Summer Light

My reference photo

If I had about 10 sets of arms I could paint all day long paintings inspired by the area I live at, the Santa Ynez valley. Late afternoon light is the best I think and many of my paintings have come from that time of day. Seeing the bluish/purple mountains with their pink highlights from the setting sun was enough inspiration for me to paint this scene. I was driving down the road and had my camera so I took some reference photos. I didn't want the entire image, but maybe one like that will happen, so I located a nice spot in the photo and away I painted.

I am out of larger canvases at the moment so I did this one smaller at 12"x16"...should have gone larger though. Maybe I'll use this later as the study for a larger painting.

"Summer Light"

12"x16" Oil on canvas covered panel

....and a detail image from the painting:

 

 

Central Coast Sunset

"Central Coast Sunset"

12"x16" Oil on Canvas Covered MDF

This painting was my warm up painting for the Quick Draw in Los Olivos this year. I used this to work out what I had in mind in painting for the event. It wasn't quite this finished looking so after the event I went back at it touching up things here and there. No sense in not finishing it up since it was painted and dry enough to go in and do the small adjustments. I like it, has that low light that I like and a really nice sense of atmosphere to it. If anything bothered me about it it has to be the canvas I'm using when making my boards. It has a tighter weave compared to most stretched canvases I've been using. Also, there is no flex to board mounted canvas compared to stretched canvas. I've been painting on stretched canvases a lot for the last year and have gotten used to that little bit of flexing of the canvas....panels are solid as a rock. What a little nitpicker I am, haha.

Here is a little detail of the painting....

 

Alla Prima Painting

"Misty Eucalyptus Trees"

12" X 16" Oil on Canvas
This painting was done alla prima tonight in about 2 hours. I wasn't really racing to finish it or paint alla prima to begin with...it just turned out to be an alla prima painting in a couple of hours which is always nice. I did this one more as a study than anything since I wanted to try out some different background color mixes for the sky. I made this sky with a mix of white, cerulean blue and a dab of cad yellow light added to that blue mix in the lower part of the sky. I wanted a greenish look to it because I wanted to paint the background trees with a slightly darker mix of that lower sky color. This always gives the painting a nice hazy, almost foggy look in the distance. I wish the green showed better here, it's a subtle mix as it rises into the cerulean upper sky and looks pretty cool when you're standing in front of it. Cerulean blue and cad yellow gives a really nice pale green but it requires very little cad yellow since that color is so intense.

Gaviota Bluffs Reprise

"Gaviota Bluffs"

I am fortunate enough to post my work on a website full of other artists who critique each others work. I had Gaviota Bluffs posted there and received some very helpful feedback. I've since gone on to push the distance more on the back trees by repainting a mix of lighter green and greying down other parts up in that area. I've also gone back in to slightly darken the foreground bluff as well as add more detail to the grasses and small plants growing down the side. Works better now.