Tag: night

Rainy Night, Snowy Night

Pixabay is a wonderful source for photos for painting subjects. Resources like this allow you – the artist or whoever – to explore worlds new to you. I, for one, doubt I shall ever visit a city with yellow trams unless I travel far from my current stomping grounds. This painting is derived from one such photo.

In the afternoon of one of my classes, I had about 20 minutes left to paint. The one I was working on was done to the point I could not go any further. It still needs to be finished while I try to figure out how to do the people in it.

I laid in an essential outline and some basic colors in those remaining 20 minutes and set it aside for the next class period, which is about 2.5 hours in length. I also decided to do it alla prima – finish it all at once. And, I did. Over the past few days I worked on some refinements, but very little.

The only thing I think I want to do a bit differently is the headlamp on the tram – make the white brighter and colder. To achieve this, I probably will use a cold blue mixed with titanium white.

Pretty pleased with this one!

Oil on 11×14 canvas panel.

Last Night

Last Night

Several weeks ago the fierce, hot east winds (aka Santanas, Santa Anas) came through and the neighborhood over the hill went up in flames with over 320 structures lost. Now we expect the same situation for the next few days – dry, windy, low humidity. I used to love the wind, but now I fear it.

For days we have had sunshine and no rain, few if any clouds in the sky. Day and night are clear with a gentle breeze. Last night, though, the fog came in. Not a pea-souper fog, but enough to leave water droplets on Inky’s fur after her evening walk, and chill enough this morning to feel the damp in my bones. I always like how fog and mist distort and blur the world around me, so last night I decided to take out the little Canon G7X camera to see what I could get.

We have a cinder block wall surrounding our house, and as we sit on a corner, we really have rather nice views up and down the streets in the neighborhood. The top of the wall is flat and stable, so I used it to hold the camera in place, focus in and out for composition, and then pushed down the exposure button and held it there to keep the camera steady. I got a few shots, but this one is my favorite.

Strange Nocturne

This was going to be a nice beachy scene with a white house and rocky coastline . . . but things got out of hand. First, a part of me blames the paper – it is student grade and did not seem up to the task of a lot of large swaths of wet washes. Next, I got frustrated. And I was hungry. And getting quite annoyed. So, I just grabbed stuff and sort of scribbled on it – take that, you nasty painting! Anyway, this is the result, and while it is certainly no beauty, it makes me remember I do want to do some nocturnes – night paintings, night colors. How can that be done?!