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.

Ponderosa Pine Study

I am working pin improving my painting skills and I am doing a series of landscape studies.   This morning I laid in the initial blocks of a Ponderosa Pine and Aspen study.  I will need to blend the sky better and refine the Aspens against the sky.  I will loop back on these studies and will past the after pictures when I am satisfied with them.

Tree Sketch

Today, I worked on this tree sketch.  This is the basic block in for this small study, I plan on working on the values in the sky and improving the brushing in the middle ground.

Giant Sketch

Today's sketch is from the book Giants.  It is fun book and filled with great sketches of the imagined views of Giants.  They are nice thing to practice sketching skills and to just enjoy the feel of the pencil on the page.

I hope you have had a great Christmas!

Merry Christmas, I hope you have enjoyed the day and have spread the peace and good will towards all men!