Tag: oil painting

Country Track alla Prima

I had been working on my geese (see “Honk, Honk, Honk”) for weeks on end. The last few sessions in my painting class found me bringing it in, setting it up on the whiteboard ledge, looking at it, and then dabbing a bit here or there. I expect I will dab a little bit more, but I will be submitting it the first annual student art show at the adult school campus in August.

Spending a lot of time on a painting means a lot of focused work. Breaking that focus seems important for me. Play and don’t get precious. In painting class this means slap on some paint and get going. With this painting, I did. And I finished it in two hours, all within the allotted class time. I rather like it and totally enjoyed the play time.

Oil on cotton canvas board, 11 x 14.

Honk! Honk! Honk!

A lady in my painting class paints animals so beautifully – lively, colorful, and full of personality. Me, I don’t usually paint animals. I did have fun painting the cats in gouache and sumi-e, so in a desire to expand my, er, repertoire?!, I decided to do some geese.

Painting animals, unless you are doing a portrait, don’t have to look exactly like the subject! Yay! Much less intimidating. So, geese.

Geese have such personality and they make me laugh when you see a bunch of them, necks extended, beaks up in the air. My geese aren’t quite so funny, but here is my donation to the painting of the animal kingdom.

I worked on this painting over several painting class sessions. Often I would put it up on the eraser edge under the white board of the classroom to ignore it and then look at it again, all the while working on another painting. Or munching on something, like cookies, that people like to bring in. Or wandering around to see what other people are doing. For reference, I looked at a lot of photos of white geese, trying to get a sense of their postures and poses.

Oil on canvas panel, 11×14.

Bosc Pears on a Table Cloth

Cats are still on my mind, but in my painting class a few weeks ago I decided to do something fun and less intense than critters. Pears are always a favorite, to paint and to eat. These were photographed several years ago and were the source for the painting.

I have always liked this photo, partly because of the pears themselves, but also I love the table cloth upon which they rest. It was a present from my MIL, Judy, and it’s always been my favorite one I own. I thought the pears looked especially lovely on it.

The painting itself was pretty much finished in the 2.5 hours of class time I had. I did a few touch ups last week after it had dried. Too often I fail to see things and then wish I had fixed them when I could. So, this sat on my dining table for a week and was completed in class and critiqued.

Photo realism in paintings does not interest me, and generally the same with still lives. This one, though, does please me a lot. I like the way my colors work together, the composition, and the way I handled the paints. It felt really good to paint this!

Oils on canvas board, 11×14.

Tecopa Hot Springs

I’ve been too focused on too many things rather intensely and it makes me unsociable and not interested in the small and seemingly unimportant stuff that makes up daily living. One of these focal points has been painting. I have been working on this oil painting off and on for several weeks, and think it is finally done to my liking.

Tecopa Hot Springs is located in the Mojave Desert in Inyo County, California. It is not a very populated area. The hot springs are odorless, mineral springs considered to have healing properties. In my area the hot springs are quite sulfurous and smell like rotten eggs, so odorless is nice! The view from the springs is spectacular, taking in the land and the mountains beyond. This is a bit of the grandeur that is California.

I took a bit of a colorist approach to this painting, a bit of imagination and improvisation as well. Realism is for photography, so here I could play around while working to capture a sense of the place. I like semi-abstract or colorist paintings which keep the subject recognizable.

Oil on canvas panel, 16×20.