Another Grab Bag Palette - "The Painting"

This painting was done with my second Grab Bag Palette. These colors were a bit harder than the first Grab Bag Palette that I picked last week. My colors this time were Raw sienna, Winsor Violet, Permanent Green Light, and Oxide of Chromium, plus White.


"Hard at Work", 8" x 10" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection


I have a larger painting of this scene in the works, with my normal palette, but I wanted to give this one a try with the limited palette colors that I picked.
This gentleman was plowing his piece of this field while his wife walked along dropping corn into the rows. I usually don't take photos of people up close like this without permission. I asked this couple if I could shoot some photos to use for paintings, and I paid them for the privilege.

"Last in Line" 24 x 30

"Last in Line", 24" x 30" oil on canvas, 2008
Private Collection

This is the larger version of "Last in Line" 14 x 18, that I posted in November. I have had this finished for a while but I had not posted it.
I will not be able to post many new paintings this week. Most of my energy will be going into teaching my plein air workshop here in San Miguel. I went out painting yesterday and the weather was great. I'll post what I came up with at a later date. We should have sunny skies in the high 80's all week. Great painting weather.



Detail "Last in Line"

"Sock Monkey"

"Sock Monkey", 6" x 8" oil on board, 2008
Not For Sale

This is my second still life. I guess I can call it a series now. I don't usually take many commissions, but since "Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse" I have gotten a few requests that I just can't turn down. For the most part, I find that kids who are not actually "paying" for a painting are pretty easy to please.

There were a few issues with lighting that I struggled with. I don't usually paint at night so I don't have good lights. I just used one 60 watt bulb to light the monkey, the painting and my palette. The light from an incandescent bulb is pretty warm. That makes the paint look warmer than it really is. I adjusted pretty well for that, and the colors are actually pretty accurate when I look at it this morning. I had a hard time seeing into my values while I was painting it though. A good challenge I guess.

A still life set up like Carol Marine's is what I need to get for these.

I have added a few close ups as well. I've found that some people like scrolling on a large image to see details and others do not. I prefer to post an image that is closer to the size of the original on these small ones. Details are cool because they give you that feeling of getting up close to check out the brushwork.



detail 1



detail 2

"Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse"

"Every Cowgirl Needs a Horse", 6" x 8" oil on board, 2008
Not For Sale

One goal of mine for the new year was to do some art that would push my comfort zone a bit. I have been putting it off long enough. Today I decided to shake it up.
I have not painted a still life in years. That was a good start, but I wanted to step outside of the box even further and go with a little girl subject.
Our daughter Erin will be five on Tuesday, so I decided to paint a still life of one of her stuffed animals as a present for her. The victim was a horse that her Grandparents gave her when she was little. I got a bunch of good hugs and kisses, and she says she really likes it.
There are a lot of blogging artists, that I really admire, painting still lives these days. I was inspired to try my brush on a few.
Some of my favorites right now are: J Matt Miller, Jason Waskey, Carol Marine, Qiang Huang, Aaron Lifferth, Duane Keiser, Michael Naples, and Simon Andrews.

"Good Company"

I have been working on a large painting and a small painting, but they are not finished yet. I'm not feeling gutsy enough to post a work in progress today, so I would like to share this one that I painted last spring.


"Good Company", 30" x 24" oil on canvas, 2007
Private Collection

This woman sits in front of the church every day crocheting. Her cat often joins her. There is a special energy about this place that I can't really describe with words. I think the peacefulness of the place comes across in this painting.
I have included a few detail images. You can get a good feel for the original if you click on them to enlarge.


Detail "Good Company"



Detail 2 "Good Company"


I wanted to try the same scene with a little more of the architecture of the church. This one gives more of a sense of the location. "Good Company" is more about the woman and her companion.
"Good Company" has found the home where it was meant to be. "Sitting by the Church" is available at my gallery in San Miguel.


"Sitting by the Church", 18" x 14" oil on linen, 2007
Private Collection

"Las Sombras del Ranchito"

"Las Sombras del Ranchito", 14' x 18" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection


I am happy with the way this painting turned out. My method is not always the same with each painting. An artist should be like "Felix The Cat" and have many options in their "Bag of Tricks". That way, the process does not become too much of a formula.
In this painting, I wanted to get a lot of color into the shadows without breaking up the strong pattern of light and shade. I decided to start with one basic value for all of the shadows with lots of color changes not value changes. There is a lot of reflected light bouncing around in this scene. That made this part even more fun. I linked everything in the shadow into an interesting pattern taking care not to vary the values too much just yet. I did not paint any light colors until I was content with this step.
Sombras, by the way is Spanish for shadows.



Step One - Shadow Pattern


Below is the step one photo turned into black and white in Photoshop to show how there is pretty much just one value at this point. The only darker value is in the trees to the left, which I chose as my darkest shadow to judge the rest of my values against.
I checked the values in black and white as I was posting this, but you could take a picture of your painting along the way and try this to check your values. There are a few strays, but most of the values fall into a very limited range.
The next step was to add the color into the light areas. Again, I did not want too much variation in the values. I also did not put as much color variety into the lights. I wanted the shadow color to remain the focus.
Adusting the colors and values of both the light and shadow, I added some highlights and dark accents. This unified the painting a bit and made certain areas "read" better.
When I felt like I was thinking about the details too much I stopped.



Step One - Black and White

Two New Paintings

"Chilis and Beans", 6" x 8" oil on Linen, 2008
Private Collection

These two paintings took me way to long to complete. I had a lot of trouble with "Chilis and Beans". Maybe it was the cool overcast light in a predominantly warm colored painting or maybe it was too much detail for the small format. I worked out most of the issues that were giving me trouble including some values that I was not getting right. After days of fighting with this one it seemed kind of picked at, so at the end I went back and simplified things a bit .



"Loaded Again", 8" x 16" oil on Linen, 2008
$930. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner

"Loaded Again" went smoother than the other painting, but it is not as loose as I had envisioned when I started. I am happy with how it came out though. There was just the boy and horse at first. He looked like a man with nothing to compare his size to, so I added another figure a little bigger. You can tell how big the trees are because you have the people and horse to compare them too. Everything is relative.
I am feeling a little stressed about how these two were going, but they are done now and I am ready to loosen up a bit with my next few.

A Painting from Today (updated)

I added a few more brushstrokes and here is the finished piece. I thought that it might be interesting if I left the image from yesterday for comparison.


"A Glance to the Left", 6" x 8" oil on board, 2008
Private Collection


"A Glance to the Left", 6" x 8" oil on board

I only had a little time to paint today, so I started a new 6x8. Here is how I left it.
There are a few things that I want to adjust tomorrow. Then I will sign it and re post the photo.