Cloud Patterns

We had another one of those summers with spectacular skies...many showery days when the cumulus clouds rapidly built up into thunderheads. Makes for tricky painting, but potentially great atmospheric effects if you're quick enough. I spent a lot of time this summer trying to do paintings featuring the sky. Most of them didn't turn out very well. Even though I've been studying clouds my whole life, they are still mystifying to paint.

However, sometimes things just work out. I did this little 8x10 study sometime in July, and I really like the way the sky turned out. I painted it fast and did no touch ups afterwards, so it's a pure plein air piece. It's a really simple composition, but I think it shows off the main feature (the clouds) nicely. I've been thinking about trying to work it up into a larger studio painting, but am not sure how well that would work - I feel it might need some additional elements at a larger size, perhaps more structures. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

Wyoming County Revisited

I'm going to post 2 paintings done this summer on Durfee Road in Wyoming County. This area has some wonderful views of the Genesee Valley, along with great farms and barns. It is the same general area where I painted "Wyoming County Vista" a couple of years ago, as well as "Goldenrod Vista".

The first painting is an 8x10 oil study called, fittingly, "Durfee Road Study". The morning I painted it I thought I had done a great job - until I got it home! Then I realized the colors were too dull and the overall contrast too weak. So I worked on it at home, then went back to the same location a few days later. Unfortunately that day was much hazier than the first, so rather than work on the same painting I started the second one posted here - a 10x12 oil called "Durfee Road Summer". This one also required re-working at home. Unfortunately, the jpegs of both paintings aren't very good, and I almost didn't post them because of this. If I get a chance to take better pictures I will post them...but the first painting sold and the second is currently in the Legacy show.

I used to be very reluctant to work on plein air paintings at home, but lately I've realized that many of these studies could be greatly improved - oftentimes the painting has a good structure but is lacking color or contrast, mainly because the bright light outdoors fools me into thinking the colors are so bright on site. Maybe someday I'll be able to consistently account for this when painting outdoors, but I'm not there yet!

Papaya!

OK, this is the last of the little (5x7) still life studies, as I haven't done any in a while. It's oil on canvas board, half of a very ripe papaya. I had intended to paint this one more loosely, but wound up rendering individual seeds. Old habits...I do like the way it turned out, though there needs to be more variety in the orange tones.

I've got a bunch of plein air paintings from the past few months that I'll be posting soon, I've almost caught up with everything...