Foggy Top

11x14 oil on panel
$500 unframed
Available from my studio

This was such a beautiful setting. I saw it driving in and out of Bushwhack Road in Kerrville and wanted to paint it. The morning I did so was very foggy. The fog would move in and out over the hillside and I wanted to capture that haze, the muted tones and the lost edges of the hillside. The little metal roof sometimes would just glow too. Now, tonal paintings are not my forte' but I often like to try a higher "key" painting and this was a good exercise. I had a couple of fun ladies pull over where I painted along the roadside who were thrilled that I had chosen this subject. They'd often thought it needed painting. Another person pulled over to see if I had car trouble. Nice people out there in Kerrville.

Mike's Tractor

11x14 oil on panel
sold

This was my second painting of the weekend paint out. My first is really not worth showing - or keeping. But this tractor and old gnarled oak just intrigued me. It was a challenging scene to paint. I was sure I wasn't going to be able to do it. AND my new friend Mike wanted to watch me work! After a rocky start, I settled down and figured out how to paint the tree and the background and then began to make some marks on the tractor until it began to look like a tractor! Its loose and colorful. Sometimes its a lot of fun to leave things in the sketchy phase and don't retouch those bold color "test" marks. 

I'm about to head out to another type of farmland - Indiana - to celebrate my inlaws 50th wedding anniversary. Will be mixing a little business in there and plan to meet a collector about a commission of her favorite restaurant. What a cool job I have! :-)

Road Block

10x10 oil on panel  
$425 framed
Available at the Kerrville Arts & Culture Center

Another painting from my weekend in Kerrville. This one also hangs in the show at the KACC until Nov. 3. Just like my figurative works, I prefer closer views to vistas when painting outdoors. This sunny ranch road and gate looked so welcoming hugged by all the bright greens of the surrounding trees. 

Weather Beaten

14x18 oil on linen

Ask Russell Collection Fine Art about this painting.

Happy Friday! I know I am relieved its the weekend. Been a frustrating week in the studio dealing with business issues. The Girl Scout cookie campaign ends this weekend too, so I will soon have a lot more of my time back for creative endeavors. The ability to quietly center and focus on painting is just impossible with too many things cluttering my mind. I bet a lot of you can relate.

Ommmmmmmm.....

Moses Botkin Monthly Challenge

Our challenge this month was to paint anything we liked, but on a 6x8 support and only with a half-inch brush! Diabolical! Actually, I paint every painting with just one brush, but use a smaller one - a 6 instead of an 8. I think I am just lazy. The artists I paint the model with on Mondays were surprised to learn that. They were aghast when they heard that I don't clean my brushes either. I use OMS (Gamsol) and just swish my brushes in there until they look good and lay them down and walk away. I don't use expensive brushes and they get a lot of abuse I suppose. Using one at a time until it flays out finally or the ferule loosens. I like a synthetic too actually, with a crisp edge.

Now, on to my painting. This horse was turned out one morning during our visit to the dude ranch two years ago this fall. The background was very Texas hill country. Dry scrub. And when I was flying in this past weekend and looked out the window, I was momentarily surprised because the ground looked almost like snow. The colors were so pale and muted. Lovely in their way.. and I wanted to try to capture that in my background here.


Facing the Morning Sun
6x8 oil on panel
©2010 Robin Cheers




Onion
6x8 oil on panel
©2010 Aaron Cordell




Bright Bales
6x8 oil on hardboard
©2010 Diana Moses Botkin




Bling Pouch
6x6 oil on canvas
©2010 Suzanne Berry




Still Life
8x6 oil on canvas
©2010 Vicki Ross

Artists Retreat

We had a wonderful painting weekend in the Texas Hill Country. I joined about 20 other artists at a really cool little "camp" - Roddy Tree Ranch - on the Guadalupe River. I painted and sketched all around the area, some on the river and some of the cottages on the "ranch" site. There were some beautiful views... as well as horses, donkeys, old tractors and cars, and colorful characters.

It was so nice to just wake up and have nothing to do but get my breakfast and walk out to paint. I worked on site for awhile, then we headed out to explore more of Ingram and Hunt, and eventually drove further out FM 1340 which has to be the prettiest drive in central Texas. It was just lovely.

I won't blog everything, but for those who can get on Facebook, I posted lots of photos of the area and some of the fun things we saw on the way.

I have to say, I am rusty when it comes to landscape painting. And everything was such bright colors... sometimes I felt like a kid with a box of crayolas. And part of Saturday was so windy! Wow... luckily that died down and we really couldn't have asked for better weather.

Below are my paintings/sketches. I learned on the last two to stop fiddling and leave it loose and incomplete.


First painting of the weekend... one of the cottages prettily lit up with morning sun. Not exactly how I captured it though. The sun is so very bright, that judging value is hard.


I set up to paint the horses/pony/donkeys - whichever was going to pose well... but some other artists joined me then and the animals got curious and continually milled about keeping an eye on us and begging for treats and scratches. So I did this quickie of the pony with a halo of sun around him.



Trucked our things into a narrow, wet path alongside the Guadalupe river to get a view of these falls. Dropped my brush in the edge of the water at one point. No other major mishaps though! You could tell it had flooded recently... a canoe was stuck with a bunch of debris halfway up a tree.



Ok - I was wearing out here maybe. I had such great views of the other artists at work here, but the green was so bright, the water so blue, etc. that things ended up looking very childish. I almost scraped it off, but actually, it probably has some merit with another hour of work. I realized here that I quit too soon.... give up too easily.



Took ONE more stab at it Saturday evening. I saw this view Friday when we'd arrived. 24 hours later I went back to this site knowing the shadows would be long with the sun getting lower in the sky (6:30 ish) . I suppose I had thought about it long enough that I had it in my head and my hand knew better what to do. I was pretty pleased with my results here. Also decided to not define everything, but to just focus on my center of interest. I worry too much about filling in the canvas/board.



Sunday morning, we went back to "my view" and I painted a house on top of the hill this time! This hill is above the river, which flows pretty much west to east here... so we were in a great spot to paint long shadows on the ranch.

I am so glad I went - what a great group we have in Austin - now over 100 members! They have paint outs weekly in some very interesting areas around Austin - lots of great ideas and companionship come out of it. I'm going to keep my plein air set up packed and ready and get out more regularly. Its good to get out of the studio and talk to people in real life some!

Weather Beaten

14x18 oil on linen

I really wanted to capture the effects of our Texas sun here. Not just in the glare of the barn yard, but in the worn and weathered look of the woodwork, the baked earth and the cowboy's features. I had a lot of fun with this painting. I think that painting something I would not normally pick was a good excuse to push myself and to take some risks. I put in heavy thick strokes of pure white, left the intense blue in the shadow and had it bouncing in other areas and I put my focal point rather far left in the painting. I like it.

Trail Boss

30x36 oil on canvas

I really have no idea what came over me today. I painted two small paintings of dogs then began to look through my photos for more. I came across some ranch dogs. And the ranch horses. And the next thing I knew I wanted to paint a large horse. Talk about something completely different. I have always loved horses and spent most of my youth doing anything I could to be around them. I had a nice looking chestnut quarter horse like this. Actually, Tasha was bigger and less elegant looking. Horse and rider are on the trails out in Bandera on a crisp March morning.

Sundown

6x6 oil on panel
$100 + $12 s/h

Someone had wanted one of those previous experiment sketches I had done so I did the scene again on my usual gessobord panel. Its the same color scheme but I think I lost some of the looseness. Then again I wasn't rushing through 5-6 of them in 20 minutes.