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:

 

 

Foothills Above Santa Barbara

"Foothills Above Santa Barbara...1999"

16"x20" Oil on Canvas

"Foothills Above Santa Barbara...2013"

16"x20" Oil on canvas

I painted the first version of this painting in 1999. I thought I was done at that point. I never varnished it after it had dried because the more I looked at it the more I felt it just didn't feel finished. Late last year I put it back on the easel and made lots of changes. I added the larger trees in the mid ground and totally revamped the foreground. I also added more rocks in the mountains. It sat drying once again but still I felt it was missing something. I decided to go at it once more and make more subtle changes to the foreground  especially the flowers. I touched up the trees with branches and added twigs and smaller branches to areas of the bushes. At this point I'm calling it finished for good because it now feels finished.
The upper photo is very much like the scene actually looked. I wanted those dark shaodws of the mountains and probably overlooked the rather mundane mid and foregrounds of the original scene. What I added and changed was out of my head but I think adds more interest. Switching the point of interest from the mountain shadows to the trees was better for the painting regardless of the accuracy of the scene. I still see what I liked in those dark shadows along the mountains, they now add to the total painting. I think that had I not added the tall trees and just revamped mid and foreground colors, flowers and grasses it might have worked that way too forcusing on the mountains again....hmmm, idea for another painting.   

A Rework

After the first of the year I went through my storage area in hopes of clearing up some of the clutter of old work. Some of these paintings were sketches trying things out, paintings I wasn't happy with and paintings that I felt were lacking something and in time I'd see it.
This painting was one I felt could use more work down the line. The one thing I wasn't happy with was the mountains. I really wasn't crazy about the highlights on the mountains so I se it aside. The painting had a light coat of varnish on it so I sanded some of the texture off and wiped it down with some gum turpentine. This left the paint flat and ready for reworking.

The mountains actually looked like that but in a few days I didn't lkike those highlights. They would go for a lighter coat of blue/grey and some suggested detail. I also deicded to reqork the foliage, oak scrub, and the hillside grasses adding more color into the painting. The original painting had a more subdued look to it which was ok but I wanted to boost the colors more in the foreground. I'm happier with it now. Funny thing, I didn't use a reference photo for the rework. I just painted over the original making my own changes. After readjusting the mountain ridge line I stepped back to take a good look and realised they now look exactly as the San Gabriel mountains look from almost right below my parents house....ridgeline and all. Must be some subconsious thinking going on here, haha.

  

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

Santa Ynez Summer Field

"Summer Field"

10" X 20" Oil on Panel

Had to slow down painting there for a while due to other things needing to be taken care of. I thought for a nice get-back-into-the -swing-of- things it would be good to just do a painting from no reference material, out of my imagination and memory. I like doing these types of paintings and since I paint a lot of the Central Coast it is not very hard to do one of these like that. I've painted scenes in the valley a lot so those views are always in my mind. This scene would easily be simlar to scenes along the highway heading over to Lompoc. Grassy sloping foothills easing up to the Santa Rita or Santa Ynez mountain ranges. Decided to capture the last of the warm grasses of summer before our Winter is here and with it the occasional rains bringing green grasses.

If you are an artist I highly reccomend painting from what you have inside of your head. You just need the vision of the parts that make up a scene which you've probably painted many times before and can arrange a composition in your mind and then you're off! This type of painting is pretty fun and gives you the ability to paint on a rainy days when it is no fun or too cold to paint outside. Beats painting in the snow too!

Oak Above Santa Barbara

"Oak Above Santa Barbara"

22" X 28" Oil on Canvas

I was driving back from Pasadena when I saw this oak tree on a hillside off the highway just above Santa Barbara. I've seen this tree many times and in different light. Normally, I don't paint midday scenes but actually I took the reference photo around 4-5 pm. The fact was the sun was slightly above and behind me putting the tree in direct sunlight, casting shadow to the backside of the tree.

What drew me to paint this scene was working with a tree that was in full sun. I liked the dark shadows under and behind the tree and the sweeping hillsides. I liked the Santa Ynez mountains as the low looking backdrop with the cloud formation covering the tips of the mountains. It is a scene that I see a lot around here. During the day this is a pretty typical scene up here. I've done plenty of late afternoon scenes so catching a scene in direct sunlight was refreshing to me.