August Paintings

As my often-impaired attention span dictates, I go through stretches of doing one thing, and then move to another, and another, etc... I had done a lot of painting in late spring/early summer, and then didn't lift a brush in the six weeks or so leading up to our week at the shore in early August. For whatever reason, coming back from the beach inspired me to pull out the paints and brushes, and paint. A lot. Here are a few of the things I have done over the course of the last month. (Another post will have to cover the rest)

The first is a 9 by 12 canvas panel with a scene of a path along a stream. Revised from the version posted a while ago. I try this kind of scene often for a couple of reasons. First, I like the subject matter. Second, I don't do water well. Colors are off, too much blue, and not realistic enough. I am OK with just about everything in this work but the stream, which is pretty important in the composition. Keep practicing... [When this dries, I will have another go at touching it up, and I will post the results to see if I got closer to what I wanted]

Path Along a Stream (oils on canvas panel, 9 by 12)

The second is a 9 by 12 stretched canvas with another scene of a path along the shore of a lake, with distant hills in the background. Also revised from the preliminary version posted earlier. This is...better. I think.

Lakeshore (oils on canvas, 9 by 12)

The third is a 9 by 12 canvas panel indulging my penchant for painting scenes that are evocative of our Dungeons and Dragons RPG games. This is a scene of a vibrant red and orange sunset behind Blackthorn Keep.

Blackthorn Keep (oils on canvas panel, 9 by 12)

Lastly, a tiny 6 by 6 canvas panel of the kind that I often do when I get to the end of a painting session and ask myself "what can I do with the excess paint left on my palette?" The answer is generally something like this, a simple impressionistic sketch done in a matter of minutes. As I have noted before, there is something free and spontaneous about these little sketches that I sometimes find lacking in some of my other paintings.

Distant Lakeshore (oils on canvas panel, 6 by 6)

Anyway... Practice, practice, practice. Be accepting of the fact that you will probably get "meh" more often than you get "I like that!" And don't forget to appreciate the moments when you do get that feeling of "that's pretty good!"

It's a process.