Landscape Paintings

Here's the almost finished painting. It's finished for now, but I think it still needs some work. I think I'll subdue the background more, and brighten up the focal point, for greater contrast. I love working like this, taking my time, going back and forth in the painting. Stay tuned for the final version. It will probably take me another week or so.

Landscape Paintings

This is an intermediate step. I've got all the colors blocked in, but the painting isn't really unified yet.

Landscape Paintings

Here is the other landscape painting I've been working on. It's called, "Color Fields (Swamp)", and was inspired by a South Carolina swamp, which was absolutely gorgeous, and full of life. I'm showing here some of the stages in its creation. It is very subtle, and all about getting the values right. I may decide to brighten it up at some point, but I wanted to see if I could manage a very subtle palette. This first shot is the photo that inspired the painting.

Demonstrations

I had a very good week. I did two demos, and here is the finished version I began at the Lemont Artists Guild on Wednesday. It's a painting that has its inspiration in the plein air study I did about 2 weeks ago at the Chicago Botanical Gardens in Highland Park. It's a view of the Japanese Garden from "Across the Pond," oil, 11 x 14.

Landscape paintings

I've been working on 2 landscapes recently. They're a bit different from my earlier work, in that I have been experimenting more with layering the paint. This is creating an interesting shimmering effect. So actually, these paintings are more about the paint than about the subject matter. But they're still representational paintings. Here are the next 2 stages of my River Bend painting, oil, 24 x 24. I think it's finished now, but I may change my mind after it sits a while. The one on your right is the finished version.

Landscape Paintings

Here are 2 shots of the painting I'm doing, based on the "river bend" photo. The first is a shot of the canvas on my easel, and the second is a close-up of the same. You can see it's not finished at all. Just the preliminary layers, defining the basic composition and the color scheme. I'll be posting more pictures as I develop the painting to its conclusion.

Landscape Paintings

I'm continuing to do landscape paintings, but my style has been evolving recently. My paintings are moving away from realism/impressionism and towards more abstraction. I'm experimenting with just moving the paint around, creating layers upon layers, veiling the atmosphere. I'm trying to distill the essence of the scene, rather than portraying its details. I should have taken some pictures of the very first stages, but since I didn't, I'll show you where I am at the moment.

This photo is one I took some years ago in northern Arizona. I was attracted by the curve of the river, and the hazy mountains in the distance. I recently looked at it, and decided it would a perfect basis for my next painting. As you can see, it's not a very good photo, kind of hazy, with a tree in the middle. But that's OK. I don't like to use really good photos for my references, because it would be too tempting to just copy them, instead of interpreting them in paint.