An April Update

It's been over a month since I have posted something, which is very rare in these pandemic days... Which, as usual, isn't to say that things haven't been busy.

Family - In the intervening month I got my second Pfizer shot. Julia got her first and second Pfizer shots. Grace got her first and second Pfizer shots (the last just 2 days ago). Amp was fully vaccinated long ago for her job. We believe in science. And in 2 weeks, we will be as vaccinated a family as we can be (two weeks post-Pfizer). To those who believe that these vaccinations are a way for the government to microchip you.......if the government had that capability, they've already chipped you...so just get the shots please.

Grace is nearing the end of her junior year, and nearing taking her driving test. A big milestone. Applications for band leadership positions have been submitted for next year, her senior year, and having been a Field Major this year, she has applied for Drum Major next year. Fingers crossed. These milestones come too fast these days.

Art - I haven't painted anything in a "fine art" sense since I last posted something here, but I have been painting, just of the Dungeons and Dragons figure variety. I have been having the urge to get back to oil painting these last few days, though, and there is a blank canvas sitting on my easel now, just waiting.

And a personal note - I was going to post a tongue-in-cheek entry titled "Farewell to an Old Friend", as of this morning. It was going to be in recognition of the fact that the iMac computer that I have had here on my desk for the last 10+ years, and has been the computer that I have written every post on this blog since late 2010, seems to be in its death throes. It is labeled a "mid-2010" manufacture and has served me more than admirably, contributing in excess of a decade of service. I'd like to see your PC do that... Anyway, starting a few days ago, the display sometimes works, sometimes doesn't, and the poor old machine randomly shuts itself down to rest. The exhaustion of old age, I guess. It is running the Mac OS that is three entire versions back since it doesn't have the ability to be upgraded any further than it already has been, and there is modern software that it cannot run... I write this post on its successor, a late 2019 manufacture iMac purchased shortly before the pandemic in November 2019. Despite being the newer machine, and far better in capability, it got relegated to the basement, used intermittently while I plugged away on the old one. I'm not 100% sure why. Creature of habit I suppose. But everything has been transferred to the new machine, and I hope it can give me anywhere near the service the old iMac did. So...tongue-in-cheek, farewell to a very old friend. In a strange and ridiculous way, I will miss you.

The reality check that made this intended post seem superfluous was a text earlier this evening from my "other brother" Leo letting me know that a wargaming friend of ours passed away yesterday. We are in our mid-50's, and this friend was a good bit our senior (into his early 70's I think), but I had known him for the last 20 years or so. It wouldn't be fair to say we were close, or that my contacts with him in the last decade or so were anything more than random meetings at the various HMGS wargaming conventions a few times a year, but it is a shocker nonetheless. He was a good guy, and the world will be a bit the lesser without him. In the sense the actually matters... Farewell Old Friend. You will be missed, and remembered.

Shot 1

The wackiness of scheduling a vaccination is a topic for another day (and one that I will never write about), but I drove 45 minutes into the city this morning to a CVS pharmacy on the Temple University campus and got my 1st of 2 shots of the Pfizer vaccine.

The process was simple, once you get past the fact that I needed to be on the CVS website at 1:00am when they open the new batch of appointments to schedule myself, and needed to go 30-some miles away past at least a dozen other CVS locations to get to the CVS location in North Philadelphia that had an available appointment.

Anyway, I did the right thing and got my shot. Three weeks from today, I go back to North Philadelphia to get my second shot.

As of now, I have some minor discomfort in the arm that got the shot. It's a sweet sweet pain.

What I learned from Dad

It would take way more than one post to elaborate on the above, but, in lieu of that, I'll confine myself to one answer and the root causes of that answer...

Be involved in what your kids are involved in.

Brother Dave was a very good baseball player in little league; a slick fielding shortstop (he could actually catch the ball) and a pitcher who could reliably get the ball over the plate (a rare thing in little league).

So what did Dad do? He coached little league baseball. For several years.

Dave and I were involved in band and orchestra in junior high school (back when there was a "junior high school" and not "middle school"), and on into high school.

So what did Dad do? He got involved in the parents' organization and helped with Hoagie Day fundraisers in junior high, and Spaghetti Dinner fundraisers in high school, and was on the parents' board of directors for these organizations. Looking back, I realize how much of his time he invested in what Dave and I were doing. Coaching baseball. Coaching soccer. Band and orchestra Boards. Teaching us to fish. Hiking in the woods with us and our friends. All of it.

I was aware enough to recognize this at the time, but now, having kids of my own, I feel like I can truly appreciate it.

Grace, and Julia before her, were involved in the Drama Club and all of the musicals. Amparo has given huge amounts of her time to this.

Grace has been very involved in Band, and I have given time to this as a parents' Board member.

What would Dad have done? He would have done what I have done, and what Amp has done. Given his time and attention to his kids' interests.

So I might have my faults, but I have at least learned something over the years.

And years down the road, hopefully Julia and Grace will be able to look back and recognize that their Mom and Dad cared, and that the time we spent wasn't for us...it was for them.

Completed D&D Monsters

A little bit of additional detail work has completed the three new monster miniatures posted previously.

Bone Naga, Giant Snake and Cloaker (Dragonborn for scale)

Next on the painting table are a few more D&D blister packs: Grick and Grick Alpha, Grell and Basilisk, Black Dragon Wyrmling and Blue Dragon Wyrmling. And the Roper from the last post...

I hope to have at least some of these done by the end of the weekend.

Painting Some Recent D&D Miniatures

While the most recent oil painting effort first layer dries for a few days, I have been inspired to go back to painting some Dungeons and Dragons miniatures that I have picked up recently at Games Keep in West Chester, and Showcase Comics in Swarthmore. I have gone to Games Keep a few times in recent months with the express purpose of spending some money to support them, and I went to Showcase Comics yesterday for this first time in over a year for the same purpose. No harm in buying a bunch of stuff that you want but don't really need if it helps the stores that you value and want to still be around when the pandemic ends. Or at least moves into a different phase...

Of the [unspecified] number of packs of pre-primed ready to paint WizKids miniatures I picked up, I decided to start with the 4 shown below: a Cloaker (the manta ray thing), a giant constrictor snake, a Bone Naga, and a Roper (the tentacled stalagmite thing). All are recent releases and are classic D&D monsters, and all would be useful adds to my "painted by me" collection. I know that I have a couple of pre-painted Ropers, and an older pre-painted Cloaker, as well as a host of snakes of all shapes and sizes, but these models are all very nice and will be on the easier end of the painting scale. Not having done any miniature painting in a a bunch of months, I'd like to get back into it with something that can be done effectively and quickly so as to give me the positive feedback to continue with some more.

Dungeons and Dragons minis

The Bone Naga is not that far from done. The Cloaker has some partial base coating only, as does the Giant Constrictor Snake. The Roper has only been glued to his base and had some mold lines scraped and cleaned up. The dragonborn sorcerer is included for scale. These are all big monsters.

As a side note, you can see where I have added Liquitex brand flexible modeling paste to the bases of the snake and the Cloaker to blend the molded figure base into the base itself. It's always good to do this BEFORE painting anything, if you have the patience (and memory) to do so. The Bone Naga is almost done and then the base will still need to be dealt with. I need to fix the Roper base before painting to avoid the same problem I will have with the Bone Naga.

 More to come.

Playing with Greens

So I've bought too many paint colors (shocking), and that's just the recent binge of Charvin Fine Oils. I wanted to do something easy tonight, as it's been a long week and I'm not sure I have the brainpower left to think too much.

I decided to play around with a simple panoramic landscape across some sunlit fields to the trees and hills beyond. The main goal would be to work with a few of the greens I have purchased to get used to them.

First step as usual was to do a sketch in thinned burnt sienna, on a 6 by 12 inch canvas panel.

Panoramic Sketch

I used a limited palette of colors, and got a first layer of paint down in about 30 minutes. I am happy with the background and the atmospheric perspective of the different layers of hills, receding more to a grayish blue-green the further back you go. I'm also pretty happy with the mid-ground and foreground fields. They will need a minimal amount of touching up, but I think they are more or less done. The trees in the mid-ground are the area that needs some additional work. I need to work with the greens in the different clumps of trees to make sure that they give a proper feel for those that are closer and those that are further away. This is much-needed practice on value and color saturation. The sky will also need some cleanup in places where the burnt sienna sketch muddied the lower sky.

Stage 1 (yellowish artificial light photo)

Per my prior post on painting in layers, I have every intention that this will just be the first stage, and after this has a few days to dry, I will go back and look at this with a fresh eye, adding and changing as needed.

The limited number of colors I chose to work with are shown below. Excluding the ever-present titanium white and burnt sienna, there are 6 additional colors: cerulean blue hue, sap green, celadon green deep, cinnabar green light, burnt umber and french yellow primary. I wanted to see what I could do with a standard dark green and then a darker olive and a lighter olive. Yes, you can mix all this, but....you'd have to be better than I am at mixing colors. So far.

8 Charvin Fine Oils colors

I am absolutely loving these 150ml tubes of Charvin paint. I love the kinda-thick but still creamy texture of the paint, and the larger tubes make me less hesitant to put out bigger blobs of paint on my palette. That being said, the small amounts of paint used on this 6 by 12 panel are such that I could probably paint 100 paintings of this size with these tubes. I might run low on the titanium white, but then again I might not.

I also had my first experience with using Mimik Hog bristle brushes on this painting, and loved them as well. Firm enough, but still flexible and with good bounce (for lack of a better term). They held the paint and moved it very well. I think I might have a new favorite brush.

Lastly, I made a few final tweaks to the Farm Road painting from a couple weeks back, after it was dry. This consisted of adding wire to the fence line and cleaning up the area around the tree trunk. As I look at it, the prominent tree still needs some work, as it looks too flat now.

Farm Road, final touch ups

A little more painting, a little more progress.

What Summer Might Bring

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, we had a second baby girl.

Julia holding Grace on her birthday

Then she grew. And got smart. And ambitious about her future.

We had an interesting discussion tonight at the dinner table (prompted by her) about summer programs that she could apply for in the gap between her junior and senior high school years. She is looking at a bunch of medical science programs that would be relevant to her interest in neuro-pharmacology (whatever that is...). Assuming these summer programs happen, of course.

Field Major Grace

There are programs of related relevance in Philadelphia (Drexel and the University of Pennsylvania), Washington DC (Georgetown University) among others. Somewhere in the discussion, she ruled out the University of Pennsylvania's summer program because she told us that their program was too expensive. I'm not sure of the context in which she reached that conclusion, other than that a perceived sizable amount of money is a perceived sizable amount of money.

Which I have been thinking about in the hours since...

I was able to go to a world-class liberal arts college in part because I was able to get accepted to that school, but just as (or maybe more) importantly because my parents and grandparents lifted me up and gave me the opportunity to do so. I will never forget how fortunate I was to have that door opened for me. Being able to get accepted to a school doesn't mean much if you can't afford to actually go there, or if you do but then spend the next few decades saddled with crippling student loan debt....

Which I guess brings me back around to my original thought. It's Grace's job to aim for the stars. It's our job to build a rocket to help her get there.

Now I have to go Google neuro-pharmacology...

Failing is OK

I've been working lots of hours this week, and I got to the end of the day and wanted to paint something to relax. So I sat down with a blank 8 by 10 canvas panel, no particular thought in my head, and...proved that perhaps you need to have some sort of plan before simply starting to throw paint around. After perhaps 20 or 30 minutes of wasting some paint and a panel, I did something that I haven't done in months - I threw the panel in the trash, cleaned the two brushes I had been using, and walked away.

And that's OK. I was impatient, unprepared, mentally in a worn out state, and the outcome was predictable enough. But I tried. Better luck tomorrow.

Lastly, a random picture from the past: Leo, Ted and Dave hiking Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Unit, summer of 2011.

TRNP North Unit, 2011

Maybe I should paint this...

Farm Road

I'm doing pretty well at trying to paint at least a little bit of something every day.

Today's painting is a simple rendition of a farm road, done in about an hour and a half, on an 11 by 14 inch canvas panel using about 6 or 7 colors of Charvin oil paints (not a standard primary or split-primary palette - just some "landscapey" colors).

Farm Road (oils, 11 by 14 canvas panel)

The point of this exercise was to choose a very limited number of colors to work with, and see what I could come up with. Having bought too many colors, it is good practice to try to paint something without using a whole host of colors. Owning all the colors is one thing, using too many of them in one painting is another...

All things considered, I like it a lot. And it was a good learning experience.

A Weekend of Happy Cooking

Amp and I spent some of this weekend doing something that we both enjoy, given the time to do so... Having a glass of wine (or two or three) while cooking together. This weekend, we made an Ina Garten Eggplant Parmesan recipe (from FoodTV) on Saturday and a Jacques Pepin Boeuf Bourguignonne (beef stew) recipe on Sunday.

Ina Garten's take on Eggplant Parm was not the classic Italian American fried mozzarella cheese fest, which we thought might be a nice change of pace (I make one of those cheese heavy versions, and it is good, but has a lot of cheese and a lot of frying). This recipe is three layers of pre-roasted eggplant, marinara, fresh mozzarella, goat cheese and parmesan, and fresh basil. We are converts to the oven roasting of veggies...

Layers of goodness

A crispy panko bread crumb and garlic topping is the last step (along with Ryder cleaning Amp's fingers...)

Ready for the oven

The recipe was easy if a little fiddly (time consuming), but gave a lighter and more eggplant-based end result than the version I have been making for years now. The kids agreed that this was the better version, and I have to agree. It was more about the eggplant and less about the cheese and sauce. Not that it wasn't plenty rich enough... The goat cheese gave a nice unexpected tanginess, and the panko topping gave a really nice crunch.

Half demolished...

Sunday was for Jacques' beef stew. I adore Jacques Pepin, and would consider him one of the two or three greatest influences in my love of food and cooking. I probably have more of his cookbooks than any other author, and I treasure them all. Especially my copy of Chez Jacques, which has a "Happy Cooking" signature plate.

Chez Jacques

"Happy Cooking!" Indeed.

"Happy Cooking"

This was the target we were aiming for (and I think we came very close!).

Boeuf Bourguignonne

Early stages - Beef, onions and garlic.

Beef Stew stage 1

Middle stages - Add a full bottle of good red wine (a reserve Spanish Rioja in this case).

Beef Stew ready for the oven

The end result - Adding separately cooked pearl onions, carrots and crimini mushrooms, along with lardons of cooked salt pork (basically little batons cut from a big chunk of bacon).

Finished Stew

This is definitely a weekend recipe (as was the Ina Garten one), but well worth the effort. It was rich and decadent. The cooking liquid in the "ready for the oven" picture above is no water, no stock, just an entire bottle of good quality ready wine. Yum.... 

We don't always have the time to spend on a pair of 3-hour dinners, but this weekend we did. One small benefit of 1 year of Covid19 stay-at-home time I suppose you could say.

Stay safe. Be well. And try to find any small silver linings you can from this time we are forced to spend staying at home.

Painting in Layers

So this was going to be a post about painting oils in layers, with a look at a fairly dramatic improvement between a simple painting done in one sitting and then the improvement made several weeks later when revisiting the painting and adding a second layer.

Which would have been great, except for the fact that I was apparently so underwhelmed by the initial painting that I never bothered to take a picture of it.

Which makes the before-and-after just an "after." So here's the after:

Cart Path (oils, 9 by 12 stretched canvas)

What I would say about the one-layer original painting is that it was simple and dull. The greens of the tree line in the distance were too similar in tone to the trees in the left foreground. The cart path had become too greenish considering that the whole painting is green. The stream didn't exist, and the flower patch in the lower right foreground was just some grassy vertical stripes of similarly toned green (it wasn't a flower patch). Again, too monochromatic, given that this wasn't a tonalist painting. Tonalism and "bleh" aren't the same thing.

The original painting was a simple study loosely copying an Isaac Levitan work. It was basic. Looking at it with a critical eye, in order to be a "painting" and not a study sketch, it would need something to add interest and to balance out the composition. The monochromatic green issue would need to be mitigated a bit as well.

Without being able to see the before and after, the changes made in the second layer were as follows. A small stream was added in the lower right quadrant to add interest and balance out the weight of darker values that were concentrated in the upper left. The distant tree line, always intended to be in brighter light, was highlighted with lighter greens, while remaining a little less saturated (in other words, they are a paler whitish-green rather than a highly saturated yellowy-green). This brightens the tree line up while keeping it pushed into the distance. The dark mass of shaded trees on the left were detailed a bit by adding some blue sky holes along the top edge and punching some light yellow-green highlights through the midsection on the mid-right edge of the tree cluster. This hopefully gives the impression that there is sky through the trees, and you can also get a peek at the sun-washed grassy fields through the trees. The patch of tall grass in the lower right corner was turned into a flower patch by adding clumps of yellowish-white.

The intent of all of this was to create a more complex composition, with a number of different areas of focus to draw the eye. The brightened-up cart path should lead the eye up and back to the point where it vanishes into the darker gap in the distant tree line. The stream should capture interest (people like water!), and the flower patch should pull the eye down and to the right with its little pops of brightness in an otherwise still mostly green painting. Lastly, the bright area of sunlit grass in the left midground should make the viewer's eye want to go up and around the patch of trees on the left, so as to see what is hiding around that corner...

The end result of all this is that this little 9 by 12 painting has gone from one where every time I look at it I think "something's missing" to one where I look at it and say "it's not perfect but I like it." And that's worth a lot.

From a selfish standpoint, writing this blog entry helps me prove to myself that I am developing a better eye with regards to being able to critically and effectively review and assess what I am looking at in my own work. There remains the issue of ability to execute versus intent, but that is just practice.

The most important lesson though, I think, is the affirmation that there is nothing magical or heroic in being able to create a finished oil painting in one sitting (alla prima) wet-on-wet. Oils with their long drying time are still intended to be painted in layers. The first layer of this was nothing special. It was left aside for weeks, drying thoroughly in that time, before I decided to come back and try to "fix" it. I will admit to painting the stream in several short sittings while tweaking it and trying to get it right, effectively painting wet-on-wet in a second layer while the first layer remained dry and stable underneath.

Live and learn. Or live and reinforce what you know but perhaps don't completely believe yet. The outcome is what matters and not the process in getting there. In one layer this was a boring monotone sketch. With thoughtful assessment and rework, it has become something that I am kinda proud of.

So, note to self: paint oils in layers because it works.

Lastly...A running joke in our house with regards specifically to modern art is "I could do that" with a response of "yeah, but you didn't."

My art isn't great. I freely admit that. I am still on the steep initial part of the learning curve, and I aspire to be better. But at least I did it.

Paint Every Day

Easier said than done, but I am trying. Yesterday I wanted to paint something with pinks and purples in the sky. Today I wanted to paint something with reds and browns in the land.

So I ended up with this simple desert landscape, reminiscent of the American southwest. More or less. [touched up a bit the next day]

Desert Vista (oils, 11 by 14 canvas panel)

It is fair to say that I am going through a phase where I am just playing with colors. I have been enamored with the (embarrassingly large) selection of Charvin Fine Oils I have acquired over the last month or so, and doing simple sketches like this serves several purposes. First, they do provide me the impetus to paint something every day. Second, they remove the pressure of sitting down to do "a painting" when I can try to trick myself into believing that I am just doing "a practice sketch." That might sound silly, but it works. This is just a practice sketch which I knocked out in about an hour. Which also happens to be an OK little painting.

Charvin colors in this one that I really like include Savanah, Naples Yellow, and Tropical Green (in the lower sky).

All beginner oil painting books and online tutorials would recommend that you start with either a primary palette (red, blue, yellow and white) or a split primary palette (a warm and cool red, a warm and cool blue and a warm and cool yellow, plus white). My collector-mentality OCD doesn't let me get past wanting ALL the colors. So...I adapt to the reality of me. I am going to buy all the colors (or at least most of them), so I might as well take them for a test drive...

There is something to be said for being self-aware, and accepting the reality of what you are. I will buy too many colors. I should learn to use them.

Palette Exercise #1

It's time for bed, and I thought I would try something fun. I looked at the remnants of paint on my palette and asked myself "I wonder what I could paint with that?"

I pulled out my iPhone and set the timer to 7 minutes. Nothing like a hard deadline.

6 minutes and 43 seconds later I had this.

Palette Exercise #1 (11 by 14, oils on canvas panel)

Interesting... Childlike but interesting.

PS - Colors left on the palette, if anyone cares, were mainly French blue, Sap green, Yellow ochre, Burnt umber, Burnt sienna, French red deep, Warm gray, Tropical green and Meadow green. There was also the tiniest touch of white along with whatever mixing puddles were left on the palette in small quantities. All colors were Charvin Fine Oils.

Dirty disorganized palette

This was fun, and while the outcome isn't all that great, it was a valuable exercise in trying to loosen up and let go. I have trouble doing that. Maybe in the future I will lay out a standard palette of colors and set a deadline to complete a small sketch in 15 or 20 minutes. Or pull 6 or 7 random tubes of paint out of a box and have to use whatever I get. I can see some utility in mixing some short exercise like this into my routine.

Painting Workspace

So as not to find myself stuck in the basement while painting, I have commandeered (with approval) one end of the dining room table.

Dining Room Studio

The table is covered with a plastic-coated disposable table cloth and my end has a few thicknesses of canvas house painter's tarp. My table easel is a homemade contraption with the main part being a 24 inch square piece of thin plywood with a small shelf in front. This is heavy and rock-solid, and can probably hold a canvas far larger than I would choose to attempt to paint on. I know it holds a 16 by 20 inch canvas without budging.

There are some brushes and paints on the table, as well as a gray-tinted glass palette to the right. The palette is only 9 by 12 inches, and it hasn't taken me long to realize that I need a larger version of the same palette. A 9 by 12 palette sounds fairly big but it's not.

Anytime that I note that a picture has been taken in bad light, the yellowish dim light at night on this table easel is what I am taking about (see my post from earlier tonight on the little painting that can be seen here). When I take a better picture elsewhere in daylight, the results are far better.

The Sentinel Oak

Having finished, or mostly finished, a few paintings recently, I wanted to start something new. I've been out to the Brandywine River near home recently taking a few photos of the river in the dreary gray of winter, with snow on the ground, but I am...fearful...I guess you could say, of trying to paint these scenes.

The Brandywine in Winter

In lieu of diving into one of those, I decided to do a quick painting focused on one color (or color group). That being purples and pinks (and grays).

This is the result. It is an 8 by 10 inch canvas panel, in oils, painted in approximately one hour before dinner. [Photo taken in bad artificial light...]

The Sentinel Oak at Sunrise (8x10, oils on canvas panel)

Comments from Amp, Grace and my sister in law were that it was sad, eerie, ominous and kinda spooky.

I wouldn't, or couldn't, argue with any of these. I'm not sure they align with what my intent was, but perhaps the best thing that can be said about a piece of art is that it invokes an emotional response. If this quick little oil sketch made anyone feel anything, then I should be pleased.

And I like the painting.

One thing I have promised myself is that I will continue to paint in whatever style or subject matter appeals to me in the moment. In this particular moment, at about 3:30pm on a Sunday afternoon, I felt representational and symbolic and not realistic and literal.

So this is what happens. And I'm happy about it.

Across the River

Complete, or at least complete enough.

Across the River (oils, 11 by 14)

I do feel like I am getting closer to where I want to be, and I am starting to find my way...

Painting Progress

On the 15th of February, 2020, almost exactly one year ago, I painted my first-ever painting in oils. Something I have been wanting to do perhaps my whole adult life.

The painting, a Bob Ross inspired mountain scene, was painted without the proper tools, any knowledge of what I was doing, and it was a mess. And I say this with great fondness. It was my first painting. There is a bit of atmospheric perspective between the near and distant mountains...and that's about all the good that can be said about it. Which is fine.

Bob Ross?? (Bob would deny this...)

I went looking for it today, but I think I threw it away a few months ago in a fit of frustration that it was a bad painting, while cleaning up in the basement. Sigh. I'm stupid sometimes. Perhaps more often than I'd like to admit.

I only post this picture again in the hopes that I can look back on the past year and reflect on all that I have learned, which is a lot. I have a very long way to go to be able to create the paintings that I can see so perfectly clearly in my head. But I find it encouraging and energizing to think that I have progressed from that first painting to some of what I have been working on recently.

It's a journey, and I am enjoying it.

Across The River, In Process

To any family or close friends that have been to our family's summer house on the Sassafras River, the general theme of this should be familiar.

In order to fit it onto a standard ratio rectangular canvas (11 by 14 in this case) and not a long flat panorama canvas (11 by 22 or similar), I have had to squeeze this into a view more compressed than exists in reality. The old Decker farm (of Black and Decker fame) would be farther off to the left, and the house on the bluff at right would be further off to the right, with the intermediate trees-and-bluff section being much broader.

So, it's a rough representation, and done from memory. It seems my digital picture library is mostly devoid of pictures from the River, and I am too lazy to dig out the big box of actual printed pictures that is in the basement somewhere. I hope.

Anyway, this is a simple Stage 1 of an "Across The River" painting. There are many rivers in the world, but to us there is only one The River. Basic color blocking is in place, with details to follow.

Across the River (oils, 11 by 14 canvas panel, in process)

This took an hour. Which I only mention because I am consciously making the effort to paint quickly and not fuss over the details...

Stage 2 will require finishing the clouds, detailing the grassy areas to make them less monochrome, highlighting of the foreground wooded sections to saturate the greens and make them pop, cleaning up the few buildings, and maybe highlighting the waves in the foreground to get them closer to that Sassafras brownish-green color. 

At the end it will need a red channel marker buoy somewhere in the middle...

Two Finished Paintings

After a few minor touchups I would now consider these done. I'm happy with both of them, and photographing them in natural daylight helps immensely.

Once the painting had dried, I went back and tidied up the smaller bluff on the left, and added proper hints of trees high on the large bluff to better match the original picture, and to break up the longer horizontal lines. 

Near Scottsbluff (oils, 11 by 14 panel)

The bottom of the next one didn't look right, so I scrubbed out some of the mass of bushes and vegetation along the bottom edge and added grassy areas instead. Lastly, the building needed to lose a window and have its roof angled to better seem to be pointing toward the water.

Across a River (oils, 12 by 16 panel)

I still have a very long way to go to be able to better execute what I am trying to paint, but I feel like my eye is getting better, as far as being able to critique my own work goes. For a good part of my first year of painting (which is coming up in a few days, I think), I could look at one my paintings and know that it didn't look right. Now I can usually tell specifically what doesn't look right, and why. 

Crossing the Rubicon

If you have an issue with a work that is going to bother you, make the bold choice. Cross the Rubicon and leave yourself no other option than to fix it.

As I wrote in the prior blog post, the painting I wasn't satisfied with was sitting on my improvised table easel a mere 20 feet from where I sat.

So after some repeated tweaking of the wording on the prior post, I wandered into the dining room (a pandemic-never-used-room that now serves as my main painting studio), and scratched out the parts of the painting that I said I couldn't really live with, and I sketched in an under-painting to replace what I didn't like.

This doesn't commit me to being satisfied with the new sketches, but it does commit me to not settling for what I knew didn't look or feel right.

So here is what I will be working from to try to finish this work:

Phase 5 - Fix the Foreground...

For better or worse, I have a few thoughts on what to do with the foreground.

Whatever the end result, the thought process was sound.

Postscript - I'm not sure I'm going to touch this again. It may be one of my favorites of anything I have done since I started painting a year ago...