Hallett's Peak - Pocky Mountain National Park

In keeping with my resolution to paint more, this evenings activities were to block in the initial oil colors for Hallett's Peak from Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado.

400th Post - Two from the Easel

This is my 400th Posting on this blog.  I started this blog as Art Therapy and a way to discipline myself to improve my abilities.  The Art Therapy was to distract myself from the personal loss of James, my son.  The discipline is to improve my capabilities.  Life is short and I wanted to focus myself and use the blog as a motivation to do something every day.  Today, I messed with the painting from Steamboat lake and I blocked in the initial colors of this tiny canvas Rooster.  This was combined with an art room re-organization and New Years cleaning.  Tomorrow, I will begin the march to 500 postings with more practice.

Jessica Sketch

The other model at the Chesapeake Fine Art Studio was Jessica.  I did not spend as much time sketching her.  She was seated on a bench and wore a ballerina costume.  This was about a 15 minute sketch.

New YearsDay sketching

I spent the afternoon and evening at the Chesapeake Fine Art Studio on Kent Island in Maryland.  It was a New Years Celebration and party.  They had two models and Sarah was one of them.  I sketched her a couple of times in 20 minutes poses.  This was the most successful of the sketches.

Happy New Year's

Happy New Year's Eve!  I hope 2015 is a great and wonderful year.  I have mostly enjoyed 2014 and feel my art has improved.  The discipline of daily posting helps keep me motivated and on track.  My only resolution for 2015 is to paint more in Oil Paint.  With that I will live you with today's block in study, it is a Rocky Mountains study.  It is Alla Prima, i.e. the paint applied in one attempt.  I will need to work on this though as it will need some value adjustment to separate the foreground from the background and I will lighten the horizon and add some clouds.

South Dakota - Wild Horse Sanctuary

Today's block-in Oil Painting is of South Dakota's Wild Horse Sanctuary near Hot Springs.  This is a view from a ridge line looking down towards Cascade Creek.  This is a small study to work out the colors and the compostion before going to larger paintings.   It is easier to make mistakes and correct them in small sizes.

Ponderosa Pine Study - Part two

I have shown a lot of block ins of paintings with promises to should progress and changes made.  So tonight I am going to follow-up.  You can see the changes made as I sort through the problems I see with this study.  I have improved the sky's transition from upper to lower horizon.  I extended the top of the tree and I made improvements to the shadowy under foliage and I have begun to define the foreground.  The Aspens will need a lot of work and I want to add a back ground Fir tree off center between the Ponderosa and the Outlined Aspen.   This will have to wait till tomorrow.