Painting a Still Life e Plein Air

On the final day of this event I searched for, and found, some shade in an alley in the middle of town. An antique store allowed me to set up near their entrance and gave me water and coffee too. Country music playing in the background and lots of observers added to the festive atmosphere.

I didn't finish the painting but I enjoyed the day and sometimes that's good enough. Unfortunately, it was another warm day and although the event was well-publicized, the wet paint sale didn't attract a whole lot of visitors so I left as soon as the awards were announced. And no-- I didn't win anything! :-)

Second Day of Painting in Converse

I painted a well-known landmark--a Shell gas station on Route 18, the second day I was in Converse. The home across the street had just been sold and the owner granted permission to set up my easel on their property, which offered a nice shady place to paint.

Plein Air in Converse, Indiana

I joined the Indiana Plein Air Painters this year and this is the third paintout I've attended. Held in Converse, Indiana, this paintout was sponsored by a number of small businesses in the town of Converse.

I had never heard of Converse before I visited it for this event but I left with a positive feeling.

Unseasonably warm weather arrived with the first day of fall, and coincided with the paintout, titled "The First Brush of Fall". The 90 degree weather was not exactly conducive to plein air painting but that's part of the challenge when you enter a plein air event: you must be prepared for everything- even pouring down rain.

I painted a pastel of a farm on the first day and made the mistake of standing in the sun because that's where the best view was! It was the first time I'd used pastels in the field and I was not too happy with the support I used-- a handmade board primed with a mixture of gesso and marbledust. I think I should have sanded it.

Plein Air Painting in a Park

11" x 14" oil on panel

The second plein air session with my group of student painters was held in another park-- one with beautiful ponds-- George Bible Park in Bryan, Ohio.

Flower Painting

I am working with some beginner and intermediate painters, teaching them a little about plein air painting. We get together when we can and paint. The first time we painted in a public park with lots of gorgeous flowers, so the natural choice for me to paint was flowers.

Central Park Flowers

9" x `12" oil on panel

Lakeside, Ohio Plein Air Event

Friday through Sunday I was in Marblehead, where I attended the Lakeside Plein Air Festival and Wooden Boat Show. This is a beautiful area of Northwest  Ohio, perhaps one of the better kept secrets in Ohio. I painted three new pieces and showed them, along with many from previous years, at the Plein Air Show on Sunday. Sales were brisk at the show and the organizers ran out of sales slips.
Below is Reagan, who stopped to admire my work and helped me paint some waves on the lake.

Hal's Garage

This morning a friend and I painted a picturesque old gas station that we had been wanting to paint for months. Hal's Garage is on the west side of Fayette, a small town 30 some miles west of Toledo.

12" x 12" oil on canvas

Dip Nets

This is a restaurant where we painted in Port Clyde when it was raining. I loved the colorful lobster buoys and the yellow reflections from the overhang. My friend painted facing the other direction.

Tim Horn Workshop

I attended a two and a half day workshop with Tim Horn last week. He is an excellent instructor and had some helpful tools for painting outdoors. There was nothing that was new to me, but watching him actually using the tools-one was a color isolator- reinforced the idea that I should be using them as well.
Tim's work is all about light and shadow and the first full day of the workshop was cloudy, but he still managed to impart some of the wisdom that has made him one of the top landscape painters in California.
I did not do a decent painting in this workshop, but I did create one I liked at the B&B where we stayed.

12' X 12" The Glen House

Spring Weather Arrives

It finally got warm enough for me to get outside and paint. I need 50 degrees or better and I like it to be 60. I am a wuss, I know. This wisteria is growing up the side of a tree. The back lit shrubs were brilliantly lit. No wind, lots of shade, steady light and lots of birds flying around. My host furnished a glass of wine and all was well in the world for a couple hours. A perfect day to be outside painting.

12" x 16" oil on canvas

More Plein Air from Arizona

This is another painting I completed near Phoenix at the beginning of the month. This was painted near my friend's condo, looking upward in the late afternoon.

The rock formation at the top of the hill was interesting and many of the prickly pears were starting to bloom, along with some other plants I'm not familiar with. I was able to achieve the soft forms on the delicate plants that had previously eluded me.

9" x 12" oil on linen

Plein Air in Arizona

There's a trick to painting the desert en plein air and I haven't totally figured it out yet. It involves condensing multiples subjects --like shrubs and cactus and rocks-- into solid shapes. Matt Smith does it extremely well, but this Ohio painter always runs into a few difficulties.

Still, this year's efforts were better than many of my others. My friend and I painted in a conservation area near the Sonoran Desert and the fresh dry air was welcome, especially when I knew that fiends and family back in Ohio were experiencing record quantities of rain.

I think I did a passable job on the saguaros. They are challenging. What I really love about this area are the misty purple mountains. Whenever possible I set up my easel so I am facing then so I can include them in my painting.

9" x 12" oil on linen

OPAS Competition

This is the painting I chose to enter in the competition. I just loved the the composition and the complimentary color scheme. Unfortunately, there were a lot of good paintings and mine didn't win anything. The owner of the gallery did choose it to be left there for the show through November so maybe someone will buy it.

I didn't have a chance to photograph it before I put it in the frame.

I painted it at Pigeon Roost, a pumpkin farm south of Newark, Ohio.

11"x 14"oil on canvas

Another Painting Completed in Licking County

I'm participating in the Ohio Plein Air Society competition. this weekend. The sky looked pretty threatening this morning but it didn't rain, and I was grateful for that. This scene was painted south of Johnstown on State Route 37.

9x12

Oil on Linen

Somewhere Near Newark, Ohio

I was pretty happy with this, the third painting I did today. I spent less time on it and it is smaller than the other two, but I really enjoyed painting it. The sun was hiding behind clouds by the time I set up my easel but that didn't bother me at all.

Field on Cotterman Road

9" x 12"

oil on linen

Frey Farmhouse

This old farmhouse was built by my friend's grandfather in the 1930's and is still owned by the family. We painted in the afternoon because the house faces west and we wanted light on the front. I embellished the flowers but for the most part it's a good representation of what I saw and another unusually pleasant eveningt for August.

11" x 14" oil on canvas

Plein Air Just Before the Parade

My friend and I set up our easels across the street from a couple of Victorian houses last Saturday. It's a nice empty lot where an elementary school used to sit and the city keeps it mowed, so it was really an ideal place to paint. I am always looking for spots like this when I drive around. Parks are great because they have restrooms, but they don't always have good views. In the country you can look for  substations owned by the electric company, sometimes with nice views of farms or farmland. And of course railroad tracks along unused sections of track are great places to set up too.

The day was sunny and cool, perfect for painting, but when we began to see people walking on the sidewalk with chairs and coolers I realized it was the morning of the Wauseon Homecoming Parade and we would need to move our car very soon if we didn't want to be blocked in, or watch the parade.

I had a pretty good start but I needed to spend another 30 minutes doing touch ups at home. This experience really proved to me that if you have an incentive you can get a lot done in an hour and a half.

Old Barn, Plein Air

I prefer to paint outdoors when I have the opportunity in the summer. I painted this plein air piece on a warm morning in July last week. The farm has been in the Fry family for generations. When I paint I aim for a "mood" more than a photographic image. The painting should tell the viewer a little bit about how I felt when I viewed the subject.

I was feeling really relaxed and on my game that day, so maybe some of that comes through. It was a perfect morning for plein air and that always cheers me too.

11" x 14"

Turn of the Century Barn

Light and Shadow

This is an example of a plein air painting that I began in the field and finished at home in my studio. I'm not always able to finish my outdoor studies. Sometimes the weather changes. Other times I spend too long on the details and the light changes so much I find myself doing what's known as "chasing the light."

For whatever reason, there are always going to be paintings that look great and need no modifications when you view them later, and there will be painting that need touch ups. Some plein air artists are purists. They won't modify a painting. Instead they will call it a field study and perhaps create a new painting using the study as a basis for color and value.

I'm not a purist. I don't want ugly paintings hanging out near me, so I will try to bring the painting to a place where it satisfies me. I've learned that I have to do this within a few days of painting the subject outdoors or my visual memory of the scene is likely to be gone. I also need a photograph if there was architecture or a building in the scene, to double check the perspective.

In this painting of a light post at Lakeside, Ohio, I knew I wanted to define the curves on the decorative roof accents and lighten the areas in the sun.

I'm displaying a photo of the finished painting, along with the photo I took as a reference to show the finished piece is not a photographic rendering. I maintained the structure, design and hues of the original and only used the photo as a guide to render the building more accurately and to place my shadows consistently. That's one problem with painting outdoors: your shadows will always move when you're painting on a sunny day.

Sunny Day Lakeside

9" x 12"

A Cozy Corner

Sometimes I have a painting that hangs around for a year or two and I pull it out and think this just needs a little more work. Depending on how the work goes it either ends up in the trash or in a frame. I like how this one turned out. I brightened the flowers and added a cat. It's a very 'cool' painting in tone and hue but sometimes that's OK. I often tend to go a bit too warm on my pieces.

I found this frame at Wayfair.com, believe it or not. I didn't actually buy it, I just copied it and photoshopped my painting into it, but wouldn't it look awesome if I did put it in something like this? Frames can make or break a painting, and I have to admit I like the museum look. It seems to add class to ordinary paintings.

9" x 12"

Cozy Corner