Paint America Exhibit Schedule

The exhibit for the Paint America Top 100 and Top mini 50 will be in Westboro Gallery in Topeka Kansas. It will Open on February 15, 2008 and will run till April 1. to see the participants go to www.paintamerica.org.

Paint America

Fountain Light 11 x 14 oil on linen

Just found out that my Painting "Fountain Light" was juried in the top mini 50 for the Paint America Competition. My other entry only made the 2nd 100 . I had only entered two as the fees can get expensive. The exhibit for this will be in Kansas, I will post more details when i get them.

First Good Weather Day

9 x 12 . oil on linen

It was a good 65 degrees by noontime and I had managed to go out with my painting group to a farm in Middletown. it was around 11 am when I started and finished this 9 x 12 at around 12:45 . I used a C13 linen and for the colors I had used the ff:
White
Ultramarine Blue
Cad yellow Light
Cad yellow lemon
Cad Yellow Medium
Manganese Blue Hue
Ultramarine Violet
Emerald Green
Alazarin Crimson
Terra Rosa
Cad Orange
Bright red or Cad red light
Permanent Rose

I noticed the sky had a yellowish cast on the white areas, although The painting does not show it due to photography limitations, I tried to put a hint of yellow in the cloud areas. There were horses around but ran out of time to put them in before the light could change. there were a lot of pink highlights and subtleties in the grass and I used the permanent rose with white mixed in to the mixture of my light yellow green of the field. I used the Manganese Blue Hue instead of Pthalo Blue to make it easier to mix the sky color.

Happy New Year

    I decided to start a journal this year to basically compile and organize my thoughts and methods that I use in my painting processes and my plein air adventures.  Although I have been painting a long time,  It has sometimes been instinctive  for me and I never really thought of documenting the 'hits and misses'  of my plein air paintings, and my studio works.  I do a lot of experimentation in my work and I know due to this I have learned a great deal.... but what did I really learn?  Lets Begin with breaking down the materials I am currently using:    

  I use Linen Panels glued to gatorfoam,  masonite or birch .    I make these myself, although if I ran out of my own panels I use the Fredrix linen boards which are green at the back and are supposedly archival in quality.  for the linens I use the C13 of Claessens  and the Fredrix Carleton DP which has a rougher texture but i love the way it takes the paint.  I use this now for works bigger than 12 x 16 , I find the texture of this linen in smaller works are too pronounced and can be distracting , unless I pile on the paint.   

 For Oil paints i use Artist Quality Rembrandt, Windsor&Newton, Gamblin and Grumbacher.   for my Brushes i have recently switched from using only Flats to using Bristle Filberts and sometimes Flats ,  and Sable Flats.  I like the Dick Blick masterstroke series 05208 Sables and Langnickel Sables series 5590,  and I use  different brands of Bristle brushes:  Utrecht 209-F series , Robert Simmons Signet series , Richeson Signature Filberts and sometimes Arttec Bristle Supreme 500KF  Filberts.   I also use Cheap Utility house painting brushes that I buy from Hardware stores or the cheap  Loew-Cornell bristles that you can buy at craft stores that come in big sizes.  These are good for Big studio pieces where you want to quickly cover a big area on the canvas.    As for the colors , I'll just post the ones I use per painting, this way I will be able to look back and compare .