Edge of a World, Edge of a Day

I painted this piece today over the Rowboats painting of the weekend. Back to space and light.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Rowboats in the Park Revised

Today's revised version. I like the more asymmetrical look, more open feeling. But I still don't think it's enough to save it...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Rowboats in the Park

Spent all day working on an interior still life, but couldn't get a pleasing combination of shapes, so with a hour to go before my afternoon tea break, I gave up and did this piece to get something done. I'll probably paint over this one, or at least redo it extensively. (The apparent shadow is actually painted in the painting, so that would have to be fixed for sure.)

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Woman in Bed

Obviously, I'm not a painter of people. Not only do I lack the skill set, but I'm not interested in the subject nor do I feel that I can bring anything new to the genre. As a consequence I rarely have naked women hanging about the studio. When I do, I might as well make hay while the sun shines.

By the way, this the first painting of my 9th year of being a painter. Eight years ago I quit my day job to paint and haven't had to work since. The rich have continued to get richer without my help.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Larking Lizards and Carpboat in Drifts of Rain

I've got a couple of end pieces about, and it's Friday so it's time for another Archipelago of the Three Lovers painting. (Essentially these are abstracts, at least in my approach to painting them.)
Here's the premise of this series:
It's a science fiction scene. Imagine three planets (the three lovers) in close orbit around a point in space. They're close enough together to share an atmosphere and occasionally scrap by each other knocking bits and pieces, plants, animals and people off into this shared atmosphere and these rocks then hang suspended like motes of dust within the shifting gravitational pull of the three planets. This is the archipelago, drifting 'islands' in free fall in the space between the worlds. I seem to remember an Edger Rice Burroughs book with twin worlds and a shared atmosphere, but I think three worlds would work better.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Last Light on the Beach

Another 'light and open space' paintings. This morning, on my bike ride, I developed a theory as to  why I like this proportion of sky to land: for the last 30 years I've been living in the middle of a rolling prairie and unless you're looking at your feet, this is pretty much the split between land and sky you're going to see. I've just grown so used to it. As a matter of fact, last night when I looked at this painting I realized that my original version had too much land and I had to cut down the dunes by a good inch or two before I got to this, more satisfactory proportion.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

A Hint of Autumn

Just putting paint on board today while listening to the new Bombay Bicycle Club album. I really shouldn't be doing this: I should be making every painting important. Oh well.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Last Light Along the Falmont Bay Road

This is the first and maybe the last fruit of my week on the shore of Lake Michigan. There is nothing in it that directly reflects that week on the beach. Go figure.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Rainy Avenue

A rainy morning painting.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Summer in Lansworth 6

After spending a week's family holiday on the shore I should be painting pictures with the sea in it. I'd like to. But today, when I took out the bigger board, I decided I wasn't that ambitious today... maybe tomorrow.  I added today's smaller piece to my Summer in Lansworth series hoping to fool the gullible into thinking that I'm exploring in great detail the light and shape of street corners because it is important, not because I can't think of anything else to paint.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Misty Morn too

Well, it didn't look any better in the morning, so repainted it, keeping the same old scene just for comparison. I like this better, but is nothing to write home about. We'll see what I think of this version tomorrow.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Misty Morn

I'll likely paint over this one. It is just too much the same as too many others. As much as I hate to work, I'm going to have to really put some effort into coming up with some new ideas...

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

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