A Road to the Highlands

Today's project, painted over yesterday's painting. Like the last one, this one is based on a google street view. I'm trying to get light on the green grass, and failing. It's as hard as making a blue sky radiate light in a painting. This may be it's 15 minutes of fame as I may well paint over this tomorrow.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Inverness Shire

I started this one out very much in the vein of the last several paintings, and still remains some of the devil may care brush strokes I started with in the trees. The rest got a little more (rather too) civilized. This is still just an experiment rather than anything I'd call a successful painting.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Into A Stormy Night

This is painted over the Moonlit Study painting posted previously. Like it I'm just playing around with paint and painting, hoping to, perhaps, stumble into some new ways of painting my paintings. This is my acrylic painting number 910, which, while not an exact number of the acrylic paintings I've done,  is close, plus over 250 oils and watercolors, means I've done well over a thousand paintings in the last 8 1/2 years. I have no incentive to do the same thing over and over again, so I'm free to find something new to do in painting. If I only knew what it was... I have the feeling that the only way I'll find out is by painting, and not being too particular how I paint or what. We'll see how it turns out.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Moonlit Study

Just messing around with paint today. Heaven knows what I'll end up doing with this piece.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Fireworks with Flowers

The fireworks are in the painting's painting, a homage to the Whistler piece with fireworks, The Old Battersea Bridge piece, I believe. The flowers can be either daffodils or irises.

16x12" 40x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Cut Narcisis

Something springlike other than a landscape.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Another Spring in Blysmith Station 2

I've been playing around with this scene for the last three days. Normally I'd have cut my losses long before now, but I had nothing better to do than to try this and that and that might as well be on this. I re-did the building a dozen times, shape wise and color wise, as well as trying (and seeming failing) to get the lines right. As I mentioned previously, I like to use blue as my shadow color, not because most shadows are blue but because it seems to (in my eyes) imply shade. However when using these colors, a blue building looks rather wrong, like comic book coloring gone wrong, so I had to try and come up with a color for the building that looked like shade without too much blues in it. As for the building itself, I really need a reference to make it more than just a block of something, but since I'm not really very good at copying stuff, and I'm lazy, I didn't bother.  Like the previous painting, this is more a journey than a destination, and while the result is not much of anything, it was a bit of an education painting it. Mainly I learned, I might want to paint something other than landscapes at the moment...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

A Study of Greens

Trying out different ways of making green. I think that all greens in tubes look like green paint so I only have two and rarely use them, mixing blues and yellows instead. I usually make my greens more yellow than they should be, like I did with the lawn here, because that's the way to get them to look sunlit and warm, which I think greens should be, even though greens are a rather cool color. I guess that's the main problem, the idea of green is summer and warm, but the color of green is cool. Anyways, I was just playing around to see if I could find a nice way to make a green I could use. Can't say I learned much.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Another Spring in Blysmith Station

About the only thing worth commenting about on this piece is that I completely abandoned using blue for my shadows.  The version before this one had a lot of blue and it looked petty silly. Otherwise, I have to say this is a pretty uninspired piece. Not at the top of my game, this week.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Sunset on Kilm Hill

Another improvised piece, which is to say, I didn't know what I wanted to paint but knew that if I didn't start putting paint on the board, I'd have nothing. This is the point where I said, 'Good enough'. I don't really recommend painting this way, but it is fun, trying this and that, painting by the seat of your pants. Since I only paint sketches anyways, I can get away doing things this way.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Edge of a Winter's Night

I went over an repainted this piece and had to give it a new title, though I can't determine if it is before dawn or after sunset. It's an edge anyways. Painted this in my 'thin' technique, using a broad and rather dry brush with no concern for doing more than suggesting things. I don't see any reason someone should only have one style of painting, and I use several, though I suppose the results all bear a family resemblance. I think I'm done with this now since I have to paint another piece to make my week's quota...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Dawn in the Lane

Just playing around with blues and moods. We'll have to see how this strikes me tomorrow.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

High in the Winter Uplands

I wanted to do a wide open, airy scene. The arrangement of the landscape features, woods, the slope of the hill and road are very typical for me, the very blue sky is not. I don't like painting blue skies, or for that matter, midday scenes as they look too much like typical photographs or postcards, so that is what makes this painting different.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Water Meadow in Winter

As hinted yesterday, I've repainted yesterday's afternoon picture. This is something a lot more in line with my original idea: a winter version of a previous painting of mine called River Line Study. I think I'll keep this one.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Road Morning

It was a cloudy day today, so I wasn't tempted to spend hours just lying around in the warm sunlight like any old cat or dog. But just in case tomorrow's sunny, I painted my second picture of the week this afternoon. Another improvised piece. This one is pretty plain, but I wanted something less dramatic then the morning's piece. I may have to work on it or paint over it tomorrow, however. It's on the edge.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Road Sunset

I set out to paint a scene. This isn't it. It can be a little discouraging not to be able to paint what you set out to paint, or anything close. Who's in charge here anyways? Oh well.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard