Hold your Horses

  "Coming Home"

24 x 30" acrylic

I'm back to acrylics for this painting. I considered painting oils over the acrylics to finish it but it didn't seem necessary. There were lots of layers and  I love the fast drying of the acrylics for those kinds of techniques. I found painting the horses challenging- partly because the drawing has to be so accurate  and also because the horses were mostly in shadow, which made for very subtle value changes.

Tweaking

Its amazing what shows up when you photograph your painting. I thought this one was done when I did the top photo. A few things jumped right out when I looked at the photo- the shadows from the middle group of trees were way too symmetrical, and the shadows in the right foreground were too black. Ten minutes spent and the painting looks quite a bit better.

"The Path Beckons"  24 x 30" oil

Long Beach sky

 

Here's one of my recent paintings that came from my trip to Tofino a few weeks ago. I worked really hard on the sky and then painted the sand part very quickly.  The sun came out for a window of about 3 minutes and then all the light was gone. Timing is everything when it comes to good reference photos.

Painting by Committee

I finished this painting abut a week ago. The reference photo I used had a flat white sky with no light, so I painted that part out of my imagination. This is challenging for me- I mostly lean on my powers of observation, rather than make stuff up. Changing the sky colours changed every other colour decision in the painting so there was a lot of back and forth-ing before I got something that looked ok. During the process I showed the panting to my husband, sister, and two groups of workshop students. Everyone had something to say and a lot of it was very helpful. I ended up taking a lot of colour out of the rocks, so that the sky could be the star of the show.

"Tofino Sunset"  24 x 36" oil

Day's End

This is my most recent oil painting. I am still enjoying oils so much and learning with each piece. This painting will be on it's way to the Adele Campbell gallery in Whistler soon.  "Day's End 24 x 36" oil.

I just spent 5 weeks of acrylic classes with this lovely group of people. The next session will be here in Fort Langley, starting in October. Details will be on my website.

Revamp

      
This is the reference for the painting below. The painting was done about a year ago and I just recently got it back from one of my galleries. I think this is a classic example of following the reference photo too literally. After pondering the painting for a while, I decided that the black sand was too somber and also that the featured wave needed to be more interesting.
     
I decided to repaint the original acrylic painting in oils and to lighten the sand and revamp the waves. I think it's much improved. "Shoals and Riffles"  36 x 36" oil.