I started this little piece about a month ago...it is really the way the light was in front of our place. However, it seemed a bit garish to me. When I went back to the photo, I realized that it was really quite brilliant/color infused, so I went ahead and finished it. My main goal was to use as few brush strokes as possible...the cliffs are just dabs...and have them read as shapes from a distance. This is only a 6x8 painting...the type I generally start in the field.

I submitted a painting to Art In The Parks Mendocino a few weeks ago. While I worked hard on the piece, I had not been to the site in months, so I had to work from a preliminary sketch and some photos. I am a desert painter, not an ocean painter, so I was expecting a rejection notice....and low and behold, the painting got in. I am delighted. I have set a goal to apply to many shows this year, as I think it helps me hone my skills. (And it helps me deal with rejection!) What a nice surprise this was.

(See two prior posts). This incomplete painting was painted while I was "gallery sitting" at our gallery, Tumalo in Bend. (if you are ever in Bend, do come by.)
Well, it is a very long day (10:00AM to 7:00 PM). Around one or two o'clock I pulled out my easel, paints, etc. I had decided to work on a larger piece (this is 16 x 20) from a sketch I did last summer and reference photos.

An hour or so later a couple came in. The woman seemed very interested in looking at art...the man a little bored. He approached me as I was painting and asked if I was going to put in any people. I said that I hadn't intended to as this was all about quiet, distant places where one can be alone. He continued that as an artist, I could take liberties, and that paintings with people in them were more interesting. I acknowledged that some landscapes are greatly improved by just the hint of a person (recalling some great beach scenes with dots that resolve themselves into distant people) and that many landscapes are really about people,just not this one. He was a persistent little bugger, and suggested that I should be more creative. I refrained from saying, "If you buy this work instead of kibitzing, I will put in a damn human."
His wife (or girlfriend, or hopefully person on first date who will never go out with him again) was rolling her eyes the whole time.
The painting is far from finished...it is really just the initial blocking in of shapes and values, but I don't foresee any folks in it!

This painting too had some areas needing resolution (see prior blog about our critique group)...again the painters nailed it...needed to break up some lines, tone down some blue in the sand in foreground, etc. Went home, and followed their advice,and another painting put to rest!

I do not know what I would do without my artist critique group. Even after studying a painting for several days, I am often left with a feeling that something is off, but I am not sure what. Bingo, the group nails it. I go back to the studio, make the corrections and finally feel the painting is complete. That happened to this painting of a thunderhead growing over the Diamond Valley in South East Oregon. I forgot to "mass and simplify." When Vicki, Tracy and the others recommended that the clouds be a bit less scattered it was an "ah ha" moment. Artist friends are the best!

Plein Air Painters of Oregon has a winter challenge contest. We were given 3 black and white photos and left to interpret them ourselves. Actually, as a past board member I was the one to submit the photos. But I dutifully did this painting from black and white (not even sure I could fine the color photo in my photo reference, had I wanted to cheat)...and it was a lot of fun. The problem with painting from a color photo is that the photo is often off, and the painter subconsciously tries to replicate the mistakes of the photo resulting in an off painting. I suspect the original had green grass, but I really wanted to capture a late autumn day (bare foliage, warm colors just before the winter cold).

This scene of Summer Lake (an hour or so east of Bend, Oregon) is from late summer. You can see the fog rising from the receding landlocked lake in the upper left corner. The land in the foreground was once under water. These lakes grow and diminish based solely on rainfall.

They are called "dead" lakes, but I find them alive with beauty.

OK, I am a photo ditz...my friend Katherine has helped me, but there is only so much she can do with the raw material (me). I finally got around to photographing some paintings I did last year. They were little plein air pieces..needed a little final studio works, (hilights) and then photographing. I suppose I would do better if I wasn't impatient with the set up, but I WANT TO PAINT, not photogrpah. This was painted adjacent to the John Day River, at a spot where I have painted before. I love the fact that I only have to schlep the pochade box aobut 50 feet to get to the river.

This painting is from some photo scrap I took last year at Crystal Crane Hot Springs in Harney Co (one of the largest counties in the US)...in Eastern Oregon. It was a sunny day until some huge cumulous clouds rolled in. That night (we stayed there), the silence was absolutely the most we had ever "heard/not heard." Even though I live out in the desert, about 7 miles from the closest town, we have the river, and the highway (seven miles away) and trains...so ournights are not completely silent.

There is a miniature show I was recently informed of. I had two paintings that fit the specs, but decided to push the envelope and see if I could get a large scene on a small canvas. This is on a 5"x7" canvas. The scene is of a farm in the Tygh Valley, in central Oregon. It is a beautiful spot. I like going there to paint, and always come away with additional reference photos for studio painting in the winter.

I am working away at my series, High Desert Light. Although I intend to include the many moods of the desert--sunny, threatening, bleak, vast, etc.--I seem to be focusing on cumulus clouds at present. It may be my longing for spring or summer. Right now, if I were to photograph the high desert around my area it is sort of gray, raw umber and various shades of grayed yellow. No longer snowed in, but definitely grayed in. In the spring and summer when I paint out doors, I guess I will continue with the blue skies, so my next painting better be one of the moody ones!