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.

pre mixing color - "The Sower"

"It is beautifully simple, painting - all we have to do is get the color notes in their proper relation." Charles Hawthorne

I am working on several posts based on the idea of pre mixing color on the palette before painting. There is so much to talk about here that I feel the best way to go about it is to do several posts. I don't want everyone to get bored, and I don't want to overload a blog post with too many ideas.
I'll try and not repeat myself too much. If you have not read my previous post on pre mixing color, it is here.

On this one I worked from a photo, mixing colors for about twenty minutes. I started by mixing my lightest shadow color, which is the woman's sweater in shadow. I compared the values of all of the other colors to that.
Then I blocked in the main masses of the painting for about thirty minutes without mixing any new colors.
After that, I began breaking those main masses up into smaller shapes for another ten or fifteen minutes. Mostly in the background trees. I realized that I was going beyond the purpose of this post so I stopped.
Photos below - (1) palette, (2) after 30 min., (3) after 10-15 min. more.




"The Sower", 10" x 8" oil on linen, 2008
Private Collection

I find that key issues that many students in my classes face are seeing color and value, mixing accurate color, working too slowly to catch the rapidly changing light, and painting the details before the main masses are blocked in accurately. I wanted to find a way to focus on these issues.
It is all about getting the right color, making it the right shape, and putting it in the right spot.


I would like to add a few quotes from "Hawthorne on Painting". If you don't have this book, get it. It is only like six bucks. I have read it at least twenty times. Each time I pick up on something new, something that helps me with where I am at the moment.

"The mechanics of putting one spot of color next to another - the fundamental thing."

"Remember, no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true, get them true and you will be surprised how little else you will need."

"Do studies, not pictures. Know when you are licked - start another. Be alive, stop when your interest is lost....... It is so hard and long before a student comes to the realization that these few large simple spots in right relations are the most important things in the study of painting. They are the fundamentals of all painting."

"A mass either stays within the lights or it falls into the range of the darks, and by half squinting the eyes you can tell to which it belongs. Remember, the eye takes in all your big lights against all your big darks."

I'll stop there for now.

Viernes Santo- Good Friday

Since it is Good Friday, Viernes Santo here in Mexico, I wanted to share these two paintings that I did my first year living in Mexico. That was 1990.
Here is my confession. I do not know what size they are or the titles that I gave them. I am bad at keeping records of that sort, but I was even worse back then. Maybe it seemed presumptuous to me to think that it would matter. Maybe I was just lazy. They are probably about 24"x30" give or take a little. Oil on canvas. These are scanned from fairly bad snap shots.



On Viernes Santo there are Via Crucis (Way of the Cross or Stations of the Cross) all over Mexico. I was living in Atotonilco, and this was the first time that I ever saw anything quite like this. They reenact the Stations of the Cross with local folks playing the roles. Everyone turns out to watch. They end up with the crucifixion in front of the church.




I liked the fact that the guy in the foreground had his crown of thorns over a wool cap.

I have a few other paintings or the Via Crucis, but I am was so bad about photographing my art and keeping records, that I could not find images.


Here are a few more photos of the procession. These are from 1990 in Atotonilco.
The views from above were taken from the roof where I was living at the time. Then I went down into the crowd. There are a few others taken by a friend of mine, Phil, who was visiting at the time.














Thanks for looking!

"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"

"In Front of Arturo's Store"

"In Front of Arturo's Store", 8" x 10" oil on linen, 2008
$720. Framed, Available at Galeria Gardner

These women set up in front of my friend Arturo's store, in Atotonilco, to sell framed pictures of saints, prayer books, crosses and other religious stuff. Pilgrims that come from different parts of Mexico, to spend a week doing pentinence at the church, are their main customers.

The overcast day made it so there were no strong light and shadow patterns to work with.


"In Front of Arturo's Store" Detail 1

I don't like posting images that are so big, when clicked on, that you have to scroll to see them . I would rather post "detail" images. They are fun, because they are like little paintings in themselves. It also allows for a close up view of the brushwork. It's just colors and shapes in the right place.
Any opinions on this? Which do you prefer? Large images to scroll over or details like this?


"In Front of Arturo's Store" Detail 2

I tried to keep this painting simple. I wanted the gesture of the people to tell the story.


"In Front of Arturo's Store" Detail 3

"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

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.