We Move On.....

Welcome To 2014 My Friends

Today is Jan 2, 2014. I'm glad you are here and wish you and your family the best the New Year that truly deserve. I hopefully will continue down the twisty road of art and if things go right I should be a better artist by the end of the year, if you are a painter the same should apply to you if you work at it...nothing is free except doing nothing, that doesn't cost anything but you get what you pay for. We continue to pursue being better painters in 2014.

I couldn't paint yesterday because of the holiday. I even went to bed at 11:30 but because of that I was up at a dark 4:45. I made coffee and headed for the studio. I had planned on starting work on a new painting I have in mind as a good way to start out the year but instead I decided to go back at one I had painter in early 2013 but over the year had grown less and less happy with the mountain colors. In the original painting the mountains were painted a more violet color. I've done that before but for some reason in this painting the violet was just too intense. To me the painting looked like 3 horizontal stripes moving across the painting. I know the compositional move to fix that and in future paintings will do just that. For this painting, adjusting that color of the mountains will do for now.

"Valley Evening"

12" x 16" Oil on panel

 

Now it feels better to me. I like the atmosphere in this painting. A few birds in there too which is the easiest way I can think to add some life to the scene. I'm still no big fan of including people in landscapes....they just draw too much attention. I know a lot of painters would disagree but that's ok. They can paint their own paintings.

My trees are always slowly evolving as I learn to paint them more and more. Each painting is another race, another lesson, another test of how much better you can paint compared to the last painting. Of course, how you see your progress and how fast they happen are variables all of us painters have to deal with as we learn.

 

 

Sunset Above Santa Barbara

"Sunset Above Santa Barbara"

12" X 20" Oil on Canvas

I almost hated to title this piece ignoring the large storm clouds moving over the mountains. What a great scene this was as Linda and I were leaving Santa Barbara heading over these dark mountains back to Solvang....ominous but majestic all rolled into one.
I painted this scene over 2 years ago but something never seemed quite right. After it had dried into the storage room it went. After Christmas had passed I was going through the paintings in there deciding on what old ones would be painted over. I came across this painting and took another long hard look and decided to throw it back on the easel and revamp it with a new foreground. I'm glad I did because it works much better to me now. I added the eucalyptus trees and background trees, I reshaped the bushes and really exagerated the grasses. I also went back over the mountain in sunlight and added more rocks jutting out of the mountain. The scene is now not quite what was actually there but works better as a painting I think.

A detail of the painting.

Click on image for a larger view

Hillside Evening

"Hillside Evening"

12x16 Oil on Panel

Trying to improve an older painting that I felt was never quite complete back when I painted it. I went back in and repainted the background mountain, added moredetail to the foreground hillside and slightly adjusted the tree tops. I'm happier with the finish now. I don't usually go back over older paintings but this one grabbed my attention the other day while I was going over my older work. There is just a yucky feeling I get when painting over dried paint. I don't prefer painting over wet paint either. I like painting over tacky, sticky paint which is where my paint usually is by the end of the day or the next morning. Despite all of that ,this one ended up with a decent look to it so I'm calling it quits at this point.