To Add Atmosphere...

…to this little study, I am glazing it with a light grey. 

To try and create a rainy haze effect, I use the the cup on the left on the background, the middle cup for the middle ground, an the right clearest cup for the foreground. Hopefully after two glazes, this will add in light atmospheric perspective.

The Second..

…in the series is the same view, but this time in the darkest of night. The fun part is all the lights dancing along the horizon line. 

Every light has a different hue, so included at the bottom of the top photo is my palette, while the bottom photos show my notes for figuring out which lights are which (night exposure photos don’t do well with color balance).

The lights are painted in first, that way I can paint the sky and water over them to control their very minute shapes.

The First Of The Series of Three...

…is the low tide dusk view. The photo had a stormy sky, but the day I was painting the sky was pouring rain, and I loved how it obscured the true horizon line, so I painted it that way.

After setting it aside to leave the sky and pluff mud foreground to dry, I took the following days to paint in the spartina. 

As this is a study, I will not paint in a second layer, but instead play around with some glazes to enhance the rain atmosphere, and turn my attention to the other two studies in the series.

Three Studies...

...are up on the easel. The view is of the entrance to Charleston Harbor, picked because it is a quick block walk from the friendly confines of my studio.

This series of studies will be loosely confined to dusk at low tide, midnight at a mid tide, and a high tide sunrise.

North versus South

I thought I would post two pics of my N v. S paintings, along with a detail to show off the cool sides of the panel.

They are actually sections discarded of the gallery floor while making the floors safe for all.

But here, they get a second life to hang on the walls!

I See The Forest...

...for the trees. Every last little one of them!

And just to give you an idea of how long this took to paint, each photo roughly represents a six to eight hour painting session.

The Upcoming Group Show...

…at RLS is themed North vs. South. Nothing speaks more to me about the dichotomy of this theme than the topography of trees. But, which trees?

Considering that my last photo trip involved high speed sledding of my car through near endless mud bogged roads, that they were the perfect mirror for my northern favorite tree, and that I kind of admire their steadfast dedication to reaching straight up to the heavens, I chose a groove of tall pines as my southern subject.

The only problem was the mess of lines left from tracing the photo was an abstract jungle of near nothingness. So I painted the negative space of sky, leaves and grass, carefully scraping out each spire of a trunk.

When it came time to paint the trees, each already had its space defined.

Now I have something to work with…

Sometimes Paintings...

...fall between the cracks, so to say. 

In this case, a painting that I could not finish in time for my last solo show got hidden in storage. 

 But having some time this summer, I decided to complete it.

The first layer was, as usual, about finding the shapes and getting color in the ballpark.

Then I sand the entire surface, and begin painting with attention to the details while adjusting the color to true hues.

Here, the sky is finished, while you can see the marks left by sanding.

Here I am working on pulling the highlights from the muddy color to true reflected shapes of sky an clouds.

Now you can see the sky in the water.

The shapes become easier in the still water before the wave.

And once done, it goes in the frame.

Completed, ul 26 (lilac wine)!