Lonely Palm

I had so much fun painting this one.  I used black gesso on the canvas before I started painting.  I love the matte finish of the black gesso and hope that when the oil paints dry on this one, the black bits peeking through will be a contrast with the shiny oils.  Of course, some oils dry flat, not shiny so I'll have to wait and see.

This was painted entirely with a palette knife.  I don't know why I don't do more palette knife paintings.  They are so different in the finished look and the feeling while I'm painting.

Along with leaving bits of black peeking through the paint throughout the painting, I left a black line between all of the major elements.  With my background making stained glass windows for so many years, I am still attracted to this look.

Lonely Palm
Image size 12" x 12"
Oil

Silverado II

I've worked on this painting some more and I like it better.  I may still work on the water some more but not right now.  I think I'm in danger of overworking it so I'm going to step back for now.

I poured some more color on the trees in the middle and right side and darkened them.  I also added some more to the water and darkened the reflections.

Silverado

I painted another poured painting this week.  Looking at it in the photo, I realize that I have a bit more I want to do on this one.  I think I will do another pour with the resist off to add more color.  I like the red but think I need more.  I also want to darken parts of the trees and add more detail and work on the water some more.  For now though, I will tape it to the wall and study it for a few days to decide exactly what to add.

The photo I used for this painting was taken in the canyons not too far from our house.  I've painted this before and plan to try it in oil and possibly pastel in the future.  It's fun to see the different results with each medium.  The first time I painted this, I used watercolor and painted almost exclusively wet into wet. The poured painting was also painted very wet but is a very tight, graphic painting since resist was added after each layer of paint.  So even though the same medium was used, they look totally differnt.  Below is the first painting I did of this scene so you can see the different effects.

So far, I like this first one better but hopefully, when I make the changes to the poured painting, I will like it equally.

Silverado

Image Size 22" x 30"

Watercolor

Laguna - Poured Painting

I haven't done a poured watercolor painting for a long time so I decided to do one this week.  Poured paintings have a very graphic quality, which I really like.  Each time a layer of paint is poured and dries, another layer of resist is added to areas that don't need to be any darker to save those values from future pours.

This is a large painting, 22" x 30", and doing each pour was a bit messy.  I ended up with a lot of the paint on my shoes.  I haven't quite learned how to keep the paint on the paper while I'm blending the colors together.  I think I might be using too much paint.

I didn't stretch the paper because I have been told that the paper can be manipulated better if it's not stretched and can be bent to make the paint go where you want.  This paper, Arches #150, dried with big vertical ripples in it which made subsequent pours very difficult.  I think I'll try the next poured painting on stretched paper and see how that works or maybe I'll use a thicker paper.

By the time a poured painting is done, it is almost completely covered with resist so it's hard to know what it is going to look like when the resist is removed.  Taking the resist off is like opening a package.  You don't know what you're going to find.  It's really fun!

Laguna
Image size 22" x 30"
Watercolor

Foam

I'm still playing with the sea.  It's so weird that I'm so into these seascapes.  I've never had any desire to paint them before.

I've always loved how the foam remains after a wave has swept onto shore so I thought I would try to paint that.  I'm pretty happy with this but I want to paint more versions of this so I get to know it and hopefully get better at them.

Foam
Image Size 6" x 12"
Oil