"On The Ridge"

12"x16" Oil on Canvas covered panel

This area is just north of where I live, about a 10 minute drive maybe. Summer grasses are always great looking around here. The grasses and their warm color tones give the trees and background mountains a great looking color contrast. This is one of those paintings that took two days due to all of the distractions going on...I hate that because it is really hard to get back to work on the painting and sometimes you can begin to loose interest if you had stopped at a point where you were not happy. This painting started out as a summer painting but after a break and coming back I changed to to a winter scene, green grasses, but then came back from another break and went with summer again. I hate wiping paint off. Glad it ended up as it did and calling it finished.

Some of the work on the bushes here in this detail shot of the painting...

Chamberlin Ranch Oaks Repaint

"Chamberlin Ranch Oaks"

6" X 8" Oil on Panel

This small painting was painted about a year ago. I recently had this in the Silent auction during the Los Olivos Quick Draw event and it sold to a really nice woman from Hermosa Beach, CA. I had wanted to try and paint another version of the small painting to push the colors and add more detail in the foreground. Before the Quick Draw I grabbed a 16"X20" canvas that had a Marine painting on it and decided to paint over it. 

Normally when painting over an old painting I'd sand off any lumps of old paint and then wipe it with a mixture of yellow ochre or indian yellow and turpintine first. This gives you a more even tone to paint over and fresh paint for the new paint to stick to. Instead I just wiped it down with a very diluted mix of turpentine and copal and once it was tacky I painted away without a tinted ground. This forced me to paint thicker since I tend to paint thin. 

"Oaks At Chamberlin Ranch"

16"X20" Oil on Canvas

There were slight changes to the newer painting since I wasn't trying to copy the original but just use it as a reference. I got most of the painting in before delivering the small painting on Thursday night to the auction. After the weekend event was over I came back to the new painting and finished it off. I really pushed the colors and detail which was the point of it all. I like the changes and added color/detail of the new painting. It is a good thing to try doing these with ones own work. There is a normal pressure with every painting as you try to make it a good painting of course but in doing a second painting I found that pressure was not there. I already had a good painting so there was a lot more freedom to experiment and make changes here regardless of the outcome...if something didn't work I could always just wipe it down or wipe the whole painting down and start over. Things went well on this one so I'm happy with the effort.  

A detail of the tree and foreground....