Old Faithful

24" x 18" Oil on panel.

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This one has been on my easel for a while. It was nice to get it completed and hopefully I can get in a New Year's (Resolution) swing. The holidays, woodworking, and a sore back have cut into my painting productivity.

Old Faithful truly is amazing when you consider how long you have to anxiously wait for other geysers to deliver in the same basin. I captured it from the side with the crowd. I thought it was a perfect day with a deep blue sky and the wind blowing the sheets of water and steam very nicely.

Yosemite Falls in Spring

18" x 24" Oil on panel.
(Click for a larger view.)

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Yosemite valley in May is awesomely great. It's before the summer rush of people (it's still busy)and the waterfalls are at their peak. I fondly remember the short visit to the valley when I took the photo reference for this painting and I hope to be back next year.

The valley has great views wherever you turn, so there is a lot of classic material. I chose to have the upper falls just off center and the lower falls just inside the composition. The clear blue sky on that day just added to the blueness in the shadows vs the warmth on the rocks. I included the cars and foreground meadow to give a sense of scale. I may also investigate some cropped versions and larger formats of this view.

Andy Schleck #2

18" x 24" Oil on panel

Another Andy Schleck painting. This time I kept details at bay and worked on top of an abstract blue and yellow background. Unfortunately, the photo of the painting has some glare in it.

Nice Doggy

11" x 14" Oil on linen.
In a private collection
Lynnwood, Wa

Victor is a very docile dog. He doesn't really get bothered by a good pat (Bonk!) on the head. Here Carmen is giving him a pat goodbye. Compare this to Bye Bye Victor where Carmen is reacting to a slight scolding for being a little rough. I enjoyed visiting this set of reference photos again. I wanted to capture the moment and motion of that vigorous pat. The amount of details involved quite a bit of time.

Compositionally, there are a lot of interesting points to draw your eye. The sharpest contrasts and the natural focal point of a face are toward the top, but the pyramid of the figures anchors the painting. Her swinging hand is near the center of the picture, but not quite; the motion helps your eye to Victor's head. I liked playing up the relative motion of her arms and the tip-toe on her left foot that she has from the good back-swing.

You can lean on me - Pears

14" x 11" Oil on panel.

$125 - Shipping to US included.

These pears were approaching ripeness, so they needed to get painted to memorialize their great blushing color. I arrived at a nice setup where one is leaning on the shoulder of the other. (Maybe not a new motif, but I like how my take on it turned out this time.)

Compositionally, the highlights on the fruit are the focal points with a nice warm shadow acting as a third character as you eye reads the painting left to right. The format in the larger version gives some space, but the tops of the pears cross into the upper half of the painting. I was careful not to place anything important right on a centerline. Unfortunately the darker paints have a bit of glare in these photos, so the painting looks even better in person.

The smaller version is a "little buddy" that I painted first as a warm up study to the larger painting. Here it is with the larger painting to compare the sizes.