Thursday, January 11, 2007

Backyard Plein Air



Off Greenfield Oak
6"x8" Oil on Ray Mar Panel

It was a nice warm day yesterday so I headed out in the backyard and tried another Plein Air piece. I wanted to put emphasis on this tree in the distance but I think I wnt a little too large with it. Still, the main part of doing these plein air pices right now is just to learn how to finish a painting in one sitting without taking too long so in that repsect it worked....thid was done in a little over an hours time.
This is on Ray Mar panel which are very cool panels. For some strange reason my blues seem to be toned down a bit on these...more testing to follow.

Here you can see the view and the blue box shows the area I decided to paint...


A painting buddy showed up to help me out and keep an eye on my progress...

4 comments:

Leslie Anne Pease said...

I love your eye when it comes to landscapes. Wonderful commposition!!!

Ron Guthrie said...

Thanks Leslie....
I have this habit of taking any pictures I have and running through Photoshop to practice cropping compositions...you could do it with just 2 "L" shaped pieces of thick paper or mat board if you didn't have photoshop. It's a good way to look for scenes that work out of ordinary snapshots and you'd be amazed once the painting was done.
Sometimes they really don't look all that promising until you find yourself in the middle of the painting and things start to work. Adjusting the colors or adding light or pushing the distance or depth of the scene really lets you get creative.

Leslie Anne Pease said...

Adjusting the colors or pushing the distance... that's where you are very talented!

I already monkey around in Photoshop but when it comes to landscapes the paintings look more promising in the reference image! LOL!

Ron Guthrie said...

Hahahahaha...I think that happens to us all Leslie. I've yet to paint a scene the way I wanted it to come out....that's why we never know when it's finished, hahaha.

I think half the time I say it's finished when I can't stand going back out of frustration and readjusting something for the 4th or 5th time....FINISHED!

Then again, sometimes a painting comes out better than I had envisioned it which is always a welcome surprise but has me wondering how I did that for the next couple of days. hahahaha.
Can't win.
Ron