Prairie Church

Prairie Church
10x8 Acrylic on Stretched Canvas
Finished on All Sides
For purchase information please contact me

I love the prairie. I even love driving across Kansas. Others don't seem to care for it so much. Of course going west in  Kansas means going to Colorado to me. I'm sure that doesn't hurt things. But the wide open spaces are beautiful and a wonderful place to watch the clouds. Nothing gets in the way. And the prairie can produce some awesome cloud formations.
A little more impressionism, I had painted only the sky a while back. I was just playing around really, trying to be looser and working with acrylics. No lightning at that time. So I just added the foreground, with the church and road and some lightning. I really like painting lightning. 

Closeups below.

Prairie Moon

Prarie Moon
Acrylic on stretched canvas
10x8
Edges are finished with a dark color
I have paintings stacked up, stuck in corners, piled elsewhere. I got most of them out yesterday and put them out on my long dining room table. I just need to find homes for most of them. I will be putting a lot of them on eBay, at bargain prices. Most of them are smaller, from 5x7 and up a bit. Most are oils, some acrylics, like the above. This is just a goal and I am just beginning the process. I will let you know as things progress.
I have a few paintings, quite a few, that are in need of being finished. That was the case with the above painting. I had done the ground and the sky a while back and then wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it. So yesterday I added the moon, house, tree and stream. This is a loose, more impressionistic painting, which was my intention. I have a few more very similar to this, with mostly just the sky finished. I will be working on those for my next projects.

For purchase information go HERE

Below is a closeup shot of the little house. Hmmmm, little house on a prairie.

Four Seasons

I posted the photo right below a couple of days ago. I wasn't happy with the trees that I was working on, the top two in the collage. So I changed them up a bit and you can see in the second photo below. The autumn and winter trees are the same. I think they are better.  If you wish to see these larger, click on the photo.

BEFORE

AFTER

East Tennessee Somewhere

Oil on Gesso Board
4x4x1/8
Contact me for purchase information

Just wanted to play around a bit and do a quickie with some thicker paint. I've been watching some video on YouTube of some painters and one in particular. His are beautiful. The support is only 4x4 inches and I used a #4 flat sable, so it was a little like doing a larger painting with a bigger brush, only in miniature.  These are fun. It is hard to mess up. Although it has a long way to go!!
The setting is in East Tennessee, somewhere near Muddy Pond. That has been a favorite place of ours to go visit for years. It is the location of a Mennonite store. They used to make good sandwiches and we would go there and eat outside the store on the grass. But unfortunately they quit doing the sandwiches, so we don't go there any more. We have found another place where we can get the sandwiches, although it is not nearly as pretty of a drive.  And no grass to sit on :(

Below is the photo reference. Nel, I would love to see you do this one!

The Muddy Pond area is beautiful. I get our sorghum made from there.

Below is a closeup of some brush strokes. 

A Blue River - RESERVED

A Blue River
Oil on Stretched Canvas
20 x 16
NOT For purchase at this time
***Reserved***

From a Scene Somewhere in Colorado

Autumn Dream

Autumn Dream
Oil on Stretched Canvas
20 x 16

Hydrangeas - SOLD

5 x 7 
Oil on Canvas Panel

This painting is Sold

Just trying to loosen up my hydrangeas. Learned a different technique for doing the background. I was reading about using transparent colors. I never knew the possibilities. There is so much to learn! I started by covering the green area of the canvas with just Sap Green which is a nice transparent color. Then highlighting with Thalo Yellow Green/Cadmium Yellow Light/White while it was still wet. The blossom was done with a filbert and the greenery with a bright. Fun to do. There is so much freedom doing it this way and hard to do it wrong. That's a great thing. I know these are not what hydrangea leaves look like, but I was just working on the background technique, not so much a particular leaf. In the photo, the darker blues are showing more exaggerated than they really are. That seems to be a problem with certain colors when photographing and I'm not sure how to remedy it. 

I planted another hydrangea bush this spring, next to one that I planted a couple of years ago. They are so beautiful and covered with blooms.

Just for comparison, here is one I did a good while back. Tighter yes, but I do like the blossoms.  With this one I used more Pthalo Blue so that the color is like they would be if they were in acidic soil. I like the background technique on the new one better. Hmmm, now I think I need to marry these two somehow. The top one was a quickie, which I wanted it to be. Next time I'll take a little more time and try to put the things I like best together and also use a larger canvas. I like to use these smaller ones for studies. I think there might be a difference in the quality of the photo also. That can be a real challenge.

Shrooms

Oil on Canvas Panel
7 x 5
For purchase information go HERE

For my painters, this is the next one. Sorry Jamie, I wasn't thinking about the colors!! I did add a little blue accent. It is a fun painting. You don't have to get bogged down in the details and we can do it fairly quickly. I may play with it some more but just wanted you to have a picture to reference and print it if you like. I did this one on a 7 x 5 but we will be doing it on our 8 x 6's.

Thank you for looking.