This is a thin slice of the mission at Santa Inez, I think.
I was inspired by seeing some Georgia O'Keeffe paintings at MOMA. There were a lot of her pieces that broke all the commonly held conventions of composition – just a tiny sliver of sky, a close-up of an architectural detail, a centered subject etc.
I joined the Monday Morning Painters at Spring Lake in Sonoma. It always amazes me how much the surface of the water changes from minute to minute. I guess you just have to pick one moment in time and keep it in mind (along with the color of the sky, the temperature of the atmosphere, the direction of the shadows etc. etc. etc. Easy, right?)
Here's another artists take on the scene (unfinished).
Having recently sold two versions of similar paintings, I went back to my reference photos and decided to try a larger one. Much larger. 30 x 10 inches. I just made sure to not use anything smaller than a half-inch brush, and tried to rush along and keep things loose and fresh.
I think I need a little more room to be able to back up from something this large while I'm painting it.
Ball Point Pen on Paper
Where have I been? Wish I had some great answer, but I've just been busy. Too busy to paint? No. Just too busy to post.
To get things rolling again, here's the original sketch for the panhandle painting. It's not terribly good or detailed, but I like it as an almost abstract gesture kind of thing.
Painting posts resume tomorrow.
I had just enough time to start another sketch of the Conservatory, so I did. Then I discovered I didn't really have as much time as I thought, so I rushed to just slap paint on in big strokes to just map out the basic shapes. I threw it in the box, packed up and headed home (one of the benefits of acrylics – speedy break-down).
When I looked at it later, I realized that it was already done. Pretty much anything I'd add to this would most likely ruin it.
Yes, it's the Conservatory of Flowers in GGP. What a fantastic day. It's really fun to paint when there's tons of kids riding bikes, slowing down just long enough to ask "whatcha doin'?"
This is a small panel, 5 x 8 inches, that was supposed to be a sketch, but I wound up getting too involved with it. Still, I managed to stay away from the small brushes.
I had some other shots of Kaia and in the end I think this is a more interesting pose. This is gonna need revisiting, because the skin tones are all wrong and the face just bugs me – neither loose enough, nor tight enough. Maybe I should even eliminate the shoreline, though that might kill what little I've got going on compositionally. Hmmm.
I've been neglecting the blog lately. Not that I haven't been painting, but I was away from my desk. As the 1st year of doing a daily painting blog winds down, I'm thinking of trying my hand at some more involved pieces. You know, the ones that take longer than an hour or two. As a result, I may be posting less frequently, or perhaps posting various stages of works in progress.
This is a bigger, more detailed version of the Panhandle photo I did a sketch of the other day. It's OK, but just kinda blah.
I'm not getting the exciting colors in the costume to "pop" and I think it's not only my poor color mixing skills, but also the choice of red I've started with – Alizarin Crimson. I may dig up some other reds and come back to this shortly.
