Roanoke River Overlook #2

Parkway Series #25    12 x 16   oil   $125

Back on October 8 2009, I posted this painting, leaving most of it as a value study.  The blue and purple underpainting was left as a finished piece, however, as much as I experimented with abstraction, my need to paint correct value and color always prevailed.  So I went back and finished this one and I feel it is much more successful.

Rakes Mill Pond, Take Two

Parkway Series #253   12 x 16   Sold

Another remake shows more color and luminosity than the original painting posted on September 8th.

Remake #109

Parkway Series #109    11 x 14    oil    $125.

On February 11, I posted a very "anemic" rendition of this painting entitled "Roanoke River Tributary".  I was drawn to the image because of the diagonal compostion and color.  But the blue and orange contrasting colors were not effective in the original so I intensified the orange in the forground and added snow to make the contrast more effective.  The bottom horizontal log helps eye direction to remain in the painting instead of going off at the bottom right.  It is fun and very interesting to continue my self imposed critique.

Improvisation

Parkway Series #286   11  x 14    oil    Sold

 Out of the 260 paintings I did last year, only a few were rejects; I posted all but five paintings: this was one of the five that was never posted.  This painting is a dramatic remake of the original.  The original had no hay bale and no sky holes; in fact it had no focal point and I'm not sure why I chose a group of trees with a partial view of the parkway through them.  I did have great fun remaking this;  I really enjoyed the creativity of playing around with composition and ideas and I am proving to myself that the year of daily painting was incredibly beneficial in getting me to the point where I can improvise and compose without "written music"!

New Insights into Mill Mountain

Parkway Series #282   12 x 16   oil     Sold

This is an improved paint-over of #282 posted on Nov. 9th.  Aggregate shapes again improved the composition of a "sea of orange".  After a year of daily painting and pushing myself to produce quickly, I am finally slowing down enough to critique my work and turn out better quality paintings.  I am excited about going to the gallery this week and hanging a quality show of new paintings from the WVTF exhibit.  I am going to bring home many of the earlier paintings to repaint in the hopes of improving them.

Aggregate Shapes

Parkway Series #300    12 x 16    oil    SOLD

Even though this painting was started before the workshop, it was never finished enough to post online.  I finished it last night and while working on it, I kept thinking about Ron Boehmer's encouragement to group the shapes as much as possible.  Thinking about aggregate shapes while painting a mass of orange trees that are all the same color is extremely helpful,  Even though the "main characters" are not as obvious in this painting as in others, the shapes work much better now than they did before.

Luminosity

Parkway Series #280    12 x 16    oil    sold

On Nov. 3, I posted this painting.  After the workshop critique, I came home and added more "luminosity" to  the shadowed areas of this painting.  I know about working within shadows and light areas to create reflected light but because of my fast pace regimen, I was sometimes overlooking small but very important issues.  Over the next few weeks, I plan to redo some of the paintings I feel could be more successful.