March 25 - The Pastoral Cow Painting Finished

You can see that I kept the grays intact for this one, and held to the complimentary color scheme of purple and yellow green and the mid range of values. The highest value contrast comes in the vicinity of the cows, so that holds your eyes, and there is an implied line created by the direction of the cows (the way they are facing) that brings the viewer into the scene, and allows one to "visit" with the rest of the composition.
This original painting is available for $295 as an 11 x 14 original on my ebay store.

March 24 - The Pastoral Painting Continues

As you can see, this painting is all about the grays! As I move across the surface, I continue to combine mixes of ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, burnt umber, thalo green, yellow ochre and white to fill in the canvas areas that are distant and cool. I paint the near cow with some more of these mixes, and they are thin enough to be underpainted areas. As I paint, I am always mindful of contrasting areas, where the light area of a cow will be against a darker passage of foliage. And so the painting continues! 11 x 14 oil.

March 23 - How Now Black and Brown Cow? (Oil Lesson, 11 x 14)

Busy day today, getting ready for the get together tomorrow for plein air artists in Riverside to meet Betty Billups and her work here. She's been working prepping the many canvases that will be her four foot by 16 foot plein air mural next week, and I have been catching up on my bookkeeping and taxes. So tonight I started an 11 x 14 oil of a very pastoral scene--which will be focusing on grays. The color scheme will be complimentary purple and yellow green, and the value balance will be midtones. I'm looking forward to how this one will turn out! There will be some plein air painting in between the start and finish... the weather has been fantastic for the last few days--into the low 70s and breezy--perfect for on location painting!
My art instruction DVDs are here.