500th posting

This is my 500th  posting.  I had always wanted to do art work and paint, for as long as I can remember.  It always lurked in the back of my mind as what I ultimately wanted to do with the spare time and in retirement, or at some time in the future.  Life always got in the way and I had put it off till some time in the future.  It was not until James, my son died about 20 months ago it was reinforced to me, life is short and time is precious.  So these 500 posts are dedicated to him and to remind us all, but especially me do something now you have always wanted to do since you just don't know how much time you will have.

Prairie Cloud study - revisited

I am in a revisionist mood so I pulled out the block in of Prairie Cloud Study.  Besides taking a better picture, I darkened parts of the clouds to give them volume and some structure.  I modified the sky patches with more varied blues, and finally I better structured the darks in the tree and the tones in the grasses.  I think this is a good study for when I plan to work on some of my South Dakota Badlands photos.

Plains Monarch - second approach

I went back and worked on this study of a lone three on the Plains.  I had blocked in the basics and tonight I ran across this while considering what I wanted to work on.  I made minor changes to the clouds and the tree.  I did a lot more brush work on the grassland in the middle and fore ground.

Green River, Wyoming

Sometimes I feel a need to do something different so I worked in watercolor and brown Pentel pen on tan paper.  This is modeled in the style of artist Thomas Moran's watercolors from 160 years ago.  So I enjoyed this as a break tonight.

Arctic Circle - Northern Scandanavia

Sometimes the painting fights you and nothing works as you see it in your head verse what you end up putting down on the canvas.  I worked on three starts this weekend and all of them annoyed me, did not work or will need more work to even be half way presentable.  This simple study based on a photo and some other images I had from a trip to the Arctic Circle 25 years ago made up this study.  It went together in about 2 hours and worked pretty much from the start.  It is too bad more don't go this easy.

Cherry Blossom Festival - part 3

This is tonight's work on the Cherry Blossom Study I have been working on for the past few nights.  I have put in the foliage and worked on the water.  I am going to work on the water, the foreground, and add some additional color for depth in the foliage.  After I work out the water the way I would like I am going to add a reflection of the blossoms in the dark water near the tidal pool retaining wall.

Cherry Festival revisited - part 2

I added some of the cherry blossom foliage to the study for my larger Cherry Blossom painting.  Tomorrow, I will address the water shadow, and the monument's shadow in the reflection of the water.