This is a little 5×7 that just looked like a challenge with all the foliage and the upside down reflections. You can almost turn it upside down to display it as well. ( = I am finding that greens can be a challenge, especially when there are so many different shades in one painting. This is probably another thing I could practice…the many different greens.
I continue to find trees extremely challenging yet I am seeing progress. It is a challenge to know where to begin some of these pictures of the woods, but I felt like I at least had some direction this time. I still feel like this could be improved on if I did it again, but I’m happy with it for now. I’m still feeling a strong attraction for painting woodland scenes and especially trees themselves, in fact I found a guy that paints ‘tree portraits’ yesterday on Pintrest. His name is David Langevin. His stuff is amazing. It may be a similar direction I’d like to go in eventually. You can check out his work on whiterockgallery.com. Just search his name.
This is another 5×7, also a view from my front yard. The low sun in the winter is spectacular when it comes out. The mountain is green with trees, of course, but the warm sun makes them appear orange in the evening. I wanted to capture this extreme color compared to the cool sky and snow for later reference. Sunshine makes me smile! ( =
This is a view from my home. There is a mountain that goes straight up just across from us. The way the sun hits it in the evening amazes me. the colors are so strong. I’m not sure how this reads to someone not familiar with the view. But it is supposed to be a patch of the mountainside just catching the sun between the dense foggy patches.
I love painted trees! I need to practice them close up because they are very tricky to paint. So in this I combined the tree practice with the strong warm light practice. It is just a small 5×7, but I think it has good impact. When studying a subject close up, the things you learn can be easily applied to a more suggestive painting later on. This is another thing that I need to remember.
This is the second little 5×7 study of the warm light effects on a subject. In this case it made a nice backdrop for the interesting foreground. I thought it was interesting that the fog looked so warm compared to the cool, shaded trees. I really wish that we had more sunny days here so I could get outside and paint!
This is some sunlit buildings in Dexter, Maine near my families home. I am just captivated by the way a simple, even lowly subject can take on such beauty when there is the right light affecting it. I am beginning to think that that might be what inspires me to paint. I long to capture beauty in the simple things and share that with others.
This is a little (5×7) study that I did to practice the color, temperature and value of the light.The sun hits the mountain peaks like this in the winter here in Juneau. (on one of the maybe 10 sunny days we get) It is so beautiful! I want to be able to capture the extreme impact that it has. I think this is quite close to how it looks. I’m am going to do several more this week. It will be my focus.
I continue to find that I like to paint the light. The photos or scenes that catch my attention the most have some sort of a strong impact created by the light. I really want to explore this more. I am finding that it takes quite a bit of practice to see the effects of light correctly. You almost need to outsmart your brain when painting in order to correctly evaluate the colors and values that you see. Challenging!
This is a little 5×7 painting. It is the second time that I have done this picture.I believe that it is much cleaner and much less overworked as well. I must say that I don’t generally enjoy doing a picture more than once, but I am learning the value of doing so. The first time I did this, it was quite a struggle to capture the sunny light. But this time it took less than half the time. It was a real pleasure to work on! From now on I am going to make it a practice to do certain paintings more than once, and even in different colors or value patterns. I think it will increase my learning significantly.
Art with my Coffee 