Idea for a painting

We traveled to Door County, Wisconsin this fall. Of course for me that means doing some painting and taking some pictures for possible paintings during the winter months. (By the way......it is all of 1 degree Fahrenheit here right now.) One morning we went to a coffee shop in Ellison Bay on a morning when musicians gather to jam. I sat there for quite a while when I was taken by the look of two of the guitarists. I did this little 6" x 8" study of one of the musicians with an intention to make a larger painting. That was September, this is January.....sometimes it takes a while for a painting to percolate in the mind.

Fire's Creek in North Carolina

This 14" x 18" landscape is from my studies of Fire's Creek in North Carolina. While my plein air paintings are done in an hour and a half to two hours, this one is far more detailed and took me several weeks to do (interrupted by other work as well). I've been busy here at home in the studio now that the weather here has turned quite cold.

Small sketch

This is a 6" x 10" oil done on the spot in Mineral Point, Wisconsin. I was working on this for about 2 hours and just wasn't pleased with it. While I did sell one of my paintings in the show, I didn't put this one in. The person in the house (or a relative of) walked across the street to see what I was doing. I'm at the point of being critical of my work and not satisfied with this....although I am putting it up here for anyone to see.

Plein air, Door County, Wisconsin

Luckily, I have neighbors who have a vacation home in Door County. I love going to Wisconsin...the site of many of my Farms and Barns paintings. Part of the time (4 days) was spent driving, not on the main roads where the tourists go, but on the County roads in the middle of Door County where the farms are. The purpose was to take some shots of the farms in Fall colors to give me ideas for paintings during the winter months when it's too cold to paint outside......I used to do that -- when I was younger and not bothered by really cold weather. The first painting is the meadow behind my neighbors' house. Loved the color. the next painting was done just 200 feet away....the path through the wood. They gave me a chance to show some textural effects with thick paint.

Fall scene at the pond/ Emily Oaks Nature Center

This is an oil done 6" x 12", a size I haven't done before. Easily made from a 9 x 12 panel, I thought I'd like to try a panoramic view. I painted in this same location last year, so the two paintings look similar. However this time I painted looser and thicker. In the trees at the far right I painted the sky holes through or on top of the dark color I had brushed in for the trees' leaves and limbs. The bright yellow leaves in the center were dropped on carefully. Painting time was about two hours. I stopped without noodling out the grasses in the foreground.

Fresh Paint Amana --- final pickup

Yesterday I drove to Amana. Iowa to pick up my unsold plein air painting from the Fresh Paint 2014 event. Why don't certain paintings sell? This has a really nice morning sky and some lily pads. Maybe I'm the only one that appreciated that. The other is a 12" x 24" of another view of Lily Lake. I had worked for over two hours on a windy dark morning and still not finished. After dealing with the wind I was ready to stop after two hours and left it unfinished, then took a couple photographs intending to finish at home. Instead of that, I took it along with me to Amana, picked up my other painting and headed off to Lily Lake to finish the big one.

Plein Air in Amana, Iowa

Again, this year I returned to the Fresh Paint Amana and met several very nice painters while trying to do my paintings. Lately I have not been pleased by my own work, but these two came out well enough to put on the gallery wall. They are both oil on linen on a birch panel.....one is an 8 x 10", the other an 11 x 14". I returned to Lily Lake just across the road from the city of Amana and painted the lake in the early morning. The other sketch is of a footbridge next to the lake. It's always good to talk to the other artists....to find new places to paint, learn about what they are doing. One of the artists is a chain saw sculptor, but also an accomplished painter. As I've said before....artists are capable of almost anything.