Gourds

Another of my "plein indoor" paintings done on a cold dark evening when I was wishing I could be outside and painting in the sun. We have a bunch of gourds leftover from the summer garden, kept around for decoration.  I threw a few of these outside afterwards and watched the squirrels tear them apart the next morning to eat the seeds.  Gourds, 6 x 6.

The Frozen Lake

Hamms Pond is surrounded by large swaths of cattails. Here's an early morning painting I did there. I had to go back a second day to finish it - there were things I wanted to change and had to see it again to do so. Luckily it was pretty much the same weather.
Frozen Lake, 8 x 10.

New Work

I have posted nothing in a while.  Doesn't mean I haven't been painting. Sure the weather's been pretty cold, so I haven't painted outside too many times. I have a couple of paintings here waiting to dry and be scanned, and when they are, I'll post them. I've hit one of those spells where I don't much like some of the paintings I have been making.  Either I've done a bunch of not-so-good paintings or I have been getting more selective and discriminating in my taste.  I like to think it's that... or maybe it's both. I've been taking a critique class - it's getting me to see things I hadn't thought about in my work. I highly recommend it.

Today I went and painted - I took a painting back out to the original location and worked on it again. It was one of those situations where the painting looks fine at the time but once it's home,  I start to see what's wrong, or think about what I'd like to change. "Fixing" it in the studio is never a good idea for me. I've tried it in the past - it always came out badly. I have learned it's something for me to best avoid.

 Today was a very similar morning, weather-wise so I took the painting back to the original location.  In a few minutes I had adjusted a few things and it's looking much better, and was easy to do when I could actually see the trees, the sky the mountains, the water, the actual colors again.  It was so much easier than trying to do it in the studio. Definitely an improvement.  With that finished up I then worked on a new painting. So far, so good. I see how I like it tomorrow.

Salt & Pepper

Another indoor painting of my salt & pepper shakers. They looked good on the red holiday tablecloth. I've been busy preparing canvas panels for future paintings and have a couple odd pieces left including these 6x6 panels, so have decided to do more indoor paintings on them.  Salt & Pepper, 6 x 6.