Sunday, November 27, 2011

Finishing up Summer Shade

Even though I still don't like the colors of leaves, I would be working on the lighted part and shadow part on the ground then putting finial touches on the leaves again to finish this piece.

I'm a little dissatisfied with the outcome. But I know well that my skill is not that good to come up with an attractive painting with this subject matter and composition. I need to move on to the next challenge. I might come back to similar subjects in the future though.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Sky and Clouds: wet-in-wet

The second update of the day is about wet-in-wet. I started shaping clouds in the sky by curving in with sky colors. Sky always changes colors from top toward the horizon. I might leave thin clouds for later to glaze after sky colors dried up a little bit.

Palette Base

This is the base of the palette box. As half-expected, it's not steadily attached to the tripod, which I need to improve by adding more support against the rounded legs.

At this point, then, I realized the position of canvas is too high. I can always lower the tripod, but it would make the palette surface too low. This was a little bit design mistake. I'm now making the side bar on the canvas holder, where the binocular holder bites on, higher to lower the holder. Making the palette surface higher is too much backward work at this stage.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Wondering how to stabilize

This is the basic mechanism how to hold the palette box attached to the tripod. As in the above photo, it's already firm against pushing down force at the front. However, it's still weak against down force on the side (photo below). At this moment I'm thinking two things:
1) raise the precision of the curvature.
2) add another layer above the current plate to have more than two points of contacts against the tripod.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

Started assembling the palette box

Although I haven't come up with the final idea how to attach the box to the tripod, I started making the box. The panel in the photo is the bottom side of the bottom plate. The opposite side will be the palette surface.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Piano Hinge arrived

A piano hinge I ordered on-line arrived today. It's about 31" but I'll cut it into multiple to use them for the new palette box.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Leaves are making shapes

It's hard to see the difference from the photo in the blog on 11/4. But those leaves are in much better shape now including cast-shadow part. I still need to sharpen edges on the right side. But now I can apply thicker layers with closer colors to the final layers.

Since I applied and accepted by Parklane Gallery in Kirkland, I need to produce more paintings monthly basis. So I spent good time this weekend and worked on this in wet-in-wet manner, which I think the key to finish quicker. The outcome would be quite different compaired to my normal way, glazing or scambling over dried layers, though. I even touched Sauvie Sky as well.

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Defining Foreground Greens

  
I haven't touched this piece a while. Tonight I tried defining the foreground greens value- and color-wise. They're a little too dark if you consider lots of summer lights in late morning. I'll reduce values when I add more layers on to them.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Plein Air along SR-10

Saturday night I stayed at Timber Lodge Inn in Cle Elum and drove out Sunday morning for painting along SR-10. I drove back and forth on the hwy then ended up setting up my easel where I can look down the steep slope to the bottom at the river level. I particularly impressed by the vertical line the edge of the trees created. Although I'm not satisfied with the color of the light yellow ground, I liked the way I finished those trees. The purplish brush was added at the last minutes. It could make it a little less purple.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Still working on edges of leaves

Although I don't like doing this, I had to make those edges of leaves sharper. One reason is I couldn't decide or make desirable color combinations for leaves. If I found the perfect formula for the colors, this painting would be attractive enough without sharp edges, which I can't find.

The background shade doesn't need sharp edges obviously. Then I should be able to enjoy putting subtle difference in values.