Last Post For A Few Weeks

Quick Sketch 9/23- $40- 6x8

first to email me saying they want it gets it. just remember i wont even see the email till i get back from italy in a few weeks. i'll ship then too.

here i did a value sketch of the night painting below it. here's how i do em....

first step-just get the major shapes down as one of three values (in monochromatic paint) . decide is the shape a light, medium or dark value. paint it very simply and FAST. dont worry about edges, paint thickness, nothing. be very quick and intuitive. dont think it to death.

Value Sketch-$25-6x8

contact me if you want it

step two- now go in and paint each shape what it really should be compared to what it is now. example- look at the trees and its reflection. in step one i did em the same didnt i? now i "broke em out" the reflection is a tad lighter. put lighter paint around the moon in the sky. that sort of thing. if you look real close you'll see that the water is just a little darker than the sky. but on the first step i did em together.

here's the one i did outside last night. i really like it. the more i do outside the more confident i feel. get out there the next time we have a full moon and give it a go!

Silvery Shoreline- 6x8

$100

SOLD

this will be my last post (and probably email too) until i get back from my italian workshop. i've got a great group joining me for my five day class painting the italian landscape. gonna get a fan put into my laptop while i'm gone so i'm not even taking it with me. i'll post when i get back. bye y'all!

In Loving Memory- Kurt Murray-1988-2010

As most of you who read this blog know, if i'm not painting i'm surfing or kiteboarding. i think it brings a vitality to my beach-oriented stuff, so for that reason i want to share this. i struggled with whether i should put it on the blog or not, but i want to, so here it is.

The surf community of my little beach town of Surf City NC is mourning the loss of our Kurt Murray who died in a surfing accident this past Sunday in the waves of Hurricane Igor. Kurt was 21 years old and was a guy who loved the ocean, surfing and kiteboarding every chance he got. He was loved by everybody who met him. i ask for your thoughts and prayers for his family.

Kurt, you'll will be missed in the lineup and kiteboard sessions.

pray you have endless glassy waves or steady 20 mph winds for eternity

RIP man!

Moon Beams- 6x8

SOLD

Getting ready to leave to teach in Italy so this (maybe one more) will be my last post for several weeks. i wont have much internet access so i probably wont be emailing either. all shipping of sold paintings will happen when i get back. also i'll blog and post pics of paintings that i do in Tuscany as soon as i get back too.

#100921-6x8-$75

sorry for the bit of glare. dark paint is hard to photograph

contact me if you want to purchase this one

this is the front of a popular seafood restaurant on the morehead city waterfront. done under a street light across the street. night painting is such a trip! everything you think you know goes right out the window. you have to just paint from the gut, observing very closely, mix as close as you can and get what you can down as close as you can out there. it took about twenty minutes in the studio to fix somethings that were impossible to get right out there. i like the light on this one.

The Sun Slipped Away-8x10

This is the port in Morehead City at twilite. pretty sure this is going to Vision Gallery in Atlantic Beach, just across the causeway from here.

These twilite paintings really test you. between the misquitos and the light changing color every ten minutes. i looked down on my legs and they were almost black with those blood sucking insects from the bowels of hell. my leg literally looked like one of those commercials where the guy sticks his arm in a clear case full of misquitos and theyre all over him. wouldnt you know....i shipped my gear with the OFF bug spray in it over to italy for my upcoming workshop there next week, and had to tuff it out.

then the sky is blue, then orange then pink, then dusty rose and finally very dark. the whole time the objects out in the landscape cant make up their mind what color they want to be either LOL

can see i'll be doing alot of these twilite paintings from about 80% memory after i get the major color notes down.

#100917-6x8 SOLD

 SOLD

A scene from my last trip to Charleston. Love to hear the history of the city as the horse drawn carriages meander past me while i'm painting!

Keeping Colorful Shadows

#100914-6x8
SOLD

The key to colorful paintings is colorful shadows. dont see them as these very bland, dark shapes even tho' they may look that way (compared to the other shapes). pump up the hue, and intensity a bit from what you see and you'll get nice colorful, interesting shadows and paintings.

Study #100908-8x8-SOLD

SOLD

thought i'd show you the scene and how i blocked it in a la Cape School.

The grass is the darkest and coolest light shape and therefor a reddish orange. the house in shadow is the lightest shadow shape and gets underpainted a medium blue-purple. the sky is coolish so i did it in the right value of magenta (pink actually). the shadow under the cottage is the darkest and coolest and i painted it dark purple.

after this is put on thin using lots of Liquin, i go back over all these shapes with a color that more closely represents the actual thing youre looking at. work on the shapes that are the most out of whack first. on the last pass you fix the edges, values, hues, and saturation.

alot of students ask me "how do you know when to stop?".

thats easy! you stop the minute youre not making big improvements to the painting that please you.

Study #100903-5x5-SOLD

a small study for a larger painting i'm working on. seeing if i like the composition and color harmonies.

#100903-5x5
SOLD

Is It Soup Yet?- 6x8

SOLD

Hurricane Earl just skirted us here on the southern coast of NC and tho the outer banks caught more of his fury, he missed them too. so its back to painting!

and i can breathe a sigh of relief! its freaky having all but two of my galleries in the line of the storm (since theyre almost all right on the coast). Even my gallery on Cape Cod which is supposed to get Earl in a day or two! keep your head down and stay safe Liz! BTW, shipped all the paintings to you today.

Demo-Last Stage

Complimentary Light- 8x10

$800 framed

available soon at the Rowley Gallery, Orleans, Mass.

Last stage of the painting is to throw reflected light around into nearby shapes and concentrate on edge treatment. leave hard edges in some areas (especially around the the important areas) and soften up the periphery edges. then take out your liner and make very thin detail shapes. this last stage is all about nuances. delicate, well placed strokes of color. try not to mess up all the hard work you did in the previous stages. easier said than done!

Just a reminder-- Upcoming Workshops

Ocean City, Maryland and Rhode Island in October. if you'd like to sign up there are a few spots left.

the upcoming Tuscany Italy workshop i'm holding late this month has two spots left. let me know if youre interested in painting in sunny Tuscany and we'll get you signed up.

Underpainting Demo

for todays post i thought i'd show you several stages of my painting process

Stage one- lay in cool colors for anything thats not getting light from the window. approximate the values

Stage two- now you go in and try to get the colors and values closer to the real thing, maintaining the clarity of color you had in stage one.

Stage three- start cleaning up the drawing while honing in on the actual value, hue and saturation of the shape youre working on. in the areas that are shaping up nicely you can start to add a little more detail. detail is nothing more than smaller shapes within larger shapes. you'll see that actual color of reality doesnt matter that much at this point as long as the value and temperature (cool for shadow shapes, and warm for light shapes) are right.

this painting is about 75-85% finished. i'll post the finished pc. in a day or two, depending on hurricane Earl who's screaming towards the NC coast, so my schedule this week is up in the air. its supposed to come right at us and hopefully turn at the last minute, but who knows. i may have to run inland for a day or two in case the power goes out, the roads all get flooded, and the stores all close.

Pouring the Bubbly-6x8-$400 framed

available soon at Rowley Gallery

i think this is the last 6x8 i'll be painting thats headed to cape cod , and ive got one more 8x10 interior to do. ive enjoyed the studio time but i'm missing painting outside a little. the temps arent quite as high as theyve been the last couple of weeks so it makes me want to get outside again.

on this one i underpainted it in a more traditional style by underpainting with the viridian of the walls and its complement alizarin crimson, and white. i toned the panel in a burnt orange and drew the shapes with an orange oil pastel. then after underpainting i used the very detailed underpainting plan and added the right colors to each shape, staying very true to each value i had in the underpainting.

Well...on a totally unrelated note.... the waves came in today. hooray. and tasty ones at that.

Where are the Waves?

Hurricane Danielle was supposed to give all us NC surfers big waves today but they just werent there when i did my surf check, so i went to plan B. i've been stoked to get started on a 12x16 of the 6x8 i did yesterday. so off to the studio i went. here's what i ended up with.

not to worry about the lack of waves. hurricane Earl is a few days behind Danielle and due to swing much closer to my fave surf spot. Just not too close i hope!

Shimmery Dining- 12x16

Gettin' in the Groove

Chromatic Restaurant-6x8

$400 framed

available soon at Rowley Gallery

There's this weird component to painting that involves rhythm. and its something that i took for granted painting outside everyday. i just got up everyday, went outside, and painted. and i liked a little more than half of what i did out there. and they went smoothly for the most part. the problem was when it would rain or get cold (doesnt happen much now that i go to key west in the winter to escape it!) i'd hit the studio and paint. problem was that painting in a studio from photos is waaay different than plein air work. then i'd wonder why i wasnt as at-ease doing interiors or figurative work.

Having done all these interiors and figurative stuff consecutively, lately, i can feel that rhythm and confidence that i alway had doing my plein air stuff.

Added benefit of doing studio work day after day, its nice not to have to work outside in august here in NC where its 90 degrees with 90% humidity everyday. Not to mention- i can listen to Judge Joe and Judge Judy while i'm painting. i know.... its weird but you can halfway listen to the show and concentrate on the painting at the same time. the perfect balance.

Hot Stuff-6x8-$400 framed

this whole chef series will be available soon at the Rowley Gallery

on this one i played with a more abstract background than some of the prior pieces.

thats what makes this painting business worth messing with. the ability to take every piece, everyday, and experiment with different things. thats why its impossible for an external force to steer or guide an artist. it has to come from an internal desire on our part to paint the thing and have fun experimenting with this and that, even if its a series. this way we can see what we like and what we dont like about the paint handling, background, color palette, loose, tight, etc, etc. its a learning process for each subject until we are comfortable with our "look" and feel that we are doing what makes us happy. doing that keeps it from being a job for us. and as everybody knows we painter types dont like "jobs" :D

all you painters let me know your thoughts in the comments section!

Pastry Chefs-6x8

$400 framed

to purchase contact Rowley Gallery

Funny how every painting you do is different in some small way from the one you did yesterday and from the one you'll do tomorrow even when its the same subject. tho' theyre usually very similar, they arent exactly the same. each one you paint is an individual entity and very one-of-a- kind. thats what makes original art so neat and hence intrinsically valuable.

Interior of a Kitchen

The Next Order-6x8

$400 framed

headed to Rowley Gallery in Orleans, Mass.

A kitchen scene. who hasnt wanted to paint some chefs with those big hats? i like the silvery kitchen and those stark white areas of the chef near the light.

Early Light in a Corner-8x10

$800 framed

available soon at Rowley Gallery, Orleans, Mass.

talked to Liz (the owner of the gallery) about the upcoming show of these interior pieces, and we've decided to pre-sell these before the show opens in October. what we'll do is sell the piece, but the buyer will be asked to leave the piece on the wall a week or so into the show. that way the exhibition of these interior pieces will be intact on reception night. so if you'd like one of these let either her, or me know and we'll presell it to you off the internet, before it even goes on the wall in the gallery.

Bedroom Triad-10x8

$800 framed

headed to Rowley Gallery in Orleans, Mass.

here's the finished piece from the underpainting post i did below. i like the dreamy light in this one. my favorite ten square inches of the painting is the bottom front of the armoire. tell you what...portraying that carving on the front was tricky! going for accurate but impressionistic. that razors edge i'm always talking about chasing. its my "holy grail".

A Saturated Underpainting

my favorite way to work. straight out of the tube, saturated, underpainting. the idea is that you dont have to get the exact color right as it will go thru several transformations adding more saturated colors until its the approximate color i need. then if its still too saturated i'll bump it down with the its complement of i'll take a bit of scrapings (gray) in the right value and knock off the saturation. you do this is passes. in other words you fix them all every pass. too hard to get a color right when the colors surrounding it arent correct, so you work all over the painting getting it a "little more right", then come back and work all over the painting again.

i'll show you the finished piece after i tweak it a bit.

Silvery Pair 6x8-$100

SOLD

An exercise in keeping a silvery day painting colorful. you just look at the very unsaturated colors and bump them up a bit while staying true to the lighting effect. on a day like this its very diffused, cool light, where the shadows have a hint of warmth.