Columbus Landscaping Association Garden Tour

Our group was asked to paint in the gardens on the Columbus Landscaping Associaton Garden Tour today. I chose a beautiful house in a gated community off Orange Road. What a beautiful home and wonderful landscaping! I painted two paintings while there. What a great experience!

Studio Work - Heron Pond

I worked in the studio several evenings this week. For this painting, I first used the Gamblin FastMatte Alkyd for the first layer to block in the basic shapes. The next night couple nights, I used my normal Gamblin standard oil paints. I really like the feel of working on top of the FastMatte. I am not sure it if was the dry texture of the Alkyd or just because the paint was dry. I am so used to working on a painting alla prima wet on wet. I also worked larger (11x14) then my normal plein air size of 8x10.

acrylic wash

FastMatte

regular oils

I thought I was done but the 2nd heron was distracting
and also made some other changes

"Heron Pond", 11 x 14, oil on hard board

yART–Art at the MAC

I painted from a photograph while at the art fair. It was a nice day and lots of nice people came through. No sales on my part, but I did sell one of my older pochade boxes to a fellow painter. It got hot and sticky mid-afternoon, and I packed up and headed home.

While at the fair, I got some suggestions from my oil painting teacher and worked on it a little bit after coming home. My underpainting was a golden color and bright red. You can see a bit of it in the first photo below.

The photo I used was underexposed on purpose so that I wouldn't try to copy it exactly. 

"Woodlot"  8x10  oil on hardboard

yArt in the Park

If you are in the Columbus Ohio area, please stop by tomorrow at the MAC and visit with me and the Central Ohio Plein Air group. We will have art for sale and will be painting!
http://www.mcconnellarts.org/wp/archives/6181

Plein Air Saturday–Prairie Oaks Metro Park

We painted at Prairie Oaks today. It was really overcast and drizzling when we arrived. I setup in the shelter house because I was using pastels today. Because I bought a new pochade recently for my oil painting, I decided to gear up my older Guerrilla Painter box for pastels. I already had two of the pastel trays, so bought two more and the palette extensions this week because Judsons had lower prices with free shipping! By the time I was trying to finish up my painting, the sun came out and every cloud disappeared! Talk about chasing the light! I like my finished painting.

Prairie Barn, 9 x 12, pastel on Pastelmat

Palette Cleansers

Just a couple quickie sketches to use up the paint on my palette.

Saturday Plein Air–Glacier Ridge Metro Park

We painted at Glacier Ridge Metro park today. I turned out to be a lovely day. After weeks of 95 degrees and high humidty, today was humid, but in the low 80's and overcast with a nice breeze. I decided to try putting a little video of my progress on the blog today instead of individual photos.

I have a new laptop, and learning about Windows 7 and Windows Live options. Some of it is pretty nice! I like the photo editing package real well, and have most of the options there figured out. And I do like using it to create a blog post.

"Glacier Ridge View"  8x10, oil on panel

I have rigged up a new way of photographing my finished paintings too. I read online about homemade photography tents for lighting objects. I made mine with foamcore board, packing tape and tracing paper. I use clamp-on work lights for lighting. I have finally figured out all the options on my Canon SD1200IS Digital Elph camera and now set white balance and adjust before taking the photos.