Painting A Custom Car

Not much to say about this one, it's a painting based on a photo I took of a custom 1950 Chevy at a car show.  The actual car was painted flat black, other than that I painted it pretty much how it was.

Blue 1950 Chevy Custom

To purchase click on image.

If you have 20 minutes to spare why not enjoy this video of me making this painting?

Searching For Balance

Well, look at that, only three days since my last blog post.  I have actually been meaning to post every Wednesday and Sunday, and I did that more or less for a month then lost my way for nearly a month, let's see how long I can stay on track this time.

You often hear about "balance" in compositions for paintings and drawings.  Most of the time paintings are not symmetrical, so what makes for a balanced composition?  I have to admit I can't explain the principle in general terms, at least not very well.  When I am presented with a reference photo to consider for a painting, balance is one of the first things I consider, however I think it's become somewhat intuitive for me after reading so many books (Edgar Payne's book on composition is one of the best for this) and looking at so many master and professional paintings, composition and balance have become somewhat ingrained in my psyche.

I can say this however, balance boils down to shapes, their size, their value and their placement in the composition.  However hue and saturation can sometimes play their part, but if the other factors aren't right, adjusting hue and/or saturation are not likely to help much to correct poor balance.

"Neglected"

Here is my latest landscape  All of the elements you see in this painting were also in my reference photo but I adjusted their placement and shapes.  I made the outside poplar tree taller than the one closer to the middle, the opposite was true in the photo.  Notice that the peak of the barn roof is offset to one side, that was the case in the photo, this seems to be a common design, why I don't really know, but it does make for a more interesting design and in this case helps to balance the composition.  If the peak of the barn was right on the center of the barn I'd have to move the barn over to the left more and maybe make it a bit taller to balance the composition, assuming I left the poplars as is.

That takes care of horizontal balance, but what about vertical?  I'm not sure it would be considered balance but the composition is divided pretty much in thirds, the grass, then the barn and hills, and the last third, the sky.  However maybe that's too "balanced" and if there was one thing I'd maybe do differently if I did it over it would be to move the barn and hills down a bit and reduce the grassy area.

If you would like to watch a video of me making this painting you are in luck, there's one on YouTube, click and watch now.

Hot Roddin' With Paint

I've been slacking with my posting lately, sorry about that,  and this one is going to be a short post, sorry about that too, but at least I'm giving you a video to watch to give you something to occupy 15 minutes of your stay at home time.




This painting is based on a photo I took at a big car show last year.  The car was built at a shop in Grantsville, Utah and is a bit famous having been published in Wheel Hub magazine so I stayed pretty true to the colors and features, of course the palette knife applied layers made it more abstract, but it's still quite obvious that it is a 1932 Ford hot rod.  Here's the finished painting;

"32 Hot Rod"

Click on image to purchase

An Agricultural Relic

I'm not sure where my love of old tractors comes from but I sure enjoy them.  Maybe it comes from playing in my Dad's wrecking yard when I was a kid, being exposed all summer to old, mechanical things, stuff that most people looked on as junk, but for me it was a playground, probably not legal today.

Abandoned Oliver Tractor

Click on image to purchase

I always get excited when I see an old tractor sitting in a field, or in a barn while traveling the rural backroads of Utah and take plenty of photos.  That wasn't what happened with the subject of this palette knife painting however.  I found this old Oliver Tractor in Mcbride's Wrecking yard in Grantsville, Utah. Unfortunately pressures from the city caused Mcbride's to be closed a couple years ago.  I spent a couple hours walking around that yard and this is the second painting I've done based on photos I took there, I feel lucky I had that opportunity.  Obviously I moved the tractor to a more rural setting, a farm field in the background and tall, dead grass in front and backed by a group of trees.  This painting is also on the large side for me, 18" X 24".

More Demo Videos

Another week on YouTube and three more videos to share with you.

This one is a little different in that it's a sketch instead of a painting.  I use a Copic Multiliner pen and Tombow brush pens to do a simple black and white sketch of an old, abandoned Chevy farm truck.  I saw and photographed this truck in Wallsburg, Utah.

I stepped up the complexity on this one a bit by adding a couple barns to make this a rural landscape.  Structural objects with well defined shapes can actually be a bit of a challenge to paint with palette knives.  I also approached the process just a bit different.  I did make a brush underpainting, intstead I blocked the painting in using a more thin layer of paint using the knife.  The painting is loosely based on a photo I took in Spring City, Utah.

This one bumped up the difficulty level considerably.   Barns are relatively simple shapes, but old vehicles are quite complex.  I decided to take that challenge on anyway by painting an abandoned early 1950's Chevy truck in an open grassy field.  Barns are primarily straight lines and very geometric without many details, whereas an old truck can have organic curves and lots of details.  This one really pushed my skills, especially since I had to do it in one sitting under a camera. The truck that served as the model for this composition was based on a photo I took at the Erickson Ranch in Wallsburg, Utah during the Antique Power Show.

That's this week's videos, I hope you watch and enjoy them.  If you do please click the "like" button, and if you want to be alerted to new videos when they come out hit the subscribe button and the "bell" notification icon.  Also, I'd very much appreciate any comments.  Thanks.

Wanna Watch Me Paint?

If so, now you can!  That's right, I've started a YouTube channel.  My videos will all be painting demonstrations, now you'll be able to watch my process from start to finish.

Click here to go to my YouTube channel

As for the day of this post I have three videos uploaded.  The first was just a short time lapse of a landscape painting of open country using palette knives.

The second video is a long format of the first, I even include commentary for a couple minutes at the beginning where I talk about my reference photograph, my composition decisions and show you my palette and name off the colors I use.

The third video is a mix of the first two styles but is a different painting, a back country autumn scene. There is no commentary on this one and it's shorter because much of it is sped up a bit but parts of it run in real time as well.

I plan on making two videos a week to be published on Wednesday and Sunday.  I'll also upload the occasional bonus sketch demonstration video.  If you enjoy these videos make sure you "Like" them, "Share" them and subscribe and click the bell icon if you want to be notified when I put up new videos.

Recovered Landscapes

I recently cleaned up my studio.  Things were piled on top of things that were piled on top of other things.  The clean up became studio archeology as I pulled out paintings that I forgot I had.  I decided many of these paintings are ready to go into my Etsy store while others needed to be reworked first.  Here are a few these recently recovered paintings.

Parkway Spring

One of my few oil paintings "Parkway Spring" is based on a photograph I took while out for a walk in the Jordan River Parkway.  The Parkway can be very green during spring, a nice painting to look while we endure winter.  (click on image to purchase)

Barn by the Tracks

"Barn by the Tracks" has been one of my "love/hate" projects for some time.  I always liked the idea and the composition but not my execution of it.  When I pulled it out of my discard pile while cleaning up the studio I decided it wasn't so bad, except for one problem, it didn't match my current style.  So, I fired up the palette knives and painted over the whole thing using the existing brush painting as an underpainting and guide. I'm much happier with it now.    I don't remember exactly where I saw this scene, somewhere in Brigham City I believe.  (click on image to purchase)

Lone Tree

Prints Available

The painting "Lone Tree" was inspired by a visit to Fairview, Utah, a fairly remote, small, ranching town a ways south and west of the Salt Lake City area.  Fairfield is surrounded by open ranch land. On the west side in particular you might see plenty of cattle feeding amongst clusters of old oak trees that often have pretty odd shapes.  Odd natural shapes you say?  I'm on it. I focused on one interesting tree in particular for this painting based on photographs of the area, however I'll admit the real landscape around Fairfield isn't nearly as green. 

"Tree Stand"

This painting might look familiar, that's because "Tree Stand" is a scaled up version, (16" X 20") of "Tree Stand Study" a smaller, (8" X 10") painting I posted earlier.  The painting was inspired by a cluster of trees I used to pass by every day on my way home from work.  Of course these trees were stuck in a commercial area, storage units in the background in fact. Well that won't do so I "planted" those trees in the open countryside, in this case a fabrication of my imagination. (click on image to purchase)