Lemon Lean

6x6

oil on gessoed panel

DPW

This was painted on hardboard I had bought and gessoed myself at some point.   I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked working on this surface!   I think it was the brush stroke texture of the gesso.   And I practiced drawing the way we did it in Carol's workshop and started out with my vulnerable areas of color, painting my islands:-)   Gotta celebrate those times the process is a breeze...

and now I think I need to get some more hard board.  

 

What's your favorite surface, if you paint?

Happy Tail

6x6

Oil on hardboard

SOLD

This was painted on a surface that I'm really enjoying.   A very slick gessoed hardboard that takes the paint differently than both canvas and regular gessoboard.  It let's me push the paint around, which is a lot of fun.   And of course I love an opportunity to paint a back-lit scene, this one of our happy mutt Theo!  

Dinner time - Day 27

8x8

Oil on Hardboard

Day 27 of 

30 Paintings in 30 Days

I looked over the list I made for myself on the first day of the challenge and this is what I set out to do, with the results in parenthesis:

As a theme for myself I will be painting

Everything that's been on my list to paint, which means:

At least 5 paintings each of

 cars  (3 so far)

kids (2 so far)

toys (4 so far)

animals (7...)

Cape Cod and urban scenes (2 so far)

and I will plan to paint on location/en plein air at least once or twice a week

plus do some abstract explorations and playing with a palette knife
Painted (5 Plein Air paintings)

So it seems the animal category won out and I have a few more days to fine tune or add to my list.

If you did the challenge - How did you do on reaching your goals?

Late Light - Day 25

8x8

Oil on Hardboard

Day 25 of

30 Paintings in 30 Days

This is the light I saw in the parking-lot of a Panda Express that we stopped at on the way home from a trip.  I grabbed my trusted paint-stained camera and got a few shots.   I wanted to get a little more experimental, simplified and more messy with this one...not sure I didn't get more complicated than intended, but it's a step in the process.   I liked the way the light from the sun passed thru the car's window.

This one is a day behind...now there's only a few more days to go....it's kind of weird to think the challenge is almost done.

Hang Ten Stuffy! - Day 24

8x8

Oil on Hardboard

Day 24 of 

30 Paintings in 30 Days

It was quite comical this morning, me trying to talk my 3-year old into letting me bring Stuffy to the studio so I could paint him and my son being adamant that I paint Bolt instead.....after some tears and turning the car around....Sounds crazy I know:-)  He let me bring Stuffy, as long as I promised to paint Bolt and I relented, as long as Bolt was going to cooperate.

....I still have to paint Bolt cause he wasn't quite in the mood?!...

I love the shape of this dragon and the way he naturally leans towards surfing.   Painting on this surface is interesting as it stays on top and it helps if you heap on more paint to get it to stick.

Getting a photograph was a whole other challenge as it rained most of the day, so I might just take another one tomorrow.

I ended up making some adjustments on this piece simply because I realized that the biggest value contrast was down by the leg and tail of the dragon on the lower right and that wasn't exactly the focal point so I changed it so that hopefully the viewer's eye is drawn to his head more than his feet.  Let me know what you think!

Happy Painting!