Light Rain in Lansworth 3

A little different colors this time... maybe a break in the clouds, but it's still raining.

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Light Rain in Lansworth 2

This morning's piece. I started out intending to paint a grey rainy day, but chickened out. I know you can paint beautiful pictures in greys, but mine always seem to look so gloomy - but then I usually don't finish them. Tomorrow I'll try to finish one...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Light Rain in Lansworth

Here's today's 6x8" (15x20cm) painting. It is nice to be able to sit down with no idea and mind and just play with paint -- and at a size that does not challenge my attention span...

A Street in Blues

Here's another little painting I did this afternoon. I had to work to make sure I didn't put in too many details...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Bright Morning in Pangone

I've been meaning to get back to painting some small paintings like this one. Some of my favorite pieces are small, though is not exactly one of them. Still, I have another 11 boards cut this size, so we'll see what I can do once I get back into the swing...

6x8" 15x20cm acrylic on hardboard

Country Lane in Spring (rev.)

Here's what's painted over yesterday's Country Lane in Spring. It is an almost virtual redo of An Upland Road on a Frosty Morning, posted below, so I don't think I'll keep it like this, but I'm just playing around right now...

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Country Lane in Spring

This is just an improvised piece that I'm far from sure I will like tomorrow. I do want to do a misty morning scene, but I'm not sure this is it.

18x24" 45x60cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Blysmith Station 6

A bit different than the rest of the series, but pretty much what I wanted to do.  This may be the last on the series, however, at least until I can think of a new angle.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Blysmith Station 5(rev)

Just after I posted the first version and commented on how the buildings had gotten grander than I had originally envisioned, I decided that not only had they gotten grander, but they had gotten out of scale as well. They looked  bigger than the space would have allowed. Now there's not a lot of realism in my paintings, but the one area that I do try to be realistic is in the shape of the scene. I don't insist on strict drafting exactness, but I try to have my paintings seem like they could be based on real scenes, even if I don't paint them that way. Since I had to do the buildings over, I decided to go back to the more modest type of row house, as I had painted the first time around.

Spring in Blysmith Station 5

This piece started out looking a lot like the last one posted: mostly in blues -- too much like the last one, so I went the other way and made it a sunny morning. My idea was to have a series with smaller terrace houses but I seem to have drifted into painting bigger buildings.  I'm going to have to come up with some other ideas now, as I think I've done enough street scenes like these.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Blysmith Station 4

Another rainy day in Blysmith Station. I had a lot more color in this painting at one time, but it didn't work (or I couldn't get it to work), so we ended up with a very blue piece.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Blysmith Station 3

This is more like it - less fussy and clunky, more fluid and relaxed.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Blysmith Station 2

Again, a bit too clunky. Not what I was hoping for. I did up the size of my brush to try and avoid picky details, but still not the free impressionist painting I'm shooting for.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Spring in Blysmith Station 1

Not what I set out to paint; too many colors, but that's what improvising is all about. I'll try for a little more monochromatic painting next time.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

Hamdril Hill, Lansworth (Minor revisions)

A few minor revisions this morning to the last post: such as giving the top of the retaining wall more of a curve and changing the color of the figure so that she's less a part of the wall and sidewalk then she was wearing blue, plus a few touch-ups to the light.

Hamdril Hill, Lansworth

I generally like to keep my views on the level, since I mostly make them up in my head or on the board as I paint, and looking up or down a hill makes designing them more complicated. I think you need more detail than I use to create the illusion of depth and prospective, especially looking up a hill. Looking down a hill, as in this case, is easier in that one can create an opening that can be used to define the depth of the scene, something looking into a hill one can't do.

12x16" 30x40cm acrylic on hardboard

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