Salt Fork River Art Festival

I participated in the Salt Fork River Art Festival with my mom at Sleepy Creek Vineyard down in Oakwood, IL this past Saturday and Sunday, sharing a booth. We had some very turbulent weather between the cold, wet, fog, and clouds. I did get a chance to do some painting since it was rather slow at times. Here are some pics. This small study is looking through at Frontenac grape vines at the vineyard. 8x6, oil.

Raccoon skull study II

Here's another raccoon skull study I finished up today. 4.25"x8.5", graphite pencil. This one, along with another skull, and one of my nocturne paintings will be in a local halloween exhibit. I'm having a real difficult time photographing my drawings. The darks always tend to photo a bit grainy, the mid-tones end up being one value, and the lights end up being too dark...closer to the lighter mid-tones. The drawings all have a close value range for the most part but it gets frustrating. My assumption is that since graphite has a metallic looking luster, it has a reflective quality. That, along with the fact that this is on a smooth hot-press bristol (reflective also), my marks are bouncing light around in a strange way.

Plein Air 9-22-11

This is from this morning and is more or less an experiment. I'm trying out some different brushes along with still using the old ones. My old ones are long mongoose flats which do a great job with thin fluid paint as they are soft long hairs. The new ones are bristle flats. These are coarse hog bristles which are much shorter than the others. They have more spring and can lay down impasto brush strokes. I think working with these will help me with confidence out there, both in color mixing and in application on the surface. The other brushes, I usually tried to sneak up on things with gradual washes. Anyway, I'd like to try to incorporate both types of brushes into my arsenal to get the effects I want. 8x6, oil.

Plein Air 9-15-11

From this morning at the Fox River. 6x8, oil.

Plein Air 9-1-11

Plein air, oil. 8x6. Did this one this morning.