MORNING IN THE DESERT VI

Another painting completed some time ago, this time in oils. This scene was more of a reflection of something I saw early one morning in the Southern Californian desert. I was able to successfully add some of those stunted bushes which are characteristic of the area to the foreground and this helped bring that part of the painting into focus without distracting from the overall mood of the scene. It was very important to get the mountains in the background finished in a way that would reflect what I saw without becoming too bogged down in details. I like the sense of hazy distance in this one along with the effect of morning sun and a promise of a very hot day to come!

GOLIATH HERON STUDY

Due to an emergency trip overseas, I'm now in Hong Kong and will only be back in the studio later this month. I did however manage to find some time before I left to grab a few images of previous completed work and I wanted to share this small watercolor study done some time ago during an exhibition. The idea was to complete a painting during the evening as a demonstration of my technique, so I arrived with the underdrawing and background wash already complete. Basic washes were applied to form the shapes of the head and neck, and as these dried I added darker tones and finer detail to the beak and eye. For an on-the-spot demo, I think it turned out okay and will form the basis for a larger painting later on.

BLACKWATER LANDSCAPE, PART 1

Although most of my time spent in the studio recently has been towards completing watercolors, I did manage to almost finish this oil. I say almost since I only really have the foreground to complete. Right now, it is blocked in but will need some reworking along with some slightly darker values added. I'm not totally pleased with the shape of the water either so will probably re-work that too. I kept the clouds in the upper part of the sky soft-edged to hopefully impart some movement. I see them as slowly drifting from right to left in the light evening breeze. Since I love scenes such as this and never tire of painting them, I planning a new series of evening landscapes similar to the one shown here. I'm hoping that I can impart a more local flavor (to me that is) as there are a number of wonderful scenes around where I live that I walk past most evenings. Right now, they are mostly watercolor studies in my sketch book but I'll do the series in oil. I have done a number of plein air oil studies too and all this along with the sketchbook studies will get heaped together as reference for the final paintings.

AFTERNOON SUN IV

To finish off the painting, I gave the shadows another thin wash and darkened the underside of the overhang. This helped solidified the window more securely in the wall. I was careful to keep variation within the shadowed areas as this was very important to the realism of the work. More work was done to the front of the overhand and also to the wooden window frame on the right. Now that it is darker, the edges are more defined helps pull it away from the wall. Now it seems to jut out into space as intended. Then I just went carefully over the painting looking for areas that needed subtle tweaking. That part didn't take long and when couldn't find anything else to do, I declared the painting finished.
When I started Afternoon Sun IV, I was remembering the hot sunny days spent exploring old villages around Hong Kong. I was fascinated by the architecture and style of the older homes and temples that I came across. So the window here is a pleasant reminder of that time and although the main subject is in the center of the painting, it still has a somewhat abstract design caused by the shadows that I like. Sadly this building is no more, razed to make way for new homes. I suppose that is the price of progress, still seems a shame to me. Size is 30" X 22".

AFTERNOON SUN, PART 5

Upon further reflection, I decided that the shadowed areas needed a little more attention so more washes were applied here. I kept quite a bit of variation within each wash as there were lighter areas within the shadows that I wanted to retain - getting a good balance was trickey. I started work also on the bottom of the overhang. The thing about this area and the underside at the top of the window was the reflected light coming up from the ground. I was careful not to go too dark here so it was a case of laying in some colour and seeing how it looked. I spent some time painting the front of the overhang and used drybrush to create some textures. I also added Burnt Sienna washes to the window frame on the right as a way of lifting it off the shadows behind which were a little greyer. This helped some but I realised that I still needed to go darker. All of the elements were in place now though and I could see how they were working together to create interest and depth. I knew that only a few things remained for me to do and these were some of the smaller details along with a few areas that weren't quite finished.

AFTERNOON SUN, PART 4

I starting the days work with a final wash over the wall area being careful to keep it from going too dark. I wanted to maintain the feeling of bright sunlight and still have enough tone on the wall to keep it from looking too washed out. Next I applied the first washes to the shadowed areas - I had kept the pencil lines indication them very light as I didn't want them to show through in the final painting. With that area working well and drying, I turned to the bars again and added further washes to the deep shadowed areas inside. I also worked on some of the fine line details here and there but would keep most of this work until the end. Right now, I was basically concentrating of keeping the overall values correct. I added some deeper tones to the ends of the broken window frames as well the bars as a way of defining some of the textures there and yet more blue. Not too much to do now, another couple of days work should see it through.

AFTERNOON SUN, PART 3

Here is the result after having laid on a number of washes using mostly Sepia with a touch of Burnt Sienna. There is plenty of texture now along with quite a bit of modulation of the surface. It looks as interesting as I had hoped, some of the lighter areas were left as the bare paper underneath. Now that I had more tone on the painting, it was easier to judge consecutive washes so I darkened the blue using more of the Cerulean that I had started with and darkened the rust on the bars with alternate washes of Sepia and Burnt Sienna. So far the painting was progressing well which is always a relief when working in watercolor! I added a hint of shadow in the upper right below the overhang in a way of getting a better understanding of how dark the shadows need to be. Since I never work directly from a photograph, I do spend quite a bit of time just looking at the painting itself and seeing what it needs instead of just slavishly copying directly from whatever references I may have. My aim is to create something new, something that may just be different and unusual enough to excite others the way that the initial idea excited me.