Sand Mountain, Steamboat Springs, Colorado - Oil Study

This is an Oil Painting of Sand Mountain from Steamboat Lake, Colorado.  The reflection is in the lake and this is the view from the campground.  This is a preliminary study for a larger paining.  I try to work out the problems at the smaller size before trying to do a painting in a large size.  The smaller format takes less time an is effective for working out problems.  If you cannot get it to work small, large will be a disaster.

Practice is the basics

Part of learning art is studying the basics an understanding design.  Part of this is understanding values, i.e. the lightness and darkness of things as compared to each other.  The removal of color makes it easier to understand value.  Sometimes painting in black and white or using photoshop to switch a color photo over to B&W makes it easier to understand the relationship between things.  The top ball and cube are also a study in the "key" or the range of dark to light.  The bottom cubes are the basic types of value relationships in a painting, with the basic variations in light to dark backgrounds and the different groupings of the boxes in the different values of dark to light.  These are just a way to make one analyze the subject before beginning to paint.  These studies are highlighted in Andrew Loomis's book, Creative Illustration, which is a classic on the subject.

Sailing Barque Sketch

This is a sketch of a Sailing Barque ship.  It also is a study of calm water reflection of the sails.  More artwork to calm myself and distract myself for the daily grind.

Bushes and scrub tree

I used a carpenter's pencil to ge the thick strokes on both of these sets of sketches.  Both are opposites the top is dark on light sky and the bottom is dark sky with light foliage.

Tree Study

Tonight I finished up a tree study.  I had worked on this on and off for a few nights.  This was an experiment for me and I like the reversal of branches light on dark and then dark on light, which is something I needed to work on.

Curious Buck

This is a quick sketch I did a few years back of a curious buck with odd mis-shaped antlers.

Buoy - Water studies

Tonight's drawing activity was to draw this buoy with three different water types.  Calm water, light current, and small waves.  This is one of the things I want to work on, especially here in Maryland with the Chesapeake Bay so close, mastering water is a requirement.