"California Poppies"8" X 10"
Oil on Canvas
I don't know why but everytime I grab a small 8"x10" canvas and plan to just whack out a painting in an hour or two it becomes a multi-day monster! I started this one 2 days ago late at night. My thoughts were to just do a quicky to build up smaller pieces for the Artist Studio Tour in November. I had just finished the last wide-format painting and still had good wet paint on my palette....why not do a quick one with the left over paint! Makes sense eh? Not to be had.
At first it all went well and I was almost finished but then kept looking at the sky wondering why it didn't look right. I've been looking a lot lately at the works of Early California Impressionsists such as Grandville Redmond, Edgar Payne, Angel Espoy...and more, and felt compelled to do a sky more to that liking. Once I added some warm Indian Yellow to my sky I began to see a different completed painting that I now wanted. So, I went back down to the mid and fore grounds and began redoing, adding, deleting and experimenting with small subtle changes that would give the painting an older turn of the century look and feel. It's not quite on the money but to me the feel is there and if I pursue this some more I can see dialing it in more to my liking. I won't go for the exact same look because I have my own style that will stay in the paintings but the combination is something I'm excited about seeing.
a detail of the painting...
2 comments:
Hey Ron I like the hazyness you got on this.
I know what you mean about things sitting on easel for too long. I've a few landscapes that I set out to get done in one (maybe 2 sittings but found I was getting a block with them.
I'm Working acrylics at the moment doing quick still lifes that I have to get done in one sitting!!
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
You're doing Acrylic alla primas....that's a good medium for it. This one was just supposed to be an alla prima...maybe a couple of hours at best. As it went along I'd think of stuff I wanted to try and one thing led to another...then I got really serious about it so it ended up taking way more time to paint this one given it's size....It's all in fun though.
Man, I haven't worked with acrylics since college. I used to like them a lot when I had the hang of using them but it's been a while.
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