Adding Zest to a Landscape Painting

  Like many artists I am always questioning what subject and style direction I want to go in. I love painting outside. I love learning about new and exciting places to visit and seeing the true colors that a camera cannot capture. My landscape paintings however rarely give me the same excited feeling that the scene provided.

  I also love to paint wild animals and people. Since wild animals rarely stay still long enough to paint I must paint them from photos in the studio.
 
  I was contemplating my artistic dicotemy the other day and looked at the cover of a Southwest Art magazine. This painting by Edgar Payne really grabbed my attention. 
 The landscape is very nice but it is the figures and horses that make this painting interesting. Perhaps I can spice up my plein air painting from last week at the La Luz Trail area of the Sandia Mountain with some kind of animal or figure!





   There was a large rattlesnake that came to visit while I was painting but I don't want to scare the viewer. While painting I had thought about other wild animals in the area - chipmunks, bears and mountain lions. That big rock in my painting looked like the perfect spot for a mountain lion to enjoy the early morning sunshine.

I did some sketches, in black and white and in color.

  Then I put my lion into the painting.


What do you think, is it a more interesting painting?

Workshop weekend with Michelle Chrisman

I had a fabulous weekend of painting and learning. My painting style had been getting pretty tight lately and I wanted to loosen up. Harwood Art Center was offering a workshop with Michelle Chrisman that looked like just what I needed. With only six students I got tons of personal attention. Michelle has a very calm, positive teaching style. I practiced using a pallet knife and finished the top painting of a Corrales front yard, 18 x 24, in just 3 hours.

Grand Canyon in "Monsoon Season"

The travel books are right, nothing prepares you for your first view of the Grand Canyon. We stayed on the South Rim for 3 days and were leaving as the Labor Day visitors were streaming in.
 I got to paint twice with my buddy Peg Usner who was visiting from Louisiana. Both times were in the afternoon rain but the rangers were very accomodating and let me paint on the lodge porch and in the geology museum.

Down By the Abita River

For this weeks class we met under the Rails-to-Trails bridge in Abita Springs. Just a block away there is the noise of a small town with big trucks barreling through town but here it was quiet and peaceful and we could just enjoy the moment.

October Plein Air Painting Class

Thursday was my first time teaching plein air. There were five students in the class and we met at Fountainbleau State Park. After a week of rain we were lucky to have a lovely sunny day. On Monday and Wednesday I had done some practice painting. I find rainy day paintings a little gloomy but several people liked my darkest version of the scene.

New Mexico Art

 I am privileged to be juried into the Placitas New Mexico Holiday Show and Sale the weekend before Thanksgiving.  I've got a little stockpile of art at my house there.
 The churches of New Mexico are always eye catching to artists. They are also wonderful to visit, especially the one in Chimayo. On a recent visit we met the priest who has been there for 50 years. What a wonderful giving man. He escaped the communists in Spain and has dedicated his life to the parishioners and to improving the sanctuary

grounds ever since. He pointed with pride to all the trees he had planted.

Fun with Torn Paper

In the Carol Nelson workshop I took this year we learned to create colorful papers and then turn them into paintings. At first I found it frustrating but now I am enjoying it. The first step is an acrylic underpainting. Once I am happy with the painting I can start glueing torn paper in matching colors on top of the painting. This probably takes 5 times longer than the acrylic underpainting did but the result is so cute and original

!

Down on the Farm

A customer that had bought a cow painting asked me to do some companion pieces. She had many happy memories of summers on her Grandparents farm, a Mennonite dairy farm near the Blue Ridge Mountains. She was sad that her Grandmother had left the farm for a nursing home and that her children would not experience the farm. Someone just last week had

said to me that we buy things that remind us of where we want to be. I had never thought about that but she is right, since I made the decision to move to New Mexico I've been buying things like an antique horse collar and other rustic Western things.

Toys from the 50s

I found a rusty old Radio Flyer red wagon that had been kicked to the curb by my neighbor. I asked my class to bring something that would have been in their red wagon to the next class. Everyone in the class grew up in the 50s and 60s so they knew what I was talking about. Ferris brought baseball bats. I have a Teddy Bear. Leslie brought her wonderful doll collection including Raggedy Ann and Andy. I had so much fun painting them. I posed them on a child sized chair that my daughters Great Grandfather had made and put the spot light on them. Ann had been obviously been 'loved' a little more than Andy.

Counting Paint Strokes = Big Shapes

Today I taught my class a Peggy Kroll Roberts exercise to help them simplify and use more paint. The goal was to cover the whole canvas in only 25 strokes. I practiced the day before and my first attempt was 43 strokes, way too many. It is the long narrow painting at the top.
  The next attempt was the demo for my class. The pressure was on and I made it! Just 25 strokes and the whole canvas is covered. From here I may add more detail but I am happy with the colors, values, and composition so it will be worth my time to work on it more.

Dairy Day

This little 4 x 4 painting was among three that size that sold this weekend. My daughter is in vet school and had a calf that she trained and groomed to show at their Dairy Day event. Rajah was a very well groomed and beautiful calf, but a little stubborn about trotting around an arena.

still life demo

I taught a class today and the emphasis was on separating darks from lights. I showed the method of making the dark paint thin and the light paint very thick. It makes a more interesting painting to have a variety of surface textures.  I was trying to do this in 30 minutes but did at least make it in 45. One of the students bought this painting and left with a wet canvas.

My LPB Donation

 I just donated this painting to Louisiana Public Broadcasting for their annual art auction fund raiser. I am joining the Hammond Art Guild in this worthy cause. I painted this portrait from a photo I took at the Rural Life Museum in Baton Rouge. I know the artist in the painting and she complimented my work saying that I really caught her focused-on-

painting facial expression.

Little Green Heron

 Every time I go to City Park in New Orleans I see a Green Heron stalking along the edge of the pond. I love his crazy bird eyes and the frilly white crest.
 I painted this with a pallet knife. The paint is very thick and textural. It will take a week to dry and then it is going to the Artisan Gallery in Mandeville.

Loosening Up

Painting this morning in Abita Springs I could really feel and see how much I have improved at painting plein air since January. I have gotten much looser and more painterly.  People are always telling me that they cannot draw or paint. I always disagree and say it is more about working on something than about an innate talent.

House Portrait

I took the photo for this home very early in the morning. My favorite architectural feature is the tower-like structure over the door. The dark cast shadow on the roof next to it helped reinforce that as the center of interest. I did thin paint everywhere else and then piled on the pale yellow on the tower.

Little Flower Villa

 Mandeville, Louisiana does not have a lot of historic homes because of the many hurricanes that besiege this little town perched on the edge of a huge lake. This was historically a place for wealthy New Orleanians to escape the summer heat and yellow fever epidemics and relax on wide verandas enjoying the relatively cool breezes from the lake.
  One of the few surviving homes is Little Flower Villa, which my friends and I painted

. Can't you just picture yourself sipping a Pimm's cup on the porch?

Like a Day at the Beach

I got to paint at the Ponchatrain beach

this morning right before a big storm blew through.

Portrait of Suburbia

 You know how the Impressionists painted everyday life as members of French bourgeois society and it all looks so romantic and beautiful? I asked myself today why paintings of our everyday life don't seem to sell. Especially figure paintings of modern life. Figure paintings may win awards but the bottom line is that selling a landscape is much easier than selling anything that shows modern people and how we live. If anyone has a clue to why only landscapes sell please write.
 I am happy to have received a commission from a realtor to paint portraits of the houses she has been selling. The realtor then gives these paintings to her customer as a thank you. I think it is a very wonderful thank you gift!
 This is my first in the commission series. I tried to make the house very recognizable but with some magic in the shaft of light crossing the front of the house and the slight fuzziness in the background.  I also some unexpected pops of color. If you look closely the orange color I toned the canvas with shows through in many places.

Bert's Boatyard

I love boatyards. All the colors and angles and activity are so interesting. This boatyard is tucked into a  backyard in Madisonville off of a bayou. From the street you just catch a glimpse of the boatyard in this mostly residential neighborhood.  The owner graciously allowed us to set up on his lawn between the house and the work area.