More Paintings!

I had a streak of energy and created seven paintings last week. The first three were from photos I had taken over the years near lake Erie, and I also completed four plein air paintings. I'll share them all over the course of the next few days and make up for the slow period on my blog when I was in France. I still have paintings to share from that trip too, so I am a bit behind.

Life should slow down a bit now. No trips are planned and the only thing on my agenda is finishing a novel I started earlier this year.

This is a 10" x 20" painting of a sunset at Lakeside. I took the picture last year from the shore line. In my photos the sun always shows up as white, but I've seen enough sunsets to know that in reality the sun is pink or gold or some other very warm color, so I adjusted the painting to reflect that.

What's strange is that my camera doesn't even want to read the color of the sun in the painting correctly. It's showing us cooler than it actually is.

LAKESIDE SUNSET

10" X 20"

Marblehead Lighthouse from Another View

This is a view of Marblehead Lighthouse from the rocks below it on the north side. It's an angle that eliminates a lot of the distractions you see from above. It's also an angle that would be almost impossible to paint en plein air so I used a photograph.

The last few years I have had a few paintings in a gallery at Lakeside, Ohio. I haven't had much success with mainstream art; the only thing they sell of mine are paintings of Marblehead and cottages. It's a tourist area so that 's probably why. You don't go on vacation and buy a still life painting.

Although I am tempted to try a sail boat this year.

9"x 12"

Marblehead Lighthouse, Spring

1957 Lyman Wooden Boat

I attended the annual Lakeside Wooden Boat Show and Plein Air Art Festival this past weekend. This is an oil sketch of a wooden boat that I completed while I stood on the dock before the art show. It was a wonderful summer day in the seventies with low humidity and no wind. The perfect day to be outside painting.

This boat is a 1957 Lyman and the owner cam along and purchased it after some of his friends told him I had painted it.

SOLD

9" x 12" oil on linen

Gazebo

Lakeside Gazebo

11" x 14"

I began this painting on Sunday morning before the art show but I wasn't able to finish it. I pulled it out this morning and decided to add the plants which I knew I hadn't gotten to and define the bushes more. I kept it pretty loose because I really have no idea what else was there. 

I then added some violet in the shadows just because I thought it would be pretty. The blue of the lake and the abstract qualities of the trees are nice and I wish I had the capacity to simplify things like this in a painting when I'm NOT in a hurry and painting very quickly. Maybe it is something I'll work on in the future. Set a timer and after an hour call it done. I've heard that sometimes less is more when you apply it to painting.

Is Spring Here? Is Summer on its Way?

My small 6"x6" beach scenes are selling pretty well, so I searched through my collection of photos and tried to find some interesting pictures. Sometimes there is a good 'picture in a picture' and all you have to do is crop it and delete some other people or things that detract from the focus. In this case I added the bucket and the wave. The little girl is darling and I like the color in this small piece very much so I may do a larger version. The problem is that there is a definite lack of detail in the original and I'm not sure how much I could make up.

Sun Dancing

6" x 6"

A Plein Air Weekend

I spent a long weekend at the annual Lakeside Wooden Boat Show and Plein Air Festival. After a week of 100 degree heat the temperatures fell on Friday and I was wearing a jacket when I arrived at the gate Friday morning. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds in the afternoon and the jacket came off. Our final day was a breezy but warm Sunday, when the artists were invited to participate in a wet paint sale at the the park.

Jim White and I had decided we would kill some time by drawing people for free prior to the art sale, so we set up our easels and had some fun. Most of our clients were people who worked for Lakeside or children, but we didn't mind. The wind nearly took my paper with it a few times, yet every one seemed happy with their drawings. At least the price was right!

Here's Jim, doing his Sargent imitation.

Here's another friend of mine, Richard Maxfield, who's trying to sell some paintings. Or maybe he's just trying to explain his own unique creative process to them.

After the sale a friend and I took a dip in Lake Erie and THAT was extremely refreshing after being outside in the warm July sun all afternoon.

Here's a picture of my favorite subject from the weekend. I stayed with a great family and I asked one of the boys to pose with his rod and reel at dusk. I thought he would just stand on the dock and toss the line in once in awhile. Instead, he used real worms and he had a bite within minutes. It became an exercise in futility to paint him. The fish, a sheephead, according to my model, was reeled in after a few minutes of drama and it was a big, fat one! Unfortunately, the line broke and the fish swam away with the hook, which resulted in an interesting story about the actual size of the fish when he told his cousin about it later that night. It was getting dark so I took a few pictures, roughed the sketch in and finished it in the morning.

The Fishing Story

16" x 16"

SOLD

Palette Knife Painting

This is an 8" x 10" painting of a scene looking westward on Lake Erie near North Point Park. There was a lovely breeze blowing in from the lake and the day was made very comfortable because of it. One of my favorite places to paint in the area.

8" x 10" oil on board

Lakeside Plein Air Paintout

This is the third year I have attended this paint out which is help in conjunction with the Lakeside Wooden Boat Show at Lakeside, Ohio. This year I stayed with a host family and it was a more comfortable experience.

I painted the ubiquitous Marblehead Lighthouse because I hadn't done it and I needed to. Everyone paints Marblehead Lighthouse. It's almost a requirement. It was unbelievable hot on the day I did this so I searched for available shade and ended up as far away as you could get from it- leaning against a wall in the parking lot, with shrubs providing meager cover. At least there is usually some kind of breeze when you are near Lake Erie so it's not as bad as it might be.

11" x 14" oil on board