Barn at Flume Road, 2014

Assignment 1 - Painting Study

I wanted to create a painting that could be seen from across the room. This work achieved that goal. Many times when I paint and draw, I stand back from my work and realize there is not enough contrast. In this quick study, I painted directly from observation, with the garlic placed outside in the full sun. The intense light allowed me to clearly see the form, and deliniate areas of shadow. This time I used thick oil paint, and painted wet into wet, allowing the colors to mix on the canvas. I think I used zinc white here, as well as french ultramine for the blue, magenta and/or permanent rose, and yellow light hue. The texture of the gessoed paper shows through to give a nice textured feel to the ground. This painting was inspired by the mostly monochromatic Diebenkorn still life paintings I saw at the Palm Springs Art Museum in January 2014. Medium: Water soluble oil paint on watercolor paper prepped with gesso.

Apple Orchard background updated

I didn't like the look of the acrylic paint so for this iteration, I have added water-based oils.

apple tree background -- in progress

I'm working on this landscape painting of our apple orchard. Lately I have been studying background paintings from animated feature films, and I'm trying to capture some of the styles and techniques I see from artists of that genre. Specific influences are from Disney and Studio Ghibli. I may tone down/tweak the colors with a glaze of some sort. Not sure yet. Still need a lot of work on this one...

pots 'n' pans

Sketch for Assignment 1 Still Life

Here is a sketch I did of some apples from the orchard by my house. I used this as the basis for the painting #1.