Passage to Northwind Close

One of my strengths as a painter, I think, is my ability to construct a realistic scene without having any material to work from. The key is to be able to use perspective and I am pretty good at that.  So while things worked out pretty good for this painting, it has the mood I was looking for, I am not all that happy with my lines. The passage twists and turns and I don't think I have the perspective quite right. I did a lot of alterations after I traced on the original design, and I don't think things worked out quite right, though I guess, good enough.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on watercolor canvas 

New Winter Scene underway

I've made a start on the next painting. It is going to be a dusk scene, so I have painted the walls a bit darker than I normally would at this point. As a rule, you can never paint too light with acrylics because you can always wash after wash of color over the existing colors to darken and alter the color to suit what you want to do, since once acrylics are dry they tend to stay put and not get muddy. However, since I know that the walls will be in deep shadow, I went a little darker for their first wash than I normally would. You can see the blue outlines of the buildings and I am planning on putting a group of large trees behind the central building in an unseen open square, so that a lot of the sky be overpainted with branches... if all goes well...  I will also have to add some figures as well, though with acrylics I can just put them over the existing paint where I want them -- I can scrub off some of the paint or just paint over with white paint if necessary.

Bakers Court

I worked on this piece yesterday and today, I just didn't get around to posting where I was yesterday.  This is another scene from the back alleys and lanes with old stables, sheds and barns converted into residences.  I like the  informality of this type of scenes vs. the more formal  and regular street scene, and the fact that these alleys are narrow means that I can more easily paint both sides without a great space in between is an added advantage. I also don't run much of a risk of being run over unlike painting in the middle of a street...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on watercolor canvas

A'Top Lili Hill

Here is the finished version of A Top Lili Hill. This is the style of painting I did for more than a decade before moving to the thicker oil and acrylic paints some 6 years ago -- mainly because I was looking to sell paintings and watercolors do not command much of a price in the market, not to mention the expense of framing them.  I started using colored inks and moved on to watercolors because of a concern that inks would fade too fast. At the end I switched to acrylics on watercolor canvas like this painting because I could get the ease and brightness of ink without concern for fading. Working on canvas also allows for corrections to be made and they can be framed without glass.  All these paintings are scenes of an imaginary country and are painted from imagination in this rather folk art style.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on watercolor canvas

At the Top of Lili Hill -- in progress

This is today's work -- a new acrylic on watercolor canvas scene  in the 18x24" format.  Pretty much in the middle of the process -- the color of the buildings has to be built up some, figures and trees put in, shadows put in, etc. So far, so good...

Coach House Mews, Snowy Afternoon revised

Here is yesterday's painting with a simple black outline like the rest of the week's work, and I've cropped it to reflect a more standard 16x12" -- the 18x12" I paint on  is just half a 18x24" sheet.  I'm thinking I might want to invest a little more effort into using an outline. Right now I'm just using a gel ball point pen -- I might want to get a more dramatic and fluid line with a regular pen or brush. We'll see what next week brings...

Coach House Mews, Snowy Afternoon

This one is acrylics on watercolor canvas, my preferred combination. I wanted to paint a rather moody piece, but this did not turn out quite as I had hoped. Not sure what went awry.

18x12" 45x30cm acrylic on watercolor canvas

Manor Farm

The last of this week's experiments with watercolors and acrylics on paper. As I may have mentioned, I haven't painted on paper is probably six years. I must admit, I don't like it.  Next week I will move to watercolor canvas, which is what I switched to six years ago, at first because it gives the impression of being more durable than paper.  When I switched from watercolors on it to acrylics, I gained the additional advantage of not needing to put the picture behind glass, which some people object to because the reflections hide the picture. I like it because I can make changes and corrections, which you pretty much can't do on paper. 

18x12" 45x30cm acrylic and ink on 140lb Montval paper

Market Town Wharf

Making changes one variable at a time: today I did this one in acrylic paint rather than watercolors.  It is still on paper, however.

18x12" 45x30cm  acrylic and ink on 140 lb Montval paper

Winter Morning in the Back Courts

Today's watercolor.  I'm using past 'blueprints' as a basis for these paintings at the moment. I develop a scene using small thumbnail sketches and then scale them up to full size line drawings that I tape on the back of the good paper and trace from using a light box. This allows me not only to re-use the scene, but make alterations, and different crops, etc. This is only half of an original 18x24" 'blueprint' that I fist painted some years ago as a fall scene.

18x12" 45x30cm watercolor and ink on 140lb Montval paper

New Snow in the Back Courts

I'm thinking that the creative well is drying up a bit along the lines I have been painting, so that it is time for a change of pace. I haven't painted in watercolors in five or six years, so I thought I'd give that a shot today. I quickly realized why I haven't painted in watercolors in five or six years (even though I did it exclusively for a decade prior to that...): they are too iffy and unforgiving... I had to resort to cheating -- adding an ink outline -- to get a decent painting. I will stick with this style of painting for a while, though I think I will give watercolors a miss and go back to painting with acrylics in the watercolor style on watercolor canvas, which is what replaced watercolors in the first place.

18x12" 45x30cm watercolor on 140lb paper

Nocturne No. 4 -- in progress

This is not likely to be very close to the finished painting, but it is what I have this afternoon. Have to think about what I want to do.

Below is the revised Nocturne No. 3. I had started to rework it, decided to paint over it, and when that didn't work, scrapped what I had off, leaving something similar to what is below. I decided I would paint it that way, hence the new version -- a spring or summer evening.

Nocturne No. 3

Hero of the Boulevard is an alternate title.  Again, I'm just exploring what and how much color I want in these paintings... and I haven't figured it out yet.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Nocturne No. 2

Looking for the color of night. Yesterday's blues were a bit too cool for my taste. This one is a bit warmer, though perhaps a bit too muddy as well. I'm thinking what I did on the right side -- the blues and olives a purples is where I will go next.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Nocturne No. 1

As the name implies, this is my first study of painting night scenes in the city. I did this one mostly in blues, and used a short, stiff, round brush instead of my usual flat brushes. The subject is one of my stock scenes, but I was mostly concerned with color and technique this time around.  (Painted this over 'High in the Hills', which turned out to be too plain...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

High in the Hills

We haven't had any snow to speak of, yet, so I was reluctant to paint snow pictures -- naming names... and all. However, with flurries blowing about today, I decided that I might as well take the chance. This is just a small minimalist scene that I improvised as I went along.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning Lark Square

I had an early edition of this painting started yesterday, but did not get around to posting it. I was far from sure it still would be around today. It and all the previous versions of this painting were more detailed than this, but I simply do not like that look for my work. I enjoy realistic paintings of other artists, but I'm just too ham fisted to make it work.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Rainy Eveing

What I really want to do is to create an impression of a place and time without just painting a scene. It might be a distinction without a difference, but I know I don't want to paint places, just impressions...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

One of the nice things about painting just for yourself, is that you get to paint just what you like. The harder part is that you have no excuses -- deadlines, customer preferences, etc, that might explain a painting you have to make excuses for. Yesterday's painting was one of those, so I made another attempt at it today. I still am not thrilled, but I'm far from sure I can do any better.  My violets are just a big happy clump, that is hard to paint without going into a lot of detail that would be boring even if I could paint it.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Abstraction of a Violet

This afternoon's rather abstract portrait of a violet.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

It should probably be cropped to look like this:  (but since I don't have a frame to fit this size, I won't bother.)

Shaft of Sunlight

This was pretty much a exercise to loosen up my painting. I used an idea from a smaller painting I did a while back -- it is probably still on my gallery page -- but I just wanted something to paint and did not care to waste time coming up with something entirely new.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Petunia Study 2

A companion piece for yesterday's little painting. I also worked on another piece, but ended up scraping everything off -- an idea that  doesn't seem to work no matter how often I try it.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning in Lambstead Crescent

It took three days of painting on this panel to get something that I am willing to keep -- even if it does not break any new ground for me. A bird in hand is how I look on it. Some panels are like that.  A more realistic approach is that perhaps I need to work on some smaller, less ambitious pieces for a while until I come up with some fresh ideas as to what to paint, which is the plan going foreward.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

I finished up the afternoon with a little study of my favorite pentunia.

This is just a small study: 6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard (Petunia study 1)

Still working on it

 This one is unlikely to make the grade either. Oh, well. Next week is another week.

Park Lagoon Willow

Just the morning's doodle here, while I tried to come up with my next painting...'Where do I want to go..."

 6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Below is where I'm at with the next larger painting. I have a feeling a lot, if not all will change tomorrow...

Abbey Barn

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Abbey Barn, maybe

This is why painters get the big money: you can work all day, like three whole hours, and this is all you end up with. I started out with a sunset scene -- you can still see some of the colors in the stone fence, but I did not like that, so I'll probably turn it into a morning scene again -- these colors have to go. Likely in blues and creams again... tomorrow promises to be another day of hard work.

My Old Petunia Again

Last fall I painted this gangly old pentunia  when it was three years old, and since it is now once more blooming indoors, I decided to paint it again this fall just to see how I would paint it a year later.  Last year's edition is still posted on my deviantART gallery, link in the right hand column.

I could not do justice to the flowers as they are a bright magenta, and I don't have magenta in my box -- and though I lack a great understanding of color, I have a feeling from my years in the printing business, that not having magenta means you can't get there from here...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Industry Along the Landa

Basically all I used today was yesterday's idea, just about everything else has been repainted. It is a bit too stiff for my tastes, but that is a result of using a smaller brush and a more detail orientated result -- though this is far from a realistic painting and a close as I care to come.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

In progress

The plan was, and though I had second thoughts about it, still is to have buildings along a canal that will cover a fair amount of the trees as they stand right now & will be reflected in the water as well. I was not crazy about my first set of buildings, sketched in another and then abandoned the idea.  But I'm over that now & will get it to work tomorrow. Maybe.

Early Morning Frost

Here is yesterday's start, finished. Not quite what I had in mind yesterday. I had to move the sun behind me so that the buildings would have a combination of sun and shade. I had at one point drawn in the tree branches for the nearer trees, but I did not like that effect, so I went for a more fuller approach. Owes a lot to my previous Market Garden painting.   The lighting was a bit uneven -- amazing how the camera picks it up though it is not visible to my eye -- so the photo is a little funky, but it will do.

18x25" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Work in Progress

Given my approach to painting -- a sketchy impressionism -- and my use of rather large brushes to keep me from getting too fussy about things, there is a danger that I might use my approach just to be quick and lazy. While I admit to nothing, I decided to use a smaller brush this time to concentrate my focus a little.

I paint right handed and paint on a desk rather than on an easel so that I tend to paint from the upper left corner down and across the board, if only to avoid dragging my cuffs through wet paint. I started this painting at the bottom this afternoon -- you can see what's left of the morning's work on top -- and decided that it was safer to wait until tomorrow when the bottom was dry before proceeding further.

Morning, High Street Lillihill

This is a plan 'B' painting, and improvised at that. My originally intended painting did not work out, and seems unlikely to do so, so I just grabbed a smaller board this afternoon and started to work out some ideas (I want to paint trees without leaves this week) -- and use the paint that would otherwise go to waste.  With smaller paintings I am a lot less fussy, and while this is nothing much, it isn't worth painting over.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Weir on the Lenant

I spent way too much time on this small painting today. I rather hope it will be the last one on this theme -- as I should be putting a little more thought into what I paint. I generally follow the seasons with my painting and the leaves are off the trees around here, so I will try my hand at painting leafless trees next week. That, at any rate is the plan.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Foot Bridge at Willowbee revisited

As a student of painting who is just trying to discover just how to paint, I don't have all that high of standards for keeping a painting. What it can't do, however, is bug me, and the building on the first edition of this scene, bugged me. So I took it out, and while I was at it, decided to make the whole scene a bit mellower.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Foot Bridge at Willowbee

This piece is a variation on Monday's The Weir Near Compton Station.  I  had that painting up and last night while looking at it without my glasses on -- the best way to view my paintings -- I noticed a light area that looked like it could be a building in the trees -- essentially this painting. This painting is a little too up and down, too literal, but it will do.

Painting like I do, I have to be sure that the viewers realize that I am not trying to be detailed. If there is any confusion, they might think I am trying to be detailed and failing.  That was the problem with my work yesterday which I scraped off and did not post. Besides not liking the colors, it was a too much of a scene, too detailed but not detailed enough to work.

Below is today's afternoon painting. It is actually the same scene that I was trying to paint yesterday, thought less of a set-piece then the first attempt. In my first attempt I was attempting to put my morning walk to good effect by painting sunrise on the trees and the full harvest moon still low in the western sky. It was just out of my current comfort range when it came to colors & such.  This one is one of my standard issue misty morning ones.

The Old Lock at Willowbee

each 18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Weir Near Compton Station

Back to painting this week. Pottered around with this painting all morning with little to show for it, so I started fresh this afternoon and just decided to go with the flow, and so I did.

18x24" 45x60cm  acrylic on hardboard

Mist and Willows

This is just something I did this afternoon to cover over the other River Crossing painting from last week. It is the type of painting I do without thinking at this point in time. I did not know what I wanted to paint: only that I wanted to cover up the previous painting, so I just started painting and went with the flow. I did try several other approaches that did not seem to work -- I was not happy with the colors,  so I ended up reverting to a familiar standard.  Who knows if this will last any longer than the painting underneath it.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

No Painting today

Having fun with another project, so I did no painting today. Maybe tomorrow -- getting some ideas in the meanwhile.

Bridge and Barges

Since I didn't have a clue as to what to paint today, I decided to go back and rework one of last week's less than stellar pieces. Just as in my writing, I find that it is sometimes best to edit out things to make a piece better. In this instance,  keeping only the bridge and barges I think improved the work -- even if you're not getting a lot of paint for you money.

It is a gloomy day here, so the photo is a bit funkier than usual.  I've taken hundreds of photos of paintings and I am amazed at how unseen tiny variations in shadow and light make a big difference in a photo and how hard it is to get all the colors right, no matter what you do.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Above the Weir at Copper Vale

Not great, but after a week of not painting well at all, I'll not complain.  I used to hate painting the summer's greens and looked forward to autumn and the autumn colors to paint, but I don't seem to be on top of my fall color game.  With a bit of luck, I will have next week to work on it...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Chasing my tail

I did end up working on the River Cross Station Dawn painting (above) for what it's worth. This week I'm just chasing my tail and can't seem to get anywhere.  It appears that my leeriness of painting these scenes was justified.  Below is the down and dirty revision of River Cross Station Dusk that I did this afternoon -- removing River Cross Station and changing it into a boulevard for no improvement, but since I'm painting as a student: it counts as practice.   (Both 16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard).

Finally, since I had time, I decided, what the hell,  I'd do a quick study and take a peek at how tomorrow's paintings might work out in order to avoid even more tail chasing. At least I have the rest of the evening to think about this one.

River Cross Station, Dusk - Last Version

Above is the latest, and last version of River Cross Station, Dusk.  I'm not sure it is much of an improvement, but I'm having my doubts about the whole exercise anyways.  Below is my quick sketch of River Cross Station, Dawn, mainly blocked in for position.  Can't say I'm too fired up about it. I have two other paintings in mind for this week, so it may get bumped back to next week, if at all.

both 16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard