San Antonio Riverwalk at night WIP

I am liking the start of this one. Usually a good sign. Mark, set, go!!!!
The reference photo turned out very well, so I have good material to work from. Yay!

Bare bones, folks. When the bones are laid out in the right way, one can sing the flesh onto the body of the painting with ease. Honestly, I might need to make some changes to the arch of the bridge or reflection... Not quite sure just yet.

Linen

Linen
6" x 8"
oil on canvas board

I was in a bit of a hurry to get this one posted, and I am afraid the colors aren't living up to reality. As it turns out, I really like this one, so I am putting it aside as another possibility for the Whistle Pik show in December.

I got my website set up and thanks to Fine Art Studios Online, it is beautiful!

Years ago I made the mistake of building my own website. It was a nightmare. I love the set-up on this one, and it is so easy to update!

Check out my fabulous new website: sarawintersart.com

Three Sisters

Three Sisters
9" x 12"
oil on linen canvas board
Click here to purchase.

I took the reference photo for this painting last spring at Fisherman's Wharf in Seattle.

Ahhhhhh.....

Seattle Boats
6" x 9"
oil on canvas board
Sold

Small paintings move wonderfully fast. I can see why people become daily painters. Instant gratification- ahhhhh!

Plein Air painting is Hard.

Union Flat II
6" x 8"
oil on canvas board

Whew! I decided today to go back to Union Flat Creek to try my hand at the rocks again. Getting there, but they still just look like globs of paint rather than rocks. What am I not doing that I should?

I may have to do some up close and personal rock studies...

I also decided to concentrate on the drawing bit of this painting, and found that helped a lot. I've been reading Richard Schmid's Alla Prima so today, I was trying to look at the subject as a specific problem that I needed to work out. As I was painting, I realized how little attention I have been paying to the exact placement of objects in the view.

Color. All the greens really get me. Subtle changes make all the difference, I suppose...

I need more drawing practice.

Yet another lovely plein air painting day

Break Time
8" x 6"
oil on canvas board

Painting number one: My first ever attempt at painting sheep! I like it. I practiced rearranging the scene to suit my needs. Which was kind of a necessity because the sheep kept moving around as they belched at their young. These sheep didn't bleat. They belched. It was the strangest thing I have ever heard.

Blah
8" x 6"
oil on canvas board

Painting number two: Same location, facing a different direction. I don't care for this one. There is not enough definition in the trees- they just sort of blend in with things they shouldn't. There isn't enough contrast to suit my taste either. I also don't care for the way the trees all sort of line up. Irritating.

The sheep were very obliging and moved to this side of the field when I started painting it.
I'm going to try this one again another day.

Union Flat
6" x 8"
oil on canvas board

Painting number 3: I have driven past this scene like fifty times and never stopped to try it. The rocks are what drew me, initially, but I ended up concentrating more on the water so my rocks are pretty indistinct. I enjoyed this painting, and will definitely be stopping there again. Next time I will focus on the rocks a bit more...

Moving on! - The Metisse

The Metisse

8" x 10"
Oil on canvas board
Sold

I took too long with this one- started fiddling with it. Darn tiny brushes!

I'm going on a virtual paint out to Paris now with Bill Guffey and crew. I got my prints from Kodak the other day and am sooo ready to start!

The Metisse - WIP, almost there...

The progress photo of the Metisse as promised. Not long now- just the water and reflections and maybe a little tweaking here and there...

I was a nervous about the composition at first because the boat is pretty close to dead center. I like it right now, we'll see if I still like it when the painting is complete.

The Metisse - WIP

I was getting a painting ready to ship and got a little carried away. I couldn't help myself- the box was so perfectly clean and blank... It was just begging for a sketch. The boat is called the Metisse. I fell in love with it at the dock. It was smooth, slender and red red red!

This was another reference photo I had been avoiding for a while, but I had so much fun sketching it that I started a small painting of it.

I am enjoying working small. This one is an 8"x10". Soon I will have a mass of 6"x8" canvas boards to work on as well.

Let me tell you how much I love Gamvar (Gamblin's super awesome archival varnish). It dries to the touch relatively fast and doesn't make your head spin from the fumes... in fact, I hardly noticed a smell. Hurray for Gamvar!

Aha! Not quite as finished as I thought!!!

Fisherman's Wharf

16" x 20"
Oil on Canvas
Click here to purchase.

Now its finished. I will not be making any more changes to this painting.

I was trying to leave the lettering off the Karsten because I didn't want it to draw attention away from the Phalarope behind it. But lo and behold! leaving off the lettering did the opposite of what I intended. That great white mass was just too much. I like this painting too much to have left it to sink into that crevasse of unwanted paintings.

(The purchase link on the post below will go the same place as the purchase link in this post... to the updated painting in my Etsy shop.)

Fisherman's Wharf

Fisherman's Wharf
16" x 20"
Oil on Stretched Canvas
Click here to purchase.

Finished! This painting was a challenge. Mostly because I took so long to finish it. Have had to make some changes to my studio space

Moving on. I have about 16+ canvases to paint red now.

I have been trying to get my hands on Edgar Payne's Composition of Outdoor Painting for a while now, and could not find a copy for less than $125. Insane. Finally found one though- for less than $30 and still in the printer's shrink wrap!

It came in today. I thumbed through it and can hardly wait to immerse myself in its glorious tutelage! (oooooo! I get shivers just thinking about it.)

WIP - getting closer!

A few little changes and a bit more paint. Any minute now a whirlwind of paint is going to hit this painting and it will be finished. I pretty much just have some whites and an orange-ish spot and a blue-ish spot.

Oh... And a bit more lettering on the boat in the foreground.

Almost finished!

WIP - a bit more

Coming along... I just saw something I need to change. Man! Blogging is helpful! This is the first painting that I have pretty substantial reflections from the water appearing on the boats. This is a new challenge. I like it so far.

Lettering is hard. It has to be just right otherwise it looks sloppy and awkward. Talk about awkward- awkward is one of the most awkward words I have ever seen. Good fit.

My lettering on the Phalarope needs a bit more work... the beginning of the word hangs down further than the rest. .... hmmm...

WIP - bit by bit

Woohoo! I got a little bit done today. Feels good.

I really had to fight the impulse to make all those grays in the upper left hand corner the same. But things like that make a difference. There are bluish grays, reddish grays, yellowish grays... It would be a shame to ignore all those wonderful little differences.

Its funny, but the more things get filled around the boats, the more excited I get about painting them. Icing.

WIP

A start. I had a minute and decided to go ahead and post what I have so far. It helps me see that some progress is being made. Its like looking at a painting upside down. Gives a different perspective.

Sometimes I get so caught up in the mess before me I fail to see where it is all going. Just have to keep pushing forward, and even if the final piece is not what I wanted it to be, it will at least be finished. More often than not I end up liking it in the end.

I have some more stormy sunset cloud reference photos on the way. I'm looking forward to painting some more clouds.... and more boats.

I just have to work past this block.

Port Townsend Boats II

Port Townsend Boats II
16" x 20"
Oil on canvas
Click here to purchase.

Voila! Painting number 5 in my Boats of the Pacific Northwest series.

I like this one. I really like the composition- the busy stuff at the top with a majority of the space taken by reflections.

I think I am going to do a couple of cloud paintings while I wait for my reference photos from Seattle to come in.

WIP - More Port Townsend Boats, and a bit of a ramble

I took this tonight because I didn't want to wait until morning when I have the proper lighting... The colors are a little off.

We went to Seattle this weekend and loaded me up with SOOOOOOOO many wonderful boat pictures! Oh! I am so excited! Wait until you see some of the beauties I got! Saturday evening we ran over to Fisherman's Terminal. Brad got himself a fish taco to go from Chinooks- which he said was awesome. I don't care for the taste of fish. I took his word for it. The day had been overcast, but seconds after Brad got back in the car with his dinner the sun broke through the clouds. I booked it for the boat docks. There were so many wonderful things to see. I took around 200 pictures there. Then we went down the road to a Marina just below the Fremont Troll and got a few golden hour pictures. I am so excited! I can hardly wait!

We had an interesting stay at the Mediterranean Inn. Someone pulled the fire alarm around 3 am. It was chilly, but a nice night. I think there was a dominant feeling of goodwill coming from the relief of knowing that we were all out and safe. The hotel was pretty small, so it didn't take long to clear the building. No fire. The suspect was a lonely drunk guy in a beret, apparently looking for some company in the wee hours of the morning. There was only one person there who seemed angry about the whole deal, but he seemed like a nice fellow. He was running about taking pictures of everyone standing around outside in their pajamas with their bed hair sticking out in all directions. I spent the rest of the night going over in my head how I could get out of a building faster if we were ever in another fire alarm situation.

I love Seattle. The city itself has so much personality. I remember someone telling me they hated the place because all the buildings were a dirty gray... I saw so much color there. Even with the overcast and rainy skies. The buildings are tastefully colored, muted, not obscene. Not the glaringly hideous colors you see on the houses in mountain towns.

There is art everywhere in Seattle. And artists too. On our way into town yesterday we saw a man riding a bicycle with a french easel strapped to his back. It was a very pretty easel too. Looked a warm red, like cherry wood. I wonder where he found such a pretty thing. Maybe he stained it himself.

I remember seeing an artist painting at a busy intersection a couple of years ago. His subject was a cute little bar/cafe, and he was painting on a rather large canvas, in my opinion, for painting outside. It was definitely larger than a 16x20. I was impressed. And then there was little ol' me running around like a maniac trying to get as many boat pictures as I could before the light vanished. But as far as anyone else knew, I was just an enormous dork caught up in a shutter frenzy.

I had so much fun running up and down the docks.

Seattle = Good Food.
Woah! let me tell you. We have never eaten at a bad restaurant in Seattle. This morning I was dying for a hometown-hangin'-with-the-cronies kind of breakfast. I was looking doubtfully at a Greek breakfast menu when Brad opened the door of the next cafe, took one look inside and said "We need to eat here." I was skeptical at first because it was called Mecca Cafe. I was thinking "middle eastern food for breakfast... not today." The place was a tiny bar/cafe done down in red, black, and silver. It was like Mephistopheles bought himself a little 50s diner. The waitresses had pasty skin and black hair and fingernails and dark dark lipstick- not quite Goth though. They took the look and gave it a real down home feel- if you can imagine that. It was all very well done! And the food was wonderful. I had a massive plate of scrambled eggs, rye toast with strawberry jam and the biggest pile of hash browns I have ever seen in a cafe- all for a whopping $4.99.

I was musing over the fact that we have yet to eat crummy food in Seattle, and Brad said it is because they have loads of competition and access to all kinds of fresh ingredients. A mediocre eating establishment can't survive in that kind of an atmosphere.

I love Seattle.

WIP- more Port Townsend boats

I was looking at my wall of reference photos last night trying to figure out what to paint next, the pickings are getting slim, when I came across this photo. The composition was boring, so I cropped a section with tape and cut out what I wanted.

So now I'm working from a teeny tiny 3" x 4" photo. Which, as it turns out, is a good thing! I am having to break the smaller bits into chunks of color rather than trying to paint a particular something. I am in trouble when I find myself trying to paint what I think an object is supposed to look like, instead of how it is.

My mantra for the day:
Paint what you see, not what you know.


Oh! I found my learning journal while cleaning up the book shelf. One of my "learning observations" from the other day was that a concise drawing is key to a good painting. My husband calls it "P.A." - Plan Ahead. I think it makes the painting process more enjoyable, because everything is set and ready to go.

I didn't plan very well on my last painting and struggled with it the entire time.

Gotta have P.A.

Squamish Yacht Club

Squamish Yacht Club
16"x20"
oil on canvas
Click here to purchase

Finished.

This picture was taken in the middle of summer. It was chilly. And stormy, as you can see. That was such a wonderful day. The dark, moody sky... and the sun beaming through in just the right places.

I am looking forward to getting some more reference photos soon. I was making room on the bookshelf the other day and found Fodor's Pacific North Coast guide book. Oooo! Excitement! I don't know why I didn't think about using a guide book. This one is over 10 years old, but I figure I can get some basic ideas of where to go and then look up the details on the internet.

I love the internet.

How did we ever do without it?

WIP - Squamish Yacht Club

Adjust, adjust. The boat in the foreground is in a constant state of adjustment.

I am, at least, feeling a little better about this painting. When there are so many changes needed, and so much going on in the painting, it is sometimes difficult to see the end product as worthwhile.

Getting there!