Luminosity

Morning sunlight breaking through the fog, back lighting the trees; the leaves glow with luminosity.  This painting came together slowly. I did color studies first, but the values and color intensity needed subtle adjustments as the painting developed.

The final digital color study.

The sketch book color studies.

 Detail 1.

 

Detail 2.

 Detail 3.

 Detail 4.

Detail 5.

These first three images of the process are mostly under painting.

I start with the back ground, then then foreground elements, but I also jump back and forth making subtle refinements.

You'll notice some color shifting that is a result of the photograhpy.  I did some minor adjustments of the color to the final image in Photoshop, but not to all the images of the process. 

The final.

Catalina Mountains, Romero Trail Final

Here's the finished painting. Romero Trail 18x30.

 A few images below, of details. I pushed the abstract qualities and the brushwork.

Artist Statement

I love the struggle of painting. Painting for me is about orchestrating and balancing the elements of beauty found in nature. The elements of color, shape, light, texture and mood are my inspiration. My paintings are personal and emotional interpretations of the land, sky, and atmosphere.   

I love oil paint. The buttery way it can flow off a bristle brush, and how thick paint can be freshly stroked over and into thinner paint. I strive to create exciting and pleasing abstract brush work. Look closely at my paintings and you can see broken impressionistic passages of color and shape. Back away and you'll see the abstract brush strokes become realistic forms of trees, rock, and sky. One particular element that I love to explore with paint is atmospheric depth. As you step back, notice the separation from the foreground to the background, created by value and color. Can you imagine walking through the landscape?

I've made my living as a professional artist for over 30 years. My commercial work has included illustrating book, comic, and gaming covers. I also designed, painted and modeled digital environments for award winning video games. Regardless of schedules and deadlines, I carved out time to paint small landscape studies. Now I am my own client and have the opportunity to indulge my own creativity. I love to paint.  

Catalina Mountains, Romero Trail #2

 Enough with the planning and the preliminary work, onto the final painting. Working from the earlier drawing I did on tracing paper I draw the final and lay in thin tones of value using burnt sienna. This is the under-painting. I plan to allow some of this under painting to show through the final paint adding some nuance of depth.

 

Working from the background to the foreground I paint the sky first, then the furthest mountain ridge. I refer to my color study trusting that the values and hues will come together as the painting progresses.  There are paintings where this doesn't work out so well; that I don't like the value and hue decisions in the background once the foreground is painted.  I will then adjust them by painting over, or sometimes sanding the paint off and starting over with fresh paint.

 

One of the elements I endeavor to work into a painting is quality abstract shapes and brushwork, while representing realism.

Here's a couple of detail images. Notice the abstract shapes, the brushwork the broken color and maybe some of the under painting showing thru.

Once the darker values of the mid-ground are in, the painting starts to come together. Those darker values push the mountains into the background creating atmospheric depth; another element that I enjoy putting into my paintings.

Another detail image, this time the rocks in the mid_ground. By enlarging the image the brushstrokes are more clearly visible.

The values of the new ridge create more depth. Notice the hues are warmer, they have less blue. Also it was time to under-paint the foreground shapes.

As I start painting the foreground, I can more clearly judge the value and color decisions I've made in the background and mid ground. I don't plan to sand any areas and repaint, but I may do some minor adjusting.

Next up, the final painting.

Catalina Mountains, Romero Trail #1

The Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson are beautiful and distinctive.  I found them very challenging and rewarding, but mostly challenging to both hike and paint.  The terrain is very textural, huge rock formations with spotted clumped vegetation. Single photos represent a small bit of the visual experience.  On multiple trips I've taken hundreds of mediocre photos, here are a few that I am using to create a new painting.  This one has nice shadow and light shapes, like most of my photos there is a glare across the lens.  Not the artistic lens flares like in movies, but the annoying kind.

Nice composition and a bit of the atmosphere that was very evident in person, but it is a struggle for mediocre photographers to capture.

Ah that beautiful texture that's so difficult to paint. Painting every detail of the rock and scrub brush would take more patience than I have, and would make for a less intriguing painting.  The challenge is to suggest detail with brush strokes and edit shapes to create pleasing rhythm and design.

This photo is less mediocre.

On to the composition, color, design; what to edit out and what to make the emphasis. I complete most of this work digitally. This stage is one of the most fun and challenging, (there's that word again).  I often spend quite a bit of time in this stage, yet every painting is still edited more as the stages progress.

I draw the composition about 12" wide, and grid it up so I can draw it on the painting surface. I don't create full size drawings and transfer them anymore. I used to work that way, but that's very challenging.

Often I create multiple color comps in a sketchbook; I was pretty happy with this one.  The camera, as always, distorts the color and values, compressing the range.  So you cant see that I was emphasizing the broken color passages.

This is all "preliminary work" as Joel Nakamura would say. I haven't yet started the final painting, stay tuned.

Sabino Canyon, Bear Canyon Trail.

I haven't posted as frequently as I had intended to lately, that doesn't mean I haven't been painting. I plan to post more regularly in the future. This is a new painting completed a few weeks ago, depicting the Bear Canyon Trail that leads to Seven Falls in Sabino Canyon, Tucson, Arizona.

 

When hiking I typically walk about 7 steps, stop, take a photo, hike another 7 or 8 steps and take another photo and so on, until the memory card in my camera is full. Consequently I spend tons of time studying reference and concept images for a painting. Many of the concepts show promise but are never realized as a finished oil painting. Case in point, this photo (and many similar ones 7 steps apart) was intriguing because of the low warm morning light, and long cool cast shadows. I also wanted to include the natural look of the desert plants in the various stages of growth and decay. Much of the decay has great character and interest (to be explored more in future paintings). As I was working through ideas my thinking was side tracked by the memory of hiking up and down the rocks, and this image didn't convey the elevation change.

Here is a digital color study based on the above photo reference, along with other photos of the rocky cliffs and bluffs. The concept became too busy. I was trying to paint too many concepts at once.  Morning light, decayed and non decayed vegetation, the magnificent peaks and jagged rocks...

Magnificent peaks and jagged rocks. Are they not magnificent?! I should do a painting with them as the focus.

Another worthy subject to add to the list of concepts, crazy variations in the shape of the saguaro.

I also wanted to emphasize the canyon. We hiked up between two giant ridges of rock, it was an amazing day.

More crazy saguaro cactus. If I paint the actual specific shape will it look too fancy-full, and not believable?

So I decided to try to create a paining with crazy cactus, and warm low morning light, magnificent rocky peaks, that tells the story of hiking up the canyon. This is an early digital concept. I felt the foreground was too busy.

Better, but the color is too...dramatic?

Closer?

 

Better.

 

In the end did I choose to combine too much? Was I able to bring the concepts together, and create a harmonizing painting?  Most of my paintings are about light, shadow and atmospheric depth. These subconsciously create a foundation that the other concepts can play upon.

 

Here's the finish. 18" x 24" Bear Canyon Trail.

 

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

In the past few months Susan and I have traveled a bit, visiting some magnificent museums filled with masterworks of landscape oil painting.

The collections at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City focus on preserving and interpreting the heritage of the American West.  

The End of the Trail sculpture at the entrance of the museum.

Susan and "the Duke"

Each year they hold the Prix De West Invitational Art Exhibition and Sale. The museum purchases the top juried painting each year for their permanent collection. These are some of the greatest  American western landscape painters: Wilson Hurley, Clyde Aspevig, James Reynolds, Clark Hulings, Tom Lovell and many others. These are premier paintings representing the artists at their best. Most are large paintings, they probably average 5 by 6 feet. Then inside the Sam Noble Special Event Center, resides 5 massive triptychs painted by Wilson Hurley. Each are 18 by 46 feet!

Notice the size of the paintings compared to the folding tables.

There is so much more to the Museum, here's the intro from the web page...

 The National Cowboy Western & Heritage Museum is America’s premier institution of Western history, art and culture. Founded in 1955, the museum in Oklahoma City collects, preserves and exhibits an internationally renowned collection of Western art and artifacts while sponsoring dynamic educational programs to stimulate interest in the enduring legacy of our American West. More than 10 million visitors from around the world have sought out this unique museum to gain better understanding of the West: a region and a history that permeates our national culture.

The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum features a superb collection of classic and contemporary Western art, including works by Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell, as well as sculptor James Earle Fraser’s magnificent work, The End of the Trail. The exhibition wing houses a turn-of-the-century town and interactive history galleries that focus on the American cowboy, rodeos, Native American culture, Victorian firearms, frontier military and Western performers. Outside, beautifully landscaped gardens flank the Children’s Cowboy Corral, and interactive children’s space.

From fine art, pop culture and firearms to Native American objects, historical cowboy gear, shopping and dining, the Museum tells America’s story as it unfolds across the West.

Here's a link to their website.

Arizona painting 2014

 Here is a post collecting six of my larger Arizona paintings from 2014.  If you look back thru the blog you can see individual notes on each painting.