GO WEST, YOUNG PAINTNGS, GO WEST!

 These are heading for them thar hills.

Twilight Grove

Acrylic on cotton fabric

Cedar Shakes

(and one other)

By column:

Left:

Abstract Waterfall: texture, transluscents

Tree: acrylics

Center:

White on black: texture, acrylics on stretched canvas

Abstract Desert: texture, transluscents

Purple Skyscape with silhouette: acrylics

Sky and Seascape: acrylics

UPSIDE DOWN HERE, my bad - Purple skyscape with foliage: acrylics

Right:

Rock and Tree: acrylics

Skyscape with silhouette: acrylics

Sky and waterscape with peninsula: acrylics

Abstract Halloween tree: acrylics

Here they are separately - kind of ... 

And that's the lot of them for this trip.

Oh, and this one, in case somebody up there wants to cut it down to size and stick it in a frame or something:

It may as well make itself useful a second time, eh?

And yes I know these photos are lousy. They're mainly here for my records. If anybody is interested in any of them, they'll have to contact Adla at the Cheshire Cat in Cripple Creek CO to see if she's got it or knows where it might be.

Ten Minute Stress Relief

Sometimes you just need a bit of canvas, some bottles of acrylics, and one good brush to break the tension.

Here it is without the crop:

When one painting is giving me grief, it helps to flip it over and do something to ease my soul on the back of it. That's what this is.

1) Yellow, light orange, dark orange, red, purple, and black.

2) The back of a work-in-progress.

3) One really good inch-and-a-half flat brush. 

4) Ten minutes and I'm settled down, attitude adjusted.

NOTE: One thing about this is that working fast can be really fun. You squeeze the paints straight from their bottles onto the canvas in drips, lines, little puddles, where you're going to want them, swipe your brush across them starting with the lightest tint and up into the next color to spread and blend them, wash out our brush quickly, pick up where you left off and do the next section, and repeat until you're done. The paint will still be a little damp, so the silhouetted mountain overlay picks up a touch of the lighter color, which is a nice effect IMO. HELPFUL HINT: Use the absolute minimum number of brush strokes possible, which I failed to do here, mainly because I was pretty stressed and not thinking straight when I started. 

That Painting and I Have COME TO AN AGREEMENT

 

We have decided to take a detour.

Until we are able to spend a lot more time at a seashore, we have no idea what the heck we're doing.

We are, however on our way to the mountains, and we have to cross high desert, and plains, and travel through foothills to get to said mountains.

Therefore, it is our joint decision to follow our natural inclinations and do something we know how to do.

The good news is that we are also right fond of horses and dogs, know them well as a matter of fact.

And enough is enough.

This painting does not want to be what I thought I wanted it to be, nor even anything close.

Fine time to find that out NOW, when it's supposed to be shipped within the next couple of days.

If This Painting Was A Kid I Would SEND IT TO ITS ROOM!

Since it's fighting me EVERY step of the way, chances are I'm going to call this battle a loss for me.

That's not a bad thing.

Every time this happens, it happens at the WORST possible time, drives me around the bend for a couple of hours before I give in and turn the process over to the paints and canvas.

That is inevitably the best decision because trying to force it has yet to produce a positive outcome for me.

So this is the time for me to go ahead and let the bloody recalcitrant painting take the bit and just hang on for the ride.

The good news is that none of those crazy rides has ever unseated me, so there's that.

RECENT WORK AND A COUPLE OF 'OLD ONES'

This is by no means a complete gallery of everything. I'm not even sure I have photos of all the pieces I've done recently, and they're all gone from me so if I didn't get a photo I likely never will. *sigh*

I'm also working on some of the Cedar Shake pieces (cedar shingles from a 100 year old house that's getting new shingles at long last). And have on my agenda to do Ranch Landscapes from down here in the Lower Arkansas River Valley of Colorado - mostly south of town, on the other side of the Purgatory River but also some from north of town and maybe some from along the old highway that goes past Bent's Old Fort.

None of these photos are particularly all that great, but you might get the general idea ... and I had to resize most of the photos to upload them, so ... ALSO, I have no idea why that one aspen painting is out of alignment. I tried four time to make it get into line but - some paintings just have minds of their own. Actually I think ALL paintings have minds of their own, at least all of mine seem to as they generally flat refuse to become what *I* intended for them to be.

This first one is literally one of the first of the aspen paintings I did clear back whenever it was. I set up a hinged set of window screens (the old-fashioned kind, about five feet by almost three feet) in a trifold and started painting one big expanse of aspen, acrylic on fabric. the smaller piece here (lower right) is one of the white on textured white Study In White pieces.

This is the sidewalk sign for a fantastic shop in Cripple Creek Colorado where a few of my pieces hang now and then. It's an adventure every time you visit the place with a wider variety of stuff from all over than you'd expect!

Here's one of the pieces I've been working on this December of 2018. It's 54" x 32" or some such, so a fairly big piece. I wanted the sky to peek through the foliage so did an underlay of cobalt; same for the darker bottom part. Do NOT ask my why I didn't join the sky and the earth - instead, I left a wide strip of plain fabric between them, so when viewed from behind or back-lit it looks a mite odd. As experiments go, this one turned out okay anyhow. Even so ... what was I Thinking? In my own defense, this December has been spent recovering from some rather extensive adjustments to my upper jaw done late in November - that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Here's one from even further back than the first of the aspen pieces. It's pencil on fabric with black acrylic surround.

This is a quick little piece I call Aspen Alone. It's acrylic, but the sky part is diluted to make it water-color.

I like doing these colors. Here I've followed my general rule of 'working my way forward'. The sky goes in first, then the furthest back bits, and just work forward from far away to near, putting the closer layers on top of the further back ones.

This is another of the fairly big pieces I've been working on this month.This one has a white base coat, aspens done first, sky filled in, lower part added.

Here is Phantom Queen in progress. It's still 'in progress' even as we speak although on it's way to the buyer, a little further along than this with more layering and some of the lower part done.

Here's the piece with the sun behind it. It's the third of the fairly big pieces all on the same theme of cobalt sky, bright fall aspen ... The point behind this one is to be able to backlight it. Kind of. I have plans for that whole back-lighting thing, yep. Since I can't keep a secret to save my life, it involves muslin and translucents.

Here's a relatively little simple white over blue. Looks a bit chilly to me.

Here it is, caught in the colors of a prism reflecting sunlight onto it. Can I recreate this look with some light touches of pastels? I could try, and I likely will, but not on this piece as I no longer have it.

This is one of the two pieces that went into the Victor Colorado Plein Air event over Labor Day Weekend, and never came back out. That's good news as it means it got sold there. It's white over textured black and measures just about two feet by three feet. It's called Moonlit Phantom and was done on site down Phantom Canyon which heads south and down from Victor toward Canyon City in Colorado USA. I got the texturing and black done by daylight while I could actually see it clearly, waited until about one in the morning for the moon to rise to be sure it was going to look the way I remember seeing it a thousand times by moonlight, and of course it did. But it was an Event so I had to be sure. Got the white and a touch of silver in place that night, then headed out for sunrise partway down Gold Camp Road. The aspen leaves are 'fingerprints' of actual aspen leaves coated with white and pressed onto the black to make the image in paint.

Here's an unfinished piece from down Gold Camp the following morning.

A Study In White in progress.

Another Study In White. This one I believe went to the Cheshire Cat and have no idea where it went to from there.

Here's the other piece, Study In White, that went into the Victor Plein Air Event and never came back out. The photos you see here are the only ones I have of these two pieces. Had to talk my way into the closing of the Event when everyone's pieces were retrieved in order to get the photos. It was my only chance as I wasn't retrieving anything.

Here's another one that went to the Cheshire Cat in Cripple Creek. The owner made me fill in the moon and lighten the whole thing up some as she thought it too dark. The clouds are white soft pastel. This is another from the Moonlit Phantom series, white over textured black.

A Reign of Hope

This photo is called Phantom Queen and has been the inspiration for more than one piece of artwork.

She has kind of been nagging me of late so chances are there will be a few more pieces to add to the Queen Collection.

As soon as I get at least Part One of HELL AND HIGH WATER published I plan to take a break from writing and get some art done.

That, my friend, is going to happen ASAP. Part One is just about ready to go - a final edit and I can get it into print.

As for the Queen artwork ... the colors aren't going to let me go. I've got to invest in massive quantities of cobalt blue and metallic gold.

I've got a big square canvas staring me in the face. 

I've got it reversed, an experiment to see how it works to do my 'sculpted', high textured paintings within the protection offered by the framing of the stretched canvas. My thought is that I can then add glass to the framing without damaging the painting.

It's worth an experiment.

At any rate, a couple of things are in my head at the moment, both of them based on the above photo.

One is to do aspen leaves in gold over a cobalt background, of various sizes scattered all over the place.

The other is to use the texturing and see what I can come up with in terms of an interpretive piece of the Queen.

We shall see what we shall see.

My first step is going to be to get the back (actually the front, but in this case it's going to be the back) of the canvas coated with stabilizing paint - several coats I'm thinking, of plain white. Then a top coat or two of that liquid rubber I have for my boots. It dries to a blue color that I'm hoping won't clash with the cobalt. It will be on the back and won't really matter, but it's the principle of the thing.

And my gut tells me to do the Queen painting first so that's probably what I'll do.

I can get the photo into my projector and use it for a guide. Because the 'experiment' my sister talked me into trying fell flat on its face, I'm going back to using plaster. It will mean working very fast and not having any wiggle room for 'fixing' but will be worth it.

The texturing means I'll have the bulk of the painting done in white on white (plaster over white paint with another coat - or two - of white paint over the top of the plaster to help protect it). Once that's done all I have to do is put the colors on.

I'm only going to do the central stand ... the trees off to the sides aren't going to be there - I think. To get the square instead of the photo's rectangle I'll just carry the sky and ground out to the sides leaving the Queen centered.

Yep.

That ought to do it.

Because it's an interp piece I don't have to follow any rules.

The cobalt can go straight down to the bottom of the frame if I want and I can just leave the ground totally out of the picture if I want. White and black for the trunks, gold for the leaves. The texturing will make the 'front' leaves pop but I can still use shading and highlighting to emphasize the depth.

So that's what's on my agenda.

What the Queen will actually decide she wants remains to be seen. For all I know she'll just opt for gold highlights over cobalt including the trunks.

Yep.

Gotta get this Story done I surely do.

Portraits of the Younglings of Dunnottar!