An Early Autumn Saturday Along the Road to Bayport

I'm a bit undecided about this painting -- not sure about the house and its stand of trees. As a general rule I try to avoid middle distances, like where the house is, as they do not fit my style very well. If I stuck with my general style of painting the house should be no more than a white triangle -- without the details I've felt I should put in (windows, chimney, dormer...). However the painting does a nice feel to it for me, so that I might be tempted simple to do another along similar lines without that middle distance...something along the lines of yesterday's work.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Uplands On The South Denboro Road

Still in my minimalist, wide open spaces mode.

I believe the scale of the Cape Cod landscape a bit more realistic these days with lower and less dramatic hills and bluffs.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Pond On The Harniss Road

'...with cranberry swamps and marshy ponds in the hollows...'

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Nothing to see (again)

I painted over 'The Shore Road, Trumet' today,  decided it wasn't good enough. And I painted it over and over again without getting anything that was good enough.  I'm learning to paint by painting, so even if I don't end up with anything, I've probably learned something -- though goodness knows what...

Good enough is a tricky concept. By definition not all pieces are masterpieces, so what then is good enough to keep? I'm happier with some pieces more than others, but that appreciation can -- and really should -- change as time goes by.  I was looking at some pieces of mine from a year or two ago, and I wasn't impressed. Then too, my taste in my paintings are different than most viewers.  Case in point, last week's paintings:

Sunset Along the Wellmouth Road  141
The Road to Mayport  57
Woods Along the Harniss Road 32
Field in Fog 22

The number behind the title is the number of viewers each painting had last week on my deviantART site. Assuming that people don't click to see a bigger version just to sneer at it, the number of views should roughly reflect the piece's appeal. Now, how the piece photographs, and the fact that it glows on the computer monitor could have some effect on a piece's appeal. Field in Fog, for instance did not photograph well and is a lot more solid looking in the flesh, while Sunset Along the Wellmouth Road probably is a bit less drab  on the  computer screen than the original. However, the fact is that the ranking by views is exactly the opposite of how I would rank those paintings, with Field in Fog being my favorite, and Sunset, my least by an equally long margin. This is more often the norm than the exception.  So it seems that even if I'm not impressed, others might be, and that too should be taken into consideration.

So what is 'good enough'?  Right now I'd have to say that the painting should reflect the way I want to paint today, and beyond that its fate hangs on my whim.

Morning Along the South Trumet Road

I actually did some research for this painting: I wanted to find out what color bayberry bushes turned in fall (they stay green) and that lead me to some old photographs of Cape Cod.  This painting of "scrubby pines and bayberry thickets" is probably closer to the real old Cape Cod then my previous pieces.

I had considered a change in venue for my paintings, but having discovered the photos from around  the time of the stories I'm drawing from -- and having no place else in mind to paint -- more on this theme may be coming next week. We'll see.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard.

'The Shore Road, Trumet'  is the day's second painting, and I will admit, it's not much of one. I think I might add a few figures along the foggy  lane just to see if that might give it a little more spark.

(I painted over it instead.)

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

City Afternoon

It has not been a good week for painting. This is just a little doodle and not much of one. The other, larger piece ended up getting scraped off.  Tomorrow is another day, I guess.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Approaching East Wellmouth

Nothing to post yesterday -- everything ended up being scrapped off.

This is another in last week's series of imaginary Cape Cod scenes, and probably the last, unless I can come up with a more interesting idea than I did today.

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Week's Work

I started this week's painting with a theme; my imaginary landscape of Cape Cod of a hundred years ago or more inspired by the books of Joseph C Lincoln. Having never been to Cape Cod, and in any event, unable to travel back in time to the point where Joe Lincoln's stories where set, my imaginary landscape is vivid, but rather formless. But then, most of my imaginary landscapes are -- pinning them down and making them fit into an actual picture is often surprisingly hard, if not impossible.  In any event I made several attempts, none of them completely satisfactory in pinning down my vision, though I like the paintings. I don't know what I will paint in the coming week, but I think I would like to try it a few more times.

The little Jungle Pool sketch was inspired by the stains left by acrylic paint scrapped off. It is not unusual for me to get ideas for paintings by looking at what is left after I scrapped off the paint of an idea that didn't work.

The beach and bluff piece was originally meant to be a field, but that proved too boring, so I went with a beach.  It still is rather boring, but I like the colors so I will probably keep it.

Field in Fog was this week's Friday painting. I'm thinking of making this style of painting a regular Friday feature.  I actually wouldn't mind painting them more often, but I've found that oh,so promising ideas which I think I could paint until the cows come home, often prove not to be the case.  So I'm thinking that it might be best if I limit myself to one painting like this a week. I have no illusions that these paintings will be met by popular acclaim but I like them a lot: I like their understatement, their sense of  quiet mystery, and to be honest, the luxury of painting paintings that please only me.

The morning version of this painting was altogether different: no fog, blueish skies and a single clump of trees on a hill. It was clear by lunch time that this was not going to work -- the design was boring for sure, but whether or not I could paint in this sketchy style without it being misty was -- an still is -- unclear. At any rate, I ended up adding the fog, and eventually repainted the whole picture.  However, even if I have to stick with fog, I think there are still plenty of paintings to paint, but as I said, we'll have to see about that...

Field in Fog

It's Friday, time to push things to the edge a bit -- this time, like last week, my taste for understatement.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

This and That

 

Worked on a variety of paintings today, two small studies and a revision of yesterday's painting.  

Above, Beach and Bluff Study.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Below, Jungle Pool Study. 

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard 

 

Below is the revised Sunset Along the Wellmouth Road.  Looking at it today, I felt that the landscape was too cluttered, so I simplified the foreground, eliminating a valley.

 

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Sunset Along the Wellmouth Road

 

Still not quite it.  I'll keep trying. I think I have to reduce the scale of things a bit.

"The road from Wellmouth Centre to East Wellmouth is not a good one: even in dry weather and daylight it is not that. For the first two miles it winds and twists its sandy way over bare hills, with cranberry swamps and marshy ponds in the hollows in between."  -- Thankful's Inheritance  by Joseph C Lincoln

16x24" 40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Woods Along the Road to Harniss

Closer than yesterday's effort, but still not quite it.

16x24"   40x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Road to Mayport

Before deciding on what to paint, I often ask myself 'Where do I want to go?' and travel there in my imagination. For this painting the answer was to Joseph Lincoln's turn of the last century Cape Cod. I am very fond of Joe Lincoln's books and his Cape Cod that lives in my imagination. (Though I have never been to the actual place.)  I find it interesting that I can see a place in my imagination, and never quite nail it down to an actual image.  Though I am happy with the way this turned out -- it is not quite the Cape Cod of my imagination.  I'll try again, because there is where I'm wanting to be.

12x24"  30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Words, Words, Words...

I've set out to make this blog a daily chronicle of my painting and thoughts on my work.  I'll work up a profile sooner or later, but simply put, I'm a unknown painter -- who has every intention of staying that way -- but who has the luxury of being able to paint everyday without having to even attempt to make any money at it.

I will freely admit that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to painting, and hope to never quite figure it out. It is the constant discovery in my painting that makes it so interesting and fun for me. If I knew what I was doing, it would be too mechanical -- just plugging things together -- clip art on a higher level. So I hope to make this blog about  those little discoveries.

The problem with doing this as a blog is that it appears to be the nature of the beast that the first will be last and the last first, so that unless one follows it every day -- which I do not expect most people to do -- the chain of discoveries run backwards as a reader scrolls down to see what has gone on since the last visit. With the paintings I don't think this will be too big of an issue, as I don't think they are going to evolve all that rapidly, if at all. But with words, it means that I can not carry on a dialog from one day to the next because it would read backwards, or be too clumsy  scrolling up to work as I would wish. I've been mulling this over -- looking at other artist's blogs to see how they treat their blogs and how I approach them. I've come to some tentative conclusions as how to best address my concerns.

Mostly what I looked at in other artist's blogs is their work rather than their words. I would suspect that my blog would be no different, and so I think I will stick mostly to photos of my paintings day in and day out and keep my comments with the paintings very limited in scope.  I will limit my wider ranging comments -- if any -- to a single post a week, usually on the weekends when I don't usually paint.  This will allow me to comment on my week's work as a whole and keep any observations or thoughts on art  that my week's work inspired in one  more or less unified clump. This, I hope will make it easier to write, to find and to follow, if anyone should care to do so. 

I've run on long enough, so I won't make any additional comments about last week's work, except to say that I haven't a clue at the moment as to what I will be painting tomorrow and the rest of the week.  We'll all have to say tuned in to find out.

Morning Fog

I'd like to thank Mr. Turner and M. Monet for letting me get away with this. I rather like it. This is a larger piece than I usually like to paint these days, (18x24") and earlier efforts with different subjects did not work and seemed unlikely they ever would. I had all but abandoned painting for the day until deciding to make one last effort late this afternoon rather than post a photo of a board with all the paint scrapped off.  It was fun to paint, and as an old Taoist, I'm happy with the way it turned out.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Road to Egesport

Today's work is a rather plain scene along the sandy road to Egesport on a foggy morning. I had originally envisioned an evening scene with bushes lining the side of the road, but in the end, opted for this more stark, misty version, saving the more elaborate version for a larger painting.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

What could I have been thinking when I thought those trees would do in yesterday's painting, 'Trees Along a Cart Track'?  I came to my senses and edited the nearer trees out -- they simply did not work -- and now have a much more spacious painting.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Trees Along a Cart Track

Today's work continues my current focus on painting trees. This time I added a bit more background placing the scene in a more specific context. My original draft only had the grove of trees in the middle distance, but that seemed too much like the last painting, so I added the closer tree and for a time considered adding branches along the side and top to frame the scene.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Field and Woods

I like these more abstracted landscapes -- I've done an number of them since I started posting my work. The intent of my work, however, is to evoke a mood or memory and I'm far from certain that this style serves that end.  It may be simply too abstracted from reality to be effective. I'm hoping that with a better design, the paintings will spark the response I seek, but will have to see about that.

12x16" 30X40cm acrylic on hardboard

Little Doodles

'Twilit Field', above, and 'A Turn in the Lane', below, are the sum of today's work -- no more than doodles in paint. In my defense it was a local holiday. There are times when I wish that I knew what I was doing and could produce the painting in my head. However, the painting in my head is often very vague and impossible to pin down so I guess it's best that I just improvise my way in through a painting. Both of these little pieces are examples of improvising with very little in mind.

 

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Willow Lagoon

This is what I ended up painting over the last posting, Morning Lane. Perhaps the reason I disliked that one so much was that I had painted a couple very similar paintings a week or two ago, and it was just one too many.  This piece is a small step in the style that I intend to explore, so I'll keep it.

12x8" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning Lane

 

I had already taken a picture of this board with only the remains of scrapped off paint from previous attempts to paint something, but decided to give it one more try. I should have settled for the scrapped off paint. Too late now. I promised the bad along with the good, so here's an example of the former. Since I had nothing in mind to paint today,  I was just improvising in paint. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. I will probably paint over this one.

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Trees and Field in the Mist

Size seems to matter. I can paint a free and impressionistic study like this on a small scale -- this one is 12x16", 30x40cm. But when I paint on a larger scale, things tend to get more literal, even though I scale up my brush size to match the board size. Maybe it is just a matter of practice. Luckily, I like painting smaller works -- they are meant to be moments rather than monuments.

Today's painting is another inspired by the light morning fog that has been heralding early fall around here this past week. This work is more along the lines of what I wanted to paint yesterday, but didn't.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Meadow on the Plum Creek Road

My original inspiration came from today's early morning walk through a thin ground fog. However I was unable to get the pale blue sky and the trees, mostly flat, blue green shapes to work in this painting -- boring, not enough detail, did not like the colors -- and since it ended up looking a lot like my earlier Plum Creek painting,  I placed this scene along Plum Creek Road as well.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Dunes on Long Sands Island

Having no clear idea what I wanted to paint today, I decided just to mess around with a small painting. Seeing that this little thing took all morning, it proved a wise decision.

6x8" 15x20cm" acrylic on hardboard