Rooftops

11" x 14" Oil on mounted linen.

$100 - Shipping to US included.

This is for the current Different Strokes challenge. My procrastination is in full force with this completed on the last day possible! The thing I liked the most about this painting was leaving out the M in Macys.

Laser Level

Some lines really should look straight. Vermeer would have used a string attached to a couple of pins and I thought about that technique. But since I have a laser level, I used it. I'm sure he would have used one too if he had it handy. This really helped even up quite a hump in the middle of the boat.

Scraaaape

(Click for a larger view.)

My last painting session started out with a scraping session. Not with a household paint scraper, but with a painting knife. I wasn't happy with the yellow and orange shirts being so much more rough than the rest of the canvas. I wasn't sure about this since I actually prefer an interesting and built up paint layer. Still, here is a view of the scraped part of the painting. If you look closely, you can see the linen weave in spots. Overall, the area still has about the same color, but it is much flatter. I also got to scrape back a couple of faces I was not too happy with. I would be interested in comments on whether I should have scraped this back or should I move ahead with making the rest of the painting thick and built up.

I will come back and repaint there area later. I am also updating the In Progress post below.

Two Peaches

(Click for a larger view.)
12" x 12" Oil on canvas.

Sold.

I have been spending much of my painting time on the large Dragon Boat painting.(See the updated post below.) I am sticking to working on it during daylight, so I found time the last two evenings to paint this vibrant still life. I wanted to play with some unconventional cropping and close up detail. I carefully set this up to avoid symmetry within the square format. The two day process let the underpainting dry some so that I could build a little transparent glazing.

I also painted the sides of the deep gallery wrap canvas dark, so this is ready to hang without a frame.

Saturday Plein Air and the Boat

10" x 8" Oil on mounted canvas.

I decided to shake the rust off of my plein air setup today after working on the Dragon Boat painting for a while. I got down to the creek and had everything balanced on a couple of rocks to get an interesting view. Then I realized I forgot to bring any paper towel or wiping rags! I didn't want to tramp back to the house, so I painted this with quite a handicap. I resorted to using only the knives, wiping them on the palette. I think my next expedition will be better.

I am still updating the previous "in progress" post for the Dragon Boat painting, but here is a bigger detail of the end on which I have been working.


(Click for a big version of the detail.)