Changing the Zoom

Feel the Heat- 5x7

This ones similar to Great Balls of Fire ( a few posts below) but i changed up the composition by zooming in much closer. i also went for a different look. i like painting pans of fire. can you tell?

Its That Time of Year!

Pink Triad-7x5

Essentials-5x7

You can tell when its winter whenever i'm painting cosmetics. thats the only time i ever do 'em.

Yellow Fin-8x6-SOLD

I love painting guys on the back of boats holding up their catch. the sun, the light and shadow, the slice of water behind them.

Revision

Unattended2 Revised-9x12

First Unattended2

Did a little revising on this painting from a few weeks ago. i keep completed paintings around in front of me to see if they need anything. i kept looking at this one and it just wasnt doing anything for me so i made a few changes. there weren't enough temperature shifts for my liking so i made these changes:

*darkened and cooled the dark shadows on the house and made the sunny side less orange (a little redder and darker)

*darkened the larger roof

*lightened the smaller roofs

* a spot of darkness under the far right window

*got rid of the far right tree so it doesnt compete with the house

*cooled off the foreground grass and simplified it, making the house pop out more

*darkened the tree trunk so it doesnt fight with the left side of the house

* gave more definition to the tree, making it more subtle and painterly. added sky holes too

the combination of dropping some values and cooling some shapes down made a big difference and makes the house more important, and now its the star of the show. the painting has more pop!

Garnish-6x8

Headed to the small works show at elizabethrowleygallery.com.

$200 framed

Chef Series

At the Lobster Pot-6x8

SOLD

Great Ball of Fire-6x8

SOLD

Fire and Slice-8x6

SOLD



Seems the chefs i did a few months ago are selling pretty well, so i did another series of them. i like the contrast between the warmth of the fires and the coolness of the stainless steel kitchens on the two chefs with pans of fire. Two more in this series to come.

Tweaked a Bunch

Overtowering-9x12

Unattended 2-9x12
Promised Land-8x10 SOLD

Pollack Street Shadows- 8x8
SOLD

More from some recent outings. just got them "tweaked"-- the technical name for adding subtle temperature, value and edge work, after getting them home, out of the field. these days i work on them in the studio until i like em. dont care how long that is. i do try to show restraint tho', because there is such a thing as overworking them, where you can lose the right color, and the freshness and spontaneity you get working for only two hours outside in the elements. these days your hands and feet get cold and the sun seems to move much faster during these short early winter days.

Busy Busy

Unattended-9x12

Rock Harbor, Overcast-6x8
SOLD

Overshadowed Barn-8x10

Farm Arrangement-9x12

Backyard Frontyard-6x8-SOLD


been busy, busy. too many paintings to post one at a time, so i'll post a bunch that were recently done.

Winter Wet Paint

driving back to the studio today, i decided to take some back roads, looking for a painting, and came up on this beautiful winter scene. thought i'd let you see what it looked like and the small changes i made. the colors of the photo arent even close to the real scene. this is why photos are good for the drawing and details part of a painting but you really need to do plein air color studies done on site to get the actual colors out there. the photo makes the sky look white and the building in shadow, blue. thats not how it really looked.

SOLD

i moved the phone pole out of the middle of the peak of the house, and moved the small tree closer to the center for better balance. i made the path look more like a dirt road. Paved streets just dont have the same aesthetic as a dirt path.

bare trees are very hard to make believable in a painting, and they usually take me a few months of painting them before i like what i do. in this painting i feel like i'm "getting there".
also used a painting knife edge to get those fine telephone pole lines. works great

Prep Work

Planning a 16x20 painting of an interior i did as a demo a few months ago. here's the thumbnail value plan/Notan of it showing the division of light and dark. these really get the scene into your head before diving into paint. this way you know what to emphasize and what to de-emphasize value wise. also helps you mass darks together for a nice design.

Study of Lamp on a Table- 5x4

$50 plus $8 shipping

email me or call 919-920-9718 if you'd like this study

in the color study i try very hard to stick with the sketch light/dark map. values can be similar in objects and you break em out by changing the hue. keep the darks massed together. i'll use this, the demo painting, and the reference photo to complete the upcoming larger piece.

Notan Sketches Save One

Cocktail Time-8x6

email me or call 919-920-9718 if you want this one

Ok. Here's what cocktail time used to look like. but after working with Notan sketches all day yesterday i realized the notan of the original was weak. so i revised it to have a stronger Notan. which equates to a stronger painting.

Notan is japanese for Light/Dark. what you do is draw the light and dark pattern in a very abstract way so that the design is as interesting and powerful as it can be. real notan uses just two values but i like having three or four in my sketches. you dont try to describe form with notan like you do in a value sketch, but instead you try to think of the large shapes and work them into nice patterns of light and dark. so i guess its a hybrid notan and value sketch that ive done below in my sketchbook.

i'm using medium gray pastel paper i bound into a sketchbook, a very dark Duotone pencil from Derwent and a stick of white oil pastel. these are my fave drawing tools. just having them in my hand makes me want to sketch. i tell all my workshop students that if you want to get better at painting, they need to sketch whenever theyre not holding a paint brush.

what i did to cocktail time original was simplify the light pattern. by going dark over the windows and then down the left side and connecting it to the shadow part under the bar, i made the dark pattern bigger and more solid. makes the window look even whiter which silohouettes the focal point, the bartender, nicely. also took out the distracting little white lights over the figure in the original. also took out one window divider and moved it so it doesnt sticking out of the middle of his head anymore.

try doing a bunch of these notan sketches from paintings online you like. make sure they have nice lights and darks. the more you think in terms of good light/mid/dark value patterns, the better your paintings!

Finding Something to Paint-SOLD

Swanpoint Glimpse-6x6

alot of times during a workshop, students ask me what my thinking is when i'm looking for something to paint. so i decided to give you some of my mental processes when i'm out trying to find something to paint. these are in no particular order-

* stay in particular areas that youve found lots of things to paint, on a consistent basis, in the past. sort of like a fisherman tends to go to the same places or "honey holes" because he knows that fish hang out there. He knows he's caught fish there more times than not

* you have certain things you like. say a backlit boat, or a cottage with late afternoon light on it, etc. so go out looking for things you know have worked out for you before

* squint at the potential scene youre contemplating.make a square out of your fingers to frame the composition to see if the arrangement of fuzzy shapes is interesting.

* i have places i go when i dont mind being around curious bystanders, and places i go if i really want to paint alone. have a few places of your own depending on how you feel that day

* when you find a place you like, "crawl" every inch of it, trying to get to know the place. the longer you paint there the more things you'll consistently find.

* times of day and seasons can change familiar places and give you many more opportunities. go back to old haunts. boats get moved, new buildings get built, old trucks get put out to pasture in a field that didnt have one in it last time you were there.

* you can drive by a scene a hundred times and all of a sudden its as if youre seeing it for the first time and it needs to be painted. keep your eyes open at all times. you never know when you'll see something that just needs to be painted. and it may be on your own block or on the other side of town. you dont have to go far to find things to paint

* i get an "ahaaa" moment when i see something that needs to be painted. its the contrast, or the color, or the shapes. something makes you want to paint it. go with it when that happens to you too.

Ready to Fly-6x8

 SOLD

been on a kick recently to paint things just because they appeal to me. its the act of painting something with absolutely no concern whatsoever for its marketability. a liberating feeling to say the least. i'm only interested in how the light acts in a given scene, with no thought whatsoever to what the subject matter is that i'm painting. even whether somebody might want to buy it or not, doesnt enter into the equation, on days like these.

found this tiny private airport with small planes scattered around a runway thru some woods. the runway was so short i couldnt believe they could get airborne in such a short distance.

Moon Over Ada Mae-5x7

Today was the kind of weather a plein air painter dreams about at night. wonderful, clear, warm light and 70 degrees. Got off two today in New Bern, an 8x8 (i'll show in a few days) and this one. what a great scene right in front of the Persimmon waterfront restaurant. in fact i edited out the restaurant that was to the right and behind the Ida Mae. its a much "cleaner" design without it. it took me years to figure out that i didnt have to paint everything i see in the landscape i'm painting. DUH!

On the paint thinner front, i found some mineral oil and tried it instead of the smelly baby oil today. i thought it was a little too thick so i switched to cheap vegatable oil and found the more liquidy consistency much better for getting all the paint out of the brush quickly. will probably stick with this for now. love the fact that i'm not rubbing toxic thinner into my skin or inhaling it day and night in my vehicle and studio any more.

Going Less Lethal

SOLD

Rock Harbor Duo-6x8

One from Rock Harbor in Orleans a few weeks ago. i love painting there. its got great parking, not many tourists hanging over my shoulder when i'm painting, and tons of great scenes like this one.

Have decided to use a less lethal form of cleaning my brushes and have been using all this week. the reason i did this was... i live in my studio, literally. the place i rent for my living and studio space is closed up 99% of the time. either the air is on or the heat and thus has no fresh air circulating around. not a good idea when youre cooped up with toxic thinner fumes. so i decided to use baby oil to wash my brushes out with. here's the beater jar i use with wire mesh down in the bottom for scrubbing the brush across. the paint falls in between the mesh to the bottom leaving the thinner clean after it settles down some. after a few months, you take the wire mesh out, scrape the sludge out, clean the jar, and pour new baby oil in till its a bit over the screen.

then i "paint" the baby oil on a phone book page until all the paint is off the brush, which may take a time or two. then i "paint" the clean brush across a roll of paper towels and Voila! a clean brush. nice thing too is the brushes i use, which are synthetics, last waaaayyy longer because the thinner used to burn them and cause them to fray real quick. now the oil seems to keep them conditioned like hair conditioner does for your hair.

glad to report that since i dont use toxic thinners in my living environment any more that i dont twitch or say stupid things nearly as much as before :D

anybody know where i can buy unscented baby oil? i dont like the perfumey smell of regular baby oil. may try vegetable or walnut oil if i cant find unscented baby oil.

Bar and Restaurant Interiors

Cheers-8x8

SOLD

Took a bunch of pics around the bars and restaurants last evening and then spent the day drawing and painting them. Only down side was that it was 70 degrees and sunny here and i wished all day that i had been plein air painting instead. oh well... there are worse jobs!

Hanging at the Land Ho-7x5

Headed to the Tiny Gems show at the Rowley Gallery, Orleans, Mass.

A popular watering hole in Orleans and with all the colorful signs hanging down from the ceiling, its a blast to paint

A New Interior

Before the Rush- 9x12

Laying in the basic tones and temperatures. this cements in the composition and is a road map for the rest of the painting. looks good as an abstract, the sign that it might be a decent painting.

next stage- a few different values and hues

smaller and smaller shapes and firming up the whole painting. starting a few accents and highlites.

Back from AOC

The Intersection- 9x12
SOLD

I'm back from my three days of teaching at Art of the Carolina's. what a great event. its the biggest art expo in the country and instructors and students come from all over the country to teach and attend workshops most of the week. i'm honored to be included in the who's who of instructors teaching there.

I taught an all day class on how to paint in the cape cod school of art technique, a class on values, and one on how to simplify and edit a complex scene.

usually have a few weird days coming back from a workshop but i got right on The Intersection plein air the day after AOC and was right in the groove. sometimes i think this painting thing is 50% technical and 50% mental. yeah i know what youre thinking.... i'm mental LOL!

Step by Step Demo- Comfy Chair2

Finished piece

in step 1- i lay in the composition using orange oil pastel over a yellow ochre toned gessoed masonite board -9x12. i sort of grid the reference by drawing an "x" from corner to corner, then draw a horizontal line and a vertical line where the x meets in the middle. then i do the same on the panel. then i transfer the big shapes in each triangle made by the x and lines. then i put down darker cooler colors everywhere not being hit by light, and light warm colors everywhere i see light hitting things.

step two- starting to flesh out the "bones" of the above underpainting. getting more realistic colors down, a tiny bit more detail (smaller shapes within large shapes) and seeing where the painting is leading me. scroll up and down from this photo to the finished piece to see the changes made in the last part of the painting to complete it.

I'm considering holding a three day plein air workshop in Port Clyde, Maine with a day trip to Monhegan Island next August. if its something you might be interested in drop me an email. if there's enough interest it'll be a go! The class itself will cost aproximately $300-$350 for the three days. Maine is one of the most scenic spots on the east coast that time of year.

In Between- 5x7

Headed to Rowley Gallery for the Small Works show i'm participating in. Thats where all the gallery artists paint "mini's" for the holidays. i've got several more planned to send up to the cape.

I think this one will sell for under $350 framed so its just right for that art lover on your Christmas list!

Found this scene walking around on Commercial St. to find a cup of cofee on a beautiful, chilly morning in PTown. gotta love alleyways that lead to the water, right!