Fog and Snow, Martin House Square

Both of yesterday's paintings were in danger of getting painted over, and the Wovenlay one was the one that bit the dust last night and today.  It did less for me despite being more colorful.  (Or maybe because it was more colorful...) Anyways, here's it's replacements a much more moody piece, reflecting our foggy winter day.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Wovenlay Park in Snow (rev)

Right after posting the original version I decided that the light pole was just too centered -- I try to avoid centering anything (and this painting is way too centered to begin with), and decided that the path was just too clunky.

Cavleigh Crescent & Wovenlay Park in Snow

Today's painting is Wovenlay Park in Snow, the upper painting. I wanted something a little more colorful than yesterday night's Cavleigh Crescent in Snow. With the Cavleigh Crescent piece I was still trying to get a more liquid looking painting, this time by adding a lot of water to the paints. Not crazy about the results, but then it is a pretty monotone painting. The upper piece is in a more conventional style for me.

Both 12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Moscow Road 1812

I was admiring the paintings of Ashley Wood yesterday morning, especially the way he's able to make browns and greys so liquid and glowing, and had that in mind while I was playing around with the sky here. I ended up having this column of smoke, which I then had to figure out how to use. I tried several ideas, and this is what I've settled on. The army is just suggested (heaven forbid I actually try to paint horses, much less Napoleonic uniforms...) and is meant mostly to frame the sky and that column of smoke.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Upland Road in Winter (rev)

More minor tinkering. It's turning into one of those can you spot the differences in the two photos. Any difference in the tone of the paintings is just in the photograph.

Upland Road in Winter (rev)

Reworked the sky and tweeked things a bit.

Upland Road in Winter

The problem with today's piece is that it is neither fish nor fowl. It is not sappy enough to appeal to popular tastes (not that I want to do that, heaven forbid!) but it might be too sappy for me. I'll see what I think about it tomorrow.

The Downs in Snow

I wrote a little essay on my gallery site under the New Morning, New Snow painting  about how I've come to rely on improvising: even vaguely planned paintings don't seem to pan out. This is a case in point: I started out attempting to do a more abstracted version of what I wanted to do in New Morning, New Snow, and you can see what I ended up with...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

New Morning, New Snow (rev.)

Minor revisions from last night.

New Morning, New Snow

I have mention either here or in my web gallery that I seem to be having trouble painting pictures I set out to paint. I can improvise, but to decide on what I want to paint and then do it the next day, has been hard. This piece is one scene that I decided I wanted to try yesterday and managed to get this far on it. The original idea was even more abstracted than what this turned out to be, and I'm not sure just how I feel about this one. But I figured I'd post it here and we'll just have to see...

12z24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Snowy Fields Along the Shore Road

This is to try to appease the gods of winter, who this weekend in a blizzard that dumped only 10" or so in the area, dumped 12 to 18" on just about all of my 70' of driveway that I have to shovel by hand (being one of only 7 people in the state of Wisconsin that doesn't have a snow blower.) Gotta love Winter! (I guess...)

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Harbor Dawn Study

Here's a subject I haven't painted for a while. Usually I follow the local seasons, but I can't seem to get into painting snow, so I'm casting about for something else to paint(or not painting) to avoid painting the cold white stuff...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

River Study

I said in my intro that I want to be a painter who paints paintings. This is a sample of what a painter paints when he has no idea what he wants to paint. A day's work.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Fields Rev

Well, I have to confess that the original version was even too boring for me, so I bunged in my standard house and shed over the rise just too give it a spot of interest. I don't think it's all that much better, but oh, well.

Winter Fields

This is one of those "punt" paintings. I'd been trying for the last several days to do another interior still life, but I try as I might, I was unable to capture the enigmatic air (at least to my mind) that the two previous paintings have.  I gave up today, and painted this instead -- since we are expecting our first measurable snow of the season. I consider all my paintings "studies" (that's my story and I'm sticking with it) which explains the lack of details, but this painting, given it's 18x24" size, is really no more than a study... of a study.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Bedroom Study Rev

Minor revisions and a little better photograph.

Bedroom Study and Impatiens Study

I didn't get anywhere yesterday on this piece, but today things went along pretty good and I finished it my lunch time. Being dark and gloomy around here today, I had no choice but to spend my afternoon painting too, so I did another impatiens piece -- it's looking quite fine these days.

Above, Bedroom Study 18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard
Below, Impatiens Study 12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Bedroom Doorway

I don't know the rules of painting, but I have a feeling this piece breaks several dozen of them. I like it.

18x24" 45x60 cm acrylic on hardboard

Mews in the Mist

Yesterday's piece. I started with the idea of doing a painting in whites, but had to compromise a bit and a bit more color, but not too much.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

A Lane in Browns and Golds

This is the current version of this painting. I'm not sure if it will be the last or now. Like yesterday, I'm just enjoying working without fine constrains... Below is the morning version (I had taken a photo of it before I decided to revise it, so I'll include it in this post.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

A Lane in Blues

Did this piece this morning as an antidote to all my 'character building' of last week. I found this board last week and it had some sort of blue scene scraped off of it, so I just went over it today, lightly repainted it, giving it the 'scene' that the scrapped off board lacked. I  can't tell you how much more fun this was than the last several pieces...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn Evening Farm

Did this over the weekend: the last of my character building. I have no patience for fine work, and just slop through it. No interest in trying harder...

10x15" 25x37cm ink and acrylic on paper

River and Rocks 1 & 2

I thought I'd take some time to go back and do some actual drawing (and coloring) just to build character. This is my first effort and it is somewhat of a mess: half a dozen different approaches on one piece of paper. That comes from just winging it...

20x15" 50x37cm acrylic and ink on paper

Below is my second effort, this time a little bit more restrained in it's use of techniques, and as a result, more of a graphic design than a picture.

10x7.5" 25x18cm acrylic and ink on paper

Sands in Half Light

I liked the sky -- it has gotten a little too dark as the acrylic paint has dried (oh, well) -- but I spend a lot of time exploring what I wanted to put below the sky. This is what I finally settled on. Not too imaginative, but it has a feel to it that the other prospects did not.

12x16" 30x40 cm acrylic on hardboard

A Street Corner in Lansworth

Recently I watched one of my favorite movies, My Fair Lady, and noticed a painting on the wall that had this general motif -- golden light bending around a dark shape, woods or something, and decided to see what I could do with that vague inspiration. This was last night & this morning's effort.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

November Study Three

It's title says it all.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

November Uplands

Usually by this time of year I'm either painting autumn past (i.e. when there were still leaves on the trees) or looking reluctantly ahead to winter. However these days I'm not interested in painting pretty pictures, just painting, so I'm sticking with the greys and browns and tans of the season as it is now, around here.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Rowboats and Pirate Island

This is painted over the last painting I posted  (Dusk in Elkinton Sq) -- I don't know how many times I had to paint and repaint that board. Some boards are just like that -- surely it is not the artist's fault things don't turn out right!  Anyways, in the end, I decided to revisit a scene (A Study in Greys) and repaint it under different light conditions, and given my history with this particular board, call it a wrap.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Dusk in Elkinton Square

I spent all day trying to paint this scene in a pretty way, but nothing worked. So I went and redid it in this gloomy er, moody, way instead and like it better, though it's nothing to brag about.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

November Study Two

I wondered what grey and gold would look like.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn Sands (Revised slightly)

Just played around with the sky and coloring of the sand a little bit

Autumn Sands, Fenlynn Bay

This was an accidental painting. I had painted a tree line and then decided I didn't like it and scrapped it off. When I came back to it I painted the sky, added the line of hills and the scrapped off  hills suggested sand dunes to me, so I went with that. I'm sticking with my minimalist inclinations these days...

18x24" 45x60 cm acrylic on hardboard

November Study One Revised

This is last night's revision of the previous painting. I made the design of the painting a lot simpler and more linear with everything in a horizontal band. 

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

November Study One

I don't as a general rule paint local scenes, but this one, as have been several others lately (the October Studies and the Bike Trail piece) are based on views from my daily bike ride. They are not the actual scenes, but recreations made with liberties taken.  As with all my paintings, the end result is of less interest to me than the actual painting of the piece, of putting it together, of seeing what works and what doesn't. This piece is pretty dull and boring, but then, it's a gloomy November afternoon which is dull and boring.

12x16" 30x40 cm acrylic on hardboard

A Study in Greys

A painting only the painter could love, luckily, since I only paint to please myself, all is good. I spent the better part of two days of painting working on various versions of this scene, and then last night when I scrapped off the previous work, I liked the scrapped off version best of all, and quickly repainted it along the lines of the scrapped off image. Alternate title is Park Lagoon with Rowboats on a Rainy Autumn Night.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Picnic Point After Sunset

This morning's work based vaguely on memories of Picnic Point from my now distant college years.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

October Study Three

Similar to my first October Study, this is, however a smaller piece and I worked on it a lot longer over several days. Sometimes that's how it works.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Avenue on an Autumn Afternoon

This morning's painting. Lots of old elements in it, but it is just an excuse to paint.

12x16" 30x40 cm acrylic on hardboard

October Study Two

I've been painting and scrapping off paint from this particular board for several days. This morning, looking at the shapes of paint that remained, I decided to just run with the scraped off remains of the trees on the board and see what I could come up with, and this is it.  The previous attempts where of an entirely different scene.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn on the Cape

Back to a summer theme one more time...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn Rain

I wanted something moody and urban. For a while I tried to do it in greys like actual rainy days (around here), but that didn't work for me -- just too cold and ugly, so I'm back to using creamy colors instead.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Twilit Yard

I don't know about this one...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Bike Trail in Fall

This is the morning's piece. I ride my bike along an abandoned RR route turned bike trail each day and this work is loosely based on a section of the trail as it approaches a road. I painted this even more loosely than usual.  I expect that this will be the standard for a while.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

October Study

I've been painting on this board all week. Painting and scrapping paint off. I like painting, so I don't mind too much if things don't turn out quite right, and well, I'm in a 'been there, done that' mood, so the sort of OK attempts did not make the cut. I've settled on this piece: quite abstracted, and painted with vertical brush strokes for it's colors and mood.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn Afternoon

An improvised piece, again with the row of trees motif.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Forest Road Revised

Sometimes I let things that sort of bug me slide, but this time, the differences between the types of branches between the right (far) and left (nearer) trees bugged  me enough to redo things a bit  last night to make them all the same type of trees.