Saturday, December 06, 2008

Dec 6 - Commission with Fall Colors

Ah, the holidays! Nice to have a commission come in of a horse in pasture, and to be able to pull out all the stops on the fall colors in the trees behind him!

Here's the underpainting on this 16 x 20 oil--I used a cool blue intentionally to set off the warms that will be in the layers to come. The horse's name is Quattro, and he's a racing quarter horse, two year old.

This is just the block in of the major shapes, and figuring out placement of the subject. Since I'll have two focal points--the large tree in the background and the horse/shadow combination in the foreground, I placed the horse almost left of center. I'll have to be careful to ahve his shadow be strong enough to keep that midpoint division from making the viewer uneasy! There will be white rail fences framing the horse and separating him from the woodland behind--very typical of the area.

News also, I've opened up registration for the ONE workshop I'm teaching in Southern California next year in my studio. It will be the three-day Boot Camp next February, which falls over Valentine's Day and the President's Day weekend--February 14-16. Four people have already signed up, and there are only ten slots. If you want one of the remaining six seats, please go here (opens a new page in your browser). This workshop focuses on hands-on Color System paintings, creating your own subjects in your most familiar medium.

You can see my entire blog here.

Color System information can be found HERE.

If you need to email me directly, please click here.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Dec 2 - On Location with the Golden Acrylics

On location with the Plein Air Artists of Riverside last Sunday I quickly painted evening light overlooking a vast view. And, the Golden Open acrylics work! Even in Santana wind conditions, I only had to spritz them a couple times with my water bottle. I was working with all Open except for Ultramarine Blue, that workhorse color, as I am awaiting an order to fill out the Color System.

This is called "Low Water" (Lake Matthews, California) and is a 9 x 12. I put my gear together and strapped it on the motor scooter and drove 20 minutes over to the PAAR member's house for this vista from their front yard. This scene is only a small piece of the entire view, and yet it spoke to me--loving the diagonal of the finger of the lake and the evening light on the hills and distance. Only in the sunlit areas below the halfway point of the canvas are there any hues from the warm box, and not many of them.

The Golden canvas went into my slip case as it wasn't dry enough to just toss under the seat as normal acrylics--more like oils in that regard. I tootled on back home, and had a most interesting experience.... on the scooter, I could smell the scent of turkey casseroles and turkey soup on the air--never would have had that with a car! And when I fed the critters, I noticed the wonderful juxtaposition of Jupiter and Venus right off the points of the crescent moon before I came back in the house. This is one of the photographs that Alberto took of the view of city lights and that sky, from our driveway. Life is magic!

You can see my entire blog here.

Color System information can be found HERE.

If you need to email me directly, please click here.