Repeating themes

Sometimes I find that trying out variations of the same theme in different pieces can break the monotony of doing the same painting over and over again until you get it right. Those of you who visit this blog will know that farmland fascinates me and I have often posted paintings inspired by this theme.

Hayfield is a small piece that was done some time ago, but really just finished recently by adding highlights to the foreground. Pieces like this have taught me that aspects of the same scene can be re-arranged in numerous ways to compose a painting. The discipline that comes from doing such a "series" of paintings has helped me overcome the beginner's notion that I must have novel inspiration for each piece!

Hayfield, Acrylic on canvas board, 5" X 7", $35 (unframed)

Limited palette painting

Since I can only paint when I am not busy with my full-time 'day job', several days often go by without my touching a brush. Even when there is a long gap I still keep thinking about composition and technique, working them over in my mind for when I do get to my studio. Upon picking up a brush I often feel driven to quickly complete a piece. Nothing helps this more than having a simple composition and a limited palette.

Three Trees is a small piece done with just four colors (dioxazine purple, light blue permanent, chromium green and yellow ochre, plus white gesso) and one filbert brush. While doing this painting, I roughly counted the brush strokes and I am pretty sure that there were less than 50. Next time I will be aiming for less because it sems to lead to cleaner color.

Three Trees, Acrylic on canvas board, 5" X 7", $40 (unframed)

Afternoon on the Prairie

This is a rather fast knife painting, an approach perfectly suited to acrylic paint. The colors were mixed directly on the board and moved around only as much as needed to the shapes and light-dark contrasts. Even the colors in the tree (ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow medium) were moved just so as to create the shape. The fact that this minimal working of the paint still produced a mostly green hue reinforces the wisdom about how overworked paint can lead to mud!

As I said in another post, scenes such as this one are commonplace in the midwest and their beauty probably wholly unnoticed by most people. To me the play of atmospheric effects on farmland along with the change of vegetation with seasons is enough to inspire forever.

Afternoon on the Prairie, Acrylic on board, 11"X14", $150 (unframed)