Early Spring, Lansworth

This is kind'a what I wanted, but not quite...rather boring. Still, I'm tired of winter, so I'm moving on to spring and this is a start.

12x16 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Upland Road on a Frosty Morning

This is what I've painted today over my last posting, Winter Sunset, Lansworth Commons. That one was just not it -- I didn't like the colors and the composition was just too blah... Of course, this one is pretty plain as well, but I'm more comfortable with the colors anyways.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard.

Winter Sunset, Lansworth Commons

I've been working on the idea of winter on Lansworth Commons all week and this is were I'm at now. Early versions were morning versions with more (and closer) trees frosted with hoar frost, but I never quite got it right: too little sense of space, too much room for details that were lacking.  This, at least, has a sense of space and everything is far enough away to avoid details... Unless I come up with something brilliant, I'm giving up here.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

New Snow in Lansworth Again

Well, here is the result of my experiment of painting the same picture two days in a row, a test of whether or not it would pay for me to actually know what I've set out to paint. On the whole, a marginal improvement, at best. I think not knowing what the hell I'm doing works for me... 

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

New Snow in Lansworth revised

Here's the tinkered with version of yesterday's painting with minor changes. I'm half tempted just to paint a second version of this painting just to see what a difference it would make if I knew what I was doing right from the beginning.

New Snow in Lansworth

I've set myself a modest quota of two paintings, and I'd only did one this week, so this is a Saturday afternoon quota painting... and I don't have to keep it. I was pretty rushed at the end, so I might tinker with this tomorrow and see what I feel like then, since I really need to take a good photograph of it anyways...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Afternoon, Lansworth

I'm not unaware that lots of people like bright colors. However, I've always liked the understated, and these are all about me. Never the less, today I set out to paint a more colorful painting than I normally do. This is about as colorful as I gets... And as I hinted in the last post, this is painted over that Munsforest Road painting...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

By the way, when I first posted this painting, it was the below painting. But by the time I'd made my cup of tea, I decided that something along the lines of the above version would be an improvement, so this version is now just an image of what it once was.

Snowy Day, Munsforest Road

I was hoping to get the loose, slapdash feel of Boathouse on a Canal with this piece, but I don't think it's quite there. Yet. We'll see if I decide to give it another try.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Wet Day in Cavleigh Crescent

An hour or two's work this afternoon. Nothing new here.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning Along Orchard Road

Well, at least it is something, and that's progress of sorts. Yesterday I looked in on Sheila Vaughn's web site (http://artat.blogspot.com/) an artist's who work I admire, and noticed a couple of foggy paintings that I liked. I decided what I needed to paint some foggy day paintings myself, since my style is so vague anyways.  I'd been  working on and off on this piece for the last several days getting nowhere, so today I softened it up and painted it misty, if not exactly foggy. In the original version the background trees had been very dark pines and the highlights in yellow as if at sunset.  The simple composition I just kept pretty much the same, though it has little to recommend it.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Upland Road in Winter 2 Revised again

Well, here we are again, a few more skies later. With nothing much to paint, I can just play around with this piece just to see what can be done.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Upland Road in Winter 2 Revised

I wanted something different than a repeat of the first Upland Road in Winter painting, so this overcast revision is a bit of an improvement in that respect. It is, however, gloomy and lonely, but well, that's winter...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Upland Road in Winter 2

I have a feeling this piece will not last, at least in it's current form. There is just nothing much to it. I'm at low ebb creatively at this time of year, I find, and haven't a clue as to what to paint that might be a little new for me.  This piece is just an exercise in painting, and fulfilling my modest quota of two paintings a week.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Boathouse on a Canal, Willowsea

I think I'm just being artsy here. It's taken me a while to get back to painting and I've nothing in mind to paint...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Fog and Snow, Martin House Square

Both of yesterday's paintings were in danger of getting painted over, and the Wovenlay one was the one that bit the dust last night and today.  It did less for me despite being more colorful.  (Or maybe because it was more colorful...) Anyways, here's it's replacements a much more moody piece, reflecting our foggy winter day.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Wovenlay Park in Snow (rev)

Right after posting the original version I decided that the light pole was just too centered -- I try to avoid centering anything (and this painting is way too centered to begin with), and decided that the path was just too clunky.

Cavleigh Crescent & Wovenlay Park in Snow

Today's painting is Wovenlay Park in Snow, the upper painting. I wanted something a little more colorful than yesterday night's Cavleigh Crescent in Snow. With the Cavleigh Crescent piece I was still trying to get a more liquid looking painting, this time by adding a lot of water to the paints. Not crazy about the results, but then it is a pretty monotone painting. The upper piece is in a more conventional style for me.

Both 12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Moscow Road 1812

I was admiring the paintings of Ashley Wood yesterday morning, especially the way he's able to make browns and greys so liquid and glowing, and had that in mind while I was playing around with the sky here. I ended up having this column of smoke, which I then had to figure out how to use. I tried several ideas, and this is what I've settled on. The army is just suggested (heaven forbid I actually try to paint horses, much less Napoleonic uniforms...) and is meant mostly to frame the sky and that column of smoke.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Upland Road in Winter (rev)

More minor tinkering. It's turning into one of those can you spot the differences in the two photos. Any difference in the tone of the paintings is just in the photograph.

Upland Road in Winter (rev)

Reworked the sky and tweeked things a bit.

Upland Road in Winter

The problem with today's piece is that it is neither fish nor fowl. It is not sappy enough to appeal to popular tastes (not that I want to do that, heaven forbid!) but it might be too sappy for me. I'll see what I think about it tomorrow.

The Downs in Snow

I wrote a little essay on my gallery site under the New Morning, New Snow painting  about how I've come to rely on improvising: even vaguely planned paintings don't seem to pan out. This is a case in point: I started out attempting to do a more abstracted version of what I wanted to do in New Morning, New Snow, and you can see what I ended up with...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

New Morning, New Snow (rev.)

Minor revisions from last night.

New Morning, New Snow

I have mention either here or in my web gallery that I seem to be having trouble painting pictures I set out to paint. I can improvise, but to decide on what I want to paint and then do it the next day, has been hard. This piece is one scene that I decided I wanted to try yesterday and managed to get this far on it. The original idea was even more abstracted than what this turned out to be, and I'm not sure just how I feel about this one. But I figured I'd post it here and we'll just have to see...

12z24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Snowy Fields Along the Shore Road

This is to try to appease the gods of winter, who this weekend in a blizzard that dumped only 10" or so in the area, dumped 12 to 18" on just about all of my 70' of driveway that I have to shovel by hand (being one of only 7 people in the state of Wisconsin that doesn't have a snow blower.) Gotta love Winter! (I guess...)

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Harbor Dawn Study

Here's a subject I haven't painted for a while. Usually I follow the local seasons, but I can't seem to get into painting snow, so I'm casting about for something else to paint(or not painting) to avoid painting the cold white stuff...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

River Study

I said in my intro that I want to be a painter who paints paintings. This is a sample of what a painter paints when he has no idea what he wants to paint. A day's work.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Fields Rev

Well, I have to confess that the original version was even too boring for me, so I bunged in my standard house and shed over the rise just too give it a spot of interest. I don't think it's all that much better, but oh, well.

Winter Fields

This is one of those "punt" paintings. I'd been trying for the last several days to do another interior still life, but I try as I might, I was unable to capture the enigmatic air (at least to my mind) that the two previous paintings have.  I gave up today, and painted this instead -- since we are expecting our first measurable snow of the season. I consider all my paintings "studies" (that's my story and I'm sticking with it) which explains the lack of details, but this painting, given it's 18x24" size, is really no more than a study... of a study.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Bedroom Study Rev

Minor revisions and a little better photograph.