A Soft Morning Along the Plum Creek Road

The paintings I like best usually take only a few hours --  I knew what I was doing and it actually worked.  When painting stretches into a day or two, or three, like this one, it is because the original idea did not work -- my original street scene was just to clunky and stiff  -- and I had to improvise, and improvise, trying one thing and then another. And in the end, they usually never turn out anyways.  This one, however, turned out pretty good -- quiet and understated -- just the way I like my paintings.

16x24" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Sill untitled, unfinished

This is Friday's untitled and unfinished today.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.  The photo is not very true to color, but since this is a work in progress, it will do for now.

Untitled, Unfinished

...And undecided. This is today's work, and while I am pretty happy with the left side of the painting, after several different treatments, the right side still leaves much to be desired. I'll have to think about this over the weekend to see if I can find a way to make it work.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

A Rather Broken Down Willow (Revised)

A Rather Broken Down Willow (Revised)

Coming from painting in watercolors where the ability to fix things is very limited, I don’t, as a general rule, do a lot of fiddling with my paintings once I think I’m done. In this case however, I decided that the tree, even a broken down willow, needed to be a bit more tree shaped, so I moved some of the bushes and underbrush at its base further back into the misty background.

A Rather Broken Down Willow

A Rather Broken Down Willow (12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard) is today's work. I try to paint within the impressionist school, but sometime I find myself putting more details in than I should. This was the case with the first two paintings I did this week, neither of which I am very happy with, so this painting was painted to be a break from those efforts. I painted a small (6x8")painting of a willow tree in the fog with rowboats yesterday so this work is not quite out of the blue -- I used that idea and general color scheme as a basis for this painting. I just wanted something -- without details -- to paint.

And They Lived Happily Ever After

This was a welcome to the blog posting, but since most, if any reader, will likely come by it by reading backwards -- for who knows how long -- I thought I might as well make it the end of my blog. Hopefully in time I will learn to write backwards -- tossing out casual references to subjects and comments I have yet to write -- so as to fit the format. Failing that, I will -- and no doubt, have --  make  (or made?) sure that every post is self-contained and can be read backwards and forwards.  Confused?  Welcome to the rabbit's hole.

Here is the original text of this post:

I've borrowed a Rudyard Kipling title for this blog for no particular reason other than my hope that it will be an accurate description of what it contains. I don't as a rule paint on the weekends, so I will probably confining my posting to the five weekdays – with luck.

I quit my day job six years ago to be a painter. I had been painting in watercolors in my spare time for years and felt that if I was ever to do anything in the line of painting, the time had come. Being neither old enough nor rich enough to retire, I set out to paint pictures to sell. I am over that now.

First, I'm now old enough to retire.

Second, though I have sold several hundred over the past six years, the fact is that painting as a business requires an artist to paint paintings that sell. I don't want to paint paintings that sell. I want to paint paintings. So while I have nothing against selling my paintings, feel free to inquire if you are interested in any, selling paintings is not a what my painting or this blog is about.

Lastly, I'm still not rich enough to retire, but I'm old enough not to care.

I hope you will find (or, have found...) some paintings you will like in this blog. A more complete collection of my work can be found at: http://litka.deviantart.com/gallery/