Plein air pieces

Here are three plein air pieces done over the last six months. These were done back in July, November, and October, respectively. The stump is the most successful, but there are some other successful elements about the other two. I have been trying to get out and do one painting a week, which has been both cold, as well as rewarding. I'll post some of the recent pieces soon.

New piece for the New Era

Here is a digital piece which I did this week for the New Era magazine (the youth magazine of the LDS church). I like it generally. It's a bit heavy on the photographic side, which, digitally, often ends up looking like you only know how to use the color picker in Photoshop. With some more time I could have pushed things away from that a little more successfully, perhaps. It was originally all warm light (both the ambient and directional light were warm), but I pushed the cools into the ambient side, and I like that part. Kudos to Alex for being such a willing last minute model!

The Next Step

Here is the actual oil painting of the digital version in the last post. I am quite pleased with it, and feel like there are some things working better here than in the digital version. I pulled up the digital version on my old imac and painted straight from the screen, a first for me. It was very enjoyable to paint from the screen instead of a sub-par print. This is a 9"x12" piece, and I'm looking forward to doing a larger version soon.

Why yes, it HAS been six months...

So, we had our first son in August, which is all of the disclaimer needed for not posting in awhile:) I have been trying to utilize more of my film/color key skills in my personal work, and this is one example. The bottom is a photo which I took a few years ago. It had some great elements, but after doing a larger painting of it, I realized that it was missing some important elements. So the other three are the small digital overpaintings I did, using the photo as a starting point. The top is the most recent, and I think the most successful. I used a few other photos for value/color reference, but mostly just tried to compose the scene from imagination and not be hindered by the limitations of the photo ref. I'm excited to now do an oil painting of this and see how it changes from digital to paint. More to come!

A Beach Campout Weekend!

Ok, so I usually only post art related things here, but I couldn't resist sharing a photo from our troop beach campout this past weekend. The kids had a lot of fun, and it was great to see them so excited to be having meaningful adventures together. If it looks like we're screaming in this photo, it was to prepare us for the cold Atlantic water which we were seconds away from being immersed in:) Go Boy Scouts!

The Latest

So, here is a little landscape and its corresponding study. The larger finished piece is 11"x 14", so not huge, and the small study is around 4"x 6". And though I rarely show them together, I have included the original photo ref that I used for the piece. The photo itself is a compilation of three different photos (if you look close you can see the hack job in Photoshop...I was going quick). I include this so that you can see things that were similar as well as some of the dramatic liberties that I took with the piece, adjusting it for composition and interest. In these photos, the reference looks very vibrant and the two paintings are a bit washed out. In reality, the print of the photo was semi-washed out, and the painting has all of the color...funny. And beyond all of that, I had exactly two nights to get this painted and entered into a show (it didn't make it in:). So, though it was a mad dash to finish it--the piece bearing the marks of that speed--I'm glad that I pushed through and did it. Enjoy!

New Plein Air Easel

I just recently purchased a new 'Easy L' plein air easel, and am very excited about having greater flexibility to paint on location. The easel is great, but there were some design elements that I felt needed a little nudge to get where they needed to be. The slide-out wings were constructed on the flat bottom of the 'out of the box' easel with 1/8" birch plywood. I sandwiched the two pieces and alternated the grain and it turned out quite strong. There are stronger 1/8" ply's out there, but this was the cheapest, and worked just fine. A blend of different wood oils helps them slide well, and protects the wood.

Over the weekend I got out and did two mediocre paintings just to break it in. As Ron says (here at Blue Sky) "It's the indian, not the arrow!" ...onward and upward.