Big Sur Fog
The California coast delivers weather that varies from bright sunshine to fog–all in the same spot, the same hour! This foggy day version of Big Sur is the other side–the foggy side–of my last sun-lit coastal painting.
Carmel and Sorolla
As I start to prepare for the San Luis Obispo Plein Air show in October, I’ve been referring back to photos from my recent plein air painting trip to paint studio work. What struck me about this scene was the strong contrast between the sea and sun-lit land, much as represented in by Sorolla in his … Read more
Desert Light
The colors of the desert are so distinctive. Yes, there are spots of bright color here and there, but in general, I find the colors to be “mellow”, varied and yet quite harmonious. This was painted from a reference photo I took outside Tucson, Arizona. I started with transparent washes across the entire painting, from … Read more
Painting Demonstration
After a great plein air painting trip, I’m back to the studio and focusing on the figure. I took snapshots of my progress on this painting so you’ll be able to view as a demo on YouTube. I know this is an unusual composition, but I like that. This was a great study in warm … Read more
Painting Day in Asilomar
I had a week off and spent the time painting from Carmel > Big Sur > Ragged Point > San Simeon. It was a wonderful week focused on painting! In these two studies (painting at Asilomar, just north of Carmel) I was focusing on the use of dark transparent colors to represent the ocean. click … Read more
Timberfield 10 Reception
Last year, Christopher Forbes and Stephen Doherty invited a group of 10 artists to paint at the Forbes family estate in New Jersey. We had inspirational landscapes, interiors and models to work from. Those artists have been invited to share work done that week, or later work inspired by the trip. The artists attending included … Read more
Big Sur Mountians
“Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.” Henry David Thoreau One of the challenges I (and I know many other landscape painters face) is learning how to simplify. Capturing the essence of your subject with as few marks or shapes as possible makes for a strong design (one you can read across the … Read more
Palm Canyons Shadow Study
I used a reference photo of “Indian Canyons” park in Palm Springs, Ca to study shadow color. The color of shadow on a surface is influenced by it’s local color, as well as the environment: objects facing the sky tend to have bluer shadows than shadows that don’t reflect the sky. A good area of … Read more
Tucson Trail
Revisiting the colors of the desert landscape. I had some trouble with the distant shadows, and kept alternating darker/lighter. This photo seems to show them lighter than they appear in life. In the end, the distant shadows are probably a bit too light, because when I removed color from this image to make it black … Read more
Chinese Peace Pavillion
Here’s a plein air sketch of the Chinese Peace Pavilion on “Strawbery Hill“, Stow Lake, Golden Gate Park. The trick with this painting was to paint a monolithic structure. I kept it off-center, with the walkway on the left leading you in. The trees surrounding where also kept point in towards the center of interest, … Read more