Big Bend

Big Bend 2

Big Bend 2

Shadow Palms

Shadow Palms

Two a day in Laguna Beach

After painting inside all day yesterday because of the weather, it was nice to have a warm sunny day.

I started a new sketch book today.  I promised myself to take the time to do better quality sketches. 

When I started the painting the bluffs were entirely in shadow.

Two a day in Laguna Beach

This painting had to be done in a large part from memory.  The light was shifting quickly into the shadowed areas and I did not want to add it

Once I got the shapes right I started working lighter and lighter.  I experimented with my mark making in trying to imitate the foot prints in the sand.

Done and onto the next painting.

Two a day in Laguna Beach

I really like the sense of distance created by depth of the shadows in this painting.  I really liked the lighting and color in the painting but I hate it when I don't get the ocean horizon right.  I will have to fix it later.

Modjeska Canyon

After driving the length of the canyon I settled on this spot. Because the clouds were gathering and the cold wind was blowing I figured I did not have much time to paint.

The clouds made the landscape dark and moody.  I tried to get the shape of the clouds early in the painting because I liked their shape.

I tried to resist drawing and worked on the overall color and value within the painting.

    

Modjeska Canyon

I was running out of time so I had to finish.  There was no time to keep messing around with the large shapes, colors, and values.  

I had to start defining the specific elements within the painting. Even though I did not like some of the trees and cactus, I had to keep going.  Every painting is completed on site in one sitting so there was no time to futz around.  The detail and complexity of the foreground needed more attention but not today.

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Modjeska Canyon

The main area of interest to me was the cactus and brush in the foreground.  My efforts attempted to create my impression of the foreground rather than the more detailed painting I had originally intended.

More time would have resulted in better shapes and a better composition.  

This painting held a lot more promise than I showed with my final result.  I will be back to paint in this area again.

From Brush Canyon

This is the first time painting a diptych for me.  I had waited a couple of years before painting this scene because I did not think I was ready.  Every six months or so I would run across the reference photo and think about it.

With this quick under painting I quickly established the warmth in the foreground, the overall shapes, and the composition.  I used a wash as a under painting because I wanted to have an interplay between contrasting colors and contrasting temperatures.

From Brush Canyon

With the addition of the foreground elements into the painting, the next step was to relate the colors and values so they would reflect my impression and intentions for the painting.

Before moving forward, I worked on lightening the shadows in the distance.  In the middle ground there was a need to darken a lot of the shadow areas without over painting them.  Refocusing on the foreground to make sure it was consistent with everything else was the last thing I did before working on the details.

Up until this point in the painting I was working with only one large brush.  I used a three inch brush to do the wash and to put the basic shapes into the painting.  I also used this brush to blend and lighten the overall background in the painting.

From Brush Canyon

Once the underpainting was completed, the focus became developing the background to insure the right level of value contrast between it and the foreground.

The atmospheric perspective in this composition was not meant to suggest a great distance.  Because there is a limit to the values you are able to express with paint it was important to establish one end of the value continuum within the painting so that there was a reference point for all the other value decisions in the painting.

Once the overall value of the hills in the background were established, I moved onto the values in the middle ground.  There I focused on establishing the value range within these masses.  The need was to insure the values between the middle ground and the background was correct as well as the values within the middle ground.

From Brush Canyon

From this point on the progress was minimal.  The focus was on refining shapes and details.  Adjusting some color and values between the foreground, middle ground, and the background.  The glare on the painting is from the wet paint picking up the lighting.  One of the difficult things about photographing oil paintings is the light has a tendency to produce glare or wash out the details.                                           





Through the Wash

Because I paint larger than most outdoors, I need an easel that can resist the wind.  This dowel with a brass attachment holds my painting in place on the easel. As I was just about finished setting up I noticed that it was missing.  It would have made painting more difficult.  I retraced my steps and found it near where I had parked.

This was the view of my subject that I chose.

Lately, I had been hurrying through my initial composition drawing.  I had to resist the urge and slow things down to make sure my composition was what I intended it to be.  As I have looked back on my sketches for the past year I can see growth in the quality and the accuracy of my sketches.

Through the Wash

My set up changed because I was using a water color under painting on Wallis paper.  In addition to the usual stuff I had to bring the watercolors, a watercolor tray, water, a 3" brush, artist tape, and foam core to mount the paper on.

I had to adjust my easel in order to keep the water color from running completely off of the surface.

Because my painting was upright for the most part, it prevented me from really laying down the water color and get the deep values that I was looking for.  This meant I had to spend more time layering the water color and building up the darker areas of the painting.

Through the Wash

The underpainting realized.

In the underpainting I was striving to set a gray background to bounce the vibrancy of the pastels against.