Strand Creek

Another one of my doodles in paints. If I learn anything about painting, it is likely by doing it, so I keep doing it, even when I don't have a clue as to what to paint.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Alone in the Botanical Gardens

Today I decided to 'de-construct' last week's Botanical Garden painting, i.e. to paint it in this more abstracted style. I did not have the first painting in front of me, so this one only vaguely resembles the original (I think, since I haven't compared to two yet...)

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Crescent Park Studies

I've put aside yesterday's painting -- the bottom line is that I need a big enough idea to fill the size of the board I've chosen, and my idea wasn't big enough to fill an 18x24" board. So today we're on to smaller paintings -- which I think are my forte anyways...

Crescent Park Study 1:














A familiar scene -- a small fenced in urban park like a London Square -- that I return to time after time because I like painting it. This is done in more or less my usual style.

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

For my second painting I wanted to de-construct the painting above: make it more elemental, more abstract.  What I want to paint is impressionist inspired abstract landscapes that don't look abstract (until you look at them closely and realize I didn't paint anything "real").  Study 1, above, though far from realistic, is fairly literal never the less. For my second study I wanted to be freer.

Crescent Park Study 2

Having the first study before me made it easier to avoid falling into old habits and making things too specific. This is far closer to what I want to paint, and only occasionally do. Painting small paintings helps too: I find it hard to scale the effects I want up to larger sizes, though you would think it would be fairly easy -- perhaps I just need some really large brushes...

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Moon and Fen Road -- revison in progress

This morning's work, not done and a bad photo -- not sure where I'll go next with this.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Moon and Fen Road

I was pleased at how using a green sky for night seemed to work a painting or two ago, so I decided to try it again.  I doubt that this will be the final version and the colors did not photograph well... so consider it a work in progress, though just what I'll do hasn't come to me yet.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

White Sky Study

The only thing I had in mind when I started this piece is I wanted to paint a white sky (rather than my more usual yellow ones...) My morning walk is now a bike ride and I go further on the bike path, along a long line of willows in a field, so this painting is more grounded in actual experience than most of my pieces. Still, it has a rather "Starving Artists" abstract landscape feel to it ... all I can say is "sorry".

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Russian Moonlight

I recently had a book on Russian landscape painting out from the library and it featured several paintings with moonlit or night time skies painted in greens. So I thought, what the heck, and thus the title of this piece.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Botanical Garden in Moonlight

Here is today's revision.  All very slapdash, but I spent too much time being slapdash, will have to do it right the first time.  Spending too much times is counter productive. I wish this one turned out better. Oh well. Next week.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Botanical Garden in Moonlight

A rather slapdash effort, on purpose, so I'll make it a virtue. I changed the foreground  from lawn to a pond, which I'm not convinced was a plus. I can always change it back...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Orchard Lane Dawn

I still would not care to be found dead in a ditch with this piece, but it's an improvement in my eyes over yesterday's effort.  It is still not what I really want to paint, it is too specific, too literal for what I care to paint, but I wanted to re-do yesterday's version as a point of honor.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Orchard Lane Dawn

One of the dangers in improvising while painting is that you may end up with a painting you would not want to be found dead in a ditch with... like this one.  Oh well, it killed a rainy afternoon.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning Along the River (In Blue)

My greens weren't working this morning -- I tried using cobalt (hue) instead of ultramarine as the blue for my greens, but that didn't want to work today -- so I  just went with mostly blues. The subject was more or less improvised as I went along -- I wanted something a little different than what I've been doing recently.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Quiet Corner, After a Shower

As I confessed last posting, I'm just playing with paints these days -- the subject matter is of little concern for me -- thus we have here another treatment of a scene I have used several times before in recent weeks.  Oh well...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard.

Early in the Morning in the Park

In the years I painted in watercolors I used to dip my brush into the various paints that I thought I wanted to use to create the color I was looking for and then put the brush to the paper and mix things up a bit with a little water.  The paints would mix and arrange themselves, creating interesting patterns and doing a lot of the work of making the painting interesting.  With these thicker paints, I still do the same thing, but the paints don't mix themselves on the board, I have to do that, which is a lot more work.  However, it is also fun to push the paint around and see what you can come up with.  This is pretty much what I'm doing these days -- the actual scene is a secondary consideration, and is certainly a secondary consideration in this piece.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Orchard and Pasture

During my morning walk I noticed that the white and red blossoms of a wild growing apple tree along the trail looked lavender in the light overcast light and so we have today's painting: a rather minimalist painting, cooler colored and with a lower tonal value than usual for me.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Market Garden, Early Onion Plot

As predicted, I started over. I probably should have gone with my first instinct and not bothered with a larger scene -- but oh well, I've painted worse...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

New, Larger Market Garden Painting

I suspect that this will turn out a lot different than it is now.  It had better...

Market Garden, Spring Morning

I had originally intended to paint this on a larger 18x24" board but decided that I didn't have enough to say to use that much space, so this a 12x16" (30x40cm) piece. I like the way it turned out, so I may so the larger work after all...

Walled Garden and Crabapples in Bloom

Just painting -- the wall was added this afternoon it give the piece a little structure.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Crabapples in Bloom in the Park Across the Way

Very similar to the piece "Quiet Corner, Rainy Day" -- in part because I painted it with the same lack of an idea as to what I wanted to do.  In addition, since I'm right handed and paint at a desk, I tend to start in the upper left hand corner and work my way more or less towards the lower right hand corner so as to avoid dragging my cuff in wet paint as much as possible... Starting in the upper left I have a choice of trees (or something) or sky  and with trees I like dragging my brush to make the foliage rather than pushing it, so it makes sense to start with the trees on the left... It's all quite logical...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

An Avenue in the Fog

I worked on this off an on today -- I knew what I wanted as far as the subject matter -- just could not quite get it to work the way I wanted. Oh well.

12x26" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Top of the Lane

Another improvised piece -- not quite sure about this one though -- a little to literal for me.


12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Quiet Corner, Rainy Day

It is rather hard to paint something if you don't know what to paint. And it is rather hard to know what to paint if you can't think about it for more than a minute or so before you're off on to something else.  Luckily I do like to put paint on the board and see how things turn out, and that is the way this piece was painted -- just by putting paint on the board and seeing where it was going and what I could make of it.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Blue Gate

Today's little effort.  This is a 8x12" piece of hardboard and is too tall for this type of painting -- take 2" off the height how you want.... (I just paint to the edges... don't blame me.)


8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring Morning, Moon Crescent

Well, this is today's version  of yesterday's painting.  I wanted to get more green in -- it is spring, after all -- and I used a bigger brush as well. 

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring Morning, Moon Crescent

This is neither different or better than what I've been doing for a while, but I've come to the conclusion that there is no revolution in store for me -- will just have to evolve things.  This is painted over the last two (Hornsport Rd) paintings. I'll probably stick to smaller works for a while to get up to speed again.

18x24" 45x60 cm acrylic on hardboard.

Spring Along the Hornsport Rd rev 2

Well, here's today's version of the painting.  This will be revised tomorrow...maybe.

Spring Along the Hornsport Rd

I can't quite figure out which is the cart and which is the horse.  Old age. I want to paint something different -- something better than I've done before, but I still haven't an idea as what that is.  So do I paint the old stuff and hope something else comes along or do I wait until it does?  Right now I'm splitting the difference: painting a little old stuff and hoping something better turns up. 

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard.

Spring Color Study

Having taken so much time off, I'm now re-starting rather slowly too. This is just a small study using a familiar scene to explore colors that I could use to paint some misty spring scenes. They're not quite the right colors however... but that's ok, next time...  At least I'm painting again.  (The 12" height is too high -- I display this size in a 8x10 frame (w/a mat), but the 12" size saves me from another cut on the board...)

8x12" 20x30cm acrylic on hardboard

The River Marshes at Low Tide

A rather dismal scene to start off painting after my extended holiday, but, oh well,  I'm just happy to have something to post.  Some canvasses and boards seem to defy all but the most determined attempts to get something acceptable on them.  This board was one of the worst. I'm just going to close my eyes tomorrow and let this painting be good enough, as I'm sick of painting over it again and again.

For the most part I spent my time working on my 'romance' called "Yours, someday, maybe --  A romance in an undetermined number of pieces." painting with words rather than paint, so I was having fun and keeping creatively busy this past month.  I would really like to paint something different than I've been doing, but can't seem to think of anything too different and have doubts that I actually can paint anything too different as well...  Taking a month off has not given me a clue as to what I would like -- and what I am able -- to do differently. I don't know what I will do tomorrow...

 18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard