Plein Air Day

My brother Chris and I got out for a little painting on Monday and headed to Tyler State Park down by the covered bridge. Its been a while since I was out painting and I felt a little rusty.
 I tried to  capture the atmosphere of the sunny morning. I have enough information in the sketch to do a bigger painting.

8x10 oil

When we got home we got a little more practice in and painted one of Maria's flower pots.
I put the finishing touches on it in the studio.

8x10 oil


My wife Maria has been doing some rock painting for her flower plots, we will go out and spend a hour or two hunting for rocks along river banks and come home with a bag full of rock canvases.

These are Maria's creations,

Fly Fishing Art, The Strike

The Strike  8x10 oil

This painting sat around unfinished for close to a year. Last weekend my brother and I got out fishing and this week I was able to finish it, funny how that works. Thats him from a trip we took a couple years ago.

Dolphin Rock Painting acrylic,  5 1/2" x 3"

I finished this rock painting of a dolphin, also known as a mahi-mahi.
When I spotted the shape of this rock it reminded me of the high forehead of a dolphin.
I keep forgetting to photograph the rock before painting it.

Painted Rock , Ruby Throated Hummingbird

5" x 6"
This one came easier as I tried to keep the design simple.
The shape of the rock mimics both the shape of the flower and the curving pattern of the hummingbirds wings.
I apply a couple coats of varnish which protects the rock and keeps the colors bright and fresh.

Painted rock, blowfish

I found this rock while we were fishing. Its all about shapes. When I held it in my hand I saw the air filled stomach of a blowfish. An added bonus is it has a flat bottom where it can stand up on its own.

Rock Painting, a new artistic challenge

Recently I started experimenting with painting on rocks. I find this type of painting very addictive.
The challenge is finding rocks with an interesting shape and pulling an image out of it.

These two rocks I collected today while we were fishing at the lake, I saw a bird shape in the rock in the back and a flounder in the one in front.

After I clean and dry the rocks I apply a couple layers of acrylic paint mixed with medium to give the rocks a good base coat.

Here is a blowfish I'm working on now. In the back you can see the rocks with the grey base coat on.

This is what I've done so far, I'm still getting a feel for all the possibilities you can do with rocks.
These I will start listing in my Etsy shop.
The last few weeks I rearranged my selling venues.

I have a new website for my original paintings    http://www.patrick-odriscoll.com

My Etsy shop will have aceo's, and small 5x7 original paintings along with the painted rocks.

Still Life Flowers

Flowers  8x10 oil

I almost forgot about this sketch, I was going through my drying rack and spotted it.
A couple of weeks agoI took some of the flowers out of the vase and laid them on the table to paint..
I used a (gessoed over) panel, which is a painting that didn't make it.
 Luckily I have a box of them to practice with. This was the setup for the afternoon practice session.

I used a limited palette of  cad yellow med, crimson, cobalt and ultramarine blue and white.

Last snow painting of the year

8x10 oil on panel

This is from last Fridays snow storm. I liked the way the trees looked with all the wet heavy snow clinging to them.  On the way to the grocery store Saturday morning I was able to click some pictures on my phone as a quick sketch for reference. The good part was by Saturday afternoon most of it had melted. Still waiting for spring.

Another Artist in the Family

Eric O'Driscoll  Artist


My nephew Eric was in his first art show Friday night, It was great being there with him and his dad for the opening of the show. Eric's piece is a watercolor of  sneakers.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015 5:26 pm | Updated: 2:52 pm, Wed Mar 18, 2015.

By ANTHONY DIMATTIA Staff writer

BENSALEM — The opening reception for the 5th annual Multi-Generational Art Exhibition will be from 6-9 p.m. Friday at the Bensalem Senior Center, 1850 Byberry Road.

The event displays the work of artists from the senior center along with roughly three or four Bensalem Township School District students, organizers said.

Here is a picture of Eric plein air painting with us in the snow.

A Walk in the Snow

Snow Day, 6x8  oil

 A snow scene from my memory. A couple years ago I was walking through Neshaminy State Park after a snow storm and was taken by a scene similar to this.
I was in a part of the park that had a cathedral of trees with the sunlight coming thru throwing crisscross shadows and lighting up the snow making it glow.
I added people walking their dog to instill a sense of pleasure in freshly fallen snow.

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.