The Strand Before Sunrise

Okay, here's my story: I'm painting series paintings just like Monet... and I'm sticking with it.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Dragonfly Boats

As long as all I feel like doing is putting paint on board, I decided to do another of the Archipelago of the Three Lovers painting.  The 12x24" 30x60cm size board is what is left over when I cut two 18x24" 45x60cm boards out of a standard sized sheet of hardboard. And since I rather like a lot of sky in my large scale landscapes, this is somewhat of an orphaned size.

Summer in Lansworth 5

I spent yesterday painting another picture by lightly dabbing the paint on. It didn't work. I'm neither into drama or bright colors and the dabbing makes for a very diffuse painting that I found it impossible to create any contrast and interest in it at all. I'd like to think my devil may care approach to brush strokes add interest to my otherwise understated paintings would lack.

Today's painting brings nothing new with it. Mostly I'm just painting and exploring colors. In the past I used a yellows for my greens but now, for some reason, I want to use mostly blues for my greens. Go figure. Anyways, I'm not concerned about what I paint these days: its how I paint that interests me, so I end up re-doing familiar scenes. Hopefully I'll be able to move on in time.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in Lansworth 4

A foggy summer morning in Lansworth.  Did this just to explore the use of a different type of brush stroke. Needs to be refined a bit. Somehow.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Creekline Study 2

An antidote to the overly literal pieces I painted earlier in the week. This one is painted over that Beach Grass, Fenlyn Bay painting I did last week. (Killing two birds with one stone...)

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Shady Alley

Oh, well. Trying to give a bit of shape to the paint I was putting down. Too literal for my taste. Don't like painting in the mid-day sun. More comfortable at the margins of the day and a narrower range of colors.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in Lansworth 3

I've got to come up with a new series; this one is way too hard to paint for some reason. I wanted this painting to be looking up a hill, an angle that is not my long suit, and I see that I failed to bring it off here. More like I'm painting from a step ladder on a level street...  The other thing you might notice is that I paint most of my pictures looking north: morning sun from my right, evening sun on my left... I try to keep it simple...


12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Sands and Grass, Long Sands Island

What's summer without a visit to Long Sands Island?  Besides, the struggle to produce a second 'Summer in Lansworth' painting frightened me from doing another one right away... This piece, by the way, is painted over the Summer in the Uplands painting that I posted a week or so ago that never quite clicked with me. The scene is only a means to an end, and the end for me is a feeling, a mood. Summer in the Uplands never achieved this end for me. This one I think does, though I spent a day and a half re-arranging clumps of grass and sand to get that mood.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in Lansworth 2

Seeing how hard it was to get even this little painting done, I may have been wildly optimistic about a series of Lansworth paintings....

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in Lansworth 1

The secret of success, I've read, is to be the best in the world at one thing rather than to be good, even great, at many things. Now, as an artist, should I try to expand my skill set and paint lots of things in lots of ways, or should I be the best damn impressionist artist to paint Lansworth in the world?  At the moment, I'm opting for the latter, which explains the "1" it the piece's title.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in the Uplands (Revised again)

Well, at least I'm painting. Too bad I ain't painting all that good. Anyways, the lines were all wrong on the last version of this painting. Just didn't feel right. Today's lines are better, more laid back, but they still don't make much of a painting.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in the Uplands (revised)

Altered the coloring of the foreground, making them bluer to narrow the tonal range a bit. What I really wanted to do was to reproduce the colors I ended up with in the recent piece called Creekline Study which I've come to like a lot. (The colors are softer in person than in the photo.) But with my by the seat of my pants way of painting, it's 'good luck with that', this is a close as it will get, I guess.


18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in the Uplands

This is today's main painting. I painted this one in what I call 'daub style', that is to say rather than brushing the paint on, I more or less just daub it on with a stiff brush to give the trees a bit more texture and life. This style makes the sky less realistic, but realism is not even on my radar...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Beach Grass, Fenlyn Bay (revised)

Usually I would not waste my time fiddling with a piece like this, it's either like it or paint over it. This piece however, was just too close to another painting I did a while back, so I wanted to make it a bit different, so I moved back the hills and added a hint of the sea.

still 12x16" 30c40cm acrylic on hardboard

Beach Grass, Fenlyn Bay

A shoreline would be more interesting to paint, (really, compared to this piece, what wouldn't be?) but I have certain issues with shorelines. Basically you have to paint them vertical and then try to give the impression that you're looking at something that is actually receding into the distance. This usually involves making objects smaller and smaller and perhaps fainter as the distance increases, something that is hard to do with my ham-fisted style. I usually try to avoid any middle distance in my paintings all the time: keeping everything on two planes: a foreground and a background. 

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Rainy Days

This morning I started painting with nothing in mind and this is what I ended up with. A standard scene of mine, but since I hadn't set out to paint anything, just putting paint on board, it's not surprising that I ended up with something similar to what I've done in the past. Not having a preconceived idea to achieve makes for a relaxing way to paint. Of course it's not very challenging either, but I'll challenge something tomorrow...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Shady Street

I started painting this piece with a pallet knife but I found that I do too much of my painting on the board, things like mixing colors and deciding just what I'm painting, that working with a pallet knife was too cumbersome. And it's not very economical either, though it seems that if you're in the over the sofa art market, pallet knife paintings are all the rage. But since I'm not in that market, no point wasting paint...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Morning in the Meadow with Sheep

Looks like this is the week's painting. Blame it on the nice weather. But I did go all out and put livestock in this painting, sheep (in long grass) being one of my specialties. Dogs, cats and seagulls are the other animals I dare to tackle.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer Street Study 2

I tried making this scene into a river painting, but it seemed pretty boring. Pure wilderness doesn't thrill me: I like the well worn interface between people and nature (or rather the rest of nature), like these street scenes with front yards overgrown with trees.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Creekline Study Revised

Yesterday's painting was lame, but I did like the colors so I went back and repainted most, but not all of it. Hopefully this one won't turn lame overnight.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Creekline Study

A return to an old standby, the willow tree. Now that I'm riding my bike again, I ride past a line of willows early in the morning and in the evening, if not a noon as well and for some reason I find them very paintable. I don't actually paint from life, the mosquitoes would eat me alive if I tried, but I do try to remember the impressions they make on me each day.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Day's End Along Berry Creek

Another improvised piece - I don't really know what I want to paint, and I'm using the good days to put off trying to find something. But yesterday was a rainy day so I had no excuses. This piece's claim to fame is that I used a much smaller brush than I normally would, and it was a round one! Living close to the edge.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer Street Study

I haven't been neglecting this blog, I've been neglecting painting. Actually I was on vacation for several weeks, and I've taken a week or more to recover. I'd really like to figure out some new place to paint, but as you see, I haven't yet. Oh well.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring Along the Orchard Road (Rev)

Minor revision: added the people on an oriental scale: dwarfed by nature. The original was a little too empty without them.

Spring Along the Orchard Road

Another cold and gloomy spring day around here, so I might as well paint. I was tempted to paint over yesterday's Fenlyn Bay painting, but decided that it was too enigmatic to paint over, as in 'why would anyone bother to paint a few tufts of grass,  blue hills and half a dozen seagulls?' sort of enigmatic.  I think I'll just consider it a 'challenging' piece.

As for this piece, I was thinking of a stand of I think silver poplars along the bike trail that had that white-ish blue green look to them in bud when I started, but I rather strayed from that idea as I went along. Oh well.

18x24' 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring Sands, Fenlyn Bay

I wanted a nice airy piece for today's second work. We've had a few very nice spring days this week , so I've been in the yard and on my bike and not painting. Needed to catch up to my 2-a-week minimum budget for painting. Had a number of different ideas on what to put below the sky and this is the one I ended up with. A very simple painting, but that's what I was in the mood for.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Feather Boats, Three Lovers Archipelago

Likely the last of the little series. Clearly run out of ideas. Parts of this piece where once parts of a larger 2x4' 60x120cm piece that I thought I could do, but decided that it wasn't going to work. I need big ideas to fill a big space, and I don't see any point in scaling up smaller ideas, since I'm not in the over the sofa art market.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Butterfly Boats at a Market Landing

A second scene from the Archipelago of the Three Lovers.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Butterfly Boat Amongst the Floating Islands

Painting impressionistic fantasy scenes is petty iffy, at best. With impressionist painting you're rather counting on your viewer knowing just what it is you're painting and from that basis appreciating (hopefully) how you've treated that subject. In the case of a fantasy painting like this one, the viewer isn't familiar with the vision I'm using as a basis to paint impressionistically, so they're likely to be very confused by it. I've decided that that's okay.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Lost in the Woods

I've long since left the bank of realistic painting, but I've no great desire to reach the far bank of pure abstract painting, so here's were I'm at. Basically foliage abstracted. I had no other idea in mind.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard