July-August Monthly Challenge-2011

Summer is here and July 4th is upon us. Great time for painting. How about we try to do a painting of something we enjoy this summer. If you don't have photos to work from, there are a lot of reference out there to use as a guide. Remember to respect people's copyrights when doing this, by naming the source of the reference where necessary. I'll try to get some reference pictures to help, but in the meantime let's get have fun and give it a try.

Suggestions:
Flags,----Fireworks-----Family Outings
Camping----Beaches----Sunsets or Sunrises----Your Garden
Judy

Sounds great Judy. I'll be working on something soon.
Dayle

OK, so today I did a painting with my new WSOs - actually, my very first full painting with WSOs. I did use Jerry Yarnell's online videos on painting with WSOs to learn how to do each of the major areas, but instead of painting his scene, I painted my own scene inspired by the view from my backyard of Mount Rose and the Sierra Nevadas. I wasn't sure if I should post it here, but it is summer in Northern Nevada, so I thought I would.

I painted this wet-in-wet, alla prima, in about 3.5 hours. It is on 9X12 Canson Canva-paper primed with 2 coats of gesso. I used Lukas Berlin WSOs and walnut oil.

Wow, this is really nice! I love the way you've brought up the foreground interest with the grasses and rocks!

Cindy,

It is just beautiful. I love your colors especially the distant mountains and the grasses. You're whole technique is terrific. Isn't it great having a very picturesque back yard to look out on? Please also post this in "Completed Paintings." It deserves to be in two places.

Thanks, everyone!

When I was doing the painting, I almost quit before putting in a foreground for fear of "messing it up"! Then when I put the rocks in, my husband didn't like them there and thought they were out of place. Rocks and stones are my nemesis! Then I remembered to settle the rocks in by bringing up the grass around them a little and they looked better. Then I got the idea of doing the long grasses up front, and after warming up on a piece of scrap paper, decided to give them a try. Right away, I felt a feeling of almost relief as I was painting in the long grasses and put them around the rock, too. I realized at that point that the painting had been missing an interesting foreground to help complete the painting and that instead of "messing it up", it made it much more complete! What a relief that was! I felt a lot better about the painting then - and learned a valuable lesson about composition!

It's loon season in here in the Adirondacks and I love loons. I went to an art fair last weekend and met a photographer with a huge collection of loon photos he had taken. He gave me permission to paint this one if I gave him a print. His name is Joseph Woody and his website is http://www.loonphotos.com/

Here's the beginnings of the painting done on a 9 x 12 textured Ampersand board. all the paints are W/N Artisan and include cobalt blue, magenta, cad yellow light, payne's gray, titanium and zinc white. I was planning to do this alla prima, but it is pretty tedious at times because of the detail, so I might have to break it up into 2 days.