Busy Saturday

I'm pretty tired, but I felt the need to post this paintng.  This is the larger painting I've been working on. Seeing it online seems to help me decide where I need to make corrections.  I ran out of natural light to photograph this so it didn;t come out very clear.  I was careful to prepare the lines in this one, yet I still struggled to make it work.  Finally after piddling around with it I decided to go bold and try whatever happened to fall on the canvas.  That;s when I made the most progress.  Sometimes being too deliberate handcuffs me. I will try to get a better photo tomorrow.  

Early Saturday.

Early Saturday on 6th   12X16" Acrylic on Canvas

 I started this one Saturday morning.  I chose the smaller canvas thinking that I first needed to establish a rhythm of painting.  Initially  I couldn't picture in my head how the painting would work, but I kept going.  I added layers to the foreground, established some lines and kept adding layers.   Eventually I was able to work thru the problems and it emerged quite nicely.   I'm learning that you can't paint as freely with Acrylic as you can with watercolor, unless you don't mind wasting a bunch of paint.  I usually mix colors on the fly, but I don't expect them to dry out in 10 minutes.  I know there are ways to make them last longer, and I'll have to look into doing that.  I do like that you can layer them as well as make them opaque.  Well, its on to the next canvas.  I need to do a larger painting.  This one's 12X16"

Downtown Early Morning...So Far

This is the Acrylic Painting I've been working on.  I've got some tidying up to do here, but the main portion is done.  This is a rare case where the original actually look better than the photo.  It's very difficult to capture the dark colors with a camera.  I was thinking about making the headlights in the background more prominent, but this seems to be working as well.  I'll have to sit on it.  Im moving on to the next scene.  A larger painting that might test my resolve to ge this project done. 
  One thing I have discovered again about Acrylic paint.  It dries faster on the pallette than you can paint most of the  time.  This makes me think harder about moving to oils.

Remembering what works

 The most incredible thing about the internet is, you can just surf around and get inspired by all the Artists out there who are doing things you admire.  The down side in a way is that you realize how many talented Artists are out there, and you can feel like getting noticed will be difficult at best.  Making a living in art has always been difficult, and when I see how many Artists are represented, it seems to me that the market is pretty flooded.  The up side is that once you start to feel like you are making the work you can show, you can get it out there instantly.   Anyway, I was doing some research for my next painting, which I've decided will be an urban scene.  A couple of clicks later, I found some fantastic paintings that I can use as a spring point for inspiration and composition reference.  Then I looked up one of my own paintings that I liked to remind myself how I treated the street lights.  This Woodstock painting came out succesful because I was able to get the transition of intensity to work.  More later on this.  By the way, one of my favorite artists (so far) when it comes to urban Landscapes is Jeremy Mann.  I will get some links in later, but for now I have to go.

Not finished but...Next...New Subject.

 Editors Note:    I'm inserting this in the first part of my entry because I forsee some helpful hints coming my way.  I should first point out that I wasn't finished with this painting.  I realize the sky has more detail than the foreground, which gives it a problem with depth and cohesion.  I was going to work on the foreground next.   I welcome comments, but at this point I'm not going further with this painting because of time constraints...


 Original Post;
I spent the better part of a morning trying to fix what I thought was wrong with this painting.  For a painting that has a dominating sky, there wasn't enough "drama" if you will.  I inserted some dark clouds at the top and thought about adding more.  But I got to the point that I really wasn't interested in the topic anymore.  To me, the subject itself didn't keep me interested.  The top painting is more what I would have wanted.  That's a cropped version and the camera picked up some interesting patterns that I don't see in the original. The color variations are a little different.  I would consider the top painting (in its presentation here) to be more successful than the second photo of the exact same painting below. Of course, in my hurry to blog, the second photo is blurry (once again) and as a result ends up looking much less professional.  I don't dislike this painting, and I don't consider it a total failure.  It just doesn't move me when I look at it.
I haven't finished putting in some of the grass in front and bringing in more of the contrast.  But for now, I have more pressing needs.  I need to present some finished paintings for my new project.  I don't think this will end up being one of them.
   Having said that, we all know that when someone stops worrying about a painting, they often can come back and somehow make it work .

I thought I should post something on this painting since I started with it, but encouragement is not what I'm looking for today.  I need to move forward.  Gotta go.

  

It does suffer a bit from the two in one problem at the is point.  The sky is not matching up with the ground quite yet.  The dimensions of the canvas are not really to my liking for this scene.

New Beginnings and Traditional subjects

I guess I should mention that this painting is on canvas, and I'm working in Acrylic.

That tornado on the right is unintentional.  I sprayed water on the painting and the drip created that . It clearly doesnt belong here.  Maybe in another ....not a bad idea.

Looking a little stiff and plain.  I need to step it up somehow.

Part of the reason I haven't blogged in a while is my camera has decided to drop me as a partner.  It won't let me take many pictures, and when it does, it is reluctant to allow me to download them.  In any event, I took these blurry dark pics of my current project.   A traditional landscape.  I don't know how I feel about this one yet.  I do know that there is a nagging desire to change the shape of my  canvas to a taller elongated  shape.  The effect of the sky seems much stronger in the reference photo.  And I have wanted to create the elongated painting for some time now.   I haven't added any paint to the barn on the right yet and haven't filled in the foreground.  I  kind of like the more impressionistic color swatches in the first stages, but they don't quite fit with the rest of the background.