Morning Willows

Inspired by my early morning bike ride today -- willows in the morning mist, though I  increased the contrast between the low sun lit mist and the line of trees.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Strand Creek

Another one of my doodles in paints. If I learn anything about painting, it is likely by doing it, so I keep doing it, even when I don't have a clue as to what to paint.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Alone in the Botanical Gardens

Today I decided to 'de-construct' last week's Botanical Garden painting, i.e. to paint it in this more abstracted style. I did not have the first painting in front of me, so this one only vaguely resembles the original (I think, since I haven't compared to two yet...)

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Crescent Park Studies

I've put aside yesterday's painting -- the bottom line is that I need a big enough idea to fill the size of the board I've chosen, and my idea wasn't big enough to fill an 18x24" board. So today we're on to smaller paintings -- which I think are my forte anyways...

Crescent Park Study 1:














A familiar scene -- a small fenced in urban park like a London Square -- that I return to time after time because I like painting it. This is done in more or less my usual style.

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

For my second painting I wanted to de-construct the painting above: make it more elemental, more abstract.  What I want to paint is impressionist inspired abstract landscapes that don't look abstract (until you look at them closely and realize I didn't paint anything "real").  Study 1, above, though far from realistic, is fairly literal never the less. For my second study I wanted to be freer.

Crescent Park Study 2

Having the first study before me made it easier to avoid falling into old habits and making things too specific. This is far closer to what I want to paint, and only occasionally do. Painting small paintings helps too: I find it hard to scale the effects I want up to larger sizes, though you would think it would be fairly easy -- perhaps I just need some really large brushes...

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Moon and Fen Road -- revison in progress

This morning's work, not done and a bad photo -- not sure where I'll go next with this.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Moon and Fen Road

I was pleased at how using a green sky for night seemed to work a painting or two ago, so I decided to try it again.  I doubt that this will be the final version and the colors did not photograph well... so consider it a work in progress, though just what I'll do hasn't come to me yet.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

White Sky Study

The only thing I had in mind when I started this piece is I wanted to paint a white sky (rather than my more usual yellow ones...) My morning walk is now a bike ride and I go further on the bike path, along a long line of willows in a field, so this painting is more grounded in actual experience than most of my pieces. Still, it has a rather "Starving Artists" abstract landscape feel to it ... all I can say is "sorry".

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Russian Moonlight

I recently had a book on Russian landscape painting out from the library and it featured several paintings with moonlit or night time skies painted in greens. So I thought, what the heck, and thus the title of this piece.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Botanical Garden in Moonlight

Here is today's revision.  All very slapdash, but I spent too much time being slapdash, will have to do it right the first time.  Spending too much times is counter productive. I wish this one turned out better. Oh well. Next week.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Botanical Garden in Moonlight

A rather slapdash effort, on purpose, so I'll make it a virtue. I changed the foreground  from lawn to a pond, which I'm not convinced was a plus. I can always change it back...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Orchard Lane Dawn

I still would not care to be found dead in a ditch with this piece, but it's an improvement in my eyes over yesterday's effort.  It is still not what I really want to paint, it is too specific, too literal for what I care to paint, but I wanted to re-do yesterday's version as a point of honor.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Orchard Lane Dawn

One of the dangers in improvising while painting is that you may end up with a painting you would not want to be found dead in a ditch with... like this one.  Oh well, it killed a rainy afternoon.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning Along the River (In Blue)

My greens weren't working this morning -- I tried using cobalt (hue) instead of ultramarine as the blue for my greens, but that didn't want to work today -- so I  just went with mostly blues. The subject was more or less improvised as I went along -- I wanted something a little different than what I've been doing recently.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Quiet Corner, After a Shower

As I confessed last posting, I'm just playing with paints these days -- the subject matter is of little concern for me -- thus we have here another treatment of a scene I have used several times before in recent weeks.  Oh well...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard.

Early in the Morning in the Park

In the years I painted in watercolors I used to dip my brush into the various paints that I thought I wanted to use to create the color I was looking for and then put the brush to the paper and mix things up a bit with a little water.  The paints would mix and arrange themselves, creating interesting patterns and doing a lot of the work of making the painting interesting.  With these thicker paints, I still do the same thing, but the paints don't mix themselves on the board, I have to do that, which is a lot more work.  However, it is also fun to push the paint around and see what you can come up with.  This is pretty much what I'm doing these days -- the actual scene is a secondary consideration, and is certainly a secondary consideration in this piece.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard