11 and 12

I needed some new material for painting landscapes, so I drove down highway 88 and took some pictures of the Superstition mountains. I drove to the top of a hill off the side of the highway, hiked around a bit, and got lots of good photos.

I've painted 2 landscapes from the photo shoot so far. That makes 12/100 for that goal of mine. Still a ways to go but at least I have started to put a dent in it.

My palette is a little more extensive on these paintings. I used Old Holland oils, again, with Graham Walnut Alkyd Oil as my medium.

Palette: 50/50 Flake/Titanium white, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Red Medium, Alizarin Crimson (Williamsburg), Green Earth, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine, Ivory Black.

In the second painting I used some Natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise Genuine from Daniel Smith Oils. This paint is made from real turquoise from the Sleeping Beauty Mountain mine in Arizona. It's a really great color. My mom gave me a few Daniel Smith oils for Christmas. They are made from gems, including Malachite, Tigerseye, and an iron oxide red made from Sedona rocks. They are really cool.

Egg and Pitcher

Happy new year!

I've started a few new paintings. I wanted to take some in-progress pictures again and this egg painting seemed like a good candidate. I'm using a limited palette here of 50/50 Titanium/Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, and Ivory Black (Old Holland brand). I am using a 50/50 mix of Graham Walnut Alkyd and Stand Oil as my medium. I think I will use a little bit of Indian Yellow and Ruby Lake glazes to get some extra warmth in the shadows, but that should be the extent of my palette on this one.

It's on a 6x8 inch panel.

Day 1:

First I toned the panel with some burnt umber and turpentine. I put it in front of the fan to dry while I set up my palette. I mixed a little bit of my medium in with each color on my palette. After getting the initial sketch and values painted in with burnt umber, I got a rough first layer completed. I used bristle brushes for this stage.

Day 2:

The Walnut Alkyd/Stand Oil mixture caused the surface to be slightly tacky by the next day. Still wet enough to work with but tacky enough to accept more paint. I switched to small sable brushes for this stage. I made some adjustments and refined the shape of the pitcher and some of the reflections. I think at this stage the underpainting is finished.

Next up is glazing. I'm going to try to keep glazing at a minimum. Glazing attracts too much dust, and I find that it is too difficult to control it on such a small painting. Plus I don't really like the gloss.

The egg needs some orange tones added to the shadowed side. A little bit of warm tones need to be added to the pitcher as well. The wood table still needs a lot of work. The reflections need to be toned down a bit, and I also have to add in the wood grain. The grain is very subtle in this piece of wood so it shouldn't take too long.

Day 3/4:

Done

I did a couple layers of glazing and I think I can say this painting is finished. I brought some more color into the shadows with Alizarin Crimson, Ruby Lake, Indian Yellow, Ultramarine Blue, and a touch of Viridian. I went with a few more colors than I had originally planned but I think the wider variety of color looks better. In addition to the glazing I went in with some Titanium White and put in the final bright highlights and reflections.

Sedona... finished?

Almost finished, I think. There's still some more changes and final touches I want to add to this before I really call it done. I'm still not too happy with the foreground. I'll have to think about it for a few days. It's just about there, though. I'm anxious to get this framed and up on the wall, and start on the next one.

Work-in-progress Gourdes

Well, it has been a busy past couple of weeks. We had our grand opening at Montage gallery/studio on Mill, which was a huge success. I talked to tons of people, passed out a lot of business cards, and sold 3 paintings.

The Sedona painting is nearly done. I've been working on it at the gallery while I talk to people. People enjoy watching artists work, and having my easel set up in the gallery has brought in more traffic. Since the painting is at the gallery it means I can't take a picture of it right now. D'oh. I'll have to take an update picture during the week.

I've been working on a little side project. I got the itch to do a very refined painting on a panel. I also decided to take some progress photos of everything, from sketch to completion. The panel is a 5x7 pre-primed Masonite panel from Gessobord. I was pretty impressed with the quality, though they can be a little pricey.

After making some thumbnail sketches and deciding on my final composition, I started working on the panel. I began with a charcoal pencil sketch of the subject (in this case, Gourdes. Gourdes were on sale at the grocery store around Halloween, so I bought some and took a bunch of pictures).

The Photo:

The winning thumbnail sketch:

The Charcoal line drawing on the panel:

Finally its time to start painting! I decided I will be using only Old Holland paints for this. The underpainting was done with Flake White and Burnt Umber.

Because I used Flake White (a quick drying pigment) and thin layers, this was dry the next day. Ready for the first layers of opaque color. My palette here (Old Holland, again) is Flake White, Naples Yellow Deep, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Red Medium, Red Ochre, Green Earth, Cobalt Blue, Burnt Umber, Ivory Black.

I took the picture indoors (it is dark outside right now) so there is a bit of a glare from my studio lamps.

Now the painting is awaiting glazes. Can't wait to get started on that.

12/19 Well I did some glazing last night, and a little more work with opaque paint. I figured I would just edit this post rather than make another one, and keep all the progress photos in one place. Stuff is really starting to take shape now.

Glazing unfortunately makes the painting glossy, and that makes it difficult to photograph. However since I am using only Liquin as my medium it means the painting dries practically overnight. I might be able to paint another glaze layer on tonight.

12/20 Next glaze layer:

Things are looking better. I still need to deepen a lot of the shadows, especially the close gourde. I might be able to get that done in 1 or two more glaze layers. For glazing I used my transparent paints from Old Holland. Old Holland paints are rather expensive, but I am slowly building up my stock of colors. I used Liquin as a glazing medium, and a little bit of Flake White for the areas where I needed to bring up highlights. The rest of the colors were Indian Yellow (orange), Cobalt Yellow, Ruby Lake, Green Earth, Viridian Light, Ultramarine Blue Deep, Ivory Black.

Well I think it's finally finished. I applied another glaze layer last night,with the same palette of transparent colors listed above, with the addition of Permanent Alizarin Crimson (I don't have an Old Holland version of this color so I had to use Winsor&Newton). There's some slight color changes I might make in the next day or two but I think that's probably all the adjustments that need to be made.

 On to the next one!

Work-in-progress Sedona landscape

This painting is 34x26 inches. I'm referencing some pictures I took in Sedona earlier this year. You may recognize the rocks on the left side from a smaller painting I did a few weeks ago. That was more or less a color study for this painting. I've been slowly building up thick layers of paint. The texture is really starting to come out. I've still got a lot to do...

In case you are curious about my palette: 50/50 Titanium White/Flake White, Naples Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Scarlet, Burnt Sienna, Alizarin Crimson, Terra Verte, Cobalt Blue, Ivory Black.

Landscapes 8 and 9

I have a couple more landscapes. This weekend is the Tempe Festival of the Arts, and I will be at my gallery all weekend. I'm going to have my easel set up and I should hopefully be able to knock out a few more of these landscapes while talking to customers. Hopefully I can sell a painting or two while I'm at it.

Another overcast landscape with a limited palette. I used Titanium/Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Ivory Black, and a touch of Cobalt Blue in the sky. I passed through lots of beautiful farmland when I was driving across the country earlier this year. Wish I would have taken more pictures.

I believe this is a little ways outside of Globe, AZ. I referenced a photo from an old AZ Highways magazine. Palette: Titanium/Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Burnt Sienna, Terra Verte, Cobalt Blue, Ivory Black.

100 Landscapes

I decided I'm going to paint 100 small landscape paintings (5x7). Landscape is probably my favorite subject to paint. I love mixing color and creating a sense of atmosphere. I've been trying out some different palettes and doing a lot of experimentation. I'll list the palette I used under each painting.

I went to Utrecht yesterday and bought them out of 5x7 panels. They only had 34 in stock. Guess I'll be going back.

Anyway, on with the show.

(SOLD)

Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Cobalt Blue, Ivory Black.

Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Scarlet, Cobalt Blue, Ivory Black

(SOLD)

I tried working with a more limited Zorn palette here. I eliminated red and replaced it with a muted, brownish red. Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Ivory Black. I think I used a touch of Cobalt Blue in there, but not much.

(SOLD)

This Grand Canyon landscape had a more extensive palette. I'm pretty happy with how this one came out and I like the vibrant colors. I used 50/50 Flake White/Titanium White (to speed up drying time), Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Burnt Sienna, Cobalt Blue, Terra Verte, Sap Green, Ivory Black.

I wanted to get a little bit more color into this overcast, rainy landscape, so I used my old landscape palette. I used this palette throughout college because it's very cheap to buy and you can mix a huge variety of colors from it. Not to mention its the best way to learn color theory. I used (Winsor & Newton) Titanium White/Flake White, Winsor Yellow, Bright Red, French Ultramarine. When you mix all of those grey and neutral tones from the primary colors, you get greys with a lot more "life" to them. It was fun working with this palette again. I'll be doing it some more...

The photo of this came out a little too much on the green side. I still have a lot to learn about photography. I don't normally use the palette knife in my paintings, but I used it to make some grass texture on this one. I'm pretty pleased with the texture, so I'll be doing that again I think. Palette: Titanium White/Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Terra Verte, Cobalt Blue, Ivory Black.

(SOLD)

I've really liked painting these overcast scenes with a limited palette. Titanium White/Flake White, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Ivory Black. Once again there was a touch of Cobalt used in a portion of the sky.

7 down, 93 to go.