3x4 foot

This is a photo from 2008, painting studio class at VCU.

and another, still 2008. 

3x4ft. Biggest I've painted (besides a few murals). Biggest canvas I've painted. This was back in the day I could go to the wood shop & make my own canvas frames. I had a ton of fun on this one. It was  3 or 4 maybe 5 paintings before it became the coalmines. I don't remember exactly how many. I would paint for 3 hours and then the teacher would tell us to wipe it out. Good lesson to not take painting too seriously & just enjoy the application of the paint & colors. I painted on this one canvas for an entire semester. I never finished it. The semester ended & I still didn't know where I wanted to go with the colors or the foliage. 

So it's been in the closet at my parents' house till last year, then leaning against a wall & collecting dust behind our bed. Now I'm back at it. I sanded it down again & added color...

Still much to be done, but here's a look at this "old friend" of mine:

I looked over while we were eating dinner & Theo was standing like this. Struck me as funny, like a theatrical backdrop.

I might leave it like that for a few weeks. I might sand it down again, I might build up the colors or i might tone them down again. I don't know. Just trying to enjoy the process of applying the paint and see where it takes me. 

I'll keep you posted.

picture dump & a quote

A few photos from the week:

Hollow Tree & Richmond Rooftops framed with Dick Blick frames.

(Museo & Concerto frames)

Bit of plein air sketching.

The wooden man.

My toes again. 

Progress.

Wrestling with mixing a natural looking green: 

Ivory black with various blues and yellows.

Progress -- another Maymont tree painting.

"When we start to paint, we talk in terms of the thing we are trying to paint as opposed to the shapes we are trying to make. This inability to conceptualize the world and abstract it holds us back as painters. In the beginning we are convinced that we are drawing or painting trees or buildings or faces when all we are making are shapes on a canvas."

- John Singer Sargent

Sketchbook: Revisiting an old subject

The Midlothian Coalmines.

The subject of quite a few of my plein air studies in college, sketches & a 4 ft painting, which I never brought all the way to completion. 

(Slicci pen in my moleskine & chalk pastel.)

New Construction

Queens Gate Construction

11x14, oil on canvas

Midlothian seems to be overrun with new construction. Living in the same town since childhood, it is astonishing how much of the beautiful woods have been cut down and paved over. Here's the beginning of yet another housing development.

Green & why it worked.

You may have read my post about summer greens & how to handle a green painting. I've been struggling with three predominantly green paintings over the past few weeks (only two were in the photo from that post) and am grateful for a success. I tried to "paint red into the green" in this piece, but it ended up looking dead. My solution: the saturated burnt sienna (red-brown) of the clay stream bed steals the show. The green is vivid. The fields are alive! You don't get that too-much-green feeling.

I hope to show you the results of my other green adventures soon.

Creek behind Krim Point

The Grove Neighborhood, Midlothian, Virginia

8x10, oil on canvas

detail images: