Flowing In- 36x48

Flowing In

36x48 on gallery wrapped canvas

email me for price and availability at rooneystudios@Hotmail.com

so many things about the way i paint have changed in the last year. one area is the size. i never used to enjoy painting big. now i love it. i'm using a part acrylic, part oil underpainting process that gives me the peeks of pure color i love poking out in just the right spots. and I learned a thing or two from my buddy Dan Nelson about transparent glazes. I don't do it a lot but it looks great on certain areas.

also, my color sense went more Wolf Kahn and less Kevin Mcpherson with much looser brushwork.

 

But probably the biggest change is that i'm painting almost everything in the studio since last december. i'm using studies and photo references from years and years painting outside almost exclusively. i think it taught me how to "correct" a photo if I have to.  But I'm doing my own interpretation of the them tho'. i'm not so literal anymore, and don't try to exactly reproduce the scene and light key like i used to. Trying to introduce some "wow" factor into the painting.

 

painting is a fluid thing and the bar is always changing. what i thought i was doing ok on a few years ago, look laughable and amateurish to me now. as the ones i'm doing now will look in several years.

 

that is....i hope!

Blue Heaven- 36x48

Blue Heaven- 36x48

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here are couple just coming out of the pipeline. working on a much bigger scale these days. 8x10's are going to seem like postage stamps!

 

 changed a few things to keep them loose this big. using brushes that trim house painters would use. then I'm working transparent, translucent and opaque back and forth as needed. this came about after spending a few days watching dan nelson use transparent washes on his paintings with great success. I thought hey I can steal that! what happens is you have more flexibility with edges which is something I highly treasure. I use the opaque paint when I want a hard edge and the translucent when I want a lost edge. then you can glaze a temperature difference on a shape from left to right (or top to bottom) very efficiently, without changing the value at all. thanks for that Dan!

then I started using turpenoid natural instead of vegetable oil to clean color out of brushes. now its a snap to clean all the paint out of these monster brushes, plus I'm getting comfortable working on stretched canvas. its weird. these little things were keeping me from enjoying working on bigger stuff. now I'm having a blast!

I'm colorizing the paintings more as well. a progression I started this winter. I'm liking what I'm doing not being so literal. using intuitive color versus being a slave to reality. I want my stuff to have "honest" light but keep it unexpected at the same time. is that even possible? we'll see.

 

i'll be the featured artist at ArtSource in Raleigh the month of july. if you get to north hills mall come see some of my new work there.

Marsh Reflections- 24x30

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