Moon Over the Ocean 3

This one I painted for my nephew Dennis since he was the one who sent me the photos. He is visiting here from Florida and his birthday was yesterday. I hurried up and started this last evening and finished it this afternoon. It's slightly different than the smaller ones. I used the watercolor canvas again. It's supposed to be for all mediums, but I'm having a little trouble with blending with acrylics yet even after I coated it with a layer of gesso. I need to use it again and make notes. I think I like the water and waves better on this one, but the clouds better on the smaller ones.

Seascape - Bird and Boat

 

 

No wonder I'm not getting the house cleaned. Here's another painting I did yesterday and finished today. I went to the craft store last week to get some matte medium and of course I had to browse. I found some 5" x 7" watercolor canvas panels and I had to try them. They are smoother than regular canvas board and can be used with watercolor and acrylic. Of course it's a seascape. I thought it would be easy since I've been doing them lately. Still not easy. The other seascapes I did had the waves on the left side. Apparently, that's easier for me to do since I am right handed I guess. I might have to straighten out the horizon line though. Also, the next time I use the watercolor canvas, I think I will put a coat or two of gesso on it.  The paint sinks in too much unless you are using watercolor paint and leave the white of the paper for the white areas.
P.S. There are two photos of the same painting for a reason: The bottom one was a regular scan and a lot of the texture on the canvas shows up as glare. The top one was edited in Windows Live Photo Gallery with "Noise Reduction" and I think it makes a difference by cutting down on the texture glare. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier. I had fish for dinner yesterday. Maybe that helped.

Moon Over the Ocean 2

I took a break from cleaning the attic and did another mini painting. Here is the second version of Moon Over the Ocean done on ACEO size watercolor card. The paint soaks in a little on the watercolor paper, but it helps make the clouds look more diaphanous or fluffy.  Also, the moon is not paint; it's the white of the paper showing through.

ACEO - Moon Over the Ocean

Since I read somewhere recently that you can paint acrylics on watercolor paper (even if you don't use the watercolor technique), I thought I would give that a try. However, I have a package of Strathmore ATC size assorted papers that I looked through and decided to use the paper made for use with acrylics first (made sense to me). It has a slight texture and is sort of a light cardboard thickness. At first I didn't like it, but after finishing the painting, I decided I did like it. I used a photo that my nephew sent me that I thought would look all right painted small. I might try the watercolor card with the same scene and see if there is much difference in painting technique.

Mini Big Clouds Over the Beach- Acrylic 5" x 7"

I finished a small painting today, a smaller version of "Big Clouds Over the Beach." I guess you could call this "Mini Big Clouds." I wanted to see if I could do another one like it since I didn't make notes on colors, brushes or technique on the larger one. Well, if you scale down the size I learned that you need to scale down the brushes. I had a lot of trouble with the foreground water in this one, but didn't on the first one. Maybe I should stick to 9 x 12" instead of 5 x 7." I could probably keep adjusting things, but decided to just quit while I'm slightly ahead. I did coat the canvas board with several layers of gesso so it would be smoother. I think it helped some. There is still some glare from scanning and I probably should try to take a photo, but I'm not having any luck with that either. I tried Carol Marine's instructions for taking photos of paintings, but haven't found a good spot for lighting yet.

Breezy Beach

Here's another beach scene, but I'm not as happy with it as I was with "Big Clouds Over the Beach." It is smaller, 8" X 8" and done on a different texture canvas board. I did the Big Clouds painting on an older canvas board that is no longer available (Grumbacher) and it was really nice to paint on. I probably need to switch to gessoed artboard, but I have a lot of the regular Fredrix canvas panels in all sizes. I need to figure out how to make them smooth so I can use them. I'm working on that. It's a good thing I used the old canvas panel when I did Big Clouds or I might have given up on acrylics. I also need to make notes of which brushes I used for what and what colors I mixed to get the colors I got. 

McIntosh and Friend

 

This was more for practice than anything else. I watched a video on values and read a chapter in "Daily Painters" on values. I'm also still trying to get acrylics to look like oil paints. I learned a few things by doing this "study." It's hard to see values when the apple changes color on top where the light is hitting it. Dark red mixed with white looks chalky not lighter. Backgrounds are hard to paint when the lighting on your subject is coming from a lamp right next to it. Shadows are not as dark as you think they are and a few other things I can't remember right now, but I hope I will remember them when I paint something else again.

Big Clouds Over the Beach - Acrylic 9 x 12

 

I had a difficult time getting back to doing any painting after another trip to visit my son and family over the holidays. I watched several art videos trying to get inspiration and read an art book, "Daily Painting" by Carol Marine. (recommend it). Then I cleaned up my "studio"--half of a bedroom-- and rearranged it some and put together a stand for my laptop so I could look at a photo while I painted. It took me forever to decide what to paint. I'm so far behind on all the ideas I have, but I wanted to do something new and in acrylic paints. It seemed like I had to learn how to use it all over again after I had been using watercolors and oil pastels, but I was determined to be able to use acrylic paints so they looked like oils. I think I may have gotten that result in "Big Clouds over the Beach." At least I was happier with the results since the last time I tried acrylics. The picture is a little fuzzy because the painting was a little too large for the scanner. I tried to redo it, but it is still a little fuzzy.

Carnegie Painted 2010

Intersection - Stoplight Colors, 10" x 20"

I got the painting of Carnegie done for the "Carnegie Painted" show. I wasn't real happy with it, but I didn't have anything else to enter. My son Tim said I should start now and paint several of Carnegie over the next year so I would have a choice and I could pick the best one or two for next year. (I usually wait till the month before the show to start painting something.) I used a lot of sap green on this one and I think the painting looks too green. Maybe that's one of the reasons I didn't win a prize again this year and maybe I should paint larger. Most of the other paintings in the show were larger. I'm not sure what I'm going to do next. I don't know what medium I should be working in. Maybe I should stick to watercolor? I thought acrylic would work out better than it did. Also, I thought it would get done faster than it did. It takes me too long to do a painting. The wife of a local artist once told me that I would get faster. I guess that is a good reason to keep painting regularly. She also told me to take some workshops. There are several classes at Southarts this fall that I would like to take, but I really need to be cleaning and painting walls instead of pictures before it gets cold and I can't open windows. I didn't get as much done this summer as I had planned. Where did the time go?

Florida Beach #1 and #2

Florida Beach #1, 5" x 7"

Here are the beach scenes I just painted. Not too much architecture thank goodness. I really wanted to try using some of my acrylic paints with some different mediums to see if I could get them to act more like oils. I did this one first without using gesso as an extra undercoat. I used some gloss medium mixed with the paint and this seemed to work better--it was a little easier to blend the paints and the finish is a little shinier.

Florida Beach #2, 5" x 7"

Painting #2 is only slightly different than #1 so I could compare results. The second one has a gesso underpainting and I used a gloss gel with cerulean blue and white for a light blue wash under the clouds. The white clouds came out softer because the undercoat was still moist. I would like to be able to paint beach scenes with clouds in acrylic like Australian painter Mike Barr. His paintings seem fresh and effortless. I guess that comes with lots of practice (and talent).