Radioactive artichoke

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8 x 10" o/c
Since this originally was just a value study, it isn't much of a composition. I may have been influenced by the friend I was painting with yesterday, who kept nagging me to push it and make it more colorful. I think the underpainting, which I usually do not do, also intensified it.
Next goal: a palm tree close-up-- a larger. "real" painting I started a couple of years ago and never finished.

Plein Air--not

Old Auburn Cemetery Redux
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8 x 10" o/c .....
I dunno--my first attempt to re-paint this didn't work out, because of the surface: I tried it on gessoed masonite, which I've always hated and still do. I keep thinking it shouldn't matter what I paint on, but it does. Even with some texture in the gesso, the paint slides around, looks transparent and feels like grease. So I wound up reworking the original location painting. But whenever I work from photos, I tighten up, and my piece ends up looking more like a photo than it does a painting. Oh well--onward and upward.

Today I'm going painting at a friend's house. She works completely differently, often abstractly; so I'm thinking I will take along the artichoke value study to use as an underpainting and add color.

Plein Air: Old Auburn Cemetery

Dying to plot my course (awful puns intended)

8 x 10" o/c; On location at the Old Auburn Cemetery for the last class in Frank's workshop. See the finished painting HERE
I am not experienced at plein air (hate heat, schlepping/
juggling supplies, etc.), spent barely an hour and a half painting, and didn't accomplish much--which is why I am posting it small. Nevertheless, I love the (actual) trees at this location and think the composition has some possibilities. So I am dying to give it another shot in the studio using my photos and this field study as reference--which I will do the minute I complete the last of the 10 large posters I am illustrating and before plunging into work on the next children's book.

I have two books to do in the coming months and am hoping not much else. More and more strongly, I feel that if I do not change direction I will die. My new plan is to spend some time every week creating a body of work I can eventually show and market in galleries--or wherever. Although I dearly love the work of all the wonderful CAC (should I begin the process of joining?) and other California plein air painters, I am not sure the world needs another--especially one who is mediocre at best. So I am still pondering my direction and possible niche.

Next book: animals before a hurricane

Sunflowers again

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9 x 12 oil on canvas panel
This was a workshop project, done from a photo taken in flat light. The idea was to design the shapes and capture the colors and three basic values.

Butter on blue

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5 x 7" o/c
This is the second homework assignment for Frank Ordaz's workshop--a study attempting to accurately capture the color of a cube of butter in north light. Couldn't resist adding the blue glass plate. With regard to the color treatment, I already see quite a difference between this and all of my previous work. It's like a small miracle.

Out with the old

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12 x 18 O/C
This is a scan of a photocopy (because I gave away the original) of a painting I used to like. It was done mostly from life as a 3-hour demo at a gallery some years back, and the final touches finished from photos at home. I say I "used to" like it, because today in Frank Ordaz's workshop I became aware of a deficiency that I now see in all of my work to date: a failure to correctly evaluate and depict the temperature of light as it moves across subjects. For example, the warmer blue foreground colors show a little of this, but those squash surely should have had some cooler hues in the darks. Of course, seeing and understanding a concept is one thing, and implementing it quite another. But I believe this understanding has the potential to eventually transform my work. Anyway, one can hope.