Halloween Witch Painting

This is a painting I recently completed this week. 20x16, oil. It's for a Halloween show in October in Kenosha. I limited my palette for this painting and probably could've limited it more (Cremnitz White, Yellow Ocher, Cadmium Red Deep, Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue Deep, Viridian, and Ivory Black). I try to keep from posting show pieces well before the opening but I figure no one who reads this blog will be at the event.

Plein Air 9-3-14

When I go out to paint stuff in the landscape, I don't merely find an old tractor and say, hey I'm going to paint an old tractor. I stare at the scene and squint and figure out what really drew me to the scene. I think about the underlying abstract design and value structure of the scene. What drew me to this scene was the dark arc of shadows that arc up from the left connecting the lower parts of the tractor up and through the shed. I liked the way this was balanced with the grain bins and how they also tapered down in size from left to right. When I did this piece I thought there was a lot of chroma (bright colors) for me but when I took a look at it when I converted to black and white I thought the values (lights and darks) held up very well. 14x18, oil.

Plein Air 9-8-14

As I was driving home the other day, I discovered this place and I knew I wanted to paint it. It's called Bobby Rockets and is about 20 minutes from home. I went back there this morning and painted it. 14x18, oil.

Studies

The last couple days I've been doing some small loose sketches/studies/copies....whatever you want to call them, of some paintings by artists I like. I kept them small (5x7 panels) and quick, about an hour or so each. They were a lot of fun and I hope do some more as I learned a lot from each.