Thursday, January 25, 2018

Sun Sweeps In - Donegal, Ireland

Sun Sweeps In - Donegal, Ireland
I painted this scene once before.  That was after a trip to Donegal, Ireland to explore my roots.   The land depicted has special significance to me because it was these fields that were worked by my Great-grandfather back in the late 1800's.  The cartpath runs down to a culvert between the road I was on and the pasture.  Stone walls are all over tinted with greenish lichen and moss.

BUY NOW

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

Green Harbor in Oil Paint

"Green Harbor in Oil Paint" is a collection of twenty oil paintings created in my seaside hometown on the South Shore of Massachusetts.   The book measures 8.5 inches by 11 inches and has a pretty blue and white cover.   It would make a nice gift for the art lover you know, a good looking coffee-table book, or an addition to your beach-themed room.   This book is the first in a series of planned books, so if you start collecting now, you can look forward to seeing at least three more volumes in the future.

If you have been following me for a while, you may be able to guess the locales of the next featured books....stay tuned.....

 BUY THIS BOOK

 Painting Images in "Green Harbor in Oil Paint"
BUY THIS BOOK

Thursday, January 18, 2018

Northern Ave Gray Day

Northern Ave Gray Day - Stage One
On this May morning, the outside temperature was 51 degrees, but there with heavy overcast and rain on the way, it felt quite chilly along Northern Ave on the Boston waterfront.   My thought was, capture the scene quickly and finish in the studio if necessary.  The clouds were very pretty in a stormy kind of way.   I used my round palette knife to swirl the cloudy sky.    Everything had a gray tinge to it, even the one "vivid" part of the scene, which was the long row of international flags lining the top of the World Trade Center.

Dots of color on palette for flags
Gray Day Northern Ave
I tried to loosen up and just render an impression, with an emphasis on the right colors and values.  There was lavender leaning blue in every color. In the photo of my palette, I demonstrate how I painted the international flags.   I created a row of bright colorful dots of paint comprised of the colors in the flags.   Using my palette knife I scraped up the line of paint dots onto the straight edge, then applied the straight edge of the palette knife with all the colorful dabs of paint making a short vertical stroke upward.   The knife was wiped clean and the remainder of the colorful dots were scooped up with the opposite edge of the palette knife and short vertical strokes down so that the row of flags were completed.  This produced an impressionistic rendering of the flags