Friday, June 18, 2010

Two Plein Airs and a Study




Here are three recent pieces. The top piece is a plein air piece that I did last Saturday up near Taconic State Park about 2 hours North of Manhattan. It had rained in the morning and started again just as I was finishing this up. The indirect light was wonderful to paint in, and I felt that I accurately described the color and mood of the scene.

The middle piece is a quick study I did from an old photo I had of West Layton. I added in the trees as a compositional element (they weren't in the photo), but if I were to paint the scene as a larger piece I think I would leave them out, push the horizon even lower, and just focus on the clouds, which is the main focal point.

The last piece is a plein air painting that I did right across the street at Blue Sky a few months back in early Spring. There had been a bad storm the day before which had cut off power to much of the area, so we had gotten word that work wouldn't start until later. "Great" I thought "I'll just go in and do a painting first and then jump into work when it starts after lunch". I raced through this painting and, having taken longer than I had planned on it, I cleaned up in a huff and rushed over to work only to find that the power was still out and work was canceled for the day. Oh well, deadlines help us paint better.

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