#4 Mason House Inn

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I've established the road out front of the Inn and created a grassy area on the other side.  Also added more in the treeline and Caboose area.  Deeper grays and light brown will be added to the road.  It is currently a gravel road, but I imagine back in the day, it was all packed dirt.

I'm saving what I consider the hard part for last....the brick and windows.  I'm not using a ruler to create straight lines...this is all freehand.  To me, it makes for a more interesting piece, not a duplicate of a photograph. 



#3 of Mason House Inn

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Added some shadows here and there and working more darks in.  I take several breaks from having brush on canvas.  I step back and study the composition/color/value often as I progress on a work.  More tomorrow..........

#2 of art commission

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Here I'm progressing in the treeline behind the building. The time of year is Fall and there are so many lush colors in the trees.  I've also added the hotest highlighted area in the work.

Tomorrow #3

Here's the beginning....

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Oil 24"x36"

This is the beginning of a commission I'm working on.  I started this a month ago.  I thought I'd share each step along the way .  Here's Day #1.  Check back tomorrow for #2.

As you can see here....I usually tone my canvas instead of painting directly on a fresh white surface.  I tend to like using light red too.  Just something about red to me.  It's gotta be somewhere in my work.

Next step is transfering a light drawing from a sheet of paper where I work out details.  Most the time I like to just us oils and place contour lines to start.  When working on a project like this, I need to have a more precise placement of objects in the image.

"On Fire"

Oil -16"x20" canvas in frame

Not as happy with this version of the sunflower.  I painted the frame along with the canvas and had to take a picture of it slanted to keep the "glare" of the wet paint down. 

I LOVE flowers, and I've come to the conclusion, they are the MOST challenging thing for me to paint.  I'm much more confident at doing portraits and landscapes.  It's crazy right?

So stating this, I think this work was a good practice run......now on to other things.

"Southern Light"

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18"x24"  Oil on stretched canvas

These flowers are but a few I have for students to draw and/or paint from.  As I was putting things away after a class, I was mesmerized by the light shining on these two and the sharp shadows to the left of where they were sitting.

I grabbed my camera and started shooting away....hoping it would capture the intense lighting I was witnessing in front of me.  (I didn't have time to break out brush and paints.)  I was happy when I got home and downloaded the images, printed them off and voila.....here's one composition of the scene I plan to paint several versions of.

The paint was still wet when I took this picture.  I tried my best to not get reflected light bouncing off the canvas.  Where there's a will, there's a way right? Rigbt!   

Final Canvas titled "Rainbow Mix"

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Here's the final group of 6"x6" squares for the "30 Paintings/ 30 Days Challenge" that was given by artist Leslie Saeta http://www.lesliesaeta.blogspot.com  in January. 

I marked off three 24"x18" canvases into 6"x6" blocks.  Each canvas held 12 squares.  "Rainbow Mix" was created using a full palette of "Warm & Cool" colors.  I also used a wide variety of brushes I own (some I forgot I had) and painted one square totally with a narrow palette knife.

You can see all the squares, along with the finished canvases, together on my website Artwork pages. http://www.ginlammert.com  ( I didn't start posting the very first works...but there are plenty squares  side-by-side to enjoy the view.)

This challenge was a GREAT way for me to start the new year.  I would recommend doing this exercise anytime if one feels in a creative slump.  Just trying to make the same subject matter interesting over and over...and over .....makes for a challenge in itself.