January 28, 2011

Fishing Cabins

20" x 24" oil on canvas.
Another small one. Again I tried graphic shapes on the water to add interest. However I don't think they're 100% successful.









Detail #1 the image of the boats is much bigger than on the painting.











Detail #2 Also much bigger than on the painting. One thing I frequently do, and you can see it here somewhat, is that rather than painting the positive shape I paint the negative shape. (Here as an example I painted the grass, and that creates the shape of the house.) Doing so not only creates the positive shape, but creates visual interest.

Detail #3 Here again you can kind of see that rather than paint the shrubs and shadows I painted the grass...and that described the shapes of the shrubs and shadows.





January 22, 2011

Long Shadows

36" x 48" oil on canvas.
This is another of the 3/4 down shots. I painted three or four of these (different subjects of course), to see if I could create interesting paintings.










Detail #1 The color in this painting is pretty rich but you'd never know it from this photo.














Detail #2. I know this is the stupidest reason for a vertical photo but I wanted to see if it would show up or if it would get clipped on the blog...sorry but that really was the reason.

















Detail #3 Playing again with the color of light and the color of shadow. Not 100% successful though.

January 15, 2011

Green Truck

36" x 48" oil on canvas.

I made a few paintings like this 3/4 down shot which are kind of interesting because they're fairly geometric or graphic. Some of you are going to find these way too severe, and that's fine.





Detail #1 Even the shrubs are these funny little geometric things.














Detail #2 It's really unlike me to do a painting using all straight lines.








Detail #3 Even though this painting is very unlike my other work one thing I always use is the COLOR of light and the COLOR of shadow. They're not simply a matter of using white and black (or gray.)









January 10, 2011

Big Blue Sky

40" x 48" oil on canvas.

I wanted to see if I could make an interesting painting with the main subject in just a strip on the bottom. So the colors of the houses and stuff are fairly intense in this painting but I think they work pretty well.




Detail #1. There's a very slight value difference between the sky on the right and that on the left.












Detail #2. Here you can see the use of color that makes the houses and fields interesting. They could be pretty bland otherwise.










Detail #3. I tried to make these palm trees read as palm trees even though they're shaped kind of like Q-Tips.











January 4, 2011

House on Green and Brown

30" x 36" oil on canvas.
I don't know why the house came out so bland in this photo 'cause it's color is actually quite rich. In the painting the color is definitely affected by the color of the sunlight. So even though it's supposed to look like a white house it's fairly golden colored. I photographed this painting in the afternoon, but since it was lightly raining outside the color in the image is somewhat cool.

Detail #1 The color of the house in this image is more accurate than the one above. The color of the roof isn't dark gray, it leans more toward a cool red so it looks like a cool terracotta.





Detail #2 The distant hill is more blue on the right of the trees and more purple on the left. The value and intensity are essentially the same so it reads as one thing and not two. The green field is slightly more intense on the right.