Struggles with light

This painting appeals to me for it's composition but the light is rather dull so the challenge is to tweak it so there is more direction and strength in the light and shadows. Also I'll need to break up the two earth colored areas of land so they don't lead us right off of the canvas.

I'm off to paint this morning, it's a beautiful day so I anticipate good things!

Summer fruit

During the winter I forget how intense the colors of summer are. We've had beautiful weather going on two weeks now, it's glorious!

This week I'm taking a small group of students around area parks for plein air painting. The forecast is good so we should have some lovely painting conditions.

Studio painting

Here is a painting done in the studio using photo reference from a visit to the Applegate Valley. As always there are things that I like about the painted version, such as the soft forms and interesting division of space, but there are things that are lacking, like the richness in the shadow areas and a more dramatic sense of depth. More to strive for in the next painting!

Heading for the mountains

I'm off with my daughter for a short camping trip. We'll be seeing some pretty amazing forest and mountain scenery. It will be a great opportunity to do some field studies and shoot some photos for inspiration this winter. I find that I really enjoy the process of gathering info in the field then working on a larger oil in the studio. Plein air is fabulous but the time restrictions can be very frustrating.

The painting with the tress shown is in progress. So far I'm happy with the sense of depth I'm achieving. I look forward to working on it this weekend when I get back to the studio.

Edges Edges Edges !!! I finally get it...

Well I've been away for a while waiting for my hubby to fix the computer problems. In the meantime I got a lot of painting done.

During this hemit like existance in my studio I finally felt something click in my brain regarding the idea of paying careful attention to edges. My art instructors for years have been telling this to we students and while I thought I knew what they were talking about I wasn't really getting it. One of them said "get the edges right, the interiors not as crucial. What to look for where an edge occurs is crisp or soft edges, color relationships, and value relationships. I'm sure there is much more but this is as far as I've gotten so far