June in the High Country

After the success of the last three paintings, all of which sold, I felt I should return to a subject more difficult. After all, this month was for me to try to learn as much as possible. I have a photo from a favorite trail of mine, and many others, that was taken on a friends last trail ride. He had cancer and it was amazing he could still ride at this point but he did, and he thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated all of it. So, I am sure, that influenced my choice. Here is the reference photo:

I had a feeling this would be hard, and that I wouldn't like the results, but I wanted to try anyway. The photo looks simple, it shouldn't be that hard, right? I must be learning, though, because I knew it would be difficult, and I was right. Here is how it looked the first time it was 'finished':

 

There are things I like about it. I think the snow patches came out better than expected, and I like the shadows on the snow patches. I don't like my foreground, and to me the entire painting reads as flat, with no feeling of dimension or space. Can I stick my face in it? I think not. I posted the photo on WetCanvas and got some great feedback, so I adjusted a few things:

I softened and lightened the tops of the mountains. I greyed down the bluff with some purple. The foreground grass was scraped off and redone using orange underneath to make the green pop. Much better, right? I know it's not perfect, but I felt  I learned a lot so on to the next one.

Mr. Moose

After my success with the colorful goat painting I wanted to continue on with the horns theme. In this case, antlers. My first career was taxidermy, which I did from 15 or so to 23, the last few years being in a large studio working on game animals from all over the world. I love horns and antlers, and moose are so easily recognized and have fairly simple antlers, I thought I could get some nice results. I think I did!

Mr. Moose

SOLD

Got my Goat

As luck would have it, when I posted the buffalo painting to Facebook someone asked if I was going to paint goats. I replied that I wanted to, but hadn't had much luck finding reference photos I wanted to work from. Within moments she posted some wonderful goat photos! I was thrilled, and the next day did this from a crop I took from a photo of one of her goats:

"Got my Goat"

SOLD

I am very happy with this one, hopefully I can repeat this on future paintings. I tried to use more color and to not overwork it. Another thing I find I am doing almost never is blending with my fingers. I tried to only use a harder pastel stick to blend on this one, allowing the pastel to build up and glow.

Yesterday was a day spent reading about painting and surfing the web for more photos to work from. At first I felt these were wasted days, but I think it's all part of the process. Finding photos to work from us not that easy, you need permission from the photographer, or a ready source of photos where permission has already been given. I have a lot of my own photos, but mostly they are from trail rides and I noticed they are always mid day shots, or cloudy days with flat light. That is because I never get up at the crack of dawn to ride, nor do we stay out until dusk. So there ya go, that's why I am always on the hunt for photos by intrepid souls who are out at the perfect times, early morning and early evening.

Hells no, buffalo!

The photograph for this painting came from photographer Manu Sharma in India. This was during a festival where horses, cattle, and camels were all ornately adorned:

Photo courtesy Manu Sharma Photography

      Here it is in progress:

I realized at this point that the eye was too small and not quite in the right spot.  I wasn't liking the pink tone on the cheek, either. I started to think more about warm and cool colors, and what parts of the buffalo  were warm or cool. I brushed off the check and tried again:

The eye is much better, and the cool pink is gone but this fleshy color isn't quite right either. I am beginning to get frustrated and can feel my inexperience weighing down on me. Then I remembered a handy tip, look at the painting in a mirror and the issues will jump out at you. I do this with my sculpture except I take a photograph and flip the image on my computer. I also looked at a very small version of the  reference  photo, which helps to see the major shapes and colors and not the details that are far to easy to be prematurely focused on. I brushed off the cheek, again, and this time I got it right:

 Festive Buffalo

SOLD

I wasn't so sure about this one, I liked it and my husband liked it, but was it just too weird? I put it up on Facebook and wouldn't you know, someone bought it right away! I think I will do more bovines.

The Daily Painting Project

I started painting in August 2012, so really not very long ago. My friend Sonya, who got me started, told me all I needed to know when she said that if I wanted to get good at painting I should do a lot of paintings. I knew she was right, but stubbornly I began doing larger paintings that would take days, if not weeks, to complete. I did a few pretty good paintings during this time, but my work was not improving as fast as I wanted. I want to get a LOT better. Then I stumbled across an article by Carol Marine on Dailypaintworks about her experience with daily painting. She had taken art courses in college and said she learned very little. She did feel she started to understand painting until she began to paint for a few hours, every day, or most every day. She says to paint small and often, and you will start to improve. I had to set a sculpture project aside for awhile and decided to take the plunge and actually really try to do this. So far I have 8 paintings in the last two weeks. Carol says that you need to do around 500 before you actually know what you are doing, and I think she's right. If I can count what I have done since last August up to now, that leave me with only....470....more before I really know some stuff. Here is my effort from the first day, where I learned, or didn't, not to pick such complicated subjects. I consider this one a fail:

I chose better the next time, this is from a reference photo provided by NadineThome on the Facebook group Equine Artists. I call it "Horse Power":

"Horse Power"

 

The next one, from a photograph provided by Manu Sharma. This is a Marwari called "Redhead":

"Redhead"

SOLD

Both of these I am quite happy with, especially "Redhead". I wish all my paintings came out this fresh and vibrant. Practice makes perfect, though, right? I decided to push myself and go back to landscapes, an area I am definitely weaker in. Here is the first one, a crop from a photo I took while we were horseback riding in Utah on Cedar Mesa. This is looking down into the Grand Gulch from the rim and is called "In the Depths":

"In the Depths"

I posted this on WetCanvas and got some great feedback and guidance. Overall I am quite pleased with it, but it was too complicated of a subject to be done in one day. So what did I do next? Took a crop the the photo I took before this one and tried again, this one is called "Deep Within":

"Deep Within"

I might fuss around with it a bit more, for one thing I didn't leave myself a good place to sign it! I wasn't done with rocks, though, and the next time used this crop from a photo taken in Kane Gulch near Moab, which I felt was simpler and lended itself more to the ideals of daily painting:

"Kane Gulch Red Rock"

I think I made a few leaps forward with this one, but still feel the right hand shadow is too dark. I put it up on Facebook and got some great feedback, even a comment from a well known pastellist. So what do I do next? I thought I'd try water, and picked a crop from a riding photo. It had water and grass, two things I have hardly done, but I thought it would be a good challenge. After the the first session Todd and I both thought my reflection in the right looked off. The next morning I decided it was the rock, but I wasn't sure why. I put it up on WetCanvas and Jackie Simmonds told me the photo was just plain weird, that I did a good job with it but the rock in the photo is just a freak rock.  I call this one "Creekside Rocks" but maybe it should be "The Freak Rock":

At this point I am sick of rocks, but want to keep pursuing water. My next one is a crop from a National Park Service photo. Yes, it has water, and more rocks....I am going to rip my hair out. This one is called "Potholes" but I could probably come up with a better title:

"Canyonlands Potholes"

  I am setting it aside for a few days to decide if it needs more fussing. What am I doing tomorrow? A buffalo!