Oak Hollow Farm

This painting is a nice fantasy. I painted it in the middle of a 30 hour snow storm that dumped 20 inches of snow on us. The reality is not fun at all, at least when you get old and have a long driveway to shovel by hand. Winter sucks.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on watercolor paper

Of course, after the wind stops howling and the snow blowing and four hours of back breaking work clearing a path to the street and the sun comes out, things look a little prettier.

The end of the shortest day of the year, after a storm.

The Farm Buildings at Haltin Lea

Not a whole lot of sugar coating on this winter painting. I put some warmth in the coloring of the sky, but otherwise, a dull, monotone winter's day with maybe just a hint of the low lying sun breaking through. This is a large painting (for me) and it actually works well because you can't do everything at once with these paintings, so that I can work off and on - 15 minutes, half an hour here and there - over a couple of days, unlike with my more impressionist pieces that are the work of one sitting - if they work at all.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on watercolor canvas

The Stone Barn

I had my act together this time, technique wise, so this one is a little more polished than my first effort. I'm not sold on the composition, but it is different from my usual. These are sheets of canvas and because they are fabric,  it will tend to shrink a bit because of the water used in the painting of it. Taping it down with masking tape was always hit and miss. This time I tried glueing the edges down to my formica drawing board using acrylic medium and that worked great. I was able to peel it off without a great deal of trouble, though I'l have to experiment on just how little acrylic I'll need to keep it down.

12x18" 30x45cm acrylic on watercolor canvas

Winter at Crofton Grange

A bit out of practice painting in my old watercolor style. One of my headaches in painting in my somewhat unconventional watercolor style was keeping colors from bleeding into each other and creating a muddy, ill defined painting. Winter scenes solve a lot of those problems with the snow keeping objects isolated. For example, the rocks on the right are crisp and distinct. But if this was any other season, I would have to put some sort of colors between then which could (and did, often) make things blurry and muddy. This, by the way, is painted with acrylics on the special watercolor canvas that came out a decade ago. It has its pluses and minuses but on the whole, I like it with acrylics. Watercolors, not so much. The great thing is that you can put repeated washes over the acrylic image without much worry about lifting the old levels, so that you can build up an painting's tone step by step. And you can fix mistakes by scrapping and/or painting over... because acrylic whites will actually cover things, unlike watercolor whites... This is half a 18x24" sheet, so that it could be cropped 2" on the ends to make a more agreeable shape.

12x18" 30x45cm acrylic on watercolor canvas

Pines and Snow Study

Just pushing paint around here, folks.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Way of the Grey Crane in Snow

Wouldn't you know, as soon as I start painting snow scenes, it snows. I knew I shouldn't be tempting fate. I had the earlier Way of the Grey Crane painting in mind, but not in front of me when I painted this. This has a little more of the pine tree look that I wanted the first time around but didn't get. This ain't much, but I'm settling for it anyways.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Moorland Gate and Moonlight

After doing a few little pieces that tried to look big, what we have here is an 18x24" piece that looks small. After my first snow study piece I decided to mash up the moonlight paintings with snow and ended up including my coastline study pieces as well in the mix.  I'd actually started out painting an alley scene, but that seemed neither very original nor very interesting and too big (or rather the idea was too small for the size of the board), so after that it was a matter of improvising. I ended up going with simplicity and mood.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

First Snow Study

This is both my first snow painting of the season and is meant to be a painting of the first snow of the season as well. We've had nothing more than a few flakes blowing in the wind around here, which is great, I feel that I've hand my lifetime supply of snow already, but I thought I'd risk tempting fate and paint a snow painting because I didn't know what else to paint. I considered making a large painting of a scene like this, but opted for this little study last night instead, just to see. That's what studies are really for... and as far as I can see, I dodged a bullet in not trying a big one. Still, the painting over the fireplace is getting old and out of season, so I'll have to think of another winter scene to paint...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 9

Still on the moon light theme. I have used shades of green for night skies in the past, and while not realistic, they seem to work pretty well. As I have mentioned in the past, I consider myself a mere student of painting, and what I am doing is exploring how to paint. I think you have to put in several decades of doing this before you can really master it, and seeing that I'm not even halfway there - with painting in thick paints like oils and acrylic, at any rate -  I'm not yet concerned about where I'm at in the process today, or how each painting turns out (as long as it meets certain vague personal standards). I bring this up only because I realize I've painted variations of this scene, a dozen times: justifiable only because, you see, I'm just practicing...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Alley in Moonlight

I painted a number of different scenes on this board yesterday and none of them worked. Last night before going to bed I did this, just to play around with the colors. The fact that this is another small piece means that I can just say, 'oh well' and not worry about how unoriginal it all is. Which is nice since it is all I could come up with yesterday...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 8

Oh, where to put this little piece? I added just a glimmer of water so that it can fit into the Coastline series.

6x8"15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

High Over the Hills

Just trying to paint little pictures that look big.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

November Sunset 2

The morning's painting. I suppose if this piece was done in my large 18x24' size, it would pretty much be in my usual style, but seeing that it's a 6x8" piece, it is quite restrained for me.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

November Sunset

My new project is to paint landscapes as classically as I can using a small brush and trying to show as few brushstrokes as I can. Of course, recognizing my limited attention span to details and time, I'm doing this on a small scale: the usual 6x8" board.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Marsh Study 2

Inconsequential. But small, so what the heck?

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Marsh Study

We have a lot of them around here. I''ve got mixed feelings about being so casual (sloppy) about some things, like the sky in this case where you can plainly see how I sculpted the tree line. On one hand it may be an annoying distraction, but on the other, much of my painting is about spontaneity and a certain 'deal with it' attitude. I think 'study' in the title lets me get away with it.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Rainy Afternoon

Don't know quite what this is: all I know is that it's been a bit of a hard slog painting the last several days and we'll just have to take what we get.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 7 New

As I suspected, I could not bring myself to accept the previous no. 7 so this is what I eventually ended up with. It ain't much either, but will have to do. You can see how low the sun is in the afternoon around here these days by all the shadows thrown by my brush marks in this photo.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 7

If this wasn't a small painting, and I didn't suspect that this is one of those boards that will always give me trouble, I'd paint over this one. I might still.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 6

This came out a with a rather highlandish air to it, which wasn't my intent, but works for me.

6x8" 15x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 5

In my bookkeeping system this acrylic 1000 and as such, somewhat of a milestone. It is however, not actually my 1000th acrylic painting. At one time I did fifty some small paintings like this and numbered them as "bookshelf paintings" even though they were done in acrylics. And then there are the paintings I've painted over. How do you count them?  In any event, some I've painted over I've kept the same number, others got a new number, so who knows when I crossed the 1000 mark. Still, in the little over 9 years since I quit my day job to paint, I've done around 250 oil paintings, 50 some watercolors and over a 1000 acrylics and that's not counting all the watercolors I did before I became a painter. Even at my minimum price of 1000K each, I'm rich! Now if I were 27 instead of 63 and people where actually buying my pieces at 1000K plus, what a fine dissipated artistic life I could be leading... I suppose, in the end, a bulled dodged...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

After an Evening Shower (Once again)

One of the things wrong with the first version was the colors. I decided that there was no reason to do an fall scene, so I made it a summer scene instead. I also changed the composition somewhat and adopted my "I couldn't care less" style of painting to get a rather casual, scruffy painting. I think it worked.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 4

Keeping it simple.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

After an Evening Shower

I felt that this painting should be better, somehow. I've repainted it several times over the last two days and have made little progress, and I guess I'm just wrong. Oh well.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 3

Sticking with painting the edges of the day.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 2

I'm not sure where this series is going. I had to change the name once already. We'll see, I guess.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Coastline Study 1

Not sure where I'm going with this series so I'm keeping the title pretty generic. I am going to paint in lanscape mode this time around. That should keep things different from the last two series. I painted this one with the same brush I've painted all the other small paintings this fall, and there ain't much  brush left to it, mostly just pushing paint around with it's nub, which is what accounts for the sky.

6x8" 15x29cm acrylic on hardboard

Back Courts After Rain

Painted this piece as an antidote to the outline paintings I have been doing recently on this particular locale. Had some trouble, almost went outline anyway, but I changed to a bigger brush and got more of the effects I wanted going into it.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 14

I think this will be the last in this series. Once I get around to painting snow scenes we may return to this general subject. Who knows?

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

A Forest Lane

Just playing around and since it did not really fit with the current series, it get it's own name.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 13

Still playing around with painting over the board with colors and then scraping the wet paint off and using the remaining stains as the basis for what happens in the painting when I start adding more paint to it.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 12

In this painting I deliberately painted over the whole board and then scraped the paint off leaving only a stain and proceeded to paint the sky to create the shape of the trees and paint over the lower half to create the foreground.  The joy in these paintings is the role chance and spontaneity play in their creation. Mostly what I do is lightly edit them to make them into some sort of scene. Painting without   care.

8x6" 29x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 10 & 11

Above is number 11 in this series, below number 10, both done today. I took out a couple of bigger boards to paint on, and put them back. Too much work. Right now I'm pretty addicted to these small studies on a theme...

both 8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

A Dampish Sort of Evening

I can't quite see this fitting into the Fall into Winter series, so it gets a title of it's own. A large part of the tree on the right is just what paint was left after I scrapped off earlier ideas and then painted the sky around it to give it some shape.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 9

If these were not small little paintings who's main purpose is to give me something to do and maybe something to discover; studies on a theme, as it where, I'd feel rather embarrassed about how repetitive certain features of these paintings are. But as it is: they're just studies of certain features, compositions and painting styles.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Croyhill Lane

This is the outline style painting I've been playing with for the last two days. As you can see I pretty much reverted to the nearsighted, fuzzy style of Back Courts Afternoon. That was not my intention, but I found that the scene  I came up with was just too cartoonish to be done either semi-realistically, or in the more straight up and down graphic arts style of hard lines and flat colors of the first small one. I don't think this worked, but oh, well, if you want assured success you don't go around trying new ways of doing things, which is pretty much the fun of painting.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 8

I wanted to make a sunny one this time around, so let's pretend those are red oaks that hold on to their leaves well into winter... That's my story anyways.

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 7

Another gloomy day here, weather wise anyways. In other ways, it a rather fine day.

8x6" 20x1`5cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 5 & 6

I think I'm beginning to get into my stride with this series. Given the basically drab colors of late fall around here, it takes some doing to make something interesting and of them.  Above is no. 6 below is no. 5

both are 8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 5

Well, at last we have a piece with the color pallet I was looking for in this series. I resisted using snow this time around as well. It's just too early, though I saw some yesterday...

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

A Back Court in Shadows

Here's another take on using outlines in a painting. I started out making the edges of things a darker shade, but I was not very consistant with that. In the end it's pretty much of a hodgepodge of things with outlines and things without. However, I see no real need to be doctrinal about these things. Something different from the last one anyways.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 3

I seem to be having a great deal of trouble doing what I set out to do with this series. The late fall colors: browns and greys just haven't worked. I think that when I add snow to the mix (and I'm in no hurry to do that yet...) I can get them to work, but without the blank spaces that snow creates, all the gloomy colors just look plain gloomy. That and leafless trees are another issue...

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 2

This was another one of them boards that didn't want to cooperate. I decided just to settle for this. And it really falls more into the last series than this one, but I didn't want to go back...

8x6" 20x15cm acrylic on hardboard

Back Court Afternoon

Well, here's the fuzzier version of the outline style. The nearsighted version so to speak. I'll have to think about how to do things other than the outline: how to place things and color them and such, but as to the question is it better than a hard outline? Don't know yet.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall Alley Outline

This was pretty much accidental. I had started a scene similar to the what I've been doing and had put in a few lines in for the buildings a bit darker than necessary, and when looking at it I decided to go this route instead. The key here is to do it sloppy. If you make neat it looks mechanical or like simple computer art/design. I want it to look like a painting. However, I would like to have the outlines a lot less lines and more like a gradual darkening, a gradient between the color sections. I'm going to have to see how I can do that...

8x10" 20x25cm acrylic on hardboard

A Winding Way

A larger treatment of the Small Autumn Impressions themes and techniques, which actually sort of changed from start to finish.

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Fall into Winter 1

This is the first of a new series depicting late season autumn drifting into winter. In short, November. I'm looking to use a more subdued pallet and at least imply leafless trees and will eventually add some snow to the mix, though I'm in no hurry about that.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard