Paper Towel Paintings

Painted outdoors last week and as set up my gear, realized I forgot to pack my brushes. I tried my palette knife but it was too difficult to fill in the canvas texture and on a small palette I couldn't mix enough volume of paint so...my solution was to wrap a paper towel around my index finger and paint that way. Here are the two works I began that way at the Seattle Horticultural Center. This is a park next to the University of Washington campus in Seattle and contains nice paths and several ponds as well as having views of Lake Washington and Mount Rainier. A nice place to paint. These two 6x8 works are at one of the ponds. There is a looseness in the work I like.

Outdoor painting season

I have been outdoors every other week or so this summer with the EAFA group. Here is the latest small work,6x8,  finished indoors because I forgot my brushes and had to start several works with my gloved fingertip and a paper towel. Sometimes you must improvise! Here I am finally getting some of the brushstroke characteristics I've been working toward, especially in the foreground. Will post more recent work soon, including the paper towel versions. 

New Arizona landscape painting

A new landscape of the Verde River in Cottonwood, Arizona. It's done in oils and is 14x18 in size. I tried to capture the Arizona light using a limited color palette. This work will be for sale at the Puget Sound Group of Northwest Painters Auction on Sept. 29th in  the Seattle Design Center.  

Three works on exhibit

I have had 3 works selected for the Eastside Association of Fine Arts "Anything Goes Show" that begins next week at the Seattle Design Center, in south Seattle. These are from my "Swirls" series that begin with many lines and then I color in and add more lines until I develop a rich surface. I first did these in small pencil and marker works, then expanded them until now these are 52x42 inches in size. It's my first chance to exhibit several of them together. They are titled "Infinity", Black, Red X, and Blue, as looking at the works is like staring into the universe. 

New small landscapes

Had trouble again with the software but found a workaround.
Here are 3 small landscapes. Bottom two are painted using a limited palette, just blue, ochre, and white. Top one is an outdoor work completed indoors due to rain washing out the rest of the session. The two limited palette works are 5x7 and 6x8 while the  more colorful work is 6x8 and shows a view from Seattle's arboretum area, with a highway overpass in the distance.

Green and Blue studies

Here are two studies of the same scene. In one I used the analogous colors of green and yellow, in the other I used more green and blue. Both give off their own feeling of light, warm and cool. The same scene can be approached from many angles and a decision needs to be made which direction to take. These studies help when outdoors to capture the right light with the correct color scheme. This is a view toward Lake Washington in the distance, while heading east on 75th Street, going downhill.

   

New studies

Had trouble with the blogger site for a while but finally straightened it out so can post again. 


Here are some analogous color studies. These are colors close to each other on the red-yellow-blue color wheel. These are the primary colors. Secondary are the orange-green-violet colors that are made from mixing the primaries. The red and yellow studies are very tight on the color wheel, almost a single color hue with just various values, or light and dark.The blue-green studies have slightly more variation. These are all scenes from a small river running through Cottonwood, Arizona. The goal here was also to find a strong light versus dark composition.