Late Summer Along the Trumet Road

This weekend I start my eleventh year as an painter. It's been a decade now since I quite my day job to paint "full time". Haven't a regret. Lot's of changes along the way. Started in watercolors and then had to learn how to paint in oils on canvas when it quickly became apparent that watercolors are too much like prints to command much interest in the "over the sofa" market. Later on I switched to acrylics on hardboard because I realized I could do everything I wanted in acrylics with a lot less annoyance. I sold paintings for the first five years or so and enjoyed the process, but I came to realize I was unprepared to do what it takes to make painting a business, so I just put a minimum $100K price on 'em and have never had to ask myself, "But will it sell?" again. (I know the answer.) In return I have the freedom to paint pictures like the one above without caring that no one but myself is likely to like it. Well worth it.

I did make my quota of two paintings a week this year, but I only did so by cheating: painting a lot of little paintings last fall. Oh, well. And I am not exactly painting at my best these days; maybe I'll get better and maybe not. We'll just have to see what year eleven brings.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Late Summer on the Upper Orham Road

Back from a week's holiday on the Lake Michigan shore with the extended family; lot's of walks along the beach and lots of time re-reading Joseph Lincoln books about Cape Cod a hundred or more years ago, which is the basis for this and these types of painting. Nothing new here, but at least I'm motivated to paint a bit. Can't complain.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Late Summer Along Lost Spring Road

I see it's been more than a month since I last painted a picture. I've always relied on intuition and inspiration to paint without any formal training. When inspiration and intuition fails I've nothing to fall back on and am pretty much out of luck. And the spring of inspiration and intuition seems to have run dry. I could, I suppose re-hash old scenes, like this piece, but that really doesn't interest me. Instead, I don't think I'll be painting for a while and see if anything changes. I'm not holding my breath, it's been hard to come up with things to paint for a year or more, so I'm far from sure this is a temporary thing.

But it's not like I'm not continuing to create. I'm just into words these days. I've finished the almost final draft of the first four episodes of my open ended science fiction serial "Captain of the Lost Star".  If it passes muster (a big 'if') with various reviewers, I'd like to self-publish as an ebook this fall sometime. It's a 60,000 word introduction to the characters of a tramp space ship plying the Nine Star Nebula. My plan is to add 10,000-15,000 word connected short stories on to it to keep the story going to where ever in the Nebula it's going. I'm planing to draw some illustrations and will post them here if I do. In addition I'm working on another science fiction novel with the working title of "The Rhymer's Gate" which I hope to have done by the new year. I write, as I paint, for fun, so that if I do finish them to my satisfaction, I'd publish them myself as ebooks if I don't think I'd embarrass myself too much. We'll see.


18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Moon & Sailing Barge

Another old Thames sketch. Unfortunately it looks like a four color print that's been left in the sun too long and all the yellow ink has faded out of it. Oh well.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

The Old Thames

Paint something different or paint differently seems to be my only two options to get painting again. This is piece is mostly a paint differently painting achieved by using a small brush and colors I don't usually use. The subject is an old friend including my favorite bridge, the Hungerford bridge, now sadly disfigured.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

little study 4

Did this last week. Just got around to photographing it. No better than the rest.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

little study 3

Boring. I think because I'm trying to paint landscapes instead of moods using landscapes. At least painting on little panels is an economical way of trying to find what you're doing wrong.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

little study 2

Not what I wanted, but will keep trying.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Little Study 1

It's been quite a while, once again. Vacations, babysitting, no idea what I want to paint are largely to blame. I was at a gallery the other day and saw big paintings (eight foot by eight foot) painted to sell to rich people to hang on their big white walls in their big houses, and was glad I didn't have to do that. So I painted this instead and put a $100K price tag on it.

6x8" 15x20cm  acrylic on hardboard

Ships in the Clouds

Another piece where I just started out with blotches of paint and worked them into shape. Not sure were this is, but it's near some port anyways. Is that spot of brightness near the bottom milky sunlight dancing on the Thames? Could be.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard.

Steam Lighters and Ships

Sea ships and cloudships in and over the Hooghly, Calcutta's harbor. This piece is closer to my natural style than the previous entry in this series. I set out to do a more airy painting then what this turned out to be, but I've come to like the thicker, clunkier paint style. The sky proved somewhat problematical, I was thinking of rain, or sun shining through a mist, but it seemed boring. This sky, though disordered at least implies motion.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Sunrise on the Ganges

It's one thing to cross oceans, seas and deserts high in the clouds in a racing cloudship, but it would be a waste to cross the vast Maratha Confederacy lost high in the clouds. So I left the Anjer at Bombay and took passage on the Empire Mail Cloud Prince, seen here at anchor. The Cloud Prince is floater type of  airship that cruises only several hundred feet off the ground making it much easier to see India. This is a study of sunrise in Varanasi on the Ganges.

I'm not really a painter of postcard scenery (obviously), so I suspect that this type of scene is a deal end, but I've been sketching it all week, so I thought I might as well give it a go.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Coaling in the Clouds

Taking on coal from lighters over Muscat. Next stop, Bombay.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Steamtraders over Alexandria

The third sketch in the series as I travel East aboard the India & East Mail cloudship Anjer (the white hulled ship on the far left). Below is Alexandria harbor (Egypt) after calls on Tunis and Malta.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Deeper in Glen Maig

Unlike most of my paintings, this and the previous Glen Maig painting are loosely based on a real place as seen by google's street view. I didn't have the pictures in front of me when I painted these and felt free to take all the liberties I wanted including features, time of day and season, but their real life sources can be found. (Though the name of the glen is fictional.) I'm not too crazy about either of these paintings, even if they were good, I don't like painting picture postcard scenes, which these would be, if I could paint picture postcard scenes. The main reason I painted them is that I'm writing a story set in this glen, and I wanted to paint as well as write it...


12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Glen Maig

A fictionalize Scottish glen from my The Rhymer's Gate story which I'm working on. I was struck while painting this last night how little I know about painting. I'm still just flying by the seat of my pants: just trying this and that to see if I can make it work rather than setting out and getting what I wanted done. More surprises my way, more failures too, I suppose.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Pirates...of sort. Study

Another quick study of bumboat peddlers (the "pirates") hawking their trinkets over the side of the Indian & East Mail Cloudship Anjer while calling at Gibraltar. I really hadn't meant to make this sketch so similar to the last one. I had actually started painting it as I had intended to: a view looking towards the ship from alongside it, but my clunky style of painting does not lend itself well to creating any illusion of depth by subtle graduations of textures and shadows; I need clear lines to suggest depth. The side view was just too flat, and with the lack of details, too confusing as well.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Departing for the East

A regrettably quick study aboard the Indian & East Mail Cloudship liner Anjer departing Portsmouth for the Eastern Empire. The cloud cruiser HMCS Kestrel is off our starboard bow.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Cloudships Passing Revised

Completely repainted from the previous post. I wanted to give the scene more atmosphere. I also wanted to revised the cloudships as well, though in the end I decided not to over think things like how they stay aloft... we'll just go with the Barsoomian seventh ray or what ever that lifts them skyward rather than paint blimps.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Cloudships Passing

I'm far from certain that there's any demand for steampunk impressionism, but my art is not market driven, so here's a steampunk impressionist painting of three steam driven roto-ships passing in the sky.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Flowering Trees, Haven Street

I haven't forgotten about this blog. I simply haven't been painting. I usually follow the local seasons in my painting and I got tired of painting winter. Well, I got tired of winter, and it's been unbroken winter around here until this week -- snow banks still more than 3 feet high along the driveway.

I've been writing instead, working on two science fiction pieces; an open ended adventure story "The Captain of the Lost Star" and a mystery/romance "The Rhymer's Gate". Can't say I'll ever finish them, but seeing that I may well have lost it when it comes to painting, I'll probably keep at writing for some time to come.

As for this painting, well I needed to replace a winter scene around the house, and felt as a matter of principle I should paint a new one rather than just find an old spring scene. I don't really know what to say about this piece; I spent an hour on it, trying very hard not to try: just to see what would happen. It shows. The problem with painting at the moment is that it seems that I've done all I can do and everything seems' been there done that'. We'll just have to see how it plays out.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Winter Creek Again

Pretty much the same bend in the creek, just a wider view.

12x24" 30x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Bright Winter

Decided to be fair to winter and do a sunny winter scene along the lines of my last two larger winter pieces. Still keeping it simple, we're painting openness and air here not a conventional landscape. The landscape is the language not the message.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

In the Heart of Winter

All week this was little more than sky and a line of trees. I wanted to do something along the lines of The Blanket of Winter, but not a just re-arrangement of the elements. Yesterday it came to me to combine elements of those watercolor style paintings I did with the more stark and abstrated thick paint winter ones and this is what I ended up with.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Shaded Way

Someone went out painting without his glasses. That, however totally fictional, is my story here. I did rough this in with a more conventional take on the scene, but it struck me as too clunky to ever work so I went this route instead. Pretty much what I wanted to do anyways. It is, by the way, the same basic scene as my earlier Autumn Shaded Way piece, hence it's name.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

The Blanket of Winter

I wanted to do a larger piece;  I wanted something new to hang over the fireplace. I first tried a view from a height using a small brush but that proved neither detailed enough nor abstract enough to work. So after various other attempts and failures, it came to me just to paint a grey sky and snow: winter without compromise. And it's something I can actually do.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Leaving Kings Cross 2

This is a quota piece: I have a 2 painting a week goal and I was one painting short on Friday. So since someone made a nice comment on my last train painting which I happened to have painted over, I thought I'd do something similar. This is a smaller painting, though I suppose it's hard to tell...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Winter Moonlight Along the Creek

I painted this over the previously posted train scene. In real life the train painting was just too flat and blah to last. Besides, I'm more comfortable painting vague abstracted scenes rather than specific concrete ones when working with thicker paints. I know the limits of my talent. (I can't manage thick paint.) And my patience. (Life's too short to bother to learn.)

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Leaving Kings Cross

Just playing around. Painted the subject to vaguely I had to give it a concrete title.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Along the Creek in Winter

This is an old dog trying a new trick sort of painting; thin paint brushed haphazardly about for a slightly different effect than my usual haphazard technique.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard