Colored Pencil - Landscape

This is a colored pencil landscape I did a few years back.   This is a western Virginia scene.  If you get to visit the Shenandoah Valley, do it.  It's a great long picturesque valley.

More Experiments

This is a simple two color oil sketch of Aspen trees.  It is small 6 x 8 inch sketch and was quickly done to capture the essence of the trees.  I try to do a couple of these a week to improve and practice.  Most are disposable but the improve meant comes with time and repetition.

Experimentation

To track on yesterday's post, another way to improve is to experiment with techniques, brushes, a limited palette of say two colors.  Get art books and read the authors theories and try his or her techniques.  Most are fairly similar and consistent with a high recommendation for repeated practice.  Above is a two color, white and burnt umber oil on canvas paper.  Not all of these work but I liked this one and I stopped before I screwed it up by over working it.

Practice, Practice, Practice

I have spoken before about the 10,000 hour guideline, i.e. the need to do a minimum of 10,000 hours to  master a skill.  I hit various levels of frustration with my paintings.  I have many started and half finished paintings.  Some will be re-addressed and finished, some will be destroyed, and some will be utilized to start a new version of a painting.  I have heard of another artist referring to these paintings as little evil ones, which torment your creative side.  James Gurney has a semi-annual burning for failed paintings.  The 10K hours may be arbitrary but it is a good goal and above are coming of the paint mixing exercises I have done in oil paint.

Scissor - Tailed Flycatcher

This is a colored pencil sketch of a Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher.  We saw this is Oklahoma and I think it is the state's bird.  It definitely is a unique and special bird, not one of the run of the mill see in the yard types.  It will catch your eye on the fence or on the wire.

ProngHorn Antelope

SO if you are driving the long stretches of the American Outback i.e. any of the high plains areas of the mid-west to the inter Mountain areas of the Rockies, always be on the look out for the fastest animal in North America, the Pronghorn.  We have seen them in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana, but they are everywhere.   They like it in the wide open so they can see they're enemies and out run them.

Tampa Tower

Waiting for my flight back to DC, I had 15 minutes and captured the tower at Tampa's airport.  I liked the clouds and the different odd lines.  I unfortunately caught the clouds too much like they were with the odd size similarity.  I should have edited this more to create some different sizes and thus more interest for a better composition.