Category: Trees
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Camping Castles: #1
My friend Branden took a picture of Tyler and I playing Castles of Burgundy on the last day of our camping trip. I liked the photo quite a bit, and decided to paint it. First, I cropped the photo, and edited it to strengthen some of the shadows and contrast, and then made it black…
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The Ravine: #9
Oh boy… I went for it and painted a full sheet. I have never painted something this big before, so I was a little curious to see how it would go. It turned out that I really, really enjoyed painting this large size. Its Fathers day today, so I wanted to paint my family. I…
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The Ravine: #8
I really tried on this one. This is painted on the back of another painting, so I knew starting out that it was just going to be an exercise, but I really wanted to treat it like a keeper. I think I have a good recipe now for the final painting, which Ill try on…
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The Ravine: #7
Im trying again to capture the memory of visiting the Ravine as a kid. There is something playful here which feels right. And I like that the tree back there is a defined focal point. One of the things I have struggled with is defining a focal point. As far as composition goes, this is…
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Lowery Two Color Exercise #1
A while ago, I bought Arnold Lowerys book Start to Paint with Watercolors. I read through the first forty-odd pages and tried to recreate some of what he talks about in those pages as simple drills a while ago, but didnt take on the first painting exercise until tonight. My first reaction is that this…
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Church: #1
Every year for the past eleven or twelve years, some of my closest friends and I have gone on a camping trip for a long weekend. At first, there were a lot of us, and gradually life got in the way for a whole lot of us, but Babs, Sean, Branden and I still keep…
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Nimisilla Sunset: #4
I will do a write up on this later. I painted this last night, and I like it. Im proud of myself for not going longer than I should have and creating mud on the left.
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Saturation Notation, Tree Technique, Atmosphere, and Perspective
There are two big things Im consistently disappointed in when I look at my landscapes: trees and atmosphere. Today, I set out to practice these. I grabbed some scrap paper (A.K.A. the back of a failed painting). I painted a very simple horizon and sky. The goal here was two-fold: practice painting atmosphere, and give…
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Nimisilla Plein Air: #1
I went out to the reservoir to paint tonight. I planned on walking a bit out to the peninsula, but this little window into the kayak launch struck my fancy. So I painted it. As I painted, I met a nice woman who has been an art teacher for a long time, she seemed happy…
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Nimisilla Sunset Recipe
I think a good idea is to think of a painting in terms of a recipe. You need to add the right ingredients at the right time with the right motions in order to get the right end result. With that in mind, I took the lessons I learned from my practice sessions, and tried…
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Nimisilla Sunset Practice
I played with the Nimisilla painting a lot today. I took a bunch of failed paintings, and quartered them on the back with masking tape. In each quadrant I tried a study of the painting to solve the problems as Rick Surowicz puts it. But you cant solve problems until you identify them. Here are…
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Nimisilla Sunset: #2
This is a pre-test for a painting I want to do of a scene in my memory from last week when I went fishing with my friend Babs. Babs and I have been good friends for over 20 years now. Thats a weird thing for me to say because in my mind, Im not much…
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Mohican Covered Bridge: #1
Its absolutely gorgeous out today, so I went to Mohican State Park near Loudenville, and painted the covered bridge. On my way out, as I walked across the bridge, I passed a park ranger, so I gave this to her. It took a lot for me to paint this outside because there were a ton…
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Mites, mud, and a microscope.
I spent a glorious day yesterday outside with my dog Lego. We fished in my inflatable boat. We walked through the woods. She sat while I painted a church. We drove for an hour and a half through Amish country to my favorite camping grounds. And, she lolloped through tall grass as we climbed a…
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Plein Air-McKinley Monument: #1
I have been wanting to get outside and try some Plein Air painting for a while. Ive been so busy lately that I havent had time to get out, so I decided to prioritize it today. I need some sun, and some stillness. I drove to the McKinley Monument and set up. I started with…
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The Ravine: #6
I like this sooooo much more than #5. It still has a way to go, but Im happy with this for now. I was watching videos of Joseph Zbukvic painting, and I came across one of a painting that captured a lot of what Im after in this exercise, so I tried to follow along.…
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The Ravine: #5
Im still trying to get the feel of my memories of the Ravine communicated in a painting. It turns out, nostalgia is tough to paint. Especially when you arent feeling particularly nostalgic. I really dislike this image, and hesitated to post about it, but Im trying to be good about posting the progress. My hope…
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The Ravine: #5
I wanted to try the Ravine again while the lessons from my last attempt were fresh in my mind. And – you just cant leave the driving range on a worm burner. I didnt bother with a value study because I wanted to paint this one from my last attempt. One of the things I…
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The Ravine: #4
I spent countless hours as a kid walking through a ravine near my house, sometimes with my brothers and sister, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. It was always a place where my imagination seemed to yawn open and suddenly thousands of worlds were possible. We spent days cooking salami on coffee cans, or trying to…
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The Ravine: #3
I tried to paint that picture i have in my head of the Ravine where we used to play as kids. It seems each time I paint this, I get farther from the image in my mind. To start, I sketched this composition in pencil, following a neat little trick I learned in Ron Hazel’s…