The sky was bugging me, not just because of the uneven brush strokes. It seemed to be the wrong color.
So, I repainted it. Yeppers, better.
Those hills don’t look far enough away.
So, I lightened them and made them duller in color. (a little shiny-wet here)
Then I redid the dirt and the trees.
Prolly doesn’t make much difference from your point of view.
Now I have a list of 12 more things to fix, repair, repaint, relayer, re-detail. My patient customer said she’d like it in April, but didn’t specify a date.
When you look at my painting subjects, you might guess that orange is my favorite color. You’d be wrong. However, orange things are among my favorite things (not raindrops on roses).
The poppy painting is on the easel for consideration and contemplation. How can I make it better? Does it need to be made better? I have an idea for the first question, and the answer to the second question is “Maybe”.
The lemon isn’t orange. Well, duh. The Mural Gallery just sold a little lemon painting so I am painting a new one.
The larger commissioned painting is getting close to completion; the poppy painting is new, and the lemon needs an orange to go with it for the Mural Gallery.
The orange painting is going quickly; the poppy painting is a little more difficult.
It’s from a photo I took up the North Fork of the Kaweah River a handful of years ago. I am not trying to copy every poppy exactly; ain’t nobody got time for that. Besides, nobody cares.
I think this is going to be a good one. My goal is to get it to Kaweah Arts in time for the studio tour on the weekend. It is a county wide studio tour. I’m not participating but am supporting Kaweah Arts in their efforts to draw many people in.
This painting seemed too bright. After studying it awhile, I decided to only tone down the brilliant green in the distance to push it farther away. (“Push it” visually, not warp the canvas.)
Four Guardsmen, 16×20”, oil on canvas
This is after:
Hmmm, that’s a pretty subtle difference, perhaps even dubious*. Might want to try that again later. In addition, the photography colors are significantly different.
Never mind. Let’s move ahead, shall we?
This painting looks scary in its beginning stages unless you happen to see it while galloping by on the back of a fast horse (or see it the size of a postage stamp on your phone).
After these fairly dissatisfactory adventures in oil painting, I returned to my pencils. This one has a story, which I’ll tell you when I know the ending. This is the sketch I sent to the customer to see if it matched her design expectations:
These paintings only show on my blog because I can’t remember how to get more than a handful of paintings to appear on the store part of my website. You may call or email or text if you’d like to buy any of these. Use the contact button on my website, because if I type the info in here, the cyberjerks might harass me.
Pacific Ocean VII, oil on board, 5×7”, $100
Pacific Ocean VIII, oil on board, 5×7”, $100
Pacific Ocean IX, 5×7”, oil on board, $100
Painting these is almost just as much fun as drawing with pencil, especially when I get to the third pass over the painting, where I get to draw with my paintbrush.
P.S. There is sales tax if you live in California. Figure in $8, and I’ll pay the postage.
After spending a week doing plein air paintings at the beach in October, I could not wait to get home where I could paint waves and the ocean in my painting workshop, where the waves were frozen in motion on photographs. I love those blues and teals and greens and splashing whites, and I wanted to capture that in over-the-top detail.
“Over-the-top” hasn’t quite happened, but I am pretty happy so far. I’ve shown you Pacific Ocean I, II, III, and now it is time for IV, V, and VI.
Pacific Ocean IV, oil on board, 5×7”, $100 (yeppers, raised my price)
Pacific Ocean V, 5×7”, oil on board, $100
Pacific Ocean VI, 5×7”, oil on board, $100
A friend knows someone with a store somewhere in a town on the California coastline, and she is SURE the paintings will sell there. The store has very limited shelf space, so instead of putting the paintings on little easels like I had envisioned, she said they will need to hang.
That took some searching, but I eventually found something. The choices were to buy a package of 2 for maybe $4, or a package of 100 for $8. After a brief struggle between the frugal part of my brain against the side that doesn’t want to own extra stuff, I ordered 100.
See what is meant by “board”? It is actually named “Gessobord”.
Pacific Ocean VII, VIII, and IX are wet at the time of this writing.
Once again, I am counting my chickens before they hatch, which might be my strongest talent.
In 1996 or thereabouts, I drew this in pencil. It is a compilation of photos taken in Pauma Valley, Lemon Cove, and maybe even in Ivanhoe and Exeter. For some reason, a reproduction print was still around during my show last fall. It sold quickly, and a friend asked me to paint the scene for her.
I’ve never painted from a pencil drawing before. Since I have experience in the subject matter, and I can still locate most of my reference photos, I said yes. (Everything is easy compared to those miniature faces.)
First pass over the canvas.
Second pass.
Third pass.
I will be taking my time on this since my friend said she would like it some time in April. This remains my current favorite subject matter, and it brings to mind all the phases of favorites that my art has gone through. More on that later. . .
… I am working on several art projects at once. That is, IF I am actually working.
The little beach paintings are still progressing. I have enough boards for twelve of these. Six are now completed, three more are in the messy first layer stages, and three more are waiting for my decision to either paint more beach scenes, or paint some oranges.
I like these little boards.
Pacific Ocean IV, 5×7”, oil on gessobord*, $75
There are also three unfinished oil paintings in the painting workshop, but none have deadlines. The beach paintings don’t have deadlines either, but their small size gives me the illusion of productivity and progress.
Meanwhile, I have two very complicated pencil commissions to complete. One is now in progress; the other is awaiting my thumbnail sketches for the customer to choose from.
“Bad things happen quickly; good things take a long time. This is why patience and determination are such primary virtues.”
I don’t know who said this, but I intend for these two difficult pencil commissions to be good, so they may take a long time.
*Gessobord is something akin to masonite, coated very smoothly with gesso, a thick white paint, probably acrylic.
