 oil.  This is based on a picture my good friend Greg took on one of his High Sierra hikes.  He's an amazing photographer and this little study will surely not do his photo justice!  I forgot to snap a picture of the underpainting, but remembered to get a shot of the next layer.

Sorry, lighting is horrible on this one.  Still lots to do!

Old Barn - Finished

So I've been painting for almost 2 years now (off and on) and realized I really haven't completed any of the oil paintings I've started.  I've completed a few oil pastels, but no oil paintings.  So today I finished up a little one I'd been working on...the Old Barn.  I received some great critique up on WetCanvas.com and heeded that advice, removing part of the fence that passed in front of the barn.  My final struggle was how to paint grass.  I'm pretty happy with how the grass ended up, but certainly much more to learn there.  One take away in doing the foreground grasses...it really helps to paint the grass in the foreground with a loaded brush!  So I'm calling this one done...hope you like it!  Canvas board 8"x10"

More work on the Old Barn - WIP

Worked on the Old Barn painting some more today.  I figured it would be nice to actually finish a painting so I think I'll push and get this one done.  Worked on the foreground and bit, added a little more detail to the barn and fence.  Right now I'm trying to decide whether to leave the fence leading off to the left there or not.  Feels like it divides the painting too much and it might be nice to just continue that pasture on up to the forest line. Hmmmm....

Back to Painting - Old Barn WIP

Done with the color exercises for now...back to the painting!  I've got a bunch of paintings I've started, but not finished so I thought I'd start finishing some of those paintings up starting with this old barn.  Worked on the forested ridge in the background, did some more work on the barn itself and laid in the initial fence posts. 

At glance it looks as though I've painted the barn crooked, but in fact there was nothing square about this old barn :-)

800 Colors from a palette of 12

Whew!  So this was an interesting and time consuming exercise.  I took my palette of 12 colors (plus white & black) and mixed every color with every other color and then tinted each combination giving me 10 values for each color.  Some take aways from this exercise....

•  800 colors is a lot, but you realize that variations are truly infinite.  What happens if mixed two colors unevenly and tinted or shaded that?  What happens if I add in the complement to grey the color down? It goes on and on!
• Got a good feel for which colors are stronger or weaker than other colors.  Thalo green, thalo blue - way strong.  Raw sienna, alizarin crimson - not so much!
• This kind of exercise really sped up my color mixing to the values I wanted.
• ...and....I should've done this a long time ago :-)

Well, certainly gained a better understanding of color mixing.  I had a lot of "ah ha, so that's how you get that color" moments!  Now back to the paintings.  Anxious to see how this exercise helps my painting!

Color Notes over Musical Notes!!!

Been working on building up some color charts for one of the palettes I've been experimenting with.  It's a bit tedious, but rewarding when you can stand back see see the infinite variety of colors at your fingertips (or brush tips I guess).  This palette includes thalo green, thalo blue, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, raw sienna, burnt umber, yellow ochre, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red hue, permanent rose, alizarin crimson and then I just include a grey scale using ivory black and titanium white.

Drawing from my sketchbook

Was just going through my sketchbook and realized I hadn't posted this drawing I did awhile back.  Did this while passing the time at a garage sale.  Twas' a fun little sketch!!