A Road in the Woods

This is a larger view of the woods road that I sketched in the last days of 2008. I am still working on it. The lefthand foreground needs to be developed further, as do the lefthand trees. I quite like the area of misty dead conifers in the upper left corner, but fear that my attatchment with this part of the painting is making it hard for me to see that it detracts from the image as a whole. My plan is to add more trees over the area that I am so fond of and leave just hints of it peaking through. Just enough so that I know that it is there.

I started with the intention to do this as a long horizontal format, but also wanted to give myself some flexibility. I have done a full sheet painting as you see above. It is 22 x 30". If I am not pleased with the trees I put in the upper left I shall go back to my original idea which is the crop below.

If I am pleased enough with the full painting I shall not crop it at all.

Please leave your comments.

Snow Haze, 7 x 10", watercolour, January 2009, $160

This is the last of the imaginary scenes of the snow that I shall do for a while, I think, but I am more pleased with this one than with yesterday's.

Snow Glow

Snow Glow, 7 x 10", watercolour, January 2009, $160

Another made-up painting. This was inspired by the sky as I was out and about on a recent very cold day. Because I had some critique of the field rows in my last painting I thought that I would work on making better ones in this painting.

fun painting day

Winter Colours, 5 x 7", watercolour, Jan 14 2009 $98

I was on my way home from town this morning and the colours of the wet brush, grasses and trees in the freezing rain caught my eye. I came home and made this painting up. I had fun painting this and am reasonably pleased with how this has turned out.

Magnolia, a work in progress

Here is something I have not done in a while and that is posting a work in progress. It shows the steps as I paint them. I did something new in this painting in that I applied almost all the colours unmixed onto wet paper and then allowed them to mingle. Above, I started with my drawing, soaked the paper and then applied the pure colours and let them move around. Then I started developing some of the deeper tones, and kept on adding layers until I was happy with the result.

Magnolia, 10 x 14", watercolour, Jan 2009, $400

almost finished- peony

Pink Peony, 20 x 30", watercolour, still in progress

This is one that I worked on extensively over the summer but

never reached the point where I was pleased with it. I was trying to stay away from what I feel is the somewhat cliched large bright flower on a black background. However, in the end I caved and here it is with a black background and to me it looks much better. I want to do just a bit more work around the yellow stamens but not too much.

Last Paintings of 2008

Here are the last 3 paintings of 2008. I recorded 113 paintings created in the last year. ( I keep notes of my paintings as I go along) Not all of them made it to this blog or to public display. Some ideas just do not make it to completion or maybe sometimes I am not up to the task set by my imagination. None the less, I think that I ended the year on a good note, as seen by the painting below.

Winter Woods, 7 x 10", watercolour, painted on Dec 30 2008, $185

On Boxing Day Robert and the kids and I went skating on a frozen puddle in the woods further up the road from our home. On the way there the colours of the sunshine coming through the trees caught my eye and I made time to get some pictures. I really over dramatized the colours that I saw, and the above picture is the result. I hope to work more with this view again, maybe this time being a bit more true to life, but again, perhaps not.

Nick on the Beach, 14 x 10", watercolour, Dec 2008

This was to be a Christmas present for Robert but I did not complete it in time. It is more overworked than I would have liked. I want to do more portrait work this year, and focus on getting the skin tones right early in the painting without having to keep adjusting them as the painting goes along.

This is a detail of the above painting. The shape of Nick's eyes is quite challenging. I do not think that I got them right, but am tired of struggling with this one.

Kids at the Beach, 10 x 14", waterolour, Dec 2008, NFS