A New Year

2012 is here and I have painted 82 9x12 plein air paintings since last Spring. Looking back at them I think they do show some improvement. Presently I'm reading four books on the subject of painting and I hope to do a short review on each here.
For right now I'll post my most recent paintings which all reflect the colder weather and also lack of sun in the last few weeks or so. Good excuse for these rather gray 9x12s, but I'm learning to not take nature so literally and hope to be able to improve on my 20% success ratio.
I've been busy and restricted to painting in the back yard when I can get an hour or two. the top picture is Marcescent Beeches — That's a plant that holds on to it's leaves. They are interesting this time of year because the are very horizontal and counteract the vertical pines and poplars so common here
At the bottom, two done right out the back door. Winter in the Garden—a rather cold looking piece and a brighter vertical of my favorite spot to smoke cigars and drink wine—The Men's Deck.

Loud Saturday/Gray Sunday

Last weekend Saturday I spent several hours driving around Cherokee County looking for a good place to paint. I really don't like wasting good daylight driving around and this was one of those days. Arnold Mill Rd. runs east-west about 2 miles north of my house and I drove back and forth twice before finding a good spot combined with an adequate place to park. The results below look peaceful enough but don't tell the story. After about twenty minutes into this I realized I had set up near a shooting range. For most of the three hours I was there people were firing off high power rifles, hand guns, even sub machine guns! Then, all of the sudden a plane takes off from a field right across the street. I know how to pick 'em.
Sunday I watched the first half of the Falcons game, and when I grew frustrated with the score I decided to march down the hill and set up near the creek. It's was a colorless, light less afternoon and cold. That's never stopped me. It is a good excuse for this painting though. I actually like the color but with no help from the sun I had some problems with the depth. It was also devilishly complicated with twisting roots, rotting leaves, rocks and of course water—No excuses. I marched back up the hill to find the Falcons had come back from 23 down to win the game. Typical.

Studio/Plein Air

I know—no such thing but both of these painting have had some studio retouch work after Plein Air starts, I've been reading too much Stapleton Kerns. It comes from just missing that certain thing that makes them into art. Most of the times it's focus but sometimes it's result of the paint getting to thick and the fact that you can't do much with it till it dries. The top painting is called Nouveau Woods because of the Art Nouveau like vines hanging from the trees. It takes a lot of simplification when your painting in the woods—you can't possibly paint every tree and fallen leaf. In the end this one works, with the deep shadow breaking out to the sun lit poplars and the orange reflection in the stream.
The bottom painting was from about a month ago at Mountain Park and has a lot going on for a small painting. The light and color is a bit stronger than most of the work I do. I had to repaint that tree several times and in the end I think this painting is about the tree—I was trying to get the couple on the bench to be primary focus but the far left placement worked against the whole painting and in the end they lost out.

Tis the Season

For some reason much of the work for last few weeks has ended up creeping into the studio realm with retouches and outright repaints. I don't like doing repaints on such small canvases—it's just too tight and the paintings lose the freshness that is the key to good Plein Air. That said, I was working on a few ideas for Christmas cards so I can be excused—at least on these two. The top was done outside the house after I put up the Christmas lights—the night I painted it rained and I stood under an umbrella for several hours working on this. I then worked for several more sessions in the studio trying to get this in shape to use.
The bottom painting is of Barrington Hall in Roswell I set up on Sunday a few weeks ago and captured this decorated window along the column lined porch. In the end I decide that neither would work for the yearly card.

The Red Canoe

I was reading back through the blog tonight and realized that i had missed posting this one from about two months back. It was just at the end of Summer and was painted over at a small lake that I jog around. A few people have canoes and small docks. I like the color in this and the way the bushes and trees hold the canoe in. This one's a keeper.

Down in the Holler

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, along with it most of the color fall brought this year. I did get a few last days of orange, but that's all over now. The painting of the garden is a subject that I've painted several times before. I touched this up after about 3 hours outside and I'm still a bit iffy about it. That center of interest is too near the center.
The painting above I think is one of the better I've done and required no touching up. This is another scene that I have painted many times—if you go back far enough in this blog you are sure to see it. This little crick, as we'd call it in Ohio is down about 100 feet below my house "in a holler" as they say in Appalachia. The color is so true and the reflection of the trees ended up being the key here, giving it little light at the bottom of all those heavy earth tones.

Heading into the holidays

As we rush towards the end of the year and the start of another I've been trying to concentrate more and more on my art and find a way to make it a more sustainable part of my life. I almost have to start getting some kind of return on all the time that I spend painting and researching and thinking about painting. It's time to get serious or move on.
Unicoi Lake Trail
Still working on the 100 plein air paintings goal— finished 66 so far. This last weekend I was up at Unicoi Park all day on Saturday and did three painting of the lake, one ended up getting damaged so I need to do some retouching, I set up on the dock at the end of the lake for a different view than last time I painted here. It was cloudy but not raining and I like a gray day—makes it easier to catch the scene without the sun changing so quickly. I used a composition that I've used before and appears to work well, I split the image in two with both sections being almost equally weighted but the center of interest falls to the left side. This view is of the small visitor center in the campgrounds and a path that winds around from left to right. Quite a few people stopped by while I was there for close to eight hours.
Abstract in Alizarin
The second painting is from the same dock and has a very strange feel to it —on one side I have the walkway in perspective this leads to the path which heads off the the left. The odd thing here is the mix of this very 3-D walkway and the path which turns into a almost 2-D pattern of color and shape. At the time I thought it was very interesting, especially the color but this may be too much to get working on a 9x12 canvas.