Friday, February 28, 2014

Staying Active In and Out of the Snow

The painting shown here is an oil sketch  (15 x 22) on illustration board that I accomplished a couple of weeks ago -- when the cold weather snap had taken a nap.  The purpose here was not so much to complete a painting of the boat on the stancions as to gather factual information for work on a separate canvas in the studio.  I was attracted to the subject by the partial snow cover on the ground as well as to a boat out of the water.  In the "colorless" winter, there is still much one can do with color.

This small (8x10) is an oil sketch done on burlap, accomplished from a sketch I had done in pencil.  The foggy day and the downward viewpoint were the attractions here.  This, like the previous painting, is a Wickford scene.  I have done a few pieces on gessoed burlap.  It takes some struggle to work the brushes over this rough surface, but I think it has potential for the more impressionistic techniques.  From this sketch , and a change of format, I developed a second piece.
This second oil sketch was done on an 11x14 canvas panel.  I  gave the panel an underpainting of a lavender hue and painted into it using wet-on wet brush and palette knife work.  The fog here is seen as a more colorful gray and brings out the other few spots of brilliant color.  The three ducks in the lower right quadrant are not very visible.  Since there is such thick paint on the panel, corrections will have to wait a few more days!