Winter in Pangone 1

Painted a little looser than the previous paintings, more how I like to paint.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

First Snow in Pangone 3

Today's winter scene from the alleys of Pangone. This one suffers from a combination of too many and too few details in all the wrong places.  Oh well, this not what I consider my cutting edge stuff.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

First Snow in Pangone 2

Set out to paint differently than I usually do by painting the colors without a lot of shape and then going back and painting with various details and knocking out the light background. However, I don't think it made much difference in how the picture turned out. Old dog new tricks sort of thing, I guess.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

First Snow, Pangone

Back to landscapes a little early, but that's where my heart is. I'm trying new techniques though, for better or worse.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Branches and Brambles

This is what I consider an 'art project'. By 'art project' I mean something, an idea,  that I do just to see how it'll turn out; an experiment. The idea behind this piece came from those images you see when you have your eyes closed: in this case an abstract pattern of short dark lines against a light background. I made it less abstract when I painted it. To do this type of thing, you should be a lot more patient and attentive to details than I am, but on this scale, the sloppiness is pretty hard to see. Anyways, this was done in the standard way I do branches: I shape them by painting the background after I do the branches rather than paint over the background.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Squall Weather Revised

I've spent hours on the waves without a great deal of satisfaction. I find it hard to get waves both interesting, and logical. This is last night's revision: rather chaotic, but I suppose, logical enough given the weather conditions.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Impressions in the Mist 4

I'll be candid and admit that this is a landscape, which I swore off painting for this month. Oh, well. It's more or less a doodle, and so it tended to fall into a familiar pattern since I wasn't thinking too hard about what I was painting. I used a small brush and twisty brush strokes, so that the brush ended up with only two or three bristles, the flexible modeling medium I use to add texture to the paint is pretty hard on my cheap brushes.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Squall Weather

Yesterday's Sunrise on a Calm Sea was even too understated (boring) to me, so I repainted it last night and this is the revised painting with a new title

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Sunrise on a Calm Sea

I had a rather large Thames barge with red sails in this painting this morning, but in the end, it looked too crude. You'd need to be able to paint all the little glints and shadings of light and equipment: it can not be imagined or gleamed from thumbnail photos.  I went with my usual understated look instead.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard 

Luggers at Sea

I've abandoned the disreputable impressionist style of painting for straight up classical painting. At least today. Lesson learned today: if you want dramatic boats, you have to paint stormy seas. I didn't paint wild seas, so I had to make my luggers rather placidly sailing along. Oh well.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

In the Wake of the Inchcliffe Castle

Decided to try my hand at nautical painting. (Hey, it's a separate genre from landscape painting...) Took down 'The Best of Sail' to have a look at how Jack Spurling painted the sea and sky and went at it. I had to abandoned my large brushes and impressionist style, but that's what these days are all about: experimenting.  The title is a nod to Guy Gilpatric's Glencannon series, a favorite.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Impressions in the Mist 3

No way to spin this one. It's a landscape. The problem for me in doing any other type of painting is that it seems like an art project. 'Now class, today we're going to paint...' Oh, well, I'll keep trying to paint anything but a landscape for a few weeks yet. No promises, however.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life Number 6

Just playing around with paint today, trying not to paint a landscape. This is the type of painting that might well be painted over tomorrow as it's pretty blah.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Four Blade Lugger

Another installment in my science fiction/fantasy 'Archipelago of the Three Lovers' series. I won't bother with any explanation, a general one can be found with the earlier installments. Right now I'm just trying not to fall off the wagon and start painting landscapes again... (after only a week).

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Impressions in the Mist 2

This is painted over the two girls in velvet dresses. I tried to fix the cockeyed eyes of the last version but things did not go well, and it was a lame picture anyways, so I just painted over it. I'm not sure this is a keeper either, but I may decide enough is enough.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Riverboat in Moonlight

I can't pretend this isn't a painting of something, mostly smoke. An ode to Turner.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Girl in the Velvet Dress 2

Yesterday's was too dark and got darker as the paint dried, and as I predicted, trying to fix it, didn't work. This is painted over that one, It's just an art project. People are not my thing.

16x12" 40x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Girl in the Velvet Dress

Way too dark, but when I get a face that sort of works, I've found that I'm wise to settle for what works rather than try to get it working better as that is always a disaster. This was originally a 24x12" panel, but I couldn't get her arm right, so we got out our jig saw and eliminated the bottom 8". You're not missing anything.

16x12" 40x30cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life Number 5

This one is kind of a mash up of The Still Life nos. 1 & 3. Basically what I did with both this one and no. 1 is to paint something over the stains of the scraped off paint from the earlier efforts, and then go back and lightly paint over the parts of those stains that remain after adding the new painted elements. Most of the old painting is painted over in this case, but there are still elements here and there.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life number 4

Sailing pretty close to the forbidden edge of landscapes, but it's pure abstract, unless I give it a name to hint at what it might be imagined as, which I won't.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life no. 3

I was looking out my window this morning trying to come up with an idea to paint while watching the sparrows who have taken over the bird houses on my grape vines flirt about on a frosty, misty morning and decided, 'Hey, why not"? Sparrows and grape vines... As you can see, I lost the sparrows: no way I could (or wanted to) paint the sparrows in a manor compatible with the grape vines, so that only left the grape vines on a frosty morning. I think it's enough.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life no. 2 revisited

I guess I couldn't resist after all. Basically the flowers were not abstract enough and I came to feel that they needed more of a context. I like using picture frames as a backdrop because 1. they add a contrasting geometric shape to the composition and 2. I get to paint a painting in a painting.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life no. 2

Had to keep myself from filling the empty space in this piece. Usually I put a corner of a picture frame in my still live paintings, but I want these to be as abstract as I can paint. I can't paint pure abstracts, but I'm trying to make sure I don't try too hard to make sense in the paintings.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Still Life no.1

As promised, a floral abstract, or what ever. It's an abstract.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn on the Moors Last Revision

That blue sky simply wasn't going to cut it. And the foreground got too busy as well. This is it.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn on the Moors (revised)

This morning I decided that I'd managed to get the sky into a very static, characterless state, and seeing that it makes up most of the painting, this was not good. I went with a blue sky, which is not really my thing, but did it anyways, and had to lighten up the moor a bit since it was now a much sunnier day.  Tomorrow we'll get out of the landscape racket. Maybe.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn on the Moors

This was the painting I was working on yesterday when I decided to be come an abstract floral artist. Tackled it again this morning, and this will have to do. I still think I need a change: tired of painting variations of things I've already painted. We'll see what I decide to paint next.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Impressions in the Mist

I really wanted to paint an abstract floral because I've rather run out of ideas for landscapes, but I guess I ended up with an old familiar scene once again. Oh well, maybe next time.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Cherryblossom Vines and Feather Lizards

Another addition to my Archipelago of the Three Lovers series. (These 12x24" pieces have been piling up...) Besides I needed some color to balance the karma of yesterday's greys.

It's a science fiction series of paintings and/or abstract paintings with a slight nod to being something, your choice. 
Anyways, imagine three planets (the three lovers) in close orbit around a point in space. They're close enough together to share an atmosphere and occasionally scrap by each other knocking bits and pieces, plants, animals and people off into this shared atmosphere and these rocks then hang suspended like motes of dust within the shifting gravitational pull of the three planets. This is the archipelago, drifting 'islands' in free fall in the space between the worlds. I seem to remember an Edger Rice Burroughs book with twin worlds and a shared atmosphere, but I think three worlds would work better. I usually some sort of winged boat in, but decided the Feather Lizards would have to do.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

November Rain

The title says it all.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall Colors in Lansworth

Well the weather has finally turned to good painting weather: rainy, windy, snowy, so I'm painting. I've got some ground to make up since I've been rather neglecting my work lately to ride my bike in November.

Little new here: just using a lot of extra acrylic medium to get a little richer texture otherwise it's a familiar Lansworth street scene.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Rowboats in the Park Yet Again

Can't seem to leave this idea alone. I'm using a cropped version of an earlier piece on this theme for my ipad wallpaper and I wanted to try and make a similar one that needn't be cropped. This is close, but not quite.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Moon Over the Downs

The original idea was to use an almost featureless grey sky with a moon in it: something I'd seen on a recent bike ride at twilight, and use it in a scene similar to the last several. The actual scene had a line of trees on the horizon and a marsh in the foreground, and I was looking to do something like that. But the trees seemed too familiar, and I liked the idea of a featureless horizon, and the glint of the moon on water, so this is what I ended up with. I'm not into painting pretty pictures these days. I'm into seeing just how much I can push minimalism without sacrificing mood.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Sunset Along the Bike Trail

I painted  this piece today to mark reaching the 4,000 mile mark (6,400km) riding my bikes this year, mostly along the abandoned railroad converted to a bike trail. Ten miles in the morning, and again in the evening, and if I'm bored, another 10 -14 mile ride mid-day. It adds up.

I actually used a photo I took (below) as reference for this piece. Not my usual practice, and as you can see, I took my liberties. For one thing, I could not find that orange, so I toned everything down.  And as you can see, this is very much a sketch. I feel that if you're going to paint realistically, you've got to be really good. I'm not that good or that patient, so I have to make sure people realize I'm not really trying to paint realistically by being very unrealistic. Of course, most people don't like that, but oh, well.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Well the differences in color sort of bugged me, after I posted the painting, that I decided to see if I could fix it . What a disaster. I've had to redo the whole painting several times just to get the painting below. This is why I hate to do commissioned pieces - and won't anymore. Meeting a specific target, in this case my own, and making it good enough for me, the customer, and the price is just too stressful. I'm not going to do this again. I'm just going to make things up...

Autumn in the Tall Grass (revised)

Yes, it's revision time again. The only thing done is change the foreground, any other changes in tone are just the difference between two photos and how they get processed. I think the foreground is now more in sync with the sweeping nature of the composition.

Autumn in the Tall Grass

As I mentioned either here or on deviantART, I don't have a very clear image in my head of what I want to paint, if indeed, I have one at all. In this series of paintings all I wanted to do was paint a lot of open space. In a way, these pieces are sort of an inside joke, or simply a declaration of independence in that I'm painting pictures that will appeal to almost no one at all, because, well, I can. Someday however, someone's going to have to like this one a lot, since they'll have paid millions for it.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn in the Heather

Yesterday's work, with a little high lighting today. I'm coming around to believing that I should always go back the next day after the paint has dried and add more highlights to an acrylic paintings. Acrylics dry darker than they appear when you first paint them, and it is especially annoying when the brighter spots are not brighter the next day. In any event, this was meant to be a rather overcast day, so it is not too much darker than I had intended.

The nice thing about not turning painting into a business is that I can paint a picture like this that has zero market appeal, and not worry about it at all. If I like it, it's just fine. That makes painting so much more pleasant.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn on the Heath (Rev.)

This revising thing is getting to be a habit, one I don't like. But I guess it's necessary. Anyways, I decided that the foreground had too much of the night scene still in it, and well, the color shift of the acrylic paint didn't do it any good either, so I've gone back and repainted it today, a little more heatherly this time around.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Autumn on the Heath

My intent was to paint a night scene, creating the sky by using a series of washes and layers using extra acrylic medium to see if I could create a sense of depth and richness in the sky. Big problem. Well, two big problems. First, I didn't know what I was doing so I tried this and than and this and that didn't work. And secondly, I was forcefully reminded that I hate to paint that way. I don't like doing art projects. I like to paint, as in painting a study or a sketch. That's how my talent works. I never use a study as a basis for a 'studio' or finished piece. The study or sketch is it.

Anyways, I painted a more conventional night sky last night and started doing the foreground when I realized that wasn't going to work either, so I changed the course of the painting to a day scene by more or less painting over the night sky and here's were we ended up. A bit gloomy, but I don't paint all that many gloomy paintings, so what the heck.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

A Lane in Lilyfield

Just something I wanted to paint. Probably need to be a bit more daring here. Oh, well: good enough. (Which is not really a good enough attitude, but it is good enough for today.)

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Farm at Lilyfield

Another rather unproductive week painting. Indian summer left us midweek, and I've spent the last couple of days working on this piece. Way to long, since it's nothing to write home about. I would have given up on the scene except that I hadn't the faintest idea of what else to paint...  Good painting weather is here, so hopefully I figure out something to paint.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Green Banner Boat

The latest addition to my Archipelago of the Three Lovers series.  It's a science fiction series of paintings and/or abstract paintings with a slight nod to being something.
Imagine three planets (the three lovers) in close orbit around a point in space. They're close enough together to share an atmosphere and occasionally scrap by each other knocking bits and pieces, plants, animals and people off into this shared atmosphere and these rocks then hang suspended like motes of dust within the shifting gravitational pull of the three planets. This is the archipelago, drifting 'islands' in free fall in the space between the worlds. I seem to remember an Edger Rice Burroughs book with twin worlds and a shared atmosphere, but I think three worlds would work better. Since it's actually weightless in the archipelago, the 'wings' of the various crafts are moved like oars to move the boats amongst the floating islands.

I tried using additional acrylic medium with a little paint to try to get more depths into the painting, with a little success. Maybe.


12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Indian Summer in Pangone 2

Well, I made my week's quota. Nothing to write home about, but what the heck: it's an hour or two on a Friday night. (Truth is that this is always the way I do things.) They say there's another three or four days to go for this spell of 70's weather, so I expect I'll be painting at night for a while yet.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Indian Summer in Pangone

Actually it's indian summer here, and with the long winter just around the corner, I haven't been able to stay inside to paint. I whipped this piece last night just to make an attempt to meet my 2 paintings a week budget. I wanted some different colors and feel this time around, hence the reds and gloom.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Sheds at Lilyfield (revised)

Minor revisions, mostly to the buildings and wall just to bring them out more.

Sheds at Lilyfield

This is today's version of yesterday's The Barn at Lilyfield. There are three types of paintings, ones that are 'it', ones that aren't 'it' (but might be, if things work out) and ones that are never going to be 'it'; which most paintings fall into. It is this last category that makes being a painter so damn hard since you have to decide if they're good enough or not. Yesterday's version was not good enough, today's... we'll see how it strikes me tomorrow. The one thing it has going for it is that it has so much paint on it that I'd not like to paint over it again...  The thing is that this would have been a very nice 12x16" piece. It might be just too big.

18x24" 45c60cm acrylic on hardboard.

The Barn at Lilyfield

Well here's today 's painting as it looks today. Never sure these days how done I am. I had an image of a high horizon painting going into this, but only this, the afternoon version actually went in that direction, mostly because I could not get any buildings to look anything but clunky so I wanted to crowd them out. I petty much just roughed this barn in and left it as it. Buildings are not my thing.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Lilyfield Meadow (revised versions)

Above is the final (ha!) version of this painting. I've cut back the trees on the left: opening up the painting and making it less unbalanced. In addition I added a bit of highlight to the wall and a bit more detail to the house.

Below is this morning's first revision. I had decided to take the trees up to the top of the painting and lighten up the sky to get more of a milky light look rather than overcast. The fact that I have this photo says that I was ready to go with this version, but it never quite felt right. It was just too unbalanced.  This is pretty much how I paint: if it looks good, it is good, but I have to get there by looking at it and changing it until it looks good. I don't have a picture in my mind to paint to or a plan except to start painting in the upper left hand corner...