Travelin'

I'm leaving on a trip to Rwanda, Paris, and Vienna. Since this is a work trip, I won't be able to paint or sketch, but hopefully I can take some nice photos to paint from when I get back. That will be a nice exercise for my color memory. I am going to attempt to upload photos as I go, but that will depend on my internet connection. See you on the other side.

In progress

This is a wip of a digital painting of the ruins of St. Mary's Abbey in York, UK. I am working from a photo and memory. I have gotten the general drawing, values, and color, and now I have the tedious job of painting all of the architecture. I don't know if I'm up to the task now, so it may go on the back burner for a while and come back to it when I am more confident (i.e. more skilled). That is one of the great advantages of digital.

Lessons...

Here is a still life I just finished this morning before work. I am not too satisfied with it as I can see a lot of things I could have done better. My biggest lesson is that when painting something white, make the values a bit lower than they actually are so that you can still put the highlights in. I think I rendered the values accurate to what I observed, but the highlights were brighter than white paint, which posed a problem. My pure white highlights blended in with the surrounding color far too much. I tried to blue them a bit so that they would stand out, but it still isn't quite right.

The composition was also a little off balance, so I added some local flowers/weeds. I think that is the part I like the best, so I may return to using them in a future still life.

Comments and critiques welcome!

New Still Life

This painting is a bit of an inside joke for me. This past year my wife and I tiled about 800 square feet of our house, so I thought our trusty, mortar covered trowel would be a great painting and fun reminder of our hard work. This was a pretty fast painting. 8x6, 2.5 hours. The palate was pretty small: white, cad lemon, cad red, transparent oxide red, ultramarine.

Semi-Plein

I finally finished the painting of the Auburn Cemetery that I started while visiting and painting with Frank Ordaz. He finished his on spot, mine took those couple hours plus four more. He is speedy, but he is a pro. Painting with Frank was very enjoyable.

This is my first traditional landscape, and first plein aire (or semi-plein since I started it outdoors and finished it later from memory). I think it turned out decent, but I see some things I would have liked to have done differently. For one, I think the tree trunk is a bit odd since it leads to nowhere. It would have probably been better to leave it out and replace it with the large italian cypress that was behind it on location. But on the other hand, I really liked the color of the trunk!

Comments and crits welcome!

On Vacation

I failed to mention that my wife, son, and I are currently driving up the west coast, visiting family and friends.

I had the fortune of stopping off and meeting Frank Ordaz along the way. He and is family are wonderful, hospitable people. We had a bit of time to paint outside. You can see Frank's result here. I didn't get nearly as far as him, so I will have to finish and post mine when I get home.

The pics are from Crater Lake in Oregon.

Classic Chevron

I found this spot beside a diner on the 127 south of Death Valley. I thought it was neat that a new Chevron station had been built directly across the street from an old, derelict Chevron pump and new it would make a neat image. Tell me what you think. I am not sure if it is finished yet, so I am open to suggestions to take it further.

This was painted in Photoshop in about 7 hours.

EDIT: This is a new image based off of critiques I received in the comments section. I fixed the perspective on the pump handle assembly and lightened/added detail to the opening on the side of the pump. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!