Month: February 2015

Here’s a small value study of a friend a made while painting in Chattanooga last Fall. I had never painted around cows and for some reason assumed that they would stay away. It’s exactly the opposite. As soon as we got set-up they all walked right over and proceeded to watch the demo with us. I took a minute to grab some photos while they were standing around and have wanted to revisit them since that time.

This painting was done as a part of the class I take with Barbara Jaenicke. My initial reaction to the photo she sent was that it was unpaintable. Watching her demo allowed me to see how to find the painting within the photo.

I was able to get one pass of the colors complete during the class, but it was nowhere near complete. For me, this is where it gets tricky. The progress was good enough that it was a risk to go into it again because I might screw it up.

I let it stare me down over the whole Christmas break before finally attempting to finish it. One of us was going down, and I was at least going to give it my best shot.

Getting back into it felt crazy at times but after a little while I was able to find the rhythm. I think the break was good too because after looking at it again I was able to see the “light story” much better.

Note: This painting was done as part of a class I take with Barbara Jaenicke. The photo, composition and direction on this piece was from Barbara as a part of the class.

This one is a more developed version of No. 253. I backed the view out a little more and added in some cows that were edited out in the plein air study. The photo on this one is not so great (camera phone) because it was a gift and now lives with my parents. I forgot to get a proper shot before handing it over. The cows on this one were really fun to paint. Because of the distance the whole form had to be created with just a few strokes.

No. 261 was painted for my sister and her family as a Christmas present. It’s a much more developed version of No. 238 from last year. I had wanted to give them one of the ones I painted on the trip but they were more like studies. And I wanted the one they got to be really good.

Painting this was a challenge and I very nearly gave up on it twice. I get wound up when painting anything larger than 8″ x 10″ and this one was no different. But, the last set I worked through taught me so many lessons and I was able to use those to find the answer.

This painting was done as a part of the class I take with Barbara Jaenicke. She loves to paint snow and is so good with those types of landscapes. I’d only attempted any kind of snow setting once and after receiving the photo we’d be working from I knew this would be a challenge.

No. 259 is a painting of an oak tree at Sutter’s Mill in California. The sun was behind the tree so it had this backlit look set against the brilliant blues, pinks and greens of the background.