Experimenting with different reference materials, winter landscape,11x14

Winter landscape  11x14  oil on wood panel



I did this plein air sketch (below) about 7 years ago late in the afternoon on the way home from work. It is very basic but captured the warm lighting that afternoon. A small patch of snow was left hidden behind a sloping bank and I wanted to capture the sun light on the snow and the shadows.
I always liked this sketch and wanted to use it or parts of it in a painting.

Seeing the snow we had recently inspired me want to try a snow scene, so I looked thru my sketchbook for ideas and came across a sketch I did last year at a local park, it was a footbridge crossing over a small brook.

I want to try combining the lighting from the plein air sketch and the composition from the pencil sketch to see what I could arrive at.

Autumn Sunrise

Autumn Sunrise, Whitetail Deer 11x14 Acrylic on canvas

This was painted from reference photos I took one morning at the park.
The post from November 17 shows the reference photos I shot.
In the photos from that day you can see the trees had dropped most of their leaves, but I was interested in capturing the lighting effects at sunrise that morning.

I stayed with the original idea of putting a deer crossing the field highlighted with sunlight.

My first thought was to put a deer in the field highlighted with sunlight.

Winter field, Tyler State Park,12x16 oil painting

Winter field 12x16 oil

 I  recently reworked this piece adding a little atmosphere to the painting.  I painted this from a  5x7 study done on location one afternoon.
That day I was hoping for a sunset but the overcast sky won out.

Still life acrylic painting, 8x10 Amaretto

Still Life Acrylic painting 10x8  Amaretto

This was one of the bottles we bought for NewYears Eve, when I saw it on the shelf in the store I saw a challenge for a painting. What caught my eye was the contrast of the dark rich color of the Amaretto and the bright label along with the interesting shape of the bottle.

I kept the background value slightly lighter than the bottle except on the right side where I merged the values of the background and the right side of the bottle to create a lost edge giving it a realistic look.
I used Phthalo Green and a bit more Crimson for the dark color of the Amaretto and the same colors with a little white for the background trying to add a little atmosphere between bottle and background.

Its a nice change switching off and painting a still life in between landscape paintings, the still life usually taste better too.

Forest Road 8x10 Acrylic

Forest Road 8x10 acrylic

Late afternoon light on the walk back to the cabin after a day of fishing.

Original acrylic painting, still life, Blueberry Pie, 8x10

Blueberry Pie  8x10  acrylic

I painted this still life this afternoon while I still had enough natural light coming in the kitchen window.  I used acrylics because I wanted to finish the painting in one sitting and I knew there would be a lot of overpainting, so with the acrylics drying as fast as they do I could paint one layer over another within minutes.

I used a limited palette of cad. yellow med, crimson, ultramarine blue,  phthalo green, burnt sienna, and white.  I couldn't seem to mix an acceptable grey/silver for the pie plate using blue,sienna,white so I mixed phthalo green with crimson for a grey and added varying amounts of white to control the grey values.
I was going to paint the slice last night but it broke apart as I was taking it out, so I said I'll eat... uh I mean paint the rest of the pie tomorrow.

Waterfalls

8x10 oil

This is a small waterfall cascading down a rocky ledge emptying into Cedar Run, a trout stream in upstate Pa.
This was one of the first streams we fished when we started going up there 25 years ago.

Landscape painting,autumn cornfield, Core Creek Park

Autumn Cornfield  8x10 oil

Another overcast sky from this fall. I did like the contrast the tan colored cornfield provided against the stormy looking sky.

Sunrise Sketch

I was up right before dawn this morning looked out the kitchen window and saw the beginnings of a quick sunrise. I knew it was supposed to be overcast all day so I had no plans on going out in the 26 degree temps.

But even on overcast days you get a very brief period of time right before sunrise when there is color in the sky. I did a quick sketch on an Aceo card using my cigar box easel.  Within minutes everything was grey in the sky.  Now I can make the coffee.

A little later I did an 8x10 as a practice piece to see if I want to develop it into a bigger painting.

Thankful Turkey

6"x6"  oil


This one is thankful he made it thru another Thanksgiving.

Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Gathering the last bit of autumn color

I went to Core Creek Park  at dawn last Saturday to try to catch the last bit of autumn color before its gone. I didn't take my paints only the camera because I wanted to record as much as I could during the first hour after sunrise. The moon was setting during this time slot so for me that was a added incentive .
I am looking for ideas, possibilities, inspiration, and I love the light at that time of morning.

The first rays of sunlight lighting up the trees. A lot of times I paint from the spot I'm parked at, I have a view looking down to the lake which is in back of me here. We will be back to this field in an hour.

I liked the shadowed area at the bottom of the brush and the shadow going across the grass.

An explosion of color.

My first thought was to put a deer in the field highlighted with sunlight.

The picture doesn't show the rich colors in the tree, I like the highlighted edges.

The same tree looking from the side.

I was getting ready to leave when I spotted these deer. This is the same field I started at (first picture) an hour ago. This is prime mating season, I guess they wanted a little privacy so they headed into the woods.

A nice 8 point buck.  Wait for me dear.

Using outdoor sketches for reference

8x10 acrylic

8x10 oil

These two paintings were done from outdoor sketches I did one morning when I was out with my brother Chris.  ( From the post on Sept 1st ).

The two outdoor sketches from that Saturday morning.

As you can see I changed things up a little. I gave a little depth to the top painting, and changed the lighting on the bottom so the picture reads a little easier.

Our trip from upstate Pa

We had a good week even with the overcast weather all week except for Friday. We lucked out and had no rain except for Monday night. We caught fish at every stream we fished so that was good.

We visited our old campsite when we arrived.

There was still some fall color left along the streams.

The colors of the trout matched the colors of the landscape.

I did some painting in the mornings before we headed out to the streams.
This is a sketch from a small section of a Kousa dogwood tree with its spiked red fruits.

A quick sketch of the maple tree out back.

The one night there was a lull in the action spotting wildlife so I grabbed a knife block and set up a still life.

This painting I worked on over a couple of nights, it was from a painting trip with my brother Chris at a local park.

I couldn't forget about our nightly visitors.

A couple days outside

I got out a couple days last week to do some plein air painting but the weather has not cooperated lately. It seems like we have had our share of leaden skies and rainy weather and these two days were no different.

I settled on a view of a farmhouse at the end of a field because it made a good focal point because of the contrast it provided on this overcast day.

8x10  oil


I stopped off at Core Creek Park to look around and spotted some egrets in a backwater section of the lake. I pulled over where the best view is ( on the bridge) but traffic is buzzing by right next to you so I set up the easel on the passenger seat and did a quick 5x7 sketch

I did this 11x14 painting in the studio the next day.

My brother and I are going on our annual fly fishing trip this week to upstate Pa.
Here are some images from past trips.

Tom and jumping trout

Photographing the night sky

Spring Creek reflections

early morning

our campsite for the first 18 years

the walk back to the cabin after a day of fishing

Autumn oil painting

The Island 6"x6" oil

Maria and I went up the Poconos last weekend to view the autumn colors and do a little fishing at Promised Land State Park. This is a little island that sits in shallow water at the one end of the lake.

Autumn is approaching

Heavy Overcast  5"x7", oil

I stopped off at the park after work looking for something interesting to paint. The skies were heavily overcast all day with breaks in the clouds for the sun to sneak thru.
 I wanted to try to capture the mood of this cloudy day.

The sky kept changing as a new set of clouds came in to replace the one's that were just there. I waited till a good set came by that had some good contrast, fixed it in my mind and painted the clouds from memory.
The whole tree line looked dark with a few individual trees standing out from the rest.
I was supposed to be concentrating on the sky but got caught up in the tree line with a hint of autumn color.
It was great being out.