Monday, January 30, 2012

Right horse is almost done

As you can see, the right horse is almost done. I still need to adjust the color of legs but not much more I can improve. I'm going back to left horse. At the same time, I need to start thinking how to finish the background.

Monday, January 23, 2012

Fixed the composition and filled the canvas

As shown in the photo, I decided the rough composition especially the foreground and filled most of canvas with some colors. Background hills are still too dark and the front bush needs more sharper edges. But I can see this could be a successful painting if I'm patient enough and solve each problem one by one.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Getting into too much details

The left horse is getting into shape. But I'm worrying about too much detail of the skin color patterns and forgetting about the overall value changes. Especially its face. I'll leave it as is for now and work on the right horse next. When I come back, I'll squint more to finish it. It's almost done after all.

Friday, January 20, 2012

Still can't determin the composition

Based on the suggestions in the last workshop, I started putting more colors and values into this painting. How much river and what kind of foreground shapes I would put in are not decided yet. I wanted establish more context before making those decisions.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

More detail on Right Horse

After filling up the entire background, now I'm working on the right horse again. This time, I can start finalizing the final colors since I can see the the context of this painting. But I want to adjust the face of the horse to be more attractive.

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Jim Lamb's color mixing workshop

Today I went to Jim Lamb's home studio in Sammamish, WA to attend one-day semi-private workshop. It's about mixing colors. Not to make any actual paintings. However, I brought in a replica of my "Yakima River Valley" painting (see the photo, 12"x9"). I painted this quickly through two nights in this week to represent what I'm struggling with the studio painting.
It's actually representing it pretty well much more than I expected. In the critique session at the end of workshop, I got quite good suggestions and opinions to this painting from Jim and other three students, like...
  1. values and color transitions on background hills.
  2. sharp&soft edges of hills in background and middle ground
  3. shapes of foreground brush from compositional points.
  4. pros and cons of the hint of the river
I'm going to make some adjustment based on above to complete this piece. It was really beneficial in addition to the color studies.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Realization of horses - 1st round

The first round for the horses is done. I'll wait the paints to dry up a little before touching them again. I need to decide the value for the background in relation to the horse colors. I'll probably make them darker than real values to put focus on the horses. I could use cadmium colors on the horses to make them shining. But that's not the way I regularly do. Fist I need to hide more underpainting orange.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Getting gray

After pushing shadow value further, I started filling up canvas. It's getting gray entirely than I intended. But at this stage, it would be fine since I would paint it over and over.
I might try taking Jim Lamb's one day color making workshop next Saturday to get more confidence making colors. If a spot is still available though.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Attaching an accessary

I wanted to add an accessory to the palette box; a wet brush&knife holder, which did tonight. I'll leave this box until those pieces of hardware I ordered arrive.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Oiling palette surface

Today I finally found a strap handle on-line, which would fit this box perfectly. It took me a quite while including a visit to a local luggage repair shop in Georgetown. The main problem was size of the handle. Most of them are 10" or longer.
Anyway, while waiting for those pieces of hardware I ordered, I've been oiling the surface of the palette. The first coat I put yesterday was quickly soaked up by the board. So I put the second coat tonight. I used old linseed oil I bought probably about 5-6 years ago, which I no longer use since I've changed my way of handling paints to put on the canvas.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Ghostly horse is coming to life

As I wrote on 12/30/11, once I put highlighted colors, the right horse has been getting life in it. I need to do the same on the left horse next.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

New Year, New Landscape

The first update in 2012 is a new landscape. But the scenery is the same valley along SR-10 near Cle Elum (See my blog on Nov. 8, 2011). I painted there two months ago.
Canvas size is 22"x18", same as "Sauvie Sky". I might continue painting landscapes in vertical format a while. I like this format because I can put close foreground as well as far background and sky. I painted like a child at this first stage.