Barn Through the Poplars...

I've been driving by this barn for almost 4 months on my way into work.  The barn lies behind a row of poplar trees.  It's rather a common scene here in Iowa to have a row of poplar trees on one side of the large buildings on a property.  The trees grow fast and serve as a wind break; especially during the cold snowy times of year. 

The sight of the hidden barn rather reminds me of a Bev Dolittle painting.  I love Dolittle's paintings with the horses and Indians in amongst the winter landscape and birch trees.  You really have to hunt to see the horses and Indians through all of the trees.  Seeing this barn day after day made me think and roll the thought around in my head of challenging myself to paint something like that only with my own touch and my level of experience in that style of art. I will admit that I am not as detail orientated as she is and it would take me years to get to that level.  But I thought it might be fun to play on the concept of the Bev Dolittle style. And so here it is, a painting that I call "A Barn Through the Poplars"...

Photo: "A Barn Through the Poplars"; a watercolor on 13" x 21" paper.

Right away I decided to place the barn scene that I painted to be among the colorings of a sunset.  I thought that it was more in fitting with a Bev Dolittle sense of style.  The red color of the barn would be more lost in among the skies of a colorful sunset.  I also chose to keep the cornfield in front of the populars and barn in a loose feel and not be tied down to more of the details that  should exist in a foreground of a painting.  I wanted the whole focus to be the trees and the slight glimpse of the barn peeking out behind them. 

Photo: A Barn Through the Poplars in progress.

I would love to hear any feedback you may have and thanks for stopping by.

Porch No. 101

This porch belongs to my good cycling buddies; Bee & Peter.  They asked me about a little over a year ago to do a painting of their house/porch.  I really thought I had managed a bit of a coup when I had them pose on their porch with their dog Astra for No. 100 of the Salt Lake City Porches Project.  I thought it was the perfect way to finish the project and also did a painting of their porch too.  I figured it was all done in one full swoop. 

Then after the January showing of the 100 SLC Porches, they approached me and asked to do a painting of their porch with no people from the front.  I will admit that I dragged my heels.  I was rather burned out on porches by that point.  So, more recently I was approached by another cycling bud to do their porch, I thought that I had better take care of Bee & Peter's porch first.  So here it is....

"Porch No. 101"; Poured Watercolor on 10" x 14" Paper.

When I asked how they wanted me to paint it; they said they wanted me to choose.  They did admit to liking my poured watercolors.  Here's one of the photos that I worked off of for their porch.

As you can see, I did a very loose form and played with colors to represent their porch.  I studied the different times of day with the directions of light play.  I also had several different times of year that the photos were taken from.  I will admit I'm partial to the Fall and liked playing with the bare branches of the tree.  Thus, I ended up with the top poured watercolor.  They seemed pleased with adding it to their painting collection. 

I'm currently having a sale on the available 100 Salt Lake City Porches of 25% off.  I'm calling it the RED HOT Summer Sale.  It makes sense when the temps are as high as they've been lately.  You can scroll through the page to look at those available by clicking here.  I welcome any feedback you may have and thanks for visiting.  Now on to the next porch for me!

"100 SLC Porches, No.59 & No.60"

It's definitely a patriotic theme with these two porches...



"100 Salt Lake City Porches, No.59"
Watercolor on 11" x 14" Yupo

"100 Salt Lake City Porches, No.60"
Watercolor on 11" x 14" Hot Pressed Paper

Porch No.59, I spotted a while back while on a bike ride during a pretty May Day while in the Canyon Rim area of the Salt Lake Valley.  I've been saving it for the patriotic time of year.  I loved how the big trees in the front yard kind of framed the upper area of the porch.  It's more of a side porch that runs the front length of the house.  I did this in a bit of a puddle wash on yupo; which is not an easy thing to do on yupo because yupo is a very slick type surface where the water REALLY puddles up and it must be kept still till the water drys.

Porch No.60 is an older home in the Taylorsville area of the Salt Lake Valley and I thought it might be fun to do it as a red, white, & blue theme to keep it patriotic even more.  I really got the idea from a painting that my friend & teacher Colleen Reynolds did.  It was a scene where everything was blue & white except for a guy that was wearing a t-shirt that had a flag themed print on it.  Colleen added the color red to that section of the painting.  I was very fascinated the first time I saw the painting and I thought that this porch was a good candidate for this style.  I started with a light flat wash of blue and built up.  The last thing I did was add the red color.

To view the progress of ( or to purchase one of) 100 Salt Lake City Porches, please click here.  I welcome any feedback you may have.  Thank you for visiting my art blog.

Water Color Painting Class #3

How time flies I'm all ready into my third class!  AND here's a painting that I did between classes... (A bit of homework).  Kind of a stormy clouds in background with trees.  It's based on a photo that our teacher gave us in the prior class.  Though, I will say the sky turned out to be darker than what I thought it would.

We started out the third class with watching a photo slide show and discussing composition in a painting.  It was very informative, and hopefully will help in my paintings overall.  It makes me want to go over all of my other paintings and see what I did right and what I did wrong.  Hopefully, I have more right than wrong.  After the slide show we proceeded into landscapes/over layering painting.  This we did over paintings we had all ready done in class.  I chose one of the washes that I did in my first class.  Here's the result....

This is supposed to be a field with pumpkins with the mountains and trees off in the distance.  It still needs some work.  But I think I'm seeing some progress?

Next the teacher had us work on stormy clouds in a different way.  It's like starting with a wash then putting turning the paper so that its vertical in one direction and then turn over the other way vertical before it drips off the paper.  Then mix in some gray and work it in a bit.  Put in the clouds with a clean moist brush picking up the paint.  Then turn the paper vertical one way then the other to allow the paint to work into those clods giving them more a fuzzy stormy look.  Well, I will say I was REALLY horrible at this exercise!  Here's what I ended up with...

Then we got to learn how to do evergreen trees.  These were rather fun and I experimented with several different size brushes on this same sheet of paper.  What do you think?

Water Color Painting Classes- 1 & 2

I've muddled my way through two water color painting classes so far.  Last night, I had my second class and I feel like I'm still just barely dipping my toe into it.  It's definitely a learning curve and I'm hoping that my learning curve improves as I go along.  The first class we worked on washes and then we played with making clouds.  My clouds need some work and I'm rather amazed that water colors dry SO MUCH more lighter.  We took some of the paintings from the first class and used them again for backgrounds in the second class.   I guess that this is fairly common way of doing water color paintings in that you layer them.  You paint one segment.  Then, let it dry and paint another and so on. The teacher had us hold on to all of our paintings because we are going to still use some of them for landscapes for future.  Below are the photos of my water color paintings.  I'm documenting this because I'm curious to see how my water color painting progress.

Class # 1-- WASHES & CLOUDS

Class #2-- TREES & STORMY SKIES

( I do think that this stormy sky looks pretty good. -- Perhaps, there's hope for me yet?)