Twilight and Sunset

A rainy Saturday's painting. (And about time, since it's the only one this week....) More a proof of concept than a really thought out painting. I have vague visions of something similar, but more refined... We'll see. My vague visions oft gang 'agley.

18x24" acrylic on hardbard

The High Road

After painting two small works last week, this week I've been playing around with this larger piece. The problem with this piece is that I'm not good at painting realistically so that this piece looks like the work of a beginning painter -a rather clumsily realistic effort. I'm not a beginning painter, and I don't like looking like one. Of course, my main purpose was to experiment with soft, moist sunny day effects, and I think on that basis, it works pretty good, but as a painting it lacks a lot of polish.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Down in the Vale

Another exploration of atmosphere, sunlight and distance. The nice thing about painting from imagination is that one can avoid painting things one can't paint. Painting looking up a hill is something I generally avoid as it is something that my technique is not well adopted for: I will need to become familiar with the changes in the angle of things as they recede up a hill, if I'm to master the view. I haven't really paid too much attention to that aspect in this piece and I'm not sure I care to bother since it is so easily avoidable in my case.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

High in the Wold

This piece was all about a study of atmosphere and light. I wanted a little more milky atmosphere, the hills closer and still faint in the moist air. Maybe next time. I'm also trying to figure out how to paint light and color, which is to say, how to paint a grassy field in sunlight and get both the greeness of the grass and the warmth and light of the sun shining on it. With water colors you can count on some of the light being reflected off the white paper below the transparent paint to give you this light, but with these thick paints, you seem to have to put more of that light on the suface, while keeping it green and warm. I suppose I could put white below and use only a thin film of green... I'll keep working on that.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

White Flowers Study

Tried a landscape, but went back to a floral. Not a very productive week, painting wise. Not a lot of ideas. Well, none at all. Which can sometimes be a problem, even for me.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic

Wild Cherry Blossoms

Loosely based on a bush along the bike trail. The question was how to present the blossoms and how realistically to do so. I opted not to do it very realistically, and emphasis the pattern of the blossoms by making the background a fairly uniform dark green.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard