Sunday update

Here is another of my new Green Lake views. I've been reworking the foreground and getting closer to the colors I wanted. I have lost my reference photos from some of these so am working from my intuition. Usually, when I get stuck, I go back to the photo. Going back to the scene in most cases doesn't work as the season, the lighting, clouds, or colors are way too different. By using photos I lock in what I loved about the scene. The two I've been working on were from the same day where there was bright light during summer.

Seattle Nights

Night scenes continue to fascinate me and I'm reworking some old ones with better paint quality. Here is one from my yard that shows trees and lights of nearby homes. I have several other small night scenes plus some larger ones and am planning on trying to get them shown as a series of night images. I have a plan to take some photos of downtown Seattle, on a juicy rainy night with reflections, and then work up some city night scenes. Will have to be late at night as some of the best angles are from the middle of the street where the pavement will glow.

The image shown here is 12 x16.

Drawings

Here are several drawings from my weekly sessions. They are a combination of oil pastels and pencils from 20 minute poses by the model. Have several landscapes in the works and getting a Monet density look on some of them that I like. Will post those soon.

More Green Lake

Here is another palette knife painting of Duck Island at Green Lake. I'm off to my art lecture series but wanted to post a new work. Also spent a sleepless hour near 1 am last night as it was hot and I couldn't sleep so reworked my yellow abstract I've been working on. Not sure where it will lead but it's always a challenge.

I've been about the challenge of realistic painting versus abstract as the lectures I've been attending are about abstract art and there are several attendees who I can tell don't appreciate abstract or non-objective work, yet, I find it more difficult to do a good abstract than a figure or landscape. Once you have an image in front of you, it limits the process while with an abstract, there are no limiting factors except ones you must choose. These choices are no easier than deciding on the issues of realistic painting and often even more difficult. One only needs to see the loads of bad abstract painting to see this is true while there are many beautiful landscapes and figures painted every day it seems.

Green Lake Night

This is another small painting, 12 x 16, that I'm redoing in a thicker style with the palette knife. I often walk Seattle's Green Lake at night and this image was from a remembered dark night where I could see dark clouds and background against a silver lake. There were just a few lights along the lake and in the distance along with ballfield lights. The lake is a constant for my landscapes and I return to it again and again. I have a large project in mind where I take photos from the middle of the lake and paint a series of works that can be hung around a room on all sides, enveloping the viewer with a 360 degree view of the lake shore. I plan on doing this during the summer when the trees are lush and colors are bright.

New Oregon Landscape

I'm continuing in the thicker paint, palette knife landscape mode. Here is an Oregon coast scene with an unusual angle. I was high up on a cliff, overlooking a smaller cliff, and then the beach was below that. There are trees reflected in the edge of the water. The composition is strange although it follows my reference photo pretty closely. Truth is stranger than fiction and this works better as a photo than a painting but I wanted mainly to get the texture and thickness on the canvas. This was also overpainted with the palette knife on a thinner unsatisfactory painting. Here I had to brush in the waves a little as the knife wouldn't quite give the effect I wanted.

Back from Reno

Took a weekend break for a trip to Reno. Nice weather but not much art work except sketching. Finally in the habit of carrying a pad with me again. Also took a few landscape photos of the Truckee River that runs through town.

Finished a small Mexico landscape and worked another layer on a new abstract tonight. Did the small landscape, 8 x 10, with a palette knife after being unsatisfied with the normal painted version. You can see some of the thickness of the paint. I used a new alkyd quick dry medium plus galkyd medium to make the paint the right consistency and insure it dries in a week or two. Using the water soluble oils and these mediums I can use thicker strokes on all my work and still paint a few times a week on the same work without disturbing the layers. Those are three sun bleached granite rocks, really small islands, in the distance. This is the view from the shore in Mazatlan.