Thursday, September 03, 2009

While at the BBQ....

" Calkins Road Vineyard"
12" X 16" Oil on Masonite panel.
Linda and I went to a BBQ at a friends house over on Calkins Road just north of the sleepy town of Los Olivos. Their house is actually a cutting horse ranch and while we waited for the charcoal to fire up I grabbed my camera and strolled the grounds looking for reference material. Not oddly enough or this area there was a vineyard next door to the ranch so I walked over and started snapping away. They had this old wood shed at the end of the rows so I decided to paint an angle with the shed in it since I hardly do structures.
This is the result of that BBQ spare time.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Great shift in subject matter, it works really well. You should mix a few of these in with your broader landscape images. You'll get lots of invites to BBQ if this is what happens.

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Mick,
Yeah, going vertical and closer is a fun change. I don't usually do thses oaks like this...Oaks out in the wild are usually overgrown and thick with foliage. Oaks on someones property are usually trimmed or thinned due to winds out here busting branches off. I decided to paint this one like it was but I'm not crazy about it.
I was painting a lot of 9x12 and 12x16 paintings so doing the wider 12x24's balance out. I've gone to shows where the artist uses pretty much the same size images and that gets boring.

Teresa said...

You are on a roll! I love these vinyards! And that oak tree is gorgeous! Reminds me of an old oak I used to climb when I was a child :O) Great work Ron!!

Ron Guthrie said...

Hi Teresa,
Glad you like that tree...I normally like them thicker with lots of foliage but figured I needed to try something new.

I was looking over some older vineyard scenes I had done and thought by nowI should be able to do better so that's another reason for doing them.

That last painting of yours was gorgeous! You did a fantastic job on that water Teresa. Thanks for the comments on this one!
Ron