Jul 21 - Corrections to the backlit Demo Cowboy

Remember I said that I wanted to make some value changes to this painting? Well, easy to do with Resin Gel and some glazing over the areas that needed to drop down in value. Now I think this one is finished, and holding the "punch" that it needed for this time of day.

The question to all students of the Color System--would you have done what I did to make this painting work, or would you have chosen to do something else? I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to keep those values "reading right" for the time of day. That's why we make those little value studies for you to take with you in a workshop--so the tools are at hand when you're ready to work on your own. This painting is now clearly a small light with a large dark in mostly midtones. Before, it may have had the color, but it didn't have a clear identity for the value structure. My bad. All fixed now!

This is a 12 x 16 oil which will be mounted on a rigid substrate and available for purchase down the road a ways. Right now I want to look at it, and get a really good photograph of it for the upcoming book.

On workshops, I have a few spaces left in the Maine Color Boot Camp--Fall Colors for plein air, but mostly studio work on the Color System in a fabulous location on Mt. Desert Island. Please email me if you'd like more information. This is such a wonderful vacation spot, and hardly better with fall color, with those loooong shadows and painting in a Color Boot Camp! September 21 through 25 in Bernard, Maine--totally on the island! Tent camping is available close by in Acadia National Park, and there are many bed and breakfast places as well as motels to stay.


You can see my entire blog HERE.
My workshop schedule for 2009 is HERE.
Color System information can be found HERE.
If you need to email me directly, please click here.

Jul 20 - Colorful Study of a Goat Kid

Ah, the heat is cooking my brain, so I hide out in the cool studio (daylight basement, stays in the 80s when the outside temp is over 105!) and do work here. There are four dogs here, too, and everyone else who cannot come in (goats, horse, chickens) have plenty of shade and water.

Today's job was to organize and sort some of the thousands of photographs I have taken over the years. But (no surprise--ha!), I got distracted! This image of one of the many goat kids I've had and it just asked to be painted. So I brought out a 12 x 12 box canvas (with 1.5 inch depth) and did this colorful study of the shadow sides on this little fellow.

These colors are stated more strongly than some of my other paintings, because it was/is my intent to make the coloration easy to understand. It's a great morning light lesson painting to learn how to mix those shadow areas on a white animal. It's an oil, and painted around the edges, so no frame is needed. Available to a new or returning collector for $295. Got goats?

Congratulations to new collector John Wickham of Los Angeles, California on his purchase of "Sycamore Leaf" from my collection.

You can see my entire blog HERE.
My workshop schedule for 2009 is HERE.
Color System information can be found HERE.
If you need to email me directly, please click here.