Original Study of Lincoln Marsh River

I was calm when I got up this morning.  Really. But I've been having a bad technology day.  Seems everything I touch, that has to do with technology, refuses to cooperate.   Even the toaster refuses to work right.  Okay, I'm done complaining.  Not really.

The small painting above is one I did of Lincoln Marsh.  I messed up the color corrector on my iPhoto, so it looks a little different in the photo than it does in real life.  The point I was trying to make is that I sometimes use small paintings as references for bigger paintings.  I find it helps me to focus in on the joy of painting when the composition, values and colors are already worked out.  Every once in a while I need to get a big painting out of my system.  Usually these bigger paintings look very different from the smaller ones.  The small study is a jumping off point to the bigger one.  It's easy to expand on the larger canvas.  I feel more freedom painting larger.  

22x28

I think I'll stay away from technology for the rest of the day.  Thank goodness there's no technology involved in painting!

Autumn 

9x12

This is a study that, I must admit, came from somewhere in my imagination.  It was done purely as a way to learn more about the transparency process.  I learn from every one of these paintings.  And to make sure I retain what I learn, I take detailed notes.  Hopefully, I'll be able to create larger paintings soon.  But for right now, there's more to figure out.

I start by building the bones of the painting with dark transparent colors, then allow them to dry.  The trick is to not do this too dark, because successive colors will darken the initial colors.  For the sky I used transparent sienna mixed with white.  After drying, I glazed over it with sienna.  In the background field, transparent colors were used, but when they dried completely, I also glazed over with a bit of white and transparent sienna to cause recession of space.

There are times when I feel I'm wasting my time with the pursuit of going off in a whole different direction.  I feel like going back to what was a comfortable painting process for me.  But other times, I know I'm on the right track.  Being an artist means having difficult, frustrating times too.