SUBSCRIBE ME!

My friend and fellow Artist, Diane Cutter , mentioned to me that I should have a Subscription service here on my blog so she can be notified when I post something new...so it is here.
To add your name to the list of subscribers just type in your email address in the box above by the links...that's all there is to it...you can easily opt to remove your name from the subscription at anytime.

Jurors Award

Carpenteria Foothills

12"x16"

Oil on Ray Mar Panel

I'm a member of the Artists Guild of the Santa Ynez Valley and we show our work in juried and non-juried shows in the town of Los Olivos at the Gallery Los Olivos. Recently we had a juried show and one of my pieces won the Jurors Award. In the same show I also won 2nd Place for one of my other paintings. I was flabbergasted...(can't believe we still use that word to this day but it fits!). I always wanted to win an award for my pen & ink works but that never happened. I think my pen & ink work was too realistic for an award considering the work that usually wins awards. Sad but true, realism usually takes a back seat to most work that wins awards in my humble opinion. At heart, I'm a pen & ink artist and painting is what I've done to add color in my portfolio....but it is the painting that has garnered the awards and sales on original work you just have to live with that.

I have sold tons of pen & ink prints but the only awards for pen & ink work has come from the Santa Barbara Country Fair and the California State Fair....which was ok but it would have been nice to get an award in a full blown art gallery environment. Pen & ink is very much an overlooked medium which is ironic because it has been around for so long. It is also a medium that takes a lot of skill to pull off well. Pen & ink artists are a special breed of artists who spend hours perfecting their craft and turn out work that is very very special.

Here is the second Place painting.....

Morning Pasture

9"x12"

Oil on Ray Mar Panel

Anyway....just tooting my horn here. I try and keep that to a minimum but I actually have to do it since I'm not paying an Artrep to do it for me. Nothing worse than having to look people in the eye and say "my work is good, I think you should buy it"....

The Studio....

A long time ago, the High School years, my Dad suggested I take wood shop class. A great class to take for anyone who likes to build things or learn how things are built out of wood. I know, because I have used the knowledge learned back in wood shop a zillion times. It amazes me how many guys don't know a thing about woodwork....but that's another story. One of my projects was to build myself a small wooden drawing board which I did and used at home for years. Just a flat piece of wood with two "legs" that slanted to allow the drawing board to be angled on a dining room table or desk while you drew, it worked great.

After getting out of the Army and getting married and years later that drawing board was nowhere to be found. My drawing board once again became the kitchen or dining room table or any other flat surface that could be found...I took painting class in college and bought a really cheap easel to work on in the garage....this was due to orderless turpentine not being around then and you didn't want the kids getting a contact high inside the house. One thing about the struggles of an artist to find a place to work is it really makes you appreciate a good place once you get it!

So, we enter the current drawing painting setup due to Artist Luck#1....Early one morning I jump on the computer and go to Yahoo Auctions (my local) which practically doesn't exist anymore. Having some money finally in my bank account, I type in "Drafting Table"....and low and behold I find a guy selling one a few miles away for $60.00. A killer table with all the bells and whistles, used, heavier than the Titanic and now sitting 10 feet away from me as I type!

Now Artist Luck #2....I was driving a truck delivering to a company and noticed some flat drafting files, ...2 of them that stack together and usually cost about $400-600 a piece, sitting in their parking lot. Turns out one of the guys there was using them to store small tools in and I asked if he wanted to sell them....he says "$30 bucks" and I couldn't pull the money out of my pocket fast enough! We loaded them onto the back of my truck with a forklift and they are now with me storing my art ambitions.

I now live in a home with a garage that was converted by the previous owner as a studio to do photography. His old dark room is now my storage closet for art supplies. I've aquired a nice solid oak easel for painting and life is good. When I say it is a long way from a wooden table top drawing board I know what I am talking about...took me over 30 years to get here. Now, if I had taken classes in business management or computer programming back in college I would have gotten a great money making job and had this stuff years ago...but artists like to suffer right?

Here is where the painting happens.....

Looks like I did the dramatic lighting thing for a brochure but in reality I was actually working on that lower painting and decided to just snap a shot of the setup...remember, this is a converted garage and most garages don't have big artist needing windows facing south.

I can't see spending megabucks for a wooden taboret so eventually I'll just make one...in the meantime I bought this wire rack on wheels with bins at Costco, Target or WalMart...can't remember but it was pretty cheap. I've seen awesome oak ones in an art supply store down in Santa Barbara but price-wise it's like buying a house! I'm sure you can go through an Escrow company to help you out with the purchase of it....not me, I'll make one.Get one with wheels! I am always moving this thing around and glad I'm not picking it up all of the time....and besides, you can roll the coffee closer to you as you paint and it gets later at night!

For additional art supply storage it is hard to beat getting plastic stacking bins. You could even put one of these in a closet to keep "out of sight out of mind" from the ever forgetful teenager or wife/husband that is always looking for something to write with...like your art supplies!

An artists needs a place to work and places to store the equipment needed to create art. Unless you are the son or daughter of Donald Trump or Bill Gates you might have to wait a while to get that but if you keep your eyes on the prowl for the great finds out there you can do it. I did it, so can you....just remember to appreciate it!

Refugio Vista

In my attempts to teach myself to paint outdoors, Plein Air, I decided to tackle this scene. It is a view looking across the Santa Ynez valley with a ranch for my focal point. I consider this to be one of the 2 plein air pieces I have done that truly worked well. What worked great about this scene was capturing the light of midday, or morning actually, without even trying to. I was trying to just paint the scene in front of me and without my knowledge I painted the light! Sounds stupid but that is hard to do and somehow it happened by me just concentrating on getting the scene on canvas.

To me, that says something is starting to work inside of me without me really trying to make it work....the eye is a wonderous thing when you let it do what it does best without your interupting it!. Maybe this is why people paint outdoors in the first place, the natural light of nature will show up in your work....which is totally cool!

Here is my setup and view out there...not an expensive pochade box, my Dad made this for me so you can't beat that price! I should have taken pics right from the start but got into the painting and forgot I had the dang camera sitting right there in the truck. Duh!

And here is the finished piece.....

Anyway, I think it came out pretty well and I'm proud of this one. I will probably do a larger piece because this is a pretty typical scene here in the valley on a sunny day. It also has the combination I like in a painting, some distant structures, distant blue mountains and dark trees. The contrast of that combination is too cool.

Garden at Cambria 2

I decided I liked the smaller 9"x12" Garden at Cambria painting so much that I decided to do a larger version of that painting on 18"x24" sized canvas. Most of my work is smaller 12"x16 and under paintings so this is a nice change going larger....my largest painting yet.

I also snapped a few pics of the progress on this one. To check my memory, and for fun, I decided to move the smaller painting inside the house and not use it for reference in doing the larger painting. I painted the larger version using only my original reference photo like on the first version. My results were pretty dang close to the smaller painting.

Here you see the start of the painting....sky first then the added houses. After that I used a thinned paint and, using a paper towel, simply rubbed in the dark blocked in areas of foliage. Some for the dark shadows and some just for an underpaint of foliage where the leaves would be painted in as just mid and highlighted values. I never actually paint "leaves"...they are just suggested masses of paint. These rubbed in areas of paint are a mix of the color of paint you want to use and then dipping a paper towel into turpentine, dipping that into the paint mixture and rubbing away. The nice thing about this method to get these areas done first is that the turpentine causes the paint to set up to a tacky finish in just a few minutes when the turpentine dries. This allows you to paint your mid and highlights right after it dries. I move to other areas to give it some added drying time and then go back to these areas. Looks horrible but it works.

Here you can see the added foliage being painted in over the rubbed in areas. I'm a lefty so I tend to paint from right to left across the canvas. Being a large canvas and using small Flats this process took a few hours.....

Here you see most of the foliage added. I've layed in the cool whites of the fence. This is just Ultramarine Blue added to Titanium White. To the left I increased the blue to darken the fence in the corner of the painting. I thought the fence posts were too narrow so I widened them right after this photo was taken....made a big difference. My perspective was thrown a bit working on the larger canvas. I'll add the white highlights of the fence next which will finish forming the fence....

Finally, the finished painting after lots of tweaking here and there. Overall, a close resemblance to the first smaller painting but some noticable differences. I'll try and get the gallery I'm in to take this piece and use the smaller piece for showing at local Artist Guild shows.

Solvang Nocturne 1

Nocturnes.....the first one I ever saw was one painted by Whistler...famed artist who painted what is commonly known as "Whistlers Mother" but is really titled "Arrangment in Grey and Black No.1". Whistler did many nocturnes. I've seen many nocturnes painted by artists I know and it also added to my desire to try a nocturne. Nocturnes are not easy and this is my attempt to do one that wasn't totally terrible. I'll do a simpler one next time.

This is actually a scene outside of where I live looking towards the neighbors house next door on a hill. It was a challenge to do and worth the effort for the lessons I learned while doing it. If I painted nocturnes for the next year I'd get much better at them....or I'd cut my ear off.

Garden at Cambria

I visited the town of Cambria last year and naturally took a lot of pictures for futre reference material. I think as much as Plein Air painters love to visit locations and immediately capture the scenes on canvas I love capturing images on film just as much. Sometimes snapping the shutter as fast as possible out the car window and sometimes framing a scene as you would to compose a painting. Both methods have resulted in some great paintings. As much as I know good planning pays off sometimes the best things in life are purely accidental as well as a gift. The trick is being able to remember to just see them when they present themselves.

This little garden in the backyard of one of the shops there had all the charm in the world and reminded me of my Grandma who loved to grow things in her backyard...and front yard as well. I've painted 2 paintings now as a result of my Grandma. This is the legacy you leave behind if you are a truly a good person in life, wonderful memories for those left behind. Some of those memories inspired me to paint this scene.

"Garden at Cambria"

12"x16" Oil on Ray Mar panel

The fence was painted in 2 parts. First, the fence posts were painted in a cooler shadowed blue darkening the mixture where the shadowed part would be and done without sketching it in.

After that the highlights were put in and then the foreground flowers were added.

That's what I love about painting. The fence really looks more than it is but it is really just some dark blue paint and then some added white trim on one side...a few strokes and you end up with what looks like a picket fence on a sunny day. Too cool!

Eureka!

I do have a love of fishing boats. So much so that I orginally began to paint as a means to see my drawings of boats become painted boats. These are two of my first completed boat paintings from that quest.

This first one if titled "Eureka Boatyard" and comes from a photo I snapped while stopping for an hour in Eureka, California at the harbor.

"Eureka Boatyard"

12"x16" Oil on Ray Mar panel

The second image is one done of some boats moored in the main channel up in Morro Bay. Behind them is the sandbar that forms the harbor there. I'll do more boats in the future so I can really do them well one day. I like both of these paintings and consider them a great start. Painting landscapes has taught me many lessons in learning to paint and payed off well in creating these two paintings.

"Channel Mooring"

5"x7" Oil on Masonite panel

Experimenting with Video

Click image to see video

Hi There,
I wanted to one day add a sound file to this blog but never got around to it. The other day I saw a video presentation on another artists site and decided to look into it. After a few Google searches I had the info I needed to give it a try.

Now, this isn't exactly a video, it's a ppresentation of various art works of mine plus a cool sounding music track. The music track was made by my old school friend, Richard Ishida, recording his bass, keyboards, guitars and some percussion parts. He then sent the files to me in an email and I recorded myself here playing the drum track. I then sent all the files (music tracks) back to him and he did the final mixing...the result is the song "Simone Ramone".

Cool, I just checked to see how it works and it works pretty dang good! The images are just off a bit and a couple are not that swift on my monitor...could be the low bit rate you have to use for uploading a video...this is required by the hosting site. It only maybe less than a minute to load to see so give it a try and let me know what you think.
Ron

Backyard Plein Air

Off Greenfield Oak

6"x8" Oil on Ray Mar Panel

It was a nice warm day yesterday so I headed out in the backyard and tried another Plein Air piece. I wanted to put emphasis on this tree in the distance but I think I wnt a little too large with it. Still, the main part of doing these plein air pices right now is just to learn how to finish a painting in one sitting without taking too long so in that repsect it worked....thid was done in a little over an hours time.
This is on Ray Mar panel which are very cool panels. For some strange reason my blues seem to be toned down a bit on these...more testing to follow.

Here you can see the view and the blue box shows the area I decided to paint...

A painting buddy showed up to help me out and keep an eye on my progress...

Pampas Grass

Pampas Grass

12"x16" Oil on Masonite Panel

This is a scene of the pampas grass that lines my driveway. The plumes of this grass are always catching the sunlight and when the wind is blowing their plumes are like the feathers blowing in the wind. I've been wanting to paint them for a long time now and right before Christmas I did. I like masonite panel because it gives the painting this nice texture that you don't get with canvas.

Painting plants allows a lot of freedom to do as you please which is nice. Also, the painting was done over a tinted ground which was rubbed on with a paper towel...I then painted over this with a brush putting in the details.

A detail of the painting....

That Big Brown Oak Tree.....

Alamo Pintado Oak

12"x16" Oil on Ray Mar Panel

This oak was covered in a moss we get where I live and gave it'd color a brownish/grey green. It caught my attention so I tried painting it. Not much to say about it except it is a cool looking tree to paint. I like messing with trees to see the various textures and shadows I can come up with.

A Detail of the texture on this tree.....

Plein Air 2

I'm always dreaming of painting outdoors. I can't think of anything more fun than to simply choose to go somewhere and sit down and do a complete painting in one sitting. I love the looks of Contemporary California Impressionists paintings and eventually my goal is to learn to do similar work.

Today was a pretty slow day so I decided to go outside and try painting my neighbors hillside. Again, I used an underpainting to get me started. I went a little dark with it but it worked out ok. Before I try something like this I pick a scene, stop and think how I will paint it and then begin painting. This is a study so I'm not looking for a masterpiece, I'm learning to paint outdoors, which with oil, is very different from painting indoors for me. This piece took about an hour to do including my setting things up outside. After doing this piece I thought about things I'd do differently in the next attempt and I think my results will be better in the next one purely from the experience gained here.

The pochade box I'm using was built from scratch by my Dad. I told him what I was looking for and sketched it out one night on scratch paper over coffee. I let him have the final say in building it since he is a hobby wood worker and has probably forgot more than I know in life. I took 4 years of woods class in High School but he has been building things in his spare time most of my life....so that's 49 years to my measly 4 in HS. The box works great...a little heavy but most of that weight is from the old tripod he had laying around he gave me. This box can handle anything up to a 12"x16"...not sure if I'll ever be able to paint PA at that size but you never know.

Here are some pics of my little experience at my drive-ways end.....

The view I choose and my box....

Seen here is my too red underpainting. I could go totally blue in the sky but wanted to let some of the red show through.

Now laying in my foreground grasses. In my finished version I need to do detail to that area but what was finished today in less than an hour is a good starting point for this little attempt.

And here is the finished version. There is some of the red underpainting showing through the foreground grasses....I'm not crazy about the lack of detail there and might do more once the paint sets up. The tree skyholes were added but looked too out of place with the more whiter sky I had so I added blue to the sky to match it all up. All in all, looks pretty cool to me for just a second attempt. I've thought of a different way to speed up painting in highlights and will try that in the next one....we'll see what happens.


And yet another pic...this one of me posing with the pochade box. We live on a hill so we get winds and it was cold to begin with. Still painting in the snow would be totally no fun. I have to say that the people who do this in really adverse weather are more dedicated than I am....I did my survival training back in 76-79 so I'm good to go there and not looking to adding to it with a painting box in tow.

Ron

Trying Underpainting

"Hilltop Sunset"

5"x7" Oil on Canvas

This image was my attempt using an underpainting, or tinted ground, under your brush work. This is a popular technique used by painters such as Emille Gruppe. I came to learn it by seeing it used by various painters online such as Bill Wray and Larry Seiler, both painters whose work I keep an eye on simply for the enjoyment and to let influence my work to some degree. That's always a great way to learn if you cannot afford taking a workshop.

I've been wanting to try this method because the way I paint in the studio in my opinion isn't going to work for me outdoors doing plein air pieces. It takes me at least 2-3 days to do a work indoors simply because of the drying times of oil paint. Working outside has to be done much quicker.

This particular piece was done using the underpainting method and I'm still learning it but it did speed things up. This took about 45 mintues in the studio. It is 5"x7" which accounts for the speed too but still faster than my typical studio method. The only thing I did later in the studio was add just a bit of highlights to the tree and highlights to the foreground grasses. This took maybe 10 minutes more. I love that glow that is seen in this sunset piece. This is a view off of the street I live on looking across the valley.

Hope you like it....
Ron

A Beach Scene

"Jalama Bluffs"

8"x10" Oil on Canvas

If you are an artist you have to sooner or later learn to paint the things near where you live...unless you want to paint Europe which I think has already been covered by many an artist. I don't see the point of painting landscape paintings of far off places since I live in a great area to paint....the California coast. The key word here being "coast". I haven't painted but one other coastal scene so figured it was time to try another one.

This scene is of the bluffs, or cliffs, that dominate Jalama beach. This was painted from a reference photo I took during a break in a storm we were having. As you can see there is not much breaking surf here...the bluffs were my challenge in this one.

I like how this one came out and think the attempt to capture the scene worked. I am very happy with how well the bluffs came out. Surprised myself there. Hope you like it.

Here is a detail of the bluffs in the painting.

Ron

And the award goes to......

You know, I've been entering shows in my local artist guild gallery every month for over a year and never won an award...for anything. I would kid others that even if no one else entered but me I'd somehow lose. Well, my streak is over. I finally won an award...First Place, for "Red Sky Over Field".

This came as a big surprise because this painting was really to try out doing some impasto work in the sky area....not that I thought it wise to do but just wanted to try impasto painting with a knife out. I thought the results were pretty cool and a lot of other artists seemed to like it too.

Last month I entered a small 8"x10" into the show which didn't win an award but I got a call telling me it had sold at the gallery. I was hoping the call about winning the award was to tell me this one had sold...hahaha. Surprise, surprise.

This is good news of course....the last 2 months have been full of good news. Sales are up, I got picked up by a gallery north of here, Gallery In The Vines, so I now have gallery respresentation. Also, the first week there I sold 2 paintings. So, things are getting better!

Vineyard House Commission

Vineyard House Portrait

12" x 24"

Oil on Gallery Wrap Canvas

Remember I have been going to art shows??? Well, this is a painting done on commission from a lady I met at one of the shows. In the last 5 miutes of the show she walked into my booth and asked if I would do a painting of her house which sits on top of a vineyard near Santa Maria, California. If you ever drive north up Hwy 101 you'll see this house to the right just off the freeway.

I went to her home in the evening trying to catch something with dramtic lighting and the setting sun provided just that. I enjoyed the challenge of catching the drama filtering through the trees to enhance the painting and give the owner something special about where she lives.

You might see just a house but the owner sees their house. Their house was built in the 1920's and sits on a hill in a vineyard. I've tried to show their house as it sits including the vineyards and wonderful view they have. This is what makes their house special to them so I take that into consideration when doing a commission and try and work that into the painting. My next commission just came in today and beleive it or not, it's a drawing in ink of Chickens! Hey, I'm not kidding! It's a Christmas gift from a woman to her husband....did I mention I live out in the country?

California High Desert

"The Ditch, Hesperia"

This is an image near Hesperia, California in the high desert. The scene is nothing more than a ditch caused by erosion. I was out hiking around snapping reference photos and found the ditch, which was about 2-3 feet deep, as I walked about. I found it neat that if you changed the scale or background this could be large canyon walls like you'd see in Canyon De Chelly.
the mountain range in the distance is the back of the San Gabriels close to Cajon Pass.

The desert is too cool and awesome in winter. I'd like to go up there and spend a week just tooling around taking pics of it. If you keep heading north of here you'd end up in Death Valley, the lowest piece of ground, below sea level, in the US.

This painting was started around 9 AM and finished later that day in the evening. I'm proud of this one because I just love the way the ditch colors came out and I like the highlighted ground level on top. that really pushes the shadowed ditch walls and wall shadows. I am slowly getting the hang of shadows. To another artist I would say "don't think shadows, think color" If you think shadows you can get very goofed up trying to paint them. The learning curve to painting is hugh compared to pen & ink.

The San Gabriels

Storm Clearing the San Gabriels
A painting I did after learning clouds on smaller 5"x7" 's. I wanted to incorporate those lessons with painting the San Gabriel mountains. These mountains are right next to where I grew up in Pasadena and I've seen them almost everyday of my life minus the 3 years I spent in Germany shivering. I love these mountains. They have been painted since the California Impressionsts arrived here at the turn of the century so I wanted to submit my version alongside of theirs. I'll do another version where they are more prominent...this was a warm-up to that one.

12" x 16" Oil on Masonite Panel
Hope you like it!

Santa Ynez Sunrise

Here is a painting done froma photo taken while driving early one morning after a storm had passed close to where I live. Those are the Santa Ynez Mountains as the cloud cover begins to break letting in the morning sun and blue skies.
This is 12"x16" Oil on Canvas. I have it propped in this floater frame while drying. Looks pretty cool there.