More progress on "Snow..."

  Even after I knocked down the top of the mound on the horizon, the border with the sky is a little higher than the reference photo. As the result the middle ground on the right has more space. But that's not so significant in this composition. Instead of leaving the background mound far away, I would put some more brush in the center ground, which suggest the mound comes around the left side behind the biggest bush and is connected to the mound on the left in the foreground.

Thinking about "Haystacks" Series

  At this early stage of this snow scene painting I'm already feeling this would become a very interesting  piece I ever painted. As soon as I started filling the mass of snow-covered bush this reminded me Monet's haystacks series. I think I want to lower the top of the mound in the background not to compete with the focal point in the foreground. I probably won't put as many colors as Monet did. But I would put variety of both warm and cool colors to finish this piece.

"paint like a child"

  When I was painting this tonight, it reminded me Picasso's quote "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child". I started like a child painting. At this moment, I just want to define the major shapes and positioning of those. So mainly scrabbly brush marks on the surface.
  But I'll gradually shift my focus on to values.

Paint the sides first!

  When I started painting like this after one week of blank period due to my day job, I realized I hadn't painted the sides of the canvas. Especially for the painting like this, which would have lighter colors, painting the sides has to happen first. I stopped painting and painted both sides, left and right, with dark color. I need to wait until it dries up and rotate the canvas 90 degrees then paint top & bottom sides.

Drawing for new horse painting

  After came back from a party hosted by a fellow artist at Alki Arts, I did this drawing tonight. I didn't comment anything about Alki Arts before, where I became an commissioned artist a couple of weeks ago. But I brought in only three pieces and Diane, owner/director of the gallery, put them in the back room for now. Until she decides when and how to show my pieces in the front room to public, they're just providing me some storage space for those pieces. That's why I didn't write anything about it before. I'll report it officially once the time comes.

  Back to this drawing....I took this photo in Spring along SR-10 between Cle Elum and Ellensburg, WA. There was a horse ranch on north side of the road. The tanker behind the horses was completely rusted and provided interesting color variations to this composition's background. I need to spend some more time to adjust the shapes of horses. Unlike the landscape piece, horse shapes have to anatomically sound.

New Snowscape Piece

I came up some idea for next two pieces, one landscape and one horse painting. This is the sketch I did tonight for the snowscape. I drove up to Grand Coulee, WA, last winter and took a bunch of photos. This is one of them. I didn't paint there even though I loaded up my painting stuff in the back of my car. So this would break my recent policy for landscape - paint on-site first then make a studio painting. But I felt that's ok after joining Ned Mueller's workshops twice.

If you can see what I'm intending to paint based on this rough drawing, congratulations! You're very skilled and experienced. This place is on top of the plateau, a little east from the big falls of Grand Coulee.Not so many difficult and/or complicated shapes. But it would be all about colors of snow and the rocks peaking out.

Wrapping this up

 Over the last weekend, I finished "Barn and Cattle". Not as good as I intended, but I'm somewhat satisfied with what I've done on the green-predominant landscape. It could have gone wrong on the every corner, which I avoided.

  For this cattle piece, I need to finish the details of the front cow as well as those hiding cubs. Then I need to finish the foreground pasture where sun hits. But I think I'll finish this piece over this weekend. Now I need to think about the next piece. I haven't decided what I would paint next either landscape or animal piece. I might need to go out painting before I can start working on the next landscape.