Happy New Year!

Cyrano de Bergerac - mixed media, 10" x 13"

With a New Year comes new possibilities and new goals. I think the tired old tradition of making resolutions, of which most will be broken or forgotten by Valentine's Day should be tossed aside. Someone I admire greatly once said "just do the best you can". With that in mind, I think I will simply choose to work hard at doing better. I'll be better at recognizing my blessings, work out harder, love my spouse more, spend better quality time with my family,  reach deeper to make my paintings better, explain concepts to my students in a more meaningful way, and be more satisfied with where I am in my journey. I figure working to simply be "better" than the year before will keep me on the right path to happiness. I wish you all much joy and prosperity in the coming year and may we all be a little bit better.

Cold Day

Detail from work in progress

Morning broke here with five inches of new snow and frigid temperatures. As the east coast of the US digs out from a weekend pummeling, we feel your pain here. Our discomfort is lessened by experienced road crews that are and fully prepared to dig us out so no real delays transpired. Given the weather, I thought I'd post a detail of a piece I am just finishing up. Photoshop continues to feel more and more natural as I get more experience. I am approaching these new pieces very much like I would a real painting and I think the results are looking a lot like my painted works.

Santa Brought Art Books!

One of the best things about Christmas for me is the promise of new art books under the tree. This year was no exception and I received some beauties. Listed below in no particular order are my new treasures. I look forward to delving deeply into each of them, but for now, I will just give you an overview.

1- Color and Light- by James Gurney:
This is Gurney's follow-up book to last year's very insightful Imaginative Realism. Both books are based heavily on concepts that James profiles on his popular blog Gurney Journey. This volume examines various techniques and principles that any artist can use to better capture a realistic sense of light and color into their work.The principles are laid out in a concise yet thorough manner which allows the reader to digest each principle with a minimum of cerebral overload. This is the type of book I would have loved to have had available when I was struggling with nebulous theories of color as they were vaguely presented during my undergrad days. I wonder how many failed color schemes could have been avoided in my work if I had had a resource like this to draw upon.Even now after nearly twenty years in the business, I found myself having light bulb moments while reading through this book. I will be recommending both Gurney books to my students as must have resources.

2- The Legend of Steel Bashaw- by Petar Meseldzija
I admit I wanted this one purely for Petar's amazing paintings. It recounts a Serbian legend that Meseldzija recalls from his youth of a Young king's quest to rescue his sister and then his own love from the ruthless dragon Steel Bashaw. The sumptuous oil paintings are meticulously designed and painted with an alla prima flair that is admirable. I found myself looking closely at the details of each painting and wishing the reproductions were even larger than the 9" x 12" format. Luckily, there is a section at the back of the US edition that includes various drawings  and details of the finished paintings as well as a step by step description of Meseldzija's working methods. This one will be giving inspiration for a long time to come.

3- The Art of Maynard Dixon- By Donald Haggerty
I admit I am a sucker for Maynard Dixon books. He is one of my all time favorite western painters, a master of design and color, he breathed incredible life into his vistas of sagebrush and stone. I own several and couldn't resist asking my wife to make sure this one was under the tree as well. This volume expands upon Haggerty's previous volume on Dixon in a slightly larger format with a number of paintings that I had not seen before. I admit I have not read the text yet but based on the previous work I have read from Haggerty, I expect this to be well written and insightful as well. The best part though are the full color reproductions the are plentiful throughout the book. Already a big fan of Dixon's work, I expect this will fuel me even more to reach for expression in my landscape work that I have not yet achieved.

Grand Canyon Christmas

Canyon Romance- by Greg Newbold

Oil on board, 5.25" x 5.25"

I had the opportunity this past summer to vacation on the North Rim of Grand Canyon with my wife. We had a great time together hiking and painting (at least I painted) and I gathered tons of photo reference including a bunch of shots capturing sunset lighting in the canyon. Well I took a day last week and made a little picture as a Christmas present to my sweetie to commemorate our trip. It was a pleasant and total surprise for her that she loved. The painting is rather small, but I had a randomly sized, bonus Gold River Gallery frame laying around from a previous order, so I decided to fill it. I am pleased how it turned out and I think I will also use it as a study for a larger painting.

Winter Sledding

Sledding - Acrylic on board 9" x 18"

Merry Christmas everybody! Hope this season brings you close to those you love. At the end of my picture book Winter Lullaby, two children pull the sled home to a cozy bedtime story with Dad by the fire. Each of my kids have a different perception of this painting with one thinking they are walking home with dad and another thinking  they are out with a sibling (another came later and he thinks he's with me also). It doesn't matter either way and I won't correct them. The point is that in their mind, they are coming home from the best sledding day ever to snuggle by the crackling fire sipping hot cocoa. Hope you all have time for something like that this Holiday Season and all the best for 2011!

Buy your copy of Winter Lullaby

Dreaming of a White Christmas

Christmas Shovel- oil on board 10" x 13"

So, all the shopping is done, or at least we have stopped. Presents wrapped, cards sent and cookies baked. I suppose I am finally ready for Christmas. Only one thing missing. A nice thick blanket of the white stuff. We had a nice storm over the weekend, but little by little temperatures have inched up this week and most of the snow has melted away. My youngest is hoping that forecasters are wrong and that Santa brings a fresh winter coat to hide away all the brown. I hope so too, but just in case that doesn't happen here (or that it never happens wherever you may be), here's wishing you a wonderful White Christmas!  This painting was done for a story that ran in last winter's edition of Park City Magazine. Thanks to all of you who follow and comment, It has been your present to me this year to feel like this blog is worth the time and effort. Now if I could just top 100 followers before New Years....

Finishing Plein Air in Studio

South Lake - Oil on panel, 10" x 8"

This painting was started during my recent painting trip to California. I still consider myself a real plein air novice and consequently some of my studies really weren't up to my finished standards. A lot of plein air painting purists would cringe at the thought of reworking an on location painting in the studio, but for me the experience of beginning outdoors only heightened the process once inside.

South Lake - as painted on location

The first impression that I captured outdoors held a lot of good things to me, including the overall color sense and the overall composition, but I was not satisfied with the either the brushwork, nor the texture of certain areas. I felt like the trees in particular did not really feel like the trees I observed. I wanted to also add more depth to the shadow planes and better define some of the shapes I found in the landscape. I lightly "oiled" the entire painting and began a process of evaluating and added paint strokes in almost every area of the piece.

Brushwork detail

Some passages received just a few brushstrokes while others were nearly completely painted over. I focused on more pleasing brushstrokes, more interesting color as well as shifts in color temperature. Overall I spent somewhere around three hours reworking this piece and I am much more satisfied with the result. A collector friend of mine is buying it for a Christmas present, so I have popped it in a frame for him.