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